"Speck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was, I believe. Then when he looked so disappointed and sulky, I knew I was right, and I patted Sallie Cox on the head for being so clever—so clever as not to care, chiefly. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, you cannot do with a man who loves you, if you don't care a speck for him. And the luxury of perfect indifference! Emotions are awfully wearing, Ruth. I wonder that these emotional women like Rachel get on at all. I should think they would die of the strain. Men are always deadly afraid of such ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
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... and he pressed close up to her, whinnying softly and looking at her with large expressive eyes. "I haven't anything to give you, poor old boy," she said regretfully, kissing his muzzle and then pushing him away from her. She looked up again into the sky, a dark speck sailed overhead, the slow heavy flight of a vulture. In a few hours he might be picking her bones! Merciful Heavens! Why did such thoughts come into her head? Had she nothing left of the courage that had once been ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
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... that the Kaan keeps an immense stud of white horses and mares; in fact more than 10,000 of them, and all pure white without a speck. The milk of these mares is drunk by himself and his family, and by none else, except by those of one great tribe that have also the privilege of drinking it. This privilege was granted them by Chinghis Kaan, on account of a certain victory that they helped him to win long ago. The ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
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... Borrowdean, turning his head as she entered, found himself studying her with a new curiosity. Yes, she was a beautiful woman. She had lost nothing. Her complexion—a little tanned, perhaps—was as fresh and soft as a girl's, her smile as delightfully full of humour as ever. Not a speck of grey in her black hair, not a shadow of ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
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... ten whole years, Is like the condor high above the Andes, A speck with difficulty found again Once the attention quits it. And I next Descried our woman under breathless noon, Bathing in a clear lane of gliding water Whose banks seem lonely as the path of light Crossing mid ocean south of Capricorn. Her son steals warily after ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
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... was low, though it was possible, as Raoul perceived, to detect the speck that was still swinging at the Minerva's fore-yard-arm; a circumstance to which the young man, with considerate feeling, refrained from adverting. The Proserpine had been some time in motion, standing out of the fleet under a cloud of canvas, but with ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
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... wrong. She stood for a long time at the edge of the fish pond, gazing into the vague depths. Then she walked, exalted, overcome by the mystery of things. She seemed to walk upon air, the world was a-thrill with spiritual significances, all was symbol and exaltation. Her past life shrank to a tiny speck, and she knew that she had been happy only since she had been in the convent. Ah, that little chapel, haunted by prayers! it breathed prayer, in that chapel contemplation was never far off. She had prayed there as she had never prayed ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
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... to sounds like some one hitting a board with a mallet. Ran outside. One found the aeroplane from the little clouds of shrapnel, for it was flying very high, and was like a speck. Clouds of smoke were rolling from one quarter of the town, and we thought that a big fire was beginning, but it was extinguished. Another aeroplane came later. The guns began long before it could be seen. It dropped two bombs over the powder factory, and ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
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... transfigured, his raiment white and glistening, and his face like the light, so are there hours when our whole mortal life stands forth in a celestial radiance. From our daily lot falls off every weed of care,—from our heart-friends every speck and stain of earthly infirmity. Our horizon widens, and blue, and amethyst, and gold touch every object. Absent friends and friends gone on the last long journey stand once more together, bright with an immortal glow, and, like the disciples who saw their Master ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
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... Fairy herself! but, alas! her blue eyes Still a pupil did ruefully lack; And who shall describe the terrifick surprise That seized the Paint-King, when, behold, he descries Not a speck on ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
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... objects moved away to the shore, no longer careful, but making a huge, splashing noise. No more strange flies appeared; and the gold light of full day stole down to the depths of the pool. Soon, flies which the master well knew, with no fine threads attached to them, began to speck the surface over him, and he fed, in ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
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... with a bonnet on its head, A pretty purple bonnet with a bow of blue and red; And here comes a bottle with a collar 'round its neck, A handsome linen collar, too, without a spot or speck; Next comes a meat-saw, his job is biting beef, And according to the cleaver he has gold in all his teeth; And last of all there comes along, amid the ringing cheers, A princely Indian corn-stalk with rings ...
— The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes • Leroy F. Jackson
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... cried Edestone, seeming to forget for the moment where he was, as a small speck which represented the approaching airship disclosed itself. "This time in the upper right-hand corner of the picture. See! I am on board, and I am driving her at one hundred and ten miles." And he ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
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... not long before, and the sky was glowing in the clear, light night. I had to stand still for a minute. In the midst of all this beauty, man was doing the work of a beast of prey! At this moment I saw to the north a dark speck move down the height where the mate and Hansen ought to be. It divided into two, and the one moved east, just to the windward of the animals I was to stalk. They would get the scent immediately and be off. There was nothing for it but to hurry on, while I rained anything but ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
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... was sitting in her favorite seat by the window. Her face was scarcely at all paler than it had been a week ago. She sat then by the window, looking out at her trouble, which showed like a speck in the blue sky. The shadow which enveloped her whole life was coming closer now, enveloping her like a thick fog. Still she was bearing up. Her eyes were gazing out on the garden—on the flowers which she ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
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... that feeling a thousand times intensified, that and a black horror swept across my thoughts in a torrent. Then the two doctors, the naked body with its cut side, the little room, swept away from under me and vanished, as a speck of ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
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... the little board building that made a home for the McIntyres, set down on the treeless prairie with only a little wooden paling to defend it from the waste that gaped at it from every side. The contrast between this bare speck of human habitation and the cosy homes of his native Province, set each within its sheltering nest of orchard and garden, could hardly, have been more complete. But as his eyes ran down the slope of the prairie and up over the hills to the jagged line of peaks at the horizon, he was conscious ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
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... excess. Such excess was in that age regarded, even by grave men, as the most venial of all peccadilloes, and was so far from being a mark of ill-breeding that it was almost essential to the character of a fine gentleman. But the smallest speck is seen on a white ground; and almost all the biographers of Addison have said something about this failing. Of any other statesman or writer of Queen Anne's reign, we should no more think of saying that he sometimes ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
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... my eye was attracted to a snow speck on the mountainside some two thousand feet above us and slightly westward that somehow looked to me different from other snow specks. For nearly a minute I stared at it through my glasses. At last the speck moved. The game ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
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... to grasp the land and drag it back into the lurid sea of blood; altogether a cruel, weird-looking scene, fantastic, unreal, and bizarre as one of Dore's marvellous conceptions. Suddenly on the red waters there appeared a black speck, rising and falling with the restless waves, and ever drawing nearer and nearer to the gloomy cliffs and sandy beach. When within a quarter of a mile of the shore, the speck resolved itself into a boat, a mere shallop, painted a dingy white, and ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
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... twilight the ship went a-flutter over a grisly incident that brought us close up to the war. We were gathered in the dusk looking at a sailing ship far over to the south—a mere speck on the horizon's edge. Signals began to twinkle from her and we felt our ship give a lurch and turn north zigzagging at full speed. The signals of the sailing ship were distress signals, but we sped away from her as fast as our engines would take us, for, though her signals may have been genuine, ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
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... An Earthman? You were an Earthman! Now you're a grubby little specimen of the genus tsith! You're a miserable, whining little speck of matter wriggling toward the final transfixation! In another year you won't even be that. You'll be dead and forgotten. Don't come crawling to me talking about Earthmen!" The voice scraped across Latham's naked nerve-ends. Penger's eyes ...
— One Purple Hope! • Henry Hasse
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... island. The district of Kau is a rich, luxuriant spot, surrounded by desolate fields of scoriae, which renders it difficult of access. We are situated six miles from the sea, sufficiently elevated to give us a commanding view of its vast expanse of waters. We can occasionally spy a sail floating like a speck on its surface. From the shore, the country gradually rises into a range of verdant mountains, whose summits appear to touch the clouds. Proceeding northward toward Hilo, there is a gradual rise, until you ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
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... giant smiles, And twirls the spotty globe to find it;— This little speck the British Isles? 'Tis but a freckle,—never mind it! He laughs, and all his prairies roll, Each gurgling cataract roars and chuckles, And ridges stretched from pole to pole Heave till they crack their ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
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... midst of an animated discussion on their future prospects, the signal was given, that the steamer was in sight, and had already rounded the point. How audibly to herself did Flora's heart beat, as a small, black speck in the distance gradually increased to a black cloud; and not a doubt remained, that this was the ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
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... blessings we enjoy, one of the greatest blessings a people can enjoy, is liberty. But every good in this life has its allay of evil. Licentiousness is the allay of liberty. It is an ebullition, an excrescence; it is a speck upon the eye of the political body, which I can never touch but with a gentle, with a trembling hand; lest I destroy the body, lest I injure the eye, upon which it is apt to appear. If the stage becomes at any time licentious, if a play appears to be a libel upon the government, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
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... Si! Say what you please, now you've done it! I shan't stop you. You've taken the one spot—the one SPECK—off you that was ever there, and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
