"Perpendicular" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... impossible for him to draw on a steep grade. It is an accepted maxim by road-engineers that the horizontal length of a road may be advantageously increased, to avoid an ascent, by at least twenty times the perpendicular height which is to be thus saved; that is, to escape a hill a hundred feet high, it would be proper for the road to make such a circuit as would increase its length ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter
... Prince Aribert with a swift cry, pointing to the ground. The lantern threw its light on a perpendicular grating at their feet, through which could be discerned a cellar. They both knelt down, and peered into the subterranean chamber. On a broken chair a young man sat listlessly with closed eyes, his head leaning heavily forward on ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... adjustable form around the lugs and strap as shown in this figure. Be sure to set the post straight, so that the covers will fit. A good thing is to try a cover over the post to see that the post is set up properly. The post must, of course, be perpendicular to the tops of the plates. If the slotted plate strap shown in Figure 5 is used, or if one or two plates have been cut off, melt the top of the lug of one of the plates which are to be burned oil, and the surfaces of the strap to which the plate is to be welded. ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... fixed the one stick across the top of the other so as to form a rough T, and was now busy in fitting a smaller stick into the angle between them, by manipulating which, the cross one could be either cocked up or depressed to any extent. He had cut notches, too, in the perpendicular stick, so that, by the aid of the small prop, the cross one could be kept in any position for an ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... sufficiently soft and yielding to be readily worked or carved with rude stone implements. Over this entire area there are irregular elevations, somewhat circular in outline, from 50 to 200 feet in height, the faces of which have been worn away by the elements, and are in nearly all instances perpendicular. These consecutive elevations extend back from the Rio Grande from five to fifteen miles. Over this whole expanse of country, in the faces of these cliffs, we found an immense number of cavate dwellings, cut out by the hand of man. We made no attempt to count the number of these curious dwellings, ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of the Collections Obtained from the Indians of New Mexico in 1880 • James Stevenson
... causes intervene, the sea breezes would be a little southwardly of the east, that direction being perpendicular to our coast. But within the tropics, there are winds which blow continually and strongly from the east. This current affects the course of the air, even without the tropics. The same cause, too, which produces a strong motion of the air, from ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... deal easier to prevent wrinkles than it is to get rid of them after one has acquired them. A little study of women's faces will show how wrinkles, that no amount of massage will obliterate, are being made. They make perpendicular wrinkles between the eyes by drawing the brows together when sewing or reading, sometimes through habit and sometimes because of insufficient light. Some wrinkles are born of in-temper, of fretfulness, or sorrow. As the skin loses its elasticity, through age or ill-health, wrinkles come ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... times, is a little to the north of Lake Haik, and beyond the Mille. It runs north and south, in length about twelve or thirteen miles, and is exceedingly high and steep, the sides thereof being almost perpendicular. Mr Krapf, amongst the most considerable rivers which he passed in this quarter, mentions the Ala, which he states runs to, and is lost in, the deserts of the country of Adel. This is important, and this river is no doubt the Wali of Bruce, which he mentions (vol. iii. p. 248) as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... some houses on the verge of ruin. If he explored far enough in the dark, narrow streets, where the rivers flow under the windows of empty dwellings; he might see them tottering, and threatening downfall upon each other—leaning over and casting shadows, black and mysterious upon the water—no line perpendicular, no line horizontal, the very beau-ideal of picturesque decay—buildings of which Longfellow might have sung as truly ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... memory, I should have been disappointed in this renowned cataract. It is not a single fall, but four successive descents, within the distance of half a mile, none of them being over twenty feet in perpendicular height. The Toppo Fall is the only one which at all impressed me, and that principally through its remarkable form. The huge mass of the Gotha River, squeezed between two rocks, slides down a plane with an inclination of about 50 deg., strikes a projecting ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... their teeth, and, with wild howls, to leap upward after their newly-discovered prey. And although her position was more than seven feet from the ground,—a height which, it might be supposed, could not have been reached by this class of animals in a perpendicular leap,—yet so desperate had the present gang become by the taste of human blood, that they soon, in their determined and constantly-repeated efforts, began to strike and seize the beams with their teeth, by which they would hang suspended a moment, and then drop back ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... thinking of!" said Toby, suddenly recovering a position as near the perpendicular as it was possible for him to assume. "I shall forget my own ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... performs the revolution of this circle, must in that time be twice vertical to every place in the torrid zone, except directly under the tropics, and his greatest distance from their zenith at noon, cannot exceed 47 degrees. Thus his rays being often perpendicular, or nearly so, and never very oblique, must strike more forcibly, and cause more intense heat in that spot. Being little acquainted with the extent and situation of the earth, the ancients believed it ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... and forbidding on the huge promontory, crossed by wall and works, and with sentries between the convict establishment and the mainland. The other three sides had the waves, which washed the nearly perpendicular precipices, for warders, and it was only here and there that an active man well acquainted with the cliffs could descend to the sea, and such an acquaintanceship was not likely to be made by the wretched men marched out, fettered and guarded, to the great quarries ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... down on one of the large stones which lie scattered near the base of the rock, with sea-weed growing amongst them. Above our heads the rock was perpendicular for a considerable height, nay, as it seemed, to the very top, and on the brink of the precipice a few sheep, two of them rams with twisted horns, stood, as if on the look-out over the wide country. At the same time we saw a sentinel in his red coat, walking backwards and forwards between ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... their demeanor was civil and pleasant. Most of them had the headloads without which a negro woman seems hardly complete in the road, varying in dimensions from a huge basket of yams or bananas to an ounce vial. How such a slight thing manages to keep its perpendicular with their careless, swinging gait, is something marvellous, but they manage it to perfection. Almost every group, in addition, had a well-laden donkey—comical little creatures, looking hardly bigger under their huge hampers than well-sized Newfoundland dogs, and hurrying nimbly along, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... likened Christianity to a great tree, sprung from the seed of Nazareth, and since fed by the opulences of fifty generations; which now is perishing at the root, and sways to and fro ever farther and farther from the perpendicular; and which in the end must come down, and leave to those who found shelter beneath it and thought it infinite, a wholesome view of the upper eternal lights. And his contempt for controversial or dogmatic theology may be gauged by his reply to one who asked him whether ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... forming a pedal, so that, with a pressure of the foot, the rider could move it downward, at will, within an arc of some ten degrees. This propeller, which was small in dimensions, but endowed with enormous speed, was, in its normal position, perpendicular to the frame. The pressure of the foot raised it to its highest point. In this position, the propeller turned at full speed and therefore tended to descend and, consequently, to point the front of the ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... of the local motion of atoms explains and accounts for the true liberty of man? Is it not manifest that the clinamen can no more account for it than the straight line itself? The clinamen, supposing it to be true, would be as necessary as the perpendicular line, by which a stone falls from the top of a tower into the street. Is that stone free in its fall? However, the will of man, according to the principle of the clinamen, has no more freedom than that stone. Is it ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... field such that the potential is the same at every point of the surface, we have what is called an equipotential surface. The difference of potential between any two points is called an electromotive force. The lines of force are necessarily perpendicular to the surface. When the lines of force and the equipotential surfaces are straight, parallel, and equidistant, we have a uniform field. The intensity of the field is shown by the number of lines passing through unit area, and the rate of variation ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... earth, supposing it to retain the present inclination of its axis while parting with its differential rotation, there would be an interchange of day and night once a year in the polar regions. On Mercury, whose axis appears to be perpendicular, a similar phenomenon, affecting not the polar regions but the eastern and western sides of the planet, is produced by the extraordinary eccentricity of its orbit. As the planet alternately approaches and recedes from the sun its orbital velocity, as we have already ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... the band of goats apparently take alarm at something. They turned and began to disperse, some of them climbing slowly up the apparently perpendicular ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... "Before us rose the perpendicular sides of Table Mountain, while on either hand we saw the crags of the Lion's Head and Devil's Peak, the former overhung by a large cloud, known as the Table-cloth. As it reached the edge, it seemed to fall down for a ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... tons—calved off into the sea. The tremendous waves raised by the fall of this mass smashed into fragments all the floe left in the bay. With the sea-ice went the snow-slopes which were the natural roadway down. A perpendicular cliff, sixty to one hundred feet above the water, was all that remained, and our opportunities of obtaining seals and penguins in the future were cut off. Of course, too, the ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... exposed, and the plate on which the shadow is registered. The least distortion takes place when the object is in contact with the plate, and the shadow of that part of the object which lies perpendicularly under the light is less distorted than that of the parts lying outside the perpendicular. The light and the plate remaining constant, the amount of distortion varies directly with the distance between the object and ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... proceeded. 'When you came in, I was just wondering whether this figure here had not accidentally got loosened from the wall behind it.' He laid his hand on the marble forehead, for the third time. 'To my eye, it looks a little out of the perpendicular. I almost fancied I could jog the head just now, when I touched it.' He pressed the head inwards as he said ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... they are so numerous as to form a large yellow cap to the immense, prickly, conical stems. They are developed in August and September. A native of Mexico, where it is found wild on the rocky or gravelly plains and ravines, and often in crevices of perpendicular rocks. It requires warm greenhouse treatment, and plenty of water during the summer, care being taken that the soil it is planted in ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... foreign influences, its tendency to concentrate on a mediocre and rather middle-class ideal of honesty, it is, I suspect, typically British. There is nothing Tennysonian about these men, nothing Kiplingesque; their art is neither meretricious nor conceited; but it reminds one oddly of perpendicular architecture. ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... had been there and had seen them, had heard them talk. Yes, they were distinct. He laughed a little to acknowledge it, with an Englishman's distrust of anything theatrical. A steep cliff started out into the waves, towering three hundred feet in almost perpendicular lines. Had that a name? Yes, that was called "Gallantry Bower." No; it was not a sentimental story—it was the old sea-fight again. It was said that an English sailor threw a rope from the height and saved life after ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... of more than nine feet, formed of masses of rock and sand and round pieces of wood parallel with a REVETEMENT of dry stones surmounted by a palisade consisting of three pieces of wood parallel with the walls, and seven perpendicular traverses. All the wood was charred; the besieged had evidently been driven out by fire. Excavations led to the finding of Roman coins; this and the resemblance of the palisades to those described by Caesar,[211] the very name of Hastedon, and the tradition everywhere prevalent in the district, ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... light is a peculiar brightness, pyramidal or wedge-like in form, seen at certain periods of the year in the eastern or western sky, before sunrise and after sunset. Its direction is in the line of the zodiac, whence its name—not perpendicular to the horizon, but at a varying angle, being in the spring from 60 to 70 degrees. The base of the wedge, which has a breadth generally of from 10 to 12 degrees, is below, and the sides rise in a line, curving outwards, to the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... stay at Rio, when tropical nature was still a fresh and unexplored page to the young observer, are wonderful. Cabbage palms, liana creepers, luxuriant fern leaves—roads, bridges, and soil—planarian worms, frogs which climbed perpendicular sheets of glass, the light of fireflies, brilliant butterflies, fights between spiders and wasps, the victories of ants over difficulties, the habits of monkeys, the little Brazilian boys practising knife-throwing—all these came in turn under ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... country. Near Carlisle lies the site of another remarkable military enclosure, which overlooks the fertile valley, between the Twin and Miami Rivers. Two deep ravines fortify the north and south sides, while an almost perpendicular bluff fortifies the east. The wall which is partly of earth and partly of stone is 3,676 feet in length, and encloses a beautiful area of ...
— Mound-Builders • William J. Smyth
... scattered about. "The soil seemed to be very rich; the country well clothed with wood, particularly on the lee sides of the hills; plenty of water which falls from the rocks in beautiful cascades, for two or three hundred feet perpendicular, into the sea; but they did not see the least sign of any place to ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... near north and south, its breadth at the bottom does not apparently exceed one hundred or two hundred feet, whilst the separation of the outer edges is from two to three miles. I am certain that in perpendicular depth it exceeds three thousand feet. The slopes from the edges were so steep and covered with loose stones that any attempt to descend even on foot was impracticable. From either side of this abyss, smaller ravines of similar character diverged, the distance ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... through which it had been passing, and falls into a deep glen. At this spot the country seems cleft in twain, and divided to its very foundation, a ledge of rocks separates the waters, which, falling over a perpendicular rock, 235 feet in height, form a grand cascade. At a distance of 300 yards, and an elevation of as many feet, the travellers were wetted with the spray. After winding through the cleft rocks about 400 yards, ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... sight appeared to arouse whatever of youthful mischief remained in the feeble old heart. She seemed to gather herself for a tremendous effort, then snorted once, and kicked thrice—three feeble kicks of perhaps six inches in the perpendicular. ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... he wore emphasized slightly the elusive air of supercilious courtliness he always conveyed. Now, as he spoke to Ruth, who, although a tall girl, was some inches shorter than he, he maintained a strict perpendicular from the crown of his head to his heels, only looking down with his eyes. Short women resented this trick of his, protesting that it made them stand on tiptoe to ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... includes no intuitive knowledge of the laws of vision, can furnish him with no reason why a line which is known and can be proved to be a horizontal line, should not appear a horizontal line; a line that made any angle with the perpendicular less than a right angle, would seem to him to indicate that his houses were all tumbling down together. Accordingly he makes the line of his houses a horizontal line, and fails of course to produce ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... with navigable rivers, while it enjoys many advantages for commerce and trade, it is also much exposed to foreign invasions. The tide on that coast flows from six to ten feet perpendicular, and makes its way up into the flat country by a variety of channels. All vessels that draw not above seventeen feet water, may safely pass over the bar of Charlestown, which at spring-tides will admit ships that draw eighteen feet. This bar lies in thirty-two degrees and ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... live upon fowls, eggs, milk, butter and rice, with a tongue or hump, cooked when necessary. Two or three miles from Kuthai, we passed a very pretty waterfall. The slender stream fell over a smooth perpendicular rock, of a rich brown colour, 100 feet high, like a thread of silver. Both sides of the gorge covered with a variety of beautifully green trees, shrubs and ferns, altogether constituting a delightful picture, the tints mingled so harmoniously, yet with strong ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... large rams. My men had hunted in this section two years before, and had never failed to find good heads here, but we now saw nothing worth stalking. By degrees we worked to the top of the gulch, and coming to the summit of the ridge paused, for at our feet was what at first appeared but a perpendicular precipice of jagged rock falling hundreds of feet. The clouds now lifted a bit and we could see below a vast circular valley with green grass and rapid glacial streams. On all sides it was hemmed in and guarded by mighty mountains with giant cliffs and vast slides of broken rocks reaching ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... stretches the whole length of the southern facade of the house, and is generously broad. It is paved with great lozenge-shaped slabs of marble, stained in delicate pinks and greys with lichens; and a marble balustrade borders it, overgrown, the columns half uprooted and twisted from the perpendicular, by an aged wistaria-vine, with a trunk as stout as a tree's. Seated there, one can look off over miles of richly-timbered country, dotted with white-walled villages, and traversed by the Nive and the Adour, to the wry masses of the Pyrenees, ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... he occupied was a sort of long omnibus on eight wheels, and with no compartments in the interior. It was supplied with two rows of seats, perpendicular to the direction of the train on either side of an aisle which conducted to the front and rear platforms. These platforms were found throughout the train, and the passengers were able to pass from one end of the train to the other. It was supplied with saloon cars, balcony cars, restaurants, ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... was not to be heard breathing as the plate was rocked to and fro as in raspberry-juice, and gradually the sky showed sharp and black. But the sky it was that puzzled Pocket first. It was broken by perpendicular objects like white torpedoes. He was photographer enough to know what these were almost at once; they were those poplars in the park. But how could Baumgartner have photographed Pocket with those poplars behind him when they had been ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... crypt, discovered in 1714 and again in 1865, near the farmhouse of Tor Marancia, at the first milestone of the Via Ardeatina, is hewn out of a perpendicular cliff, which is conspicuous from the high road (the modern Via delle Sette Chiese). The crypt is approached through a vestibule, which was richly decorated with terra-cotta carvings, and, on the frieze, a monumental inscription ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... to be generally parallel, but with enough variation to obviate a mechanical effect. They need not be vertical lines,—in fact it is better that they should take the same slant as the light. If they are not absolutely perpendicular, however, it is well to make them distinctly oblique, otherwise the effect will be unpleasant. A clever sketch of a cornice by Mr. George F. Newton is shown in Fig. 42. Notice how well the texture of the brick is expressed by the looseness ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... passed in that single instant. His vision cleared. And he saw her. He heard her, too, in the same moment. Here, the cliff was not quite perpendicular. She had slid, rather than fallen, to a resting place. She was not seriously injured. It was hardly a score of feet from the top of the cliff to the tiny shelf of rock on which she lay. This was less than a yard in width. A bit of pine ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... the church, a perpendicular building with a decidedly 'Early English' smell in it, and Uncle Solomon led the way to his pew, stopping to nudge Mark as they passed the memorial to his enemy's meretricious aunt; he nudged him again presently, after ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... thirty acres in extent, or about three hundred and fifty yards in diameter. In the center was a lake, also circular. The broad belt of shore around this lake was covered with rich grass, level as a bowling green, and all this again was surrounded by a nearly perpendicular cliff, down which indeed he had fallen. This cliff was thickly clothed with shrubs ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... along the strata, step by step, as along a fallen stair, each stratum presenting a nearly perpendicular front, but losing, in the downward slant of the tread, as a carpenter would say, the height attained in the rise, I came, about a quarter of a mile farther to the west, and several hundred feet higher in the formation, upon ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... an immense plain one sees a kind of hut, or rather a very small roof standing above the ground. This is the entrance to the clay pit. A big perpendicular hole is sunk for twenty metres underground and ends in a series ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... Zeppa. His jaw dropped, his eyes glared, his knees smote together, and lemon-yellow took the place of brown-ochre on his cheeks. It was an awkward place of meeting, for the path, if we may so style it, was a mere ledge, with a perpendicular cliff on one side, a precipice on ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... place at a considerable distance, and saw only the towers of the church and lighthouse, in addition to the so-called "Monk," a solitary, perpendicular rock, that is separated from the main body, between which and it there sparkles a ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... whether the Inventor of the one of the other [were [5]] the greater Blockhead. The Simple Acrostick is nothing but the Name or Title of a Person or Thing made out of the initial Letters of several Verses, and by that Means written, after the Manner of the Chinese, in a perpendicular Line. But besides these there are Compound Acrosticks, where the principal Letters stand two or three deep. I have seen some of them where the Verses have not only been edged by a Name at each Extremity, but have had the same Name running ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... poverty, maintained by collections of nearly 4000l. per annum from the industrious parishioners! Lest readers in future ages should doubt the fact, the antiquary of the year 2500 is hereby assured,—that it stood at the angle of the Wandsworth and Fulham roads, at the perpendicular distance of a mile from the Thames, and by the side of the fashionable ride from London to Richmond!—Did so monstrous an incongruity never penetrate the heads or hearts of any of the high personages who daily pass ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... expeditious mode of cooking; but though one of the most common, it is as commonly performed in a very imperfect manner, and meets with less attention than the comfort of a good meal requires. A fryingpan should be about four inches deep, with a perfectly flat and thick bottom, and perpendicular sides. When used it should be half filled with fat, for good frying is in fact, boiling in fat. To make sure that the pan is quite clean, rub a little fat over it, then make it warm, and wipe it out with a clean cloth. Great care must be taken in frying, never to use any oil, butter, ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... vault of the Dean's Chapel is noticeable. It is a fan vault, of the style developed to so great perfection in the Tudor period, as shown in Henry VII.'s Chapel at Westminster, and in the roof of the staircase leading to the dining-hall of Christ Church, Oxford. The architecture of this chapel is Perpendicular in style, and its delicate decoration should be carefully noticed; the screen which separates it from the Martyrdom Transept is also worthy of close attention. The monuments here are interesting rather than ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... to the level valley below deceives even more strangely. It looks as if you could drive a golf ball straight from the hill on to the green; you may speculate as to the beauty of the arc curved in the sunlight, and the deadness with which the ball would lie after an absolutely perpendicular drop—to the extreme danger of those disinterested in the experiment. But the hill is not really steep enough. The contours crowd on the map, but they show that you would have to drive nearly ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... General and the Brigade Major had not returned from their tour of the trenches. Headquarters were situated in Gully Ravine, that prince among ravines on the Peninsula. From my place I could see the gully floor, which was the dry bed of a water-course, winding away between high walls of perpendicular cliffs or steep, scrub-covered slopes, as it pursued its journey, like some colossal trench, towards the firing line. Down the great cleft, while I looked, a horseman came riding rapidly. He was an officer, with a slight open wound in his chin, and he rode up to our door and said: "Hardy's ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... my own personality into this narrative, but as I was passively concerned, I do not see how I can avoid it. Besides, being a public man, I am not wholly averse to publicity; first person, singular, perpendicular, as Thackeray had it, in type looks rather agreeable to the eye. And I rather believe that I have a moral to point out and ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... boot-jack, and so caught the full force of the waves. One corner, as already mentioned, was called Flinty Point, the other Needle Point, and between these two points there was no gangway within the semicircle up the wall of cliff. Indeed, within the cove the cliff was perpendicular, or rather overhanging, as far as such crumbling earth would admit of its overhanging. To reach a gangway, a person inside the cove would have to leave the cliff wall for the open sands, and pass round either Needle Point or ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... returned the bon vivant; "but be wise, most noble pedlar, and take another rummer of this same flask, which you see I have held in an oblique position for your service—not permitting it to retrograde to the perpendicular. Nay, take it off before the bubble bursts on the rim, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... was light. It could hardly be considered necessary, in fact, were it not to discipline the troops. The bluffs were almost perpendicular, varying between seventy-five and one hundred feet in height. Immediately at their base was the Chesapeake and Ohio canal, averaging six feet in depth. A narrow towing-path separated it from the Potomac, which, in a broad, placid, but deep stream, broken occasionally by ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... on the bluff, and protected by solid walls. From this curious pueblo another transition takes us to the extraordinary cliff-houses found in the Chelly, Mancos, and McElmo canons, and elsewhere,—veritable human eyries perched in crevices or clefts of the perpendicular rock, accessible only by dint of a toilsome and perilous climb; places of refuge, perhaps for fragments of tribes overwhelmed by more barbarous invaders, yet showing in their dwelling-rooms and estufas marks of ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... him far behind; Concannen, more aspiring bard, Soars downwards deeper by a yard; Smart Jemmy Moor with vigour drops; The rest pursue as thick as hops. With heads to point, the gulf they enter, Linked perpendicular to the centre; And, as their heels elated rise, Their heads attempt the ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... men on board were models of efficiency and quiet discipline, herding back the excited passengers and trying to keep them away from the rail, for the slant of the deck was now almost perpendicular. ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... less fleet, followed them nearly to the pickets. Checking his useless pursuit, he rounded a bush, dropped his whip and stood, voiceless, motionless, the capacity of his powers consumed by the act of breathing and preserving the perpendicular. ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... right below us, a common square surrounded with wooden fences. In the middle rose a large temple quite different from all those of western Mongolia, not in the Chinese but in the Tibetan style of architecture, a white building with perpendicular walls and regular rows of windows in black frames, with a roof of black tiles and with a most unusual damp course laid between the stone walls and the roof timbers and made of bundles of twigs from a Tibetan tree which never rots. Another small quadrangle lay a little to the east and contained ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... hundred yards it lies between banks twelve or fifteen feet deep. After this part the banks die down into insignificance, so that the road is nearly open. The deep part, which is like a very deep, broad, natural trench, was known to our men as the Sunken Road. The banks of this sunken part are perpendicular. Until recently, they were grown over with a scrub of dwarf beech, ash, and sturdy saplings, now mostly razed by fire. In the road itself our men built up walls of sandbags to limit the effects of enemy shell fire. From these defences steps cut in the chalk of the bank lead ...
— The Old Front Line • John Masefield
... had sprung the battle light. Desperate it might be to scale almost perpendicular cliffs and plant batteries on the top whilst exposed to the fire of a sleepless enemy there, who could send for reinforcements by thousands when once aware of the threatened peril. And yet now that he knew his strength in the upper river, and the ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... were reported to be numerous. After about three hours' climbing over a mass of large stones and rocks, the ascent became much more precipitous, trees and sand taking the place of the rocks. In course of time we reached a plateau, with an almost perpendicular fall on the one side, and a horizontal ridge of rock protruding from the mountain side beneath. Four of the party, which numbered eight guns in all, having taken up positions on this ridge, the remainder, with a posse of boys, made a flank movement with the view of ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... part of the year. The principal of these chasms lies in the east part of the town, and is several hundred feet long, sixty feet deep, and about forty wide. The slate is of a very compact kind; and the walls are perpendicular, and correspond with much exactness. At the bottom is a cold spring, and a cave of considerable extent, in which it is probable that the ice lies—for the writer does not specify the position in which it is found. The chasm is a favourite retreat in summer, and is called the ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... Beaver valley below headquarters was well known. The banks of the creek shifted from a valley on one side, to low, perpendicular bluffs on the other. It was in one of these meanderings of the stream that Joel saw a possible haven, the sheltering cut-bank that he hoped to reach, where refuge might be secured against the raging elements. It lay several miles below ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... ancient western gateway, built by Benedict, and though it has since been much altered, a considerable part of the original structure remains: "The western side has been faced with Perpendicular work, and an arch of that character has been built in front of the original Norman arch, above which is a very elegant arcade, the alternate arches of which have small windows within them; these light the chamber over the gateway which occupies the situation of ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips
... of the Big Horn Basin, Hart Mountain rises abruptly from the Shoshone River. It is covered with grassy slopes and deep ravines; perpendicular rocks of every hue rise in various places and are fringed with evergreens. Beyond this mountain, in the distance, towers the hoary head of Table Mountain. Five miles to the southwest the mountains recede some distance from the ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... thoughtful somnambulism of the animal, the transformation in death, the recapitulation of existences which the tomb contains, the incomprehensible grafting of successive loves on the persistent I, the essence, the substance, the Nile, and the Ens, the soul, nature, liberty, necessity; perpendicular problems, sinister obscurities, where lean the gigantic archangels of the human mind; formidable abysses, which Lucretius, Manou, Saint Paul, Dante, contemplate with eyes flashing lightning, which seems by its steady gaze on the infinite to cause ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... man while you are under her. She only wants to keep us a couple of babies for ever—sending us to bed, and making such a figure of me;' and Lucy relieved her feelings by five perpendicular leaps into the air, like an India-rubber ball, her hair flying out, and ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... special apparatus, and much more time than Agassiz and his party could give. Neither was an approach from the side very easy. The glacier arches so much in the centre, and slopes away so steeply, that when one is in the lateral depression between it and the mountain, one faces an almost perpendicular wall of ice, which blocks the vision completely. M. de Pourtales measured one of the crevasses in this wall, and found that it had a depth of some seventy feet. Judging from the remarkable convexity of the glacier, it can hardly be less in the centre than two ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... perfectly straight-stemmed cocoa-palm; they all have an inclination from the perpendicular more or less; perhaps that is why a cyclone has more effect on them ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... their return,' continued Beltran, 'reported that they had followed the river till they came to a large mountain of perpendicular rocks, which it was impossible to climb, and over these rocks fell the water. And it seemed to them that on the top of this mountain were many trees; and they saw strange wild beasts, such as lions, elephants, and other ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... and, as the narrow entrance was passed, the sun poured its full rich light on rocky mountains stretching as far away as the eye could reach, on each side of the lake, and terminating in rocky cliffs from 600 to 800 feet in perpendicular height, which formed the shores or confines of the lake. Across Lake Waminikapon, which is, more properly speaking, not a lake at all, but rather a widening of the river bed, the progress was very good, the water having no motion to retard the boats, ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... properly belonging to the action represented. It is well observed, that the argentine or silvery tone so much admired and sought after by amateurs, "is nothing but the faithful imitation of the tone assumed by nature in countries where the rays of the sun are not too perpendicular, every time that the air is in that state of transparency required to temper to the necessary degree the too brilliant blue of a pure sky, and itself to receive and transmit this desirable silvery tone which delights the spectator." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... the Perpendicular period can be detected at a glance. All the Norman windows which had remained unaltered were now filled with tracery, not of particularly good design; the great west window and the others in the west wall were similarly treated; the conical tops to the transeptal ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... the foot of a perpendicular rock, moss-grown low down, and overrun with creeping ivy higher. Green thorn bushes filled the chinks and made a wall to the well, and the long narrow hart's-tongue streaked the face of the cliff. Behind the thick thorns hid the course of the streamlet, ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... and it runs south for nearly 10 m. parallel with the shore. The sandbanks have arrested the encroachments of the sea, which submerged a former site of Aldeburgh. The church of St Peter and St Paul is Perpendicular, largely restored, and contains a monument to the poet George Crabbe, born here on the 24th of December 1754. A small picturesque Moot Hall of the 16th century is used for corporation meetings. Slaughden Quay ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... from the bank; but the latter called out, "It's my hands,—they have no skin left: do catch hold, there's a good fellow." So the "good fellow" did catch hold, but he was too experienced an eel-fisher to try to lift a couple of dozen pounds weight of eels out of the water by a perpendicular string; so he tied it to a flax-bush near, and, stooping down in order to get some leverage over the bank, very soon drew the ball, with its slimy, wriggling captives, out of the water. Just as he jerked it ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... door open with his knee. The interior was heavy with smoke. Near the stove knelt Sundown trying to encourage the smoke to more perpendicular behavior. He coughed. "She ain't good in her intentions, this here stove. One time she goes and the next time she stays and takes a smoke. Her innards is out ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... three plane surfaces perpendicular to each other and rigidly attached to a rigid body. Referred to a system of co-ordinates, the scene of any event will be determined (for the main part) by the specification of the lengths of the three perpendiculars or co-ordinates ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... meant for Penmaen-mawr, the northern termination of the Snowdon range. It is a mass of rock, 1545 feet high, a few miles from the mouth of the Conway, the valley of which it overlooks. Towards the sea it presents a rugged and almost perpendicular front. On its summit is Braich-y-Dinas, an ancient fortified post, regarded as the strongest hold of the Britons in the district of Snowdon. Here the reduced bands of the Welsh army were stationed during the negotiation between their prince Llewellyn and Edward I. Within the inner enclosure ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... unbroken through the Isthmus. This, however, is not the case: the Northern Cordillera breaks into detached mountains on the eastern side of the province of Veragua. These are of considerable height, extremely abrupt and rugged, and frequently exhibit an almost perpendicular face of bare rock. To these succeed numerous conical mountains rising out of Savannahs and plains, and seldom exceeding from 300 to 500 feet in height. Finally between Chagres on the Atlantic side, and Chorrera on the Pacific side, the conical mountains are not so numerous, having plains of great ...
— A Succinct View of the Importance and Practicability of Forming a Ship Canal across the Isthmus of Panama • H. R. Hill
... reaching the main road from Contreras to the city of Mexico we reached a watery ravine, the sides of which were nearly perpendicular, up which I had to be pushed and then to pull others. On looking back over this bed of lava or scoria, I saw the troops, much scattered, picking their way very slowly; while of my own company, some eighty or ninety strong, only five men crossed with me or during ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... following proposition: "Two perpendiculars to the same straight line are parallel." The evidence given is: "If they are not parallel, they will, if sufficiently produced, meet at some point, which is impossible, because from a given point without a straight line but one perpendicular can be drawn." Is this evidence sufficient to constitute proof? Does it convince you? ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon
... he did not realize what the click meant. Not until he tried to open it did he understand. The settling of the wharf had thrown the door and its frame out of the perpendicular. That was why it stuck and opened with such reluctance. When he opened it, he had, so to speak, pushed it uphill. Its own weight had swung it back, and the spring lock—in which he had left the key—had worked exactly as the circular of directions declared it would ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... frequent I prod deep into the snow to ascertain its actual depth, where the snow is thick it is most apt to slide. The cry is keep close to the rocks and you are safe. After many days of severe suffering and fighting cold we came to a perpendicular ridge of ice which we discovered was a long ridge, there seemed to be no way around so we prepared to let over each other. It was about one hundred feet down to the ice. I was the first to test the ropes, then one by one the dogs, sleighs, guns and all was over ...
— Black Beaver - The Trapper • James Campbell Lewis
... having a protuberance on his head remarkably like a night-cap in stone, was possibly a sluggard as well as a Sabbath-breaker, and might have got out of his bed just in time to "hurl;" that another, with some faint resemblance left of a fat grinning human face, leaned considerably out of the perpendicular, and was, in all probability, a hurler of intemperate habits. At some distance off we remarked a high stone standing entirely by itself, which, in the absence of any positive information on the subject, we presumed to consider as ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... a man of not more than seven-and-twenty years, with delicate pale features, and an abundance of glossy black hair. A small and very much pointed moustache shaded his upper lip, and the extremities thereof rose short and perpendicular from the corners of his well-shaped mouth. His eyes were dark and singularly expressive, his forehead low and very broad; his hands were sufficiently nervous and well knit, but white as a woman's, and the fingers tapered delicately ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... brave heart to scale the rock alone. It was a difficult and dangerous climb in the dark night; but, however, he managed with the help of bushes and shrubs to reach nearly to the top. But alas the last step was too steep for the little boy; it was a sheer, perpendicular wall. Our hero looked round in despair; big drops gathered in his eyes; but he would not let them fall. He stood quite still, clinging to the rock and unable to move either forward or backward. It seemed ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... who knew how to present arms. I heard something coming, and called out, 'Who goes there?' and Alberta jumped up in such a hurry that the points other tent—her umbrella, I mean— scratched my face, and before I could recover arms, over went my umbrella, perpendicular, straight smash through the glass of the conservatory, ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... other, they sink on that side, and in consequence bend the upper part of their bodies, as their shoulders, the contrary way, to balance themselves; and then again the neck is bent back again towards the lame side, to preserve the head perpendicular; and thus the figure becomes quite distorted like the letter S, owing originally to the deficiency of the length of one limb. The only way to prevent this curvature of the spine is for the child to wear a high-heeled shoe or patten on the lame ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... extraordinary beauty of the picture which lay before them. The waterfall, the sound of which had reached them a few minutes earlier, was some sixty feet in height and about twelve feet wide, the river tumbling vertically down the perpendicular face of the cliff into a wide basin, the lofty sides of which were draped with the graceful fronds of giant ferns, the broad leaves of the wild plantain, crimson-leaved acacias, enormous bunches of maidenhair, and several varieties of plant and bush, the names of which were unknown to the trio ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... of the house proposed to show us a "short cut," by which we might, to especial advantage, pursue our journey. This proved to be almost perpendicular down a hill, studded with young trees and stumps. From these he proposed, with a hospitality of service worthy an Oriental, to free our wheels whenever they should get entangled, also to be himself the drag, to prevent our too rapid descent. Such generosity ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... opened before us. Ben Ledi looked down over the "forehead bare" of Ben An, and as we turned a rocky point Ellen's Isle rose up in front. It is a beautiful little turquoise in the silver setting of Loch Katrine. The northern side alone is accessible, all the others being rocky and perpendicular and thickly grown with trees. We rounded the island to the little bay, bordered by the silver strand, above which is the rock from which Fitz-James wound his horn, and shot under an ancient oak which flung its long gray arms over the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... opened the door, there was no longer a spot of earth or of sky to be seen—only water, and the gray sponge filling the upper air, through which coursed multitudinous perpendicular runnels of water. Clad in a pair of old trowsers and a jersey, he went wading, and where the ground dipped, swimming, to the western gate of the churchyard. In a few minutes he was at the kitchen window, holding the boat in a long painter, for the water, although ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... to me that the insensibility which came upon Glaisher, and in a lesser degree upon Coxwell, when, in 1862, they ascended in a balloon to the height of thirty thousand feet, was due to the extreme speed with which a perpendicular ascent is made. Doing it at an easy gradient and accustoming oneself to the lessened barometric pressure by slow degrees, there are no such dreadful symptoms. At the same great height I found that even without my oxygen inhaler I could breathe without ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... around a half-mile canyon through which the river, a rushing torrent, tumbled in the interval over a series of small falls, and all the way the perpendicular walls of basaltic rock that confined it rose on either side to a height of fifty to seventy- five feet above the seething water. Just below this canyon another river joined us from the east, increasing the volume of water very materially. Our tumplines ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... striking features in the structure of these buildings is that while the inside walls of tower or temple are perpendicular, the outside walls are sloping. This was intended to give stability to the structure, which in modern buildings is imparted by their buttresses; but in the case of the temples it has a further value in that it adds greatly to the ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... he who had murdered was driven by unbearable fear out into the open, where he could see his enemy. He was seen and hunted, but it seemed to him seven times better than to lie still in helpless inactivity. He fled from his pursuers, slid down precipices, sprang over streams, climbed up perpendicular mountain walls. All latent strength and dexterity in him was called forth by the excitement of danger. His body became elastic like a steel spring, his foot made no false step, his hand never lost its hold, eye and ear were twice as sharp as usual. He understood what the leaves whispered ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... doorways of the houses that cling to the perpendicular sides of the hill. "The Italian pervades," I volunteered, "but there are Greek, Sicilians, Spaniards and French." The whole was reminiscent of the South of Europe, but the Neapolitan scene of cleated walks and steep steps lacked the enlivening ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray
... shown by straight lines running parallel to each other across the chart. The degrees and minutes of these parallels are given on the perpendicular border of the chart. Meridians of longitude are shown by straight lines running up and down, perpendicular to the parallels of latitude, and the degrees and minutes of these meridians are given on the horizontal border ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... slipping. "Yeo heave!" is then shouted by the framer, at which every man lifts, waiting always for the word, and lifting together. As soon as the bent is lifted as high as they can reach, the pike-poles are driven into the beam, and the bent is soon in a perpendicular position. Several pikes are then stuck into the opposite side to keep the bent from being swayed over, until the tenons on the foot of the post is entered into the mortice on the sill: it is then secured by stays, until the next bent is raised, when the girts connect them together. ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... Australians found themselves facing an almost perpendicular cliff of loose sandstone, covered with thick shrubbery, and somewhere half way up the enemy had a second trench strongly held, from which they poured a terrible fire on the troops below and the boats pulling back to the destroyers for the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... termination, is composed of a long ridge of soft white limestone, and seems to have been suddenly thrown up in one of the last geological upheavals which affected this part of the country: in some places it resembles a perpendicular wall, while in others it recedes in natural terraces which present the appearance of a gigantic flight of steps. The summit is often wooded, and the spurs covered with vineyards and fields, which flourish vigorously in the vicinity of streams; when these fail, however, the table-land resumes ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... on a huge broad stone, which, lying athwart other tall perpendicular stones, made a kind of hut, approached by a pathway of upright narrow pillars, irregular and crude. Vast must have been the labour of man's hands to lift the massive table of rock upon the supporting shafts—relics of an age when they were the only architecture, the only national monuments; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... not have foreseen the road he would take. I was sorry for him as I heard the reverberations of his crashing fall. No living thing could escape death in such a drop, for though the cliff down which he had disappeared was not absolutely perpendicular, it was nearly so. Peering over it, I could not see his corpse, for fern and tree-top hid all below. At least, I thought, he had surcease of all ills now. And so I descended the steep trail on foot—mostly on one foot—until I reached ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... majesty, whose name it bears, had charge of the construction, apparently he intended it only as a passage-way for the river, the cut being the exact width of the river as it flows through. The greater part of the two walls stand two hundred and fifty feet high, above the river level, perpendicular to the earth's plane, facing each other, the river between them at the base. Many names had been cut in the surface of the rock, ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... few steps, he paused idly a moment on the verge of this green 'God's-acre' to read a perpendicular slab on a wall, and his face broadened into a smile as he followed the absurdly elaborate biography of a rich, self-made merchant who had taught himself to read, 'Reader, go thou and do likewise,' was the delicious bull at the end. As he turned ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... particularly trying, and the sting of his words had lingered. She had it in mind to tell Helen of the bitter words Doctor Wilbur had hurled at her, simply because she could not explain the projection of a perpendicular upon a plane. So far in their school life—two months had passed—Hester and Helen had spoken to each other only of the agreeable things. But now Hester meant to express herself ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... It seems never to have been noticed that, as every line from the surface to the centre is perpendicular, a descent by slopes, such as is represented, would really ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... fact: there had been a plain in front of the house, but now the house is standing on the crest of a frightful mountain!—The horizon has fallen, has gone down, and from the very house itself a black, almost perpendicular declivity descends. ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... intelligence. The squares were well guarded, the garrison ever alert. Spaniards were not birds of prey to fly up those perpendicular heights, and for beings without wings the thing was impossible. He followed Fleming through the darkness, and was soon convinced that the impossible was true. The precious squares were in the hands of the enemy. Nimble as monkeys, those yellow jerkined Italians, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... saw everything go helter-skelter in that confounded canvas. The light was dying away, and all at once, in the greyish dusk, the scales suddenly dropped from my eyes. The background alone is pretty; the nude woman is altogether too loud; what's more, she's out of the perpendicular, and her legs are badly drawn. When I noticed that, ah! it was enough to kill me there and then; I felt life departing from me. Then the gloom kept rising and rising, bringing a whirling sensation, a foundering of everything, ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... meditations which this magnificent and varied scenery excited in my mind, I approached the edge of a tremendous perpendicular cliff, with which the down terminates. I dismounted from my horse, and tied it to a bush. The breaking of the waves against the foot of the cliff at so great a distance beneath me, produced an incessant and pleasing murmur. The sea-gulls ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... black angry waves dance up one after another, and roll past us toward the northern shore. And see that dim hill at the other extremity of the pond, how gigantic and broken it looks. Oh, Mr. Piscator, let's go and see it! let's go and see it! And those high perpendicular rocks, that stand out so boldly. Yes, yes, put up the helm! we'll go and see how they look in ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... we, who had expected to dismiss at any moment, were full of anger, and were sullen to find that by some wretched order or other we had to take another hour of the road: first we had to go back four miles along the road we had already come, and then to branch off perpendicular to our general line of march, and (as it seemed to us) ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... a furnace, not the most artificial, though not seemingly ill adapted to give a great heat with but very little fuel. This they made by digging a round hole in the ground, about 20 inches wide and full 3 feet deep, cutting an opening in the front sloping down to the bottom, perpendicular at the sides, about 9 inches wide and about 15 inches long, reckoning from the edge of the circle: this is to serve to throw in the wood and to allow a passage for the air; at the other side a small opening about 4 inches ...
— On the Antiquity of the Chemical Art • James Mactear
... Negrillos [Negritos] inhabitants of this island, had also a form of burial, but different. They dug a deep, perpendicular hole, and placed the deceased within it, leaving him upright with head or crown unburied, on top of which they put half a cocoa-nut which was to serve him as a shield. Then they went in pursuit of some Indian, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... descent, through a chasm between perpendicular cliffs some hundreds of feet in height, leads from Krogkleven to the level of the Tyri Fjord. There is no attempt here, nor indeed upon the most of the Norwegian roads we travelled, to mitigate, by well-arranged curves, the steepness of the hills. Straight down you go, no matter ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... occupies the whole of this wing of the building. It must be equally clear that it looks out on a trim mown lawn, through three quadrangular windows with stone mullions, each window divided into a larger portion at the bottom, and a smaller portion at the top, and each portion again divided into five by perpendicular stone supporters. There may be windows which give a better light than such as those, and it may be, as my utilitarian friend observes, that the giving of light is the desired object of a window. I will not argue the point with ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... the same, and his Sonne in Law Mortimer, and old Northumberland, and the sprightly Scot of Scots, Dowglas, that runnes a Horse-backe vp a Hill perpendicular ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... angle and was lost in his hair. If the chin had weakly receded, as it often does in this type, Sir Isaac would have had a face like a spear-head, like a ram of which the sharp point was the top of his nose; but Sir Isaac's chin was square, and the wall of it perpendicular. ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... faltered. Fat, and not by any means nimble, he came to a pause about twenty feet from the entrance, and, making a sudden turn, darted out. The Doctor was tall and unaccustomed to bend his perpendicular form. Half choked and panting heavily he too gave up, and turning about rushed ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... come up the valley about parallel to one another. The street of Calistoga joins the perpendicular to both—a wide street, with bright, clean, low houses, here and there a verandah over the sidewalk, here and there a horse-post, here and there lounging townsfolk. Other streets are marked out, and most likely named; for these towns in the New World begin ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... they were only French words: after a long and tedious travel, I came at last to meet with a piece that was lofty, rich, and elevated to the very clouds; of which, had I found either the declivity easy or the ascent gradual, there had been some excuse; but it was so perpendicular a precipice, and so wholly cut off from the rest of the work, that by the first six words, I found myself flying into the other world, and thence discovered the vale whence I came so deep and low, that I have never had since ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... wall; and under the Christ a gilt and blue Madonna; the books on the three shelves few, leaning different ways. His right elbow rested on a square plain table, at which was a wooden chair; behind him, in a corner, the bed: a bed all enclosed in dark boards, a broad perpendicular board along the foot, reaching the ceiling, a horizontal board at the side over which he got into bed, another narrower one like it at the ceiling for fringe and curtain, and another perpendicular one hiding the pillow, making the clean bed within a very shady and cosy little den, on the ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... with an effort half wriggle, half spring, he raised himself perpendicular, and turned towards the room rather than the persons ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... Ye wilds, that look eternal; and thou cave, Which seem'st unfathomable; and ye mountains, So varied and so terrible in beauty; Here, in your rugged majesty of rocks And toppling trees that twine their roots with stone[145] In perpendicular places, where the foot Of man would tremble, could he reach them—yes, Ye look eternal! Yet, in a few days, Perhaps even hours, ye will be changed, rent, hurled Before the mass of waters; and yon cave, 10 Which seems to lead into a lower world, Shall have its depths searched ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... soon after the conversation about the donkey, he went down to the beach, where, it being the bathing hour, the whole visiting population of Ault was assembled. The coast met the sea at this point as a perpendicular wall of rock a hundred and fifty feet high, stretching away to the west in an endless line, but on the east side, sloping gradually down, till about two miles further on, it lost itself in the flat line of the shore. Where ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... there is an immense mountain gorge. The rocks have been rent in twain, and set apart twenty feet, forming two perpendicular walls two hundred feet in height. On either side of these natural walls, in crevices where earth has collected, grow wild flowers of rare quality and beauty. A company of tourists visiting that part of the ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... standing up in the boat, began to examine the surroundings with keen interest. They were close to the great crag "shaped like a giant's helmet," as Valdemar Svensen had said. It rose sheer out of the water, and its sides were almost perpendicular. Some beautiful star-shaped sea anemones clung to it in a vari-colored cluster on one projection, and the running ripple of the small waves broke on its jagged corners with a musical splash, and sparkle ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... mingled, I know not by what methods or in what proportions, with sulphur and with the pitch that is extracted from evergreen firs. [20] From this mixture, which produced a thick smoke and a loud explosion, proceeded a fierce and obstinate flame, which not only rose in perpendicular ascent, but likewise burnt with equal vehemence in descent or lateral progress; instead of being extinguished, it was nourished and quickened by the element of water; and sand, urine, or vinegar, were the only remedies ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... through the same country where we are this year, I came to the little village of Benouville, on the Falaise, between Yport and Etretat. I came from Fecamp, following the coast, a high coast, and as perpendicular as a wall, with its projecting and rugged rocks falling perpendicularly into the sea. I had walked since the morning on the shaven grass, as smooth and as yielding as a carpet. And singing lustily, I walked with long strides, looking sometimes at the slow and ambling flight of a gull, with its ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... a small scrap of pebbly beach at the base of those perpendicular cliffs; in most places there is none—the cliffs presenting to the sea almost a dead wall, where neither ship nor boat could find refuge from ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... picture. She was exhausted and tired, and no doubt too disgusted by such ungallant conduct on the part of the organisers of the banquet to touch the subject. Had she painted this particular roll-call I fear many of the figures would have had to be drawn out of the perpendicular. ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... day she had lingered in the school yard until the other girls were out of sight, then climbing the almost perpendicular hill so rapidly that she arrived on the crest with little breath and a pain in her side, she had sauntered deliberately up and down before the imposing homes of her schoolmates, staring at them with angry and puzzled eyes, ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... The cliff, perpendicular, a mass of white, striped with black here and there by lines of flint, stretched towards the horizon like the curve of a rampart five leagues wide. An east wind, bitter and cold, was blowing; the sky ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... Bayou, which curves around them on the south and east, and the eastern slope of the uplift has been cut and gulleyed by many torrents. So strong has been the effect of the rushing water upon the soft soil that these cuts have become deep winding ravines, often with perpendicular banks. One of the ravines is ten miles long. Another cuts the plateau itself for six miles, and a permanent stream ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... until he made a groove one-eighth of an inch wide by three-eighths deep. The opposite end of the shaft was notched in a similar way to receive the head. The direction of this latter cut was such that when the arrow was on the bow the edge of the arrowhead was perpendicular, for the fancied reason that in this position the arrow when shot enters between the ribs of an animal more readily. He did not seem to recognize that ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... 16th, fresh gales of wind at S.W. with heavy showers of hail: The people generally complain of a malady in their eyes; they are in great pain, and can scarce see to walk about. The last tide flowed nine feet perpendicular; to-day we picked up shell-fish in abundance, with, pieces of beef and pork. The prisoners ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... Arauca and the Atabapo. Among savage nations great rivers bear different denominations in the different portions of their course. The Passage of Baraguan presents a picturesque scene. The granite rocks are perpendicular. They form a range of mountains lying north-west and south-east; and the river cutting this dyke nearly at a right angle, the summits of the mountains appear like separate peaks. Their elevation in general does not surpass one hundred and twenty toises; but their situation ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... beautiful. A low fence of withy had long since decayed, nothing but a few rotten stakes remaining at the very verge of the precipice. Steep as it was, there were some ledges that the rabbits frequented, making their homes in mid-air. Further along, the slope, a little less perpendicular, was covered with nut-tree bushes, where you could scramble down by holding to the boughs. There was a tradition of a fox-hunter, in the excitement of the chase, forcing his horse to descend through these bushes and actually reaching the level ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... rearrange the different articles of furniture in the most artistic manner, but everything would be clean, and there would be nothing left crooked. If a chair was to be placed, it would be parallel to something; she was exceedingly sensitive to a line out of the perpendicular, and could detect the slightest deviation from that rule. She had also a sensitive eye in the matter of color, and felt any lack of harmony in the colors worn by those ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... structural type—the straight brow, the nose suddenly straightened from an intention of being aquiline, the short upper lip, the short but strong and well-hung chin: there was even the same tone of complexion and set of the eye. The gray-haired father was at once massive and keen-looking; there was a perpendicular line in his brow which when he spoke with any force of interest deepened; and the habit of ruling gave him an air of reserved authoritativeness. Rex would have seemed a vision of his father's youth, if it had been possible to imagine Mr. Gascoigne without ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... her forehead drawn into perpendicular folds, the thin black eyebrows diverging upwards like the antennae of an insect. He added ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... your hem as for fig. 55, and work from left to right; with this difference, that after drawing two or three cross-threads together, from right to left, you skip the same number of perpendicular threads you took up below, and insert your needle downwards from above, bringing it out at the ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... stood upon a narrow beach. Above them rose a precipice, nearly perpendicular, to the height of two hundred and fifty feet. A winding path, broad enough to admit four men abreast, led to the summit; and here lay one of the large plains, or table-lands, which distinguish the heights of Abraham, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... was spinning round and round at an almost perpendicular angle in the binnacle with tremendous velocity. The pointer tore round its points like the hands ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton |
