"Straight line" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dialogue, in which the action is a pretext for setting the characters in motion rather than the chief means towards their manifestation, then the playwright can afford to relax the rate of his progress, and even to wander a little from the straight line of advance. In such a play, even the old institution of the "underplot" is not inadmissible; though the underplot ought scarcely to be a "plot," but only some very slight thread of interest, involving no strain on the attention.[2] It may ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... able to find their way out again; it might be hours before they could be got out, without you'd permit of me makin' a short cut to the middle: what my meanin' is, takin' down a couple of trees in each 'edge in a straight line so as you could git a clear view right through. Of course that'd do away with it as a maze, but I don't know as you'd ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... what to say. I've seed 'em both often enough when they was practisin', an' I tell ye the' wa'n't no slouch abaout neither on 'em. But them bats is all-fired long, 'n' eight on 'em stretched in a straight line eendways makes a consid'able piece aout 'f a mile 'n' a haaf. I'd bate on them gals if it wa'n't that them fellers is naterally longer winded, as the gals 'll find aout by the time they git raound the stake 'n' over agin the big ellum. I'll go ye a quarter on the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... "Yes, but this one is bigger. Do you see this cookie, Kid? Do you see that nut sticking up out of the end of it? Now suppose I draw a straight line——" ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... heaped up in confusion to make a lee on that storm-swept shore. As background to the whole scene, the tall buildings of the Grao, warehouses, office buildings,—the aristocracy and money of the port; and then a long straight line of roofs, the Cabanal, the Canamelar, the Cap de Fransa, a rambling agglomeration of many colored houses, less close together as they left the water, summer places in front with many stories and slender cupolas, white cabins ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... was an ancient city, lying north-easterly from Jerusalem, a little less than fifteen miles in a straight line. In the course of the exodus it was captured by the people of Israel through a miraculous interposition of divine power. (Josh. 6). The productiveness of the region is indicated by the descriptive appellation "city of palm trees" (Deut. 34:3; ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... bunch of rocks on the summit?" asked Lew. "They look like chimney-rocks from here. Anyway, they stick up higher than any other part of the mountain. And there's three tall pines right beside them. That's a good landmark. It's exactly in a straight line for the gap. We can find that mark if we can find anything. But you can't see very clearly through this timber. Was there ever ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... a straight line with those of the next boy, each shoulder-strap set at the same angle as its fellows, each gun was as well polished as its neighbor, and the spick and span appearance the line presented, after its long fatiguing march, spoke volumes in favor ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 27, May 13, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... nonsense and monkey-shines, but it never lasts long. Charles II. doesn't matter at all—but take my word for it, his father matters a great deal. There was a Thorpe among the judges who voted to behead him. I am descended in a straight line from him." ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... weary way. Commander Peary took his sights from the time our chronometer-watches gave, and I, knowing that we had kept on going in practically a straight line, was sure that we had more than covered the necessary distance to insure our arrival at the top of ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... this dotted line," said the man with the map; "it is a straight line, and runs from the opening of the reef to a clump of palm-trees. The star comes just where it cuts the river. We must mark the place as ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... and walked slowly toward a small cluster of trees, about five hundred yards from the house. Here, he leaned against a tree, and paused to look around in every direction; then he began to stride with a measured step in a straight line. When he stopped, he began to examine the ground carefully for some minutes, and finally, he seemed satisfied with his inspection, and ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... current of water runs along the hypothenuse of a triangle an eddy will be made in the included angle, which will turn round like a water-wheel as the stream passes in contact with one edge of it. The same must happen when a sheet of air flowing along from the north-east rises from the shore in a straight line to the summit of the Apalachian mountains, a part of the stream of north-east air will flow over the mountains, another part will revert and circulate spirally between the summit of the country and the eastern shore, continuing to move toward ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... recognized at the ring-side. He wore a pale blue dressing-gown and though broad of shoulder seemed not even so tall as Sagorski, but he had a bullet head which at the cerebellum joined his thick neck, without indentation, in a straight line and his arms reached almost to his knees—gorilla of a man—a superbrute. I caught a glimpse of Marcia watching him intently, and tried to read her thoughts. She examined him with the critical gaze which she might have given a hackney at a ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... hide? The moor is flat and treeless, the forest two or three miles away in a straight line, and we can go neither straight nor fast. If we cower behind one of the smoking brimstone mounds we shall be stifled; if we jump into one of the boiling springs we ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... usually restores the parallelism of the limbs by lowering the pelvis on the affected side and adducting the sound limb. This obliquity or tilting of the pelvis causes apparent lengthening of the diseased limb, and is best demonstrated by drawing one straight line between the anterior iliac spines, and another to meet it from the xiphoid cartilage through the umbilicus; if the pelvis is in its normal position, the two lines intersect at right angles; if it is tilted, the angles at the point of intersection are unequal. ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... me," commented Lawrence, "was that classy bit of dodging when he went down the field for sixty yards toward the end of the game. At least six of them tried to stop him, but he slipped by them like a ghost. And yet he ran almost in a straight line. All the dodging was done by the swaying of his hips and shoulders. A man that can do that comes pretty near to being the ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... ruler I set to work to inscribe a square within this circle; in its centre will be the market-place, into which all the straight streets will lead, converging to this centre like a star, which, although only orbicular, sends forth its rays in a straight line from all sides. ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... indications of method, removed the peg which marked the spot where the beetle fell, to a spot about three inches to the westward of its former position. Taking, now, the tape-measure from the nearest point of the trunk to the peg, as before, and continuing the extension in a straight line to the distance of fifty feet, a spot was indicated, removed, by several yards, from the point at which we had ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... was just out of gun-shot from the frigate and about a mile from the lugger when the boats shoved off from the former, though quite near the land, just opening the bay so often named. The boats, of course, were pulling in a straight line from the vessel they had just left toward that of which they ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... to avoid being trampled upon by startled camels during our sleep, by securing them in a separate but neighbouring inclosure,—spread our couches, ate our frugal suppers, and lost no time in falling asleep. We had travelled five hours that day, but the path was winding, and our progress in a straight line was at most ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... indeed, was paid to this, that when I went out from the place I heard some one say, 'Behold how that lady wastes the life of this man!'—and naming her, I heard that they spoke of her who had been in the path of the straight line which, parting from my most gentle Beatrice, had ended in my eyes." Then he says he thought to make this lady serve as a screen for his real love, and he did this so well that in a short time many persons fancied they knew his secret. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... around until they flanked the enemy. K and A Troops had already succeeded in joining hands with Young's column across the valley, and as they were capable of taking care of themselves, Wood was bending his efforts to keep his remaining four companies in a straight line and revolving them around the enemy's "end." It was in no way an easy thing to do. The men were at times wholly hidden from each other, and from him; probably at no one time did he see more than two of his troops together. ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... with valuable cargoes and thousands of valuable lives, moving on its waters, with few shelters from the storm, except what is furnished by the havens created, or made useful, by the aid of government. These great lakes, stretching away many thousands of miles, not in a straight line, but with turns and deflections, as if designed to reach, by water communication, the greatest possible number of important points through a region of vast extent, cannot but arrest the attention of any one who looks upon the map. They lie ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... of curves, and acts as a kind of dependent drapery to compensate for the concealment of the hair. Here is also the reason why the common hat is so frightful; it gives us straight or nearly straight lines, going upwards like tangents from the oval of the face, and cut off above by another straight line (the section of the crown) at right angles: all such lines and angles are foreign to the face and head. The common nightcap is too familiar, the common hat too stiff. Observe the lines of the face and head; the projection of the nose, the rounded angularity of the chin; the vertical section of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... performed by persons who make it a business of profit. Their instrument consists of three or four needles, tied to a truncated and flattened end of a stick, in such an arrangement, that the points may form a straight line; the figure desired is traced upon the skin, and some dissolved gunpowder, or pulverised charcoal, is pricked in with the instrument, agreeably to the figure. It is said not to be painful, but it is sometimes accompanied by inflammation ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... as has been often insisted on, the philosopher has patiently to endure the presence of truths, which are not the less true for being irreconcileable with each other. He is told of the existence of an infinite number of curves, which are able to divide a space, into which no straight line, though it be length without breadth, can even enter. He is told, too, of certain lines, which approach to each other continually, with a finite distance between them, yet never meet; and these apparent contrarieties he must ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... be made from Dorjiling, is that to the summit of Tonglo, a mountain on the Singalelah range, 10,079 feet high, due west of the station, and twelve miles in a straight line, but fully thirty by the path.* [A full account of the botanical features noticed on this excursion (which I made in May, 1848, with Mr. Barnes) has appeared in the "London Journal of Botany," and the "Horticultural Society's Journal," and I shall, therefore, recapitulate ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... of the Akasava, and separated from all the other Territories by a curious bush belt which ran almost in a straight line for seventy miles, were the people of Morjaba. They were a folk isolated from territorial life, and Sanders saw them once every year and no more frequently, for they were difficult to come by, regular payers ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... of longitude west from the Delaware. The south boundary was to be "a circle drawn at twelve miles' distance from Newcastle northward and westward unto the beginning of the fortieth degree of northern latitude, and then by a straight line westward." This was an impossible line, as a circle so drawn would meet neither the thirty-ninth nor the fortieth parallel. Maryland, moreover, was to extend "unto that part of Delaware Bay on the north which lieth under the ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... kiosks which we passed, one after the other at the corners of great streets, stood lonely and drenched, in the swift, white touch of our radiance. Black and shiny, the asphalt roadway appeared to go on in a straight line forever ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... upright form came forward from the left side and stood in front of him. Had the form, which was a man, only been in front at first, Bulon would have seen it; but he could not—like all buffaloes—see very well unless things were in a straight line before him. ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... wisdom these, of course; but though we kept on in what we believed a straight line for our goal, the line we were taking might be right away from the camp, or we might be proceeding in a curve which would bring us within easy reach of the enemy—perhaps as near as when we started. Truly ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... of the river the distance of Windsor from the sea is about one hundred and forty miles; whereas in a straight line it is not more than thirty-five. The rise of the tide is about four feet, and the water is fresh for ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... not pause once. They flew in a straight line over the island to the west, always maintaining their columnar formation. At first the men thought that they were making for the trees. They ran after them. The speed of their running had no effect this time on their visitors, who continued to sail eastward. The men called ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... the district that had been destroyed by these accidental shots, and it stretched from the northeastern outskirts of Rheims in a straight line to the cathedral. Shells that fell short of the cathedral for a quarter of a mile destroyed entirely three city blocks. The heart of this district is the Place Godinot. In every direction at a distance of a mile from the Place Godinot I passed houses wrecked by shells —south ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... drew a large circle, then a small one. Next, on the large circle he drew lines to represent men, as children often do, a straight line for the back and one each for an arm and a leg, with a circle for a head. When he had drawn many of these, he drew a square within the smaller circle, and within the square drew two characters to represent persons. He next ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... that the village lay all of eight miles off in a straight line, and concluded it would be a pretty long row in case they chanced to meet contrary wind. In that case the waves would bother them ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... feelings of great kindness, said to me, "I could, from this moment, consider the examination at an end. I will, however, for my own pleasure, ask you two more questions. What are the relations of a curved line to the straight line that is a tangent to it?" I looked upon this question as a particular case of the theory of osculations which I had studied in Legrange's "Fonctions Analytiques." "Finally," said the examiner to me, "how do you determine the tension of the various cords of which a funicular ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... even now seem to adopt, as an accomplishment, the acme of which was reached when the performer could succeed in running along quickly on his skates, and finishing off with a long and triumphant slide on two feet in a straight line forward. A gentleman would probably then have no more thought of trying to execute different figures on the ice than he would at the present day of dancing in a drawing-room on the tips of his toes." Even as an amusement of the common people it is not alluded ...
— Harper's Young People, January 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... be all an illusion of the map, where the Summer Islands glimmer a small and solitary little group of dots and wrinkles, remote from continental shores, with a straight line descending southeastwardly upon them, to show how sharp and swift the ship's course is, but they seem so far and alien from my wonted place that it is as if I had slid down a steepy slant from the home-planet to a group of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... stake before you, you will have no steadying point for your vision, but you can wiggle about without knowing it and make your furrows as crooked as a serpent's coil; but if you have two stakes and ever keep them in line, you cannot deviate an inch from a straight line, and your furrow will be an ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... see, sir—that 'ud be by way of Leeds, Selby, and Howden. About sixty miles in a straight line, but there's a good bit of in-and-out work after you get past Selby, sir. I should say about ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... Redheugh Bridge, the new King Edward VII. bridge, the High Level, and Swing Bridges,—all connecting Newcastle with the sister town of Gateshead. An interesting sight it is to see the Swing Bridge gradually turning on its central pivot, until it lies in a straight line up and down the stream, allowing some huge liner to pass, or some new battleship, fresh from Elswick, to sail down the river, on its way to make its trial trip over the "measured mile" in the open sea at the mouth of the river, and thereafter to take its place among the armaments ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... shaft extending directly under the float, and reaching from the center to the axle supporting the propellers, and connected therewith by means of side cog-wheels, might be used; and as the shaft would necessarily diverge from a straight line with the said axle, the shaft having the chain-wheel on the end directly over the engine and connected therewith in the manner proposed by Mr. Porter, I would suggest further that it would, perhaps, be preferable to place the wheels ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... came plunging toward the ship. It did not travel in a straight line. It curved. It was not reasonable for a missile to travel in a curved line. The interceptor missiles had to detect it, swing to intercept, to accelerate furiously. The first interceptor missed. Worse, it had lost its target. ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... Spanish dancer had taken on a threatening glare. Her curved brows had drooped and knit, until they formed a straight line below her forehead, and her red lips ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... up round the base of the mountain, where you can look down on the grandest scene in the world," said he. "Two hundred miles of wind-worn rock, all smooth and bare, without a single straight line—canyon, caves, bridges—the most wonderful country in the world! Even the Indians haven't explored it. It's haunted, for them, and they have strange gods. The Navajos will hunt on this side of the mountain, but not on the other. That north side is consecrated ground. ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... the men who made the charge had been killed, and lay in line as they had fallen. I looked over and examined the ground carefully, and was confident that I could have walked a quarter of a mile in almost a straight line on their dead bodies without putting a foot on the ground. By such evidences as this, our minds had been entirely disabused of the idea that "the Northerners ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... have been wisest to tell Lucy all that I knew about Hilda. But you may have noticed with butterflies that they do not fly the straight line between two points; rather they fly in circles, with back-tracking, excursions, and gyrations, so that unless you have seen them start you cannot guess where they have started from, nor until the wings close and the insects come to a definite rest, are ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... were placed. High-geared hand controls enabled the gunner to swing the cradle at high speed in any direction except straight down. A simple, illuminated optical sight was all the gunner needed. Since there was no gravity and no atmosphere in space, the missiles flashed out in a straight line, continuing on into infinity if they missed their targets. Proximity fuses made this a remote possibility. If the rocket got anywhere near the target, ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... is the money." The Eastern man held out a ten-dollar gold piece, which was seized upon by Jake, and without a word he and his companion started in a straight line for the saloon. ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... a moment, we must return to the straight line of investigation from which we swerved in considering the structural parts of ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... near the ground (Plate III., p. 112). The idea of a telescope without a tube may appear a contradiction in terms; but it is not really so, for the tube adds nothing to the magnifying power of the instrument, and is, in fact, no more than a mere device for keeping the object-glass and eye-piece in a straight line, and for preventing the observer from being hindered by stray lights in his neighbourhood. It goes without saying, of course, that the image of a celestial object will be more clear and defined when examined in the darkness of ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... misery. Yet, the shrewd observer, if a lover of beauty, might have found much for delight, even despite the concealment imposed by her present condition. Thus, the stormy glory of her dark hair, great masses that ran a riot of shining ripples and waves. And the straight line of the nose, not too thin, yet fine enough for the rapture of a Praxiteles. And the pink daintiness of the ear-tips, which peered warmly from beneath the pall of tresses. One could know nothing accurately of the complexion now. But it were easy to guess that in happier places it would show ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... 'higher than the earth' seems, at first sight, to be but to say, 'No man hath ascended into the heavens,' and you sinful men must grovel here down upon your plain, whilst they are far above, out of your reach. But the heavens bend. They are an arch, and not a straight line. They touch the horizon; and there come from them the sweet influences of sunshine and of rain, of dew and of blessing, which bring fertility. So they are not only far and unattainable, but friendly and beneficent, and communicative of good. Like them, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... glasses, the water goblet is at the top and to the right of the knives, and the wine glasses are either grouped to the right of the goblet, or in a straight line slanting down from the goblet obliquely towards the right. (Butter plates are never put on a dinner table.) A dinner napkin folded square and flat is laid on each "place" plate; very fancy foldings are not in good taste, but if ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... one corner of the cemetery there is a view on all sides to the horizon. The town, the empty railway station, the hospital, the network of shelter trenches, connecting earth-works, redans, redoubts, forts, and emplacements; the straight line of railway-ruled across the plain to the horizon—these make the view. Hardly anything is moving except the white flag on the hospital and the colours on the forts. Sometimes a figure crosses the open stretch between the hospital and the town, but ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... symbol of the suffering Saviour. While the air was heavy with the scent of magnolias and yellow jassamine. Crested herons, snowy white, rose from the water, and stretching their long necks and legs out into a straight line with their bodies winged their flight above the tree-tops. Pelicans displayed their ungainly forms, as they snapped at the passing fish and neatly laid them away for future reference in their pouches. Strange birds of gaudy plumage ...
— The Twenty-fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion • George P. Bissell
... by a person either walking or on horseback. If such be the case, and the vulture is on the wing at a height of between three or four thousand feet, before it could come within the range of vision, its distance in a straight line from the beholder's eye, would be rather more than two British miles. Might it not thus readily be overlooked? When an animal is killed by the sportsman in a lonely valley, may he not all the while be watched from ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... him the first chance to be glad or sorry. After moving the box and the tube a little all kept silent, but soon Frank began a louder "Oo-oo-oo!" than before, and, much excited, exclaimed: "I see 'em: four red bright little fellows, all in a straight line," and then he ran as if half crazy, shouting, to his mother: "We got 'em, mother, all four of 'em! I wouldn't swap our telescope for any ...
— Harper's Young People, November 4, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... easy enough then to reach a spot below the tip and Frank, with a long cord he had brought for the purpose, laid out a straight line from the point down the southern slope of the mountain-side. While they were busy about this they were startled by a repetition of the same strange cry, half-warning, half-savage, that they had been so alarmed by the ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... Coming through the door at my back that lion's head would stand over a foot higher than halfway up. Look at your own writing desk; your own door. Furthermore, he was nine feet and eleven inches in a straight line from nose to end of tail, or over eleven feet along the contour of the back. If he were to rise on his hind feet to strike a man down, he would stand somewhere between seven and eight feet tall, depending on how nearly he straightened up. He weighed ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... interest reached its highest pitch. Braves, squaws, and children were strung along the upper end of the enclosure, breathlessly watching the vapour-thread. Each swarthy face had dropped the mask of listlessness; each figure was rooted. Not an eye forsook a straight line to ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... similar case. He dictated several words to be written while holding the slates securely in his own hands. In this instance I asked for the word 'Constantinople' to be written. The psychic smiled, shrugged her shoulders, and replied: 'I'll try, but I don't believe they can spell it.' 'Draw a straight line, then,' said I. 'I'll be content with a single line an inch long.' She laughingly retorted: 'It's hard to draw a straight line.' 'Very well, draw a crooked line. Draw a zigzag—like a stroke of lightning. Draw it in yellow. Draw ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... shallow and useless Mesurado River, and few men land without an involuntary ablution in the salt water. Usually the stream mouths by an ugly little bar at some distance from the roadstead; after heavy rains it bursts the sand-strip and discharges in straight line. ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... thirty-five miles long (Sallust, Hist, iv, 19, Dietsch; Plutarch, Crass. 10), it probably passed not from Squillace to Pizzo, but more to the north, somewhere near Castrovillari and Cassano, over the peninsula which is here in a straight line ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... of her pencil with as elaborate an interest as he had ever seen shown in any object. It seemed an altogether remarkable affair; but then, apparently, so was the eraser. They were complementary. A line could be made by the point, a delicate, straight line; and then, reversing the pencil, the line could be taken out by the ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... curve to a branch which leads northwest for 25 feet and has an opening on the side of the hill 25 feet wide and 20 feet high; the talus at the front is 12 feet high and slopes steeply into the cave. Beyond this branch the west wall extends in a straight line to the small ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... Courtenay to range alongside, the next few minutes were devoted to a final settlement of the plan of attack. I had observed that the two small feluccas were lying inside the larger one, all three of the craft being nearly in a straight line; and it was arranged that our three boats should, on emerging from the shelter of the island, make a dash at the nearest, as if about to board her, Courtenay making for the larboard side of the vessel, ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... under her bonnet, made smooth waves upon her low forehead and reappeared in thick coils at the back of her neck. Her nose was relatively small, but too thick and broad at the nostrils, although it departed but little from the straight line of the classic model. Altogether the Signora Pandolfi, christened Maria Luisa, and wife to Marzio the silver-chiseller, was a portly and pompous-looking person, who wore an air of knowing her position, and of being sure to maintain it. Nevertheless, there was a kindly expression ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... Still, from a military standpoint," and here the sergeant spoke judicially, "our holding Wipers is a bad policy. You see, it's a salient and the Germans guns are all around us; but if we made a straight line we should give them Wipers, and that would have a bad effect. Just look in here," and he pointed to a house, the front of which was completely blown away, but the rest of which ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... thirty of her forty years had been spent in a street. She knew how to read the people who were passing her; there were the rich who were running to and from each others' houses at this hour; there were the bigoted workers driving in a straight line to their offices; there were the poor who were unhappy and rightly malignant. Already, though there was sunlight in the haze, tattered old men and women were nodding off to sleep upon the seats. When one gave up seeing the beauty that clothed things, ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... engaged, an intercepted message revealed to him the fact that Pemberton, in accordance with Johnston's orders, had come out of Vicksburg with twenty-five thousand men, and was moving eastward against him. Pemberton, however, instead of holding a straight line against Grant, turned at first to the south, with the view of breaking the latter's line of communication. This was not a success, for, as Grant says, with grim humor, "I had no line of communication to break"; and, ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... several things. It symbolizes duty. It seems to have the quality of inexorableness that duty has. When I have something to do that must not be set aside, I feel as if I were going forward in a straight line, bound to arrive somewhere, or go on forever without swerving to the ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... Natchitoches, which then served to mark the frontier up to the one hundredth degree of west longitude, where the line ran directly north to the Arkansas, which it followed to its source at the forty-second degree of north latitude, whence another straight line was drawn up the same ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... the brook, Uncle Joe," asked Bob, after a moment's thought, "or move it over to the south side against the bank there. That would make it almost a straight line between the lane ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... out how far it was around the world. Your geography, you know, tells you now that what is called the circumference of the earth—that is, a straight line drawn right around it—is nearly twenty-five thousand miles. Columbus had figured it up pretty carefully and he thought it was about twenty thousand miles. If I could start from Genoa, he said, and ...
— The True Story of Christopher Columbus • Elbridge S. Brooks
... into common life, like rays of light which pierce into a dense medium, are, by the laws of Nature, refracted from their straight line. Indeed, in the gross and complicated mass of human passions and concerns, the primitive rights of men undergo such a variety of refractions and reflections that it becomes absurd to talk of them as if they continued in the simplicity of their original direction. The ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... one of the fires appeared a good deal nearer than the other, this probably decided him in its favor; and he started, in a straight line, towards the spot where the smoke had curled up. Another two hours' walking, and they entered an open glade; where ten or twelve natives, and two or three negroes were gathered. They were greatly surprised ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... he only deifies and tries to explain them, but as this cannot be done without excessive simplification—according to the law of the mind which in order to grasp must let go an equal amount—he disguises and intensifies them in one direction. Everything that departs from the straight line or that interferes with the strict logic of his mental edifice, he denies; worse he pulls it up by the roots, and commands that it be destroyed in the name of sacred principles. It therefore follows that he cuts down much of the infinite growth of nature, and allows to stand only the ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... as a sudden twist in the road broke the straight line, Max could see the careening lights of the princess' carriage. A princess! And he was a man without ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... the world at once, and push your crow bar in till you reach EU-ROPE, which, Ernest says, lies in a straight line from our feet. I should like to have a peep down, such a hole, for I might thus get a sight ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson Told in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... of great extent, with a gradual declination [49] Being in a straight line with the mouth of the cavern, the moonlit scene was long visible, but Alroy, on looking round, now perceived that the exterior was shut out by the eminence that he had left behind him. The sides of the gallery were covered with strange and ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... rock (Bea. II.); thence to the top of a rugged hill of considerable height falling abruptly to the Komati River, this hill being the northern extremity of the Isilotwani range, and separated from the highest peak of the range Inkomokazi (a sharp cone) by a deep neck (Bea. I.). (On a ridge in the straight line between Beacons I. and II. is an intermediate beacon.) From Beacon I. the boundary runs to a hill across the Komati River, and thence along the crest of the range of hills known as the Makongwa, which runs north-east and south-west, to Kamhlubana Peak; thence ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... strictest impartiality in the accounts and opinions he gives; and if we venture to point out an instance where we think he has deviated a little from the straight line he drew for himself at starting, it is only because his having done so in the particular we refer to, is rather creditable to him than otherwise, and is exactly the error that most warm-hearted men who passed any length of time in the very agreeable society of Spaniards, would be apt to fall ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... to find out whether it goes round in a circle, or makes 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 ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... days. In just one half of that time, or in about six weeks, it passes from aphelion to perihelion; that is to say, in six weeks the whole change in its distance from the sun takes place. In six weeks Mercury falls 14,000,000 miles—for it is a fall, though in a curve instead of a straight line—falls 14,000,000 miles toward the sun! And, as it falls, like any other falling body it gains in speed, until, having reached the perihelion point, its terrific velocity counteracts its approach and it ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... least on the east side of the isle. They had meat on the fire, round which I could see them dance. They then took a man from one of the boats, who was bound hand and foot; but when they loosed his bonds, he set off as fast as his feet would take him, and in a straight line to my house. ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... naturedly the men took so many surprises—for we had an excellent view from the quarter deck, of the whole entertainment. We heard afterwards that it was considered a great success, also that one of the men had been watching through a glass for the equator, seeming to think that a straight line passing through the center of the earth should certainly be seen. He thought he surely saw it when a hair was drawn tightly across a spy glass without his seeing it and the ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... have placed your eye exactly on the edge of the table (so that you are, as it were, actually a Flatlander) the penny will then have ceased to appear oval at all, and will have become, so far as you can see, a straight line. ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... a pedler who was taking this unusual route over the ridge of the valley into South Adams. He told me that it was still four or five miles to the summit by the path which I had left, though not more than two in a straight line from where I was, but that nobody ever went this way; there was no path, and I should find it as steep as the roof of a house. But I knew that I was more used to woods and mountains than he, and went ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... non-commissioned officer in the room?" The "Y" man kept looking from side to side. His little eyes were hard and spiteful and his lips were drawn up in a thin straight line. ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... straight line of stakes across the ice, I measured the movements of some glaciers. Some progressed several feet in a year, others traveled scarcely more than a few inches. All moved farthest nearest the center; for, as is true of streams, there the friction of the side walls does not retard them. They varied ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... Skrebensky stood at the carriage window, waving, but not really looking to the two figures, the girl and the warm-coloured, almost effeminately-dressed man Ursula waved her handkerchief. The train gathered speed, it grew smaller and smaller. Still it ran in a straight line. The speck of white vanished. The rear of the train was small in the distance. Still she stood on the platform, feeling a great emptiness about her. In spite of herself her mouth was quivering: she did not want to cry: her ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... a macron (straight line) over them are indicated as [x], where x is the letter in question. Those with a caron (v shape) over them are indicated as [vx]. Superscripted text is indicated with a caret ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... when he pounced at last upon the toad he disturbed with his presence a colony of red ants on moving day. The close ranks of them, coming and going in a straight line, caught and held Buddy's attention to the exclusion of everything else—save the horned toad he had been at such pains to acquire. He tucked the toad inside his underwaist and ignored its wriggling against his flesh while he squatted ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... Hard and handsome. Large face, square-cut, clean-shaved, bare of any accent except its eyebrows, its mouth a thin straight line hardly visible in its sunburn. Small blue eyes standing still in the ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... series of observations and calculations it has been determined that the sun is moving through space and carrying with it all the planets in our system. Its rate of movement is not known with certainty, but it is estimated at about 1,000,000 miles a day. Whether it is moving in a straight line or in a vast orbit around some far distant sun is also an open question, and it may take centuries to arrive at a definite result. This motion of our sun, rapid though it is, is very slow compared with the motion of ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... instead of sweeping the bays we made a straight line, so as to pass between Point Derrible and La Couchee, and quickly arrived off what one may suppose the most picturesque spot in the Channel Isles—Creux Harbour, with its stumpy little breakwater pier and cave cutting which gives entrance to the ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... looking up-stream, he could discern this fleet of miniature boats coming down toward him in a straight line. In the clear sunlight they were visible for a great distance, and it was no difficult matter to determine their starting point. Some two hundred yards above, another tree projected out over the water very much ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... central surface covered by a perennial drifting polar icepack that averages about 3 meters in thickness, although pressure ridges may be three times that size; clockwise drift pattern in the Beaufort Gyral Stream, but nearly straight line movement from the New Siberian Islands (Russia) to Denmark Strait (between Greenland and Iceland); the ice pack is surrounded by open seas during the summer, but more than doubles in size during the winter and extends to the encircling land masses; the ocean floor is about 50% continental ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... of trees in direct continuation from the Hospital gates. This opens on to St. Leonard's Terrace in two fine iron gates with stone pillars, surmounted by military arms in stone. Beyond these gates, still in the same straight line, runs the Royal Avenue, formerly known as White Stiles. It is mentioned very early in the Hospital records, payments for masonry and carpentry work being noted in 1692. Faulkner repeats a tradition ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... Thomas Hariot; his only published works are the 'Briefe and true report' (PG4247) and the posthumous 'Praxis', a handbook of algebra. He anticipated the law of refraction, corresponded with Kepler, observed comets, and may have been the first to recognize that the straight line paths of comets might be segments of elongated ellipses. The lost 'ephemera' referred to in the text have since been found (since 1876) and a conference was held in 1970 at the University of Delaware on the current state of Hariot research, the proceedings ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... nearly eighty miles by canoe from where we now stood, though scarcely ten in a straight line over the mountains; for the rivers and lakes we were following doubled back almost to the starting point; and the whole wild, splendid country was the eagle's hunting ground. Wherever I went I saw him, following the rivers for stranded trout and ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... off in a straight line—" I stopped abruptly. "What is to prevent the thing travelling in a straight line into space for ever?" I asked. "You're not safe to get anywhere, and if you do—how will ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... and gentleness, Dr. Earl cut down through the cast, and took it off. The fracture was perfectly knit, but there was a slight swelling about the knee, and as Earl examined it Silvia saw him compress his lips in a hard, straight line. Without looking up, or changing his tone, he asked the child if she had had a fall since the cast had been changed. She answered readily that about a week before her crutch had slipped as she was coming indoors, and she had fallen, striking ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... horror, Tom looked away and watched the ship Roger had joined blast off under full acceleration. It roared spaceward in a straight line, disappearing ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... been forbidden to ride the pinto ever since the day it was brought home to her with irrefutable emphasis that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. It was more of a parabola she described, when, bucked off, her head smashed the ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... time following its elliptical course, at such a rate that the radius vector, a line from the sun to the earth, passes over equal areas in equal times, furnishing every moment an abtruse problem difficult for a scholar to solve. The orbit is so vast that it varies from a straight line, but 4 in. in 666 mi., the distance ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... manners devout, solemn, and stately. It was really quite delicious, just for a short time; and it was impossible not to be convinced that we at least came over with William the Conqueror; or we might be descended in a straight line from Prince Bladud, who flourished in Bath eight hundred years before the Christian era. At all events, we were the noblest in the land, and received the salaams of the Sublime and the Pensive as obviously due to our exalted ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... second floor and I set out in my journey along the hall, feeling my way by the walls. I felt one door; I counted: 'One'; but a sudden dizziness made me lose my hold on the wall, make a strange turn and fall up against the other wall. I wished to turn in a straight line: The crossing was long and full of hardships. At last I reached the shore, and, prudently, I began to travel along again until I met another door. In order to be sure to make no mistake, I again counted out loud: 'Two.' I started out on my walk again. At last I found the third ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... because these moods and changes of aspect and of vigour will come to us, therefore the law of life must be effort, and the duty of every Christian man be to minimise, in so far as possible, the fluctuations which, in some degree, are inevitable. No human hand has ever drawn an absolutely straight line. That is the ideal of the mathematician, but all ours are crooked. But we may indefinitely diminish the magnitude of the curves. No two atoms are so close together as that there is no film between them. No human life has ever been an absolutely continuous, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... stranger advances into a large and beautiful colonnade arrange in a circular form, all of the Ionic order, and surmounted by an architrave. He next perceives beyond this point a long avenue of columns in a straight line, supposed to mark the direction of some principal street that led through the whole length of the town. These columns are all of the Corinthian order, and the range on each side is ascended to ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... continuous, and slope sharply upwards, giving to an end view the appearance of an acute triangle, while a side view exhibits a long ridge rising suddenly at each end to a point and descending by a straight line of gable. The roof is neatly and smoothly thatched with grass, and the sides are covered in with sheets of a bark-like substance, probably the base of the leaf of the coconut-tree flattened out by pressure. The entrance is at one ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... extension before connecting you, in the hopes that you will 'snap your pointer' and dial direct next time. The underlying metaphor may be that of a rubber band stretched through a number of intermediate points; if you remove all the thumbtacks in the middle, it snaps into a straight line from first to last. See ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... and the South Pass of the Rocky Mountains, then by Salt Lake, and along the Humboldt and Truckee rivers, crossing the Sierras at Donner Pass. Other roads were talked of, and Senator Benton of Missouri favored a nearly straight line between St. Louis and San Francisco. Some one, in objecting to this, said that only engineers could lay out a railroad, and such men did not believe a straight line possible. The senator answered: "There are engineers who never learned in school ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... struggle of The Revolution, the storm of opposition which it had aroused was passing away and the old friends and many new ones were flocking around the intrepid standard bearer, whom neither fear nor favor could induce to swerve from the straight line marked out by her own convictions and conscience. Miss Anthony would soon complete a half-century, and her friends resolved to commemorate it in a worthy manner. Handsomely engraved cards were sent ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... way was easy there, and the trail, through the abundant grasses crushed underfoot, was of one who had moved rapidly. Gradually, with the upward incline, obstacles had increased, and the footprints drew nearer together. Still higher, from a straight line the trail had become tortuous and irregular. Here the climber had passed around a thicket of trees; there a great boulder had stood in the path; but, ever indomitable, the way had been steadily upward toward ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... said. Scarcely a breath seemed to come or go. Everybody was gazing steadfastly and rigidly at the swimmer, who with steady, powerful strokes was making a straight line over the gently rolling waves towards the yacht. Although they did not so express it to themselves, the coming of that swimmer meant everything to the pale, expectant people on the Summer Shelter. If he should reach them, not only would he be saved, but they could steam ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... left is making progress, and it looks (For the straight line is getting very skew) As if our forces might surround VON KLUCK'S. Meantime, on right ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various
... leagues of Paris. The line, that separates the department of the Somme from that of the Oise, might be taken, detaching from the latter the northern part of the department of the Aisne, and thence a straight line through the department of the Ardennes, which should be continued till it reached the ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... reason or other his colour had decidedly heightened during the last few moments, and he looked at Esmeralda with a quick, embarrassed glance, as if afraid to meet her eyes. She was flushed like himself, a beautiful young fury, with eyes ablaze, and lips set in a hard, straight line. Propitiation was plainly hopeless at the moment, and he was not so foolish as to attempt the impossible. This was evidently "Beauty O'Shaughnessy," of whom he had heard so much, and, to judge by his own experience, ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... greatest charm of the place to me was the beauty of the scenery. The Green River at this spot is as picturesque a stream as I ever remember to have seen in such a country. It lies low down between high banks, and curves hither and thither, never keeping a straight line. Its banks are wooded; but not, as is so common in America, by continuous, stunted, uninteresting forest, but by large single trees standing on small patches of meadow by the water side, with the high banks rising over them, with glades through them open for the horseman. ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... or Ten Dialogues on Natural Philosophy, London 1678, 8vo. To this is added the Proportion of a Straight Line to hold the Arch of a Quadrant; an account of this book is published in the Philosophical Transactions, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... always the fixing of a bow or a frill of lace or some other ornament that took her attention. She scarcely looked, as yet, at the shining wealth of nut-brown hair, with the golden strand through it, nor at the deep gray eyes, nor the straight line of teeth that gleamed when she laughed. Miss Gordon was not interested in these, but she could become absorbed in the arrangement of ribbon at such length that her sister, Mrs. John Coulson, sometimes worried for fear Lizzie was ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... wearisome train journey added to the ocean voyage! But freights pay a large part of passenger rates, and the routing from great port to great port is as rigid and unalterable as the fact that a straight line is not the shortest distance between two points on land. Trains and ships must pass by way ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... upon the front legs, for instance, causes an acceleration in the advancement of the sound member, in order to relieve the diseased one which is bearing weight. In other words, when an animal that is affected with supporting-leg-lameness travels in a straight line, since weight is borne by the diseased leg for an abnormally short period of time, the sound member needs be in the act of advancement a correspondingly short period. The result is then, an unequal division ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... lips became a hard, straight line. Even as he straightened to his feet the leaves and branches of an overturned tree whipped his face. The red mouthed dinosaur was perilously near. So close that Carruthers could smell its great, glistening body. The ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... farther they would hurl themselves through the night. Straight out along a narrow streak of asphalt toward lights twinkling on a blur of hillside. Up and around with a skidding turn to the right, and Del Mar was behind them. Down and around and along another straight line next the sands, and up a steep grade whose windings slowed even this brute of a ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... etymology for you!) All movement in a straight line is eccentric, lawless, or would be were it possible, which I doubt. Why this haste, then, in passing given points? If man did it in a noble pride, as a tour de force, to prove himself so much the cleverer than the brute creation, I could understand it; but ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