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... is sinking; All grows dim, and dies; See, the waves are drinking Glories of the skies. Day's last lustre playeth On that current dark; Yet no speck betrayeth His long looked-for bark. 'Tis the hour of meeting! Nay, the hour is past; Swift the time is fleeting! Fleeteth hope as fast. Still the Gitanilla By the stream doth linger, In the hope that night ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
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... morning when Hadow raised the island, a fleecy speck of cloud against the sky line, and he shortened sail at once and lingered out the day so as to bring him up to it by dark. After supper every light on board was doused, and the great hull, gliding through the glass-smooth ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
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... storm, which did not last for more than twenty minutes, had abated and the horizon was in some degree cleared, I looked to sea anxiously, in the hope of descrying Shelley's boat amongst the many small craft scattered about. I watched every speck that loomed on the horizon, thinking that they would have borne up on their return to the port, as all the other boats that had gone out in the same direction ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
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... river bed as Wee Willie Winkie left the cantonment and British India behind him. Bowed, forward and still flogging, Wee Willie Winkie shot into Afghan territory, and could just see Miss Allardyce a black speck, flickering across the stony plain. The reason of her wandering was simple enough. Coppy, in a tone of too-hastily-assumed authority, had told her over night that she must not ride out by the river. And she had gone to prove her own spirit ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
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... enlarged thoughts would easily pass to the stout carved ships in the river beyond, intrepidly setting sail for the Indies, or for savage America. Yes, he too had travelled, and not only in thought. He knew how many strange nations and false religions lodged in this round earth, itself but a speck in the universe. There were few ingenious authors that he had not perused, or philosophical instruments that he had not, as far as possible, examined and tested; and no man better than he could understand and prize the recent discoveries of "the ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
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... unreasonable as he who insists that everything has been divinely revealed to us. I know nothing more unbearable than the complacent type of scientist who knows very exactly all that he does know, but has not imagination enough to understand what a speck his little accumulation of doubtful erudition is when compared with the immensity of our ignorance. He is the person who thinks that the universe can be explained by laws, as if a law did not require construction as well ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
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... and put his hand over the rose on her heart, that had ceased to beat. Suddenly it seemed to him that his hand had been stung, and he drew it away quickly, his eyes on the golden rose. And where she had left it just incomplete at his coming, he saw a jet-black speck. A light broke over him swiftly, and one by one he broke the strands at the rose's heart, and under it revealed a small black snake; and as the rose had been done from her own gold locks, so the snake had been done from the one black lock in ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
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... Many, many miles away, a speck on the dusty carpet of the desert, something moved! Hours must elapse before that tiny figure, provided it were approaching, could reach the solitary palm. Delightedly, Rita contemplated the infinity of time. Even if the figure moved ever so slowly, ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
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... the depths of the argument as to the origin of species and the genesis of man; with the astronomers, to leave the narrow bounds of earth, and explore the illimitable spaces of the universe, in which our solar system is but a speck; with the mathematicians, to quit the uncertain realm of speculation and assumption, and plant our feet firmly on the rock of exact science:—to come back anon to lighter themes, and to revel in the grotesque humor of Dickens, the philosophic page ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
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... is also destructive to game. It emits a shrill musical whistle which can sometimes be heard when the bird is so high as to appear a mere speck against the sky. This ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
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... road, with arms uplifted, and holding deadly weapons, as if ready and determined to strike with well-aimed precision. But, strange to say, they all remained as motionless as statues, until we had gone on so far as to leave them a mere speck on the descending horizon. ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
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... black speck became less ambiguous. George beheld a white stern heaving up and down. He ran forward as if to accelerate her return, crying out ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
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... I watched a tremulous fading rose Rise on the wind to court a butterfly. "One speck of pollen, ere my petals close, Bring me one touch of love ...
— Last Poems • Laurence Hope
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... sweet, papa!" Miss Mildred whispered, her small, rather sickly face quite radiant; "and its eyes are the image of yours. He's asleep now, you know, and you can't see them. And look at the dear, darling little hands and fingers and feet, and the speck of a nose and the dot of a mouth! Oh papa! isn't it splendid to have a baby in ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
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... how there appears to be a cosmic hostility to human life which sobers indeed those who are intelligent enough to perceive it. It is only the fool or the brute or the sentimentalist who is unterrified by nature. The man of reflection and imagination sees his race crawling ant-like over its tiny speck of slowly cooling earth and surrounded by titanic and ruthless forces which threaten at any moment to engulf it. The religious man knows that he is infinitely greater than the beasts of the field or the clods of the highway. Yet Vesuvius belches forth its liquid ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
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... had become a mere speck on the coast-line, before they felt the tide under them relax, and knew they ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
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... it. After a time, a slow thick shower of burning fragments, from some upper portion of the prison which was blazing nigh, began to fall before his door. Remembering that it opened outwards, he knew that every spark which fell upon the heap, and in the act lost its bright life, and died an ugly speck of dust and rubbish, helped to entomb him in a living grave. Still, though the jail resounded with shrieks and cries for help,—though the fire bounded up as if each separate flame had had a tiger's life, and roared as though, in every one, there were a hungry ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
