"Plain" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... she began packing. She put into a valise her own toilet things; then flannel, cotton-wool, eau de Cologne, hot-water bottle, Etna, shawls, thermometer, everything she had which could serve in illness. Changing to a plain dress, she took up the valise and returned to Barbara. They went out together to the cab. The moment it began to bear her to this ordeal at once so longed-for and so terrible, fear came over her again, so that she screwed herself into the corner, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... incomparable depth and breadth, the Venetian painters loved. No landscape in Europe is more wonderful than this—thrice wonderful in the vastness of its arching heavens, in the stillness of its level plain, and in the bulwark of huge crested mountains, reared afar like bastions against the northern sky. The little town is all alive in this September weather. At every corner of the street, under rustling abeles and thick-foliaged ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... with indignation. "If I've got a plain nose, why didn't you tell me so before? If that's your way ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... which he thought requisite to illustrate systems, excited the utmost vexation: it was painful to officers, to find their character, their habits, and the profits of their places, laid open to national observation. Perhaps, those details were sometimes beyond an obvious political necessity; but the plain exhibition of principles in old English phrases—giving vice its true name—measuring the results of transportation by a standard recognised outside both the mess-room and the gaol—was of vast advantage to the colonists themselves. The reference made to Bigge's Reports in this work, however, ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... the world. The goats which feed on the west end of the island are much fatter and better than those at the east end, though the latter has better and greater plenty of grass, with abundance of excellent water in the vallies, while the west end is a dry plain, the grass scanty and parched, and has hardly any wood or fresh water. Though fertile, this island has no inhabitants, who might live here in plenty, as the plain is able to maintain a great number of cattle, and the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... brought the cat into the hydro and forced him to sniff at the site of the engagement. The result was that Sinbad had gone raving mad and Dane's hands were now covered with claw tears which ran viciously deep. It was plain that the ship's cat was having none of the intruders, alive or dead. He had fled to Dane's cabin where he had taken refuge on the bunk and snarled wild eyed when anyone looked in from ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... reconnoitred the country about Santiago and made my plan of attack. From a high hill, from which the city was in plain view, I could see the San Juan Hill and the country about El Caney. The roads were very poor and, indeed, little better than bridle-paths until the San Juan River and El Caney were reached. The position ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... practical question, What have I got for my money? He felt his own share in the evolution of this brilliant and cultured youth, whose corona of accomplishments might well dazzle and even abash a plain business person; and he awaited with interest a response to the reasonable interrogation, to what end shall all these means be turned? He received his son with a dry and cautious kindness, determined not to be too precipitate in ascertaining the young man's ideas as to the future—a week ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... cemetery gate. It was locked; so he climbed over the wall. He went still further up the hill, past tombstones that looked very white, and trees that looked very green in the moonlight. At the top of the hill he found his father's grave. Beside it was another mound, and at the head of this, a plain little pillar. The moon was high now and the tramp was used to seeing in the night. Word by word he could slowly read upon the marble ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... he whispered. He stole to the edge of the board platform, and cautiously opened the flap of the tent. The box containing oats and sugar had been placed a little distance away, in plain view. ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope
... myself as I fled to the drawing-room in a mist of tears, "To think that Natalia Savishna-just plain Natalia-should say 'THOU' to me and rub my face with a wet tablecloth as though I were a mere servant-boy! It ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... always impressive. His eloquence consisted rather in the lucid logic and deliberate thought evinced than for rhetorical beauty or range of imagination; occasionally, however, he would diverge from the plain thread of argument, and rise to declamation of striking brilliancy and power. Over-quick, with all his natural phlegm, to discern and to resent personal affronts—oftentimes when there was no occasion therefor—he was a favorable exemplar of that peculiar, and to ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... heightens all; the intimate sense of mountains and mountain things being in this way maintained throughout, and concentrated on the central figure. "He is sweet among the mountains," they say, "when he drops down upon the plain, out of his mystic musings"—and we may think we see the green festoons of the vine dropping quickly, from foot-place to foot-place, down the broken hill-side in spring, when like the Bacchanals, all who can, ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... upon it, both in the Baptist and Particular Baptist Magazines, are written. The unworthy attempts in those and other such like pieces to separate Brother Marshman and me are truly contemptible. In plain English, they amount to thus much—'The Serampore Missionaries, Carey, Marshman, and Ward, have acted a dishonest part, alias are rogues. But we do not include Dr. Carey in the charge of dishonesty; ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... city and the galleon in plain view, Dick Chichester's work aloft was done, and he, therefore, returned to the deck and the spot upon it from which he had previously been conning the ship, where he resumed his ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... should not be lessened by her want of mirth, not expressed either by her eye or mouth because she knew that on the expression of her face depended somewhat of the comfort of those who loved her. A homely brow, and plain features, and locks of hair that have not been combed by Love's attendant nymphs into soft and winning tresses, seems to tell us that Love is not wanted by the bosom that owns them. We teach ourselves to regard such a one, ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... dear lady, for them kind words," Joe responded, as he bowed low in mock acknowledgment; "you make yourself quite plain, Miss Alma Wetherell." He flung back the insult jauntily, as he and his companions moved on, but at least one of the group suspected that the words had ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... be involved in similar intricacies and refinements. The fact certainly is, that many writers of the middle age, on the subject of prayer, introduced into their writings a wonderful degree of metaphysical subtilty. But, if their doctrine be divested of those subtilties, and expressed in plain language, it will be found that nothing in what our author, with other spiritualists, calls mystical theology, contradicts common sense. With them he divides the progress of a Christian, in his advances towards perfection, into three stages, the purgative, the contemplative, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... a steep mountain; the river at our feet is walled, on its other side, (yes, on both sides,) by a steep and wooded mountain-range which rises abruptly aloft from the water's edge; portions of these mountains are densely wooded; the plain of the Rhine, seen through the mouth of this pocket, has many and peculiar ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... plain, Madam, I was hurrying home, to request you would wear no cap.—Never shall I forget how pretty you look'd, when I saw you without one!—Of all things, I would this day wish ...
— Barford Abbey • Susannah Minific Gunning
... pronounced it, and they thought it was Count Rumford come to life. M. Prevost went out and returned with Mr. Dornford, one of the Englishmen who had been of Dr. Hamel's party, who came, he said, to beg permission to state the plain facts, as he heard they had been told to Dr. Hamel's disadvantage. He, Dr. Hamel, Mr. Henderson, and M. Lelleque, a French naturalist, set out: the guides had not dissuaded them from attempting to go up Mont Blanc—only advised them to wait till a threatening ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... Quaker costume, lay in a room adjoining the library, in a plain, unpolished walnut coffin, padded and lined with some white material, but without any ornamentation whatever. There were no flowers and no uttered demonstrations of grief, but a profound sadness seemed to pervade the house, and for half an hour no ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... a plain, bare, interminable plain, an ocean of grass, of wheat, and of oats, without a clump of trees or any rising ground, a striking and melancholy picture of the life which they must ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... plain, simple equipage stood at the gate of the new park in Potsdam. The king and the Marquis D'Argens entered the carriage alone. Frederick refused all other attendance; even his servants ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... no mistake in the matter!' exclaimed Jack, appearing again on the surface like an otter; 'you gave me the lie as plain as ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... after nightfall, would Zilah descend with him to the shore below. The sea lay at their feet a plain of silver, and the moonbeams danced over the waves in broken lines of luminous atoms; boats passed to and fro, their red lights flashing like glowworms; and it seemed to Andras and Varhely, as they approached ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... received a distinct shock when he reached his apartment that night, to find that his niece, dressed in a severely plain black gown, was dining at home alone with him. Before he finished his soup he ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... Terrain: vast central plain, mountains in west, hills and low mountains in east; rugged mountains and broad river valleys in Alaska; ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... to bed dutifully with the rest—he knew better than to refuse—though he was feeling much too excited to sleep. But he had had a long day, with many events crowded into it; and sheets and blankets were very friendly and comforting things, after plain straw, and not too much of it, spread on the stone floor of a draughty cell; and his head had not been many seconds on his pillow before he was snoring happily. Naturally, he dreamt a good deal; about roads that ran away from him just when he wanted them, and canals ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... and I have different ideas on the subject," he said sneeringly; "but that does not matter to me at the moment. My paid servant has absconded from my service, and I have come to get him. That is plain enough, isn't it?" ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... and her love of nature give life and vitality to the scene. Valperga, the ancestral castle home of Euthanasia, a Florentine lady of the Guelph faction, is most picturesquely described, on its ledge of projecting rock, overlooking the plain of Lucca; the dependent peasants around happy under the protection of their good Signora. That this beautiful and high-minded lady should be affianced to a Ghibelline leader is a natural combination; but when her lover Castruccio, ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... was longing for power and place which had tempted this maiden to ill in the old home, here she sees her way to more than her wildest dream plain before her; and she bends her mind to please, and therein prospers. For when wit and beauty go hand in hand that is no hard matter. So in no long time it comes to pass that she has gained all she would, and is queen of all the Mercian land, from the Wash to the Thames, and from Thames to Trent, ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... The ancient Earl, with stately grace, Would Clara on her palfrey place, And whispered in an undertone, "Let the hawk stoop, his prey is flown."— The train from out the castle drew, But Marmion stopped to bid adieu:— "Though something I might plain," he said, "Of cold respect to stranger guest, Sent hither by your King's behest, While in Tantallon's towers I stayed, Part we in friendship from your land, And, noble Earl, receive my hand."— But Douglas around him drew his cloak, Folded his ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... dance itself dry in the wind. Most of all he noticed Vanna, whom he knew well enough, because when she knelt upright she was taller and more wayward than the rest, and because the wind made so plain the pretty figure she had. She was very industrious, but no less full of talk: there seemed so much to say! The pauses were frequent in which she straightened herself from the hips and turned to thrust chin and voice into the debate. You saw then the sharp angle, the fine line of light ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... low, half-trampled grass. The sun had not yet risen, but by now all the barrows could be seen and, like a cloud in the distance, Saur's Grave with its peaked top. If one clambered up on that tomb one could see the plain from it, level and boundless as the sky, one could see villages, manor-houses, the settlements of the Germans and of the Molokani, and a long-sighted Kalmuck could even see the town and the railway-station. Only from there could one see that there was something else in the world besides ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... things. On the 9th September, 1912, Vedrines, flying a Deperdussin monoplane at Chicago, attained a speed of 105 miles an hour. On August 12th, G. de Havilland took a passenger to a height of 10,560 feet over Salisbury Plain, flying a B.E. biplane with a 70 horse-power Renault engine. The work of de Havilland may be said to have been the principal influence in British military aeroplane design, and there is no doubt that his genius was in great measure responsible for the excellence of ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... a friend (And here she might mend) Little given to lend. 'How spent you the summer?' Quoth she, looking shame At the borrowing dame. 'Night and day to each comer I sang, if you please.' 'You sang! I'm at ease; For 'tis plain at a glance, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... province of Murcia, on the right bank of the river Segura, and on the Madrid-Cartagena railway. Pop. (1900) 13,626. Cieza is built in a narrow bend of the Segura valley, which is enclosed on the north by mountains, and on the south broadens into a fertile plain, producing grain, wine, olives, raisins, oranges and esparto grass. In the town itself there are flour and paper mills, sawmills and brandy distilleries. Between 1870 and 1900 local trade and population increased rapidly, owing partly to improved ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... dragon, and think it will strangle them in its shining folds. This is very idle. If they do not meddle with the allegory, the allegory will not meddle with them. Without minding it at all, the whole is as plain as a pikestaff. It might as well be pretended that we cannot see Poussin's pictures for the allegory, as that the allegory prevents us from understanding Spenser. For instance, when Britomart, seated amidst the young warriors, lets fall her hair and discovers her sex, is it necessary to know ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... public would doubtless approve the League, typical as it was of the folly which so strongly actuated themselves. Far more likely was it that their assaults were the work, misguided but surely excusable, of the Plain Man, irritated at last to execute judgment on these frenzied and incompetent efforts after that unprofitable dream of the visionary, a world peace. It was well known that the question ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... which his master conjures up before him. But we others who, in books as in music, desire above all to find substance, and who are scarcely satisfied with the mere representation of a banquet, are much worse off. In plain English, Wagner does not give us enough to masticate. His recitative—very little meat, more bones, and plenty of broth—I christened "alla genovese": I had no intention of flattering the Genoese with this remark, but rather the older recitativo, ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... endeavored, by a series of experiments, to find out some means by which this opalescence might be got rid of in the most convenient manner. Cementing the transparency to a piece of plain, clear glass with Canada balsam, as suggested by Mr. Woodworth, I found in practice to be open to two formidable objections. One of these was that Canada balsam used in this manner is a sticky, unpleasant substance to meddle with, and takes a long time—nearly a month—to harden when confined ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... minutes they were under way, the sloop heading out toward open water with two reefs down in her mainsail, a gray and ghostly shape of slanted canvas that swept across the dim, furrowed plain of sea. By midnight the breeze was as strong as ever, but they had clear moonlight and they held on; the craft plunging with flooded decks through the white combers, while Carroll sat at the helm, battered by ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... stand up and let yourself be shot at."—She flushed slightly at the remembrance of Frank standing in this very room in front of the gun in her hand. Would she ever forget his laugh!—"But pluck to do the same monotonous thing day after day, plain, honest, hard work—you haven't got that sort of pluck. You're a failure and the worst of it is, you're not ashamed of it. It seems to fill you with self-satisfaction. Oh, you're incorrigible," she ended ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... the little village below us the bells of the church are ringing for rain! Priests and peasants in long procession come forth and kneel on the arid plain. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... come here an' talked an' talked till he got his way? He knew what 'ud be the end of it—he knew, I tell you,—an' it's just what he wanted. Hasn't he been drawin' away from us ever since the girl left? I saw it all that night when he came here persuadin' me, an' I told it him plain. He wanted to 'a done with her, and to a' done with us. Am I ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... post I was now appointed. This post is agreeably situated on the banks of Frazer's River, on the outskirts of the great prairies. The surrounding country is beautifully diversified by hill and dale, grove and plain; the soil is rich, yielding abundant successive crops of grain and vegetable, unmanured; but the crops are sometimes destroyed by frost. The charming locality, the friendly disposition of the Indians, and better fare, rendered this post one ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... I wanted nothing of the kind. I scarcely understand your English law. But can it not be stated in plain legal form—a dozen lines would surety; do it—that every farthing Agatha has is settled upon herself exclusively from the ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... conversation, sensible and intelligent. In his temper he was somewhat hasty, but of a disposition the most friendly, benevolent, and humane. His person was about six feet high, and, though a good looking man, he was plain both in address and appearance. His head was small; his hair, which was a dark brown, he wore tied behind. His face was full of expression; his nose exceedingly well shaped; his eyes, which were small and of a brown cast, were quick and piercing; his eyebrows prominent, which gave his countenance ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... got as far as the Sault, when the wind, which had been favourable, suddenly veered round and blew a heavy gale in our faces, accompanied by thunder and heavy rain. As it was already between 3 and 4 p.m., it was plain we could not start that day, And just at the critical moment word came that those three runaway boys were on an island forty miles below. Our informant was a Garden River Indian. The boys, be said, ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... Renaissance, their character profoundly different, but their use the same, that of dividing scenes from one another on the same woven picture. But as any allusion to the Renaissance seems to thrust us far out onto a radiant plain, let us scamper back into the mysterious wood of the Gothic and pick up a few more of its indicative pebbles, even as did Hans and ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... where Cromwell had failed; and the event was too near in time, too distant in space, too remote in surroundings, to have as much bearing as it should. Yet the impression made was considerable. Benjamin Franklin's picturesque and worthy republicanism was not forgotten: his plain clothes and robust sense, his cheerful refrain of ca ira,—it's all right,—so soon to be the song of the French republicans themselves. The men of Rochambeau's army too, had caught the infection, had seen republicanism ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... hunters had visited the island. They were overtaken by the shades of night; and preferred sleeping in the open air to returning to Mocundo. This news spread alarm throughout the island. The father obliged the young girl to climb up a very lofty zamang or acacia, which grew in the plain at some distance from the hut, while he stretched himself at the foot of the tree, and did not permit his daughter to descend till the hunters ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... itself, but rather that the supreme King takes care of all it has to do. O my God, how clear is the meaning of those words, and what good reason the Psalmist had, and all the world will ever have, to pray for the wings of a dove! [29] It is plain that this is the flight of the spirit rising upwards above all created things, and chiefly above itself: but it is a sweet flight, a delicious flight—a ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... That was a plain way to solve the problem, and they went to the strange man's house. Laud knew the captain was not at home; but his persecutors gave him the credit of suggesting this step. Sykes and his wife were at home. They did not know whether or not Captain Shivernock had given Laud the ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... 'Mrs.' Let 'Madam' govern independently in the city, &c. Let no women after the known age of 21 presume to admit of her being called 'Miss,' unless she can fairly prove she is not out of her sampler. Let every common maid-servant be plain 'Jane,' 'Doll,' or 'Sue,' and let the better-born and higher-placed be distinguished by 'Mrs. Patience,' 'Mrs. Prue,' or ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... little for plain Fact, these people, and were in that advanced state of degeneracy on the subject, that instead of being impressed by the speaker's strong common sense, they took it in extraordinary dudgeon. The men muttered 'Shame!' and the women 'Brute!' and Sleary, in some haste, communicated ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... landscape becomes imaginary and undefined. This peculiarity has been noticed by Professor Herford in some very suggestive remarks prefixed to his edition of the Shepherd's Calender. 'The profiles of the Sicilian uplands,' he writes, 'waver uncertainly amid traits drawn from the Mantuan plain. In this confusion lay, perhaps, the germ of those debates between highland and lowland shepherds which reverberate through the later pastoral, and are still loud in Spenser.' The gulf that separated Vergil from his predecessor, in so far as their ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... a tremble all the while he talked? And, moreover, he had a particular sort of a kind of a lock, and when I groaned and said, upon every question he asked me, Lord have mercy upon me! or, Christ have mercy upon me! it was plain enough that he did not like it, and so he left me!"—The man was quite sober when he related this story; but as it happened to him on his return from market, it is probable that he was then muddled. As for myself, I was actually seen in Newgate ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... no particular hurry. He passed the night at a small temperance hotel, and next morning, after a plain breakfast, started out for a stroll into the country. He had written a note to his father before leaving Padbury merely stating his intention, and giving no address. There was nothing more to be ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... Asopos, on the track of the Hellenes, supposing that these were running away from him; and he directed his attack upon the Lacedemonians and Tegeans only, for the Athenians, whose march was towards the plain, he did not see by reason of the hills. Then the rest of the commanders of the Barbarian divisions, seeing that the Persians had started to pursue the Hellenes, forthwith all raised the signals for battle and began to ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... disabuse my senses! Yes. It is plain. Miss Jessup repented her of her confession. Something in that unopened letter— believing the contents of that known, there were inducements to sincerity which the recovery of that letter, and the finding it unopened, perhaps annihilated. Pride resumed its power. Before ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... saves. Faith saves by laying hold of God by Christ; hope saves by prevailing with the soul to suffer all troubles, afflictions, and adversities that it meets with betwixt this and the world to come, for the sake thereof. Take the matter in this plain similitude: ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... few minutes' time we were stepping out sharply across the great cultivated plain or lake bed, framed like a vast emerald in its setting of frowning cliff, and had another opportunity of wondering at the extraordinary nature of the site chosen by these old people of Kor for their capital, and ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... his own terms without the other." What a glimpse this gives of the dissolution of all that we are accustomed to call society! The two envoys set out, but never returned: like the emissaries sent to the Jewish captain, as he drove furiously along the plain of Esdraelon to ask, Is it peace? The European was slain at once, the Audh general being imprisoned and deprived of sight. Mirza Shaffi and Mohamad Beg next began to quarrel with each other. The Emperor was now much perplexed, but matters were arranged for the time through the instrumentality of ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... should be observed, had no actual experience of the world whatsoever: all his knowledge concerning it had been obtained in two ways; from books, and from the relations of those country swains, who had seen a little of it. The plain meaning, therefore, is, "To clear his doubts concerning Providence, and to obtain some knowledge of the world by actual experience; to see whether the accounts furnished by books, or by the oral communications of swains, were just representations ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... rose over a monotonous plain covered with grass, rank, high, and silky-looking, blown before the breeze into long, shiny waves. The sky was blue above, and the grass a brownish green beneath; wild pigeons and turkeys flew over our heads; the horizontal line had not a single inequality; ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... easy to draw out at first, but it presently appeared that he had been baffled by a tough bit of Latinity. The knight looked, and readily expounded the sentence, so that all became plain; and then, as it was already too dark to pursue the study with comfort, he stood over the boy, talking to him of books and of poems, while the usually pale, listless, uninterested countenance responded by looks of eager delight ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... came, and settled like a pall Funereal, on our hearts; o'er one and all It cast its blighting, withering wing, A horrid, shapeless, and revolting thing— While dove-eyed Peace bowed down its gentle head And wept for those, though living, worse than dead; And blood, like rivers, flowed from hill to plain 'Till land and sea knew not their ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... may trust yourself near them, keeping certainly out of gun-shot, send your Boat with a letter to the Spanish Commodore, and desire to know whether he means to defend the French Ships; and get his answer in writing, and have it as plain as possible. If it be 'yes, that he will fire at you if you attack the French under his protection,' then, if you have force enough, make your attack on the whole body, and take them all if you can; for I should consider such an answer as a ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... whole question. The result is before me in a little manuscript book, which Fitzjames himself re-read and annotated in 1865, 1872, and 1880. He read it once more in 1893. Both text and commentary are significant. He is anxious above all things to give plain, tangible reasons for his conduct. He would have considered it disgraceful to choose from mere impulse or from any such considerations as would fall under the damnatory epithet 'sentimental.' He therefore begins in the most prosaic fashion by an attempt to estimate ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... that Order; and in these he succeeded so well, that he was commissioned in consequence to illuminate some that had been left unfinished—that is to say, only written—in the library of the Piccolomini. He also illuminated some books of plain-song for the Duomo of that city, where he would have remained longer, executing many works that he had in hand; but, being driven away by envy and persecution, he set off to return to Verona, with eight hundred crowns that he had earned, which he lent afterwards ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... to do something to-day," says Lady Baltimore presently, in a listless tone. It is plain to everybody, however, that in reality she wants to do ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... and saw the disordered condition of the room. The chairs were scattered about the apartment, and through the caning of one of them was a large hole. The wash-bowl and pitcher were on the floor, and a good deal of water spilled around. The bed-clothes were nearly all dragged off; and it was plain, from the feathers scattered about, that Andrew had been amusing himself with jumping on the bed. Lifting her eyes to the tester, Mrs. Howland saw nearly a yard of the valance torn away and ...
— The Iron Rule - or, Tyranny in the Household • T. S. Arthur
... thy face thus to hide?" "Look, father, the Erl-King is close by our side! Dost see not the Erl-King, with crown and with train?" "My son, 'tis the mist rising over the plain." ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... beautiful craft, sitting like a swan in the water; and still farther, in the deep water of the roadstead, lay an American line-of-battle ship, her lofty sides flashing brightly in the moonlight, and her frowning batteries turned menacingly toward the old castle, telling a plain bold tale of our country's power and glory, and making my heart proud within me that ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... the triumphant king-bird hurried back was audaciously perched in plain view of every prowler. The crotch of the elm-tree which it occupied was about twelve feet from the ground. The intervale, or water-meadow, by the side of the river, held but a few widely scattered trees,—trees ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... himself, though he had renounced all his titles, all his feudal rights, and had assumed, as far as possible, the manners of a blunt, plain-spoken man, was still, next to the king, in the enjoyment of the richest revenue in France. He could by no possibility place himself upon a social equality with his boot-black. He manifested no disposition to divide ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... was pleasantly inquisitive, but it was plain that he suffered no apprehensions. "And ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... into the boiler, when the engine is in motion, by a pump worked by the engine piston. A hand-pump is also supplied by which the driver can keep the proper amount when the machine is still or in case of a breakdown. A water-gauge in plain sight keeps the driver informed at all times as to the amount of water in the boiler. From the boiler the steam goes through the throttle-valve—the handle of which is by the driver's side—direct to the engine, and there expands, pushes the ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... one hand and a dark object under his arm, Bill returned and deposited in our midst the sorriest-looking specimen of a cur dog you ever set eyes on. It was so weak it couldn't stand. But that look in its eyes—just gratitude, plain gratitude. Its stump of a tail was pounding against my mess tin and sounded just like a message in the Morse code. Happy swore that it was ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... the favourite comes with his trumpets and drums, And his arms and his metaphors crossed."] You may find the cause in the same three words: the Good Old King." Praed, on the other hand, would allow his late monarch neither public merits nor private virtues. "A good man! If he had been a plain country gentleman with no wider opportunities for mischief, he would at least have bullied his footmen and cheated ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... were Captain Lees, with his half a dozen "plain clothes men," Benito, Robert and the mail inspector. Presently Po spoke again. "Jus' alound co'ne'" (corner), he whispered. "Me go ahead. Plitty soon you come. You hea' me makem noise ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... While it is plain, then, how the City of God will be rebuilt on earth, it ought to be equally so how it will not be built. Lately another Message has been advertised in the Press, which does not promise any help. It has been proposed[A] ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... being still a king. She could not bear to see him and his knights. Every time she met her father she put on a frowning countenance; and when the old man wanted to speak with her she would feign sickness or anything to get rid of the sight of him, for it was plain that she esteemed his old age a useless burden and his attendants an unnecessary expense; not only she herself slackened in her expressions of duty to the king, but by her example, and (it is to be feared) not without her private instructions, her very servants affected to treat him ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... has since been erected by the poet's son, and the dream is thus fulfilled, though the elder Browning did not live to see it. Mrs. Bronson describes his enjoyment of nature in this lovely little hill-town,—"the ever-changing cloud shadows on the plain, the ranges of many-tinted mountains in the distance, and the fairy-like outline of the blue Euganean Hills, which form in part the southern boundary of the vast Campagna." Browning would speak of the associations which these hills bear with the ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... is plain, and the people honest," returned the countryman, who cared not if it were midnight, provided he could be the bearer of tidings of some dreadful sea robbery to the ears of those whom he well knew would throng around him, at ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... It was a wedding-gown, my dear. Even plain women, Phoebe, we can't help it; when we are young we have romantic ideas just as if we were pretty. And so the wedding-gown was never used. Long before it was finished I knew he would not offer, but I finished it, and then I put it away. I have always hidden it from you, Phoebe, ...
— Quality Street - A Comedy • J. M. Barrie
... is divided into two parts—one for the connections of the alternators to the bus bars and the other for the connection of feeders to bus bars. The drawing on page 97 shows in plain view the essential ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous
... and the solid permanency of their own manner of being, an undoubting conviction that it has always so been and will ever continue so to be in the world: these feelings of our ancestors were symptoms of a fresh fulness of life; they were the marrow of action in reality as well as in fiction. Their plain and affectionate attachment to every thing around them, handed down from their fathers, is by no means to be confounded with the obstreperous conceit of ages of mannerism, who, out of vanity, introduce the fleeting modes and fashion of the day ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... he hesitated, flushing. "She said she war willin' fer me ter do any other kind of sinnin', ef I jest plain couldn't git outen hit, but she hoped I might die afore doin' that. Then she got on her knees 'n' fer most a hour prayed Gawd ter strike me daid afore He'd see me do hit. She said," he added softly, "hit air on accounten that sin ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... time in my life, Dick, I am sorry to see you. Whatever made you come so soon?" and at the plain-spoken words there was such a general laugh that the boy's reserve ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... Cadorna was able to report progress all along the front occupied, and especially on the Trentino frontier, where Italian troops moved along the three main routes which converge on the Adige Valley from the Italian plain. The route taken was through the Val Giudicaria on the western face of the Trentino salient, up the Adige on the south side, and along the Val Sugano on the eastern front. The Val Giudicaria is the highway into the Tyrol from Brescia, and on either side of it are fortified positions ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... day of Ath-Senaid fully atoned for the day of Almain. Nine thousand of the men of Leinster were left on the field, including most of their chiefs; the victorious monarch losing a son, and other near kinsmen. Four years later, he himself fell in an obscure contest near Kells, in the plain of Meath. Some of his quartrains have come down to us, and they breathe a spirit at once religious and heroic—such as must have greatly endeared the Prince who possessed it to his companions in arms. We are not surprised, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... endeavoured to train myself for them. The place is very distasteful to me, and what is of more importance, I fear I may hereafter demonstrate the unfitness I have to-day only stated. However, it comes to me, I think, as a matter of plain duty; it may be all the better for not being according to my own bent and leaning; I must forthwith go to work, as a ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... woman to dream of crossing a plain, denotes that she will be fortunately situated, if the grasses are green and luxuriant; if they are arid, or the grass is dead, she will have much discomfort ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... means an ordinary person. Her father, Jack Bint (for in all his life he never arrived at the dignity of being called John, indeed in our parts he was commonly known by the cognomen of London Jack), was a drover of high repute in his profession. No man, between Salisbury Plain and Smithfield, was thought to conduct a flock of sheep so skilfully through all the difficulties of lanes and commons, streets and high-roads, as Jack Bint, aided by Jack Bint's famous dog, Watch; for Watch's rough, honest face, black, with a little white ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... Kensington and represented to the king the injustice of requiring England to exert her power in support of an enterprise which, if successful, must be fatal to her commerce and to her finances. William replied in plain terms that he had been illy-treated in Scotland, but that he would try to find a remedy for the evil which had been brought to his attention. At once he dismissed Lord High Commissioner Tweeddale and Secretary Johnston; ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... on thou deep and dark blue ocean roll; . . . . . . Upon the watery plain. The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain A shadow of man's ravage, save his own, When for a moment like a drop of rain, He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... this force, amounting to about a couple of thousand men, has entrenched itself in a strong position near Coroico, whence frequent destructive raids are being made into our newly won territory. They burn and slay wherever they go; in fact they leave a trail of blood and ashes behind them plain enough for anybody to follow. Mercy seems a thing absolutely unknown among these desperadoes; and instead of carrying on their warfare in a civilised manner, they are committing the most dreadful atrocities on ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... said Mrs. Goddard, with a little laugh, as he held the gate back for her to pass. It was a plain white gate with stone pillars, and there was no gatehouse. People who came to the Hall were expected to open it for themselves. Mrs. Goddard was so much amused at John's absence of mind that her good humour returned, and he felt that ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... was a rising ground, in the middle of an open plain, where it was decided that the conference should be held. Ariovistus proposed that neither party should bring any foot soldiers to the place of meeting, but cavalry alone; and that these bodies of cavalry, brought by the respective generals, ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott
... said Victor, with a grim smile. "But we'll change the subject; I don't like argument when I'm likely to get the worst of it. It's plain that you can do no good here, I therefore propose that we return to Willow Creek, take the small boat, and go up to the Mountain to see father, taking Tony and ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... beard that's white— The reason, sir, is plain: Gabriel works hard from morn till night, More ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... primitive ideas aided only too well the impression of finality it gave. She put it beside all she had seen and heard of her husband's love for Marion Glamis, and the miserable certainty was plain to her. She knew she was dying, and a quiet place to die in and a little love to help her over the hard hour seemed to be all she could expect now; the thought of Janet and Christina was her last hope. Thus it was that Janet found her trembling and weeping on her doorstep; ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... rose, they started. It was slow work at first, as they had some difficulty in passing the rough country lying behind the hill. Once past it, they came upon a level plain, and rode fast for some hours. At ten o'clock they halted, and lay down under the shelter of the shrubs; mounting again at four, and riding ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... follow each other in single file. Captain Van Buren followed the trail by Fort Ewell, and well down toward Corpus Christi, day and night, until the Indians, exhausted and used up, halted, on an open plain, unsaddled their horses, mounted bareback, and offered battle. Their number was double that of Van Buren's detachment, but he attacked them fearlessly, and in the fight was mortally wounded by an arrow which entered his body ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan
... Sol with me, too. 'Fifty thousand—one hundred thousand—two!' I said. 'It would make no difference. If we can't fake the kind of battle-plain that wouldn't make Napoleon turn over in his grave, we cross the ocean for the real thing.' 'Fifty thousand dollars,' Sol keeps saying—you know how he cries with his voice. 'Fifty thousand dollars ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... you so well I believe I should have given in long ago. I'm not thinking of you alone, but of myself, too. I'm afraid I shouldn't be happy, that I should begin to think—and then I couldn't stop. The plain truth, as I've told you over and over again, is that I'm not big enough." She continued smiling at me, a smile on which I could not bear to look. "I was wrong not to have gone away," I heard her say. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... law and the prophets." Here and there an incidental warning against this or that more dangerous form of vice or error, "Take heed and beware of covetousness," "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees;" here and there a plain example of the meaning of Christian love, as in the parables of the Samaritan and the Prodigal, and His own perpetual example: these were the elements of Christ's constant teaching; for the Beatitudes, which are the only approximation ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... groaned, and the gentleman-ranker sighed in his sleep. Ortheris took Mulvaney's tendered pouch and we three smoked gravely for a space while the dust-devils danced on the glacis and scoured the red-hot plain. ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... be for us the scene of an idle holiday; they will be a place of pilgrimage and a shrine of prayer. I well remember—I can never forget—a journey I made in the company of a French staff officer over the country that lies between Paris and the river Aisne. We came out on a wide rolling plain, and in the waning light of a winter's day we suddenly saw among the stubble and between the oat-ricks, far as the eye could reach, thousands of little tricolour flags fluttering in the breeze. By each flag was a wooden cross. By each cross was a soldier's kepi, and sometimes ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... majority of their fellows, and these are the ones who are signalled out by the historian for special attention. The people who are always good and always happy have no history, as there is nothing noteworthy to tell of them, life has no tragedies, all is plain sailing, and the whole story can be told in a few words. In a measure the same thing is true of the ordinary man, be he good or bad, for what can be said of him can be said of a whole class, and so the history of the class may be told, ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... this Sawkins sent back answer "that as yet all his company were not come together; but that when they were come up we would come and visit him at Panama, and bring our commissions on the muzzles of our guns, at which time he should read them as plain as the flame of gunpowder ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... knew the language of nature better than that of man, listened to the great, solemn forest and the stern mountain. "See," they said, "to you, who love the wilderness, we give our fair daughter. She will suit you better than the daughters of the plain. Reor, are you worthy of this ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... by many times. Besides each greater Planet th' attendance finds Of lesser. Our Earths handmaid is the Moon, Which to her darkned side right duly shines, And Jove hath foure, as hath been said aboven, And Saturn more then foure if the plain truth were known. ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More
... Friend, whose presence on my wintry heart Fell like bright Spring upon some herbless plain; How beautiful and calm and free thou wert In thy young wisdom, when the mortal chain Of Custom thou did'st burst and rend in twain, And walked as free ...
— The American Prejudice Against Color - An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily The Nation Got - Into An Uproar. • William G. Allen
... night after the dispute an old man took the king by the hand and led him to the northern city-walls; there he opened the king's eyes, and he beheld all the Irish saints of his own sex in white garments, with Patrick at their head; they were there to protect Mochoemoc, and they filled the plain ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... Major Hester fought with one army or another, always in the forefront of battle, as he was a leader in council; but never finding the boon of death which he craved. At length he stood with Wolfe on the lofty Plain of Abraham, and in the fall of Quebec witnessed the fatal blow to French power in America. In all this time he had never returned to the forest house that he had last looked upon in company with his beloved wife. Whether his resolution not to visit it would have ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... is the way the daylight dies: Cows are lowing in the lane, Fireflies wink on hill and plain; Yellow, red, and purple skies— This is the way ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the doctor stay in Ascalon, and Morgan would go to him if he felt the need coming on. The rancher disclaimed credit for a service such as one man owed another the world over, he said. But it was plain that he was touched by the outspoken gratitude of this wreckage of humanity that had come halting in ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... penalties annexed, not to add to or diminish from their coats one thread without a positive command in the will. Now the coats their father had left them were, it is true, of very good cloth, and besides, so neatly sewn you would swear they were all of a piece, but, at the same time, very plain, with little or no ornament; and it happened that before they were a month in town great shoulder-knots came up. Straight all the world was shoulder- knots; no approaching the ladies' ruelles without the quota of shoulder-knots. "That fellow," cries one, "has no soul: where is his shoulder-knot?" ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... of its honourable race by the rude epithet of 'a swing-swang;' and he penned an indignant protest on the subject to the Royal Society. Since that time the pendulum has done much more to merit the reverence of the world. Plain and simple as its outward bearing is, it really holds a high and dignified position in the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... if the Indian party was in such plain sight of the boys, they themselves must have been visible to the red men had they chosen to cast their searching glances towards the spot where the two were standing, even though the latter were partially ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... flourishing period, exceeded the size and populousness of Marseilles. Some latent motive, perhaps of superstition, must have impelled the founders, in the choice of a most unpromising situation. They erected their habitations of mud or stone, in a plain about two miles long and one mile broad, at the foot of three barren mountains: the soil is a rock; the water even of the holy well of Zemzem is bitter or brackish; the pastures are remote from the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... that evening he saw Mrs. Knollys with swollen eyes; and remembering the scene of the afternoon, he made inquiries about her of the innkeeper. The latter had heard the guide's account of the meeting; and as soon as Zimmermann had made plain what he had told her of the falling body, "Triple blockhead!" said he. "Es war ihr Mann." The Herr Professor staggered back into his seat; and the kindly innkeeper ran upstairs to see what had happened to his poor ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... glories, lost in either Charles's days, "When through thy fields destructive rapine spread, "Nor sparing infants' tears, nor hoary head! "In those dread days, the unprotected swain "Mourn'd, in the mountains, o'er his wasted plain; "Nor longer vocal, with the shepherd's lay, "Were Yarrow's banks, or groves of Endermay." ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... I had now been in several foreign countries. I had found that I was able to accommodate myself to my fellow-creatures of different languages and sentiments. I did not fear that it would be a difficult task for me to make myself easy with the plain and ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... were as dissimilar as the poles. One grandson was frank, generous, open as the light; the other was of a nature almost degenerate. In fact, each had inherited the qualities of his father. Tales began to come to the old general's ears that at first he refused to credit. But eventually it was made plain to him that one of the boys was a rake of the most ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... enemy was awaited. When Kershaw's men reached the crest such a severe fire was opened on them, and at such close quarters, that they could not withstand it, and gave way in disorder. They were followed across the plain by the cavalry, and lost about two hundred and fifty prisoners and two battle-flags. The counter attack against the infantry by Torbert and Gregg re-established our line and gave us the victory of Darbytown, but it also demonstrated the fact that General Lee ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... loss of precious time. I have nothing to explain to you which you are not already perfectly well acquainted with by my late letters. I was fully aware at the time I was writing them that I should afford you little satisfaction, for the plain unvarnished truth is seldom agreeable. But I now repeat, and these are perhaps among the last words which I shall ever be permitted to pen, that I cannot approve, and I am sure no Christian can, of the system which has lately been pursued in the large sea-port cities of Spain, and which the ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... placed under the chief command of Diego de Ordas, the artillery under the charge of Mesa, and the colours were carried by Antonio de Villareal. The army thus arranged, marched out early in the morning of Lady-day, 25th March, after hearing mass, and proceeded to the plain of Cintia[7], where the enemy awaited us, our cavalry making a detour to avoid some marshy ground, and on purpose to gain the rear of the enemy. After marching about a league, we saw the enemy advancing towards us in the plain, making ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... knew the fragrant plain, The air, the sky, of golden Spain, Its fervid noons, its balmy spring, Sad daughters of the northern gloom, Of love, of heav'n, of native home, You ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac |
