"Octagon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Sacrament at the Octagon, probably for the last time. Oh, how earnest were my prayers for re-union in a purer world! Prayers were offered for a person lying dangerously ill. I thought of the queen, and prayed ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... citizens to arms, was one of the first privileges which every Teutonic trading town desired to wring from its feudal lord. This brick tower, the pledge of municipal rights, was begun in 1291, to replace an earlier one of wood, and finished about a hundred years later; the octagon, in stone at the summit, which holds the bell, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... undoubted testimony to the previous existence of a Jain temple on this spot. The large square rooms, which were filled during our visit with true believers, were curiously roofed; a dome was ingeniously thrown over the square. An octagon, placed on solid buttresses, supported a 16-sided figure, which in its turn supported the dome. The Jumma musjid, which we also visited, was remarkable for its magnificent screen, 120 feet in height ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... leveled to the surface Of the streets and roads around it, Bears no pile of architecture,[9] To be seen afar and nearer, To be seen from hill and valley, By the traveler wand'ring hither. On the summit of the tower, Of the octagon bell-tower, Of this new and gorgeous building, With its porticos and stairways, With its halls and council chambers, Is a high observatory, Whence is viewed the distant landscape, Whence is seen the rural beauties Of this land of agriculture. Near this pinnacle ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... of drawing-rooms, with their costly furniture, the plate-rooms were beneath the Gothic dining-room; and on the other side—beyond a room known as the Octagon-room—was the Jewelled Armoury. The fire had taken such hold that the utmost exertions were needed to keep it under, and prevent it from spreading, and it remained for hours doubtful whether the rest of the Castle would escape. Prince Albert, the gentlemen of the household, ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... refute this cautious statement, the gondola quietly glided out again upon the Grand Canal, in full face of a great white dome, rising superbly from a sculptured marble octagon against a radiant sky. Sky and dome and sculptured figure, each cast its image deep down in the tranquil waters at its base, where, as it chanced, no passing barge or steamboat ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... artist, whose work of many toiling days, and many sleepless nights, has been sent in unprotected to take its chance. He knows nothing of its fate until he can get a catalogue. It may be on the line in the east room; it may be above the octagon-room door; it may not be hung at all. Only the great artistic guns are invited to the private view, the rest must wait till Monday. Possibly a stray catalogue puts him so far out of his pain on Sunday. If not, he passes ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... the original design. Nor are they even like to each other. Both of them are square at their bases, and preserve this form to a sufficient height to admit of two tiers of narrow windows, separated from each other by little more than a simple string-course. Above these windows both become octagon, and continue so to the top; but in a very different manner. The northern one has obtuse angles, imperfectly defined; the southern has four projecting buttresses and four windows, alternating with each other. ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... sunshine of spring." * This city was divided into twenty-two wards, each presided over by a Bishop. The principal buildings were the Council House, thirty-two by twenty-four feet, and Dr. Richard's house, called the Octagon, and described as resembling the heap of earth piled up over potatoes to shield them from frost. In this Octagon the High Council held most of their meetings. A great necessity was a flouring mill, and accordingly they sent to St. ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... away, and stay with us until evening, Miss Theodora," she fluttered in wild, old-maidenly excitement. "Do stay, Miss Theodora, and I will show you how to do the octagon-stitch, as I promised the last time you were here. You remember how you admired it in that antimacassar ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... not set three steps in the warm snug octagon of glass and plants when he appeared on the ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... therefore, was erected in 1774, in the octagon form, not overcharged with light nor strength; in an airy situation and taste, but shews too little steeple, and too much roof. If a light balustrade was raised over the parapet, with an urn in the centre of the roof, the eye of ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... mercury runs out. The bag is then beaten and pressed as much as they can, laying upon it a flat piece of wood loaded with a heavy weight, to get out as much of the mercury as they can. The paste is then put into a mould of wooden planks bound together, generally in the form of an octagon pyramid cut short, its bottoms being a plate of copper, full of small holes, into which the paste is stirred and pressed down, in order to fasten it. When they design to make many pinnas, or spongy lumps of various weights, these are divided from each other by thin beds or layers ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... Edinburgh had come into being between the time when Allan Ramsay's career ended in the octagon house on the Castle Hill, and another poet, very different from Ramsay, appeared in the Scotch capital. In the meantime many persons of note had left the old town and migrated towards the new. The old gentry of whom so many stories have been told, especially ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... cheese presented to her, "on which occasion, she was pleased to express her satisfaction." It was made from the morning's milking of 737 cows, prepared by the labour of 50 dairy women, at West Pennard, Somersetshire, and it weighed 11 cwt. It was octagon in shape, and its upper surface was decorated with the Royal Arms, surmounted with a wreath of roses, thistles and shamrocks. Unfortunately, although it had been made over two years, it was not considered to be fit to eat for another ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... mosaic on a grander scale than was ever executed elsewhere, the result is not gaudy, as in many of the Roman chapels, but a dark and melancholy richness. The architecture strikes me as extremely fine; each alternate side of the octagon being an arch, rising as high as the cornice of the lofty dome, and forming the frame of a vast niche. All the dead princes, no doubt, according to the general design, were to have been honored with statues within this stately mausoleum; but only two—those of ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a little as she said this, in a barely audible voice. I looked at the gray pile in silent contemplation. Its style suggested massiveness, although the building was not of any great size. The part comprising the vestibule and bell-tower was octagon in shape, and the turret was at least a hundred feet in air. Behind this were the ivy-covered walls of the body of the church. It was at that time when the earth grows still before drawing her night robes about her. In the ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... then wended her way up some narrow stairs, which curled round and round as if they were going up a tower. This, as a matter of fact, was the case. Presently Iris pushed aside a curtain, and found herself in an octagon room nearly at the top of a somewhat high, but squarely built, tower. This room, which was large and airy, was wainscoted with oak; there was a thick Turkey carpet on the floor, and the many windows were flung wide open, so that the summer breeze, coming ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... branches and interlacing their arms overhead, through which a glimpse of blue heavens with golden gleams of sunlight are seen. A turn in the road and the grand entrance is before them, on either side of which are flower beds in full bloom. A conservatory is all around the octagon south wing, now bereft of its floral beauties excepting its orchards and ferns. It is really a fine old place, large and massive, in grey stone and with the grandeur of other days about it; the arms and motto show well in ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... P'hra-mene is a lofty octagon; and directly under the great spire is a gorgeous eight-sided pyramid, diminishing by right-angled gradations to a truncated top, its base being fifty or sixty feet in circumference, and higher ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... appointment as organist at Halifax was in 1765, and the pupils and public concerts must have filled up the intervening five years. During a part of this time he lived in Leeds, with the family of Mr. BULMAN, whom he afterwards provided with a place as clerk to the Octagon Chapel, ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... leads through a lofty archway into the central hall, which is octagon in plan, having columns at the angles, from which spring ribs forming a grand stone groin finishing in the centre, with an octagon lantern, the bosses at the intersections of all the ribs elaborately carved. The size of this hall is sixty-eight feet in diameter, ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... been washed from the hills and high plains on both sides, or driven from a distance down the stream. At twelve miles we halted for dinner at a village which we suppose to have belonged to the Ricaras; it is situated in a low plain on the river, and consists of about eighty lodges, of an octagon form, neatly covered with earth, placed as close to each other as possible, and picketed round. The skin canoes, mats, buckets, and articles of furniture found in the lodges, induce us to suppose that it had been left in ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... moon, a day or two past the full, rose above the opposite bank. One sees many strange distortions of sun and moon in this land, but never was a stranger seen than this. Her disk, shining through the dense air of the river bottom, was in shape an almost perfect octagon, regular as though it had been laid off with ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... of Georgian art, with a complete homogeneous architectural character of its own which makes it singular and unique. It is full of memories of the great folks who thronged its streets, attended the Bath and Pump Room, and listened to sermons in the Octagon. It tells of the autocracy of Beau Nash, of Goldsmith, Sheridan, David Garrick, of the "First Gentleman of Europe," and many others who made Bath famous. And now it is likely that this unique little city with its memories and its charming architectural features is to be mutilated for ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... become a sort of 'Obstreperous Octagon.' Laura and Scott Burton are staying with us. Scott is a good deal of a bookworm, and uses very long words; his favourite name for me at present is Calliope; I thought it was a sort of steam- whistle, but Margery thinks it was some ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... completion, and it is said that Abbot William abandoned the idea. We have only the foundations by which we can determine their size. William of Trumpington transformed the windows of the aisles into Early English ones. He also added a wooden lantern to the tower, somewhat in the style of the wooden octagon on ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... differ in nothing from those they inhabited while living, except in their diminutive size; others prefer a square vault, ornamented in such a manner as fancy may suggest; some make choice of a hexagon to cover the deceased, and others of an octagon. The round, the triangular, the square, and multangular column, is indifferently raised over the grave of a Chinese; but the most common form of a monument to the remains of persons of rank consists in three terraces, ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... went on. "It must have a roof of galvanized iron and an octagon-drop-clock. It must be six fathoms long with a porch all around. A big room must be in the centre, with a round table in the middle of it and the octagon-drop-clock on the wall. There must be four bedrooms, two on each side of the big room, and in each bedroom ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... of years after his return to England from This visit to his old home, we find that Herschel had received a further promotion to be organist in the Octagon Chapel, at Bath. Bath was then, as now, a highly fashionable resort, and many notable personages patronised the rising musician. Herschel had other points in his favour besides his professional skill; his appearance was good, his address was prepossessing, and ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... as a new and consolatory idea struck her, "perhaps even if you had sent in the picture, it might have been returned, or put in the octagon room, or among the miniatures, where nobody could see it; and that would have been much worse, would ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... An octagon ante-room of the hall at LORD WILLIAM DROMONDY'S. A shining room lighted by gold candelabra, with gold-curtained pillars, through which the shining hall and a little of the grand stairway are visible. A small table with a gold-coloured cloth occupies ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... inscriptions, more than two hundred years old, and promises, with ordinary care, long to continue in good preservation, owing to the great dryness of the air and soil. The mausoleum of the Sumroo family is a handsome octagon building, surmounted by a low dome rising out of a cornice, with a deep drip-stone, something in the style of a Constantinople fountain. The inscription is in Portuguese a proof, most likely, that there were no ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... protrudes through the floor, and fastened so firmly that the weight of the three females will not impede the revolutions. It must also be constructed so that it can be easily shipped and unshipped. The base is of octagon form, two feet in diameter, one foot thick, and ornamented with small scrolls around the sides, the whole to be covered with white cloth, and decorated with artificial or painted wreaths and festoons of flowers. On the top of the base there must be a box one foot high, and five inches ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... doors in the room, all low and arched, with clumsy locks and heavy handles. One opened into a closet, one into the passage; the third was locked, but the fourth opened easily, and, lifting her light, she peeped into a small octagon room, full of all manner of curiosities. What they were she had no time to see, for her startled eyes were riveted on an object that turned her faint and ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... they finally neared it, proved to be a huddle of low, octagon-shaped huts (called hogans) made of short cedar logs and plastered over with adobe, with a hole in the center of the lid-like roof to let the smoke out and a little light in; and dogs, that ran out and barked and yelped and trailed into mourning rumbles and then barked again; and half-naked ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... opened from his study. A pressure of the finger upon the blinds caused them to spring open, and the broad daylight streamed through the high windows. The walls, which were hung with brown velvet, formed an octagon, and opposite the broad windows were two pictures in gold frames. The vicomte's look rested on these pictures. They were the features of his parents which had been placed upon the canvas by the hand of an artist. In ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... inclosure, on a raised platform approached through delicate arcades, stands the great Dome of the Rock, built by Abd-el-Melik in 688 A.D., on the site of the Jewish Temple. The exterior of the vast octagon, with its lower half cased in marble and its upper half incrusted with Persian tiles of blue and green, its broad, round lantern and swelling black dome surmounted by a glittering crescent, is bathed in ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... later Byzantine churches. The great mosques express the spirit of the days when the Ottoman empire was still mighty and ambitious. Occasionally, as in the case of Laleli Jamissi, where the dome rests upon an octagon inscribed in a square, the influence of SS. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... for $430,—I to put in the foundation. This consisted of eight concrete piers, each five feet deep in the clay, three feet square, and capped at the level of the ground with a limestone two feet square and eight inches thick. These piers were set in octagon form around the well, with their centres seven feet from the middle of the bore, making the spread of the framework fourteen feet at the ground and ten at the platform. The foundation cost $32. A Rider eight-inch, hot-air, wood-burning, pumping engine (with a two-inch pipe leading to ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... ardour shew That aye her praises should be widely blown: John James alike are named: of those fair two, One is Calandra, one is Bardelon. In the third place, and fourth, where trickling through Small rills, the water quits that octagon, Two ladies are there, equal in their birth, Equal in country, ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... the main arches are octagonal in shape and unusually slender. They are made up of shafts of different sizes, the larger ones placed at the corners of the octagon, the smaller ones between them. The grouping of these shafts should be compared with that of the Early English piers in the transepts. There the central mass of masonry is surrounded with shafts of Purbeck marble almost detached. ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock
... with a domed roof of heavy cement. The entrance was by the door in the church to the right of the main entrance. The room is octagonal, with the altar in a recess, over which is a dome of brick, with a small lantern. At each point of the octagon there is an engaged column, built of circular-fronted brick which run to a point at the rear and are thus built into the wall. A three-membered cornice crowns each column, which supports arches that reach from one column to another. There are two windows, ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... wing which adjoined the tower. In glancing at the house from outside, I had fancied that the square, squat wall must be that of a studio, as there were no windows, but a high, domed skylight on top. Now I saw that though the outer building was square, the room within was octagon in shape. It was, perhaps, a studio, as I had fancied, but there was something of the free-and-easy negligence of an ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... he was introduced to Herschel. In this case there was something like real community of tastes, for the astronomer was musical, having once played the oboe, and later on acted as organist, first at Halifax Parish Church, and then at the Octagon Chapel Bath. The big telescope with which he discovered the planet Uranus in 1781 was an object of great interest to Haydn, who was evidently amazed at the idea of a man sitting out of doors "in the most intense cold for five or six ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... classes! DANIEL O'CONNELL was just in his prime, and, in addition to himself returned three of his name. SMITH O'BRIEN was yet far off the cabbage garden, and HENRY GRATTAN sat for Meath. There is a living image of him now among the busts in the corridor leading out of the Octagon Hall; a fiery dramatic speaker in the House, who, as someone said of him at the time, used in his passion to throw up his arms, bend over till he touched the floor with his finger-nails, and thank Heaven he had no gestures. The O'CONNOR DON whom Members younger than I remember as he sat above ...
— Punch, Volume 101, Jubilee Issue, July 18, 1891 • Various
... a house looming out of the bareness of the slope. It dominated that long white incline. Grim, lonely, forbidding, how strangely it harmonized with the surroundings! The structure was octagon-shaped, built of uncut stone, and resembled a fort. There was no door on the sides exposed to Shefford's gaze, but small apertures two-thirds the way up probably served as windows and port-holes. The roof appeared to be made of poles covered with ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... both of the inhabited and uninhabited part of the mansion, and availed himself of the candle to traverse two or three intricate passages, which he was afraid he might not remember with sufficient accuracy. This movement conveyed him to a sort of oeil-de-boeuf, an octagon vestibule, or small hall, from which various rooms opened. Amongst these doors, Everard selected that which led to a very long, narrow, and dilapidated gallery, built in the time of Henry VIII., and which, running ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... fashionable nights; and then they go, be the play good or bad—except on Moliere's nights, whose pieces they are quite weary of. Gray and I have been at the Avare to-night: I cannot at all commend their performance of it. Last night I was in the Place de Louis le Grand (a regular octagon, uniform, and the houses handsome, though not so large as Golden Square), to see what they reckoned one of the finest burials that ever was in France. It was the Duke de Tresmes, governor of Paris ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... at the party, who had returned from Rome, with his red beard, and his picture of the murder of the Red Comyn, which made but a dim effect in the Octagon Room of the Royal Academy, where the bleeding agonies of the dying warrior were veiled in an unkind twilight. On Sandy and his brethren little Rosey looked rather coldly. She tossed up her little head in conversation with me, and gave me to understand ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 1876. I haven't had time to write in this journal since I came. There is so much to do here all the time. Besides, I have changed rooms and room-mates. I am in No. 72 now and I have a funny little octagon-shaped bedroom all to myself, and two room-mates, I. W. and J.S. Both of these are in the preparatory department. But I am in the semi-collegiate class, because I passed all my mathematics. But I didn't have quite enough of the right Latin ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... great Dagoba for about a mile, we face another Dagoba of similar appearance, but of smaller dimensions, also standing in a spacious circle. Near this rises the king's palace, a noble building of great height, edged at the corner by narrow octagon towers. ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... Memoranda: The Octagon is perhaps the most beautiful and original design to be found in the whole range of Gothic architecture. Remember also the retrochoir. The lower tier of windows consists of three long lancets, with groups of Purbeck shafts at the angles; the ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Charleston harbor, grimly erect, stood the octagon-shaped Fort Sumter, mid-way of the harbor entrance, the Stars and Stripes proudly waving from its lofty central flagstaff, its guns bristling on every side through the casemates and embrasures, as if with a ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... much more, beginning with the fore court of the conventual church of Santa Paula, where we found the afternoon light waiting to illumine for us with its tender caress the Luca della Robbia-like colored porcelain figures of the portal and the beautiful octagon tower staying a moment before taking flight for heaven: the most exquisite moment of our whole fortnight in Seville. Tall pots of flowers stood round, and the grass came green through the crevices of the old foot-worn pavement. When we passed out a small boy scuffled for our copper with the little ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... octagonal, but filled up into a square by certain curious groups of figures representing the trades of Venice. The three courses below are octagonal, with their sides set across the angles of the innermost octagon, Yb. The shafts are 15 feet in circumference, and the lowest octagons of the base 56 (7 ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... from the heavenly orbs to their semblance on the bosom of the placid waters, he observed, as it were, a fallen star, mirrored therein, but rousing his dreamy senses, he found it was a small, shining object, floating near them. He drew it from the water; it was a block of wood, in the form of an octagon, highly polished, inlaid with bits of pearl, forming grotesque figures, and thickly studded with some bright mineral, representing stars, which gave it a very ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... now, however, so vexed with my father for saying she preferred the Dean's preaching to his,—although I doubt very much whether it wasn't true,—that she actually walked out of the octagon room where they were, and left him to meditate on his unkindness. Vexed with herself the next moment, she returned as if nothing had happened. I am only telling what my mother told me; for to her grown daughters ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... peremptory, proceeded to array her young lady in her prize-day muslin dress, and sent her hastily down stairs under the guidance of a little page who loitered in the gallery. At the foot of the stairs a lean, gray-headed man in black received her, and ushered her into a beautiful octagon-shaped room, all garnished with books and brilliant with light, where her grandfather was waiting to conduct her to dinner. So much ceremony made Bessie feel as if she was acting a part in a play. Since Macky's ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr |