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... they are not at Cranford. What could they do if they were there? The surgeon has his round of thirty miles, and sleeps at Cranford; but every man cannot be a surgeon. For keeping the trim gardens full of choice flowers without a weed to speck them; for frightening away little boys who look wistfully at the said flowers through the railings; for rushing out at the geese that occasionally venture in to the gardens if the gates are left open; for deciding all questions of literature and politics without troubling ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
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... carried through the great undertaking. Thus at last a grand catalogue of nebulae and clusters was produced. Never before was there so majestic an inventory. If we remember that each of the nebulae is an object so vast, that the whole of the solar system would form an inconsiderable speck by comparison, what are we to think of a collection in which these objects are enumerated in thousands? In this great catalogue we find arranged in systematic order all the nebulae and all the clusters which had been revealed by the diligence ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
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... steamer ober dar, an' I speck de Yankee gumboat's gwine in dar to look arter dat steamer," said Uncle Job, chuckling as though he enjoyed the prospect of such an event. "Say, Massa Ossifer, is ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
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... pick it up, but the others could not see it, and went back to breakfast. Trask soon followed, observing that Shope was in the fore crosstrees studying the distant speck with ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
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... stack of some steamer. I watched this closely, until convinced the craft was bound down stream and moving swiftly. The smudge became a mere whisp and finally vanished entirely. I waited some time for the vessel to appear at the lower end of the bend, but it was then only a speck, scarcely distinguishable. I felt no doubt but what this was the stolen ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
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... what he does with it. You pick up every single speck," ordered the girl; and the boy scraped the floor with his sharp finger-nails, and crammed the candy and dust into a small paper bag. The girl stood watchfully over him; not the smallest particle escaped her eyes. "There's some more over there," said she, sharply, when the boy was about ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
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... way, 30 Or mounts sublime, and gilds the vault of day. Silent with upturn'd eyes unbreathing crowds Pursue the floating wonder to the clouds; And, flush'd with transport or benumb'd with fear, Watch, as it rises, the diminish'd sphere. 35 —Now less and less!—and now a speck is seen!— And now the fleeting rack obtrudes between!— With bended knees, raised arms, and suppliant brow To every shrine with mingled cries they vow.— "Save Him, ye Saints! who o'er the good preside; 40 "Bear Him, ye Winds! ye Stars benignant! ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
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... a knock at the door, and a ruddy old face looked in. It is the Cavaliere Trenta, in his official blue coat and gold buttons, nankeen inexpressibles, a broad-brimmed white hat and a gold-headed cane in his hand. Whatever speck of dust might have had the audacity to venture to settle itself upon any part of the cavaliere's official blue coat, must at once have hidden its diminished head after peeping at the cavaliere's beaming countenance, so scrubbed and shiny, the white hair so symmetrically arranged upon ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
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... times her eyes had lifted to sweep the snow field for any sign of the hunters' return. Now, looking out of the window without much expectation of seeing them, her glance fell on a traveler, a speck of black on a sea of white. Her heart began to beat a drum of excitement. She waited, eyes riveted, expecting to see a second figure and a dog-team top the ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
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... wonder at, for nature is not bounded by the laws of human reason, which aims only at man's true benefit and preservation; her limits are infinitely wider, and have reference to the eternal order of nature, wherein man is but a speck; it is by the necessity of this alone that all individuals are conditioned for living and acting in a particular way. (21) If anything, therefore, in nature seems to us ridiculous, absurd, or evil, it is because we only know in part, and are almost entirely ignorant of the order ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part IV] • Benedict de Spinoza
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... it's high time I was dead; and that all this is nonsense. It's the truth I'm telling you. I do value my idea and my work awfully; but in reality only consider this: all this world of ours is nothing but a speck of mildew, which has grown up on a tiny planet. And for us to suppose we can have something great—ideas, work—it's ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
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... of both parties, that their friendship appears to have been founded on mutual respect. In July, 1783, the Albemarle was paid off; and Nelson having finished the war, as he expresses it in a letter to his friend Mr Ross, without a fortune, but without a speck on his character, remained nine months on half-pay. But as he determined to make use of his spare time in mastering the French—a feat which he afterwards accomplished without a grammar—he resolved to go to France with his friend Captain ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
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... speck presented by the reefed top-sail of the corvette had sunk beneath the horizon, in the southern board, and that ship was seen no longer. Several islands had been passed, looking tranquil and smiling amid the fury of the tempest; but it was impossible to haul up for any one ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
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... suppose, to hunt for gold! And you've been hunting for it for fifteen years, you've trod along thousands and thousands of miles and never found a speck ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
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... reticulated into the semblance of polygonal, or, in some instances, egg-shaped meshes, and which remind one of pieces of ill woven lace. When first laid open, these meshes are filled each with a carbonaceous speck; and, from their supposed resemblance, in the aggregated form, to the eggs of the frog in their albuminous envelop, the quarriers term them "puddock [frog] spawn." The slabs in which they occur, thickly covered over with their vegetable impressions, did certainly ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
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... the able and daring generals who had served him in so many fields. But Stuart, the gay and brilliant, the medieval knight who had such a strong place in the commander-in-chief's affections, was there. Nor was his plumage one bit less splendid. The yellow feather stood in his hat. There was no speck or stain on the broad yellow sash and his undimmed ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
