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More "Describe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to seek for words in which to describe the overpowering anxiety which racked my nerves as we tore through the water. The peace of Europe, the safety of Japan and Great Britain, perhaps the future of the world, might be ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... take to prepare the meal, and give the cost. Insist upon variety in menus, and request the pupil to describe how the meal should be served. System, neatness and promptness should be especially emphasized. Clean table linen—no matter how coarse—is possible for every one. A dish of fruit or flowers, if only a bunch of green foliage, improves the ...
— Public School Domestic Science • Mrs. J. Hoodless
... modest to tell that he gave twice as much to worthy poor as he ever gave to personal pleasure; so the subject dropped, and they were silent until Olive asked, with a sudden recollection of how she had frequently heard him describe ladies' toilets: ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... the village of Middlemas, situated in one of the midland counties of Scotland, led the rough, active, and ill-rewarded course of life which we have endeavoured to describe. He was a man between forty and fifty, devoted to his profession, and of such reputation in the medical world, that he had been more than once, as opportunities occurred, advised to exchange Middlemas and its meagre circle of practice, ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... Examine again, Dost thou labour after those qualifications that the Scriptures do describe a child of God by? That is, faith, yea the right faith, the most holy faith, the faith of the operation of God. And also, dost thou examine whether there is a real growth of grace in thy soul, as love, zeal, self-denial, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... my rights until now. The knowledge would at one time have gone far to render me useless for personal effort in any direction worthy of it. It would have made me conceited, ambitious, boastful: I don't know how many bad adjectives would have been necessary to describe me.' ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... great social or speculative changes, the overthrow of a monarchy, or the establishment of a creed, they do but half their duty if they merely relate the events. In an account, for instance, of the rise of Mahometanism, it is not enough to describe the character of the Prophet, the ends which he set before him, the means which he made use of, and the effect which he produced; the historian must show what there was in the condition of the Eastern races which enabled Mahomet to act upon, them so powerfully; ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... Though he meant to be just, he seemed haunted by a certain chronic assumption that the science of the day pretended completeness, and he had just found out that the savans had neglected to discriminate a particular botanical variety, had failed to describe the seeds or count the sepals. "That is to say," we replied, "the blockheads were not born in Concord; but who said they were? It was their unspeakable misfortune to be born in London, or Paris, or Rome; but, poor fellows, they did what they could, considering ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... Cherry, "I wouldn't like you gu—fellers to go away thinkin' that high-class female society hadn't brought about a change in what I would describe, for want of a better word, ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... this. In Wagner's operas, which I don't understand, perhaps, but which I love with thrills in my spine—and that's a kind of understanding—whenever a character comes on the stage he or she always is followed by a certain strain of music—music that expresses character, and seems even to describe a person. Well, wallflower perfume might be your leitmotif. Can't you hear perfume? I can. Just as you can seem to see music—wonderful, changing colours. The wallflower scent's all around us now. It's you. But through it I imagine another perfume. It's here, too. It's ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... verse. The 'delight of the heavenly Wisdom in God' is not unlike that directed to man. 'The sons of men' are the last, noblest work of Creation, and on them, as the shining apex, her delight settles. The words describe not only what was true when man came into being, as the utmost possible climax of creatural excellence, but are the revelation of what still ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... present state from one of extreme fusion. The direction of the ranges being from north to south, these deposits lie also in the same direction. Those of iron are greater than those of copper, and it is impossible to describe the appearance of the huge clean masses of which they are composed. They look indeed like immense blocks, that had only just passed from the forge. The deposits at the Burra Burra amounted, I believe, to some ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... separated from her by the entire length of the room; but their work required a certain collaboration, and there were occasions when he was established near her, when deliberately, in cold blood and of his own initiative, he was compelled to speak to her. No language could describe the anguish and difficulty of these approaches. His way was beset by obstacles and perils, by traps and snares; and at every turn there waited for him the shameful pitfall of the aitch. He whose easy courtesy charmed away the shyness of Miss ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... hardly describe to the reader the effect which these conversations with Jackson had upon me at first. If a prisoner were removed from a dark cell, and all at once introduced into a garden full of fruit and flowers, which he never before had an idea were in existence, he could not have been more filled with wonder, ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... true, although she weeps sometimes in secret at the thought that he will never look upon his little daughter's face. But everyone says that the tiny Angela is the image of Kitty herself as a child; and, therefore, when the mother wishes to describe the winning face and dancing eyes, she tells Rupert that he has only to picture to himself once more—"the little girl that he used to ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... how glibly you can describe feats that are easy to a race in its youth. It is simply that they don't have to do any of that. There are millions of worlds suitable for them in the Galaxy. They don't ...
— Youth • Isaac Asimov
... positive judgment but only as an attempt to express the general impression of his works on an uncritical reader. He is first of a realist, who paints life as he sees it. As he says himself, "I have no brains above my eyes; I describe what I see.". His pictures of certain types, notably the weak and vicious elements of society, are accurate and true to life, but they seem to play too large a part in his books, and have perhaps too greatly influenced his general judgment of humanity. An excessive sensibility, or the capacity ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... you cut your hair and beard? why doffed the prairie chieftain's robes of state and come forth a plain man? You have dispelled my romance. I have tried to paint you as I saw and remembered you, and made charcoal sketches for the gratification of friends to whom I would describe you. I would so like to see you as you were! O! you were a wonder to me, a very Orson—now, you ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... forwards, running upon nothing at all, like those of a chicken on its back. Then she would laugh like the very spirit of fun; only in her laugh there was something missing. What it was I find myself unable to describe. I think it was a certain tone, depending upon the possibility of sorrow,—morbidezza, perhaps. ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... Mahabharata. The Great God thus addresses Shakti, when he asks her to describe the duties of women. I quote from a pamphlet by Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy: Sati: A ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... music, peals of bells, explosions of artillery, deafening shouts, of discharges of fireworks, and such a universal display of extravagant joy that, as my worthy author, Goncalves dos Santos says: 'It would require the pencil of Zeuxis and the odes of Pindar to describe; and if anything on earth could be compared to the joys of heaven, it was ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... describe it in terms which would have any relation to your present knowledge of physics. All I can say is that life here is intimately bound up with the higher laws of electro-magnetism which at present are only being guessed at on your level. It's not the radioactivity which you know ...
— Warning from the Stars • Ron Cocking
... reader is anxious to know what sort of a man this is who wounded so many ladies' hearts, and who has been such a prodigious favourite with men. If we were to describe him it would be personal. Besides, it really does not matter in the least what sort of a man he is, or what his ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... contracts a matrimonial engagement of which you disapprove," Mr. Mool answered, "you are instructed by the testator to assert your reasons in the presence of—well, I may describe it, as a family council; composed of Mr. Gallilee, and of ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... motley crew was this first German party landed at Melbourne. I fear they were not all vinedressers. But the difficulty was to get them to describe themselves as such, even when they were so. This was almost as hard upon them as for an Indian Brahmin to write himself down a low-caste Hindoo. Upon any pretence they would class themselves as of some trade, and one, who doubtless expected great things from it, entered himself, to the serious ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... shock was most violent, the sound resembled that of trains and vehicles in motion; while, outside this area it generally appeared to be like the hissing of a violent wind. In only a few places was it compared to detonations, the crashes of artillery or distant thunder. Some observers describe the sound as appearing at first as if a strong wind were rising, and then as the roaring of a ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... drawings of the principal subjects in it appear to have been made first in black, by Martin Schoengauer (at all events by some copyist of his designs), and then another workman has been employed to paint these drawings over. No words can describe the intensity of the "plague of the heart" in this man; the reader should examine the manuscript carefully if he desires to see how low human nature can sink. I had written a description of one or two of the drawings in order to give ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... great plant until they were told otherwise. But there was no one to tell him, nor any means by which he could find out his mistake. He had no plural number, and no definite or indefinite articles. Whether he saw one or a hundred tigers together, he could only describe them by the one word tiger. It was a long time before he could even say 'much tiger,' as the Australian natives still have to do if they see more animals than five together, and the Andamanese if they see more than two. The hypothesis therefore seems reasonable ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... which Andrew never left the fight except for that brief journey to tell Nellie the news, at last they came upon the crushed mass of bloody pulp and rags, smashed together so that the one could not be told from the other—father and son, a heap of broken bones and flesh and blood.... And no pen can describe accurately the scene. ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... friend Simmons here and I were boys together. We fell in love with the same girl. I married her. Not long afterward she gave way to drink. I found that in all kinds of ways I had mistaken her character. I can't describe your own mother to you. She had a violent temper. So had I. My life was a hell upon earth. One day she goaded me beyond my endurance and I struck at her with a knife. I meant at the bloodred instant to kill her. But I didn't. I nearly killed ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... many days in that place when, chancing to make inquiries at a store kept by a Mr. Shakespeare, I was casually introduced to a Dutch pearl-fisher named Peter Jensen. Although I describe him as a Dutch pearler I am somewhat uncertain as to his exact nationality. I am under the impression that he told me he came from Copenhagen, but in those days the phrase "Dutchman" had a very ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... and so engraved her in the memory of every one, that the injury and lapse of time cannot efface her from it; for we shall ceaselessly mourn and lament for her, like Antimachus the Greek poet wept for Lysidichea, his wife, with sad verses and delicate elegies which describe and reveal, ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... questions which I was fortunately able to answer. As I look back, I feel sure he did this to put me at my ease. This was the first time I had ever seen Dr. Janeway in the sick-room. It would be hard to describe the difference between this man I now saw examining the sick woman and the Dr. Janeway I had known before. There was a light in his eyes and an alertness in his voice, entirely new to me, as he deftly ...
— Some Personal Recollections of Dr. Janeway • James Bayard Clark
... she schoons!" cried a bystander, coining a verb to describe the swooping slide of the graceful hull down the ways into the ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... tire you to read the entire programme, so I will mention and describe briefly only a few of the pieces, though all were as creditably rendered as if it were a white school, with the singing perhaps better. The pupils, without exception, acquitted themselves nobly, and their neat appearance was worthy of ...
— The American Missionary—Volume 39, No. 07, July, 1885 • Various
... July while ferrying across the Hudson, I noticed north of the landing at Dyckman St., what appeared to be chestnut trees in bloom. On investigation, I found these to be living native chestnuts, of the peculiar strip type I shall describe later, and proceeding further north from this, where the Harlem enters the Hudson. I was led into a forest where I found at least 40 living chestnuts, some of which were in good condition, and one particularly was leafy nearly ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... me; perhaps it was but the coquetry of the "eternal feminine" conscious of her own attraction, but she sat there silent, the lashes shading her eyes, the clear light of the dawn upon her face. I cannot describe what I saw, only it was a young face, the skin clear and glowing with health, the nose beautifully moulded, the throat white and round, the red lips arched like a bow, and a broad forehead shadowed by dark hair. She had a trooper's hat on, worn jauntily on one side, ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... host went on to describe the house with the white wall, which looked down upon a cemetery and a village. His description was almost precisely what Mouni's had been, and there was no doubt that the place where she had lived with the beautiful lady was the place of which he spoke. But of the lady herself they ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... ridiculous. Still, it must be remembered that "the period was one when journalists aped fine gentlemen, and killed themselves for nothing." Ferdinand Bac declares that this practice was "largely the fault of Dumas, who, in his romances, would describe lovely women throwing themselves between the combatants ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... in the beautiful grove of live-oaks adjoining the camp. It was the largest grove we had seen. I wish it were possible to describe fitly the scene which met our eyes as we sat upon the stand, and looked down on the crowd before us. There were the black soldiers in their blue coats and scarlet pantaloons, the officers of this and other regiments ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... especially his own. One does not become surer as one advances in knowledge, but less sure. No article of faith is proof against the disintegrating effects of increasing information; one might almost describe the acquirement of knowledge as a process of disillusion. But among the humbler ranks of men who make up the great bulk of every civilized people the increase of information is so slow and so arduous that this ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... knew him well, and knew well how to judge of men's powers and attainments, said of him: "He is too great, too wonderful, for me to describe. Whatever he writes, whatever he utters, goes to the soul and fixes itself like arrows in the heart. He is ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... have hesitated to describe the hollow-eyed cripple, the quaintly-dressed artisan's wife, a few pages ago, what shall I do with this graceful, shapely, elegantly-attired gentlewoman into whom she has been merged within these two months? In good faith she was very pretty. You and I, ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... protested against any delay. The Duke of Argyle's man of confidence was of course consequential; and as he had been bred to the medical profession in his youth (at least he used this expression to describe his having, thirty years before, pounded for six months in the mortar of old Mungo Mangleman, the surgeon at Greenock), he was obstinate whenever a matter ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... tenth century. It was a monastic cell attached to the Abbey of Malmesbury, but Ethelred II gave it to the Abbess of Shaftesbury in 1001 as a secure retreat for her nuns if Shaftesbury should be threatened by the ravaging Danes. We need not describe the building, as it is well known. Our artist has furnished us with an admirable illustration of it. Its great height, its characteristic narrow Saxon doorways, heavy plain imposts, the string-courses surrounding the building, the arcades of pilasters, the carved figures ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... you," began Biddy, "wouldn't I be proud, just? But dear, dear! there never were two Irish girls farther asunder as far as appearance goes. See here, let me describe myself, feature by feature. Oh, here's a clear pool. I can get a glimpse of myself in it. You come and look in too, Nora. Now, then, we can see ourselves. Oh, holy poker! it's cruel the difference between us. Here's my forehead low and bumpy, and my little nose, scarcely any ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... who, for his part, wished to get away as soon as possible, knowing full well how he would be treated if the miser should return while he was there. So he replied, "Mother, language has no words to describe the miseries they are undergoing in the other world. They have not a rag of clothing, and for the last six days they have eaten nothing, and have lived on water only. It would break your heart to see them." The rogue's pathetic words deceived the good ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... movement I am about to describe had commenced, and when his cavalry was on our extreme left and far to the rear, south, Sheridan rode up to where my headquarters were then established, at Dabney's Mills. He met some of my staff officers outside, and was highly jubilant over the prospects ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... hackneyed, I know, but there is only one way to describe the great trek to Windhuk. It was absolutely "a chequer-board of nights and days." Looking at my diary just now, that I have had ten years' practice at keeping, I see a confusion got into the dates. You ...
— With Botha in the Field • Eric Moore Ritchie
... Here, too, we are speaking relatively; in reality, there are no fragments of the Absolute. We describe the process as it seems to us in ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... still more rare. And after having seen all this, what can be more charming than to see how a bevy of damsels comes forth from the gate of the castle in gay and gorgeous attire, such that, were I to set myself now to depict it as the histories describe it to us, I should never have done; and then how she who seems to be the first among them all takes the bold knight who plunged into the boiling lake by the hand, and without addressing a word to him leads him into ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... makes the suggestion that he noticed a singular expression in the eyes of certain of the color blind difficult to describe. "In some it amounted to a startled expression, as if they were alarmed; in others, to an eager, aimless glance, as if seeking to perceive something but unable to find it; and in certain others to an almost ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... cape on," he said to himself, thinking how he should describe him to Bud. "An' gole buckles on his shoes, an' a sword on, an' a long white feathah in his hat. Cricky! An' it was his hawse I done held! Maybe it will be somethin' mighty fine what he's goin' to bring me, ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Asked to describe the Deity, a donkey would represent him with long ears and a tail. Man's conception is higher and truer: he thinks of him as somewhat ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... mue?a—literally, once spoken—may be traced back, I think, to the Alexandrian grammarians, centuries before our era, who invented it to describe those words which they observed to occur once, and only once, in any author or literature. It is so convenient an expression for statistical commentators on the Bible, and on the classics as well, that they will not willingly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... by telling what they are, directly, and the other is by telling what they do. I find that my children generally like the last of these methods better than they do the first; and I am not sure but, on the whole, it is quite as good as the other. At any rate, I shall try to describe conscience by pointing out some of its effects. In other words, I shall tell you a story. Some twenty-five years ago—it may be thirty; how time slides away!—I knew a boy who had one of the kindest of mothers, but whose father had died before his recollection. I think—indeed I know—he ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... it around lively," cried Tom, and Hans began to describe little circles with the Roman candle. Soon the sparks began to pour forth, and not a few came down on the ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer
... 1 To describe an AEquinoctiall planispheare, draw a circle (ACBD) and inscribe in it two diameters (AB) & (CD) cutting each other at right angles, and the whole circle into foure quadrants: each whereof devide into 90. parts, or degrees. The line (AB) doth ...
— A Briefe Introduction to Geography • William Pemble
... helped him to the solution of his first problem, with the view of illustrating the nature of geometrical methods, he is in future to be left to solve the questions put to him as best he can. To bisect a line, to erect a perpendicular, to describe a square, to bisect an angle, to draw a line parallel to a given line, to describe a hexagon, are problems which a little patience will enable him to find out. And from these he may be led on step by step to more complex questions: all of which, ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... Miss Jennings, "we will consider the girl. I know her well. You need not describe her. What I know about her is this: She is the daughter of a criminal. Her father was a pickpocket, he died in prison. Now I ask you, Faith, what can you expect from this girl? According to your Bible are not 'the iniquities' of the fathers visited upon the children, and are the innocents to ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... manuscript of his accounts for a year in this capacity. By the untiring diligence of M. Ch. de Beaurepaire these have been analysed, and his paper describing them, though too detailed to be reproduced here, is of the highest importance for any writer attempting to describe the habits of a queen whose abilities as a horsewoman were so highly praised by Brantome. Guillaume le Fieu had evidently considerable financial abilities, for we find him promoted, later on, to be "Receveur ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... I shall not describe the place very fully now, preferring that it should be seen through the eyes of my wife and children, as well as ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... now got well settled down into our harbor duties, which, as they are a good deal different from those at sea, it may be well enough to describe. In the first place, all hands are called at daylight, or rather—especially if the days are short—before daylight, as soon as the first grey of the morning. The cook makes his fire in the galley; the steward goes about his work in the cabin; and the crew ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... I go any further I must describe Percival Benson Woodhouse to you, for he's not only "our sort," but a ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... tablets and portions of tablets which describe the views and beliefs of the Babylonians and Assyrians about the Creation were discovered by Mr. (later Sir) A.H. Layard, Mormuzd Rassam and George Smith, Assistant in the Department of Oriental Antiquities in the British Museum. ...
— The Babylonian Legends of the Creation • British Museum
... at the commander-in-chief, began a detailed account of the outward semblance of the count. Why she began with him, I am unable to say; but possibly it was because it was easier, for when she came to describe the baron, she was, I regret to say, somewhat vague and figurative. Not so vague, however, but that Col. Hamilton suddenly started up with a look at his chief, who instantly checked it with a gesture ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte
... so magnificently did Oldfield describe the pleasures of a woman of fashion that the audience echoed, with a different meaning, Lord Townley's comment, and showered her with plaudits. "Prodigious," indeed, must have ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... friend and I started upon hacks for the meet. Now, I am not going to describe the "harrow and weal away!" with which the soul of poor Reynard is hunted out of the world—if, indeed, such a clever wretch can have a soul. I daresay—I hope, at least, that the argument of the fox-hunter is analogically just, who, being expostulated with on the cruelty of fox-hunting, replied—"Well, ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... defence of their commerce, either purchased of the nabobs and rajahs, or conquered in the course of the war. As the operations we propose to record were confined to the coasts of Malabar and Coromandel, or the interior countries which form the peninsula intra Gangem, it will be unnecessary to describe the factory at Bencoolen, on the island of Sumatra, or any settlement which the English possess in other parts of the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... bounding of maddened horses, the clatter and roar of musketry and cannon, mixed with the spiteful report of rifles and the yells that rose from the indefatigable throats of six hundred unseen savages, formed a chaos of anguish and terror scarcely paralleled even in Indian war. "I cannot describe the horrors of that scene," one of Braddock's officers wrote three weeks after; "no pen could do it. The yell of the Indians is fresh on my ear, and the terrific sound will haunt me till the hour of ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... white; we call them with us mixed blood; (I should take you to be colored, said the witness to Mr. Brown.) I suppose he lives somewhere up there; I saw him at my room the next morning; I did not learn from him who wrote the letter; he did not describe the person of the woman in the letter written to me, only her general appearance; Purnell said he ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... a-quiver with rage, their tails whip the earth in their fury, while their eyes, like coals of green fire, shine with a malevolence such as no words can describe. ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... To describe Polly Howland in cold print would be impossible, for Polly was something of a chameleon. What Peggy saw was a young girl not quite as tall as herself, but slightly heavier and straight and lithe as a willow. Her fine ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... Napoleon and Europe;—a most painful situation, which I endured to serve the cause I believed and have never ceased to believe just, though I hourly felt its complicated vexations. I shall not linger here to describe them; nothing is more repugnant to my nature than to volunteer a display of my own feelings, especially when I am well aware that many, who listen, cannot or will not understand or believe me. I care little for mistake or invective; either is the natural condition of public life: but I ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... convention in 1912, when he kidded the standpat crowd out of every Republican state in the union but two at the election. Possibly you don't like that word kid. But it's in the dictionary, and there's no other word to describe Henry's talent. He is always jamming the allegro into the adagio. And that night in the encircling gloom on the boat as we started on our martial adventures he began kidding the ocean. His idea was that he would get Wichita to vote bonds for one that ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... lesson should be read a little more slowly than conversation. When we wish to describe any thing, we must give time for those who listen to us to get the meaning ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... to describe the most noteworthy event in the life of Henry IV., and the one which has made his name famous in history,—his contest with the great ecclesiastic Hildebrand, who had become pope under the title of Gregory VII. Though an aged ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... read so much about the magnificent Emerald City that there is little need for me to describe it here. It is the Capital City of the Land of Oz, which is justly considered the most attractive and delightful fairyland in all ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... and sun Describe the foolish circle of our years, Until death takes us, doing all undone, And there's an end at last to hopes ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... feel when you see me? What do you feel when another man comes near me? Take the count for instance. What do you feel at this instant with my arm in yours? Describe me your sensations; ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... prepare cloths and necessaries for bathing. When they had done as she desired, she ordered the eunuchs in waiting to conduct me to the hummaum, and gave them a rich dress. They led me into an elegant apartment, difficult for speech to describe. They spread many-coloured carpets, upon which I sat down and undressed; after which I entered the hummaum, and perceived delightful odours from sandal wood, of comorin, and other sweets diffusing from every part. Here they seated me, covered me with perfumed soaps, and rubbed me till my body ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... was to describe some LOVELADS and LASSES roving a little by the Sea-shore in a guilded Boat; when, on a sudden, the Wind arises, drives 'em into the middle of the Main at once, and dashes the Gondola on a Rock. Might ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... five minutes is almost impossible to describe, for every movement was executed with lightning-like rapidity, the Filipinos bound to kill or capture the Americans, and at the same time afraid that they would slip like eels through their fingers. After a score of shots taken at a distance, they closed in, ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... process through which the maker of the book passed. The man who reads the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" with his heart as well as his intelligence must measurably enter into the life which these poems describe and interpret; he must identify himself for the time with the race whose soul and historic character are revealed in epic form as in a great mirror; he must see life from the Greek point of view, and feel life as the Greek felt it. He must, in a word, go through ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... not forget that our task ends where the historian's begins. The use of iron did not long precede history, so we have but little to describe as to the customs and manners of life during the prehistoric Iron Age. A general advance in all the social arts must surely have taken place. Improved tools, and more cheaply produced, could not ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... When she came to describe the affair of the masquerade, however, her tone changed, and she became much more explicit. She went into all the details of that adventure with the utmost minuteness, describing all the particulars of every scene, the dresses which were worn both by Lord Chetwynde ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... "Then shall I describe to you that picture by Rembrandt, that pleased me so much; and my cat Childebrand, as is his habit, on my knees resting, and anxiously up at me gazing, shall follow the motions of my finger as in the air it sketches the story to make ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... help of the Almighty, order was re-established, and, after two hours of trouble impossible to describe, these 2,000 refugees embarked on ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... species being the common Cigale and the variety which lives on the flowering ash. Both of these are widely distributed and are the only species known to the country folk. The larger of the two is the common Cigale. Let me briefly describe the mechanism with which it ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... use among collegians in France, to describe those students who are unable to pass their examinations; tantamount to ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... the Throne Room that evening, and confidentially explained to the bewildered William Wetherell the exact situation in the Truro Franchise fight. Inasmuch as it has become our duty to describe this celebrated conflict,—in a popular and engaging manner, if possible,—we shall have to do so through Mr. Wetherell's eyes, and on his responsibility. The biographies of some of the gentlemen concerned have since been published, and for ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the hearing till four o'clock. Needless to describe the excitement in the town. Monsieur Tiphaine knew that by three o'clock the consultation of doctors would be over and their report drawn up; he wished Auffray, as surrogate-guardian, to be at the hearing armed ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... more wonderful were those great, dark, velvety eyes, deep and unfathomable. In them the tragedy of life was tumultuously visible, yet they were serene, self-possessed, even steady in their quiet simplicity. To describe her features is not an easy task. They were clear-cut, with a purity of the lines of the nose and brow seldom seen in a woman's face, dark, well-arched eyebrows, a pretty mouth which had just escaped extreme sensuousness. ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... candles were protected by tiny glass shades, so that the soft summer air could not blow them about, and all the girls thought they had never seen such a wonderful sight. Mr. Dale was abducted from his study—there was really no other word to describe the way in which he was carried off bodily—and requested to light the candles. He did so looking very confused, and as though he did not in the least comprehend what he was doing. Nevertheless he was there, and he ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... the crowd like a blind man's dog, following the stream in a state of stupefaction and excitement difficult to describe. Importuned by glances and white-rounded contours, dazzled by the audacious display of bared throat and bosom, he gripped his roll of manuscript tightly lest somebody should steal it—innocent that ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... cough may become so violent that vomiting is caused at the same time. Nevertheless many consumptives describe their cough as very unimportant on account of their innate sorrowless nature, and they will not even be discouraged by the gravest symptoms. Often however it is fear that induces the patients to make light of their coughing, their spitting blood, their losing flesh and to place ...
— Prof. Koch's Method to Cure Tuberculosis Popularly Treated • Max Birnbaum
... cannot put sounds upon a canvas, nor can the sculptor carve from marble an odor or a taste. We use the other senses in determining qualities of objects; and words which describe effects produced by other senses beside sight are valuable in description. As Lowell says, "we may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing" a large number of beautiful things. Moreover, language suggests hidden ideas that the representative arts cannot so well ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... would be curious to discover how much religion, how much morality, and how much vanity there were among the set. The first two would require a microscope to examine, the last an ocean to contain it. But let Tickell describe its inmates:— ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... did not rise at the bows: not she! Her mast was dependent upon a forestay (spliced) and was not stepped, but worked in a tabernacle. She was a hundred and two years old. Her counter was all but awash. Her helm—I will describe her helm. It waggled back and forth without effect unless you jerked it suddenly over. Then it "bit," as it were, into the rudder post, and she just ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... picture with an attention equal to his, but, if one might so describe it, of a different color. Her admiration got its life largely from Gerald's, whose tastes in art she was in the habit of adopting blindfold. Of this, however, she was not aware, and gazed doing good to her soul by the conscious and deliberate contemplation ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... chain him will excite universal indignation. Why, the rudest of our own Norse ancestors would not have so foully treated one so noble whom fate had cast into his hands. Had we been at war with England it would be shameful, but being at peace there are no words that can fitly describe ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... chapters in the biography of the childhood of men of genius more significant than those which describe imaginary worlds which were, for a time, as real as the actual world in which the boy lived. Goethe entertained and mystified his playmates with accounts of a certain garden in which he wandered at will, but which they could not find; ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... know?" and therefore a great part of such language will be necessarily figurative; but it by no means follows from this, that the writers who are obliged to use this figurative language when speaking of the Deity, intend to be understood in the same sense when they apply the same expressions to describe men and their actions. On the contrary, as they were writing to men and for men, it is natural to presume, that they meant to be understood in the way that such expressions are universally understood by all men, when they relate to men and their actions. Such a system, of interpretation ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... every revolution of the screw, and when fairly in the Guia narrows we were able to stop and admire it a little more at our leisure, Mr. Bingham making some sketches, while I took some photographs. To describe the prospect in detail is quite impossible. Imagine the grandest Alpine scene you ever saw, with tall snowy peaks and pinnacles rising from huge domed tops, and vast fields of unbroken snow; glaciers, running down into the sea, at the heads of the various ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... last gentleman whom we think proper to describe, was a man of about the age of the first, but utterly unlike him. His head was covered with a black skull cap, (probably to protect his baldness,) beneath which, rose ears more prominent than ornamental, being very little relieved by the hair, which was cropped short. ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... will describe him as he appeared before Mr. Waffles, and the gentlemen of the Laverick Wells Hunt, on the night of Mr. Sponge's arrival. Tom's spirit being roused at hearing the boastings of Mr. Leather, and thinking, perhaps, his master might have something to say, or ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... here and the tack there, while Aunt M'riar and Mrs. Burr exercised mysterious functions, with tucks and frills and gimpings and pinkings and gaufferings, which it is beyond the powers of this story to describe accurately. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... there was some idea that he had got away to America. Now that we know the gang are here I don't see how they can escape. We have the news at every seaport already, and a reward will be offered before evening. What beats me is how they could have done so mad a thing, knowing that the lady could describe them, and that we could not fail ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... misunderstanding lasted fully five minutes, before I finally comprehended that the secret police are known here as the 'railroads.' As there are many Corsican police officials on the Continent, they make use of an honest euphemism to describe their degrading occupation in their family circle. You ask the kinsmen of one of them, 'Where's your brother Ambrosini?' 'What is your Uncle Barbicaglia doing?' They will answer, with a little wink: 'He has a place on the railroad;' and everybody knows what that means. Among the lower classes, ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... had better describe how I first saw them together. It was on a Saturday, when a good many men were always sure to be found disporting themselves on the ball-field. I used to exercise my own muscles by going to look at them, on these occasions; and on that particular day I came near being hit by a sudden ball, which ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... new-comers who simply eat, sleep, and wait for the ice to go out. When I hear cheechalkos complaining of boredom up here in this world of daily miracles, I think of the native boy in the history-class, who, called on to describe the progress of civilisation, said: 'In those days men had as many wives as they liked, and that was called polygamy. Now they have only one ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... entertain any proposition. He is ready to try any new field of human action. He is sometimes sympathetic, more frequently antagonistic. But my so-called Pleasures may not be forced under any one head which will accurately describe them as a class. Indeed, each one is a class within himself; that is my reason for using so broad a term as Pleasures: they are, in fact, Pleasures to me. They are really necessary to my happiness—not individually, ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... swiftly for about half the distance, and then lower the boats to continue the pursuit, but I was wrong; I saw that the captain gave Mr Reardon some order, then the gong rang in the engine-room, the way of the Teaser was checked, a turn of the wheel made her describe a curve, and she slowly came to a standstill broadside ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... mention that which follows, in which he describes the fallen angels engaged in the intricate disputes of predestination, free-will, and fore-knowledge; and, to humour the perplexity, makes a kind of labyrinth in the very words that describe it. ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... in the Bible to describe what he done. Which maybe you sort of gather that he had to keep on performin', because the tenderfoot was still in the saddle. He was. An' he never pulled leather. No, sir, he never touched the buckin' strap, but ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... on the Atwater side: she was far, far from thinking or speaking of Noble Dill in that way, although, until she looked up "uncouth" in Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, she had not found suitable means to describe him. And now, as she walked at his side, she found her sensations to be nothing short of thrilling. For it must be borne in mind that this was her first and wholly unexpected outburst into society; the experience ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... invites Thee from above To lay Thy Trumpet down, and sing of Love. Let MONTAGUE describe Boyn's swelling Flood And purple Streams fatned with Hostile Blood. O Heavenly Patron of the needy Muse! Whose powerful Name can nobler heat infuse. When You Nassau's bright Actions dar'd to see, You was the Eagle, and Apollo He. But when He read You, ...
— Discourse on Criticism and of Poetry (1707) - From Poems On Several Occasions (1707) • Samuel Cobb
... He is opposed to dictators and he speaks out plainly enough, in his discourses, about the unwisdom of slaying fellow-citizens, betraying friends, being without mercy, without religion. He is conventional enough in all this. When he comes to describe the Prince, who is to save the divided State, he does so in lines that make a picture at once to fascinate ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... who calls himself Captain Wilson. I say 'calls himself' because I have reason now to believe that it is not his correct name. It would take me too long if I were to describe all the means by which he obtained an introduction to me and ingratiated himself into my friendship and the affection of my daughter. He brought letters from foreign colleagues which compelled me to show ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... who can sing thy force? Or who describe the swiftness of thy course? Soaring through air to find the bright abode, The empyreal palace of the thundering God, We on thy pinions can surpass the wind, And leave the rolling universe behind, From star to star the mental optics rove, Measure ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... decided to take a dahabeeyah trip on the Nile, and are on the eve of starting. You should see our boat, the Loulia! she's a perfect beauty, and, apart from a few absurd details which I haven't the time to describe, would delight you. The bedrooms are Paris, but the sitting-rooms are like rooms in an Eastern house. You'll say Paris and the East don't go together. Granted! But it's very jolly to be romantic by day and soused in modern comfort at night. Now isn't it? Especially ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... the Managers for the Commons have not used any inapplicable language. We have indeed used, and will again use, such expressions as are proper to portray guilt. After describing the magnitude of the crime, we describe the magnitude of the criminal. We have declared him to be not only a public robber himself, but the head of a system of robbery, the captain-general of the gang, the chief under whom a whole predatory band was arrayed, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... acoyne well knowen and vsed in Englande (and yet not therefore one auncient coyne of Englande, as Hollybande sayethe yt was of france,) emongst the Saxons before, and the Normans after the Conqueste; the forme whereof I will at other tyme describe, onlye nowe settinge downe, that this besante (beinge the frenche name, and in armorye rightlye accordinge to his nature, for a plate of golde,) was called in Latine Byzant{i}um, obteyninge that name because yt was the coyne of Constantinople sometyme called Bizant{i}um; and ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne
... of Walter were hard to describe. He saw that perhaps his only chance of life lay in remaining quiet and letting ...
— Walter Sherwood's Probation • Horatio Alger
... was you who inspired Sunday Weeks, if any one did. I have never mentioned this before, have not admitted it, even to myself, until now. But I realize that it is true. We have been a long time apart, but the memory of you has never faded for a day, for an hour. So, when I tried to describe the most charming girl of whom I could think, I was describing you. As I wrote, there was constantly before me the vision of your dear gray ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... which I have attempted to describe occupy the upper and the larger portion of the composition. The third in order is made up of three masses. In the middle floats a band of Titanic cherubs, blowing their long trumpets over earth and sea to wake the dead. Dramatically, nothing can be finer than the strained energy ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... other stones, said to have fallen from the clouds: one in the Eichstedt country in Germany; and another in the Bechin circle, in Bohemia, in July, 1753; concerning the real falling of which he had expressed some doubts; he proceeds to describe the falling of two, (whereof this was one,) not far from Agram, the capital of Croatia, in Hungary; which caused him to change his opinion; and to believe, that the falling of such stones ...
— Remarks Concerning Stones Said to Have Fallen from the Clouds, Both in These Days, and in Antient Times • Edward King
... of one disposition and another of another disposition. "If it had been my destiny to remain in the service of Colonel Balloonpeel, all my days would have passed in peace; but he went to England when he got his PENCIL. Who can describe the calmness and goodness of his madam. She never asked a question. She put the keys in the Butler's hand, and if he asked for money she gave it. But one person is of one disposition and another ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... I shall not be the last to describe as providential,"—he paused, and looked round the room as if defying any one there to challenge the sincerity of his assertion,—"the notice, which your law requires to be given by newspaper advertisement to the non-resident defendant in such a case ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... begin to describe them? All this time they have been there, playing in a mad frenzy—all of this scene must be read, or said, or sung, to music. It is the music which makes it what it is; it is the music which changes the place ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... objection-and indeed I can see decided advantages-in the enactment of a law which shall describe and denounce methods of competition which are unfair and are badges of the unlawful purpose denounced in the anti-trust law. The attempt and purpose to suppress a competitor by underselling him at a price so unprofitable as to drive him out of business, or the making of exclusive contracts ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Egypt, flutter around the cope of hell before alighting at their master's feet. Among them Milton descries various idols, later to be worshipped in Palestine, Egypt, and Greece. Then, contrasting the downcast appearance of this host with its brilliancy in heaven, he goes on to describe how they saluted Satan's banner with "a shout that tore hell's conclave and beyond frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night." Next, their standards fluttering in the breeze, they perform their wonted evolutions, and Satan, seeing so mighty a ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... and the scholar, the mechanic and the soldier, the player and the divine. In a word, there is not an individual in the community whose conduct is not influenced by its dictates. It is, therefore, not surprising that mankind should be so impressive to the power of satire, whose object is to describe their vices and follies, for the finger of public infamy to point at their deformities and delinquencies. Thus, where law cannot extend its awe and authority, satire wields the scourge of disgrace; and where religion ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... that my readers will expect, from the minuteness with which I recount these particulars, that, after all, I am going to describe a rendezvous with a lady, or a ghost at least. I will not plead in excuse that I, too, have been infected with Sandy's mode of regarding her, but I plead that in the mind of Robert the proceeding was involved in something of that awe and mystery with which a youth ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... too happy for Stuart to describe the host of ten thousand riders which he had just seen. Their lives were in God's hands. ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... shall draw out your Mazes, and laborinths, of what sort or kind soeuer you please, whether they be round or square. But for as much, as not onely the Country-farme, but also diuers other translated bookes, doe at large describe the manner of casting and proportioning these knots, I will not persist to write more curiously vpon them, but wish euery painefull gardiner which coueteth to be more satisfied therein, to repaire ...
— The English Husbandman • Gervase Markham
... other way, he would drop the link, bringing the rod of E^2 into line with the valve rod, and drawing V forward to uncover the rear port (Fig. 32). In either case the eccentric working the end of the link remote from B has no effect, since it merely causes that end to describe arcs of circles of which B is ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... enough, down they all squatted. And I began to recount to them how Daniel O'Rourke one night, returning from waking Widow Casey at Ballybotherem, and having taken a drop more than usual of the 'crayther,' saw the fairies come dancing round him; and I went on to describe what Daniel said, and what the fairies did. 'And now,' says I, 'just sit quiet where you are till I come back and finish me story.' And on this, giving another whoop, and a hop, skip, and a jump, I was making me way back to the river, ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... beginning to speak in soft, purring accents. "You know, darling Muriel, I have never looked upon Nicholas Ratcliffe as a marrying man. He is such a gay butterfly." (This with an indulgent shake of the head.) "Indeed, I have heard dear Mrs. Gybbon-Smythe describe him as a shocking little flirt. And they say he is fond of his glass too, but let us hope this is an exaggeration. I know for a fact that he has a very violent temper, and this may have given rise to the rumour. I assure you, dearest, he is quite formidable, notwithstanding ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... transforming emotion, once nurtured at his own heart, now working among the crowd of men and women his fiery speech had gathered round him, with a trembling joy, a humble prostration of the soul before the Eternal Truth, no words can fitly describe. With an ever-increasing detachment of mind from the objects of self and sense, he felt himself a tool in the Great Workman's hand. 'Accomplish Thy purposes in me,' was the cry of his whole heart and life; 'use me to the utmost; spend every faculty I have, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... grown there. A terrible people that I shall not try to describe to you. They threaten us with slavery, with extinction. Four ara ago (the Antrians have their own system of reckoning time, just as we have on Earth, instead of using the universal system, based upon the enaro. An ara corresponds to about fifty hours, Earth time.) we did not know that such ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... dealt. They succeed in driving away the Pagans, "as you shall hear." In the midst of this great crusade, every word of which, of course, is the most fictitious of fiction, appear the episodes which describe California and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... list of names and editions would not be satisfactory either to myself or my readers: the characters of the principal Authors of the Roman and Byzantine History have been occasionally connected with the events which they describe; a more copious and critical inquiry might indeed deserve, but it would demand, an elaborate volume, which might swell by degrees into a general library of historical writers. For the present, I shall content myself with renewing my serious protestation, that I have always endeavored ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... my father. What a meeting. My brain aches while I try to recall it. At first he insulted my agony; taunted me with my misfortunes, and finally maddened me. I cannot describe to you what passed. Wound up to a pitch of fury, I threatened to obtain the money by violence, if he did not write an order upon his banker for the sum required. Cowering with fear, he complied; ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... confess that they are not—true enough. Why, sweet, brave, and most lovely of girls, they fall far short of showing your merits in the full. I have so far tried to explain only what is beautiful in your face; but, darling, you have a nobleness of soul that no language of mine could describe. ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... they can easily be seen several feet below the surface. A single flap of the tail fin gives them a tremendous impulse, and they come up to the surface like arrows discharged by the gods of the sea, and describe beautiful somersaults among the waves. They could easily overtake us if they liked, but they content themselves with following close ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... opposed to rites and superstitions, for they will have a perfect knowledge of the past. The coition of lovers in the springtime will be the one religious ceremony they will allow themselves. I have a vision sometimes of the holy scene, but I am afraid it is too beautiful to describe. 'The intercourse of the sexes, I have dreamed, is ineffably beautiful, too fair to be remembered,' wrote the chaste Thoreau. Verily human beauty, joy, and love will reach their divinest height during those inaugural days of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... happy for Stuart to describe the host of ten thousand riders which he had just seen. Their lives were in ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... confined between masses of tall, smoky, old houses, and its azure colour stained by party-coloured streams from dyers' shops, and a thousand other abominations, which would defy the pen of a Smollett to describe, and all the breezes from the Alps to purify. There are several bridges in this quarter, mostly appearing from their paltry and irregular character, to have been erected on some sudden emergency; from these, however, the noble Pont ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... in her story which, being obliged to relate a wicked action, seem to describe it too plainly, the writer says all imaginable care has been taken to keep clear of indecencies and immodest expressions; and it is hoped you will find nothing to prompt a vicious mind, but everywhere much to discourage ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... tea, is a circumstance, an occurrence, in social life, but a dinner is an event. It is the full-blown flower of that cultivated growth of which those lesser products are the buds. I will not try to enumerate, still less to describe, the various entertainments to which we were invited, and many of which we attended. Among the professional friends I found or made during this visit to London, none were more kindly attentive than Dr. Priestley, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... a turn or two about the room, and looking round him with a wistful air, he came to the bed's foot, stared at me in a manner impossible to describe—and then he—he laid hold of my pantaloons; whipped his long bony legs into them in a twinkling; and strutting up to the glass, seemed to view himself in it with great complacency. I tried to speak, but in vain. The effort, however, seemed to excite his attention; ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... figure that came out to us—how shall I describe him? It was the most beautiful and gracious sight of all that I saw in my pilgrimage. He was a man of tall stature, with snow-white, silvery hair and beard, dressed in a dark cloak with a gleaming clasp of gold. But for all his age he had a look of immortal youth. His clear and piercing ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... so pityingly as you describe, and bless me as I was praying, unwitting of his presence?" repeated she, with a look that searched the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... military training. His face was fleshy, but the features were bold and he was coarsely handsome. As a rule, he affected an easy good-humor, but Lisle had felt that there was something about him which he could best describe as predatory. He occasionally spoke of business ties, so he had an occupation, but he had not in Lisle's ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... that the old man was so devoted to the house rather suggested a reason for Mrs Wedgwood seeing him here, so I asked my old lady if she had known this gentleman, and if so, would she describe him. She did this, almost word for word as Mrs Wedgwood had seen him. Also, she added, that he was a good deal of an invalid, often sat indoors, with a hat on for fear of draughts, and carried a stick, upon which ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... language was not powerful enough to describe the infant phenomenon. 'I'll tell you what, sir,' he said; 'the talent of this child is not to be imagined. She must be seen, sir—seen—to be ever so faintly appreciated. There; go to ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... now to discuss Sir Thomas's position and to describe his own, but he perceived from her own aloofness just now that it would seem a profanity, so he preserved silence instead, knowing that it would be eloquent to her. At last she spoke again, and there was a suggestion of a tremor ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... closed with the dawn of that summer morning, in the year of grace 1800, when the parliamentary union of Great Britain and Ireland was enacted. I have quoted Sir Jonah Barrington's description of the closing night of the Irish Parliament, because he writes as an eyewitness, and because few could describe its "last agony" with more touching eloquence and more vivid truthfulness; but I beg leave, in the name of my country, to protest against his conclusion, that "Ireland, as a nation, was extinguished." There never was, and we must almost fear there never will be, a moment in the history of ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... Vale again. "The thing came down. There was a terrific explosion. It vanished. Nothing happened for a while. Then it came up and found a place where it could come to shore. Things came out of it. I can't describe them. They're motes even in my binoculars. But they aren't human! A lot of them came out. They began to land things. Equipment. They set it up. I don't know what it is. Some of them went exploring. I saw a puff of ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... sought. Seeming not won, yet won she was at length: In such wars women use but half their strength. Leander now, like Theban Hercules, Enter'd the orchard of th' Hesperides; Whose fruit none rightly can describe, but he That pulls or shakes it from the golden tree. Wherein Leander, on her quivering breast, Breathless spoke something, and sigh'd out the rest; Which so prevail'd, as he, with small ado, Enclos'd ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... of fine phrases, he has sometimes spoken to me of, or rather, insisted upon what he called "the lonesome splendour of the human soul," which it is our business to perfect through various lives till I can scarcely appreciate and am certainly unable to describe. ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... chestnut harvest and the peasants used to pass along the road on their way to the forests, and she liked to watch them. She used to try to sketch them too, but she was too weak; and when I wrote home for her, she made me describe them——" ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... was so complex, so tremulously poised between world-wide poles of poetry and philosophy, of what is individual and concrete on the one hand and what is abstract and general on the other, that the task of revealing himself was singularly difficult. It is not easy even to describe him as he painted himself: it may be that, wishing to avoid a mere catalogue of disparate qualities, I have brought into too great prominence the gentle passionate side of Shakespeare's nature; though that would be difficult and in any case no bad fault; for this is the side which has hitherto ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... tough job for a little pin point germ of protoplasm; but he has no doubt that it has been done, and he writes several books to show us how. We propose to look into this self-evolving process, as he and his brother evolutionists describe their theory. ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... elections, and the year following Crassus and Pompey were made consuls. Caesar had to resist powerful confederations of the Gauls, and in order to strike terror among them, in the fourth year of the war, invaded Britain. But I can not describe the various campaigns of Caesar in Gaul and Britain without going into details hard to be understood—his brilliant victories over enemies of vastly greater numbers, his marchings and countermarchings, his difficulties and dangers, his inventive genius, his strategic talents, his boundless ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... when applied to primeval people like the Sakais. They may observe, enquire, and seek to understand—as far as their intelligence permits—everything they see around them; they remember well all they have heard and seen, and will mimic and describe it in their poor, strange language to their relations and friends; they carry with them presents which are a tangible record of their travels; they explain to the others how the houses were protected from wind, sun and rain; they will teach how to imitate the engine whistles, ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... tear gas shells—which at that time was a new horror introduced to the sufferings of the British armies. Who will forget the Redans, Le Grand and Le Petit, the Bridges Putney and Pelican? The last named was renewed or rebuilt on the average three times every twenty-four hours. No words can describe what took place between the 10th and 13th of that awful month. The Germans, expecting an attack, made one. After these terrible three days, the Battalion, whose luck it was on this occasion to be spared the brunt of the action, after being relieved by ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... pillars and innumerable statues; these decorations all wrought to great perfection, give to that part of the edifice a nicety that makes it resemble a work coming from the hands of a chaser. But how to describe, in the short space which the limits of this sketch admit, all the details, all the particular parts of our Cathedral? There is in it such a profusion, such a richness, that to be properly explored, it would require volumes. We must therefore limit ourselves to some ...
— Historical Sketch of the Cathedral of Strasburg • Anonymous
... when you have, you hain't a-goin' to describe it—words can't do it; you can walk through it and talk about the size of the buildin's, and the wonders of the display, but that hain't a-goin' to describe it, no more than the pan of dishwater ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... historic Rhine, the picturesque Hudson, or the beautiful St. Lawrence. The panorama includes besides the wilder grandeurs, economic scenes suggesting the fecundity of the earth and the industry of the husbandman. To enumerate and describe these ever so briefly would require an entire volume. This short chapter is a suggestion only that "By reason of scenic grandeur, absorbing interest of physical features, the majesty and mystery of its flow through some of the ...
— The Beauties of the State of Washington - A Book for Tourists • Harry F. Giles
... is Death; "part of the framework breaks down," "something has snapped"—these phrases by which we describe the phases of death yield their full meaning. They are different ways of saying that "correspondence" has ceased. And the scientific meaning of Death now becomes clearly intelligible. Dying is that breakdown in an organism which ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... except to the ideal. His certitude and his arguments are no more pertinent to the religious question than would be the insults, blows, and murders to which, if he could, he would appeal in the next instance. Philosophy may describe unreason, as it may describe force; it cannot hope to ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... advocate of economy in our national expenditures, but it is a misuse of terms to make this word describe a policy that withholds an expenditure for the purpose of extending our foreign commerce. The enlargement and improvement of our merchant marine, the development of a sufficient body of trained American seamen, the promotion of rapid and regular mail communication between ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... in the native army is absolutely voluntary, and does not even require to be stimulated by a bounty. A subsequent passage shows that the author refuses to describe the British army as an 'entirety voluntary' one, because a soldier when once enlisted is bound to serve for a definite term; whereas the sepoy could resign ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... not describe the SPIRIT OF CANT, Of popular humbug, and vulgar rant, And tell how he looks in a tangible form, And give the length of his horns and claws, The spread of his wings, the width of his jaws, And detail the other proportions grim, Which belong to a ...
— Nothing to Say - A Slight Slap at Mobocratic Snobbery, Which Has 'Nothing - to Do' with 'Nothing to Wear' • QK Philander Doesticks
... Daffodil, and there is only one other species that is truly native—the N. biflorus, chiefly found in Devonshire. But long before Shakespeare's time a vast number had been introduced from different parts of Europe, so that Gerard was able to describe twenty-four different species, and had "them all and every of them in our London gardens in great abundance." The family, as at present arranged by Mr. J. G. Baker, of the Kew Herbarium, consists of twenty-one species, with several ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... "Who can describe the joy, and who again the terror, of their meeting? The Indian women had fled in fear, and for the short ten minutes that the lovers were left together, life, to be sure, was one long kiss. But what to do they knew not. To go inland was to rush into the enemy's ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... I am somewhat closely restricted in the number of my pages, I would describe at full the merits and beauties of Hetta and Susan Bell. As it is I can but say a few words. At our period of their lives Hetta was nearly one-and-twenty, and Susan was just nineteen. Hetta was a short, plump, demure young woman, with the softest smoothed hair, and the ...
— The Courtship of Susan Bell • Anthony Trollope
... may be certain that I shall enforce it. Perhaps my policy as to the treatment of Rebels and their property is as well set out in Order No. 13, issued the day (December 4, 1861), your letter was written, as I could now describe it." ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... relief. 'Thank you,' she said; 'we do; some of us have it. Is your daughter's article signed A. A., and doesn't it describe a boarding-house on the Italian lakes? I thought it very ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... impulse. So did all the others. If any Bedouins had approached us, then, from that point of the compass, they would have paid dearly for their rashness. We all remarked that, afterwards. There would have been scenes of riot and bloodshed there that no pen could describe. I know that, because each man told what he would have done, individually; and such a medley of strange and unheard-of inventions of cruelty you could not conceive of. One man said he had calmly made up his ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... absolute change of character with the change of circumstances; but oftener it is due to a more intelligible cause. They move from a country beyond the reach of historical and geographical knowledge to one within it; and having done this they find writers who observe and describe them, simply because they have come within the ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... vain to attempt to describe Burns's feelings during those first few days in Edinburgh. He had never before been in a larger town than Kilmarnock or Ayr; and now he walked the streets of Scotland's capital, to him full of history and instinct with the associations of centuries. This was really the heart of Scotland, ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... all right, Happy," said St. Clair. "I believe you could keep up the sort of existence you describe for ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... story, will best describe the heroine: A TOAST: "To the bravest comrade in misfortune, the sweetest companion in peace and at all times the most courageous of women."—Barbara Winslow. "A romantic story, buoyant, eventful, and in matters ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... this was said, there ensued a dead silence. I felt that the thoughts of all were turned upon me as the one who had withheld from poor Mrs. Blake the trifling sum due her for washing. What my feelings were, it is impossible for me to describe; and difficult for any one, never himself placed in so unpleasant a ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... ingenious trade-building plans worked out successfully by grocers in all parts of the country are too numerous to describe in a book of this character; but the methods cited in the following, all of which have been tested in actual working conditions, will serve to indicate the fundamentals of ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... is impossible for the tongue to describe, or for man to write a perfect description of the horrible scene of the blood and carnage which was among the people, both of the Nephites and of the Lamanites; and every heart was hardened, so that they delighted in the ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... to the first, leads to the third floor, which is the kitchen of the building. It stands about sixty-six feet above the foundation. We shall have occasion to describe it and the rooms above presently. Meanwhile, let it suffice to say, that the fourth floor contains the men's sleeping-berths, of which there are six, although three men is the usual complement on the rock. The fifth ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... belongs to man as an intelligent, moral, and responsible agent, it is manifestly impossible to discover any ground for the doctrine of future rewards and punishments. And accordingly, D'Holbach, Comte, and Atkinson describe man as if he were the mere creature of circumstances, and deny that his character could possibly have been different from what it is. But even when it is not associated with fatalism, the theory, which denies the distinct existence of the soul as a substantive being, ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... slightly and, for a moment, lost the picture. It was changed when again I saw it; Randolph Chance was still there, but he no longer advanced toward the vision wife—she had faded into mist; he came slowly toward me. There was a beautiful look on his face—I cannot describe it—it was too holy to translate into language; but I could feel it vibrate through my being until it set my very soul a-quivering. I had no power of resistance—no wish to resist. I almost think I went ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... friend's outpouring, and the first time Dove stopped for breath, went straight for the matter which, in his eyes, had dwarfed all others. So eager was he to learn something of her, that he even made shift to describe her; his attempt fell out lamely, and a second later he could have bitten ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... books? How could he paint with such exact fidelity the peculiar scenery pertaining exclusively to the subject in question, when he can be proved never to have left London? What time had he to tread the 'blasted heath,' or describe the aspect of Glammis Castle? How could he accomplish all this? Why, simply, and naturally, and easily—by affording his poet all the requisite leisure, and defraying the expenses of all the requisite tours. And with this view, though it cannot be proved, and is very unlikely, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... I say of an Italian opera?—For who can describe sound! Or what words shall be found to embody air? And when we return, and are asked our opinion of what we have seen or heard, we are only able to answer, as I hinted above the scenery is fine, the company splendid and genteel, ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... prepared to parse the following verbs in full; and I presume, all the other parts of speech. Whenever you parse, you must refer to the Compendium for definitions and rules, if you cannot repeat them without, I will now parse a verb, and describe all its properties by applying the definitions and rules according to ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... enjoyment of some odd strain of philosophy. Good heavens! was that the way men went to war,—as if it were a hunt with an equal chance of being the hound or the hare? 'Sausage-eaters'—what a phrase to describe those eagle-helmeted supermen of Prussia's cavalry! And this little island of pipe-smoking, country-side philosophers and pampered, sport-loving youth—this was the country, heart of a crumbling empire, that had ordered the gray torrent of Germany to alter its course ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... first opportunity to watch shell fire. The shells sailed overhead so slowly that he half expected to see them in their flight. The noise they made was very difficult to describe. They hurtled, they whizzed, they shrieked, they sang. He could imagine the thing spinning in its flight, creating a noise something like steam escaping jerkily from ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... would have given worlds to calm the anxiety I know she feels for Caroline, and I do wish that on some points my sister thought as I do, not from vanity, my dear Mary, believe me, but for her own happiness. I cannot describe each member of our circle, dear Mary, in this letter, but you shall have them by degrees. The Earl and Countess Elmore are my favourites. I was very sorry mamma did not permit me to join a very small party at their house last week; the Countess came ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... servant, I again slipped my key under the door, imprisoning myself for the night. Then, finding it too early to go to bed, I lay down with my clothes on and began to read one of Dumas's novels. Suddenly I was gripped—gripped and dragged from the couch. It is only thus that I can describe the overpowering nature of the force which pounced upon me. I clawed at the coverlet. I clung to the wood-work. I believe that I screamed out in my frenzy. It was all useless, hopeless. I MUST go. There was no way out of it. It was only at the outset that I resisted. The force soon ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the very first beginning, Shame of the versifying tribe! Your history whither are you spinning? Can you do nothing but describe? ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... with the present purpose to describe all the interesting men who were assembled, among whom were Captain Frost, Messrs. Le Fort, Hill, John Jacket, Dr. Wilson and others. We spent much of the time during the week in conversation with the chiefs and most intelligent Indians of ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... in this respect. A basket with half-a-dozen brushes, combs, laces, a piece of oilcloth, and a pocket Bible, is all the stock-in-trade they require, and it will serve them for a year. They generally prophecy good. Knowing the readiest way to deceive, to a young lady they describe a handsome gentleman as one she may be assured will be her "husband." To a youth they promise a pretty lady with a large fortune. And thus suiting their deluding speeches to the age, circumstances, anticipations, and prospects of those ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... in dealing with the character I am now about to describe. The world at large is very prone to condemn the hunting parson, regarding him as a man who is false to his profession; and, for myself, I am not prepared to say that the world is wrong. Had my pastors and masters, my father and mother, together with the other outward circumstances of ...
— Hunting Sketches • Anthony Trollope
... attempting to describe my own sensations, I labor under the disadvantage of speaking mostly to those who have never experienced anything of the kind. Hence, what would he perfectly clear to myself, and to those who have passed through a similar experience, may be unintelligible to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... shame and every nicer sense, Ne'er blush'd, unless, in spreading Vice's snares, She blunder'd on some virtue unawares; With all these blessings, which we seldom find Lavish'd by Nature on one happy mind, 140 A motley figure, of the Fribble tribe, Which heart can scarce conceive, or pen describe, Came simpering on—to ascertain whose sex Twelve sage impannell'd matrons would perplex. Nor male, nor female; neither, and yet both; Of neuter gender, though of Irish growth; A six-foot suckling, mincing in Its gait; Affected, peevish, prim, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... I understand, as well as they were able, and saw it scale the garden wall of the premises; there it escaped, leaving, as you may well imagine, on all their minds, a sensation of horror difficult to describe." ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... up with her own children. She gives an amusing description of her home life in India during the hot season, so terribly trying to Europeans: "The mode of existence of an English family during the hot winds in India is so very unlike anything in Europe that I must not omit to describe it. Every outer door of the house and every window is closed; all the interior doors and venetians are, however, open, whilst most of the private apartments are shut in by drop-curtains or screens of grass, looking like ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... known traditions describe the stone as having been set in the forehead of the four-handed Indian god who typifies the Moon. Partly from its peculiar colour, partly from a superstition which represented it as feeling the influence of the deity whom ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... best seen on dark, starry nights. It was not in the north only, but all around them, great bright fringes of coloured lights—chiefly green, crimson, or pink. How they danced and flickered, to be sure! Such dazzling beauty no pen could describe, and ...
— Crusoes of the Frozen North • Gordon Stables
... trunkner Mann—a God intoxicated man: an expression which has been quoted by everybody who has since written upon the subject, and which is about as inapplicable as those laboriously pregnant sayings usually are. With due allowance for exaggeration, such a name would describe tolerably the Transcendental mystics, a Toler, a Boehmen, or a Swedenborg; but with what justice can it be applied to the cautious, methodical Spinoza, who carried his thoughts about with him for twenty years, deliberately shaping ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... due to a father, how shall we describe the claims of a mother? To this parent the daughter owes her very being. These are the arms which never tired of supporting her in infancy. For her the step was light, the voice hushed, the breath almost suppressed. ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... possessed by a fixed idea, blind men led by dreams, drawn on by an invisible leash. The terrible feature of it all was this, that when M. Joyeuse returned home, after those long, cruel days of inaction and fatigue, he must enact the comedy of the man returning from work, must describe the events of the day, tell what he had heard, the gossip of the office, with which he was always accustomed ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... at seeing each other again under such circumstances," said King William. "I had seen Napoleon only three years before, at the summit of his power. What my feelings were is more than I can describe." ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... earls, baronets, generals, and colonels that throng its pages. A novelist in his first production never limits his creative activity in any respect; and Cooper, (p. 022) moreover, knew the public well enough to be aware that a fictitious narrative which aimed to describe aristocratic society might perhaps succeed without much literary merit, but would be certain to fail without an abundance of lords. The leading characters, however, whether of higher or lower degree, are planned upon the moral model. They ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... balloon was out of sight the crowd began to return home, and such a confusion it is almost impossible for me to describe. A gang of pickpockets had contrived to block up the way, which was across a bridge, with carriages and carts, etc., and as soon as the people began to move it created such an obstruction that, in a few moments, this great crowd, in the midst of which I had unfortunately got, was stopped. ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... party, they were, a few days before reaching it, 700 miles from the coast of Mozambique, and 1500 from the Cape of Good Hope. Now Messrs. Murray and Oswell, the enterprising travellers to whom we owe the discovery of this vast South African lake, describe it as being in longitude 24 deg. East, latitude 19 deg. South; a position not very wide apart from that indicated in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various
... has vocal music, but in no way can I describe it — to say nothing of writing it. I tried repeatedly to write the words of the songs, but failed even in that. The chief cause of failure is that the words must be sung — even the singers failed to repeat the songs ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... said. "Curiously enough, sir, no boat has gone out to-day with a lady and a gentleman in it, like what you describe." ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... necessary that we should describe this celebrated voyage, with which every boy is familiar—its storms and hurricanes; the landings on islands where the white man's face had never been seen before; the visits to the simple natives of Huahine and Otaheite, then a little Eden; the perilous coasting along the North ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... it is the use he really makes of it, namely, that his shop looking like something eminent, he may sell dearer than his neighbours: who, and what kind of fools can so be drawn in, it is easy to describe, but satire is none of our ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... sun sank below the western hills our travellers drew near, by one of the three converging roads, the antipodean town of Warwick; which, to describe to the reader, we need only to say, seen at a short distance, bears a striking resemblance to an English village, and will sustain very creditable comparison with some of the prettiest in our blessed and favoured isle. This view, however, the young men were not at the time permitted ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... Hayden? The old expressions of joy seemed utterly inadequate to describe her feelings. It seemed that she was veritably dreaming of heaven, such a sense of largeness, of freedom, had come over her, so much wider was her horizon, so much more clearly could she see and understand the hard questions that had always puzzled her, and yet she had, as it were, just ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... the keeper's could be found sufficiently to revile that cat. Indeed, the head-keeper went speechless, and nearly had epilepsy, in trying to describe it to the Court, and if it had done only one-half the things that the keeper asserted, it must have been a very remarkable beast indeed; the magistrate said so. In consequence Hawkley got rather heavily ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... tell me about that,' said Stephen, and added, 'some time tonight.' He did not care to discuss the bewildering internal economy of the human frame at his dinner-table. There were details...and Mr Bittenger was in a mood that it was no exaggeration to describe as gay. ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... on it," the man replied, and these he proceeded to describe. As the description was found to be correct, and as the other witness, who had sworn that he had made the weapon, had not described any such marks, the case against Hogan broke ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... narration than with description. To write a whole page of description is a task for a master, and very few attempt it; but for the uninitiated amateur about three sentences of description mark the limit of his ability to see and describe. To get started, to gain confidence in one's ability to say something, to acquire freedom and spontaneity of expression,—this is the first step in the practice of composition. Afterward, when the pupil ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... to imitate several sketches I gave them; but they made but a poor job of it after all; for the front face is no likeness at all, and the profile is all that they could hit upon. The body gives but a poor idea of the General, who was tall and straight as a rush. So that after my best endeavors to describe his person, and I knew it well, for which purpose I attended every day at their workshop which was in that house in St. Louis street where the Misses Napier are now (1828) residing, [349] and which is somewhat retired from the line of the street, the shop itself ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... made a great difference to me if Dusautoy had been here at the time of my trouble. When he did come, I had sunk into a state whence I could not rouse myself to understand his principles. I can hardly describe how intolerable my life had become. I was almost resolved on returning to India. I believe I should have done so if you had not come ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the most reliable works he could obtain at home and in Europe, and he believes his geographical, historical, and political matter is correct, and as full as could be embodied in a story. He has endeavored to describe the appearance of the country, and the manners and customs of the people, so as to make them interesting to young readers. For this purpose these descriptions are often interwoven with the story, or brought out in the comments of the boys of ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... is fair to try The Prince by the author's own standards. He did not purpose, in Bacon's phrase, to describe what men ought to be but what they actually are; he put aside ethical ideas not as false but as irrelevant. But this rejection was fatal even to his own purpose, "for what he put aside . . . were nothing less than the living forces by which societies subsist and governments ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... and inflamed your cheeks. Your gaze was so peculiar, as if seeking to grasp in empty space forms not seen of any other eye, and all your words ended in sighs betokening some mystery. Then your friends asked you, "What is the matter with you, my dear friend? What do you see?" And, wishing to describe the inner pictures in all their vivid colours, with their lights and their shades, you in vain struggled to find words with which to express yourself. But you felt as if you must gather up all the events that had happened, wonderful, splendid, terrible, jocose, and ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... gnomon or "shadow tracker" (in Greek [Greek: skiatheras]). At about the fifth hour in the morning, take the end of the shadow cast by this gnomon, and mark it with a point. Then, opening your compasses to this point which marks the length of the gnomon's shadow, describe a circle from the centre. In the afternoon watch the shadow of your gnomon as it lengthens, and when it once more touches the circumference of this circle and the shadow in the afternoon is equal in length to that of the morning, mark it with ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... really earned it. She sowed the seeds, and it was only right that she should reap the fruit. And of all the praises that were heaped upon her none equalled the simple unvarnished story of her own deed. To describe her exploit, with no word of comment, was to load her with commendation of the highest kind. And it is well indeed when that can be said of any woman—which is always the case when her life is right. On the whole, even now people get pretty much ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... simple definitions of those parts—which she undoubtedly did, she owed it in no small degree to Judy Harbottle. This one feels to be hardly a legitimate reference, but it is something tangible to lay hold upon in trying to describe the web of volitions which began to weave itself between the two that afternoon on my veranda and which afterward became so strong a bond. I was delighted with the thing; its simplicity and sincerity stood out among our conventional little compromises at friendship like an ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... let us go on to describe the course of the Nile. It rolls away from its source with so inconsiderable a current, that it appears unlikely to escape being dried up by the hot season, but soon receiving an increase from the Gemma, the Keltu, the Bransu, and other less rivers, it is of such ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... adversary, she rejoined, "How can we go to him, seeing the door is locked on us and our feet shackled and the Jew hath the keys?" The smith replied, "I will make the keys for the padlocks and therewith open door and shackles." Asked she, "But who will show us the Kazi's house?"; and he answered, "I will describe it to you." She enquired, "But how can we appear before him, clad as we are in haircloth reeking with sulphur?" And the smith rejoined, "The Kazi will not reproach this to you, considering your case." So saying, he went forthright and made keys for the padlocks, wherewith ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... it blew a regular hurricane, and the captain dared not venture out to sea, our schooner lying safely at anchor inside the coral reef. I have not space to describe my stay here, but it proved most enjoyable, and the captain's pretty Samoan daughters gave several "meke-mekes" (Fijian dances) in my honour, and plenty of "angona" was indulged in, and what with ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... Consciously or unconsciously men describe themselves in the characters they draw. One must have the mordant in his own personality or he will not take the color of his subject. He may force himself to picture that which he dislikes or even detests; but when he loves the character he delineates, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... expression of that pictured face was something which I cannot describe—a curious look in the eyes which was at the same time both attractive and mysterious. In that brief moment the girl's features were indelibly impressed ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... arranging to go upon their journey wearing their helmets with waving plumes, and with their shields and spears, and Franz and Paul were to have weapons to place with that of Fritz in the armory. But who can describe their surprise and dismay when that evening they went to put the hunting-knife in its proper place, they found the armory plundered, and everything gone! The enemy had come in an unguarded moment and carried everything away. But where? That was the question, ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... Scott's periodic recurrence to his own personal history should be artistic mistakes either. If Scott's reverie was less lofty than Milton's, so also was his story. It seems to me as fitting to describe the relation between the poet and his theme in the one case as in the other. What can be more truly a part of Marmion, as a poem, though not as a story, than that introduction to the first canto in which Scott expresses his passionate sympathy with the high national feeling ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... here to describe the effects which gunpowder and grape- shot had had on the walls of Antwerp. Let the curious in these matters read the horrors of the siege of Troy, or the history of Jerusalem taken by Titus. The one may be found in Homer, and the other in Josephus. ...
— The Relics of General Chasse • Anthony Trollope
... not attempt to describe the meeting of the father and daughter, loving each other so affectionately, and separated under such perilous circumstances. Still less shall we attempt to analyse the deep blush of Rose at receiving the compliments of Waverley, or stop to inquire whether she had ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... memory let loose in the universe—goes about remembering everything, hit or miss. I never see one of these memory-machines going about mowing things down remembering them, but that it gives me a kind of sad, sudden feeling of being intelligent. I cannot quite describe the feeling. I am part sorry and part glad and part ashamed of being glad. It depends upon what one thinks of, one's own narrow escape or the other man, or the way of the world. All one can do is to thank God, silently, in some safe place in one's thoughts, that after all ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... people you describe, that seems a hard case," observed the stranger. "By what right are they prohibited from ...
— A True Hero - A Story of the Days of William Penn • W.H.G. Kingston
... M. Knaak, and no words can describe how wonderfully the man brought out the nasal sound. They were practising the quadrille, and to Tonio Kroeger's intense terror he found himself in the same set with Inga Holm. He avoided her when he could, and still he kept getting near her; he forbade his eyes to approach her, and still ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... the most candid artlessness, and with that tone of sincerity which comes from the heart, had upon me an effect which it would be difficult to describe; I suffered because I could not imprint the most loving kiss upon the sweet lips which had just pronounced them, but at the same time it caused me the most delicious felicity to see that such an ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... will; now I want to understand him by examining all the processes which go on in his consciousness, by studying their make-up and their behavior, their elements and their laws. In one case I wanted to interpret the man, and finally to appreciate him; in the other case I wanted to describe his inner life, and finally to explain it. The man whose inner life I want to share I treat as a subject, the man whose inner life I want to describe and explain I ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... clear, and I examined them with interest, for, remember, I was expecting a stranger to give me orders. He had a long, rather strong chin and an obstinate mouth with peevish lines about its corners. But the remarkable feature was his eyes. I can best describe them by saying that they looked hot—not fierce or angry, but so restless that they seemed to ache physically and to want sponging with ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... warmly loved in return. Alma even condescended to tell Nono that it was the princess who had first led her dear mother to a true Christian life; which high origin for religious influence Alma seemed to look upon as if it were a sort of superior aristocratic form of vaccination. Alma went on to describe the saintly princess as she had heard her spoken of by both her father and her mother, whose respect and affection she ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... I cannot describe the impatience I felt when the postman Brainstein, the son of the bell-ringer, came into the street. I could hear him half a mile away, and then I could not go on with my work, but must lean out of the window and watch him as he went from house to house. When he would ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... Florentines, and in several other rooms of the same palace; he having continued all the later years of his life in the service of Duke Cosimo, by whom the palace was restored and decorated. His works are too numerous and not sufficiently important to catalogue or describe, his composition is overcrowded and wanting in perspective. There is generally a superabundance of flesh; muscular limbs in all attitudes form a great part of his pictures, but as the flesh tints he used were wanting in mellowness and ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... memory of every one, that the injury and lapse of time cannot efface her from it; for we shall ceaselessly mourn and lament for her, like Antimachus the Greek poet wept for Lysidichea, his wife, with sad verses and delicate elegies which describe and ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... unreserved manner in which we conversed, when fate, less cruel than at present, suffered us to live in the sunshine of each other's smiles. You speak of a certain person in your letter, whom, for obvious reasons, I will in future call ANTONIO. You describe him with the partiality of a friend; but how can I doubt his being worthy of all that you say, and more—sensible, brave, rich, and handsome. From his name, I suppose, of course, he is well connected. What ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... mountains of New York, New England, or northern Michigan, and see the Hermit in his nesting home, you would find him quite another character, true to his name. There he is shy—or perhaps cautious would be a better word to describe the way in which he keeps the secrets of his precious nest. He loves the little moist valleys between the pine-clad mountains, where a bit of light woods is made an island by the soft bog-moss that surrounds it. There, feeling quite secure, he makes his ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... observed, that an alteration began to take place. My master attributed this to his altered fortunes, and I placed it to the score of my decayed appearance—the threadbare cloth and tarnished button came in, I was sure, for their full share of neglect, and he at last fell into the same opinion. To describe all the variety of treatment that we experienced would be a tedious and unpleasant task,—but I was the more convinced that I had at least as much to do with it as my master, from observing that all the gradations in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... the outlines of his Person and work. As he thought upon Him, beneath the gracious teaching of Him who had sent him to baptize (John i. 33), the dim characteristics of his glorious personality glimmered out on the sensitive plate of his inner consciousness, and he could even describe Him to others, as well as ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... the crow flies. By the road, reckoning from where the accident had occurred, it would be fifteen. But the lie of the place or the distance from Grangersons mattered little to Silas. His mind was going through a process difficult to describe. ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... comic strip in three panels. I'll do my best to describe each panel and then put the text which ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... in the soil on which they stand. If the inhabitants are asked concerning this wonderful monument, they say it is an old camp of Caesar's, an army turned into stone, or that it is the work of the Crions or Gories. These they describe as little men between two and three feet high, who carried these enormous masses on their hands; for, though little, they are stronger than giants. Every night they dance around the stones, and woe betide the ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson
... obsequiousness itself; delicate viands were placed before him, and, like every other intelligent traveller in these Islands, he was charmed by that distinguishing trait of the Luzon Islanders—that hospitality which has no parity elsewhere, and for which words cannot be found adequately to describe it to the reader. As Governor Taft himself said truly, "When a Filipino who has a house says it is yours, he turns out his family and puts you in." [241] Governor Taft's reception was only that which had been accorded to many ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... mightn't get into other people's 'ands? Would you like to know how my beast of a mother and him put their 'eds together to see how they could get hold of the bloomin' money? An' you thought you was sure of it, didn't you? Will you come with me to the perlice-station, just to help to describe what he looks like? An affectionate father, ain't he? Almost as good as he is a 'usband. You just listen to me, Jane Snowdon. If I find out as you're havin' money from him, I'll be revenged on you, mind that! I'll be revenged ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... word to describe the manner in which he set about discovering the most beautiful woman in his dominion. King David on a similar occasion wisely sent out messengers who were to bring to him the most beautiful maiden in the land, and there was none who was not eager to ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... London on purpose to get a sight of the brothers Cheeryble; and, at another, swore that Tim Linkinwater should receive such a ham by coach, and carriage free, as mortal knife had never carved. When Nicholas began to describe Madeline, he sat with his mouth wide open, nudging Mrs Browdie from time to time, and exclaiming under his breath that she must be 'raa'ther a tidy sart,' and when he heard at last that his young friend had come down purposely to communicate his good fortune, and to ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... the island, numerous villages, composed of twenty or thirty houses each, were discovered; in the centre is a public square, round which the houses are placed in a circle. And since I am speaking about these houses, it seems proper that I should describe them to you. It seems they are built entirely of wood in a circular form. The construction of the building is begun by planting in the earth very tall trunks of trees; by means of them, shorter beams are placed in the interior and support the outer posts. The extremities of the ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... pall, and rendered awfully visible by the brilliancy of the waters beneath. I had heard of that phosphorescent appearance in the sea, but never could have imagined its grandeur, nor can I essay to describe it. Even in perfect stillness the illuminated element would have looked magnificent; what, then must it have been in a state of excessive, tumultuous agitation, the waves swelling up to a fearful height and then bursting into sheets of foam; every drop containing some luminous ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... quote two experiments performed by Dr. Cocke which the writer heard him describe with ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... of fellow unfortunately not uncommon in some public schools, whom it is not easy to describe by any other word than dangerous. To look at him, to speak to him, to hear him, the ordinary observer would notice very little to single him out from fifty other boys of the same age and condition. He was clever, good-humoured, and obliging, ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... seemed she could not well endure anything to be spoken against him; and taking hold of my word 'disdain,' she said there was 'no such cause why I should disdain him.' This speech did trouble me so much that, as near as I could, I did describe unto her what he had been, and what he was.... I then did let her know, whether I had cause to disdain his competition of love, or whether I could have comfort to give myself over to the service of a mistress which ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... up all night to listen to them. It makes me feel so strange that I hardly know how to describe it,—as if I were away off from everything, and high up, where it is wide and open, and where the stars are. It makes me want to write. All sorts of beautiful thoughts come to me, that I can almost put into words. But they ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Mr. Rarey's plan of mounting for men, which is excellent, but is not described in his book, and indeed is difficult to describe at all. ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... be impossible to describe Edith's feeling as she followed the strange woman up to her own room, sitting down just where Mrs. Lamotte bade her sit, and watching nervously the restless rolling of the eyes, which had no terror for her now, particularly after ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... very difficult to describe Grace Melbury with precision, either now or at any time. Nay, from the highest point of view, to precisely describe a human being, the focus of a universe—how impossible! But, apart from transcendentalism, there never ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... and teacher, how shall I describe to you my state amid all this new life? At first I felt as though my former existence had been one long sleep, or as I suppose the mineral kingdom might feel in passing to the vegetable order, as ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... imagine, the horror and loathing with which good men, entirely believing in the existence and omnipresence of countless legions of evil spirits, able and anxious to perpetrate the mischiefs that it has been the object of these pages in some part to describe, would regard those who, for their own selfish gratification, deliberately surrendered their hopes of eternal happiness in exchange for an alliance with the devils, which would render these ten times more capable than before of working their wicked wills. To men believing this, no punishment ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... those poor devils, possessed by a fixed idea, blind men led by dreams, drawn on by an invisible leash. The terrible feature of it all was this, that when M. Joyeuse returned home, after those long, cruel days of inaction and fatigue, he must enact the comedy of the man returning from work, must describe the events of the day, tell what he had heard, the gossip of the office, with which he was always accustomed to entertain the ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... all events describe this pettifogging, miserable existence which stares us in the face without the medium of art. Our contemporary literature squeezes every worm, every peasant-girl, and I don't know what else, into the novel. Choose ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... thunderstorm. I expected to be sent for at once to stand like a criminal before Grandfather and Grandmother—but nothing happened. All through dinner, while Gleave tottered about, they sat facing each other at the long table, conducting,—that's the only word to describe it,—a polite conversation. Neither of them took any notice of me or even once looked my way. Even Gleave put things in front of me as though he didn't see me, and when I caught the watery eyes of the old dogs, they both seemed to ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... impossible to describe the anxiety Alfred had endured from the time Loo Loo became the property of the cotton-broker until he heard of her escape. From motives of policy he was kept in ignorance of the persons employed, and of the measures they intended to take. In this state of suspense, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... that era was democracy, spelled with a small "d." In the fifty years since the Civil War only one Democratic President had occupied the White House. The Republicans' long lease of power had produced certain symptoms which their political foes now proceeded to describe as great public abuses. The truth of the matter, of course, is that neither political virtue nor political depravity was the exclusive possession of either of the great national organizations. The Republican party, especially under the enlightened autocracy ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... had looked forward to taking students, but they were all to have been Portias, every woman Jane of them; and before her own learning was fairly dry (which I think an eminently proper adjective to describe legal learning) there appeared to her an obviously crack-brained old party in an india-rubber cloak, who kept a candy-store and wanted her daughter to become a lawyer. No wonder Mrs. Tarbell was embarrassed. Was she to say to the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... chessboard into four equal square compartments, and describe a complete tour, or even path, in each compartment. But we may divide it into four compartments, as in the illustration, two containing each twenty squares, and the other two each twelve squares, and so obtain an interesting puzzle. You are asked to ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... dominant thought and reflection in our minds that we were likely to be, for some time at least, absentees from the prison and all the discomfort and wretchedness connected with it, and which I have not dwelt upon or attempted to describe for the one simple reason that it was wholly undescribable. We never thought of escaping, although we soon found ourselves passing through a thinly- inhabited country where our abandonment of the high-road and concealment in the neighbouring woods could have been accomplished without the slightest ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... expressed unlimited interest in each other's history since our last meeting. I mightn't judge of what Mrs. Pallant kept back, but for myself I quite overflowed. She let me see at any rate that her life had been a good deal what I supposed, though the terms she employed to describe it were less crude than those of my thought. She confessed they had drifted, she and her daughter, and were drifting still. Her narrative rambled and took a wrong turn, a false flight, or two, as I thought Linda noted, ...
— Louisa Pallant • Henry James
... descriptions are, perhaps, better appreciated when they are dispensed with unless, as in the case of San Pasqual, they are worth the time and space and trouble. Assuming, therefore, that San Pasqual, for all its failings, is distinctive enough to warrant this, we will describe the town as it appeared early in the present decade; and, for that matter, will continue to appear, pending the day when they strike oil in the desert and San Pasqual picks itself together, so to speak, and begins to take an interest in life. Until then, however, as a ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... seasons, but only English opera at Drury Lane, under the direction of Carl Rosa, the financial outcome was such as to suggest that Mr. Gye's attitude toward opera at the Metropolitan was something like that which the Germans describe as a cat walking about a ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... have ever seen is Beaulieu in May, when the visitors have gone, they will immediately tell you that it isn't half so lovely as Timbuctoo—even when the visitors are there. Should you talk to them of charming people, they will describe to you the people they know, people whom you really would fall violently in love with—only there is no chance of you ever meeting them, because they have just gone to Jamaica. They "butt" their "but" into all your little ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... -extra-mural. Mrs. Armitage, with milk let every bowl and saucer be filled. Fletcher, at intervals of thirty feet along the wall let these be placed. If our wanderer is near she will be attracted. Margaret, with Miss Humfray to the village. Collect an army of village boys. Describe our Rose. Set them to scour the countryside for her. Yourselves join that search. Let the call of 'Rose! Rose!' echo through every lane. George, you also will scour far and wide. Upon your way despatch to me a cab from the station. I drive to the post- ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... of the last century, DE BEAUCHAMP (he was consul at Bagdad), heard an Arab workman and contractor describe a room he had found in the Kasr, the walls of which were lined with enamelled bricks. Upon one wall, he said, there was a cow with the sun and moon above it. His story must, at least, have been founded on truth. No motive occurs oftener in the Chaldaean monuments than a bull ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... impossible to vanquish an army without having a full account of its strength. It is impossible to satirise a man without having a full account of his virtues. It is too much the custom in politics to describe a political opponent as utterly inhuman, as utterly careless of his country, as utterly cynical, which no man ever was since the beginning of the world. This kind of invective may often have a great superficial success: it may hit the mood of the moment; it may raise excitement and applause; ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... arrows. The latter are of various kinds, and those used in war are dipped in the sap of what the natives term the "upo." The effect of this poison is almost instantaneous, and destroys life in four or five minutes. Those who have seen a wound given accidentally, describe the changes that the poison occasions as plainly perceptible in its progress. Before using the arrow, its poisoned point is dipped in lime-juice to quicken it. The range of the sumpit is from fifty to sixty yards. Although the arrows ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... an instant I fervently blessed Toddie and the soup which the child had sent upon its aimless wanderings. I would rather pay the price of a fine dress than try to describe Miss Mayton's attire; I can only say that in style, color and ornament it became her perfectly, and set off the beauties of a face which I had never before thought was more than pleasing and intelligent. Perhaps the anger which was excusable after Toddie's graceless caper had something ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... prime cause of the very serious disaster to our arms, and to the prestige of our army that happened at that battle, there can be no doubt or chance for two opinions. How the battle raged, and what happened, so far as I then knew, I cannot better describe than by extracting from my official report of that day's proceedings, made on the 6th of January, following, and which ...
— Personal recollections and experiences concerning the Battle of Stone River • Milo S. Hascall
... my side, the inquest waited until I had searched the place from cellar to garret. But never a trace of the mysterious intruder did I find. When I became satisfied that he had safely made his escape I asked Genevieve to describe the face. ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... what the flower of the tree of life looks like? Let us ask a question again. Why is it that the one being in all the world who could tell us anything about it, the one being who had ever seen Jordan or Eden or that tree of life-in fact, the one of all creation who could describe heaven, never told? Isn't it queer? Here he was—that one man-standing just as I am among you, and round him were the men who followed him, all ordinary men, with ordinary curiosity. And he said he had come down from heaven, and for years they were with him, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... "Impressions" lest it should be supposed that I have attempted to present a complete and minute account of the country. For this a long residence and a large volume would be required. It is the salient features that I wish to describe. These, after all, are what most readers desire to know: these are what the traveller of a few weeks or months can give, and can give all the better because the details have not become so familiar to him as ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... are given of the origin of the Vitellian family. Some describe it as ancient and noble, others as recent and obscure, nay, extremely mean. I am inclined to think, that these several representations have been made by the flatterers and detractors of Vitellius, after he became emperor, unless the fortunes of the family varied ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... the Commandant were with the Prince; whose emotions one may fancy; but not describe. Seldom did any Prince or man stand in such a predicament. Vain to say, and again say: "In the name of God, I ask you, stop the execution till I write to the King!" Impossible that; as easily stop the course of the stars. And so here Katte comes; cheerful ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... came over me a sensation which I had once experienced before, and which I was twice destined to experience again. It is impossible to describe it, but it seized me, laying siege to my brain till I felt like a child in its power. It was as if I were slowly drowning in the great ocean of silence that enveloped us. Time itself seemed to have disappeared. At my feet lay the misshapen thing, and the lantern behind ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... whom Betty had spoken in connection with the ranch, was a very promising young lawyer. Also this promising young lawyer was very fond of Betty Nelson. And while the girls are shaking their heads over this fact a little time will be taken to describe the Outdoor Girls to those readers who have not already met them and to review briefly the many and varied adventures they had had ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... I describe the splendor of that city? The sandy streets, and the gardens of flower and shade, heavy with the plant odors; and the great houses with their galleries and porticos set in the midst of the gardens, that I remember staring at wistfully. But before long ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Ali's eyes was so remarkable, that whenever the Persians would describe anything as very lovely, they say it is Ayn Hali, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... ignorant of music as of all other accomplishments, could not tell, but even to stupid me, what he did play spoke. I assure my readers that I hardly know a term in the whole musical vocabulary; and yet I am tempted to try to describe what this music ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... attention, are most apt to be defective. They have many ideas, but none of them ready, and their knowledge is useless, because it is recollected a moment too late. Could we, in suitably dignified language, describe the game of "birds, beasts, and fishes," we should venture to prescribe it as no very painful remedy for these absent and abstracted personages. When the handkerchief or the ball is thrown, and when his bird's name is called for, the absent little philosopher is obliged to collect his scattered ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... young sir. Our greatest Champion, Overman-Anu, once climbed the spiral stairway and fought nine days with the Gargoyles before he could escape them and come back; but he could never be induced to describe the dreadful creatures, and soon afterward a bear caught ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... "Well, how would you describe a Connecticut winter to a Hottentot? Not that you're a Hottentot"—the voice broke into an oily chuckle—"or that I'm in a cold climate." The chuckle was renewed. "I'm very comfortable, thank you." Here the invisible one grew tender. "My boy, your mother is here and wants to speak ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... of Madame I cannot describe. It was not of this world. And we knew her. We were her friends. She was our hostess. To the house she was the great artiste—a name to whisper, a figurehead to bow before. For us, we were listening to the song of a friend. As she had promised, she sang ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... accompanied their husbands to the house of Aspasia (and it was certainly a popular charge against Pericles that Aspasia served to corrupt the Athenian matrons), they could not have been so jealously confined as writers, judging from passages in the Greek writers that describe not what women were, but what women ought to be, desire us to imagine. And it may be also observed, that the popular anecdotes represent Elpinice as a female intriguante, busying herself in politics, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... R, or Conservative Reform, be the given indefinite line—it is required to describe on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... success as Romola; yet it more perfectly unfolds a unitary moral purpose, and the various types of character are more originally developed. The conflict of motives, the contrasted and opposed national interests, are distinctly brought out, but the aroma of the time and place are wanting. To describe a poetic and heroic era she is never content to do. Her method is totally different from that of Scott, who reflects the spirit and life of the time he depicts with almost absolute faithfulness. No gypsy was ever such a character ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... court. But I hardly think it advisable to shape general theory from the exception, and I think it would be better to cease troubling ourselves about primary rights and sanctions altogether, than to describe our prophecies concerning the liabilities commonly imposed by the law in those ...
— The Path of the Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... necessary to describe in detail each of these industries. In their broad outlines they merely repeat the story of steel, of oil, of agricultural machinery; they are the product of the same methods, the same initiative. There is one branch of American ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... about five o'clock in the morning, and it grew fair weather, the wind coming good for them to continue and finish their voyage. Thus God preserved them from the danger of the last night as of many times before, the which Whitelocke held himself obliged more largely to describe as so many monuments, to him and his company, of the goodness of God towards them, and to preserve the memory thereof as arguments to him and his, wholly to depend upon that God of whom they have had so ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... at this answer. He had reasons for believing that the name the lad he had befriended had enrolled himself under was not his correct one. It would, of course, have been easy to describe him, but Wyllard was shrewd, and noticing that there was now a restraint in his companion's manner he was not prepared to do that yet. He was aware that most of the English are characterised by a certain reserve, and apt to retire into their shells if pressed too hard. He did not, however, mean ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... Syba, formerly mentioned; where, if Mr Coryat may be believed, who says he carefully observed the same, people cut off part of their tongues out of devotion. It were easy to enlarge on this subject, but I will not any farther describe their stupid idolatry. The sum of the whole is, that both the Hindoos and Mahometans ground all their opinions on tradition, not on reason, and are content to perish with their fore-fathers, out of preposterous ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... been no breach," I said. "You might describe it as a passing coolness, but no more. We did not happen to see eye to eye with regard to my white mess-jacket with the brass buttons and I was compelled to assert ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... danger; said that further resistance on the part of the South was madness, that he hoped Governor Brown, of Georgia, would so proclaim it, and withdraw his people from the rebellion, in pursuance of what was known as the policy of "separate State action." I told him, if he saw Governor Brown, to describe to him fully what he had seen, and to say that if he remained inert, I would be compelled to go ahead, devastating the State in its whole length and breadth; that there was no adequate force to stop us, etc.; but ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... the various subjects treated of involved some consideration; two or three plans were open for adoption. 1st. To describe the several products in the order of their agricultural importance or commercial value. 2nd. An alphabetical reference, in the style of a Dictionary or Encyclopaedia; and 3rd. Classifying them under subdivisions, according ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... in which, by the hospitality of the H—-a family we are installed, has from its windows, which front the bay, the most varied and interesting view imaginable. As it is the first house, Spanish fashion, which I have entered, I must describe it to you before I sleep. The house forms a great square, and you enter the court, round which are the offices, the rooms for the negroes, coal-house, bath-room, etc., and in the middle of which stand the volantes. Proceed upstairs, and enter a large ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... events, he fell in love, and with just the woman one would expect him to be attracted by. Elspeth Grant was of the type from which the world, by instinct rather than by convention, has drawn its Madonnas and its saints. To describe a woman in words is impossible. Her beauty was not a possession to be catalogued, but herself. One felt it as one feels the beauty of a summer's dawn breaking the shadows of a sleeping city, but one cannot set it down. I often met her, and, when talking to her, I knew myself—I, hack-journalist, ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... deities of the elements and special deities who preside over all the various affairs of life. Therefore ancestor-worship, though still a striking feature of Shinto, does not alone constitute the State Religion: neither does the term fully describe the Shinto cult of the dead—a cult which in Izumo retains its primitive character more than ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... at the Pantheon, bold and forward as you describe him to be, gives me no apprehension; a man who appears so openly licentious, and who makes his attack with so little regard to decorum, is one who, to a mind such as my Evelina's, can never be seen but with the disgust which ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... distinctness, and by Don Antonio's orders thus described him:—"His stature," she said, "is that of a child of about nine years old; his aspect full of sweetness and majesty; his eyes generally turned towards heaven: words cannot describe the divine purity of that gaze. His brow is always serene; his glances kindle in the soul the flame of ardent devotion. When I look upon him, I understand the glory of the angelic nature, and the degraded condition ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... be thought complete without a few words concerning the personal appearance of my old friend; although, perhaps, few things could be more difficult for me to describe. Dogs and cats are apt to admire such very different forms of beauty, that the former often call beautiful what we think just the reverse. He was tall, strong, and rather stout, with a large bushy tail, which waved with every emotion of his mind, for he rarely ...
— The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too • Alfred Elwes
... to add to the strain, Fladworth is always inventing new games, "so that all may start fair." This happened on the occasion of my last visit, when he introduced the company to "Experiences." Every one, having contributed sixpence to the pool, was expected to describe the most interesting or exciting event in his or her life. One of the party, who did not compete, then decided which was the best experience, and the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 8, 1917 • Various
... not understood my speech? Has it been even because thou couldst not hear my word? What else has hindered? What more could I have said, than (in 1 Tim. vi. 1-5) I do say, to rebuke all abolitionists? Yea, I describe them—I show their principles—as fully as if I had called them by name in Boston, in New York, in Philadelphia, and said they would live ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... Shall I describe it? Yes; from no morbid wish to dwell upon the frightful scenes which, alas! grew too common, but as some palliation of the acts of our men, against whom charges were plentiful about ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... theologian was thus confronted in respect of a First Cause and the recognition of Design, were even less formidable than those which were arrayed under the other heads that we have enumerated. It was Huxley who invented the term Agnosticism to describe the position of such of his contemporaries as were not inclined to deny that there was a great Power at work behind the phenomena of the Universe, but were not prepared to admit that this Power could be any degree comprehensible by us. The most systematic exponent of this view was Herbert Spencer. ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... governments. I taught myself to disbelieve half of what I read in the papers. I saw the world clawing itself to shreds in blind rage. I saw hardly any one brave enough to face the brutalizing absurdity as it really was, and describe it. I saw the glutton, the idler, and the fool applauding, while brave and simple men walked in the horrors of hell. The stay-at-home poets turned it to pretty lyrics of glory and sacrifice. Perhaps half ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... almost ran from the theatre. That instinct which no slayer can control or explain, was overpowering him; it was the instinct which attracts the murderer to the spot where his crime was committed. No man can describe or define this resistless impulse, and yet all criminology records it, clear and unmistakable. It is no less than a form of curiosity. Driven by this irresistible force, David Cable, with bravado that cost him dearly, worked his uninterrupted way to the scene of his crime. By trolley ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... which is but feebly described in the tragical story of Jemmy String. Bonnet-strings and apron-strings, dickey-strings and watch-guards, curtain-cord, bed-cord, and cod-line, each and all have furnished enough discomfort to make out a long grumbling article. But I cannot linger to describe their treacherous desertions when their services are most needed, their unexpected weakness, and their obstinate entanglements when time presses. A certain pudding-bag string is commemorated in one of the ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... the first serious attempt to describe the great barren tableland that extends to the south of Limousin in the Department of Aveyron, Lot, etc., a country of dolomite cliffs, and canons, and subterranean rivers. The region is full of prehistoric ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... of economy in our national expenditures, but it is a misuse of terms to make this word describe a policy that withholds an expenditure for the purpose of extending our foreign commerce. The enlargement and improvement of our merchant marine, the development of a sufficient body of trained American seamen, the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Here is a description of Mexico of years ago—the Mexico of the viceroys—which I will translate freely from the description of a Mexican writer of to-day, and which in some respects might almost describe the city at the present time: "Hail, mediaeval city, redolent of sentimental recollections and romantic impressions such as well might be the creation of fantastic romance! Clustered with monasteries and convents, turreted dwellings and sombre monuments, ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... 30th, the King and Queen of Spain arrived at Bayonne; and it is impossible to describe the homage which the Emperor paid them. The Duke Charles de Plaisance went as far as Irun, and the Prince de Neuchatel even to the banks of the Bidassoa, in order to pay marked respect to their Catholic Majesties on the part of their powerful friend; and the ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... I cannot pretend to describe all that followed on that bewildering day, the dismay of Grandmamma and Nursey, the wrath of Jennings over the match, the joy of everybody at Lady Bird's escape, or her own confusion of mind at the fire and the excitement and the new Papa, who was and was not the Papa of ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... she suggests rather than explains; and she does not seek to make life too obviously rational. Romance, picturesqueness, charm—these are the qualities of her book. As for its plot, it has so many plots that it is difficult to describe them. We have the story of Rhona Somerville, the daughter of a great popular preacher, who tries to write her father's life, and, on looking over his papers and early diaries, finds struggle where she expected calm, and doubt where she looked for faith, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... (Gr. anaisthesia, from an-, privative, and aisthesis, sensation), terms used in medicine to describe a state of local or general insensibility to external impressions, and the substances used for inducing this state. In diseases of the brain or spinal cord anaesthesia is an occasional symptom, but in such cases it is usually limited ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... progress of geological science, the fossils now brought from these remote regions will be accessible at any future time, and something known of the geology as well as of the geography of the interior. As Professor Forbes most readily undertook to describe the freshwater shells after the work had passed through the press, that portion of the collection also has thus been brought ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... of perfect health, of health mental and physical. To describe her face as homely was to pay it the highest compliment, for its smile was the true light of home, that never failed. Filia generosi, daughter of a house that bred gentlewomen, though its ability to dower them had declined in these latter days, she conceived ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... paragraphs describe the mechanical details of the Pioneer as it appears on exhibition in the Smithsonian Institution's new Museum of History ...
— The 'Pioneer': Light Passenger Locomotive of 1851 • John H. White
... not be easy to describe the sensations of Sarah Burns while her father was giving expression to his own feelings. Joy that all cause of annoyance and trouble was removed from him; pleasure that this young man in particular had been the instrument; some slight fluttering at the recollection ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... is a very striking application of these words of David, which so fearfully describe the agitation of those who are exposed to a hurricane at sea. We too generally limit this passage to its literal sense. To Bunyan, who had passed through such a deep experience of the "terrors of the Lord," when he came out of tribulation ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Feints is so great, by reason of the many Guards and Parades, that I should find it as difficult to describe them, as the Reader would to comprehend them without Experience; so that I shall confine myself to those from which the rest derive, which are, strait Feint, Feint, and ...
— The Art of Fencing - The Use of the Small Sword • Monsieur L'Abbat
... of this volume is to give to the English-speaking people some glimpses into the past struggles, sufferings and hopes of the Serbian nation. I have tried to describe the Serbian life in light, in its peace, its peaceful work, its songs and prayers; in darkness, in its slavery, its sins, its resistance to ...
— Serbia in Light and Darkness - With Preface by the Archbishop of Canterbury, (1916) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... without any sort of ascertained tenets of its own upon the ground of which it persecutes other men: for the patrons of this Protestant ascendency neither do nor can, by anything positive, define or describe what they mean by the word Protestant. It is defined, as Cowley defines wit, not by what it is, but by what it is not. It is not the Christian religion as professed in the churches holding communion with Rome, the majority of Christians: ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... days the Demons had good cause to hate the Painters, who robbed them of more souls with a single picture than a good little Preaching Friar could do in thirty sermons. No doubt the Monk, to instil a soul-saving horror in the hearts of the faithful, would describe to the utmost of his powers "that day of wrath, that day of mourning," which is to reduce the universe to ashes, teste David et Sibylla, borrowing his deepest voice and bellowing through his hands to imitate the Archangel's last trump. But ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... field'—it isn't just washed with colour, it is like hammered work of beaten gold, like the letters in old missals!" Presently he burst out into talk: "I don't want to say anything affected," he began, "but a day like this, out in the country, gives me a stronger feeling of what I can only describe as worship than anything else in the world, because the scene holds the beauty of life so firmly up before you. Worship means the sense of the unmistakable presence of beauty, I am sure—a beauty great and overwhelming, which one has had no part in making—'The sea is His, and He made it, and ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... quickly. She was gazing straight ahead at the distant peaks. He felt strangely pleased that she had drawn away from him when his hand touched hers. Some instinct told him that their old friendship had given place to something else—something as yet too vague to describe. She was not angry with him, he knew. Her face was troubled. He gazed at her as they rode and his heart yearned for her tenderly. Life had suddenly assumed a tensity that silenced them. The little lizards ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... the noose circling about the vaquero's head, and the next thing is to let it fly. There is not much to describe about this part of throwing a riata, important though it may be. It is only incessant practice that will enable a man to make a certain cast. The main thing is to swing the rope just long enough—neither ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... subjects sometimes describe a sensation as 'more than one, but less than two.' I had a subject who habitually described this feeling as 'one and a half.' This does not mean that he has one and a half sensations. That is obviously impossible. It must mean that the ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... me! as we at home describe him, I thought the Great Turk had been twice as big; but I shall find him Tyrant big ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... simplest processes are sensations and reflexes, and we might begin with either. The introspective psychologists usually start with sensations, because their great object is to describe consciousness, and they think of sensations as the chief elements of which consciousness is composed. The behaviorists would prefer to start with reflexes, because they conceive of behavior as composed of these simple ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... affecting story of "a bright young man from Baltimore," a Sunday School scholar, well recommended by his pastor, who aspired to be a letter carrier. He appeared before the Commission for examination, and, according to Mr. Gorman, he was first asked to describe the shortest route from Baltimore to China. The "bright young man" replied brightly, according to Mr. Gorman, that he didn't want to go from Baltimore to China, and therefore had never concerned himself about the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... eaten,' says Mr. White, 'does not mean has been eaten.' Very true; but a continuous unfinished passion—Polonius's still undergoing manducation, to speak Johnsonese—was in Shakespeare's mind; and his words describe a passion no longer in generation. The King of Denmark's lord chamberlain had no precedent in Herod, when 'he was eaten of worms'; the original, γενόμενος σκωληκόβρωτος, yielding, but for its ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... considerations, and unfettered by the responsible position of an official. Having examined Cyprus in every district, and passed not only a few days, but winter, spring, and summer in testing the climatic and geographical peculiarities of the country, I shall describe "Cyprus as I saw it in 1879," expressing the opinions which I formed upon the spot with the results ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... is accounted from East to West, it is not so exactly found out, that it may be distinguished into degrees. [Sidenote: Chinian Cosmographers.] Howbeit certaine it is, that according to the Map wherein the people of China describe the forme of their kingdom, the latitude thereof doeth not much exceed the longitude. This kingdom therefore is, without all peradventure, of all earthly kingdoms the most large and spacious: for albeit diuers other kings vnder their iurisdiction containing in dimensions more length and breadth ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... attained surely and in a comparatively brief space of time. Such a conviction, extravagant as it may seem, is expressed in many passages. In the Preface to his "Parasceve," published in 1620, in the same volume with the "Novum Organum," he says, that he is about to describe a Natural and Experimental History, which, if it be once provided, (and he assumes, that, "etiam vivis nobis," it may be provided,) "paucorum annorum opus futuram esse inquitionem naturae et scientiarum omnium." Again, in the Protemium of the "Novum Organum": "There was but one course left, to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... "Then the devil left Him," i.e. after the temptation, "and behold angels came and ministered to Him." And as to the words inserted by Mark, "and He was with the beasts," according to Chrysostom (Hom. xiii in Matth.), they are set down in order to describe the desert as being impassable to man and ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... cruelty and oppression which marked the annual festival were ever before the missionaries' eyes. In 1813 we find Dr. Claudius Buchanan establishing his veracity as an eye-witness of the immolation of drugged or voluntary victims under the idol car, by this quotation from Dr. Carey, whom he had to describe at that time to his English readers, as a man of unquestionable integrity, long held in estimation by the most respectable characters in Bengal, and possessing very superior opportunities of knowing what is passing in India generally: "Idolatry ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... a stone-covered koppie, where, on the morning after our arrival, I saw six or eight men executed in a way that I will not describe. Their crime, according to Mr. Owen, was that they had bewitched some of ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... free people without slaves, whether white, black, or colored, be disregarded by the presentation of a petition from slaves. Their rights could not be affected by it at all. The rights of the South, then, here mean the rights of the masters of slaves, which, to describe them by an inoffensive word, I will call the rights of mastery. These, by the constitution of the United States, are recognized, not directly, but by implication, and protection is stipulated for them, ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... whom the electrical engineer was chiefly directing his discourse, was conducting himself peculiarly. At short intervals he would look out anxiously into the uproar, turning his small, watchful eyes searchingly up to the tops of the masts, which never ceased to describe great arcs in the air (starboard to port, port to starboard!), and out into the monotonous rolling of the waves, swelling into ever higher and larger masses. His face was full of concern. Frederick was on the point of inwardly ridiculing ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... emphatic indorsement. "When we used to know it, it was a perfect paradise of a farm. There were dams and lakes, beautiful meadows, lush hayfields, red hills of grape-lands, hundreds of acres of good pasture, heavenly groves of pines and oaks, a stone winery, stone barns, grounds—oh, I couldn't describe it in hours. When Mrs. Bell died, the family scattered, and the leasing began. It's a ruin to-day. The trees have been cut and sold for firewood. There's only a little bit of the vineyard that isn't abandoned—just ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... you know, it's the infinity that staggers you." He flung himself into a chair opposite Jewdwine, planted his elbows on the table, and propped his chin on his hands. He looked as if he saw the infinity he spoke of. "I can't describe to you," he said, "what it is merely to be alive out there in the streets, on a sunny day, when the air's all fine watery gold, and goes dancing and singing into your head like dry champagne. I've ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... in conceptions and conceits, contemplative, imaginative; often truly great and magnificent in his style and diction, though doubtless too often big, stiff, and hyperlatinistic: thus I might without admixture of falsehood, describe Sir T. Browne and my description would have only this fault, that it would be equally, or almost equally, applicable to half a dozen other writers, from the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth to the end of Charles II. He is indeed all this; and what he has more than all this ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... ingenious Author, to be an imitation of what may be supposed to pass among Shepherds[12]. This was accomplished the more easily by the first performers in this art, because they were themselves employed in the occupation which they describe, and the subjects which fell within their sphere must have been confined to a very narrow circle. They contented themfelves with painting in the simplest language the external beauties of nature, and with ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... treated me, of course, most hospitably, and had asked several friends to meet the traveller; but one, a chief guest, was otherwise engaged, and so I missed Lowell, to my great disappointment. It is not my "form" to detail private conversation, nor to describe the Lares and Penates of sacred domesticity; but I may reveal generally that I spent several golden hours of intellectual communion with the Abbott Laurences, Ticknor, Fields, Prescott, and Everett—illustrious names, which will sufficiently indicate ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... honors with the splendid gift of Kennelworth Castle, park and manor:—for in behalf of Dudley, and afterwards of Essex, she could even forget for a time her darling virtue,—frugality. The chronicles of the time describe with extraordinary care and minuteness the whole pompous ceremonial of this creation; but a much more lively and interesting description of this scene, as well as of several others of which he was an eye-witness in the court of Elizabeth, has been handed down to us in the ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... impatient when Ben Maslia began to describe each room in detail, his hunger increased when, in glowing words, his friend painted the gorgeous dining-room, and his mouth watered at the information that the cellars were stocked with ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... ensuing battle I will now describe. First, all the trumpeters together at a signal sounded the attack, next the soldiers and all the multitude raised a shout, some rattling their spears against their shields, and others stones against the bronze implements. ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... brick that are to be met with in the London market are very varied. To enumerate them all would make a tedious list; to describe them all would be equally tedious. I will endeavor, however, to give some idea of the most conspicuous of them. We will begin with that family of bricks of which the London stock brick is the type. It has been said these are clamp burnt, and almost all the internal brickwork—and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... strong emphasis on those three words "my own brother," and a change passed over his face as he pronounced them—a change that no language of mine is competent to describe. ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... fate, excited no unreasonable apprehensions for her own. Her feelings, naturally ardent, and little accustomed to restraint, were excited to the highest pitch when the news of the victory arrived. Lady Hamilton, her constant friend and favourite, who was present, says, "It is not possible to describe her transports; she wept, she kissed her husband, her children, walked frantically about the room, burst into tears again, and again kissed and embraced every person near her; exclaiming, 'O brave Nelson! O God! bless and protect our ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... complain of the liver complaint; most of them have been ten or fifteen years in this country, travelling through Bornou and Soudan. I gave them small doses of calomel. All people at this season, blacks and strangers from the north, are full of rheumatism, which they describe by saying they have pains in all their joints and all their limbs. The presence of a Christian having medicines heightens and multiplies these diseases; there is, however, in reality, a good deal of rheumatism, arising from the cold winds ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... miles.... The state of affairs was known, or might have been known, at Richmond, for Colonel Chandler, inspector-general of the Confederate army, inspected the camp, and reported upon its administration in no halting terms. 'It is a place,' he said, 'the horrors of which it is difficult to describe—it is a ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... cannot describe how loth I was to leave to night's desolation the shapeless house of a child. What fate was this that had set her to such profitless labour on the uttermost shores of "Tragedy"? What history lay behind, past, or, as it were, never to come? What gladness too high ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... in any way. Please do not even divulge that fact that I own a machine. I have entirely stopped using the typewriter, for the reason that I never could write a letter with it to anybody without receiving a request by return mail that I would not only describe the machine, but state what progress I had made in the use of it, etc., etc. I don't like to write letters, and so I don't want people to know I own this ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... the reader some definite and clear ideas of the nature of this warfare, it will be well to describe in detail some few of the incidents and scenes which ancient historians have recorded. The following ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the muse of L. E. L. dream of and describe music, moonlight, and roses, and "apostrophise loves, memories, hopes, and fears," with how much ultimate appetite for invention or sympathy may be judged from her declaration that, "there is one ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... received the puzzle-boxes. At another time the cadets were required to write a report telling of the suppression of the insurrection on the Isthmus of Panama. McGiffin won great praise for the military arrangements and disposition of his men, but, in the same report, he went on to describe how he armed them with a new gun known as Baines's Rhetoric and told of the havoc he wrought in the enemy's ranks when he fired these guns loaded with similes and metaphors ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... the old man firmly. He added gravely: "You must have had an excellent upbringing, young man, to be willing to live among the poverty-stricken people you describe, and to be willing to go so far to ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... that the words 'satanic' and 'devilish' are strong, but they relate the exact truth. They describe a system not persons: We are bound to hate evil, if we would shun it. But by means of non-co-operation we are able to distinguish between the evil and the evil-doer. I have found no difficulty in describing a particular ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... reaction set in, as was inevitable, and Alexander II was eager to adopt the progress of the West. The German writers began to describe the lives of humble people, and their books were read in other lands. Russia followed with descriptions of life under natural conditions, the silence of the steppes and the solitude of the forest where hunter and trapper followed their ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... understand that whilst the astronomical information is, in all cases, scientific fact according to our present knowledge, the story itself—as well as the attempt to describe the physical and social conditions on Mars—is purely imaginative. It is not, however, merely random imagining. In a narrative such as this some matters—as, for instance, the "air-ship," and the possibility of a voyage through space—must be taken for granted; but the other ideas are mainly ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... of Great Britain and France in the period under review, to bring upon the scene—the Terre Napoleon coasts—the discovery ship Investigator, despatched by the British Government at about the same time as Napoleon's vessels were engaged upon their task, and to describe the meeting of the two captains, Flinders and Baudin, in Encounter Bay. Next, the coasts denominated Terre Napoleon are traversed, and an estimate is made of the original work done by Baudin, and of the serious omissions for which ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... cases in the Court of Common Pleas in both Northumberland and Lycoming counties yielded some documentary evidence regarding the procedures of the Fair Play tribunal.[22] Three cases in Lycoming County and one from Northumberland County contain depositions which describe the activities of the Fair Play men in some detail. One case, Hughes vs. Dougherty, was appealed to the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth. All of the cases deal with the question of title to lands in the Fair Play territory following the purchase ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf
... Guide-books furnish hundreds of other instances, and describe temples in which the renamed kami ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
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