"Floating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... peace. Tranquillity reigned around. On the 17th, every thing was changed. On this eminence had arisen, in the night, a redoubt, built by Prescott, and in which he held command. Perceived by the enemy at dawn, it was immediately cannonaded from the floating batteries in the river, and from the opposite shore. And then ensued the hurried movement in Boston, and soon the troops of Britain embarked in the attempt to dislodge the Colonists. In an hour every thing indicated ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... all descriptions infest the metropolitan river, floating about, washing onto the shores, poking up stolidly here and there out of mudflats. Most items in a dreary inventory that might be compiled would turn out to be something that was discarded somewhere ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... instructed to take the young guest's wardrobe under her care, since new ribbons and frilling now appeared with engaging frequency, giving quite an air to half-worn garments. Darsie in a blue muslin dress, with a white straw hat wreathed with daisies, and her golden locks floating past her waist, made a charming picture of youth and happiness as she sat in the old barouche, and when the hall was reached Aunt Maria cast a keen glance around the grounds, transparently eager to discover the young people and share in the fun ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... sorry to think," I broke in, "that that sweet little floating thistle-down of a child I once knew was to be done to ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... of the loveliest of our angel-birds, Richard Crashaw. Indeed he was like a bird in more senses than one; for he belongs to that class of men who seem hardly ever to get foot-hold of this world, but are ever floating in the ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... "or otherwise floating about in Periodicals; which you have chosen in this manner to embody. I feel little interest in their publication. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... tallest trees. Palms, with their rich leafy crowns, extend to a great height, climbing plants cover the walls, and on all sides are flowers and blossoms. The most delightful odour diffused itself through the air, cushioned divans stood half-buried under the floating leaves; in fact, everything combined to produce the most ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... persisted, however, and Mr. Sander found the belief so general, if shadowy, that when a service of coasting steamers was established, he sent Mr. Roebelin to make a thorough investigation. His enterprise and sagacity were rewarded, as usual. After floating round for twenty-five years amidst derision, the rumour proved true in part. Ph. Sanderiana is not scarlet but purplish rose, a ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... sculptured ice-front, looking all the grander and more striking in the gray mist with all the rest of the glacier shut out, until I came to a lake about two hundred yards wide and two miles long with scores of small bergs floating in it, some aground, close inshore against the moraine, the light playing on their angles and shimmering in their blue caves in ravishing tones. This proved to be the largest of the series of narrow lakelets that lie in shallow troughs between the moraine and the glacier, a miniature ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... in a smutty gun—a word of undoubted Saxon origin and of expressive force, and which has saved more blood-vessels from bursting than the lancet of the phlebotomist, for as he streamed past there was left floating upon the air a long string ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... eyes, I mean; dark, floating ones, with immense eyelashes that curl up and stick out when you see her profile. She's got a short, round face—no, kind of heart-shaped, I guess, and a little, delicate, turned-up nose, like the Duchess of Marlborough's; ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... was just the sense of something narrowly eluding me, which was there, but which I could not quite perceive. There were other places, too, that gave me the same sense—one a big dark pool in the woods, with floating water-lilies; it was there, too, that mysterious presence; and it was to be experienced also at the edge of a particular covert, a hanging wood that fell steeply from the road, where the ferns glittered with a metallic light and the flies buzzed ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... nestling at the foot of a mountain, then a forest, then a lake whose surface reflected the gorgeous coloring of the trees upon its shore, then another village, then a winding river which, mirror-like, repeated the blue sky and the floating clouds. This endless panorama was to Randy a most wonderful thing, and the beauty of it all as it passed before her, ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... world," Cora flung back over her shoulder. "Mr. Corliss said I couldn't imitate Sara Bernhardt, and I showed him I could." She began to hum; left a fragment of "rag-time" floating behind her as she entered her own room; and Mrs. Madison, relieved, ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... dressing room to the other, and painted the same color as the waves. Grooved pieces of wood must be fastened to each side of the canoe, so that it can be propelled across the stage on the ways, and appear to be floating on the top of the water. Ropes attached to each end, at the bottom of the boat, passed under the waves, and roved through blocks, can be used to propel it from one side of the stage to the other. The ways should extend into the ante-rooms, so that the boat can pass entirely ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... are falling!" exclaimed Helen. "See them floating and whirling. It reminds me of the day I lay a prisoner in the forest ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... story is concerned principally with the Man and the Maid, the Miasma pervades it to such an extent that I feel justified in putting his name on the bills. Webster's Dictionary gives the meaning of the word 'miasma' as 'an infection floating in the air; a deadly exhalation'; and, in the opinion of Mr Robert Ferguson, his late employer, that description, though perhaps a little too flattering, on the whole summed up Master Roland Bean pretty satisfactorily. Until the previous ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... its ears. Footsteps shuffled within and it murmured again. Some one called: "Slow up there, now," and then the door opened. It was push and jam for a minute, with grim, beast silence to prove its quality, and then it melted inward, like logs floating, and disappeared. There were wet hats and wet shoulders, a cold, shrunken, disgruntled mass, pouring in between bleak walls. It was just six o'clock and there was supper in every hurrying pedestrian's face. And yet no supper was ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... strong tide carried him away amidst a flock of wild ducks, which flew into the air as the waters dashed onwards, leaving the buffalo to be hurled over the waterfall. This pleased me; so I raised a storm, which rooted up old trees, and sent them floating down the river." ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... disposition which can be made of this difficult subject. The limitations and restrictions to guard against abuses in the execution of a preemption law will necessarily attract the careful attention of Congress, but under no circumstances is it considered expedient to authorize floating claims in any shape. They have been heretofore, and doubtless would be hereafter, most prolific sources of fraud and oppression, and instead of operating to confer the favor of the Government on industrious settlers are often used only to minister to a spirit of cupidity at the expense ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Martin van Buren • Martin van Buren
... delicate roseate hue, while the lower parts of the mountains lie in deep shadow, and frown darkly on the valleys, which resemble a sheet of dark blue water, with an atmosphere of a bluish-red colour floating above it. The most impressive feature of all is the profound silence and solitude; not a sound can be heard, not a living creature is to be seen; every thing appears dead. Throughout the broad valleys ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... which they had fled, now rested broad and quiet as a shallow lake, burnished faintly, brooded over by a floating, increasing light, not yet compounded into day. Tussocks, innumerable clods and crumbs of vivid green, speckled all the nearer water. On some of these storks meditated,—sage, pondering heads and urbane bodies perched high on the frailest penciling ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... birds in the trees above them, and their voices as pleasant to hear. Having turned the corner, they began to meet a company of children, who came along, sometimes in groups, again in detachments of twos and threes, all clad in white, with white veils upon their heads and floating about them as they passed joyously on, as if keeping time to the music of their own happy hearts. Poor children they were, most of them, with plain, ordinary faces, but upon which now shone a light that made one think of old sweet stories,—of St. Ursula and ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... wharves, landing or trans-shipping ivory, brought across from the African coast, gum, copal, spices, cocoanuts, rice, mats, and other produce of the island, besides several German, American, French, and other foreign vessels. Here also lay the Sultan's fleet, with blood-red ensigns floating from their mastheads, the ships being remarkable, if for nothing else, for ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... thought from the cause to the effect proceeds not from reason. It derives its origin altogether from custom and experience. And as it first begins from an object, present to the senses, it renders the idea or conception of flame more strong and lively than any loose, floating reverie of the imagination. That idea arises immediately. The thought moves instantly towards it, and conveys to it all that force of conception, which is derived from the impression present to the senses. When a sword ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... Iona ever perfected. It came like a stream of sound, bathing the senses unawares; enervating, subduing with delight. It seemed the melodies of invisible spirits, such as the shepherd might have heard in the golden age, floating through the vales of Thessaly, or in the noontide glades of Paphos. The words which had rushed to the lip of Apaecides, in answer to the sophistries of the Egyptian, died tremblingly away. He felt it as a profanation to break upon that enchanted strain—the susceptibility of his excited nature, ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... halo of gold and scarlet. It was like a gigantic humming- bird moth at first, but it presently resolved itself into a little girl, clad in something dark purple below, and above with a bright scarlet cloaklet, which flew out and streamed back, beneath the floating locks of glistening gold that glinted in the sun, as with a hand on each rail of the bridge she swung herself backwards and forwards with the most bewildering rapidity. Suddenly becoming aware of the approach of strangers, she stood for one moment gazing in astonishment, ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... But lo! floating light upon the wind And murm'ing o'er ocean crest, Come the thoughts of those I left behind, Bringing comfort and love and rest. Only a word—aye, only a thought! Each speeds like a heav'n-sent dart; Who can measure the gladness and aid they've brought— ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... through common intercourse; that the blessings which we associate with a life of refinement and cultivation can be made universal and must be made universal if they are to be permanent; that the good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain, is floating in mid-air, until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life. It is easier to state these hopes than to formulate the line of motives, which I believe to constitute the trend of the subjective pressure toward the Settlement. ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... those days and I had a dappled-gray pony named Pet, and everyone said it was just like looking at a picture to see me go prancing by. Of course I never thought about it. I wore a black velvet riding habit with a long train and a black velvet hat with a white plume just floating behind, and I had ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... easily if touched. The exuding pus is thin and pale gray in appearance, gritty to the touch, and generally free from pronounced smell. At other times its colour is reddened with contained blood, and floating in it are tiny particles of a pale-green substance, which when picked up and rubbed between the fingers are seen to be small ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... leaves float on water.—Loosely floating on slow streams of the northern states, in water not the purest, may often be found the common bladderwort, Utricularia vulgaris, producing in summer a few yellow flowers on each stem, rising from six to twelve ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal
... or three of the Peruvians would go into the bush with rifles, seeking fresh meat. McKay never slept during the day's traverse. Nothing escaped his eye from the time when he emerged from his mosquito net in the misty morning until he entered it again by firelight. The men in the boat; the floating alligators and wading birds of the water; the flashing parrots, jacamars, toucans, trogons, and hummers of the air; the yard-long lizards and nervous spider monkeys of the tangled tree branches alongshore—all these he watched quietly as the boat forged on. And the ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... gleaming stars, In floating, curling sprays, The golden flower comes shining through the woods These February days; Forth go all hearts, all hands, from out the town, To bring her gayly in, This wild, sweet Princess of far Florida— The ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... the slack stream's face When the wind skims irritably past, The current clucks smartly into each hollow place That years of flood have scrabbled in the pier's sodden base; The floating-lily leaves ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... said Ralph; "found her floating among the bushes, ax'd me out a flopper[10] with my tom-axe in no time, jumped in, thought of anngelliferous madam, and came down the falls like a cob in a corn-van—ar'n't I the leaping trout of the waters? Strannger, I don't want to sw'ar; but I reckon if there ar'n't hell up thar among ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... advisory and other co-operation with the Transvaal Government in order to cope with the new element of foreign immigration, resulting from the discovery of the rich gold-fields, and to provide appropriate relations with a new floating population, without materially altering the status of Transvaal authority, or the methods of government then ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... fire, from the engines; but the water was deep; the French were bold; the Venetians were skilful; they approached the walls; and a desperate conflict of swords, spears, and battle-axes, was fought on the trembling bridges that grappled the floating, to the stable, batteries. In more than a hundred places, the assault was urged, and the defence was sustained; till the superiority of ground and numbers finally prevailed, and the Latin trumpets sounded a retreat. On ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... other, following the young man's gaze out to the distance. "Our universe is now but water and air, and we are but specks floating between ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... deserted by its occupants, it was hinted that the negro had betrayed his master to his fellow-buccaneers, and that he, Pluto, was no other than the devil in disguise. But he was not, for his skiff was seen floating bottom up in the bay soon after, and his drowned body lodged among the rocks at the ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... drawers, or rather a belt, the body being first daubed over with a layer of bright colors; from the belt (which is short enough to leave the thighs free) hangs a long tail, tied up at the extremity with long horse hair; round their necks is a necklace, to which is attached a floating mane, dyed red, as is the tail, and falling in the way of a dress fringe over the chest and shoulders. In the northwest, in the costume indispensable to the players, feathers are sometimes substituted for horse hair." He adds "that some tribes play with two sticks" ...
— Indian Games • Andrew McFarland Davis
... finally matured when he reached Switzerland and settled the family at the Hotel Beau Rivage, Ouchy, Lausanne, facing Lake Leman. He decided to make a floating trip down the Rhone, and he engaged Joseph Very, a courier that had served him on a former European trip, to accompany him. The courier went over to Bourget and bought for five dollars a flat-bottomed boat and engaged its owner ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... along, it cooled both on the sides and on the surface, so that it formed a sort of canal, the bed of which was continually raised in consequence of the molten mass congealing even beneath the fiery stream, which, with uniform action, precipitated right and left the scoria which were floating on its surface. In this way a regular dam was at length thrown up, in which the glowing stream flowed on as quietly as any mill-stream. We passed along the tolerably high dam, while the scoria rolled regularly off the sides at our feet. Some cracks ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... went, and no one knew anything about where they went, as they were never heard of again on any part of the continent. The only news we ever had from them came from ships crossing the Atlantic westward bound, which reported having passed through large areas of floating insects. They must have met a western gale when well up in air, and have been blown out into the sea and destroyed. The people of Minnesota did not expend much trouble or time to find out what had become ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... reveals, unconsciously but plainly, what he is in reality (Matt. 12:36). Thus it is that what comes out of the mouth defiles a man (Matt. 15:18)—with the curious suggestion, whether intended or not, that the formulation of a floating thought gives it new power to injure or to help. That is true; impression loose, as it were, in the mind, mere thought—stuff, is one thing; formulated, brought to phrase and form, it takes on new life and force; ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... an arch, in which the father could keep his head and arms out of the water, having laid fast hold of a beam. He passed three days thus, until a boatful of Indians, happening to pass that way, and observing the floating hull, approached the boat, to see if it contained anything by which their greed could be advantaged. They began to break through the open end. As soon as they had opened a small aperture, they heard the voice of the shipwrecked religious, who begged for help. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... it was likely that any others had escaped the fate of their ship. Signy, in her holiday attire, with her bright face blanched with fear, her hands stretched to him, her small slight form bent in the attitude of prayer;—Signy floating away, away, ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... crimes in many states accumulated on their shoulders; and what peril might ensue to society should they combine together, as indeed they tried to do in Bedmar's conspiracy against Venice. Meanwhile, the states kept this floating population of criminals in check by various political and social contrivances, which grew up from the exigencies and the habits of the moment. Instead of recruiting soldiers from the stationary population, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... Why should he go to India, except to harass me? To be sure he had nothing to do with any other part of the world, and had a good deal to do with that part; being entirely in the India trade, whatever that was (I had floating dreams myself concerning golden shawls and elephants' teeth); having been at Calcutta in his youth; and designing now to go out there again, in the capacity of resident partner. But this was nothing to me. However, it was so much to him that for India he was bound, and Julia ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... modest sum-total; but we must make it as elastic as we can. Let me see, there'll be a franc for the fiacre, four francs for our return tickets, four for our dinner, and two and a half to spend as we like in the fair. Well, we can't commit any great extravagance with that amount of floating capital." ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... obliged to scud before the windy and it being at this season of the year that the ice from the polar seas begins to make its way down into the Atlantic, it was more than likely that a collision had taken place, and that the "Viking" had been crushed by a floating iceberg, which it was ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... cabin through the windows—for the dead-lights, in the confusion, had not yet been shipped—burst out the cross bulkheads, sweeping like a torrent the marine, the cabin-door, and everything else in its force, and floating Jack and the chaplain with several others down the main hatchway on to the lower deck. The lower deck being also full of water, men and chests were rolling and tossing about, and Jack was sometimes in company with the chaplain, and at other times separated; at last they both recovered their ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... I am swimming—floating—down smoothly. [The two pairs of serpentine lines indicate the river banks, while the character between them is the Otter, ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman
... the President, for whom personally he declared that he had a profound respect, while he commiserated his difficult and painful position. In this interview Lord Cochrane appeared to me to have a great advantage over his antagonists. Yesterday the admiral's flag was still floating. In the evening the President wrote him a letter in vague terms and contributing nothing to the end he had in view. This morning Lord Cochrane, in his reply, has again asked for authority to lower his flag, if that is the will of the President; but no orders have been ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... then, as they lay in the sweet short herbage of Tintageu or Moie de Mouton, chins on fist, crisp light hair close up alongside floating brown curls, caps or hats scorned impediments to rapid motion, bare heels kicking up emotionally behind, as they surveyed their little world, and watched the distant ships, and dreamed dreams and ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... whom he intended the baby. So a doctor is summoned. Our Lord God has already suggested to him that the sick woman will have a baby. So he goes out to the brook and watches for a long time until finally the box with the baby comes floating in, and he takes it up and brings it to the sick woman. And this is the way ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... striking proof of a counter-current in the upper region of the atmosphere; and some on Jamaica, about 700 miles distant to the north-east. In the sea, also, at the distance of 1100 miles from the point of eruption, Captain Eden of the "Conway" sailed 40 miles through floating pumice, among which were some pieces of considerable size. (Caldcleugh Philosophical ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... enters within the man, and brings out one by one some hidden and better impulse, at the same time laying a gentle hand upon his rougher humors; so that when he would shout, he hums, and when he would laugh, he smiles only; and in undertaking to run, he is caught about the waist; and goes floating smoothly around in the ground-swell motion of the Spanish-dance.' . . . WE perceive that the Copy-right Question has been thus early brought before the National Legislature. From the present aspect of things we may indulge a well-grounded hope that authors who have worn themselves out ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... life long I have had one very constantly-recurring vision, a sight which came whenever it was dark or darkish, in bed or otherwise. It is a flight of pink roses floating in a mass from left to right, and this cloud or mass of roses is presently effaced by a flight of 'sparks' or gold speckles across them. The sparks totter or vibrate from left to right, but they fly distinctly upwards; they are like tiny blocks, half gold, half ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... th' unearthly symphonies, Which o'er the starlight peace of Syrian skies Came floating like a dream, that blessed night When angel songs were heard by sinful men, Hymning Messiah's advent! O to have watch'd The night with those poor shepherds, whom, when first The glory of the Lord shed sudden day— Day without ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... thought that enough had been effected to justify an attempt to force the Narrows on the 18th. Three successive squadrons of British and French ships were sent up the Straits, but the Turks had only waited till the channel was full of vessels to release their floating mines and land- torpedoes. First the French Bouvet, then the Irresistible, and thirdly the Ocean were struck by mines and sunk, the Bouvet with most of her crew. Three battleships and 2000 men had been lost in an attack which did not even reach the ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... Twenty times did Sylvain throw himself into the turbulent waters, hoping to be able to swim to the other side, but each time an irresistible force drove him back upon the bank he had just quitted, while, as for Jocosa, she even essayed to cross the flood upon a tree which came floating down torn up by the roots, but her efforts were equally useless. Then with heavy hearts they set out to follow the course of the stream, which had now grown so wide that it was only with difficulty they could ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... work to pretend he could think for himself, and proceeded to inflate his mind with so vast an idea of his own political importance that he even began to conjure up dreams of an entirely Dutch South Africa on an Africander basis, with the Vierkleur in place of the Union Jack floating ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... shone out the figure of a human hand! It seemed to glow with a faint greenish light, and it held a long pointed knife, which burned with the same pale hue. Nothing else could be seen except a kind of gauzy floating sleeve, from which the mysterious hand emerged. Aleck had no wish to investigate further, but promptly took to his heels, and made for home with all speed, frightened out ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... of the Secretary of the Navy, containing a statement of the measures which have been taken in execution of the act of 3d March last, relating to the construction of floating dry docks at ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... from Abalaine and Souchez villages and through our lines to those of the Germans, and on to Lens. Spies, either in the army itself or in the villages, had been placing messages in bottles and floating them down the river ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... its regular English colony of residents, had a floating population that constantly changed. And every day new faces were to be found drinking tea with Mr. Beresford Duff—and all these faces were well known in society at home, you may be sure; and Barty made capital caricatures of them all, which were treasured up and ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... days the natives, with the wild animals, reached the big ocean. Mappo had never seen so much water before. He looked at it through the slats of his crate. A little way out from shore he saw what looked like a big house floating on the ...
