"Spiral" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... south aisle is known as The Monks' Door, and is the regular entrance into the cathedral from the south. It opened from the eastern walk of the cloister. It is of later date than the wall in which it is placed. The ornamentation is very rich; one spiral column is especially noteworthy. There is a trefoiled arch, the cusps having circular terminations with the star ornament. In the spandrels are quaint, crouching monks, each holding a pastoral staff. Above are ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... 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 ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane
... beautiful vision. While I stood breathless with admiration, a singular sound, and an exclamation of "A rattlesnake!" from F., startled me into common sense again. I gave one look at the reptile, horribly beautiful, like a chain of living opals, as it corkscrewed itself into that peculiar spiral which it is compelled to assume in order to make an attack, and then, fear overcoming curiosity, although I had never seen one of them before, I galloped out of its vicinity as fast as my ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... playing polo on the hard brown space to the left, and from the windows of the building men leaned out, their shirt-sleeves rolled up and their strong arms bared to the sun. They smoked short clay pipes, and innumerable little blue spiral clouds mounted skyward. Obviously the heat did not greatly inconvenience them, for they laughed and sang and drank oceans ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... shows an attachment to be used in connection with the cutter head and saw table for cutting straight, spiral, or irregular flutes on turned work. It consists of a bar, D, carrying a central fixed arm, and at either end an adjustable arm, the purpose of the latter being to adapt the device to work of different lengths. The arm projecting ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... doubtless he considered barbaric and un-Christian in its character. For this pulpit is one of the finest examples of the ornate, if somewhat bizarre art of the thirteenth century, and belongs to a type of work that is not unfrequently met with throughout Italy. Six spiral columns, springing from the backs of crouched lions, support the rostrum of marble inlaid with beautiful mosaics; whilst above the arch of the stair-way of ascent stands the famous portrait, usually called that of Sigilgaita Rufolo, wife of the founder of the Cathedral. The striking ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... enlargement of the creature,—that this ichthyolite was not an immature, but really a miniature Coccosteus. We may see on the plates of the full-grown Coccosteus, as on the shells of bivalves, such as Cardium echinatum, or on those of spiral univalves, such as Buccinum undatum, the diminutive markings which they bore when the creature was young; and on the plates of this species we may detect a regular gradation of tubercles from the microscopic to the minute, as we may see on the plates of ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... that particular day, a spiral pain was twisting around in the back of his head, and digging in a little deeper with each twist, and because the figures on the balance sheet before him were hopping about like black imps in an infernal forward-and-back, that the picture hung ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... 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. ...
— Rollo in Paris • Jacob Abbott
... fine proportion; the nave has a vaulted roof of stone, and the alternate columns are clustered in plan, their middle shafts extending from floor to roof. These columns are enriched with zigzag, lattice, spiral, and vertical flutings. This cathedral, begun in 1093, was nearly two centuries building, and the Chapel of Nine Altars, in honor of various saints, was erected at the eastern end in the twelfth century. Some of these altars did duty for a pair of ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... took Leonard by the hand, and led him back the same way he had brought him. On reaching the spiral staircase, he said, "If you desire to behold a sight, such as a man has seldom witnessed, ascend to the summit of this tower an hour after midnight, when all these fires are lighted. A small door on the left of the northern entrance shall be left open. ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... at the Gorgon!" cried the mother, as the battered head of an ancient doll was displayed over his shoulder by Perseus, decorated with two enormous snakes, one made of stamps, and the other a spiral of whalebone shavings ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... spiral hat-pin, warranted to hold the hat on in any weather, and he had a number of the pins handsomely made to present to visitors of the sex naturally requiring that sort of adornment and protection. It was a pretty and ingenious device and apparently effective enough, though it failed to secure ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... altars, pedestals, etc., of Ionic style. It consisted in the best examples of a high bell-shaped core surrounded by one or two rows of acanthus leaves, above which were pairs of branching scrolls meeting at the corners in spiral volutes. These served to support the angles of a moulded abacus with concave sides (Fig. 30). One example, from the Tower of the Winds (the clepsydra of Andronicus Cyrrhestes) at Athens, has only smooth pointed palm-leaves and no scrolls above a single row of acanthus leaves. Indeed, the ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... egg-and-dart, for example, had originally a symbolic value. Sometimes they are drawn from primitive structures and fabrics, as the checker-board pattern, with its likeness to the plaitings of rush mattings, and the volute and spiral ornaments, which recall the curves and involutions of wattle and wicker work. Again, decoration may employ in its service details that in themselves are genuinely representative art. The frieze of the Parthenon shows in relief a procession of men and women and horses and chariots and animals. ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... expanded wings would be 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. From some such crude beginning a form like ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... flower of a morning-glory the evening before the dawn which is to see it unfold. The delicate petals are twisted into a spiral, which at the appointed hour, when the sunlight touches the hidden springs of its life, will uncoil itself and let the day into the chamber of its virgin heart. But the spiral must unwind by its own law, and the hand that shall try to hasten the process will only ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... he saw a thin spiral of smoke from a rise of ground. Smoke meant that some human being was abroad in the land, and every man on the range called for investigation. The rider ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... of Ghareeah a greyhound bitch for four Tunisian piastres, so that we may now expect some hares and gazelles. In returning to the encampment I observed the phenomenon of a column of dust carried into the heavens in a spiral form by the wind, whilst all around was perfectly calm. Such columns are not of so frequent occurrence in the desert as is imagined, but from time to time, as in this ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... the wind rattled against the sounding-shutters, stormed through the cage of timbers, howled along the spiral stair, and was caught and held whining in the bell vases. Suddenly a light breeze, like the stirring of confined air, fanned his cheek. He looked up. The current had been set in motion by the swaying of a great bell beginning ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... or other rounded fruit which you may have in your design, it would be as well to experiment with one on a piece of spare wood in order to decide upon the most suitable tools. The stems or branches may be done with flat gouge No. 1, or the flat or corner chisel. A very delicate twist or spiral tendency in their upward growth will greatly improve their appearance, a mere faceting produced by a flat gouge or chisel will do this; anything is better than a mere round and bare surface, which has a tendency to look doughy. The little circular mark on the end of the plum (call it a plum, ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... some mad poet in the dim past, and sent to teach us a higher geometry of curves and spirals? See him with that feather high in air, dropping it and snapping it up again in the very glee of superabundant vitality, and in his sudden evolutions and spiral gambollings seeming more a creature of the imagination than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... others lifting Jane Clayton from the floor and following him. Through a narrow corridor and up a flight of steps they went, turning to right and left and doubling back through a maze of winding passageways which terminated in a spiral staircase that gave forth at the surface of the ground within the largest of the inner altar courts close ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... not evident that insect aid is necessary to transfer the tiny, hairy spiral ejected from each cell of the antherid, after it has burst from ripeness, to the canal of the flask-shaped organ at whose base the germ-cell is located. Perfect flowers can fertilize themselves. But pollen-feeding ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... striking was the discovery of an entirely new and most remarkable species of nebulae. These were termed "spiral," from the more or less regular convolutions, resembling the whorls of a shell, in which the matter composing them appeared to be distributed. The first and most conspicuous specimen of this class was met with in April, 1845; it is situated in Canes Venatici, ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... an acorn cup full of salt, and went after the Mouse-bird. It was at the bottom of the big tree, creeping up, round and round, as if on a spiral staircase, and the Brownie began to climb in the same way. But every little while the climber had to stop and rest. This had strange results, for there is a law in Brownie land, that wherever one of the little people stops to sit down, or rest, a toadstool must spring up for him to ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... climbed up by 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
... drum is attached so as to be raised or lowered to engage the rails at the will of the engineer: it being possible to cause it to act on the rails with a pressure of 3.7 tons. The diameter of the drum is 2.14 feet. Its spiral thread is of steel, very solidly attached, and so made as to grip the rails to a distance of 0.6 inch below the level of the track. In order to insure this contact, on the drum axle are two pulleys which run on the exterior road, and of which the diameter ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... upward and onward through the most frightful part of that tremendous desolation, when snow begin to fall. At first, but a few flakes descended slowly and steadily. After a little while the fall grew much denser, and suddenly it began without apparent cause to whirl itself into spiral shapes. Instantly ensuing upon this last change, an icy blast came roaring at them, and every sound and force imprisoned until now ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... and well-loved haunt of happy hours, How often in some distant gallery, Gained by a little painful spiral stair, Far from the halls and corridors where throng The crowd of casual readers, have I passed Long, peaceful hours seated on the floor Of some retired nook, all lined with books, Where reverie and quiet reign supreme! Above, below, on every side, high shelved From careless grasp ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... in its journey across the ages, is a microcosm which has, like the world itself, successive stages of youth, maturity, and old age; but it never dies—it renews itself perpetually. It is not like a perfect circle; it is like a spiral, and in its growth is always mounting higher. I believe in making students follow the same path that art itself has followed, so that they shall undergo during their term of study the same transformations that music itself has undergone during the centuries. In this way they ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... 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 formed by the same method. Then, to ornament ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... slowly round and round into the center, and can either wind the children up tightly or can turn them on nearing the center and run out again. For another change the long line can start running and so unwind the spiral. ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... cluster are quite thin, but they are decorated with the yellow and brown straw-like material above referred to in connection with abdominal belt No. 6 (being prepared from the same plant, apparently Dendrobium, and in the same way), the material being twisted in a close spiral round the strings, and making them look, when seen from a short distance off, like strings of very small yellow and brown beads, irregularly arranged in varying lengths of the two colours, shading off gradually from one to the other. Even when so bound round, these strings are ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... column rests upon a base. Its shaft is tall and slender. The beautifully carved capital swells outward into two spiral rolls, the ends of which are curled under to form the "volutes." The Ionic order flourished particularly in Asia Minor. It was well known, ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... useless circlings back to the same point, again and again; but they are progressive; and if often they seem to return to their point of departure, we see, on close examination, that the return is always on a higher plane. The motion is a spiral one, ever advancing to loftier and loftier ranges. Now this progressive motion is something that no accidental play of the atoms will account for. For chance builds no such rational structures. Chance writes no such intelligent dramas, with orderly beginning, crescendo, and climax. Or if some day, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... inseparate conjuncture of man and beast, the centaur-phenomenon that staggered all Dunstable, might have been the effect of unromantic necessity; that the horse-part carried the reasoning willy-nilly; that needs must when such a devil drove; that certain spiral configurations in the frame of Thomas Westwood, unfriendly to alighting, made the alliance more forcible than voluntary. Let him enjoy his fame for me, nor let me hint a whisper that shall dismount Bellerophon. But in case he was an involuntary martyr, yet if in the fiery conflict he buckled ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... series."[Footnote*:Emerson] "While the earth remaineth seed-time and harvest . . . shall not cease." Life leads on to new death, and new death back to life again. Over and over when we think we know our lesson, we find ourselves beginning another round of God's Divine spiral: "in deaths oft" is the measure of our growth, "always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest ...
— Parables of the Cross • I. Lilias Trotter
... the breast of the snowdrift, swooping with the 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
... insert a drawing of this arm—one of the three selected by the American board—as it belongs to the same class and is similar in general construction to the Hotchkiss. There is, however, an important difference in the magazine, which has no spiral spring, but is furnished instead with an ingenious system of ratchet bars. One of these carries forward the cartridge a distance equal to its own length at each reciprocal motion of the bolt, while a second bar has no longitudinal motion, but prevents the cartridges from ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... after year beheld the silent toil That spread the lustrous coil; Still, as the spiral grew, He left the last year's dwelling for the new, Stole with soft step the shining archway through, Built up its idle door, Stretched in his last-found home, and knew ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... the ash tray beside the match, where, smouldering, it sent up a gray spiral into the air of the library. Whether because of his words or because of the presence of the man himself, the warning, intuitive finger had again touched Paul Harley. "You saw or heard nothing on your way across the square to suggest ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... side plumes are shorter, but are of a rich red colour, terminating in delicate white points, and the middle tail-feathers are represented by two long rigid glossy ribands, which are black, thin, and semi-cylindrical, and droop gracefully in a spiral curve. Several other interesting birds were obtained, and about half-a-dozen quite new ones; but none of any remarkable beauty, except the lovely little dove, Ptilonopus pulchellus, which with several other pigeons I shot on the ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... black, with a white bow, which ends in a long upstanding spiral beak plated with shining tin. The upper deck is shaped like a roof, with narrow steps up to it, and a flat bridge leading from one side to the other. The forward part of the raised deck ends in a double ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... L. and Juglans catappa, Lour.) resembles the almond both in its outer husk and the flavour of its kernel; but instead of separating into two parts, like the almond, it is formed of spiral folds, and is developed somewhat like a rosebud, but continuous, and not ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... scratch, he was too busily employed in that said chair in forming plans for cutting up Europe; within three yards of his table was a little door, or rather trap door, by which you descended down the oddest spiral staircase you ever beheld into the Library, which was low and small; the books were few of them new, almost all standard works upon history—at least I am sure 4 out of 5 were historical—all of his own selection, and each stamped, as in fact was everything else from high to low, ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... perceptible to sight by the starry gleam in which the motion of its wings enveloped it. The infant on the floor followed its course with his sagacious little eyes. After flying about the room, it returned in a spiral curve and settled ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... banking, cement, oil refining and transshipment, salt production, rum, aragonite, pharmaceuticals, spiral welded steel pipe ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... construction and arrangement of stock, A, mouth piece, B, inhaling and exhaling tubes, C' C, plate, D, air tube, E', valve, E, spiral spring, b, valves, c c, rods, d d, fulcra, e e, arm, f, and rod, g, substantially in the manner and for ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... you expect," retorted Mr. Martin with a vindictive gleam in his eye, "when you give a man one of these here spiral staircase cigars? Old Peter himself couldn't keep straight along one subject if he tackled a cigar like this. Well, sir, I always thought Mel had a mighty mean time of it. He had to take care of his mother and two sisters, his ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... way of gathering her thick hair into a crown of plaits above the broad, curving lines of the bandeaux upon her forehead, added to the queenliness of her face. Imagination could discover the ducal coronet of Burgundy in the spiral threads of her golden hair; all the courage of her house seemed to gleam from the great lady's brilliant eyes, such courage as women use to repel audacity or scorn, for they were full of tenderness for gentleness. The outline of that little head, so admirably poised above ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... was surmounted by a spire, possibly of wood covered with lead; this is supposed to have been erected by John de Berwick, who was dean of the minster from 1286 to 1312. The squinches which supported this spire may still be seen in the upper stage just described. Descending from this stage by a spiral staircase in the north-west angle, we find ourselves in the clerestory already mentioned. In each face there are two round-headed windows widely splayed on the interior, with shafts in the jambs; between each pair of windows is a pointed arch, in each angle of the tower is a slender shaft ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins
... Spiral: rolled up like a watch spring, or twisted like a cork-screw. {Scanner's comment: Nowadays it is more correct to regard the corkscrew as helical and the watch spring ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... is carried on the back, the other is fastened to the waist. It is composed of a Bunsen pile, which I do not work with bichromate of potash, but with sodium. A wire is introduced which collects the electricity produced, and directs it towards a particularly made lantern. In this lantern is a spiral glass which contains a small quantity of carbonic gas. When the apparatus is at work this gas becomes luminous, giving out a white and continuous light. Thus provided, I can breathe and ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... sir," purred Gadgem, twisting his body into an obsequious spiral. "Men of your position do not traffic in such things—but if you would be persuaded, sir, for a money consideration which you would fix yourself—say the ORIGinal cost of the gun—to spare one of your five—you would ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the pine-bearded foothills, in little puffs, singly and distinct, thick wreaths of gray-white smoke were sailing straight aloft. The waiting Apache of the Mazatzal was signalling the coming brother from the dark clefts of the Sierra Ancha. One hour later, just as ten was striking on the spiral of the office clock, two sudden shots were heard on the flats to the north-west, and the little herd of horses and mules, not two dozen in all, grazing under cover of the rifles of Sentries 3 and 4, came limping, lumbering in, fast as hoppled feet would permit and ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... at the base. If, now, you ask your father, or some friend, how high the steeple is of 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
... city soon dropped astern; and on a good plan of its streets one might have traced the earliest and most notable of its sections, if not the particular houses, by the thin spiral lines of smoke which curled distinctly high above the chimneys ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... (as in the ringing of an electric bell), you will 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
... festino for him t'other night; not only the whole house, but the garden, was illuminated, and was quite a fairy scene. Arches and pyramids of lights alternately surrounded the enclosure; a diamond necklace of lamps edged the rails and descent, with a spiral obelisk of candles on each hand; and dispersed over the lawn were little bands of kettle-drums, clarionets, flutes, etc., and the lovely moon, who came without a card. The birthday was far from being such a show; empty and unfine as possible. In truth, popularity does not make great promises ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... half an inch in diameter, within which another cylinder fitting it tightly plays. The inner one is cut off at its extremity, somewhat in the form of a pen, and is sharp. The sharp end is kept retracted within the outer cylinder by a spiral spring in the handle at the other end, but can be protruded by pressing on this handle when required for use. When thus protruded it is plunged into the cyst up to its middle; the pressure on the handle is taken off, and the cutting edge is retracted within its sheath. The fluid rushes into the tube, ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... added, after he had filled a cup with water from the pitcher and refreshed himself with it. Gaston followed his example, not without a wistful look at the wine, and Sanchez was obliged to lead the way up a long flight of spiral steps to two other vaulted apartments, one over the other—the lower destined for the sleeping chamber of the Knight and his Squire, the higher for such of the men-at-arms as could not find accommodation in the hall, or in the offices below. ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... whose lilies lie Like maidens in the lap of death, So pale, so cold, so motionless Its Stygian breast they press; They breathe, and toward the purple sky The pallid perfumes of their breath Ascend in spiral shapes, for there No wind disturbs the voiceless air— No murmur breaks the oblivious mood Of that tenebrean solitude— No Djinn, no Ghoul, no Afrit laves His giant limbs within its waves Beneath the wan Saturnian light That swoons in the omnipresent night; But only funeral forms arise, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... 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 ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... we 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 strange gurglings and ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... and all parts of the ship where men were stationed. In the forward part was a binnacle with small steering-wheel, disconnected now, for the steering was done by men below the water-line in the stern. A spiral staircase led to the main-deck below, and another to the first fighting-top above, in which staircase were small platforms where a signal-officer and two quartermasters watched through slits the signals from the flag-ship, ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... great deal of grass, that at a better season of the year would have been valuable; now it was dry and sapless. No timber was visible any where, nor the slightest rise of any kind. The whole of this level region, elevated as it was above the sea, was completely coated over with small fresh water spiral shells, of ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... Hiding themselves behind a buttress, they awaited his coming in breathless silence. As soon as he arrived at arm's length, he was suddenly seized, and, before he could open his lips to raise an alarm, the silence of death closed them up for ever. They next descended rapidly the spiral staircase of the tower, and opening the portal, admitted the whole of their companions. Raymond of Toulouse, who, cognisant of the whole plan, had been left behind with the main body of the army, heard ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... through the water,—the slow crawling of the snail on the land,—the sideway movement of the sand-crab,—the backward walk of the crawfish,—the almost imperceptible gliding of the sea-anemone over the rock,—the graceful, rapid motion of the Pleurobrachia, with its endless change of curve and spiral. In short, every family of animals has its characteristic action and its peculiar voice; and yet so little is this endless variety of rhythm and cadence both of motion and sound in the organic world ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... stormy day in the great northern city, preparing for what he regarded as his career, James sat in the same large, shabbily furnished room where his mother had once visited him—half-way up the hideously long spiral stair of an ancient house, whose entrance was in a narrow close. The great clock of a church in the neighbouring street had just begun to strike five of a wintry afternoon, dark with snow, falling and yet to fall: how often in after years was he not to ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... a great number of thumb-marks among them, some of which were remarkable for the precision of the spiral lines from the central point, all over the thumb point. Others in the longer thumbs showed a peculiar deviation in the curve at the end, near the point of the thumb. Where the lines began to deviate, the triangle formed ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... to calculate our distance from the Earth," he said. "Do you mind weighing yourself on these scales?" and he held the spiral down ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... love fighting a hard battle against inherited tendencies and an evil environment, for the fight, however fierce, is a good sign. Those alone are to be pitied who are drifting, and not resisting. Progress is ever by a steep and spiral pathway. Sometimes the face of the ascending soul is toward the sun and sometimes it is toward the darkness. No man can deliver his friend from the forces which oppose him. Each must conquer for himself and none can evade the conflict. From the hour when the soul ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... were curtains like frost work, which could be pushed back from the square panes. At one end of the huge apartment was my huge bed, formidable with hangings. Near it stood a table for the toilet. He opened a closet door in the wall and showed a spiral staircase going down to a tunnel which led to the lake. For when De Chaumont first came into the wilderness and built the central house without its wings, he thought it well to have a secret way out, as his chateau ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... soaring birds at once. This gull, having spread his wings wide, swept up the dean, or valley, with great speed, and, turning a large circle, rose level with the hill. Round again he came, rising spirally—a spiral with a diameter varying from a furlong to a quarter of a mile, sometimes wider—and was now high overhead. Turn succeeded turn, up, up, and this without a single movement of the wings, which were held extended and rigid. The edge of the wing ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... impressions all of them." He spoke without raising his voice, but Mr. Cupples could perceive that he was ablaze with excitement as he stared at the faint gray marks. "This one should be the index finger. I need not tell a man of your knowledge of the world that the pattern of it is a single-spiral whorl, with deltas symmetrically disposed. This, the print of the second finger, is a simple loop, with a staple core and fifteen counts. I know there are fifteen, because I have just the same two prints on this negative, which I have examined in detail. Look—!" he held ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... properties of a spiral staircase seem to be peculiar. Marriott, standing by the open door, book in hand, thought every moment the owner of the footsteps would come into view. The sound of the boots was so close and so loud that they seemed to travel disproportionately in ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... 