"Spiral" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cranny and knot hole, chirping his fine, high-keyed notes, sometimes in a querulous tone, and again in the most cheerful and good-natured temper imaginable, now gliding up a tree trunk, now scudding down head foremost, anon circling in a spiral course. ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... rumours became prevalent amongst the men concerning Hunter's condition. He had 'broken his spiral column', he had 'conjunction of the brain', or he had injured his 'innards' and would probably never be able to 'do no more slave-drivin''. Crass—who had helped Mr Rushton to 'price up' several small jobs—began to think it might not be altogether a bad thing ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... and his eyes sparkled with delight, as he held up by the line what seemed to be a good-sized fish, of five or six pounds' weight, with a very long brilliantly-coloured eel twined tightly round and round it, in a perfect spiral, several feet in length. ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... the nearest church to where you live, and multiply that height by the necessary number, you will get some idea of the magnitude of this prodigious column. The lightning rod, that came down the side of it in a spiral line, looked like a spider's web that had been, by chance, blown against the chimney ...
— Rollo in Scotland • Jacob Abbott
... propeller of this consisted of a strong centrifugal pump, with vertical axis, actuated by a low pressure engine. This pump sucked water into a perforated channel at the bottom of the boat, and forced it through a spiral pipe to the propelling tubes. These latter consisted of two elbowed pipes issuing from the sides of the vessel and capable of pivoting in the exhaust ports in such a way as to each turn its mouth ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... on its bilateral debt, leading to a cancellation of rescheduling agreements with official and private creditors. Devaluation of its Francophone currency by 50% in January 1994 did not set off an expected inflationary spiral but the government must continue to keep a tight reign on spending ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... is one of these jays mounting from branch to branch around the stem of a pine tree, from the lower limbs to the top, as if he were ascending a spiral staircase. This seems to be one of their regulation habits when they find themselves under inspection. If you intrude on their domestic precincts, their cry is quite harsh, and bears no resemblance to the quaint calls of the eastern ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... of the corridor I found a spiral stairway leading to the floors above and below. The three had evidently left the floor by this avenue. That they had gone down and not up I was sure from my knowledge of these ancient buildings and the methods ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... experience I have had of it, that a superior piece of work was never made) would be better fixed upon a small horizontal table, made on purpose, and well secured; and under the box which contains the watch, a kind of spiral spring or worm, which, with every jerk or pitch of the ship, would yield a little with the weight of the watch, and thereby take off much of that shock which must in some ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... in the room. Jack chanced to rest his hand against it, when he must unconsciously have touched some secret spring, for a secret door opened, dividing the picture in two parts, and, to our hero's unbounded astonishment, he saw before him a small spiral staircase leading ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... was but dimly visible in the shadows beyond the still, where there seemed to be a series of troughs leading a rill of running water down from some farther spring and through the tub in which the spiral worm was coiled. This man had a keen, white, lean face, with an ascetic, abstemious expression, and he looked less like a distiller than some sort of divine—some rustic pietist, with strange theories and unhappy speculations and ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... then have a multitude of brains set free for the exquisite enjoyment of dealing with the exact sequences and high speculations supplied and prompted by the delicate machines which yield a response to the fixed stars, and give readings of the spiral vortices fundamentally concerned in the production of epic poems or great judicial harangues. So far from mankind being thrown out of work according to your notion," concluded Trost, with a peculiar nasal note of scorn, "if it were not for your incurable dilettanteism in science ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... formerly led up to it. To-day the base of the columns of the porch is on a level with the pavement; consequently what was once the ground-floor of the house of which we speak is now its cellar. A portico, reached by a few steps, leads to the entrance of the tower, in which a spiral stairway winds up round a central shaft carved with a grape-vine. This style, which recalls the stairways of Louis XII. at the chateau of Blois, dates from the fourteenth century. Struck by these and other evidences of ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... moment lights up the gray cloth, the border gimp, and Volodya's figure cowering in a corner. At the same moment, directly above our heads, a majestic roar resounds, which seems to rise ever higher and higher, and to spread ever wider and wider, in a vast spiral, gradually gaining force, until it passes into a deafening crash, which causes one to tremble and hold one's breath involuntarily. The wrath of God! how much poetry there is in this conception ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... crackled out from the wood pile, and the air became rich with the smell of burning flesh. And lo! in another moment the cloud above had melted into nothingness, and the flames burnt pale, and the smoke went up in a thin blue spiral towards the ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... base, about fifteen feet at the top of the truncated part, and was designed to be two hundred and twenty feet high; but the mortar and the seams between the stones make the precise height two hundred and twenty-one feet. Within the shaft is a hollow cone, with a spiral stairway winding round it to its summit, which enters a circular chamber at the top. There are ninety courses of stone in the shaft,—six of them below the ground, and eighty-four above the ground. The capstone, or apex, is a single stone four feet square at ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... their cognate families. The entrance to the chantry, was through a little turret at its north-eastern corner, the oaken door of which, studded with quarrel-headed nails, was at one time never opened, but when the priests ascended the six steep and spiral steps, and stood around the tomb to chant ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... surface to oxidation, and to reduce the resistance of the cell, thus increasing the yield of current. The extent of surface is not so important in the case of the copper plate, which is not acted on, and in this case is merely a spiral of wire, helping to keep the solutions apart and the crystals down. The Daniell cell is much employed in telegraphy. The Bunsen cell consists of a zinc plate in sulphuric acid, and at carbon plate in nitric acid, with a porous separator between the liquids. During the ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... A spiral staircase winds like a corkscrew from floor to floor; we ascend by easy stages, through various grades of hunger, from the economic appetite on the first floor, where the plebian stomach is stayed with tea and lentils, even to the very house-top, where are administered comforting syrups ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... appeared, of no great extent. I took the glass, but through it everything presented a wavering appearance, as though the island and all upon it consisted of an infinite number of separate and distinct particles, each revolving in a spiral direction upwards. I called Ella on deck to see the singular phenomenon, for it was a more perfect example of mirage than I had ever before witnessed or could have believed possible. As we continued to gaze upon the curious spectacle, a faint foamy ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... corner to live forgotten or disdained. Why was she not rehearsing there with them? she asked herself. At once the answer came. Because your husband hates you—because he wants to make love to another woman. Then, like one crazed, she clattered down the iron spiral staircase to the stage. She did not even hear Mortimer and Dubois cry out as she ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... folds, but is a triangular stalk with a single envelope with a pith on the inside, which could only be divided into slices with a knife, either in stripes of a width permitted by the sides of the prism, or else shaved round and round, like the operation of cork making, and producing a long spiral shaving. ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... as I have seen him mount till his petty persecutor grew dizzy with the height and returned to earth. But the next day, with a fairly good breeze blowing, I watched two hawks for many minutes climbing their spiral stairway to the skies, till they became very small objects against the clouds, and not once did they flap their wings! Then one of them turned toward the mountain-top and sailed straight into the face of the wind, till he ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... this same time, or in 1835, the attention of Mr. F.P. Smith seems to have been drawn to the subject of the screw-propeller, and we find him taking out a patent for his form, consisting of an elongated helix or spiral of several turns, under date of May 31, 1836. Ericsson's patent followed some six weeks later, or on July 13, 1836. While it thus appears that Ericsson had been studying the problem since 1833 or ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... Then, keeping the central point always in view by means of compasses, from that point he struck "a series of concentric circles about half a finger apart from each other," and with a hammer, beginning at the centre, struck so that the "movement of the hammer shall be in the form of a spiral, and follow the concentric circles." It was important to keep the form very even all round. Then the vase had to be hammered from within, "till it was equally bellied all round," and after that, the neck was ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... nothing like human footsteps appeared, and the horrific crags seemed to bid defiance even to the goat's activity. It looked like an abode only fit for the eagle, though in its crevices some pines darted up their spiral heads; but they only grew near the cascade, everywhere else sterility itself reigned with dreary grandeur; for the huge grey massy rocks, which probably had been torn asunder by some dreadful convulsion of nature, had not even their first covering ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... spanning the whole window, the space between this ogee and the enclosing arch being filled in with more or less ordinary flowing tracery. These two main lights are again much subdivided: at the top is a circle with spiral tracery; below it an arch enclosing an ogee exactly similar to the larger one above, springing from two sub-lights which are again subdivided in exactly the same manner, into circle, sub-arch, ogee and two small lights, so that ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... have long to look at it—not long to search its borders for some sign of the living. The dark came swiftly. As he was about to turn back, he thought he caught a glimpse of a spiral of smoke upon the farther side, but as he stared at this, it faded until he was not sure it had been at all. He took it for a good-night message from her. Then gold and jewels, though they might be within arm's reach, became as nothing before the deep desire which almost dragged his heart from ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... slowly through the long avenues of trees, past mossy marbles and old-time columns, and threading the grove by the bronze lion, came upon the tree-crowned terrace above the fountain. Below lay the basin shining in the sunlight. Flowering almonds encircled the terrace, and, in a greater spiral, groves of chestnuts wound in and out and down among the moist thickets by the western palace wing. At one end of the avenue of trees the Observatory rose, its white domes piled up like an eastern mosque; at the other end stood the heavy palace, with every ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... Nile, Archimedes invented for this purpose the screw which bears his name. It was likewise used as a pump to clear water from the holds of vessels; and the name of Archimedes was held in great veneration by seamen on this account. The screw may be briefly described as a long spiral with its lower extremity immersed in the water, which, rising along the channels by the revolution of the machine on its axis, is discharged at the upper extremity. When applied to the propulsion of steam-vessels the screw ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... occurs sometimes in flexure, especially with dry material. The tension portion of the fracture is nearly the same as though the piece were pulled in two lengthwise. The fibre walls are torn across obliquely and usually in a spiral direction. There is practically no pulling apart of the fibres, that is, no separation of the fibres along their walls, regardless of their thickness. The nature of tension failure is apparently not affected by the moisture condition of the specimen, at least not so much ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record
... attention an ant which was making a laborious spiral ascent of his cane. Not until it had gained a vantage point on the bone handle did ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... several dark dungeons, and passing through a number of great apartments stacked with guns. It was a relief to gain the main part of the building, where other people were, and plenty of warmth and sunlight. Their spirits rose, and they laughed and joked while climbing the narrow, spiral stairs. ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... chief characteristic, was delicately tinted to-night on either cheek so as to emulate the early blushes of Aurora. Her colorless hair, of a tint so neutral as to defy description, curling in light spiral ringlets so as to drop profusely on her bosom, had been richly powdered with gold-dust for this occasion, and glistened like the sunlight, or, to fall in my comparison, the tresses of Lucretia Borgia, ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... and went, entered the pigeon-house and left in agitated manner, cooing loudly; they circled above the dwelling, sought the trees, alighted on the thatch of the cabin, descended to earth in spiral flight. ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... space that it is impossible with the most powerful of telescopes to define their stellar structure; all that can be distinguished of these is a cloudy luminosity resembling in appearance an irresolvable nebula. Globular clusters usually present a radiated appearance. Rays, branches, and spiral-shaped streams of stars appear to flow from the circumference of some; and, in other instances, fantastic appendages of stars project outwards from the parent cluster. There doubtless exists much variety in ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... right angles. This action breaks an electric current which has traversed a second electro-magnet F (Fig. 2), and releases the iron armature N of the lever NP, pivoted at P, thus enabling a strong spiral spring G to lift a stout brass wire L out of mercury, and to break at the surface of the mercury a strong current that has circulated round the primary circuit of a Ruhmkorff's induction coil; this produces at ...
— The Splash of a Drop • A. M. Worthington
... and round, one fold upon another, which gradually increased to the size of my wrist in the middle, and then as gradually decreased till it terminated in a point again at the contrary extreme; all which spiral, if it were fairly extended in length, might be a yard or an ell long. I surveyed this strange vegetable very attentively; it had a rind, or crust, which I could not break with my hand, but taking my knife and making an ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... an attendant, and scattered a quantity of it before the coop. Close at his elbow stood the augur, to interpret the omen,—a weazened, bald-headed old senator, who wore a purple-striped tunic,[138] and carried in his hand a long stick,[139] curved at its head into a spiral. Drusus knew perfectly well that the fowls had been kept without food all that day; but it would have seemed treason to all the traditions of his native land to cry out against this pompous farce. The hungry chickens pecked up the grain. The augur muttered formula ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... twelve millions of a king. Every one, from the highest to the lowest degree, has his place on the social ladder, and is beset by stormy passions and conflicting interests, as in Descartes' theory of pressure and impulsion. But these forces increase as we go higher, so that we have a spiral which in defiance of reason rests upon the apex and not on the base. Now let us return to your particular world. You say you were on the point of being made captain of ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... grace of the eagle and the speed of the wind. It was so very large that it seemed, to Chick, that if all the other birds he had ever known were gathered together into one they would still be as the swallow. Down, down it came in a tremendous spiral, until it gracefully alighted in a splash of molten colour on the bosom of the silver sea. For a moment it was lost in a shower of water jewels—and then lay still, ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... and characteristics of the syphilis microbe were not positively determined until in 1905, Schaudinn, of Germany, convinced the medical world that it was a spiral, corkscrew-like organism, from a quarter to one millimeter in thickness, and from four to twelve millimeters in length. It is not so discriminating as the gonococcus in its points of inoculation, nor is it as vulnerable to attack; and it is vastly more destructive to the tissues invaded. It ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... heard?" As they huddled in the shelter of the monument she brooded over the plain below wherein the canal, livid, yet unfrozen still, half girdled the town in a serpentine fold. Each chimney curled a light spiral into the nipping air. "Under every one a wagging tongue," she said. "It's known to ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... for, though the sun blazed with a splendour they had never before seen, the firmament was intensely black, and the stars shone as at midnight. Here they began to change their course to a curve beginning with a spiral, by charging the Callisto apergetically, and directing the current towards the moon, to act as an aid to the lunar attraction, while still allowing the earth to repel, and their motion gradually became the resultant of the two forces, the change from a straight line being so gradual, ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... bacillus causing an animal disease which is 1/2000 of an inch in length and 1/25000 of an inch in diameter. Among the free-living non-pathogenic forms much larger examples are found. In shape bacteria are round, or rod-shaped, or spiral; the round forms are called micrococci, the rod-shaped bacilli and the spiral forms are called spirilli. A clearer idea of the size is possibly given by the calculation that a drop of water would contain one billion micrococci of the usual size. Their structure in a general way conforms ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... specimens of the spiral or coiled basketry, all the features of which are shown in Fig. 536, except the ...
— Illustrated Catalogue Of The Collections Obtained From The Indians Of New Mexico And Arizona In 1879 • James Stevenson
... this varied swinging was that the black column of vapor which slowly climbed the sky, was broken into circles, spiral curves, and all sorts of odd-shaped figures, which did not dissolve for several minutes in ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... afternoons the cafe is filled with its habitues—distinguished old Frenchmen, who sip their absinthe leisurely enough to glance over the leading articles in the conservative Temps or the slightly gayer Figaro. Upstairs, by means of a spiral stairway, is a labyrinth of narrow, low-ceiled corridors leading to half a dozen stuffy little cabinets particuliers, about whose faded lambrequins and green velveted chairs there still lurks the scent of perfumes once in vogue with the gallants, beaux ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... finished her oats, Malcolm left her busy with her hay, for she was a huge eater, and went into the house, passing through the kitchen and ascending a spiral stone stair to the library—the only room not now dismantled. As he went along the narrow passage on the second floor leading to it from the head of the stair, the housekeeper, Mrs Courthope, peeped after him from one of the many bedrooms ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... was thrust through, an arm followed, and she could hear the blade ring and scrape as it was used to feel for the fastenings, clicking loudly against the ironwork and the chain which hung at the side ready for hanging across the door, to pass over a spiral hook on ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... danger of the whip becoming broken off, and the broken part lodging in the oesophagus. Neither should such rigid objects as a broom or rake handle be introduced, because of the danger from serious injury to the walls of the pharynx and oesophagus. The flexible probang, which is usually made of spiral wire covered with leather, is a very useful instrument to relieve choke when in the hands of an experienced operator. If the object causing the choke is situated in the neck portion of the oesophagus, it may ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... another room for the album, and Panshine, finding himself alone, took a cambric handkerchief out of his pocket, rubbed his nails and looked sideways at his hands. They were very white and well shaped; on the second finger of the left hand he wore a spiral gold ring. ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... dad," said the young inventor as he re-entered the library a few minutes later, "when you warp the wing tips in making a spiral ascent it throws your tail wings out of plumb, ...
— Tom Swift and his Sky Racer - or, The Quickest Flight on Record • Victor Appleton
... cement, oil refining and transshipment, salt production, rum, aragonite, pharmaceuticals, spiral-welded ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... of buildings like an inverted L. The basement was occupied by domestic offices: at the angle of the [inverted L] was the main entrance. On your right, and much nearer to you than the main entrance, a door opened on a narrow spiral staircase, so dark that it was called the ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... seemed as if no human step had ever disturbed its solitude. Six or eight rugged stairs brought the knight into a low but spacious apartment, from which there was no apparent exit except by an arched doorway, where the commencement of a spiral ascent was visible, leading almost perpendicularly into the secret room of the widow Hays' small hostelry, in which our acquaintance Jack Roupall and his friends had been concealed, and which, it may be here stated, served other purposes than to afford ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... a narrow spiral staircase to the top of the tower, from whence we had a fine view over the whole of the bay and the surrounding shores. On the summit are the remnants of a lantern which was formerly used as a beacon for the benefit of mariners entering ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... the DISENGAGEMENT contact with the opponent's rifle is abandoned and the point of the bayonet is circled under or over his bayonet or rifle and directed into the opening attacked. This attack is delivered by one continuous spiral movement of the bayonet from the moment ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... very large screw, the thread of which was a thin plate, two feet broad, applied by its edge spirally round a small axis. It somewhat resembled a bottle-brush, if you will suppose the hairs of the bottle-brush joining together, and forming a spiral plane. This, turned on its axis in the air, carried the vessel across the Seine. It is, in fact, a screw which takes hold of the air and draws itself along by it: losing, indeed, much of its effort by the yielding nature of the body it lays hold of, to pull itself on by. I think ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... came upon a spiral runway leading to a lower floor, and this I followed downward for several stories until I reached the doorway of a large apartment in which were a number of guardsmen. The walls of this room were hung with transparent tapestries behind which I ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the strand, there are groups of Sonneratia[1], Avicennia, Heritiera, and Pandanus; the latter with a stem like a dwarf palm, round which the serrated leaves ascend in spiral convolutions till they terminate in a pendulous crown, from which drop the amber clusters of beautiful but uneatable fruit, with a close resemblance in shape and colour to that of the pineapple, from which, and from the peculiar ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... us, however, that all things move in an ascending spiral. We do in order to be. What we are bears unconscious fruit in what we do. A woman who is cultivated in the true sense exerts a constant influence for good. One rich woman says, "I will not live to myself," and gives clothing to ragged ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... probably are more species of microorganisms than all other living things combined, yet we often can't identify one species from another similar one by their appearance. We can generally classify bacteria by shape: round ones, rod-shaped ones, spiral ones, etc. We differentiate them by which antibiotic kills them and by which variety of artificial material they prefer to grow on. Pathogens are recognized by their prey. Still, most microbial activities remain a ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... manufacture their pipes of a lump of clay and a green twig, from which they extract the pith. They all grow tobacco, the leaves of which they twist up into a thick rope like a hay-band, and then coil it into a flattened spiral, shaped like a target. They are very fond of dancing. A long strip of bark or cow-skin is laid on the ground, and the Weezee arrange themselves along it, the tallest man posting himself in the centre. When they have taken their places the musicians begin playing on their instruments, while the ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... more extraordinary still. There was a mast set up in the ground, thirty or forty feet high. At the ground, ten feet from the foot of the mast, there commenced an inclined plane, formed of a plank about a foot or eighteen inches wide, which ascended in a spiral direction round and round the mast till it reached the top. A man ascended this plane by means of a large ball, about two feet in diameter, which he rolled up standing upon it, and rolling it by stepping continually on the ascending side. There ...
— Rollo in Paris • Jacob Abbott
... visible emotion or speech; but there was an utter tumult, a tumult like the spiral of a hurricane, within him. Rebellious feelings, tyrannical desires and thoughts, swept through him in waves of heat and cold. Nettie's voice grew weak, the shadows deepened under her eyes, for a little they ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... came into the light of a long narrow loophole in the wall. Then from the darkness above came the sharp crack of a revolver, and the man fell on his face, shot through the heart. Another crack, and the next shared his fate. Then there was a pause, for the spiral was so sharp that not more than two at a time were within sight of the ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... village had its common Maypole, gaily adorned with wreaths and flags and ribbons, and sometimes painted in spiral lines of colour. The Welsh Maypoles seem to have been made from birch-trees, elms were used in Cornwall, and young oaks in other parts of England. Round these Maypoles the young villagers danced, and green booths were often set up on the ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... that the civilisation of his day must again relapse into barbarism and the cycle begin again. He did not himself state this conclusion directly or venture on any prediction. It is obvious how readily his doctrine could be adapted to the conception of Progress as a spiral movement. Evidently the corresponding periods in his cycles are not identical or really homogeneous. Whatever points of likeness may be discovered between early Greek or Roman and medieval societies, the points of unlikeness are still more numerous and manifest. ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... and wan, See you wretched beggar-man; Once a father's hopeful heir, Once a mother's tender care. When too young to understand, He but scorched his little hand, By the candle's flaming light Attracted—dancing, spiral, bright. Clasping fond her darling round, A thousand kisses healed the wound, Now abject, stooping, old and wan, No mother tends ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... stock-corral. And at the edge of the clearing was another building, long and very low, with one single door and several little square windows. A stove-pipe protruded from the far end of this house, and from it rose a thin spiral of smoke. ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... end. Round! Yes, they went round and up, and round and up and round and up, until I could not help surmising, with the sagacious Pompey, upon whose supporting arm I leaned in all the confidence of early affection—I could not help surmising that the upper end of the continuous spiral ladder had been accidentally, or perhaps designedly, removed. I paused for breath; and, in the meantime, an accident occurred of too momentous a nature in a moral, and also in a metaphysical point of view, to be passed ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... slope above the city, where cattle and horses were grazing, and listened for this minstrel from the motherland. We had not long to wait. Sure enough, not far from us there sprang from the turf Shelley's bird, and went climbing his invisible spiral toward the sky, pouring out those hurried, ecstatic notes, just as I had heard him above the South Downs of England. It was a moment of keen delight to me. The bird soared and hovered, drifting about, as it were, ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... fire, and went to sleep. He was up again at dawn. At two o'clock he came into the clearing about Lac Bain. As he hurried to Breed's quarters he wondered if Colonel Becker or Isobel had seen him from their window. He had noticed that the curtain was up, and that a thin spiral of smoke was rising from the clay chimney that descended to the fireplace ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... disturbed in a circular space of about six yards in diameter, the centre of which, from the whirling of the water round it, formed a hollow; and from the outer part of the circle the water was thrown up with much force in a spiral direction, and could be traced to the height of fifteen or twenty feet. At this elevation we lost sight of it and could see nothing of its junction with the column above. It is impossible to say what injury ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... enough in it in the sunlight. It shines like a buttercup in the grass. You know the plant. When it fades—and I ask whether you think Philostratus looks like a bud—when it fades, it leaves a hollow spiral ball which a child's breath could blow away. Suppose in future we should call the round buttercup seed-vessels 'Philostratus heads'? You like the suggestion? I am glad, fellow-citizens, and I thank you. It proves your good taste. Then we will stick to the comparison. Every head contains ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... sea. While it was slightly disturbed on the surface by the passage of the Euphrosyne, beneath it was green and dim, and it grew dimmer and dimmer until the sand at the bottom was only a pale blur. One could scarcely see the black ribs of wrecked ships, or the spiral towers made by the burrowings of great eels, or the smooth green-sided monsters who came by flickering this way ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... orders to do some spiral and somersault stunts for the benefit of some huns." ("Hun," used in this connection, not referring to the Germans. "Hun" is the slang term for student aviators, tacked on them ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... his curled black walnut bed, without drapery, and set, like a French couch, low on three pairs of spiral legs, was a deep cushioned chair into which he sank and dragged off his sodden buckskin breeches. The room wavered and blurred in his weary vision—squat, rush-bottomed Dutch chairs seemed to revolve about a table with apparently a hundred ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... of crooked brass.—Ver. 98. 'Cornu' seems to have been a general name for the horn or trumpet; whereas the "tuba" was a straight trumpet, while the 'lituus' was bent into a spiral shape. Lydus says that the 'lituus' was the sacerdotal trumpet, and that it was employed by Romulus when he proclaimed the title of his newly-founded city. Acro says that it was peculiar to the cavalry, while the 'tuba' belonged to the infantry. The notes of the 'lituus' ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... come to a new phase of coastal scenery. From the high land above us green scrub-covered spur after spur shoots downward to the shore, enclosing numerous little beaches of coarse sand and many coloured spiral shells—"Reddies" we boys called them—with here and there a rare and beautiful cowrie of banded jet black and pearly white. The sea-wall of rock has here but few pools, being split up into long, deep, and narrow chasms, into which the gentle ocean swell comes with ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... flight of the first piece of human machinery heavier than air that ever kept itself up for any length of time. It was a model, a little affair that would not have lifted a cat; it went up in a spiral and came down unsmashed, bringing back, like Noah's dove, the promise ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... since it does the rectifying. It is a sort of check valve that permits current to flow through the charging circuit in one direction only. In appearance the bulb, see Figure 49, resembles somewhat an ordinary incandescent bulb. In the bulb is a short tungsten filament wound in the form of a tight spiral, and supported between two lead-in wires. Close to the filament is a graphite disk which serves as one of the electrodes. Figure 50 shows the operating principle of the Tungar. "B" is the bulb, containing the filament "F" and the graphite electrode "A." To serve as a rectifier the ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... farther end of this room, in a corner, was a spiral-staircase, coming, evidently, from some pulled-down shop, and bought in the rue Chapon by Cadenet, who had fitted it through the ceiling into the room in the entresol occupied by Cerizet. In order to prevent all communication with the ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... Trampies, the pirates, the plagiarists, those plagues of the profession. Certainly, there were great bill-toppers, creators of sensations who discovered new things—terrifying feats of gyroscopic balancing, or flights through space, based upon principles of ballistics, assisted by the spiral spring—daring risk-alls, nerve-shakers, purveyors of thrills, turning to intelligent account the seductive power which dangerous feats exercise upon the public. Jimmy knew all about that. He was not the only one; but, this time, it was a question of a scientific ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... principle, and only applicable to rough determinations. It consists of a series of rings made of alloys which have slightly different melting-points. These are strung upon a rod, which is pushed into the medium to be measured, and are pressed together by a spiral spring. As soon as any one of the rings begins to soften under the heat, it is squeezed together by the pressure, and, as it melts, it is completely squeezed out and disappears. The rod is then made to rise by the thickness of the melted ring, and a simple apparatus shows at any moment the number ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... clock stood in the corner between the fireplace and the first window, and gave out a steady deep tock. The carpet was a soft Indian rug of fine texture and many colors, red, blue, and gold predominating. Most surprisingly, a steep spiral staircase of polished wood came down into the room in the right-hand corner near where Chris stood, and Chris wondered for a moment, if Mr. Wicker's voice had come from the ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... looks like a bow of bamboo strung with wire. The wire, however, is twisted into a corkscrew spiral. On this spiral a pair of tiny birds are suspended by a metal loop. When the bow is held perpendicularly with the birds at the upper end of the string, they descend whirling by their own weight, as if circling round one another; and the twittering of two birds is ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... spiral marble staircase of the tower, the Rajah leading, and passed the guards at the foot without a word. Gerrard noticed that they did not leave the tower by the carved marble gateway through which they had entered, but by a smaller door at the back, which gave access to a shaded terrace looking over ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... strengthening of these piers, effected piecemeal by partial reconstruction of the piers themselves and by laying a durable substratum of cement right down to the chalk. The fine ring of eight bells was rehung. Visitors will find the ascent of the spiral staircase long and arduous, but will be rewarded by the almost unrivalled view from between the merlons ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... by a familiar catch. Ask a friend to define the word "spiral." He will find it difficult to express the meaning in words. And nine persons out of ten while groping for appropriate words will unconsciously describe a spiral in the air with ...
— Psychology and Achievement • Warren Hilton
... astray Of his last hope, and lays him down to die. The children, riotous from school, grow bold And quarrel with the wind, whose angry gust Plucks off the summer hat, and flaps the fold Of many a crimson cloak, and twirls the dust In spiral shapes grotesque, and dims the gold Of gleaming tresses with the blur ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... up an easy, spiral flight of steps, to the door of a room, which he threw open. Cornelia was sitting in a large cushioned chair by the fire, with a papier-mache writing-desk beside her, covered with letters. There was a bright fire in the grate, and the ruddy haze, together ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... jets of spiral smoke, and crack, crack, went two rifles, while simultaneously with the report, fell back into the boat, the perforated forage cap. Both balls had passed through it, and lodged in the heart of the tree to which the skiff was moored, ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... resolute to take the plunge. In other places the banks are almost on a level with the water; so that the quiet congregation of trees set their feet in the flood, and are Fringed with foliage down to the surface. Cardinal-flowers kindle their spiral flames and illuminate the dark nooks among the shrubbery. The pond-lily grows abundantly along the margin,—that delicious flower which, as Thoreau tells me, opens its virgin bosom to the first sunlight and perfects its being through the magic of that genial kiss. He has beheld beds of them ...
— The Old Manse (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Bowman represents the Burden Bearers. This, with the Bowman, is the work of H. A. MacNeil. The spiral of ships ascending the shaft symbolizes the upward course of man's progress. Around the base is the frieze by Isidor Konti, on three sides striving human figures, on the fourth celestial trumpeters announcing victory. The ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... breeze That issues from beneath Aurora's car, Shudder the sombrous waves; at every beam More vivid, more by every breath impelled, Higher and higher up the fretted rocks Their turbulent refulgence they display. Madness, which like the spiral element The more it seizes on the fiercer burns, Hurried them blindly forward, and involved In flame the senses and in gloom the soul. Determined to protect the country's gods And asking their protection, they adjure Each other to stand forward, ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... you shall see it any day. Neither will I pretend that I am so unused to the more perishable smoking contrivance, that a few whiffs would make me feel as if I lay in a groundswell on the Bay of Biscay. I am not unacquainted with that fusiform, spiral-wound bundle of chopped stems and miscellaneous incombustibles, the cigar, so called, of the shops,—which to "draw" asks the suction-power of a nursling infant Hercules, and to relish, the leathery palate of an old ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... large ball, which made a clean, pretty hole, without tearing. "Now," he explained kindly to Lawrence, "the ball from one of these infernal rifled concerns goes gyrating and tearing its way through you, and makes an orifice like a posthole." He illustrated his meaning with a sweeping spiral motion of ...
— "George Washington's" Last Duel - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... per minute in a small sulphuric acid wash bottle. A mercury manometer is introduced here, and is useful for detecting a leak in the apparatus. The rate of flow that gives the most satisfactory results is 1,000 c.c. per hour. If too rapid it does not become sufficiently preheated in the glass spiral, and if too slow there is a more rapid decomposition of the nitro-cellulose by the oxides of nitrogen which are ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... lower, often at the foot of the tree, and passed jauntily up the winding way that led to them, hopping from branch to branch, pausing on each, and circling the trunk as he went; now showing his trim violet-blue coat, now his demure Quaker-drab vest and black necklace; and so he ascended his spiral stair. ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... it has been replied, that motion is the normal condition of matter; arising from the force of gravitation, acting in and upon the various bodies composing the universe; and mathematical calculations have been attempted to show how vortices, and spiral motions, could be produced by the force of gravitation, and the mutual resistances of the atoms ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... hyperspace instruments put in place. The hypership Andromeda was back from the Gamma System; there was close secrecy about what the expedition had found, but the newscasts were full of conjectures about Merlin, and the market went into another dizzy upward spiral. Litchfield Exploration & Salvage opened a huge munitions depot, and combat equipment, once almost unsalable, was selling as fast as it came out. The Government was buying some, but by ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... As Maurice descended the spiral stair, he said to himself that, no matter how long he remained in Leipzig, he would never trouble Schwarz with his presence again. The man was a loose-mouthed bully. But in future he might seek out others to be the butt of his clumsy wit. He, Maurice, was too good for that.—And squaring his shoulders, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... solitude or by monastic fears. A silver chain set in motion, by means of invisible wires, a bell placed at the bed's head of a faithful servitor. The count now pulled the chain, and the boots and spurs of the man on duty sounded on the stone steps of a spiral staircase, placed in the tall tower which flanked the western corner of the ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... ceiling, a noiseless rapid fan pumps air out of the room. The air enters by a Tobin shaft. There is a recess dressing-room, equipped with a bath and all that is necessary to one's toilette, and the water, one remarks, is warmed, if one desires it warm, by passing it through an electrically heated spiral of tubing. A cake of soap drops out of a store machine on the turn of a handle, and when you have done with it, you drop that and your soiled towels and so forth, which also are given you by machines, into a little box, through the bottom of which they drop at once, and sail ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... fine mansion, finer than Drake Hill, and the hall made me think of England. Great oak chests stood against the walls, hung with rusting swords and armour and empty powder-horns. A carven seat was beside the cold hearth, and in a corner was a tall spinning-wheel, and the carven stair led in a spiral ascent of mystery to the ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... was one of the pretty features of Robin Redbreast: though a spiral one, the steps were pleasantly shallow, and every here and there it was lighted ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... dandy open space! If only that plagued biplane was in Guinea, how easy we could spiral down and ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... sleeping sickness belongs here as well as do several other similar kinds that produce serious troubles for various mammals and birds. The Spirochaeta, about which there has been so much recent discussion, also belong here. These are simple spiral-like forms (Fig. 10), that are sometimes classed with the simple plants, bacteria, but Nuttall and others have shown very definitely that they should be classed with the simplest animals, the Protozoans. These are the cause of relapsing fevers in man and of several diseases of domestic ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane
... drawings there is a sort of disk made by a single line in spiral, on each toe,—together with the image of ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... Four sacred posts are planted in the fourth degree; the first (No. 55), being painted white upon the upper half and green upon the lower; the second (No. 56) similar; the third (No. 57) painted red, with a black spiral line extending from the top to the bottom, and upon which is placed K[)o]-ko-k[)o]-[-o]—the Owl; and the fourth (No. 58), a cross, the arms and part of the trunk of which is white, with red spots—to designate the sacred m[-i]gis—the lower ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... impulse received from without; for there is every reason to believe, that the movement of a homogeneous fluid towards its centre, if it could take place without disturbing causes, would be in radial lines, and not in a spiral. ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... some progress," continued Blondet. "They were very hard put to it between the straight line and the curve; the triangle, warranted by Scripture, seemed to them to be nonsense, when, lo! there arose among them some prophet or other who declared for the spiral." ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... great vocation—that of being a prop," smiled the minister, as he peeled a red Baldwin apple, carefully preserving the spiral ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... situated in a garden, wherein may be observed the remains of aggera, a moat, terrace, &c.; a river so shallow that it might be easily forded, flows at the back of the house, and serves as one boundary to this garden. In the very small inner court, stands a tower, enclosing a spiral staircase, which leads to the top of the house; the whole length of the southern front of it is occupied by a gallery, and the dormitories upon this floor, which communicate with each other, are hung with old tapestry. The principal entrance is through a porch and door, which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XIII, No. 370, Saturday, May 16, 1829. • Various
... whichever side they are seen, the curves are the perfection of flowing line. The colouring and ornament of each is a marvel and delight. Some are black, with white spots arranged in lines following the curves, and with the top of the blunt spiral white. These "black-and-white marble" patterns are followed by a whole series in which purple takes the place of black, and the spots are modified into scales. Then comes a row of rose-coloured shells, some with white lance-heads, or scales, others with alternate ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... and round the inner spiral staircase he climbed, in a creepsome darkness, invaded by moonbeams, hardly less creepsome, admitted through window-like openings set in every face of every storey. With each inrush of light, each flash of his torch, in deepest darkness, those thronging figures, weirdly distorted, sprang at ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... plumes, And thus a moralizing theme assumes:— Know, gentle Ladies, once these shapeless walls, O'er whose grey wreck the shading ivy crawls, Compos'd a graceful mansion, whose fair mould Led from the road the trav'ller, to behold. Oft, when the morning ting'd the redd'ning skies, Far off the spiral smoke was seen to rise; At noon the hospitable board was spread, Then nappy ale made light the weary head; And when grey eve appear'd, in shadows damp, Each casement glitter'd with th' enliv'ning lamp; Here the laugh titter'd, there the lute of Love Fill'd with its melody the moon-light ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... us, and because of the powers that are bestowed upon us to reach it, there is stamped upon every Christian life unmistakably as God's purpose and ideal concerning it, that it should for ever and for ever be growing nearer and nearer, as some ascending spiral that ever circles closer and closer, and yet never absolutely unites with the great central ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... extremity, where a considerable portion of vaulted roof still remains to protect the poet's family place of interment, which opens to the sides in lofty Gothic arches, and is defended by a low rail of enclosure. At one extremity of it, a tall, thriving young cypress rears its spiral form. Creeping plants of different kinds, "with ivy never sere," have spread themselves very luxuriantly over every part of the Abbey. Amongst other decorations, we observed a plum-tree, which was, perhaps, at one period, a prisoner, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... through space is spiral, so that it is all the time advancing into new regions along with the sun. She is on a boundless voyage of discovery, and her human crew are born and die in widely separated tracts of space. Think of the distance over which the travels of the sun have borne the earth only since the beginning of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... therefrom,—ACH GOTT, he might have been a "SUCCESS of a Fritz" three times over! He might have been a German Cromwell; beckoning his People to fly, eagle-like, straight towards the Sun; instead of screwing about it in that sad, uncertain, and far too spiral manner!—But it lay not in him; not in his capabilities or opportunities, after all: and we but ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... median nerve, h. Following that order of the nerves as they are shown in Plate 12, they may be enumerated from without inwards as follows:—the external or musculo-cutaneous, e; the two roots of the median, h; the ulnar, f; the musculo-spiral, g; the circumflex, i; close to which are seen the origins of the internal cutaneous, the nerve of Wrisberg, some thoracic branches, and posteriorly the subscapular nerve not seen in ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... brought into a slanting condition over a smaller area of supporting air, and the whole apparatus would tend to glide downwards in that direction. The projection of a small vertical plane upon either side would make the gliding mass rotate in a descending spiral, and so we have all the elements of a controllable flight. Such an affair would be difficult to overset. It would be able to beat up even in a fair wind, and then it would be able to contract its bladders and fall down a long slant in any direction. ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... final dash in a tightening spiral, its detector screen flickering on and off. It struck the battleship at a matched speed, with a thump and ringing of metal as the magnetic grapples fastened the cruiser like a leech ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... imagination conceived something more deadly; a sinister picture of men pumping lead in a grim, close-lipped silence; a lusty plainsman, with murder in his heart, crumpling into a lifeless heap, while the thin smoke-spiral curled ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... little to think of, all the waste energy and fancy are thrown into the manual work, and you have so much intellect as would direct the affairs of a large mercantile concern for a day, spent all at once, quite unconsciously, in drawing an ingenious spiral. ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... active being, its habits conforming to the organisation with which it is endowed. Such an array of paddles prophesies of a mercurial temperament and an energetic character. It can, however, anchor itself and lie by when occasion offers. It is provided with two long cables, prettily set with spiral filaments or tendrils, by means of which it can make fast to any point. When not in use, it can retract them, and stow them away in two sacs or pouches within the body, where they may be seen coiled up, through the transparent walls. The mouth ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... itself to be out of touch with it. San Giovanni fuoricivitas, what a rock-hewn church it is! A rigid oblong, dark as the twilight, running with the street without belfry or window or facade. Three tiers of shallow arcades on spiral columns, never a window to be seen, and the whole of solemn black marble narrowly striped with white. Is there such a beast as a black tiger—a tiger where the tawny and black change places? San Giovanni is modelled after that fashion. It is very old—twelfth century at latest—very shabby ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... quality of line. A line may be straight or broken, and if curved, curving continuously or brokenly, etc. That this quality of line is distinct from form may be shown by the simple experiment of turning a spiral—a logarithmic spiral, let us say—in different ways about its focus. The aesthetic effect of the figure is absolutely different in the different positions, and yet the feeling about the character of the line itself seems to remain the same. In what sense, and ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... with a very sensitive governor, capable of being so adjusted that any required speed may be given to the carriage and model. The resistance which the model encounters in its passage through the water is communicated to a spiral spring, and the extension this spring undergoes is a measure of the model's resistance. The amount of the extension is recorded on a revolving cylinder to a much enlarged scale through the medium ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various |
