"Niche" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Burns a niche among Scotland's saints, others would give him rank as one of her religious teachers. This claim, if not so absurd as the other, is hardly more tenable. The religion described by Burns in The Cotter's Saturday Night is, it should be remembered, his father's ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... malatenti. negociate : negoci. neighbour : najbaro, proksimulo. "—hood," cxirkauxajxo. neither : nek. nerve : nervo. net : reto; tulo. nettle : urtiko. neuter : neuxtra. neutral : neuxtrala. news : sciigo, novajxo. "—paper," jxurnalo, gazeto. next : plejproksima, sekvanta. niche : nicxo. nightingale : najtingalo. noble : nobla. "-man," nobelo. nod : signodoni. noise : bruo. nonsense : sensencajxo. noon : tagmezo. noose : masxo. nor : nek. normal : norma, normala. north : nordo. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... we left her up there in her room, I turned and took a peek to see she was comfy, but she was down onto both knees before that china virgin on the niche over her bed." ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... There was an empty niche from which some old statue had fallen or been carried away hundreds of years ago, and she was thinking what strange people it must have looked down upon when it stood there, and how many hard struggles might have ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... growth of flowering herbs and thorn. The pass was too high for the aloe and mesembryanthemum to flourish, and the lava-bed which floored it was yet too new to have clothed itself in any of the larger mountain-loving trees. Here they passed the night, in a shallow niche of rock with a fire before it; and the fire being visible from a long way off, no prowlers cared even ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... was close and foul, being heavy with the odor of musty, decaying drugs. In every possible niche and cranny the omnipresent dust had settled in a uniform sheen of gray which showed but ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... resemble those of the Kings, but there are various differences. No. 2 from the south is flanked by pilasters with ram's-horn capitals, barbarous forms of Ionic connected by three sets of triglyphs: the pavement is of slabs; there is an inner niche, and one of the corners has apparently been used as an oven. On a higher plane lies a sunken tomb, with a deep drop and foot-holes by way of ladder; outside it the rocky platform is hollowed, apparently for graves. The other three facades bear ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... the Restoration are still extant. Had he devoted himself to the making of verses, he would have been nearly as far below Tate and Blackmore as Tate and Blackmore are below Dryden. His only chance for renown would have been that he might have occupied a niche in a satire, between Flecknoe and Settle. There was, however, another kind of composition in which his talents and acquirements qualified him to succeed; and to that he judiciousily ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... occupied a niche in the Chapel wall, and before it burned the silver lamp of Repentigny which had been hung there two generations before, in memory of the miraculous call of Madelaine de Repentigny and her victory ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... shot the lock; and to the right They climb'd a staircase, long untrod, to which A feeble, glimm'ring, and malignant light Stream'd from the ceiling through a window'd niche; At length by corridors of loftier pitch They sallied into day, and access had To an illumined hall, large, round, and rich; Where, sceptred, crown'd, and in dark purple clad, Sad sat the pensive king amid ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... Physiology, and Huxley's Invertebrata, together with a disarticulated human skull. On one side of the fireplace two thigh bones were stacked; on the other a pair of foils, two basket-hilted single-sticks, and a set of boxing-gloves. On a shelf in a convenient niche was a small stock of general literature, which appeared to have been considerably more thumbed than the works upon medicine. Thackeray's Esmond and Meredith's Richard Feveret rubbed covers with Irving's Conquest of Granada and a tattered line of paper-covered novels. ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... she had to do. She had humbled Anne with shrewd shafts that hit her in all her weak places; now she exalted her. Anne had not her likeness in a thousand. She was a woman magnificently planned, of stature not to be diminished by the highest pedestal. A figure fit for a throne, a niche, a shrine. Edith could see the dear little downy feathers sprouting on Anne's shoulder-blades, and the infant ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... on climbing until he found the niche for which he had been heading. He dragged himself in and sat down, as comfortably as ...
— The Judas Valley • Gerald Vance
... took off their boots and socks, and stood them in a niche in the rock, while Hardock passed in through the mouth of the adit; and directly after he had disappeared in the darkness, he re-appeared in the midst of a glow of light produced by a lanthorn he had placed ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... stalactite cave, with scores and hundreds of ex-votos in the shape of crutches. Judging from this display, there should be no more lame folks left in France. The Virgin of Lourdes must have healed them all. In a niche of the grotto stands an image of the Virgin, and behind, perpetually lighted with candles, an altar, at which mass is celebrated ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... lower, and instantly to adjust itself across the moat; whereon, hastening, he unlocked the gate. But here he had nigh fallen into a subtle snare, by reason of an ugly dwarf that was concealed in a side niche of the wall. He was armed with a ponderous mace; and had not the maiden drawn Sir Lancelot aside by main force, he would have been crushed in its descent, the dwarf aiming a deadly blow at him as he passed. It fell, instead, with a loud crash on the pavement, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... principle. "It is the beggar's fear of cold," said he, "that prevails over such parents, and so they pull the poor thing's head down, and give it the look of a baby that plays about Westminster Bridge, while the mother sits shivering in a niche." ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... reflection of the light could be seen a hut standing in a cup-shaped niche at the head of the valley. It was ringed around with draggled larch and cedars; and a belt of dark hills encircled it. No moonlight penetrated here, save toward the dawn, when pale beams fell slantwise ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... my friend, as he stept unsteadily forward, while I followed immediately at his heels. In an instant he had reached the extremity of the niche, and finding his progress arrested by the rock, stood stupidly bewildered. A moment more and I had fettered him to the granite. In its surface were two iron staples, distant from each other about two feet, horizontally. From one of these depended a short chain, from the other a ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... could have been safely left to starve had her attempted arson of that theater really come off, especially with loss of life. Thus violence may be "militant," but it is not "tactics." And violence against society at large is peculiarly tactless. George Fox would hardly occupy so exalted a niche in history if he had used his hammer to make not ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... broader track, that bore some signs of approaching habitations, and at the end of five minutes they came upon a clearing. It was part of one of the fragmentary mountain terraces, and formed by itself a vast niche, or bracketed shelf, in the hollow flank of the mountain that, to Hale's first glance, bore a rude resemblance to Eagle's Court. But there was neither meadow nor open field; the few acres of ground had been ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... entrances are broad and lofty windows; and above them, forming a part of the second story, are niches for statues, surrounded by coupled columns resting on finely sculptured pedestals. The central or main niche is flanked on either side by quaintly contrived blank windows; and between the columns, at the depth of the recesses, are simple pilasters sustaining the elliptic arches, which serve to top and span the niches, the latter to be occupied by statues ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... Mrs. Chase to help me. She's a treasure,—she catches on to my ways so quickly. Glad you like it, Elise, honey. Now settle yourself here,—your bags will be up in a minute,—and I'll put Mona in her niche." ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... became fragrant and blooming, as she knelt to offer her upraised basket. My mother took a rose, and presented it to the lady, who placed a fair white lily in her hand. Then side by side they moved along. And now a lovely statue of a winged boy flew forth from its niche, and struck upon its lyre. The whole castle awoke into life. The statues of grave men, with a scroll in one hand and their heavy robes draped in the other, descended from their pedestals. Young princes clustered around us, with graceful garments and waving hair, their ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... Ta-Vwots. "I know a way out of this that you don't know." With a few puffs of his breath and a few kicks of his legs he reached a great fissure that led into the rock behind him, and along this passage he scrambled until he came to the edge of it in a niche, from which he could watch his enemies digging. When they had made the hole quite large he shouted, "Be buried in the grave you have dug for yourselves!" And, hurling down a magic ball that he carried, he caved the earth ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... opposition, Bruno enjoyed fair weather, halcyon months, in England. His description of the Ash Wednesday Supper at Fulke Greville's, shows that a niche had been carved out for him in London, where he occupied a pedestal of some importance. Those gentlemen of Elizabeth's Court did not certainly exaggerate the value of their Italian guest. In Italy, most of them had met with spirits of Bruno's stamp, whom they ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... surrounded by trees, every branch and leaf reflected on its mirror-like surface with a peculiar clearness. They could discover only two holes, which looked like the upper parts of arched doorways. Between them, in the face of the rock, was a niche in which a statue might have been placed, while just below it was a basin or hollow in the rock, which appeared to have been formed by art for the purpose ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... whirling in surprise. "Come out of your hole, Dave," peering into the niche between the book-shelves and the bed. "What are you prowling in ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... linen, with which he gratified the faith of the royal stranger who had invoked his healing power, and offered the strong city of Edessa to protect him against the malice of the Jews. The ignorance of the primitive church is explained by the long imprisonment of the image in a niche of the wall, from whence, after an oblivion of five hundred years, it was released by some prudent bishop, and seasonably presented to the devotion of the times. Its first and most glorious exploit was the deliverance ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... Sordes opens near the point of junction of the waters of the Pan and Oloron, whence their united waters flow into the Adour. At the northern extremity of this cave is a natural niche in which lay more than thirty skeletons, some of men, some of women, and some of children, mixed together in the greatest confusion. Worked flints, bone stilettos, and ornaments lay around, all. of the forms ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... an antechamber, supported by two columns and flanked by two oblong recesses; this led into the Holy of Holies, which was a narrow niche with a low ceiling, placed between two lateral chapels. A hall, nearly square in shape, connected these mysterious chambers with the propylaea, which were open to the sky and faced with ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... figures is a small marble statue, about three feet high, belonging to Madame Edouard Andre in Paris. It is a full-length figure of a standing youth, modelled with precision, and intended to be placed in a niche or against a background. Like the prophets just described, it has a high forehead, while the drapery falls in strong harmonious lines, a corner being looped up over the left arm. It is undoubtedly by Donatello, being the earliest example of his work in any collection, public or ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... this spring, the door opened on a gallery longer, wider, and more elaborately ornamented than that of the only Martial mansions into which I had been hitherto admitted. Looking round in no little perplexity, I observed a niche in which stood a statue of white relieved by a scarlet background; and beside this statue, crouching and half hidden, a slight pink object, looking at first like a bundle of drapery, but which in a moment sprang up, and, catching my hand, made me aware that Eveena had been ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... known her so happy in her life before,' said Agatha, wondering at Gwen's tone. 'Of course, I know she has her sad times, but she is far sweeter and even-tempered than she used to be. Miss Villars was telling me the other day, she has found her niche exactly. All the visitors at the Convalescent Home are loud in their praise other, and I really think her ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... "Here some niche or cabinet Full of rarities is set; Here some picture—'precious bit'— There's no time to dwell on it; Bronzes, china—all present Each their own sweet blandishment. But what makes our pleasure here, Is our welcome and our cheer; So I'll ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... him, towards the rising and the midday sun there stretches a great niched wall girdling the temple on two sides, each niche a shrine, and in each shrine a cold white form that waits the sun—Apollo the Far-Darter, and the spear-bearing Pallas, and among them that golden Caesar, of whom the country talks, who has given great gifts to the temple—he and his grandson, the ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... not a double personality—he was an intermittent reincarnation, vibrating between the inorganic and the essence of vitality. In a reasonable scheme of earthly things he filled the niche of a giant green tree-frog, and one of us seemed to remember that the Knight Gawain was enamored of green, and so we dubbed him. For the hours of daylight Gawain preferred the role of a hunched-up pebble of malachite; or if he could ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... the fire of common sense; it is, in substance, that there should be an equality of opportunity, an equal chance, to every citizen. This view that every individual should, within his lifetime, not be handicapped in securing that particular niche in the community to which his abilities and character entitle him, is itself the negation of class. Human beings are not equal in these qualities. But a society that is based upon a constant flux of individuals in the community, upon the basis of ability and ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... the dome was considered the greatest achievement in the building of the church; and the architect who planned and superintended the work gained for himself immortal honor. After his death a statue of him was made, and placed in a niche in the wall of the houses on one side of the square, opposite the dome. He is represented as sitting in a chair, holding a plan of the work in his hand, and looking up to see it as it appeared completed. We can just see ...
— Rollo in Naples • Jacob Abbott
... after their day's toil. The unfinished edifice loomed up like a giant skeleton of some prehistoric era, and through its mighty open arches and buttresses Jim saw fleecy clouds scudding across the western sky, A stone saint, muffled in burlap, had just been swung up into his windy niche, but had not yet discarded his robes of the world. Hambleton was regarding the shapeless figure with mild interest, wondering which saint of the calendar could look so grotesque, when a sound drew his attention sharply to earth. It was a small sound, but there was ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... significance of the war; she lacked imagination; but her understanding was sometimes terrible. She was devious; but she had a religion. He was her religion. She would cast the god underfoot—and then in a passion of repentance restore it ardently to the sacred niche. ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... to the Aphrodite of Melos, called the Venus of Milo (Fig. 173). This statue was found by accident in 1820 on the island of Melos (Milo) near the site of the ancient city. According to the best evidence available, it was lying in the neighborhood of its original pedestal, in a niche of some building. Near it were found a piece of an upper left arm and a left hand holding an apple; of these two fragments the former certainly and perhaps the latter belong to the statue. The prize was bought ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... the Fuerza del Pilar, and is now the American Moro Province military headquarters and head quartermaster's office and depot. The image of Our Lady in a niche in the north wall ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... before, muffled and close down to the riverbed. . . . Nothing of the cub left in that cough; neither was there hurry or hunger or any particular rage or fear. A big beast finishing a sleep, down in some sandy niche by the river; a solitary beast full of years, a bit drowsy just this moment, and in no particular hurry to take up the hunt. Such was the picture that came to Skag with a keen kind of enjoyment. The thrill had lifted ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... supplied a series of idealised Pompeian figures exquisitely composed, set in a lacy fancy of airy architectural detail, in which he idealised all the gods of Olympus. Each fair young goddess, each strong and perfect god, stood in its particular niche and indicated its penchant by a tripod, a peacock, an apple or a caduceus, as clue to the proper name. Such airy beauty, such dainty conception, makes of the gods rulers of aesthetics, if not of fate. This series of Mantegna was the inspiration two centuries ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... James kept on doing it, Dickens wore white socks, De Maupassant wore a strait-jacket, Tom Watson became a Populist, Jeremiah wept, all these authors did these things for the sake of literature, but thou didst cap them all; thou marriedst a wife for to carve for thyself a niche in ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... he was asked to do was perilous. Standing in his present niche of vantage he was at least safe. And added to his safety there were material comforts. He had more than enough for his wants. His work was light: he lived among men and women with whom he was popular. The very fact of his past parliamentary ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... the imputation of vanity, select for them a place in the Temple of Poetry, he would endeavour to class them in that niche which is appropriated for the reception of the light and ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... dedication to St. Stephen, several memorials of whom may, however, be recognized by the attentive visitor—among them, a picture of his martyrdom (by Abel de Pujol) near the entrance to the choir. The Protomartyr also stands, with his deacon's robe and palm, in a niche near the door of the sacristy, where left and right are frescoes of his Disputation with the Doctors, and his Martyrdom. The chapel immediately behind the high altar is, as usual, the Lady Chapel. The next contains a good modern window of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... agave fiber and many charred strings of the same material were found in a niche in the wall of a house in the eastern section, and from the same room there was taken a string, over a yard long, made of human hair. It was suggested to me by one of the Hopi that this string was part of the coiffure of an Awatobi maid, and that it was probably used to tie up her hair ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... of the most celebrated of the pictures in the Academia; and she had the good fortune of seeing St. Peter Martyr, which she misnames St. Peter the Hermit, out of its dark niche in the Church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo. She gives a very good description of Venetian life at the time, and much commends its family affection and family life as being of a much less selfish nature than ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... men, armed with clubs. On the remaining portion of the canopy pier, on the right, is the figure of St. Peter, in a cope, wearing the tiara, a key in his left hand and a crozier in the right, with canopied niche. In another, above, is a figure of St. Maurice, in armour of the 15th century, in his right hand a halbert, and in his left a sword. Corresponding with these, on the left, is a figure of St. George, in similar armour, thrusting his lance ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... numerous and the design so complex that one might study it a week without exhausting its interest. On the great steeple—surmounting the myriad of spires—inside of the spires—over the doors, the windows—in nooks and corners—every where that a niche or a perch can be found about the enormous building, from summit to base, there is a marble statue, and every statue is a study in itself! Raphael, Angelo, Canova—giants like these gave birth to the designs, and their own pupils carved them. Every face is eloquent ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... whose portrait had still a conspicuous niche among the lares of the household,—a little thin silvery old widow-lady, suggesting great sadness, much gentleness, and a little severity,—had thus become for the family of James Mesurier a symbol of sanctity, ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... parts of the room. Whenever the wind and sea whistled and roared at their loudest, he muttered to himself and tossed his hands fretfully on his wretched coverlet. On these occasions his eyes always fixed themselves intently on a little delf image of the Virgin placed in a niche over the fire-place. Every time they saw him look in this direction Gabriel and the young girls shuddered and crossed themselves; and even the child, who still kept awake, imitated their example. There was one bond of feeling at least between the old man and his grandchildren, ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... country women, sat in the hidden corner behind the stove, and poked in the great bales of straw and gossiped. Their voices and the answers of the serving amah filled the kitchen with noise. In their decorous niche at the upper right hand of the stove sat the two kitchen gods, small ancient idols, with hidden hands and crossed feet, gazing out upon a continually hungry world. Since time was they had sat there, ensconced at the very root of life, seemingly ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... who labor in that mine Of Cornwall, hollowed out beneath the bed Of ocean, when a storm rolls overhead, Hear the dull booming of the world of brine Above them, and a mighty muffled roar Of winds and waters, yet toil calmly on, And split the rock, and pile the massive ore, Or carve a niche, or shape the arched roof; So I, as calmly, weave my woof Of song, chanting the days to come, Unsilenced, though the quiet summer air Stirs with the bruit of battles, and each dawn Wakes from its starry silence ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... vague survey, disappointed and depressed, and which had frescoes by Caravaggio in the piano nobile and a row of mutilated statues and dusty urns in the wide, nobly-arched loggia overhanging the damp court where a fountain gushed out of a mossy niche. In a less preoccupied frame of mind he could have done justice to the Palazzo Roccanera; he could have entered into the sentiment of Mrs. Osmond, who had once told him that on settling themselves in Rome she and her husband had chosen this habitation for ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... great comic writer of France, lived in Paris, was pointed out to me one day while near the Rue St. Honore; and I have often noticed on one of the prominent streets a very neat monument to the memory of the great man. It is a niche, with two Corinthian columns, surmounted by a half-circular pediment, which is richly ornamented. A statue of Moliere is placed in the niche in a sitting posture, and in a meditative mood. In front ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... such an absurd stir! If you are known by name as occupying any little niche, the world waits gaping below. I suppose I ought to be flattered, but for days there were callers, letters, telephone-messages. Like Royalty in extremis.... And I never pretended that the operation was in any ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... searched out a suitable place for a cooling drink, and chose a very interesting spot in the village square. All the shops are somewhat alike, bare, black rafters, with earth or stone floor, and in this particular one a flock of swallows had their nests in every niche in the ceiling. Each of us had a bottle of beer on the pavement, alongside a French sentry whose sole duty was to see that no Frenchman had a drink. He seemed to think that it was unfair that his countrymen were not allowed to quench their thirst, so he defied the law by having a drink with us, ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... an autograph, which he should be ashamed in civility to ask, as I am to deny it. I got notice of poor Henry Mackenzie's death. He has long maintained a niche in Scottish Literature—gayest of the gay, though most sensitive of ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... But from the niche that is high in the wall, where is hid that sacred symbol of the Goddess on which few may look, there came a sound as of the rattling rods of the sistrum.[*] And as I listened, awestruck, behold! I saw the outline of the symbol drawn as with fire upon the blackness of the air. It hung above my ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... was a large, oblong hall, with a great figure of Buddha, cross-legged, imperturbable, enthroned in a niche at its further end, like the apse or recess in a church in Italy. Before it stood an altar. The Buddha sat and smiled on us with his eternal smile. A complacent deity, carved out of white stone, and gaudily painted; a yellow robe, like the Lamas', dangled across his shoulders. The air seemed ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... divided the valley from the coast valleys, and thus protected them with its crown of tall eucalyptus trees from the raw sea winds. Their hillside had been thickly planted to cedars and eucalyptus, and the house looked out from its niche in the hill upon the fertile valley in which Bellevue lies, dotted with rich country estates and fruit orchards. Farther east shimmered the waters of the Bay, and on clear days the blue tops of the Santa Clara mountains melted into the clouds beyond ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... nests of other birds, he is so wary and secretive that his little home is usually found only by accident. And the Swallow: "He is the bird of return," Michelet prettily says of him. If you will only treat him kindly, says Ruskin, year after year, he comes back to the same niche, and to the same hearth, for his nest. To the same niche! Think of this a little, as if you heard of ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [May, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... went on calmly. "For she's going to be a very famous woman, make no doubt about that. It's quite on the cards that she may have a niche in history. You might be useful to her in many ways, with that brain of yours, but it was given to you for another purpose, and you'd end by leaving her. You'd come home like a sick dog to its kennel—and become a hack. Your genius would have shrivelled ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... who, having achieved results in their own work, are ever responsive to the efforts of anyone trying to reach a difficult objective. Of all the encouraging opinions I have ever received, one has its own niche in my memory. It came from William James a few months before his death, and will ever be an inspiration to me. Let my excuse for revealing so complimentary a letter be that it justifies the hopes and aspirations expressed in the course of my narrative, and shows them to be well on the way ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... cautiously into the stable, Beate carrying the lantern. The courtyard lay dark and still; a strong perfume rose from the high manure-piles. The lovely girl opened the old, worn door, and they entered. A warm breath blew into their faces. From a niche in the wall an oil lamp threw down a faint glimmer of yellow on the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... the most difficult studies; so difficult that nuclear physics actually preceded it!) I told her that the Zen had been, all evidence indicated, the toughest, hardest, longest-lived creatures God had ever cooked up: practically independent of their environment, no special ecological niche; just raw, stubborn, tenacious life, developed to a fantastic extreme—a greater force of life than any other known, one that could exist almost anywhere under practically any conditions—even floating in ...
— Zen • Jerome Bixby
... restful, with the faintest whiff of lingering incense rising and pervading the gray arches. Yes, the Virgin would know and have pity; the sweet, white-robed Virgin at the pretty flower-decked altar, or the one away up in the niche, far above the golden dome where the Host was. Titiche, the busybody of the house, noticed that Miss Sophie's bundle was larger than usual that afternoon. "Ah, poor woman!" sighed Titiche's mother, "she would be rich ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... the attendant, who at once returned to the coffee niche. Within the music never ceased, and now singing voices alternated with the instruments. Mrs. Shiffney kept away from the door and looked into the room through the ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... heart. Inside the mosque there are no pews or benches, but only mats and carpets spread on the floor. There the worshippers kneel and touch the ground with their foreheads. The minister of the mosque is called the Imam. He stands in a niche in the wall, with his back to the people, and ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... gravely to all these things. He professed a real interest in them. He even remembered the names of the puppets and the parts they had played, and so gained for himself an enduring niche in the heart that had bitterly resented the mockery of the others. It is quite possible that a nature so gentle and so appreciative as his really felt the sympathy. The juniors are rarely mistaken as to the genuineness of the feelings ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... willing to afford the audience the music of the reed which he held in his hand. Three damsels, resembling the Graces in the beautiful proportions of their limbs, and the slender clothing which they wore, lurked in different attitudes, each in her own niche, and seemed but to await the first sound of the music, to bound forth from thence and join in the frolic dance. The subject was beautiful, yet somewhat light, to ornament the study of such a sage as Agelastes ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... birds return to the same nesting places: a box set up against the house, a crevice in the barn, a niche under the eaves; but once home, always home to them. The nest is kept scrupulously clean; the house-cleaning, like the house-building and renovating, being accompanied by the cheeriest of songs, that makes the bird fairly tremble by its intensity. But however angelic the ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... made in Madame de Pompadour's rooms, and I had no longer, as heretofore, the niche in which I had been permitted to sit, to hear Caffarelli, and, in later times, Mademoiselle Fel and Jeliotte. I, therefore, went more frequently to my lodgings in town, where I usually received my friends: more particularly when Madame visited her little hermitage, whither ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... man in whom faith begat courage and for whom courage carved a large niche in the temple of imperishable fame. The Daniel who interpreted to the trembling Belshazzar the fateful handwriting on the wall; who, unawed by enemies, prayed with his windows open toward Jerusalem, and who, in the lions' den, waited in patience until Darius hastened from a sleepless couch to call ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... heaped upon the brocaded settees, while metal-work and pictures of great price filled every niche and corner, for anything which caught the pirate's fancy in the sack of a hundred vessels was thrown haphazard into his chamber. A rich, soft carpet covered the floor, but it was mottled with wine-stains and charred with ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the timbers, adjoining are the master's apartments. On the west is a range of offices; and, on the south, with portions of other buildings, is the lofty and handsome tower gateway, erected by Cardinal Beaufort, whose statue, in his Cardinal's habit, is represented kneeling in an elegant niche in the upper part: two other niches, of the same form, but deprived of their statues, appear also on the same level. Milner describes the embellishments of this tower: "in a cornice over the gates we behold the Cardinal's hat displayed, together ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various
... the walls so much as with your clothes; for if you do, you will die instantly. At the end of the third hall, you will find a door which opens into a garden, planted with fine trees loaded with fruit. Walk directly across the garden to a terrace, where you will see a niche before you, and in that niche a lighted lamp. Take the lamp down and put it out. When you have thrown away the wick and poured out the liquor, put it in your waistband and bring it to me. Do not be afraid that the liquor will spoil your ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... little saloon. Josephine stood still near the door, and while she hastily removed her bonnet and the thick veil and handed them to Fouche, her large, brilliant, brown eyes were turned to the young man who stood in the window-niche, his hands calmly folded over his breast. In this attitude, with the calm look of his face, the gentle glance of his blue eyes, he bore so close a resemblance to the pictures which represented Louis XVI. in his youth, that Josephine ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... around him. After zigging through a bombproof half-furlong of roof, he was dropping into a large twilit cave. The blue-black ceiling twinkled with stars. The walls were pierced at floor level by a dozen archways with busy niche stores and glowing advertisements crowded between them. From the archways some three dozen slidewalks curved out, tangenting off each other in a bewildering multiple cloverleaf. The slidewalks were packed with people, ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... shall never forget my surprise. It was the year 1914 without; it became the year 1514 (or perhaps some centuries earlier still) within. On one side two minute windows pierced a wall quite four feet thick. The other wall was broken only by a great empty niche whence an image once adored had vanished. It is true there were now pews, but they were not of yesterday—square boxes where people sat and faced in four directions, and the odour of damp bibles ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... at them with eyes filled with tears, and Kit was not at all of the crying type, but it seemed as if each girl of her own special crowd had filled a particular niche in her life for the time being. There was Charity, with her eye-glasses, and placid face, upturned smiling lips and quizzical eyes. How often she had taken the edge off Kit's rancor and indignation ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... livres, you would not think much about the people. If you are smitten with a tender passion for the race, go to Madagascar; there you will find a nice little nation all ready to Saint-Simonize, classify, and cork up in your phials, but here every one fits into his niche like a peg in a hole. A porter is a porter, and a blockhead is a fool, without a college of fathers to promote them ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... up the crick, I don't reckon," she hazarded, but even as she spoke there was a flicker of light flashed through the darkness and, lantern in hand, Watts rose from his comfortable seat in a niche of rock near the fork of the trail and greeted them with his kindly drawl. "I 'lowed yo' all ort to be 'long d'rec'ly. I'll take 'em now, Miss; the trail's kind of roughish like, but ef yo'll jist take the lantern an' foller 'long ahead I reckon we'll ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... and soon passed out of sight. About a hundred feet below us were the pointed roofs of the city, the empty courtyards of the old mansions, and the black holes of the smoky chimneys. Leaning in the niche of a battlement, we gazed and listened, and breathed it all in, enjoying the beautiful sunshine and balmy air impregnated with the pungent odour of the ruins. And there, without thinking of anything in particular, without even phrasing inwardly ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... looks, shall see His Temple of Idolatry; Where he of god-heads has such store, As Rome's Pantheon had not more. His house of Rimmon this he calls, Girt with small bones, instead of walls. First in a niche, more black than jet, His idol-cricket there is set; Then in a polish'd oval by There stands his idol-beetle-fly; Next, in an arch, akin to this, His idol-canker seated is. Then in a round, is placed by these His golden god, Cantharides. So that where'er ye look, ye see No capital, no ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... named Lewis, a book-binder, who came from Scotland with Smollett, and who usually dined with him at Chelsea on Sundays. In this book he also found a niche for the exhibition of his own distresses in the character of Melopoyn the dramatic poet. His applications to the directors of the theatre, indeed, continued so unavailing, that he at length resolved to publish his unfortunate tragedy by subscription; ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... real, military airplane in his possession, cached away in some niche in the lava wall to the west of Sinkhole—a wall that featured queer niches and caverns and clefts. He was seeing—what wonderful things was ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... fate toward a deposed deity. The German name for idol—Abgott, that is, "ex-god," or "dethroned god"—sums up in a single etymology the history of the havoc wrought by monotheism among the ancient symbols of deity. In the hospitable Pantheon of the Greeks and Romans a niche was always in readiness for every new divinity who could produce respectable credentials; but the triumph of monotheism converted the stately mansion into a Pandemonium peopled with fiends. To the monotheist an "ex-god" was simply ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... golden shield pierced with little holes to look through, that he held before his face. One day he came into this turret when they who worked the guns in Orleans were all at their meat. But it so chanced that two boys, playing truant from school, went into a niche of the wall, where was a cannon loaded and aimed at Les Tourelles. They, seeing the gleam of the golden shield at the window of the turret, set match to the touch-hole of the cannon, and, as Heaven would have it, the ball struck a splinter of stone from the side of ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... Lo, in yon brilliant window-niche How statue-like I see thee stand, The agate lamp within thy hand, Ah! Psyche, from the regions which ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... aspects. He rarely revealed to the same person more than a single side. His individuality was marvellous. "Let us take him," in the words of his latest good biographer, "as simply Abraham Lincoln, singular and solitary as we all see that he was. Let us be thankful if we can make a niche big enough for him among the world's heroes without worrying ourselves about the proportion it may bear to other niches; and there let him remain forever, lonely, as in his strong lifetime, impressive, mysterious, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... cat-headed, owl-headed statues, with viper-crowned, almond-eyed monarchs, and strange, beetle-like deities cut out of the blue Egyptian lapis lazuli. Horus and Isis and Osiris peeped down from every niche and shelf, while across the ceiling a true son of Old Nile, a great, hanging-jawed crocodile, was slung in ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... But the most heart-ravishing delights end ultimately in satiety and disgust, greater, and probably more keenly felt, the more they have been relished and enjoyed. Dick began to feel listless and tired with his day's work. He laid his head upon a groove or niche in the battlements, and fell fast asleep. It seems the sentinel did not return; for Dick remained undisturbed, and when he awoke it was completely dark, save that there was a wan gleam from a dull watery moon, just dipping into a stratum of dark clouds over the sea. His ideas, not over-lucid in ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... who were gathering round, and shooting a triumphant glance at Ada Irvine's haughty face, she half dragged her amused but by no means unwilling companion to the sacred spot; and when both were comfortably perched on the window niche, she began eagerly, "Won't you tell me your name and where you live? I am called Winnifred Mary Blake. I have three big brothers, and a little one; two sisters older than myself; a cross papa and ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... in the height of his powers. A pure and simple biography cannot always determine with any satisfaction its subject's literary standing. Critical studies of classic authors do not usually give any preciseness about the exact niche the subject fills. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... Molly's thoughts, "I looked forward to the meeting with Jonathan, and now, in so short a time, I have grown to dread it." She tried to think of his pleasant, well-coloured face, of his whimsical, caressing smile, but in the niche where his image should have stood, she saw Abel in his country clothes, with his red-brown throat rising out of his blue shirt and his brilliant eyes under the dark hair on his forehead. Then suddenly memory played her a ridiculous trick, for she remembered that his hair ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... of which entitled the holder to pecuniary or other reward. As for himself, his part was that of spectator and arbiter; he handicapped the competitors; he declared the prizes. On this occasion he ensconced himself in a niche of the ruins, where he was out of the glare of the sun, and gracefully surrounded by masses of ivy; while his relatives hauled out to the middle of the green plateau several trunks of fir-trees, of various sizes, that had been carefully lopped and pruned for the purpose of 'tossing ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... wall, through which we passed into another chamber carved out of the rock, not so large as the first and only lighted by a charcoal brazier that gave off as much fumes as flame. The fitful, bluish light fell in a stone ledge, in a niche like a sepulcher, carved in one wall, and on that ledge a man lay who had every muscle of his body pierced with thorns; his tongue protruded between his teeth, and was held there by a thorn thrust ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... evidence in his possession before "some very noble Persons," and, he adds, "I flatter myself that it might be a little owing to my Representation, that the Distinction between an Object of Mercy, and an Object of Justice at last prevailed". So the felon gained his respite, and a lasting niche for his name, in that he owed his life partly if not wholly to the generous compassion of Henry Fielding. The pamphlet seems to have made its mark, for a second edition was advertised within a month ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... hung a barometer, excessively ornate, which seems to play a great part in their existence; Rogron gazed at it as he might at his future wife. Between the two windows is a white porcelain stove in a niche overloaded with ornament. The walls glow with a magnificent paper, crimson and gold, such as you see in the same restaurants, where, no doubt, the Rogrons chose it. Dinner was served on white and gold china, ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... Lamb, Wordsworth, and William Hazlitt were book-collectors of a type which deserves a niche to itself. Writing to Coleridge in 1797, Lamb says: 'I have had thoughts of turning Quaker, and have been reading, or am, rather, just beginning to read, a most capital book, good thoughts in good language, William Penn's ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... the earth. In some pictures, her elevation is very slight. There is a curious composition, by Andrea del Sarto (Berlin Gallery), where we are puzzled to know if the Madonna is enthroned or enskied. A flight of steps in the centre leads up as if to a throne, but above these the Virgin sits in a niche, on a ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... disappeared during a storm, it was supposed that the ill-fated man went to the very edge of the small, rocky island on which the light-house stood, and was swept out by a wave. This supposition seemed the more likely as his boat was not found next day in its rocky niche. The place of light-house keeper had become vacant. It was necessary to fill this place at the earliest moment possible, since the light-house had no small significance for the local movement as well as for vessels going from New York to Panama. Mosquito Bay abounds in sandbars and ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... slavery from a Territory—the argument presented point by point and step by step with legal precision the silent subversion of cherished principles of liberty. "Put this and that together," said he, "and we have another nice little niche, which we may ere long see filled with another Supreme Court decision, declaring that the Constitution of the United States does not permit a State to exclude slavery from its limits.... Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being alike lawful in ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... acknowledge freely; but not that he should allow himself to be stuck up as a ninepin only to be knocked down! There are politicians for whom such occupation seems to be proper;—and who like it too. A little office, a little power, a little rank, a little pay, a little niche in the ephemeral history of the year will reward many men adequately ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... looking her through and through until she was no longer an Unknown Woman, while the Maluka looked on interested. He knew the bush-folk well, and that their instinct would be unerring, and left the missus to slip into whichever niche in their lives they thought fit to place her. And as she slipped into a niche built up of strong, staunch comradeship, the black community considered that they, too, had fathomed the missus; and it became history in the camp ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... hand resting on the greasy arm of a large cane chair lined with morocco, of which the original hue had disappeared; he seemed to hesitate as to seating himself. He looked with affection at the double desk, where his wife's seat, opposite his own, was fitted into a little niche in the wall. He contemplated the numbered boxes, the files, the implements, the cash box—objects all of immemorial origin, and fancied himself in the room with the shade of Master Chevrel. He even pulled out the high stool on which he had once sat in the presence ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... darting Beneath the crystal arch, Piping, as they flew, a march,— Belike the one they used in parting Last year from yon oak or larch; Dusky sparrows in a crowd, Diving, darting northward free, Suddenly betook them all, Every one to his hole in the wall, Or to his niche in ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... the expiring embers, and the remains were sympathetically gathered up and placed in an urn of marble or less costly material. A priest then sprinkled the ashes with pure water, using a branch of olive or laurel, the urn was placed in a niche of the family tomb, and the mourning relatives and friends withdrew, saying as they went Vale, vale! When they reached their homes they underwent a process of purification, the houses themselves were swept with a broom of prescribed pattern, ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... of school had been a heavy cross for Marjorie to bear. Surrounded as she always was with the four faithful members of her own little set, she was often lonely. If only Constance had been in school she could have better borne Mary's disloyalty, although the latter could never quite fill the niche which years of companionship had carved in her heart for Mary. But Connie was far away, so she must go on enduring this bitter sorrow ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... memory in the space of a moment—thoughts of the wife and little ones in that far-away home to which he will never return. It is a fine subject, exquisitely conceived and executed, and worthily described in Byron's two immortal stanzas. Upstairs, in a small rotunda-shaped temple, enshrined in a niche in the wall, we saw that most beautiful conception of womanhood, known as the Venus of the Capitol. She appears as though suddenly disturbed while taking her bath, and the expression of frightened innocence ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... condition that I send him an assistant that he would undertake the management of the ranch at all. I expected, as I say, that Cook would go; evidently, however, Thornton is not going to be able to fill his place. What shall I do with Thornton, Don? We must find a niche for ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... of Maryland was more benevolent and more temperate than that of her southern neighbor. The name of Calvert is a better symbol of wisdom than the name of Berkeley. Cecil Calvert, second Lord Baltimore, dying in 1675, has a fair niche in the temple of human enlightenment. His son Charles succeeded, third Lord Baltimore and Lord Proprietary of Maryland. Well-intentioned, this Calvert lacked something of the ability of either his father or his grandfather. Though he lived in Maryland while his father had lived in England, ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... corridor back and across, to and fro, up and down, with the futile restlessness of a cat animal in a zoo, his feet clumping on the flagged flooring, and the watchful turnkey standing by, Uncle Tobe, having flattened his lean form in a niche behind the outer lattice, with an appraising eye would consider the shifting figure through a convenient cranny of the wattled metal strips. He took care to keep himself well back out of view, but ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... hammer-strokes. The seams were all awry, and the lines and cracks were all sharp and straight, though running into one another and across in great confusion. And, of a sudden, in the midst of this tangle of straight clefts and sharp-pointed angles, we came on a little rounded niche where the wall was scooped out in a graceful curve from about our own height to the ground. It was all as smooth and softly rounded as if wrought by a mason's chisel, and as we stood looking at it ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... one of the sick I visited was W. E. Henley, which did not make very tedious visits, so I'll not get off much purgatory for them. That was in the Edinburgh Infirmary, the old one, the true one, with Georgius Secundus standing and pointing his toe in a niche of the facade; and a mighty fine building it was! And I remember one winter's afternoon, in that place of misery, that Henley and I chanced to fall in talk about James Payn himself. I am wishing you could ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rock. At its entrance was a strong grate, which gave way to the Hebrew's touch upon the spring, though the united strength of a hundred men could not have moved it from its hinge. Taking up a brazen lamp that burnt in a niche within it, the Hebrew paused impatiently till the feeble steps of the old man reached the spot; and then, reclosing the grate, pursued his winding way for a considerable distance, till he stopped suddenly by a part of the rock which seemed in no respect different from the ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in his niche, there struggled a convulsive bulk, like some monstrous worm, too large for the bore, yet writhing. Bare feet kicked him in violent rebellion, and a muscular knee jarred squarely under his chin. He caught a pair of naked legs, and ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... Mounted Infantry, marched out an hour before dawn. A line of kopjes stood up before us, rising out of the bare plain like islands out of the sea, and as we rounded the point and opened up the inner semicircle of hills, we could distinguish the white waggon tops of the Boer laager in a deep niche in the hillside, and see the men collecting and mounting and galloping about. By-and-by, as we advanced, there came a singing noise, and suddenly a great pillar of red dust shot up out of the ground a little to our left. "That's a most extraordinary ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... is, to get money coined in his name and bearing his arms, to take the fisherman's ring from the finger of the dead pope, to dress, shave and paint him, to have the corpse embalmed, to lower the coffin after nine days' obsequies into the provisional niche where the last deceased pope has to remain until his successor comes to take his place and consign him to his final tomb; lastly, as he had been obliged to wall up the door of the Conclave and the window of the balcony from which ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... None may the niche of glory haplier grace, None may the crown of greatness proudlier wear, Than he upon whose tomb the silent tear Falls slowly down from ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... the arch, is eight feet two inches high, and one foot one inch and a quarter wide, on the side fronting the largest angle. The upper story is disposed into five niches, and there were formerly as many pinnacles at the corners; but one of them has been destroyed: each niche contained a statue. The first appears to have been intended to represent a bishop, another seems like the Virgin and Jesus; a third appears to be Saint John the Evangelist; the others are too much mutilated to be known. Over each ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 576 - Vol. 20 No. 576., Saturday, November 17, 1832 • Various
... once a pastor at Schuylerville, N. Y., where on the Burgoyne surrender ground stands a celebrated monument. It is beautiful to look upon. On one side of it in a niche is General Schuyler, and on the other side, if I remember correctly, General Gates; on the third, in the same sort of a niche, another distinguished general is to be seen, but on the fourth the niche is vacant. When I asked the reason I was told that "It is ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... arose, and taking a torch in my hand passed from one chamber to another, on that side from whence the voice proceeded, until looking through a window I found it to be an oratory. It had, as we have in our mosques, a niche,[32] to direct us whither we are to turn to say our prayers; there were also lamps hung up, and two candlesticks with large tapers ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... and found several remains of Christian churches with bell-towers attached to them—certainly not originally minarets. These edifices had been afterwards, in Mohammedan times, converted into mosques, as evidenced by the niche made in the south wall of each, pointing to Mecca; and there are watch-towers for signals on all the summits of hills around. The city lies nestled in a valley ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... coming to that," said her mother. "The fishing, to be sure! Why, we are going to write letters to just everybody we know, and some we only know by hearsay, and find out if there isn't a niche for Papa ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... genius, mankind is once more gifted with the harmony of intellect and flesh and feeling, that belonged to Hellas. Instead of asceticism, Hellenic temperance is the virtue prized by Raphael. Over his niche in the Temple of Fame might be written: "I have said ye are gods;"—for the children of men in his ideal world are divinized. The godlike spirit of man is all in all. Happy indeed was the art that by ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... young—though, it were to be hoped, not quite so immature. But, as circumstances alter cases, so time and chance alter circumstances. Under no circumstances, however, can the artifices of quackery be thought excusable in him who claims to be the very greatest of modern grammarians. The niche that in the temple of learning belongs to any individual, can be no other than that which his own labours have purchased: here, his own merit alone must be his pedestal. If this critical sketch be unimpeachably just, its publication ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... to a large amount was promptly executed in various quarters. The fate which awaited the Mussulman negociator was a lamentable one: he was accused of imbecility or treachery; and his head was taken off his shoulders to decorate the niche over the Seraglio gate: he paid dear for his friendly feelings towards the English. So ended the famed expedition to the Hellespont and the Bosphorus. It broke the spell by which the passage of the Dardanelles had for ages been guarded; but beyond this ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... relieved by the pleasant foliage of many creeping plants that made a tapestry for the naked rock, by hanging their festoons from all its rugged angles. At a small elevation above the ground, set in a rich framework of verdure, there appeared a niche, spacious enough to admit a human figure, with freedom for such gestures as spontaneously accompany earnest thought and genuine emotion. Into this natural pulpit Ernest ascended, and threw a look of familiar kindness around upon his audience. They ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... tank And on the steps, and all along the frieze With tender inlaid work of agate-stones. Cool as to tread in summer-time on snows It was to loiter there; the sunbeams dropped Their gold, and, passing into porch and niche, Softened to shadows, silvery, pale, and dim, As if the very Day paused and grew Eve. In love and silence at that bower's gate; For there beyond the gate the chamber was, Beautiful, sweet; a wonder of the world! ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... into the beams and rafters of some old building. How close the air was in the stifling passage through which he was crawling! The scene changed, and he was climbing a slippery sheet of ice with desperate effort, his foot on the floor of a shallow niche, his hold an icicle ready to snap in an instant, an abyss below him waiting for his foot to slip or the icicle to break. How thin the air seemed, how desperately hard to breathe! He was thinking of ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... in bronze. The gallant Schuyler, the intrepid Morgan, honor the other two. But where is he whose valor turned back the advancing Saint-Leger? whose prompt decision saved the Continental position at Bemis Heights? whose military genius truly gained the day? A vacant niche—empty as England's rewards, void as his own life—speaks more eloquently than words, more strongly than condemnation, more pitifully than tears, of a mighty career blighted by treason and hurled into the bottomless pit of despair. This is America's way of honoring ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... in the altar-niche Faced by Love's congregated worshippers, Thou art the holy sacrament round which The vast ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... and multitudinous adornment that was lavished on the exterior wall of this great church. Everywhere, there were empty niches where statues had been thrown down, and here and there a statue still lingered in its niche; and over the chief entrance, and extending across the whole breadth of the building, was a row of angels, sainted personages, martyrs, and kings, sculptured in reddish stone. Being much corroded by the moist English atmosphere, during four or five ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... glided along the corridor towards that box. Being himself an actor and well known by the employees of the theater, he was suffered to proceed without hindrance. Passing through the corridor door he fastened it shut by means of a bar that fitted into a niche previously prepared, and making an effectual barricade. A hole had been bored through the door leading into the box so that he could survey the inmates without attracting their attention. With revolver in one hand and dagger in the other he noiselessly entered the box and ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... ended, my uncle composed himself in the position he intended to occupy, with his cloak wrapped round him, and I accompanied Mrs McCarthy into the kitchen, which was in a delightful state of disorder. She here let down, from a little niche in which it was folded, a small cupboard-bed, on which, though the sheets and blankets were not very clean, I was not sorry to contemplate a night's rest. The landlady, wishing me good-night, withdrew to her own quarters. Molly, the maid-servant, ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... law, talked together of tithes and tribute, or entered on lively disputes over the laws of the Scriptures, a subject on which they never agreed. Joseph and Mary did not observe that others were quarrelling; they humbly obeyed the rules, and stood in a niche of the Holy Place and prayed. But Jesus stood by the pillars and listened to the disputants ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... never heard of Lord Iffield, but her mention of his having been at Boulogne helped me to give him a niche. Mrs. Meldrum had incidentally thrown a certain light on the manners of Mrs. Floyd-Taylor, Flora's recent hostess in that charming town, a lady who, it appeared, had a special vocation for helping rich young men to find ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... The passage which ran through it, only lighted by a window at the foot of the staircase, ended at the arched door of a silent, deserted chapel with an altar on its east side, a quaint figure of Our Lady in a carved niche, and a window half-darkened with ivy leaves, overhanging the green and damp depths of the ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price |