— Mappo, the Merry Monkey • Richard Barnum
... the labours of the ensuing week, devoted to the execution of what had been planned. Various were the rumours floating about Longbridge in the interval; it was asserted by some persons that a steamboat was to bring to Longbridge all the fashionable people in New York; that it was to be a sort of "Mass-Meeting" of the "Aristocracy." By others, all the fiddlers ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... all the exercises as well as a lady's saddle allowed; but Anton, who was one of the infantry, looked over from his post at the bright face with dissatisfaction. She had never pleased him so little. Yet, as she sprang forward with the rest, wheeled her horse round, waved her sword, her bright hair floating in the wind, her eyes beaming with courage, she was enchantingly beautiful. But what would have charmed him in mere play seemed unfeminine now that this drilling had become a matter of life and death; and as soon as it was over, and Lenore came up to him with glowing cheeks, waiting ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... has to be adjusted by magnets to counteract deviation. Mr. Gissing, you may be a sincere student of theology, but you have not allowed for your own temperamental deviation. Why, even the gyro compass has to be adjusted for latitude error. You landsmen think that a ship is simply a floating hotel. I should like to have the Bishop you spoke of study a little navigation. That would put into him a healthy respect for the marvels of science. On board ship, sir, the binnacle is kept locked and the key ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... Floating near the twelve o'clock auxiliary, Mac peered at each tubing connection, tugging and twisting. "Wait a minute," he said. His light flashed out at the motor, riding perched on its swivel, limned against cold, hard points of light that were the stars. His heart gave a bound. "I think ...
— Tight Squeeze • Dean Charles Ing
... permissions in the new psychology. Once we have crossed the old and clearly defined frontiers, almost anything seems possible. Personality, we are now taught, is complex, far-reaching, and is really, like a floating iceberg, more largely below the sea level of consciousness than above it. How far it extends and what connections it makes in these its hidden depths, no one of us may know. Normal consciousness, to change the figure, is just one brilliantly illuminated center in a world of shadow deepening into ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... as freely misrepresented. An oblong rectangle placed upright, or on its side, and covered with regular zigzags, represents a canal. Lest one should be in doubt as to its meaning, fishes and crocodiles are put in, to show that it is water, and nothing but water. Boats are seen floating upright upon this edgewise surface; the flocks ford it where it is shallow; and the angler with his line marks the spot where the water ends and the bank begins. Sometimes the rectangle is seen suspended like a framed picture, at about half way of the height of several palm ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... MOVABLE KIDNEY. (Floating Kidney. Nephroptosis).—Causes.—This condition is usually acquired. It is more common in women than in men, possibly due to lacing and the relaxations of the muscles of the abdomen from pregnancy. It may come from wounds, ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... till we meet again, Keep love's banner floating o'er you, Smite death's threatening wave before you; God be with you till we ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... the king was hard pressed to promote Laud, he gave his reasons why he intended to "keep Laud back from all place of rule and authority, because I find he hath a restless spirit, and cannot see when matters are well, but loves to toss and change, and to bring things to a pitch of reformation floating in his own brain, which endangers the steadfastness of that which is in a good pass. I speak not at random; he hath made himself known to me to be such an one." James then gives the circumstances to which he alludes; ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... in bringing the slaves from Bolivar over the river on barges. The river was overflowed about fifty miles out, and the only way he could get the slaves across was by using large barges made of logs. They were several days floating down in this way, before he could get out to the railroad at Jackson, Miss., where he transferred them to the cars. This was too much of an ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... the level ray Of dying sunlight on their plumes, Give them a beauty not their own; Their hoarse notes fail and faint away; A rustling murmur floating down Blends sweetly with the thickening glooms; They touch with grace the fading day, Slow flying ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... heads and flames after the fashion of the Catholic church pictures of "poor souls,'' in purgatory. Under certain conditions of illumination the flames flicker, the heads move, and out of the fire the arms raise themselves to the clouds floating above. Now this requires no unusual excitement, simply the weary sensing of evening, when the eyes turn from prolonged uniform reading or writing to something else.[1] It has happened to me from my earliest childhood. High bodily ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... the post of Gibraltar, against which the combined forces of France and Spain made a vigorous but fruitless attack in the year 1781. This attack furnished the subjects for two celebrated pictures alluded to in the eighth book: The burning of the Floating Batteries painted by Copley; and ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... night-thief treads; one step more, and she was beside him! She threw back her black mantle, displaying a garment of purest white clasped round the waist with a girdle of gold. Her massive tresses of rich dark hair floating over her brow shadowed her face until she looked like some great spirit queen, the Spirit ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... hearty embrace to the next of kin in succession. At last she came to me, when, perhaps, in the confusion of the moment, not exactly remembering whether or not she had seen me before, she stood for a moment silent—a deep blush mantling her lovely cheek—masses of waving brown hair disordered and floating upon her shoulders—her large and liquid blue eyes beaming upon me. One look was enough. I was deeply ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... who suggested to Nero the idea of killing Agrippina. The idea had been, as it were, floating in the air for a long time, because Agrippina was embarrassing to many persons and interests. It was chiefly the party that wanted to sack the imperial budget, to introduce the finance of great expenditure, which could not tolerate this clever and energetic woman, who was so faithful to the great ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... be attacked lies, perhaps, floating in a tropic haze five miles off, and the attacking party must pull slowly, in a sweltering heat, up to the iron lips of her guns. The greedy, restless sea is under them, and a single shot may turn the eager boat's crew at any instant ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... fire into the fissure. Ramona noiselessly dragged herself close to the overhanging wall. Shot after shot was flung into the cavern at random. Fortunately for Ramona the strain of the situation relaxed abruptly. A wave of light-headedness seemed to carry her floating into ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... the in-roads of civilization are rapidly extirpating the native races of the world—he went on to develope his plan in its practical details. He proposes, as the first step, the purchase and fitting-up of a steamer "as a floating museum," in which the seaport towns of all countries should be visited; considering that this mode of exhibition would possess great advantages through "the facility of its visiting the chief cities of the world, stopping no longer in any than a lucrative excitement could be kept ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... had been created; an immense floating debt had been funded in a manner perfectly satisfactory to the creditors; an ample revenue had been provided; those difficulties which a system of internal taxation, on its first introduction, is doomed to encounter, were completely ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... him, but neither powder nor shot. Of the cord he made nooses and caught eider-ducks, by which, and their eggs, he kept himself alive; in the night, he crept under an overhanging rock to sleep. At length he discovered a piece of wood floating to the shore; of this he made an oar, and, getting on a flake of ice, rowed himself to an island nearer the main land, whence he reached two more islands nearer still. About the beginning of August, he observed two boats steering ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... finish the welding, this lead is to be built up flush or slightly higher than the connector. Brush the tops of the post and connector thoroughly with a wire brush to remove any dirt which may have been floating in the lead. (Dirt always floats on top of the lead.) Soften the burning flame so that it is just barely beginning to hiss. Bring the flame down over the center of the post. When this begins to melt, move the flame outward with a circular motion until the whole top of post ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... The chief value of the ballot is the educational power. He who feels an interest in men and measures will soon feel a responsibility. Everybody knows that women are no better than men. They are no angels floating in an ethereal atmosphere. It is the fashion sometimes to call them "angels," but I observe they are no longer angels when they get aged. I don't know a more unpleasant role to play than that of an aged angel. If it is ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... there could be no manner of doubt. Callous and easy-going man of the world as he had ever been and ever would be, the steadfast truth and tender devotion of the poor child moved him to a faint sense of shamed admiration. On the inky blackness of the night he saw her face, floating like a vision,— her little uplifted, praying hands,—he heard her voice, piteously sweet, crying "Amadis! Amadis! Say you didn't mean it!—say it isn't true!—I thought you loved me, ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... shrubs of cautious fear, which grew upon the frail mound, and whose intertwining roots had contributed to support it, being loosened from their hold, they, and all that would swim of the bank itself, will be seen floating on the ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... well, just here and now, to say a word on the importance of the headlight. I know of no more pleasant and satisfactory adjunct of a camp than a good light that can be adjusted to the head, used as a jack in floating, carried in the hand, or fastened up inside the shanty. Once fairly tried, it will never be ignored or forgotten. Not that it will show a deer's head seventeen rods distant with sufficient clearness for a shot—or your sights with distinctness enough to make it. (See ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... of treasure must wait for a quieter time to be unpacked. They talked of weather and crops and Pitt's voyage, and the neighbours, and the changes in the village, and the improvements about the place; not as if any of these things were much cared for; they were bubbles floating on their cups of joy. Questions asked and questions answered, as if in the pleasure of speaking to one another again the subject of their words did not matter; or as if the supreme content of the moment could spare a little ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... songs Softly and sweetly—full of prayer and praise. Then silver-chiming, solemn-voiced bells Rung out their music on the morning air, And Lisbon gathered to the festival In chapel and cathedral. Choral hymns And psalms of sea-toned organs mingling rose With sweetest incense floating up to heaven, Bearing the praises of the multitudes; And all was holy peace and holy happiness. A rumbling of deep thunders in the deep; The vast sea shuddered and the mountains groaned; Up-heaved the solid earth—the nether rocks Burst—and the sea—the earth—the ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... come there. They knew it when the pebbles were being made and before the isles of coral were given unto the sea. And thus the prophecy came unto fulfilment and passed into history, and so at length to Oblivion, out of which I drag it as it goes floating by, into which I shall one day tumble. The hippogriffs dance before dawn in the upper air; long before sunrise flashes upon our lawns they go to glitter in light that has not yet come to the World, and as the dawn works up from the ragged hills and the stars feel it they go slanting earthwards, ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... postponed, no one can tell how long, perhaps for ever. Then the great mind of Washington conceived what the morally debased, reposing enemy thought impossible. He crossed the Delaware with his army in the night, amid masses of floating ice, and, in the twilight of morning, assailed the inactive camp on the other side. The picture reproduces the moment when the great general,—ahead of the mass of the army, which had also just embarked, and part of which are passing off from the shore, and part already struggling with the driving ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... came both mist and snow, And it grew wondrous cold: And ice, mast-high, came floating ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... launched me into business, and soon I was floating on a high tide of political declamation. What the crier cried I could not at all make out, for the accent of the Ballina folks is exceedingly full-flavoured. When he stopped I turned to a well-dressed young man near ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... Ultonians! Soon they rushed to view from the rear of Emain, speeding forth impetuously out of the hollow-sounding ways of the city and the echoing palaces into the open, and behind them in the great car green and gold, above the many-twinkling wheels, the charioteer, with floating mantle, girt round the temples with the gold fillet of his office, leaning backwards and sideways as he laboured to restrain their fury unrestrainable; a grey long-maned steed, whale-bellied, broad-chested, with ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... the manner of his art, thinking that hereafter I might profit by it. Then, when the dawn was breaking, I led the Chinaman down to the river by the hand,—for I was loth to make a mess within my house,—and when I had cut his throat, and sent his body floating down-stream, I washed myself, performed my ablutions before prayer, prayed, and went to my bed, for my eyes ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... Fortunes. A well-regulated Commerce is not, like Law, Physick or Divinity, to be overstocked with Hands; but, on the contrary, flourishes by Multitudes, and gives Employment to all its Professors. Fleets of Merchantmen are so many Squadrons of floating Shops, that vend our Wares and Manufactures in all the Markets of the World, and find out Chapmen under both ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... giving green apples to the pigs, bran to the rabbits, and corn to the pigeons, came back presently, and could not see the big Yollande beside the pond, only her children floating far, far away on the water. Surprised she drew nearer, called, but in vain. The mother-hen had disappeared. Then only did she understand the tragedy that had occurred. She called for help. Petit-Jacques immediately opened the big sluice and the water ran out, but much too slowly for ...
— The Curly-Haired Hen • Auguste Vimar
... to the evidence against the accused, the royal writer was brief. Two sorts of evidence he thought of value, one "the finding of their marke, and the trying the insensiblenes thereof, the other is their fleeting [floating] on the water." The latter sign was based, he said, on the fact that the water refuses to receive a witch—that is to say, the pure element would refuse to receive those who had renounced their baptism.[6] We shall see that the influence of the Daemonologie can be fairly appraised ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... this, but Zaidee's quick eyes, roving around, spied a wooden stool which she immediately dragged up on the little platform, to stand on. She climbed up and looked in. It was not the vat in which she had turned the spigot, and it was half full of whey with great pieces of the curd floating around ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... of Lexington, Massachusetts formally decreed that this flag should be used on her vessels, and that their officers should wear a green and white uniform. Even two years later than this, the Pine-Tree Flag was borne by floating batteries on the Delaware River. Sometimes the British ran up an American flag to deceive the colonial vessels, and sometimes the colonists ran up a flag made of horizontal red and white stripes to persuade ...
— The Little Book of the Flag • Eva March Tappan
... you are a marvel," he would remark after every quotation. "Now, how in the world did you ever manage to think that up? I suppose just this minute, as you sit there looking so sweet in your white dress, just such things are floating through ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... it came to them through the medium of a floating shred of gossip that had filtered through to the Carrier's Rest, they were too much affected for words. Only could they sit and smoke in silence, each man turning the story over and over in his mind until his pipe went out, and under cover of the smokeless silence ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... little brass pistol in my bedroom suddenly occurred to me. It had been loaded I don't know how many months, long before I left New Orleans, and now was the time, if ever, to fire it off. Muskets, blunderbusses, and pistols were banging away lively all over town, and the smell of gunpowder, floating on the air, set me wild to add something respectable to the ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... all New England girls of that period, I knew how to make quince jelly and floating islands, but of the actual, practical side of cooking, and the management of ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... the sensation of walking unseen to the murderous fowl and suddenly clasping his smooth back with both hands. How startled he would be! But in truth the thought was only a continuation of another that had been floating through my mind while the hawk was wheeling. Unconsciously I had been mumbling ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... exactly when he would find Mr. Waffles at Miss Lollypop's, the confectioner, eating ices and making love to that very interesting much-courted young lady. True to his time, there was Waffles, eating and eyeing the cherry-coloured ribbons, floating in graceful curls along with her raven-coloured ringlets, down Miss Lollypop's nice fresh ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... Madras and Calcutta was a floating epitome of the world. There were missionaries contending with pundits, and world travellers lazily amused by discussions involving the eternal welfare of the human race. But the disputes had a hollow and perfunctory sound, and the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor; And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... floating past the sun every now and then, and threw all the varieties of light and shade ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various
... that year; the trees showed gay sprigs of green already, the air was wonderfully mild and balmy, and in the exhilarating blue of the sky feathery white cloudlets were floating, whose course one was fain to follow with sweet dreams and fancies. It was a sin to stay indoors on such a lovely afternoon, Malvine declared, and so proposed that they should go out to the terrace overlooking the water and sit there ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... her, so he painted. As at the beginning of life in a cold world, passively meeting the long trouble of it, he painted her a rapt Presence floating evenly to our earth. A gray, translucent sea laps silently upon a little creek, and in the hush of a still dawn the myrtles and sedges on the water's brim are quiet. It is a dream in halftones that he gives us, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... sultry morning only plays at coolness, and that with its earliest visitors alone. But we are before the sunlight, though not before the sunrise, and can watch the pretty game of alternating mist and shine. Stray gleams of glory lend their trailing magnificence to the tops of chestnut-trees, floating vapors raise the outlines of the hills and make mystery of the wooded islands, and, as we glide through the placid water, we can sing, with the Chorus in the "Ion" of Euripides, "O immense and brilliant air, resound with our ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... patriarchal kings. This is the origin of the classic state, and of all aristocracy and freedom. The economic and political unit is a great household with its lord, his wife and children, clients and slaves. In the interstices of these households there may be a certain floating residuum—freedmen, artisans, merchants, strangers. These people, while free, are without such rights as even slaves possess; they have no share in the religion, education, and resources of any established ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... the gauge needles crept back on their appointed paths. The Submarine Commander motioned his guest to the periscope and gave him a glimpse of flying spray and sun-kissed wave tops. A mile or so away lay the group of islands they had seen before lunch, and close inshore a mass of floating ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... first he was very busy, glorying in the prospect of being able to give himself up to his favourite pursuits, without thereby neglecting the proper duties of life. A twenty-eight gun frigate was anything but a floating palace. The Rattlesnake was badly fitted out, and always leaky; the lower deck gave a head-space of four feet ten, which was cramping to a man of five feet eleven; but he had the run of the commodious chart-room, as arranged for a surveying ship, and would have had the run of the ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... reached the land. She was getting out of the water by the assistance of the poles, which, as we have said, formed a breakwater at the end of the island, when she perceived the body of a young girl, dressed as a peasant, sustained by her clothes, floating down ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... by the raft-race. The ditch that ran beside the railroad embankment widened in one place to forty feet. Half a dozen logs were here floating. The keeper of the great seal had brought with him a hammer and a handful of nails, and seeing on his way several strips of board, he had picked them up and now nailed the six logs together in ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... fat German Countess, who always calls Jock her liebes Kind, and comes floundering after him, to his very great disgust. The only things they have to show they are human still, and not frogs, are little boards floating before them with their pocket-handkerchiefs and coffee-cups ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Mountains are full of new sensations and I got a new one when I discovered that the fog through which we had been traveling was in reality a cloud, and, all unexpectedly, we emerged into the clear mellow light below the floating vapor. It was an enchanting scene which met our eyes; below ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... rocks, to explore its contents. The first thing she found was a group of tiny barnacles, and for a while she amused herself by washing salt water over them to see them open their tiny cups of shell. In the pool itself a beautiful lavender-colored jelly-fish was floating about, and just beyond lay a star-fish clinging to a bunch of seaweed. She found other treasures scattered about by the largess of the tide—tiny spiral shells, stones of all colors, and a horseshoe ...
— The Puritan Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... been shown that the long skeletal processes which grow out from these organisms have significance not merely as a supporting skeleton, but also as an extension of the superficial area, which increases the contact with the water-particles, and prevents the floating organisms from sinking. It has been established that the processes are considerably shorter in the colder layers of the ocean, and that they may be twelve times as long (Chun, "Reise der Valdivia", ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... offering resistance to any body moving through it, as a comet or meteor, but also of imparting the motion which it may receive in any manner to any other matter, as a planet, satellite, or sun, that may be floating ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... along bowed under the weight of their children suspended from their neck in rags of stuff or baskets of espartero; while handsome girls, accompanied by three or four maids, passed proudly with their long, transparent dresses knotted under their breasts with long, floating scarfs, sparkling with enamels, pearls, and gold, and giving out a fragrance of flowers ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... their diction remained polished, literary, academic to a degree. It is not, indeed, until we reach the boundaries of a new century that we encounter a Gulf Stream of emotional, creative impulse strong enough and hot enough to thaw the classical icebergs till not a floating spiculum ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers |
