"Driest" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as shown in Fig. 2. Before nailing the boards place lamp wicking between them and the edges of the side boards. Only galvanized nails should be used. In order to make the punt perfectly watertight it is best to use the driest lumber obtainable. At one end of the punt a skag and a rudder can be attached as shown in ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... natural aspect of the mining belt to distinguish it from the rest of the Transvaal plateau. It is a high, dry, bare, scorched, and windy country, and Johannesburg, its centre, stands in one of the highest, driest, and windiest spots, on the south slope of the Witwatersrand ridge, whose top rises some 150 feet above the business quarters. Founded in 1886, the town has now a population exceeding 100,000, more than half of them whites. In 1896 the census (probably very imperfect) showed ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... old maid, a woman with herself for a husband, than the wife of a fool; and Solomon more than hints that all men are fools; and every wise man knows himself to be one. When playing the sempstress, Jarl's favorite perch was the triangular little platform in the bow; which being the driest and most elevated part of the boat, was best adapted to his purpose. Here for hours and hours together the honest old tailor would sit darning and sewing away, heedless of the wide ocean around; while forever, his slouched Guayaquil ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... letters in the archives of Modena, which, according to Tiraboschi, are of no great importance. It is difficult to suppose, however, that they would not be worth looking at. The author of the Orlando Innamorato could hardly write, even upon the driest matters of government, with the aridity of a common clerk. Some little lurking well-head of character or circumstance, interesting to readers of a later age, would probably break through the barren ground. Perhaps the letters went counter to some of the ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... friends make to her? Oh, yes, they wanted more wood. How gladly she would get it for him; search all day for the driest pieces if ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... Tabriz on the west, and Resht on the north to the capital, is now Kazvin's sole importance. The road to Teheran was made some years ago at enormous expense by the Shah; but it has now, in true Persian style, been left to fall into decay. It is only in the finest and driest weather that the journey can be made on wheels, and this was naturally out of the question for us. A railway was mooted some time since along this, the only respectable carriage-road in Persia—but the project was ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... which it has given name, and affords a public and commodious passage over a valley, which cannot be crossed elsewhere for a considerable distance. The stream passing under it is called Cedar Creek: it is a water of James's River, and sufficient in the driest seasons to turn a grist mill, though its fountain is not more than ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... They quickened their pace somewhat when they reached solid ground, but before they were within the sheltering confines of their private car, Jimmy Grayson was launched upon his great and thrilling tariff speech, in which he invested the driest subject in the world with an interest that absorbed the attention of ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... the coldest, windiest, highest, and driest continent; during summer more solar radiation reaches the surface at the South Pole than is received at the Equator in an ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... exquisitely clear purple in the upper petals, gradated into deep blue in the lower ones; the centre, gold. Not larger than a violet, but perfectly formed, and firmly set in all its petals. Able to live in the driest ground; beautiful in the coast sand-hills of Cumberland, following the wild geranium and burnet rose: and distinguished thus by its power of life, in waste and dry places, from the violet, which ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... understand that now I had, as I may call it, two plantations in the island—one my little fortification or tent, with the wall about it, under the rock, with the cave behind me, which by this time I had enlarged into several apartments or caves, one within another. One of these, which was the driest and largest, and had a door out beyond my wall or fortification—that is to say, beyond where my wall joined to the rock—was all filled up with the large earthen pots of which I have given an account, and with fourteen or fifteen great baskets, which would hold five or six bushels ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... to the forest, White Cloud. It will be a long walk for you. We need dry moss and decayed wood for tinder. Some cold morning we shall wake and find no red coals in the ashes. Then we shall need some pieces of the driest of wood to ...
— Two Indian Children of Long Ago • Frances Taylor
... Englishmen came to take the first, the rest set up a lamentable cry, clasped their arms around her neck, and hanging about her, took their last farewell, as they thought, in such trembling agonies, and affectionate embraces, as would have softened the hardest heart in the world, and made the driest eyes melt into tears; nor could they be persuaded but that they were going to die, till such time as Friday's father made them sensible that the Englishmen had chosen them for their wives, which ended all their terror and ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... recognizing Maria Ivanovna's nephew, led his horse to the driest spot, where he dismounted, then they escorted him to the church filled with a ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... now wished to be a merry chirping bird: but when he was metamorphosed into one, the former peculiarities ceased immediately. "It is really pleasant enough," said he: "the whole day long I sit in the office amid the driest law-papers, and at night I fly in my dream as a lark in the gardens of Fredericksburg; one might really write a very pretty comedy upon it." He now fluttered down into the grass, turned his head gracefully on every side, and with his bill pecked the pliant blades of grass, which, in comparison ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... laying, so that all the inhabitants on the banks may have an equal chance of procuring a supply of eggs. The natives collect from all quarters for this object. The turtles select the highest and driest banks composed of the finest sand, which will be a sufficient time above water to allow of the eggs being hatched by the heat of the sun. Some of these banks are of great extent—many miles long, and often one or more broad. They ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... leaves, raise their branches vertically towards the sky; while those of the Courbaril and the Erythrina form, as they extend themselves, a thick vault of verdure. Plants of the family of Pothos with succulent stems, Oxalises, and Orchideae of a singular construction, rise in the driest clefts of the rocks; while creeping plants waving in the winds are interwoven in festoons before the opening of the cavern. We distinguished in these festoons a Bignonia of a violet blue, the purple Dolichos, and, for the first time, that ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... his grave young fiancee seemed aware of any cause for mirth, but with Adela that was neither here nor there. She and Dot never had anything in common, and as for Fletcher Hill, he was the driest stick of a man she had ever met. But she was not going to be bored on that account. To give Adela her due, boredom was a malady from which ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... not so certain of that," said Boxall. "I have heard that in the driest sand, provided the sea does not wash over it, drinkable water may be procured by digging deep down. Let ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... the late Dr. Barth, informed me, the Bornu name for a most excellent African contrivance, used in some parts of the Sahara desert, by means of which tent-ropes may be secured, or horses picketed in sand of the driest description, as in that of a sand dune, whence a tent-peg would be drawn out by a strain so slight as to be almost imperceptible. I have made many experiments upon it, and find its efficiency to be truly wonderful. The ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... coldest, windiest, highest (on average), and driest continent; during summer, more solar radiation reaches the surface at the South Pole than is received at the Equator in an equivalent period; ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... rescues Irene. Crowds of the common people rush in, wildly asking one another what the row is about; Raimondo, the pope's legate, comes on, and in the name of holy mother church begs for peace; Rienzi, waked by this time, sees what has occurred, and in a speech—uttered mainly in the driest of dry recitative—taunts the patricians with their bad conduct and their reckless readiness to break all the vows they have made. The nobles announce their intention of going elsewhere to fight out their quarrel to the bitter end, and they go. Rienzi beseeches the crowd to wait their time, and ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... who was surnamed the Atheist, used to say that he held out arguments with his right hand, but his hearers received them with their left; so awkward people frequently take in a clumsy manner the favours of fortune; but men of sense, as bees extract honey from thyme which is the strongest and driest of herbs,[725] so from the least auspicious circumstances frequently derive ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... himself as one of the strictest reasoners: do they form a body of men hitherto free from false conclusions and illusory speculations? The driest argument has its hallucinations, too hastily concluding that its net will now at last be large enough to hold the universe. Men may dream in demonstrations, and cut out an illusory world in the shape ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... up toward the surface from the bottom, they become flatter and flatter, and drier, until the outer surface layer becomes thin, fine, dry, slightly greasy scales, like fish-scales, of about the thickness of the very finest and driest bran. ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... vigor as indicated by healthy, dark green foliage, is more important than vigor as indicated by the length of current season's growth. In Morgantown this has been one of the driest seasons on record. Cuttings from trees with pale or brown foliage, or with foliage tending to be brittle from lack of water soon lost their leaves. Whether this was caused by the condition of the parent tree ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... Ontario in a bark canoe, even when there has been a good deal of sea on. Well managed, they are the driest boats of which we ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... doctrine and parochial duties of a more human interest, with educating Lucinda, whose intellect was more like his own than her mother's. A strange training it was for a young girl,—mathematics, metaphysics, Latin, theology of the driest sort; and after an utter failure at Greek and Hebrew, though she had toiled patiently through seven books of the "Aeneid," Parson Manners mildly sniffed at the inferiority of the female mind, and betook himself to teaching her French, which she learned ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... sheathing below the waterline the ship was liable to be sunk by the terrible worm which, in Hakluyt's phrase, "many times pearceth and eateth through the strongest oake." For want of vegetable food in the larder, or anything save the driest of bread and beef stiffened with brine, the sailors were sure to be attacked by scurvy, and in a very long voyage the crew was deemed fortunate that did not lose half its number from that foul disease. Often in traversing unknown seas the sturdy men who survived ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... humidity of the atmosphere is defined as the degree of its approach to saturation. Air completely saturated is represented by 100, and that absolutely free of vapour by 0. As a matter of fact, however, the latter never occurs; even in the driest regions of Arabia a humidity of 10 per cent. is almost unknown. For its estimation the Wet and Dry Bulb thermometers are employed. These consist of two ordinary thermometers. One has its bulb exposed so as to register the temperature of the air. The bulb of the ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... inseparable. Their victory over the tyrant Khumbaba in the fifth tablet is symbolized by the sign representing the victory of the Lion over the Bull, often abbreviated into that of the Lion alone, a sign plainly enough interpreted by the name "Month of Fire," so appropriate to the hottest and driest of seasons even in moderate climes—July-August. What makes this interpretation absolutely conclusive is the fact that in the symbolical imagery of all the poetry of the East, the Lion represents the principle of heat, ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... naturally fell into their proper places. But I very soon became aware of the magnitude of my task, and the numerous problems with which I should be engaged; and, as I perceived that this critical investigation would, even if delivered in the driest scholastic manner, be far from being brief, I found it unadvisable to enlarge it still more with examples and explanations, which are necessary only from a popular point of view. I was induced to take this course from the consideration ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... expanded blades, to wither and die in the scorching desert air; but in their stead the thick and jointed stems do the same work—absorb carbon from the carbonic acid of the air, and store up water in the driest of seasons. Then, to repel the attacks of herbivores, who would gladly get at the juicy morsel if they could, the foliage has been turned into sharp defensive spines and prickles. The cactus is tenacious of life to a wonderful ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... visiting. She was more in her element at the Court. The model children in the new Arden poor-schools had rather a hard time of it during Mr. Granger's honeymoon, and were driven through Kings and Chronicles at a more severe pace than usual. The hardest and driest facts in geography and grammar were pelted like summer hail upon their weak young brains, and a sterner demand was made every day upon their juvenile powers of calculation. This Miss Granger called giving them a solid foundation; but as the edifice destined to be erected upon ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... day to come. My lord connected our day of trial with India. Mrs. Pagnell assumed an air of studious interest; she struck in to give her niece a lead, that Lord Ormont might know his countess capable of joining the driest of subjects occupying exalted minds. Aminta did not follow her; and she was extricated gallantly ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... with a theodicy, and who, for instance, regards the whole of man's existence as a punishment for sin or a process of purification. At this stage, and in this embarrassing position, Strauss even suggests a metaphysical hypothesis—the driest and most palsied ever conceived—and, in reality, but an unconscious parody of one of Lessing's sayings. We read on page 255: "And that other saying of Lessing's— 'If God, holding truth in His right hand, and ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... has been great error. Journals have usually consisted of the driest details, or exteriors of events. The young should be encouraged to record their feelings in them; their hopes and fears—their anticipations and their regrets—their joys and their sorrows—their repentances and their ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... on very quickly," she said, in her driest and most practical tone, "towards one ideal of Socialism. Look at the way in which municipalities are beginning to undertake, and sometimes monopolise, work which used to be left to private enterprize. Before long we shall have local authorities engaged in banking, ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... is put to the test without waste of time. If the proof is satisfactory the thick fluid is poured into bamboo receptacles, covered with leaves, and a piece of deer-skin fastened over them with a band of scudiscio and finally the vases are collocated in the driest corner of the hut, from whence from time to time, they are carried near the fire to prevent that their contents should ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... Compton, "seems to be the driest and the wettest, in parts, of any country; and all its great rivers, except the Nile, ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... severe earthquakes, active volcanism, tsunami; Atacama Desert one of world's driest ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... the mouse, with a self-important air, "are you all ready? This is the driest thing I know. Silence all ...
— Alice's Adventures Under Ground • Lewis Carroll
... frogs and toads develop from tadpoles, which in all essentials are true gill-breathing fish. It is, therefore, obvious that they cannot lay their eggs on dry land, where the tadpoles would be unable to find anything to breathe; so that even the driest and most tree-haunting toads must needs repair to the water once a year to deposit their spawn in its native surroundings. Once more, crabs pass their earlier larval stages as free-swimming crustaceans, somewhat shrimp-like in appearance, ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... became blocked up with solid ice. If the change was gradual and the snow became deeper each winter and lasted longer, an intelligent, gregarious, and exceedingly hardy and active animal like the huanaco, able to exist on the driest woody fibres, would stand the beat chance of maintaining its existence in such altered conditions, and would form new habits to meet the new danger. One would be that at the approach of a period of deep snow and deadly cold, all the herds frequenting one place would ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... deeply interested in psychical researches, and I could get no more work out of her. And as soon as we had finished the Pentateuch, Mrs. Blatch declared she would go no farther; that it was the driest history she had ever read, and most derogatory to women. My beloved coadjutor, Susan B. Anthony, said that she thought it a work of supererogation; that when our political equality was recognized and we became full-fledged American citizens, ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... from her sacred woods to cut down timber, to make Ulysses a ship. They obeyed, though in a work unsuitable to their soft fingers, yet to obedience no sacrifice is hard: and Ulysses busily bestirred himself, labouring far more hard than they, as was fitting, till twenty tall trees, driest and fittest for timber, were felled. Then like a skilful shipwright, he fell to joining the planks, using the plane, the axe, and the auger, with such expedition, that in four days' time a ship was made, complete with all ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... and I was hoarse with blowing. Then I laid myself down to rest on the coast of Zealand, near Borreby, where there stood the forest and the charming meadows. The young men from the neighbourhood assembled there, and collected brushwood and branches of trees, the largest and driest they could find. They carried them to the village, laid them in a heap, and set fire to it; then they and the village girls ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... came to Ecclefechan, where we're arriving now. He had an uproarious time, and wrote verses to the Lass of Ecclefechan, which shows the place must have been a good deal livelier then than now. Or else, which is as likely, he had a faculty of squeezing the juice out of the driest, most unpromising fruit—the ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... other schools; and I am much more inclined to admire the extraordinary power of those who are able to cover the whole distance between the depths of empiricism and the heights of special culture-problems, and who again descend to the level of the driest rules and the most neatly expressed formulae. I shall be content if only I can ascend a tolerably lofty mountain, from the summit of which, after having recovered my breath, I may obtain a general survey of the ground; for I shall never be able, in this book, to satisfy the votaries of tabulated ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... bushels to the acre, Martin averaged thirty-three, without buying a ton of commercial fertilizer. His corn was higher than anybody's else; the ears longer, the stalks juicier, because of his careful, intelligent cultivating. In the driest season, it resisted the hot winds; this, he explained, was the result of his knowing how to prepare his seed bed and when to plant—moisture could be retained if the soil was handled scientifically. He bought the spoiled acreage of his neighbors, which he cut up for ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... suggested Mr. Wedmore, in his driest tones, "the girl is shrewd enough to know that I should cut off a son who was guilty of such a piece of idiocy and leave him to ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... eyes the alternate rending anarchy and moaning paralysis of Italy. He had seen what Agricola had long before been spared the sight of. And what he saw, he saw not through a glass darkly or distorted, but in the whitest, driest light, without flinching and face to face. 'We are much beholden,' writes Bacon, 'to Machiavelli and others that wrote what men do, and not what they ought to do.' He did not despair of Italy, he did not despair even of Italian unity. ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... time may grow again, Most naked plants renew both fruit and flower; The sorriest wight may find release from pain, The driest soil suck in some moistening shower: Time goes by turns, and chances change by course From foul to fair." ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... or when, a particularly obvious and commonplace knock assaulting the ear, she exclaims in tragic accents, "There's someone at the door;" or when the detective drags from the bottom of the lake a pair of the driest of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, June 2, 1920 • Various
... nothing of what lay next to John's heart, but the pair rode together over the estate. During that ride it became plain to the young man that his uncle had no intention of settling down. Once or twice, in the driest, most matter-of-fact tone, the elder spoke as if his heir were likely to inherit soon. Finally, John blurted ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... jumped at it. It is damp, year in year out. We always have fires burning in the rooms we use. But what of that? It is cheerful, and we must have some draw-back wherever we are. But, Missie, this is only a very, very small part of the old Hospice, just the driest corner. The caves and passages run the whole length of our terrace, and all the shrubs and flowers you see were planted to cheer up ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... cent, while along the Pacific coast districts they continue about 80 per cent the year round. In the Atlantic coast districts, and generally east from the Mississippi River, the variation from month to month is not great. April is probably the driest month of the year. ...
— Dry-Farming • John A. Widtsoe
... washed down by the torrential rush of spring freshets. Below it the same wild floods, leaping down in a twenty-foot fall, had gouged out a pothole so wide and deep that it was never empty of water even in the driest seasons. ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... maize at the different stages of growth throughout the year. To us, however, he seemed, by digging holes, and taking advantage of the moisture beneath, to have succeeded pretty well in raising crops at this the driest time. The Makololo remarked that "here the maize had no season,"—meaning that the whole year was proper for its growth and ripening. By irrigation a succession of crops of grain might be raised anywhere within the south ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... seems traversed by incessant trails of smoke, so straight and rapid is the worker's flight. Those on the way to the nest carry tiny pellets of mortar, the size of small shot; those who return at once settle on the driest and hardest spots. Their whole body aquiver, they scrape with the tips of their mandibles and rake with their front tarsi to extract atoms of earth and grains of sand, which, rolled between their teeth, become impregnated with saliva and form a solid mass. The work is pursued so vigorously ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... hypothesis, he will rather lend himself to his own beguilement. The performance once over, let him, if so inclined, strip the feathers from the flights of imagination, and wash the color from the incidents; if aught save the driest and most ordinary matters of fact reward his researches, then let him ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... weather at Christmas, the bed of a river the driest walk, and corn harvest in February, were things strangely at variance with ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... enlivening of instruction should not have been answered by an appeal to severe methods, to strict, dry, and dull learning, that made no attempt to adapt itself to the natural movement of the child's mind." (Ziller, Lehre vom E. U., p. 355.) Not those studies which are driest, dullest, and most disagreeable should be selected upon which to awaken the mental forces of a child, but those which naturally arouse his interest and prompt him to a lively exercise of his powers. For children of the ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... the waders," he said. "There's sometimes a little water in the hollows, and I don't expect Jake knows the driest way. Now ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... question of justice, and for this we were ready and anxious to work. A new interest was thus brought into our lives, which, in my case, soon became all-absorbing. I was always begging my brother to bring me home fresh books. The driest volumes of political economy, the most indigestible of philosophical treatises, nothing came amiss. From these I passed on to more modern works. Raymond had made friends with a student who was a professed socialist and through him he came into possession ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... enterprise of irrigation, it would be best to make sure that the source can be depended upon for a sufficient supply of water in the driest seasons; for it is precisely at such times that the most water is needed. Ordinary springs and wells, therefore, are entirely inadequate to furnish water for anything more than a small patch or garden. ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... Westminster has rarely— never certainly in later years—heard such an advocate. The secret of his great success at the bar, beyond his intellectual power, lay, I think, in a peculiar charm and fascination of manner—a manner which could invest the driest and most technical matters with interest, and compelled the attention of the hearers to the subject under discussion. The melody of his voice was, to me, one of his greatest attractions. Then, again, what a noble presence! ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... what is clear cannot be profound. Very slowly was the public brought to acknowledge that Mansfield was a great jurist, and that Burke was a great master of political science. Montague was a brilliant rhetorician, and, therefore, though he had ten times Harley's capacity for the driest parts of business, was represented by detractors as a superficial, prating pretender. But from the absence of show in Harley's discourses many people inferred that there must be much substance; and he was pronounced to be a deep read, deep thinking gentleman, not a fine ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to the learning, positiveness and cool judicial mastery of the Report on the Lords' Journals (1794), which Philip Francis, no mean judge, declared on the whole to be the "most eminent and extraordinary" of all his productions. But even in the coolest and driest of his pieces there is the mark of greatness, of grasp, of comprehension. In all its varieties Burke's style is noble, earnest, deep-flowing, because his sentiment was lofty and fervid, and went with sincerity and ardent ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... given, in his driest manner, a description of his recent visit to receive the accolade from the Queen. It was replete with the usual quaint Vicary details—such as the solemn warning whisper of an equerry in Vicary's ear as he walked ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... always command among his fellows, in emergencies like this, the men went to work in earnest. In a short time the snow was cleared away or beat down compactly over a space some yards in extent along the side of the rock, while the others soon returned with a supply of the driest wood to be found, together with an armfull of hemlock boughs, to strew over the beaten snow. The next thing requiring their attention was the all-important object of starting a fire. But in this they were doomed to sad disappointment. Their punk-wood tinder ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... a boob, I know," said Jimmy. "Give me a cocktail. A telephone's the driest thing in the world to talk into. But, as I told ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... as generally used ignores most of the continent out of sight of Melbourne and Sydney, though both Victoria and New South Wales could be stowed away in little more than half the area of Queensland. Do we reflect that Australia includes some of the driest tracts in the world, as well as areas in which the rainfall approaches the phenomenal—that not very much more than half of the territory of the Commonwealth lies within the temperate zone—that there are as marked differences between Tasmania and North ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... execute this scheme. I took the driest leaves, and endeavoured to use them as tinder; but the driest leaves were moistened by the dews. They were only to be found in the hollows, in some of which were pools of water and others were dank. I was not speedily discouraged; but my repeated ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... period prior to 1957 was the driest in the 70-year history of weather-records in Kansas (Metzler et al., 1958). Streams throughout the Wakarusa Basin suffered intermittency and, according to Mr. Melvon H. Wertzberger, the local Work Unit Conservationist with ...
— Fishes of the Wakarusa River in Kansas • James E. Deacon
... fort. Soon after rain fell, a sort of advance agent of the rainy season, a sudden tropical downpour that ran in rivulets down across the pink card-boards and my victims. Yet strange to note, the writing of the medium soft pencil remained as clear and unsmudged as in the driest weather, and so clean a rain was it that it did not even soil my white cotton shirt. I continued unheeding, only to note with surprise a few minutes later that the sun was shining on the dense green jungle about ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... system; for she knows that order was made for the family, and not the family for order. Quietly she takes on herself what all others refuse or overlook. What the unwary disarrange she silently rectifies. Everybody in her sphere breathes easy, feels free; and the driest twig begins in her sunshine to put out buds and blossoms. So quiet are her operations and movements that none sees that it is she who holds all things in harmony; only, alas, when she is gone, how many things suddenly appear disordered, inharmonious, neglected! All these threads have been smilingly ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... peculiar species, inhabiting even the driest portions of the western prairies. It is 9 inches in length, and has a plumage of a pale buffy tone. It seems to be less aquatic than any other American Plover and is rarely found in the vicinity of bodies of water. It nests on the ground anywhere ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... It certainly would be difficult, from the same point of view of strict legality, to call anything of his exactly a novel. He was a poet, a dramatist, a voyage-and-travel writer, a bibliographer (strange trade, which associates the driest with the most "nectaweous" of men!) even sometimes a tale-teller by name, but even then hardly a novelist. Yet he managed to throw over the most unlikely material a novelish or at least a romantic character, which is sometimes—nay, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... Duplessis, habitually the driest of men, rose with a moistened eye and flushing cheek—"Monsieur le Marquis, vouchsafe me the honour to shake hands with you. I, too, am by descent gentilhomme, by profession a speculator on the Bourse. ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... be necessary to take up the most abstract of these questions of belief first, the metaphysical questions. It may be that to many readers the opening sections may seem the driest and least attractive. But I would ask them to begin at the beginning and read straight on, because much that follows this metaphysical book cannot be appreciated at its proper value without ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... accordingly stalked into the drawing-room, pettishly refused to accept either tea or coffee, tucked his daughter under his arm, and, having said the driest of good-byes to the company at ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... and Lucy, and the negress set to work collecting leaves and dry sticks. Vincent had still in his pocket the newspaper he had bought in the streets of Nashville, and he always carried lights. A piece of the paper was crumpled up and lighted, a few of the driest leaves they could find dropped upon it, then a few twigs, until at last a ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... having had a shell in the room we lived in, which had blown it even more to bits than before. I went to our new abode, and then on to the trenches to see how everything was doing, and got wet half way to the knees in the driest parts; but I am glad to say they are steadily improving things for us Regimental officers. I was in bed between 2 and 3 a.m., rose again at 3.30, and finally, of course, just about 5 a.m. for good. My feet were rather numbed after the cold water, as we had to break the ice at every step. This ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... and deep but light or sandy loam. With me it does well on a raised bed of light earth; its long tap roots will save it from drought during the driest summer, when its fleshy and fast-growing foliage would lead one to think that it could not endure a dry time. It is readily increased by division ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... on the lee side of a rock. The sand inside was dry, and after being exposed so long to the cold wind we thought the air warm, so we helped the old man into it, and placed him in the warmest and driest spot we could find out. He did not seem to care about eating, but complained bitterly of thirst. Charley could no longer move, so I went out to try and find some water. As I was groping about, almost giving up the search in despair, ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... was his manner, for he was the driest of men. That night when all had retired and I had been in bed some fifteen minutes I heard a knock at my door. I supposed it was some one of my friends who could not sleep ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... however essential, is but the ground work for combining and working out the problems of the future. He was epigrammatic, terse, and gifted with a quaint humour, with which he was apt, even when in the driest philosophy, to drive in ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... those historical recollections which they transmit; they are considered superior to his history. But of all the letters of this or of the preceding age, none are more rich, more varied, or more pleasing than those of Redi, who threw into this form his discoveries in natural history. The driest subjects, even those of language and grammar, are here treated in an interesting ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... trout from the brook, and cooking them. Besides, we were far enough away from the river highway and from all habitations now to render the thing practically safe. Accordingly I lighted a small fire of the driest wood to be found, while the trapper stole up and down the brook, moving with infinite stealth and dexterity, tracking down fish and catching them with his hands under ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... Sasasquit; and about his business he went. He built the fire of sacrifice, piling it high with the driest trees of the forest, and he laid thereon the best offering he could procure—a fat fish from the river beside his cabin. He sung as before a song or invocation, in which he mentioned the wants of the wretched Indians, and the cunning endeavours of the Evil ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... of Lee Theresa Zapp quarreling with her mother, but he said nothing. He gathered the driest bits of thatch and wood he could find in the litter on the stable floor and kindled a fire, while she sat sullenly glaring at him, her face wrinkled and tired in the wan firelight. When the blaze was going steadily, a compact and safe little fire, he spread his coat as a seat for her, and called, ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... when the Bible was the driest and darkest book in the universe to me. The next day it became entirely different. I thought I had the key to it. I had been born of the Spirit. But before I knew anything of the mind of God I had to ...
— The Way to God and How to Find It • Dwight Moody
... them when they come to them for the first time, as if afraid of sinking. The most perfect of the polished pavements and walls lie at an elevation of from 7000 to 9000 feet above the sea, where the rock is compact silicious granite. Small dim patches may be found as low as 3000 feet on the driest and most enduring portions of sheer walls with a southern exposure, and on compact swelling bosses partially protected from rain by a covering of large boulders. On the north half of the range the striated and polished surfaces are less common, not only because ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... therefore be considered to express the common direction of these waters. In a country so liable to inundation as the district between these rivers appeared to be, it was a primary object with us to travel along the highest or driest part, and we could only look for this advantage in the above direction, or parallel to and midway between the rivers. We could in this manner trace out their junction with more certainty, and so terminate thus far the survey of both by the determination of a point ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... acquired taste. There are any number of choice vintages, and you will be told that the local Attic wine is not very desirable, although of course it is the cheapest. Black wine is the strongest and sweetest; white wine is the weakest; rich golden is the driest and most wholesome. The rocky isles and headlands of the Aegean seem to produce the best vintage—Thasos, Cos, Lesbos, Rhodes, all boast their grapes; but the best wine beyond a doubt is from Chios.[*] It will fetch a mina ($18 ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... melted into sack by a good fellow. So, luck to your enterprise, since you will needs venture on Tony Foster; but, by my credit, you had better take another draught before you depart, for your welcome at the Hall yonder will be somewhat of the driest. And if you do get into peril, beware of taking to cold steel; but send for me, Giles Gosling, the head-borough, and I may be able to make something out of Tony yet, for ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... sharply at him. "How may I get to your house?" he asked. "We live in different elements, you and I. We mice want to be in the driest of dry places, while you frogs have your abodes ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... fire always makes this sort of a thick, choking smoke. There's a lot of damp stuff that burns with the dry wood. Leaves that lie on the ground and rot make a good deal of the smoke, and then there's a lot of moisture in the trees even in the driest weather." ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters - or Jack Danby's Bravest Deed • Robert Maitland
... very fond of taking walks with his father, since he found that in nine cases out of ten they afforded opportunities for inculcation of facts of the driest description with reference to estate management, or to the narration by his parent of little histories of which his conduct upon some recent occasion would adorn the moral. On this particular occasion the prospect was particularly unpleasant, for his father ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... 1. In the driest days, my fountain became disabled; the pipe was stopped up. 2. A couple of plumbers, with the implements of their craft, came out to view the situation. 3. There was a good deal of difference of opinion about where the stoppage was. 4. I found the plumbers perfectly willing to ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... followed the addition of Iyok-ok to their party. From that hour they had wanted nothing of food or shelter. Reared as he apparently had been in such wilds as these, the native skillfully had sought out the best of game, the driest, most sheltered of camping spots, in fact, had done everything that tended to make life easy in such ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... drink," said Pine "When you come to eat 'em they need to be b'iled twice. They're jest the driest bird there is. There's ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... with the Mission houses. She thought these should be as simple as possible, and semi-native in style; such, she believed, to be the driest and most healthy. In any case disease could come into a house costing L200, as into one costing L20, and "there was such a thing as God's providence." Still, she recognised the importance of preserving the health of newcomers, and admitted that her ideas might not ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... are thou now, Sigurd! and in thy gain rejoicing, while Gram, in the grass thou driest. My brother thou to death hast wounded, yet in some degree ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... rest of the girls seated on the wall, as being the driest spot available, and already attacking their packets of sandwiches. Some had ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... was going to make vows of secrecy and protestations of zeal, but Lord Oldborough cut all that short with "Of course—of course," pronounced in the driest accent, and went on with, "Now, sir, you know my object; will you do me the honour to state yours?—you will excuse my abruptness—time in some circumstances is every thing—Do me and yourself the justice to say at once what return I can make for the ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... make some endeavor to estimate the value of what Mr. Mill has done in the way of criticism. It is at least worth while to examine whether one who has shown himself capable of grappling effectively with the driest and most abstruse problems that vex the human intellect was versatile enough to study poetry with an understanding heart, and to be alive to the distinctive ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... very driest wood I could find, miss," replied Jupp. "It is only the green branches and such as has sap in it that ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... he knows a great deal more than he allows to appear, but is the driest, and most despairing Englishman I have ever seen. He has suffered shipwreck of everything on the Tuebingen sand bank. The poor wretches! Religion and theology without philosophy is bad; philosophy without philosophy is a monster! ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... on the west coast of Jutland; while the small island of Anholt in the Cattegat has an annual rainfall of only 15.78 in. More than half the rainfall occurs from July to November, the wettest month being September, with an average of 2.95 in.; the driest month is April, with an average of 1.14 in. Thunderstorms are frequent in the summer. South-westerly winds prevail from January to March, and from September to the end of the year. In April the east ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... most especial indulgence, but even the toleration of the House, 'for of all the dry and dull subjects which could possibly be introduced, the question which it is now my misfortune to bring under the consideration of the House is the driest and the dullest. If this question had been one merely of pounds, shillings, and pence, it would have been dull and complicated enough; but this is a question in which are concerned not pounds and shillings, but pence, ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... seriously. For some time all efforts to obtain a fire proved fruitless. Their garments were drenched by the storm. Mrs. Pike had a mantle that was lined with cotton. The lining of this was cut open, and the driest portion of the cotton was exposed to the sun's rays, in the hope that it could be made to catch the spark from the flint. At last they were successful. A fire was kindled in a dead tree, and the flames soon leaped up to the loftiest branches. The famished, shivering wretches ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... was a law; until he could get the very commonplace but obstreperous moon into harmony with his law of falling bodies;—the story of Darwin, with his twenty-odd years of the most patient and persistent kind of toil; delving into the most unpromising materials, reading the driest books, always on the lookout for the facts that would point the way to the explanation of species;—the story of Morse and his bitter struggle against poverty, and sickness, and innumerable disappointments up to the time when, in advancing years, ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... its discursiveness, will find the argument pretty free from polemic. Any one who has inherited a library of 17th century theology will agree with me that, of all dust, the ashes of dead controversies afford the driest. ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... the neighbourhood were collecting branches and brushwood under the oak trees; the largest and driest they could find they carried into the village, and piled them up in a heap, and set them on fire; and men and maids danced, singing in a circle round ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... lost his life in the late war. Never was situation more inconvenient, unpleasant, and unhealthy. It stands on the edge of an ugly morass formed by the stagnant water left by the tide in its retreat: the very walks of the garden are so moist, that, in the driest weather, no person can make a tour of it, without danger of the rheumatism. Besides, the house is altogether inaccessible, except at low water, and even then the carriage must cross the harbour, the wheels up to the axle-tree in mud: nay, the tide rushes in ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... mountainous country, too dry for pasture, though sufficiently undulating for vineyards; bad for grain-crops, though well suited for olives. The shade has to be all provided by the industry of man, who has planted there the tree of Pallas [the olive], which prospers in even the driest soil, because it sends its roots down into the very depths of ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... necessity for cross-fences, the whole open space lying in a single field. One hundred acres were in winter wheat. As this grain had been got in the previous autumn, it was now standing on the finest and driest of the soil, giving an air of rich fertility to the whole basin. Grass-seed had been sown along both banks of the stream, and its waters were quietly flowing between two wide belts of fresh verdure, the young plants ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... tiest, To the curtain string, Though the things thou driest Gird me while I sing, Hankies and inventions Of the lacy tribe— Things I may not mention, Let ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... his huge powder-horn, and took out the stopper. Once more he crept forward towards the bull, and as near the snout of the latter as it was safe for him to go. Holding the horn by its thick end, and reaching far out, he poured upon the levellest and driest spot a large quantity of powder; and, then drawing the horn gradually nearer, he laid a train ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... effected; for when the next messenger came (as he did, not long afterwards) from the Master, he got nothing away with him but a letter. For some while back it had been I myself who had conducted these affairs; Mr. Henry not setting pen to paper, and I only in the driest and most formal terms. But this letter I did not even see; it would scarce be pleasant reading, for Mr. Henry felt he had his wife behind him for once, and I observed, on the day it was despatched, he had a very ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the worst they can be climbed. Then they will find themselves in the morass among thick reeds. But they must not fire these till they have worked round to the place of the sunrise, whence the wind blows strongly. Then they must go from spot to spot and bend down the driest of the reeds, setting fire to them. Afterwards they can get to the back of the fire and wait till all is done one way or the other. If we win they will find us, if we are killed they can try to run away. But will the ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... around them undergoing decomposition, and all the other evils attendant on the settlement of a new and unbroken country. Under such circumstances, can it be surprising that many were sick, and that many died? The summer of 1820 was the hottest and driest ever known in this country. For weeks in succession, the thermometer, in the shade at St. Louis, was up to 96 deg. for hours in the day. Not a cloud came over the sun, to afford a partial relief from its burning influence. The fevers of that season were ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... is the driest and best known almost anywhere, and all the hills are as sound and hard as the road. The climate is also dry, and in general not very cold, though we had one or two very cold days. There is a deer forest—many roe deer, and on the opposite ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... probably it was not meant to be. Mr. Henson, the printer and bookseller, had very little knowledge of the actual state of his correspondent, and looking upon the whole scheme of publishing poetry as the driest matter of business, addressed Clare as he would have any other customer. This, however, was not the way in which the deeply-distressed poet viewed the proceedings. He gave way to his feelings in a very angry letter, after despatching which he sank into deep despondency. It seemed ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... clothes which he wore next him; the cause of which might probably be the hot and adjust temperament of his body. For sweet smells, Theophrastus conceives, are produced by the concoction of moist humors by heat, which is the reason that those parts of the world which are driest and most burnt up, afford spices of the best kind, and in the greatest quantity; for the heat of the sun exhausts all the superfluous moisture which lies in the surface of bodies, ready to generate putrefaction. And this hot constitution, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... by giving, with other sciences, the true knowledge of God and ourselves, and purifying and kindling in the will the fire of divine love with the sentiments of humility and other virtues. By a little use, fervent aspirations to God will arise from all subjects in the driest studies, and it will become easy, and as it were natural in them, to raise our heart earnestly to God, either despising the vain pursuits, or detesting the vanity, and deploring the blindness of ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... there are scores similar to those you see. Sluys is the centre of the wine trade of Flanders and Holland, and cellars like these extend right under the wall. All the warehouses along here have similar cellars. This end of the town was the driest, and the soil most easily excavated. That is why the magazines for wines are all clustered here. There is not a foot of ground behind and under the walls at this end that is not similarly occupied, and if the Spaniards try to drive mines to blow up the walls, they ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... way of planting tomatoes is 6 feet apart each way, plowing a trench of one furrow with the slope of the land for irrigating, that is, a trench between every row and a cross trench as a feeder. The land is low and in the driest part of the year the surface water is from 2 to 3 feet beneath the top ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... woman's entrance into our Universities may gather something of the results to be expected from such a step in the fields of rural archaeology. Her very presence at the meeting throws an air of gentle absurdity over the whole affair. It is difficult for the driest of antiquaries to read a paper on Roman roads in the teeth of a charming being who sleeps to the close, and then awakes only to assure him it was "very romantic." But it must be confessed that the charming being has very little trouble with the antiquaries. Half the fun of the thing lies ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... alleys where swarm the poachers of the city—the trespassers and anglers in the game preserves and streams of humanity. He had lost all pleasure in his club; the most exciting themes of political life retained no piquancy for him. His old friends ceased to find any pleasure in him. He was become the driest of all dry wells. Poachers, and anglers, and Methodists, haunted the wretched purlieus of his fast fading-out mind, and he resolved to go to town no more. His whole nature was centered in his woods. He was forever on the watch; and when at Rockville again, if he heard a door clap when in bed, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... leaving me in a dense gloom, strongly pervaded by an odour of fungus and decaying onions. Groping into one of the casks, I found some straw, and spreading it on a piece of plank, I prepared to pass the night sitting with my back to the driest piece of wall I could find, which happened to be immediately under the airhole, a fortunate circumstance, as the closeness was often stifling. I had probably been dozing for some time in a sitting position, when I felt something tickle the top of ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... deliquesced rapidly in any but the driest atmosphere, by its affinity for damp, and, consequently, often caused mildew in cases of birds, etc, into which it had been introduced. The fumes of sulphur during combustion are, on the contrary, really of service in destroying insect life, as evidenced in the fumigation ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... A reporter cannot step out between the sessions of a caucus and give a racy abstract of the landscape. It may consume the best hours of many days to certify for one's self the simplest out-door fact, but every such piece of knowledge is intellectually worth the time. Even the driest and barest book of Natural History is good and nutritious, so far as it goes, if it represents genuine acquaintance; one can find summer in January by poring over the Latin catalogues of Massachusetts plants and animals in Hitchcock's Report. The most commonplace ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... world, And vile hands gather it? My song shall rise, Although none heed or hear it: rise it shall, And swell along the wastes of Nineveh And Babylon, until it reach to thee, Layard! who raisest cities from the dust, Who driest Lethe up amid her shades, And pourest a fresh stream on arid sands, And rescuest thrones and nations, fanes and gods, From conquering Time: he sees thee, and turns back. The weak and slow Power pushes past the wise, And lifts them up in triumph to her ear: They, to keep firm the seat, sit ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... men whose society is to be more desired for this quality than that of plumbers! They are the most agreeable men I know; and the boys in the business begin to be agreeable very early. I suspect the secret of it is, that they are agreeable by the hour. In the driest days, my fountain became disabled: the pipe was stopped up. A couple of plumbers, with the implements of their craft, came out to view the situation. There was a good deal of difference of opinion about where the stoppage was. ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... underground and the immature prawns dig their way out in the spring. If there's been a lot of rain, most of them drown in their holes or as soon as they emerge. According to growth rings on trees, last spring was the driest in the Beta Piedmont in centuries, so most of them survived, and as they're parthenogenetic females, they all laid eggs. This spring, it was even drier, so now they have land prawns all over central Beta. And I don't know that anything ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... of St. Fillans and other places of antiquarian interest in this neighbourhood, it almost goes without saying that much must be taken on trust. People are prone to believe that the dirty pool of stagnant water which still remains in the driest summer on the top of St. Fillan's Hill is the famous spring to which pilgrims at one time resorted. Any one who examines it will not fail to observe that it has all the appearance of an artificially built ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... perhaps even more beautiful than under a burning cloudless sky, no soft gradations between the greens and the blues. The little pools or perforations breaking the surface of the broad platform, acres of rocks, are, I believe, unexplained phenomena. In the driest season these openings contain water, presumably forced upwards from hidden springs. The pools, just now covered with green slime, curiously spot the grey ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... the under-clothes of women at work, even their stays, quickly become wet with perspiration, while the lower parts cannot escape getting equally wet in nearly every kind of work in which they are employed, except in the driest weather. It not unfrequently happens that a woman, on returning from work, is obliged to go to bed for an hour or two to allow her clothes to be dried. It is also by no means uncommon for her, if she does not do this, to put them on again the next morning nearly as ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... figurative style, we might say, had now not a little carbonized tinder, of Irritability; with so much nitre of latent Passion, and sulphurous Humor enough; the whole lying in such hot neighborhood, close by "a reverberating furnace of Fantasy:" have we not here the components of driest Gunpowder, ready, on occasion of the smallest spark, to blaze up? Neither, in this our Life-element, are sparks anywhere wanting. Without doubt, some Angel, whereof so many hovered round, would one day, leaving "the outskirts of AEsthetic Tea," flit higher; and, by electric Promethean ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... led in it, so that all men stood ready and eager to gaze on the pictures he drew. He chose too often to inflict upon them, instead of it, the most commonplace of moralizing, the stalest (p. 170) disquisitions upon manners and customs, and the driest discussions ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... replied Lizzie, in the driest manner; "especially to your sisters. However this is no time to joke. I fear you will get the worst of it, John. Do you know a man of about Gwenny's shape, nearly as broad as he is long, but about six ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... lip at the very thought of any New York woman in love. There was only one woman who knew what the word meant and she was in Gunsight, Arizona. He picked up her letter and scanned it again, but his eyes had not learned to look for love. Even the driest formula, sent from one to another, may spell out that magic word; may spell it unconsciously and against the will, if the heart but rules the hand. Mary Fortune had told him in that briefest of messages that she was back in Gunsight ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... next camping place was in a sort of circular basin that had been cut out of the prairie by the floods, and was surrounded by high mud banks. He found plenty of drift in the eddy and picked out the driest; but experienced great difficulty in starting a fire with it. He only succeeded in getting sufficient heat to cook his supper; he was not able to coax enough blaze to warm himself. Night came down black as ink and he heard the distant yell of a coyote which was answered from all directions by others. ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... society were there, and capable men went up and down the land, sensible of its charm, its wonder, its remoteness from themselves, and yet not discerning truly. At last, when a thousand feet have trodden upon a thing of inestimable price, there comes along a newspaper man, doing the driest kind of hackwork, bound to a drudgery as stale and dreary as any in life, and he sees what no man has ever seen before him, though it has been plain in view for years and years. Through scorn and discouragement ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... seeds planted in mid-summer must be able to retain moisture. Nothing robs a soil of water more surely than a breaking-plow. Its use is a necessity in farming, but this effect of plowing must be borne in mind when a seeding is planned for the driest period of the year. It goes without saying that sods should not be formed on land that is too solid for admission of air. A thorough plowing is needed by most soils prior to making a sod that will prevent further stirring ...
— Crops and Methods for Soil Improvement • Alva Agee
... to the fair, but a mighty different sort of fair from what they have nowadays. One thing is, honey, they have the fairs too soon. It never was intended for folks to go to fairs in hot weather, and here they've got to havin' 'em the first week in September, about the hottest, driest, dustiest time of the whole year. Nothin' looks pretty then, and it always makes me think o' folks when they've been wearin' their summer clothes for three months, and everything's all faded and dusty and drabbled. That's the way it generally is in September. But ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... me," he said suddenly, in his driest voice, "with your new manners and ideas, quite ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of Minnie in his strong arms to the highest and driest part of the rock was the work of a few moments to Ruby. Brief though those moments were, however, they were precious to the youth beyond all human powers of calculation, for Minnie recovered partial consciousness, and fancying, doubtless, that she was still in danger, flung her arms round his ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... round-seeded class may be sown in open quarters, and the driest and warmest places must be selected. It is next to impossible to grow them too well; for if the haulm runs up higher than usual, the produce will be the finer. Remember, too, that if deep trenches are dug and a lot of manure is put in for Peas, the ground is so far prepared ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons |