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 contact ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... until they coincide as nearly as we please with the figure to be measured. In many cases his procedure is, when the analytical equivalents are set down, seen to amount to real integration; this is so with his investigation of the areas of a parabolic segment and a spiral, the surface and volume of a sphere, and the volume of any segments of the conoids ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... up in an exact circle round them. In one sense the picture is correct enough. That is to say, the squares are correct; the circles are correct; the man and the woman are in a most correct line with the tree; and the snake forms a most correct spiral. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... men had seen the sunlight gleam on white steel far down in the valley. He had seen it several times—a long spiral flash, such as the sun would make on a fixed bayonet carried over the shoulder. Such a flash as this will carry twenty miles through a clear atmosphere; the spot pointed out by the sharp-eyed Goorkha was not more than ten miles ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... immense and lofty aisle, was our guide; and the crowd, long familiar with the way, rushed through the intricacies where so many feet of monks had trod before them, and where, perhaps, many a deed that shunned the day had been perpetrated. At length a spiral stair brought us to a large gallery, where our entrance was marked with a shout of congratulation; and tumbling over the benches and each other, we at length took our seats in the highest part, which, in both the club and the National Assembly, was called, from its height, the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... oak staircase three or four stairs at a time sprang the baron; then he walked quickly with beating heart down the long corridor to the west wing, where the nursery was, and pausing at the top of a spiral staircase which led to the side door he intended to go out by, he shouted impatiently to the housemaid who was left in ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various
... this time the pipes were beginning to scream their opening note, and Lauchie was blowing his anger into the chanter. The tune rose on a shrill spiral and high and clear it poured forth the challenging notes of a fierce pibroch, the war song of the Clan McDonald. The player marched back and forth across the platform keeping quick step to the mad tune, that rose louder and faster and shriller at ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... now the lands were left waste, and nothing fed upon them but cattle. I cannot attempt to describe the mountains. I can only say that I thought those on our right—for the other side was only a continued high ridge or craggy barrier, broken along the top into petty spiral forms—were the grandest I had ever seen. It seldom happens that mountains in a very clear air look exceedingly high, but these, though we could see the whole of them to their very summits, appeared to me more majestic in their own nakedness than our imaginations could have conceived ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... together bits of information that hitherto had floated meaninglessly in his mind. It was Mrs. Larrabbee who had given character to the career of the still comparatively youthful and unquestionably energetic president of the Chamber of Commerce by likening it to a great spiral, starting somewhere in outer regions of twilight, and gradually drawing nearer to the centre, from which he had never taken his eyes. At the centre were Eldon Parr and Charlotte Gore. Wallis Plimpton had made himself ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... nevertheless, the second story, projecting far over the base, and itself retiring beneath the third, threw a shadowy and thoughtful gloom into the lower rooms. Carved globes of wood were affixed under the jutting stories. Little spiral rods of iron beautified each of the seven peaks. On the triangular portion of the gable, that fronted next the street, was a dial, put up that very morning, and on which the sun was still marking the passage of the first bright hour ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... symmetrical, formed the center of the visible universe. On the marble table beside Andrews were some pieces of crisp bread with butter on them, a saucer of damson jam and a bowl with coffee and hot milk from which the steam rose in a faint spiral. His tunic was unbuttoned and he rested his head on his two hands, staring through his fingers at a thick pile of ruled paper full of hastily drawn signs, some in ink and some in pencil, where now and ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... procession of discovery, among other animals of less note, was presented "a quadruped with an amazingly long neck, head like a sheep, bearing two long spiral horns, white as polished ivory, and standing in perpendiculars parallel to each other. Its body was like that of a deer, but its forelegs were most disproportionately long, and its tail, which was very bushy and of a snowy whiteness, curled high over its rump and hung two or three feet by its side. ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... and ingenious. It consists of a slightly cone-shaped, cast-iron cylinder about fourteen feet long, the outlet end being the larger to allow for the expansion of the gases. Internal studs are so arranged as to keep the ore agitated; and spiral flanges convey it to the outlet end continually, shooting it across the cylinder. The cylinder is encased in a brick furnace. The firing is provided from outside, the inventor maintaining that the products of combustion are inimical to rapid oxidisation, to specially promote which ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... loud rich note, which closely resembles the frequent repetition of the name bestowed upon it by the blacks, "Calloo-calloo." As are its visits so are its notes—casual, coming in erratic bursts and sudden sallies of whirling spiral sound. Its advent is hailed with satisfaction, for the belief exists that it causes the bean-tree—the source of a much-esteemed food—togrow more quickly. This faith has a substantial origin, for shortly after ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... 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 ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... soil below, but abundantly nourished with juices already stored up, and even assimilated, at its host's expense. By rapidly lengthening the cells on the outer side of its stem more than on the inner side, the former becomes convex, the latter concave; that is to say, a section of spiral is formed by the new shoot, which, twining upward, devitalizes its benefactor as it goes. Abundant, globular seed-vessels, which develop rapidly while the blossoming continues unabated, soon sink into the ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... parasol was constructed with jointed ribs so as to fold back, and was likewise self-opening. The rod was a metallic tube, and contained a spiral spring which acted upon and pressed upwards an inner rod. To this inner rod were jointed the stretchers, which in this construction were placed above the ribs instead of below, as in the ordinary form, beside which they were much shorter, so as to admit of their being concealed by ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... whoa", and the gold-red meteor of the prairie would shake his mane and tail and come careering, curvetting, not direct, but round in a brief spiral to find a period point at ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... who is a lover of nature will be quick to perceive the strong resemblance he bears to this little insect while at work with his toy knitter, going from post to post just as the insect worked its net in spiral form on ...
— Spool Knitting • Mary A. McCormack
... dynasty (1122-225 B.C.) for the purpose of giving military signals. A Chinese origin is still more clearly indicated by the decorative designs, which show a combination of the circle, the triangle, and the spiral, obviously identical with the decorative motive* on Chinese drums of the Han dynasty (202 B.C.-A.D. 220). The circle and the triangle occur also in the sepulchral pottery of the Yamato sites, and considering the fact together with the abundance of the bells in districts where ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... from the molluscs. Sometimes a hole was broken in the side of the shell, and the fish taken out entire.[816] The sac containing the colouring matter, which is a sort of vein, beginning at the head of the animal, and following the tortuous line of the body as it twists through the spiral shell,[817] was then carefully extracted, either while the mollusc was still alive, or as soon as possible after death, as otherwise the quality of the dye was impaired. This plan was pursued more especially with the larger species of Purpurae, ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... began to dance the strangest figures in the air. Now it would sweep round a spiral of scarcely a hundred yards diameter, now rush up into the air and swoop down again, steeply, swiftly, falling like a hawk, to recover in a rushing loop that swept it high again. In one of these descents it seemed driving straight ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... green moss changes into forests, the black ribbons into railways, and the white ribbons into highways. What I had thought from a distance to be a huge curtain of black smoke, becomes the beautiful city of Nancy. We are only 800 feet above the field. One more spiral ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... Bashforth chronograph a platform, arranged to descend slowly alongside of a vertical rotating cylinder, carries two markers, controlled by electromagnets, which describe a double spiral on the prepared surface of the cylinder. One electromagnet is in circuit with a clock, and the marker actuated by it marks seconds on the cylinder; the circuit of the other is completed through a series of contact ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... where men would be most likely to go from there. At the top he looked out upon further knobs and hollows and aimless depressions, just as he had expected. Half a mile or so away there drifted a thin spiral of smoke, from the kitchen stove of the Senora Medina, he guessed. But there was no other sign of human life anywhere within the radius of many miles, or, to be explicit, within the field of ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... to run, and, fleet of foot as she was, soon distanced her tormentors. When she slackened pace it was sunset, and she was faint with hunger and desperately weary. From the road a bypath led to a small clearing in a wood, with a slender spiral of smoke showing between the trees. Audrey went that way, and came upon a crazy cabin whose door and window were fast closed. In the unkempt garden rose an apple-tree, with the red apples shriveling upon its boughs, and from the broken gate a line ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... element incapable of producing strength. Labarta found in him a great resemblance to the marine divinities. He was Neptune before his head had silvered, or Poseidon as the primitive Greek poets had seen him with hair black and curly, features tanned by the salt air, and with a ringleted beard whose two spiral ends seemed formed by the dripping of the water of the sea. The nose somewhat flattened by a blow received in his youth, and the little eyes, oblique and tenacious, gave to his countenance an expression of Asiatic ferocity, but this impression melted away when ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the reins upon her neck, and with a plunge, startled at the energy of my signal, away she flew. What a stride she had! What an elastic spring! She touched and left the earth as if her limbs were of spiral wire. When I reached the car my friend was standing in front of it, the gang-plank was ready, I leaped from the saddle, and, running up the plank into the car, whistled to her; and she, timid and hesitating, ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... 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 ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... 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, ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... in imitation of the Trajan pillar at Rome, and is twelve feet in diameter at the base. The door at the bottom of the pillar, and where we entered, was decorated above with crowns of oak, surmounted by eagles, each weighing 500 lbs. The bas-relief of the shaft pursues a spiral direction to the capitol, and displays, in a chronological order, the principal actions of the French army, from the departure of the troops from Boulogne to the battle of Austerlitz. The figures are near three feet high, and their number said to be two thousand. ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... term them,—but no palm was ever so gracile; no palm ever bore so dainty a head of green plumes light as lace! These likewise are ferns (rare survivors, maybe, of that period of monstrous vegetation which preceded the apparition of man), beautiful tree-ferns, whose every young plume, unrolling in a spiral from the bud, at first assumes the shape of a crozier,—a crozier of emerald! Therefore are some of this species called "archbishop-trees," no doubt.... But one might write for a hundred years of the sights to be seen ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... to support the stone should have a spiral at the bottom in which to lay the gem, and this should be so placed that the latter will be completely submerged at all times, but not touching bottom ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... in Rome for Mass and breakfast. . . . They were traversing at this moment, no doubt, only a thousand feet high, one of those passes up which (he thought he remembered from history) the old railway-trains had been accustomed to climb, yard by yard and spiral by spiral, a hundred ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... among the Hindoo ruins is that of a proud gladiator standing erect and triumphant amid fallen foes. At least, that is how it looks to me, as I view it in connection with the ruins at its base and ponder upon its history. A spiral stairway of three hundred and seventy-five steps leads to the summit. A group of natives are already up there, enjoying the cool breezes and the prospect below. In the comprehensive view from the summit one can read an instructive sermon of centuries ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... boldly forth and whirled to the left. Twenty feet away, almost entirely concealed among the tumbled masses of boulders, was a small cabin. About it there were no signs of life with the exception of a thin wreath of smoke rising like a ghostly spiral up the side of the chasm wall; from it there came no sound. Rod's index finger quivered on the trigger of his rifle. Should he wait—until the outlaw came forth? Half a minute he stood there, a minute, two minutes, ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... round 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 him ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... the spiral of smoke rising from his long cigar. He was dreaming pleasantly. He was dreaming of those successful manipulations of finance it was his purpose to achieve. He had lunched, so his dream was of the ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... recognized him at once, but he did not change his position by a muscle, merely lounged there, his head against the side of the cushioned chair, the brilliant, surprised gaze changing slowly to amused contempt. His cigarette hung between the long fingers of one hand, its blue spiral of smoke rising tranquilly into a bar ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... overhead, so bright that all the waving bands that now assumed more the appearance of its rays paled before it. Then the crown began to revolve, and as it revolved with constantly increasing speed, it gathered all its rays into one gigantic spiral that travelled as it spun towards the east until all form was dissipated in a nebulous mist that withdrew behind the mountains and glowered there like a dawn and left the skies void of all light save the stars. It was a fine ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... gained the entrance to the Abbey of Marmoutier, where Saint Gatien dug out his cave in the rocky hillside. We also saw the ruins of a fine thirteenth century basilica once the glory of Touraine, and by a spiral staircase ascended to the Chapelle des Sept Dormants, really a cavern cut in the side of the hill in the shape of a cross, where rest the seven disciples of St. Martin, who all died on the same day as he had predicted. Their bodies remained intact for days and many miracles were worked, ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... spiral roadway he paused, breathless, awed, bewildered, for there, eddying restlessly about the bases of towers and other huge structures, was a great sea of up-turned faces. To his surprise he found the passage he had ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... Matusino is four or five feet long, and is encircled in a spiral form at the thick end, by a row of deer's horns. A single long horn is fastened in the centre, the chief use of which is to stick it in the earth when the club is rested. Only a few races of upper and lower Ucayali and ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... men who were carrying me ascended a spiral stairway which led to an immense hall where beds were laid together in three lines, so close that they touched each other. On one of these beds I was placed, in the midst of oaths, cries for pity, and muttered ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... archipelago of luggage surrounding her, finally replaced the Polish girl. She was as fadely and straggily pretty as a doll that has been left lying on the lawn throughout a night of heavy dews. Every so often the tiny head would spring back from the soft fount of her breasts, a cry rising thin and spiral as smoke. ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... The ninety pound ingnue, withholding her silver-lace flouncings from the raw edges of moving landscape, high-stepped to a rearward dressing room; the khaki clad hero brushing past her and the pink satin drummer boys for first place down a spiral staircase. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... later, as the candle executed a spiral curve toward the floor and flickered out, Johnny dropped ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... into the level and sandy lands, across which we have accompanied our adventurers in their double journey. Along both ranges of hills, which bounded the opposite sides of the lake and valley, clouds of light vapor were rising in spiral wreaths from the uninhabited woods, looking like the smoke of hidden cottages; or rolled lazily down the declivities, to mingle with the fogs of the lower land. A single, solitary, snow-white cloud floated above the valley, and ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... his mother had gone Henri took up his pen and, continuing the article he had commenced for the Revue economique, wrote: "The trajectory of humanity is a spiral and ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... lofty keep is rectangular, and the machicolations and embattlements which were added in the fifteenth century are in a perfect state of preservation. Upon the platform, which I was able to reach by means of ladders and the half-ruinous spiral staircase, viper's bugloss spread its brilliant blue flowers over the dark stones, and enticed the high-soaring bees. The view of the wide and beautiful Dordogne Valley from these old battlements was not less grand because more than one-half of the sky was of a bluish-black—a ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... even line is required, this is a most suitable stitch to employ. It is equally in request for outline and filling in, and its chain-like adaptability makes it specially good for following out curved forms or spiral lines. Tambour stitch is practically the same in result, though worked in quite a different manner, for it is carried out in a frame with a fine crochet hook, instead of with a needle. This makes it quicker in execution, but more mechanical in appearance, so it is ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... copper wires, after which the whole was put into a vulcanizing bath of hot paraffine. Upon soaking half an hour, it was removed from the paraffine and the jute serving was bound back again; then the armour—a steel wire spiral jacket—was replaced, the spirals winding back into their original position with the greatest ease. Wire was then wound at intervals over this steel jacket to keep the spirals in place, after which the whole, for ten or fifteen feet in ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... sides of a timber pile. The reinforcement consists of longitudinal bars set around the periphery and drawn together to a point at one end and then inserted into a conical shoe; these longitudinal bars are wound spirally with a -in. rod wire tied to the bars at every intersection. This spiral rod has a pitch of only a few inches, but to bind it in place and give rigidity to the skeleton it is wound by a second spiral with a reverse twist and a pitch of 4 or 5 ft. As thus constructed, the reinforcing frame is sufficiently rigid ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... it is very narrow—so much so that a good view of the front cannot be had. It has a portico of three Gothic arches with intersecting buttresses, and in connection with lateral buttresses there are two spiral towers with spiral stair-cases. Between the towers there is a splendid circular window, which was constructed by Charles VIII. The spires of the church are octagonal, and are adorned with mouldings and traceries, and also at about half-height with a crown of thorns. The different sides of the Chapelle ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... resistance of two wedge-shaped flanges of metal carried on the anvil bolt and acting against the sides of slots cut into the sheets of wood at opposite sides. The periphery of these sheets of wood—as exhibited by that one lying beside the loose anvils on the table—is in the form of a spiral which unfolds in every case from a point on the uniform level of the anvils, and which, by variations in the grade of ascent, rises in the course of a revolution about its center to the different altitudes required for the fall of the hammers. These heights were scaled in inches and ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... Returning by a spiral stairway, he carried the rebel flag in his hand. The proprietor of the hotel came out from a place of concealment, placed his double-barreled shot-gun nearly against Ellsworth's body and fired. The assassin ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... a long spiral mist of incense was rising, and about me as I stood in the centre of the enormous interior, many visitors were passing out from the dim religious gloom into the light ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... diameter was about twelve feet, while it was three times as broad as its base, which reproduced in water and inverted the cloud-formed funnel above. The whole column rotated with a spiral motion. ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... body which changes its course, it is obliged to take an oblique direction, but if its fall be interrupted by several contrary powers, which act upon it alternately, I am no longer competent to determine what line it will describe. It may be a parabola, an ellipsis, spiral, circular, &c. this will depend on the impulse, it receives, and the powers by which ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... delight in an extraordinary enterprise, and as nothing remained but a little sweeping up, they left this to the superintendence of Mary and Mr. Wilmot, and embarked upon the narrow crumbling steps of the spiral stair, that led up within an unnatural thickening of one of the great piers that supported the tower, at the intersection of nave and transepts. After a long period of dust and darkness, and the monotony of always going with the same leg foremost, came a narrow door, ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... service by his invention of the cochlea, or screw-pump. The more distant fields of the valley of the Nile, rising above the level of the inundation, have to be watered artificially by pumping out of the canals into ditches at a higher level. For this work Archimedes proposed a spiral tube, twisting round an axis, which was to be put in motion either by the hand or by the force of the stream out of which it was to pump; and this was found so convenient that it soon became the machine most in ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... varied by puffs of wind. Now it was a perfect round, now so long as to be less a hoop than a fine oblong. Sometimes it was pear-shaped, sometimes amorphous; bulbous here, hollow there. And there seemed movement; I thought now and again that it was spiral as well as circular, that it might, under some stress of speed, writhe upward like dust in a whirlwind. It wavered, certainly, in elevation, lifting, sinking, wafted one way or another with the ease of a cloud of gnats. It was extraordinarily beautiful and ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... look beyond the most distant star, the black walls are flecked with innumerable patches of filmy light like the dewy gossamers of the spider's loom that dot our fields at morn. What beautiful forms we trace among those phantoms of light! circles, and elipses, and crowns, and shields, and spiral wreaths of palest silver. And what are they? Did I say phantoms of light? The telescope resolves them into millions of suns, standing out from the oceans of white hot matter that contain the germs of countless systems ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... started off on an exploring expedition through our grove. There were not, altogether, more than seven main trunks; but numberless sepos interlaced the boughs, and striking downwards, where they had apparently taken root, had again sprung upwards, forming spiral stems, some considerably thicker than a man's body, others as thin as the smallest ropes of a ship's rigging. We had no great difficulty in making our way, but caution was necessary to save ourselves from tumbling down ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... which produces great plenty of certain trees called Palma-Maria. These are straight, tough, and of good length, and are consequently fit for masts, the grain of the wood having a gradual twist or spiral direction; but, notwithstanding the name, they have no resemblance to palms. To the N.E. of Quibo are the small islands of Canales and Cantarras, in the channels between which there is good anchorage. These islands have plenty ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... every Buddhistic schoolboy) that when the Buddha made "the great renunciation," he attained Nirvana by sitting under a "Bo tree." My "Bo tree" is a great oak in the heart of the woods, mounted by a dizzy spiral staircase, at the summit of which you enter Nirvana by means of the "House on the Garden," a glass-house floored with boards and furnished with rustic chairs, a lounge and a writing-table; and here, amid the tree-tops, I write to the music of thrush and blackbird, with restful glances ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... the water, then is taken up by the air and breathed. Thus he suffered both immediate and remote effects from emissions. The first result was to make him incapable of work; by breathing in the "life" later on he became a degenerate. Wind or the spiral movements of air was another origin of life. Wind is a spirit, in defence of which he quoted the Greek pneuma. The words wind and word are the same, the former being derived from the latter through wird. (Cf. "In the beginning was the word," or "The ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... dense impending cloud, the sea becomes violently agitated, and the waves dart rapidly towards the centre of the troubled mass of water: on reaching it they disperse in vapor, and rise, whirling in a spiral direction towards the cloud. The descending and ascending columns unite, the whole presenting the appearance of a hollow cylinder, or tube of glass, empty within. This, Maltebrun tells us, and he further adds, "it ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... {78b} so often heard of in past years; and round it hurries to and fro a great orange butterfly, larger seemingly than any English kind. Next to it is a row of Hibiscus shrubs, with broad crimson flowers; then a row of young Screw-pines, {78c} from the East Indian Islands, like spiral pine-apple plants twenty feet high standing on stilts. Yes: surely we are in the Tropics. Over the low roof (for the cottage is all of one storey) of purple and brown and white shingles, baking in the sun, rises a tall tree, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley |