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... Governor hummed one of his favorite ballads as he slipped out of his coat and picked a speck from his snowy waistcoat. Then he produced a tiny phial from his pocket and touched his upper lip with a ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
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... lessened not their importance; and while any Mount Pitt birds (such being the name given them) were to be had, they were eagerly sought. The knots of the pine tree, split and made into small bundles, afforded the miserable occupiers of a small speck in the ocean sufficient light to guide them through the woods, in search of what was to serve them for next day's meal. They were also fortunate enough to lose but a few casks of the provisions brought ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
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... When she first appeared on the scene (I mean Valentina Ignatievna) I was just turned nineteen years of age; and the instant that my eyes fell upon her form I realised that in her alone lay my fate, and my heart almost stopped beating, and my vitality stretched out towards her as a speck of dust flies towards a fire. Yet all this I had to conceal as best I might; with the result that in the company's presence I felt like a sentry doing guard duty in the presence of his commanding officer. But at last, though I strove to pull ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
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... in the ship was watching the speck on the watery waste, which the glass had revealed to be a dismasted, and perhaps sinking ship. The incident created an intense interest, and was calculated to bring out the finer feelings of the students. They were full of sympathy for her people, and the cultivation of noble and unselfish sentiments, ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
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... sauce deep. Well could she carry a morsel, and well keep, That no droppe ne fell upon her breast. In courtesy was set full much her lest*. *pleasure Her over-lippe wiped she so clean, That in her cup there was no farthing* seen *speck Of grease, when she drunken had her draught; Full seemely after her meat she raught*: *reached out her hand And *sickerly she was of great disport*, *surely she was of a lively And full pleasant, and amiable of port, disposition* And ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
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... rims and legs of tables, and the backs and legs of chairs and sofas, should be rubbed vigorously daily; if there is a book-case, every corner of every pane and ledge requires to be carefully wiped, so that not a speck of dust can ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
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... in use a machine so delicately adjusted that it can give the accurate weight of a speck of dust, whilst the same machine will also weigh metal up to four hundred pounds. A postage stamp placed on this scale will swing an indicator on a semi-circle ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
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... had yet left us, a sail had been discerned from the fore-top-mast-head, at a great distance, probably three leagues or more. At first it was a mere speck, altogether out of sight from the deck. By the force of attraction, or something else equally inscrutable, two ships in a calm, and equally affected by the currents, will always approximate, more or less. ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
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... Societies and demand redress of grievances. He concludes thus: "You may as well look for chastity and mercy in the Empress of Russia, honour and consistency from the King of Prussia, wisdom and plain dealing from the Emperor of Germany, as a single speck of ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
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... more than usual care should be taken in following up any other small prick or dark spot that may show itself upon the white surface of the cleaned sole. In any case, a suspicious-looking speck should be followed up with the searcher until it is either cut out or is traced to the ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
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... dawn-light revealed a black spot on the low horizon. A speck that grew larger, with twinkling, fin-like flashes along each side, and in due time it proved to be a galley like their own bearing down straight for them. Nobody stopped to ask any questions. That was not sea-style then. But just as naturally as two ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
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... in black turned aside and covered her face with her hands. A perceptible shiver of emotion, a fluttering sigh such as steals over a pine-wood toward dawn ran through all ranks. Far to the south-east a speck of light now showed, which grew in intensity as it came swiftly nearer, and seemed presently to be a ball of vivid fire surrounded by a shroud of lit vapour. Again, as by a common consent, the crowd parted, stood ranked, with an open ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
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... tiny bird, A shining speck at sleepy dawn, Forgets the ant-hill so absurd, This self-important Buffalo. Descending twenty miles away He bathes his wings at break ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
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... suh; hit used to be 'bout twenty-five mile, but ev'ything's gone up so I speck hit's 'bout ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
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... remember to have seen elsewhere. For instance, the tiger-lilies in the garden here must be above ten feet high, every bloom faultless, and, what strikes me as peculiar, every leaf on the stalk from bottom to top as perfect as if no insect existed to spoil them by a notch or speck. . . . ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
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... behind him, on either hand, the forest of houses stretched away almost to infinity. The thought of it was as crushing as that of interstellar distances, of the pathless void into which God threw a handful of dust and then quietly ordained that each speck should be a sun and the pivot ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
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... "There isn't a speck of privacy in the house!" flared Rosemary. "I think I might buy something once in a while that the whole family didn't have to see. And no one has to come straight home from school, except me. If I'm an hour late, Aunt Trudy always wants ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
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... misery till the end of time.' And of a sudden from out her shoulders grew black, shadowy wings, and, with a piercing scream, she swirled upward, until the awe-stricken Dedannans saw nought save a black speck vanish among the lowering clouds. And as a demon of the air do Eva's black wings swirl her through space ...
— Celtic Tales - Told to the Children • Louey Chisholm
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... clothed in "this muddy vesture of decay," is in the eye of God and reason, a purer essence than the brightest sun that lights the depths of heaven. The organized human eye, instinct with life and soul, which, gazing through the telescope, travels up to the cloudy speck in the handle of Orion's sword, and bids it blaze forth into a galaxy as vast as ours, stands higher in the order of being than all that host of luminaries. The intellect of Newton which discovered the law that holds the revolving worlds together, is a nobler work ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett
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... obtaining a meridional altitude; and after getting the very best result he could under the very difficult conditions prevailing, he casually lowered the telescope and swept it round the horizon. Suddenly a speck seemed to flash by, and a vehement hope as suddenly arose. Then he brought the telescope slowly back, and there it was again, and accompanied this [Page 128] time by two smaller specks on either side of it. Without a shadow of doubt it was the depot ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
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... no salvation on either side. No glory awaits the Southern Confederacy, even if it does achieve its independence; it will be a mere speck in the world, with no weight or authority. The North confesses itself lost without us, and has paid an unheard-of ransom to regain us. On the other hand, conquered, what hope is there in this world for us? Broken in health and fortune, reviled, contemned, abused by ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
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... nor handling the Word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God' (2 Cor 4:2). All these sentences are chiefly to be applied to doctrine, and so are, as it were, an offer to any, if they can, to find a speck, or a spot, or a wrinkle, or any such thing in this river of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
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... stood open, as it had been flung by the shock, and I was now able to locate the sounds of the screaming. They came from the cabin beyond, which I knew to be Mademoiselle's. I guided myself as well as I could to the door giving access to the corridor and unlocked it. As I did so a speck of light gleamed in the darkness and arrested me. It enlarged and emerged upon me till it took the shape of a candle, and underneath it I beheld the capable face of the French ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
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... soon as his head appeared above the water, and he began to swim as tranquilly as if he had been bathing in the lake of the old castle. Happily the moon was rising. Yvon saw, at a little distance, a black speck among the silvery waves—it was land. He approached it, not without difficulty, and finally succeeded in gaining a foothold. Dripping wet, exhausted with fatigue, and out of breath, he dragged himself on the sand, then, without ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
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... under him. There was a water-hole a little to the east of the way we had come, and toward that I tried to head. One of the mules gave out, and staggered and groaned, and tried to get up again. I remember hearing him squeal, once; it was horrible. He lay there, a little black speck on the desert. Whitney and I didn't speak to each other at all, but I thought of those two kegs of water he had upset. Have you ever been thirsty—mortally thirsty, until you feel your tongue black in your mouth? It's queer what it does to you. Do you remember ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
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... a Mediterranean steamer, looking at a town in Algeria or Tunis. And beyond, under the low-hanging stars, was the Mexican desert—a blank page, with only here and there the obscurity of a garden, or a hacienda, or a mere speck which would be a lonely casa built ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
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... forget, never, I know! Twenty-five years are over and gone to-night, and the close, unrivalled companionship of them, and I am alone from now on—but you'll not forget!) and then they turned to each other and I was no more than a speck on the evening water. "Put your back into it, man; get along, can't you?" I growled to Caliban. We shot ahead and left them to each other, alone under the heavy, yellow moon and ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
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... window open; I could see the folk running and dancing over the ice; I could see the gay-colored flags, I could hear the boys shout 'Hurra!' and the girls and lads a-singing. All were so merry; and all the time the white cloud with its black speck rose higher and higher! I screamed as loud as I could; but no one heard me, I was too far off. Soon would the storm break loose, the ice would break in pieces, and all that crowd would sink and drown. Hear me they could not; get out to them I could not; what was to be done? Then our Lord sent ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
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... exclamations, murmured at intervals, and followed by chest-drawn sighs, expressed a deep preoccupation. With regard to his boots, he need have had no anxiety. They were of the shiniest patent leather, much too tight, and without a speck of dust upon them. But his nervousness infected me with a cruel dread. All those eyes were going to watch how we comported ourselves in jumping from the landing-steps into the boat! If this operation, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
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... present aspect of our affairs, that may change from moment to moment during the course of your session or after you shall have separated. Our duty is, therefore, to act upon things as they are and to make a reasonable provision for whatever they may be. Were armies to be raised whenever a speck of war is visible in our horizon, we never should have been without them. Our resources would have been exhausted on dangers which have never happened, instead of being reserved for what is really to take place. A steady, perhaps a quickened, pace in preparations for the defense of our seaport ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson
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... spot, n. speck, speckle, mark, blot, discoloration, fleck, dapple, blotch, smutch; stain, reproach, blemish, flaw; place, locality; areola, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
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... what a speck thou art in comparison with the Universe?—-That is, with respect to the body; since with respect to Reason, thou art not inferior to the Gods, nor less than they. For the greatness of Reason is not measured by length or height, but ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
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... species was suspended over the water, its rapidly vibrating wings showing like a mere film, a speck shot down the valley, swift as an arrow, as white as a snowflake, and stopping suddenly over the pool, startled the emerald-throat, and frightened it up amongst the overhanging branches. The intruder was the white-cap (Microchera parvirostris, ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
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... "There isn't a speck anywhere, is there?" he observed. "It is just as it used to be, just as I used to think of it when I was laid up over there. When I wanted to try and eat a bit, so as to keep what strength I had, I would think about this kitchen of yours, Rachel. It didn't do to think of ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
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... after the thought of death the most familiar thought is the decay of the bodily vesture. The first grey hair may seem to us an amusing accident, but very few years will pass before another and yet another appear, and if these do not succeed in reminding us that decay has begun, a black speck on a tooth cannot fail to do so; and when we go to the dentist to have it stopped we have begun to repair artificially the falling structure. The activity of youth soon passes, and its slenderness. I remember still the shock I felt on hearing an athlete say that he could no longer run races of ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
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... she is hungry, and said that if I continued to go about "like a snail in a dream" whenever she fetched me to carry her things on these short expeditions, she would leave me in the hotel to mend her clothes; whereupon I became actually servile in my ministrations. I brushed a microscopic speck of dust off her gown; I pushed in a hairpin; I tucked up a flying end of veil; I straightened her toque, and made myself altogether indispensable; for the bare idea of being left behind was a box ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
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... created circular, misty auras about the deck-lights. The tarpaulined donkey-engine beneath the after-cargo booms rattled as the Vandalia's stern sank into a hollow, and the beat of the engines was muffled and deeper. A speck of white froth glinted on the black surface and ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
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... ships," said Nathanael. "See what numbers of them—numbers, yet how few they seem!—are moving up and down on this highway of all nations. Look, Agatha, at that one, a mere speck, dipping ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
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... ask why. He was engrossed in brushing a speck of mud from his sleeve, and she was not sure that he ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
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... that are to take life and grow, shoot up into ears, and give more corn again; so it is throughout all the earth where corn is sown. Palestine, America, the valleys of Norway itself—a great wide world, and here is Isak, a tiny speck in the midst of it all, a sower. Little showers of corn flung out fanwise from his hand; a kindly clouded sky, with a promise of the ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
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... deficient in colour at all times, but feebler than common in the rich sunshine, and more like the coat of a sandy tortoise-shell cat; with long nails, nicely pared and sharpened; with a natural antipathy to any speck of dirt, which made him pause sometimes and watch the falling motes of dust, and rub them off his smooth white hand or glossy linen: Mr Carker the Manager, sly of manner, sharp of tooth, soft of foot, watchful of eye, oily of tongue, cruel ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
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... by the reverence of his manner, and I felt myself in the presence of my Maker,—a mere speck amid his vast creations. An ineffaceable impression was made on my mind, young as I was. My father died many years ago, while I was still a child, but the lesson of that hour has ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various
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... extending to the east as far as the eye could reach. Soon after the morning sun began to flood that ocean of waving flowers with its rays, the keen eye of Carson discerned in the extreme east, a small speck, like the sail of a ship at sea. He watched it, it moved. Slowly it increased in size. It soon developed itself into the front of a numerous band of warriors. His anxiety was great. It was not wise to attempt flight over the ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
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... half-a-dozen voices. "Yes," continued he; "Aunt Winny teld me I is to hab de prettiest yaller gal in town, and dat I is to be free." All eyes were immediately turned toward Sally Johnson, who was seated near Sarn. "I speck I see somebody blush at dat remark," said Alfred. "Pass dem pancakes and molasses up dis way, Mr. Alf, and none of your insinawaysion here," rejoined Sam. "Dat reminds me," said Currer, "dat Doreas Simpson is gwine to git married." ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
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... accord, ran out through the engineers' quarters to the open. It was now dark. Little fires dotted the hillsides. A dull red speck, like an ember, showed over the roof, darkened, and disappeared. Then a streak of fire shot out from the black slope and sped ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
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... unable to understand his being, much less the unity of all life, felt himself absolutely dependent on blind, hidden forces ever ready to mock and taunt him. Out of that attitude grew the religious concepts of man as a mere speck of dust dependent on superior powers on high, who can only be appeased by complete surrender. All the early sagas rest on that idea, which continues to be the LEIT-MOTIF of the biblical tales dealing with the relation of man to God, ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
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... Allston's picture of Elijah in the Wilderness, where a good deal of research at last enables us to guess at the prophet absconded like a conundrum in the landscape where the very ravens could scarce have found him out, except by divine commission. The figure of Milton becomes but a speck on the enormous canvas crowded with the scenery through which he may by any possibility be conjectured to have passed. I will cite a single example of the desperate straits to which Mr. Masson is reduced in order to hitch Milton on to his own biography. He devotes the first chapter ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
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... time by attempting to weld dirty or wet lead surfaces, because time cannot be saved by doing so, and you run the risk of being injured if hot lead is thrown into your face. Remove absolutely every speck of dirt—you will soon learn that it is the only way to ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
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... previous description. He was as clean and refreshing looking as a madrono-tree in the dust-blown forest. An odor of scented soap and freshly ironed linen was wafted from him; there was scarcely a crease in his white waistcoat, nor a speck upon his varnished shoes. He might have been an auditor of the previous conversation, so quickly and completely did he seem to take in the whole situation at a glance. Perhaps there was an extra tilt to his black-ribboned Panama hat, and a certain ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
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... singing a second song, something happened. A light speck was seen moving through the air. It came nearer and nearer. At last it circled round the pen, where the grain was scattered. Then it flew slowly to the ground. It was ...
— Five Little Friends • Sherred Willcox Adams
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... excitement grew in her pulse by pulse, as the excitement grows in a man waiting for a friend at a station; he sees first the faint smoke like a cloud on the skyline, and then a black speck beneath the smoke, and next the engine draws up on him with a humming of the rails which grows ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
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... located. A serious discussion was held on the train about going to the front and the dangers were depicted quite vividly. We stopped at Chagny, after passing a very old church dating back to the Tenth century. We saw, as we passed along, droves of beautiful white cows, with not a speck of color. ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
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... as he flicked a speck of dust from his sleeve. "I think you will take the easier way. None of these scum will betray you, thinking that you are one of themselves—as I happen to know, some of the best families in Russia are associated ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
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... between the molecules. If a microscope be employed to magnify a minute drop of water it still shows the same lack of structure as that looked at with the unaided eye. If the magnifying power be the highest it may reveal a speck as small as the hundred-thousandth part of an inch, yet the speck looks no different in character. We know that water is composed of two different kinds of atoms, hydrogen and oxygen, for they can ...
— The Machinery of the Universe - Mechanical Conceptions of Physical Phenomena • Amos Emerson Dolbear
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... they were not observed by the lookouts. In all probability no signals were given. The little craft was to be at a certain place at a certain hour,—and she was there! The men who jumped knew that she would be there. A black, tiny speck on the broad expanse of water, sheltered by a night of almost stygian darkness, she lay outside the narrow radius to which visual observation was confined, patiently waiting for the Doraine to pass a designated point. There was to be no miscalculation on the ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
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... suppose you will have seen how England is flooded, and you will like to hear that this tiny speck has escaped. The Lodden is over the park, and turns the beautiful water meadows down to Strathfieldsaye into a no less beautiful lake, two or three times a week; but then it subsides as quickly as it rises, so there is none of the lying under water which ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
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... when we were in Geneva, you know, and we used to call him 'our mountain boy,' saying that he had brought a speck of the mountain skies away ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
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... to the Dents de Loup wound upward like a single filament flung round the mountains by some giant spider. The miniature train, edging its way along the track, appeared no more than a mere speck as it crept tortuously up towards the top. At its rear puffed a small engine, built in a curious tilted fashion, so that as it laboured industriously behind the coaches of the train it reminded one ridiculously of a baby elephant on ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
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... and goes out. Day is breaking; but Captain Boyton is not discernable yet. Over the gray waters one sees through a good glass, the white fringe of surf breaking on the sandy beach, which is lined by a black mass of people behind whom is burning a large bonfire. A speck is at length made out to the right of the boat, 'three points off,' as the white haired old salt on board remarks. The sky gets lighter, the sea deep blue. We can now plainly see the dauntless Captain paddling actively away toward us, riding buoyantly over the swelling ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
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... Stanley," cried Granville; "look! follow that high-flown hawk—that black speck in the clouds. Now! now! right over the heron; and now she will canceleer—turn on her wing, Miss Stanley, as she comes down, whirl round, and balance herself—chanceler. ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
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... about, and clomb Ev'n to the highest he could climb, and saw, Straining his eyes beneath an arch of hand, Or thought he saw, the speck ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
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... on. The Eagle was now a mere blot on the surface of the ocean—a speck of blackness amid a swirl of foam, caused by the waves breaking over the ship and the reef. The wind continued too high to risk raising the sail with which each boat was provided, and it was ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster
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... he heard them not) Hath been greeted with honied words, And his cheeks have been fondled to win a smile By the Privy Council Lords. Will he trust the "charmer" in after years, And deem he is more than man? Or will he feel that he's but a speck In creation's mighty plan? Let us hope the best, and rattle our bell, And shout and laugh, and sing as well— Roo-too-tooit! Shallabella! Life to the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 13, 1841 • Various
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... malaria, we should find in each of these examples an evidence of the degree to which nature, in some few instances, concentrates powerful qualities in minute or subtile forms of matter. But if a man comes to me with a pestle and mortar in his hand, and tells me that he will take a little speck of some substance which nobody ever thought to have any smell at all, as, for instance, a grain of chalk or of charcoal, and that he will, after an hour or two of rubbing and scraping, develop in a portion of it an ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
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... the shore a heron flew, And from a speck on high, That hovered in the deepening blue, We heard the ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
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... face and stooped over to flick an imaginary particle of dust from his trousers' leg. There was but one object in their going and he had not dreamed of being asked what it was. He could not be employed forever in brushing away that speck, and yet he could not, to save his life, construct an answer to Veath's question. In the midst of his despair a sudden resolution came, and he looked up, his ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
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