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More "Foil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a short laugh. "I seem to have fitted in just right to foil the villain in getting the papers. Say, better not let Jack know about this, or he'll be on the job, too, and what he needs just now is ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... ended here her lays, "And all the nymphs unanimous, exclaim'd;— "The Heliconian goddesses have gain'd. "Vanquish'd, the others rail'd. When she resum'd:— "Is not your punishment enough deserv'd? "Foil'd in the contest, must you swell your crime, "With base revilings? Patient now no more, "To punish we begin; what anger bids, "We now perform.—Loud laugh'd the scornful maids, "Our threatening words despis'd, and strove to speak, "And clapp'd with outcries menacing, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... what we already know of Byron's religious opinions; nor is it easy to say where he ceases to be serious and begins to banter, or vice versa. He evidently wished to show that in argument he was good at fence, and could handle a theologian as skilfully as a foil. At the same time he wished if possible, though, as appears, in vain, to get some light on a subject with regard to which in his graver moods he was often exercised. On some points he is explicit. He makes an unequivocal protest against the doctrines of eternal punishment ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... the first time Davos felt almost cheerful. Perhaps the absolute hush of the country and the purity of the atmosphere, with its suggestion of recent rain,—the skies weep at least once a day in the Salzkammergut region,—proved a welcome foil to fashionable Ischl, with its crowds, its stiffness, its court ceremonial—for the emperor enjoys his villegiatura there. And Davos was sick and irritable after a prolonged musical season. He had studied ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... Tulkinghorn, such a foil in his old- fashioned rusty black to Lady Dedlock's brightness, hands her down the staircase to her carriage. He returns rubbing his chin, and rubs it a good deal in the ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... which we should be disposed to identify it if the characters of the prologue and epilogue were introduced as dramatis personae in action. But their doing and enduring are presupposed as accomplished facts, and employed merely as a foil to the dialogues, which alone are the work of the author. Perhaps the least erroneous way succinctly to describe what in fact is a unicum would be to call ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... imported at the revolution: for the rest, one of those commodious persons in society who are nothing particular themselves, but are understood to be acquainted with the best in every department; close-clipped, pale-eyed, nonchalant, as good a foil as could well be found to the intense coloring and vivid gravity ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... of the train could be faintly seen as it glided along its steel track bringing its load of human or mechanical food to the hungry battle-line. Swiftly but with great care the two brothers made ready the deadly missiles with which they hoped to foil the plans ...
— Fighting in France • Ross Kay
... largely the result, or the cause, of the poet's unusually sensitive consciousness of the ephemeralness of love. The notion of permanence often seems to rob love of all its poetical quality. The dark despair engendered by a sense of its transience is needed as a foil to the fiery splendors of passion. Thus Rupert Brooke, in the sonnet, Mutability, dismisses the Platonic idea of eternal love and ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... rotated. There were two diaphragms, one on each side of the cylinder, one being for recording and the other for reproducing speech or other sounds. Each diaphragm had attached to it a needle. By means of the needle attached to the recording diaphragm, indentations were made in a sheet of tin-foil stretched over the peripheral surface of the cylinder when the diaphragm was vibrated by reason of speech or other sounds. The needle on the other diaphragm subsequently followed these indentations, ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... by grave critical authorities, the best living interpreter of Chopin. He was a Pole—any one could tell that by the way he spelt his name—and a perfect foil to Paderewski, being short, thick-set and with hair as black as a kitchen beetle. His fat amiable face, flat and corpulent fingers, his swarthy skin and upturned nose, were called comical by the women who thronged ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... which, wanting thee, Want half their charms, for, to thy poet's thought, More deeply glow'd the heaven, when thy fine eye, Surveying its grand arch, all kindling glow'd; The white cloud to thy white brow was a foil; And, by the soft tints of thy cheek outvied, The dew-bent wild-rose ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 322, July 12, 1828 • Various
... delicate gray lines against a series of heavy black strokes exemplifies some of the possibilities of such variety. Observe, in Fig. 6, what significance is imparted to the heavy lines on the roof of the little foreground building by the foil of delicate gray lines in the sky and surrounding roofs. This conjunction was employed early by Mr. Herbert Railton, who has made a beautiful use of it in his quaint architectural subjects. Mr. Railton's technique is remarkable also for the varied direction of line and ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... which greeted the author's "Letters to the Young," and his more recent series of essays entitled "Gold Foil," and the constant and substantial friendship which has been maintained by the public toward those productions, must stand as his apology for this third venture in a kindred field of effort. It should be—and probably is—unnecessary ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... seeking the key to their intimacy, could easily blunder upon the old bromide and repeat that a pretty woman invariably prefers a plain one for a foil. But he would have to be a very blind fool indeed. For Felicity Brown's beauty, perfect enough under the spot of the Midnight Club's miniature stage, became a less flawless thing in contrast with Cecille. Perhaps that sounds far-fetched. Perhaps, having ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... and produced a ring, enclosing a piece of coloured glass set over foil. This he presented to the child, who ran off delighted to show her ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... Anglo-Saxon brooches [v.04 p.0643] were exquisite works of art, ingeniously and tastefully constructed. They are often of gold, with a central boss, exquisitely decorated, the flat part of the brooch being a mosaic of turquoises, garnets on gold foil, mother of pearl, &c. arranged in geometric patterns, and the gold work enriched with filigree or decorated with ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... as to innumerable other honest, middle-aged and comfortable men, Darwinism came as a dreadful invitation to go out into the wilderness. Over my head and just out of range of my ears he was debating that issue with Siddons as a foil and my cousin as a horrified antagonist. Slowly he was developing his conception of compromise. And meanwhile he wasn't going out into the wilderness at all, but punctually to and fro, along the edge of the lawn by the bed of hollyhocks and through the little green door in the garden ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... as if you took the diamond from its setting, and left me nothing but the foil," says he. "Oh, I would order it another way: give me the gem, and let who will take what remains. Unless these little hands are mine to hold for ever, I will take ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... see express'd Love's better omens, in the green hues dress'd Of this selected foliage.—Nymph, 't is thine The warning story on its leaves to find, Proud Daphne's fate, imprison'd in its rind, And with its umbrage veil'd, great Phoebus' power Scorning, and bent, with feet of wind, to foil His swift pursuit, till on Thessalian shore Shot into boughs, and rooted to the soil.— Thus warn'd, fair Maid, Apollo's ire to shun, Soon may his Spray's and VOTARY's ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... and very beautiful eyes to her stony parent, then they dropped, and she began tracing figures and arabesques on the polished floor with the point of her foil. "That is ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... sleep, all in vain. The demon of ennui had taken possession of her; and now, at the end of every resource, she stood looking drearily out at the wintry scene. She was dressed for the evening, and looked like a picture, buttoned up in that black velvet jacket, its rich darkness such a foil to her fair face and shining golden hair. Grace was her only companion—Grace sitting serenely braiding an apron for herself, Rose was fathoms deep in "Les Miserables," and Eeny was drumming on the piano in the drawing-room. ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... young and amazingly pretty, the sister of her son. It would be untrue to say that, being in clover, she was unaware of it. For a woman of one-and-thirty to have her husband for a lover, and her lover for a foil, is a gift of the gods. So she took it—with the sun and green water, and wine-bright air. Let the moralists battle it out with the sophists: it did her a ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... To foil these attempts at concealment is the business of the observers who gather information for Army Headquarters and G. H.Q. For observers on corps work the detective problems are somewhat different. ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... were clearly visible every Thursday evening, in Oxford one roof sheltered both of them. Furthermore, there was even some measure of intimacy between them. It was the Duke's whim to condescend further in the direction of Noaks than in any other. He saw in Noaks his own foil and antithesis, and made a point of walking up the High with him at least once in every term. Noaks, for his part, regarded the Duke with feelings mingled of idolatry and disapproval. The Duke's First ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... thoroughly opposed to instigating or participating in a policy of competitive armaments. Nor does preparation mean a policy of militarizing. Our people and industries are solicitous for the cause of 0111, country, and have great respect for the Army and Navy and foil the uniform worn by the men who stand ready at all times for our protection to encounter the dangers and perils necessary to military service, but all of these activities are to be taken not in behalf of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Calvin Coolidge • Calvin Coolidge
... him, in the position of a self-indulgent idler, preferring comfort to duty, a foil to his more conscientious rival. When the dust of the departure had cleared away, he sat on, not in the cool house, but on the hot verandah, nursing his griefs in solitude. He seemed the only person left behind, or else he seemed forgotten, ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... been famous for its hospitality and good times. On Hallowe'en a miniature Druid-fire burns in a bowl on the table. In the blazing alcohol are put fortunes wrapped in tin-foil, figs, orange-peel, raisins, almonds, and dates. The one who snatches the best will meet his sweetheart inside of a year, and all may try for a fortune from the flames. The origin of this custom was the taking of omens from the ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... the day in question we stood before each other, foil in hand, both of us nerved by an intense, though as yet unspoken, enmity. This had been observed by most of the spectators, who approached and formed a circle around us; all of them highly interested in the result—which, they knew, would be an ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... possession of it, and made nothing of it,—that he imbibed it with mother's milk,—and that I, the wretched Tommy, am most abjectly behindhand in not having done the same. I ask, why is Tommy to be always the foil of Mr. Barlow to this extent? What Mr. Barlow had not the slightest notion of himself, a week ago, it surely cannot be any very heavy backsliding in me not to have at my fingers' ends to- day! And yet Mr. Barlow systematically carries it over me with a high hand, and ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... taken to prevent the enemy from outflanking us and at the same time to secure our Retreat in case of need. The Enemy have made no move from Frog's Point.... I don't know how it is, but I believe their design to circumvent us this time will prove as abortive as the former ones. If we can but foil Genl Howe again, I think we knock him up for the Campaign. You ask if Genl Lee is in Health and our people feel bold? I answer both in the affirmative. His appearance among us has not contributed a little to the latter. We are sinking the ships as fast ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... the opposing generals an unceasing game of strategy, a succession of moves and counter-moves in which the opposing commanders handled their great armies with the same consumate skill with which the expert fencing-master uses his foil, but in which neither could break through the other's guard. Repeated minor encounters took place which, in other wars, would have rated as heavy battles; but the weeks lengthened into months without ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... complete mental inactivity. I cannot discover that any disturbed physical functions have been an element in her mental aberration, for more perfect physical life and loveliness I have never seen. Her white hair, which might have made her look old, is a foil to a beauty which seems ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... Mr. Barrymore intimated that Sir Ralph's head would be improved by punching. Neither of them would take any of the wine when it came, though it looked fascinating, fizzling out of beautiful bottles decked with gold and silver foil, like champagne. It tasted like champagne too, so far as I could tell; but perhaps I'm not a judge, as there was never any wine except elderberry at home, and I've only had champagne twice since I've been the child of a Countess. The Asti was nice and sweet. I loved it, and so did ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... this appears to have been quite a fine ladies' argument. Kenloe puts it in the mouths of leaders of polite society. As coolly as if it had been a question of parlor decoration, they appear to have argued that the black background of the general misery was a desirable foil to set off the pomp of the rich. But, after all, this objection was not more brutal than it was stupid. If here and there might be found some perverted being who relished his luxuries the more keenly for the sight of others' want, yet the general and ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... the rose,—it is sweet merely, and soon degenerates into candy. Half the delectableness is in breaking down these frail and exquisite walls yourself, and tasting the nectar before it has lost its freshness by contact with the air. Then the comb is a sort of shield or foil that prevents the tongue from being overwhelmed by the first ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... felt the towering soul of MONTAGU, Her sex's glory, and her country's too; Who gave the spotted plague one deadly blow, And bade its mitigated poison flow With half its terrors; yet, with loathing still, We hous'd a visitant with pow'r to kill. Then when the healthful blood, though often tried, Foil'd the keen lancet by the Severn side, Resisting, uncontaminated still, The purple pest and unremitting skill; When the plain truth tradition seem'd to know, By simply pointing to the harmless Cow, Though wise distrust to reason ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... bravely put his hand on his sword and replied, "Your dogs would devour me, my good fellow, and I foil them. They would employ their teeth upon me as I would mine if I had before me a morsel of that appetizing boar, for I am lost in the forest since yesterday morning and have ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... his coat a bottle of champagne, and set it on the table, where the lamp's ray fell full on its gold foil. Her eyes opened wide; for he had always visited this house in his oldest clothes and ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... know that gold never looks so well as on the foil of their dark skins. Dick found in his trunk a string of gold beads, such as are manufactured in some of our cities, which he had brought from the gold region of Chili,—so he said,—for the express purpose of giving them to old Sophy. These Africans, too, have a perfect passion for gay-colored ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... the services of a "converted" man if he could secure one who was "unconverted". The amount of bad language evoked in the course of this theological argument was extraordinary. Such acrimonious discussions as these acted, however, as a mere foil to our general harmony, and a common practice on an evening when we had no wounded on our hands was to start a "sing-song". The general tone of these concerts was decidedly patriotic. "God save the Queen" and "Rule Britannia" were thrown in every ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... with numbers and get the war over. I am not disturbed about Russia. If we can get the Dardanelles open, we can easily send her ammunition and equipment for her spare men, and so end the war more quickly; but, failing that, I think Russia will easily foil Germany, and spring at her again and again until she is worn out. I had a letter of congratulation from your sister Mabel. ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... Gold.—Is prepared by dissolving gold in aqua regia, a composition of one part of nitric to two parts of muriatic acid. Gold foil is the best for our purposes; coin, however, answers, in most cases, for the daguerreotype operator, as the alloy, being so slight is not noticed in the gilding process. When the latter is used, it will facilitate ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... destiny of Nature's calling, Foil'd and frustrate! Just then the evil tide was crawling ...
— The Village Wife's Lament • Maurice Hewlett
... what I wished to do, and after a little persuasion he agreed to carry a letter to her on his next marketing trip. My message was prepared by writing it on tissue paper, which was then compressed into a small pellet, and protected by wrapping it in tin-foil so that it could be safely carried in the man's mouth. The probability, of his being searched when he came to the Confederate picketline was not remote, and in such event he was to swallow the pellet. ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... Palace built of squared brick, Which cunningly was without mortar laid, Whose walls were high, but nothing strong, nor thick, And golden foil all over them displayed, That purest sky with brightness they dismayed. High lifted up were many lofty towers And goodly galleries far overlaid, Full of fair windows, and delightful bowers, And on the top a dial ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... summer's day one may see, far away and "sown in a wrinkle of the monstrous hill," some neighboring village with its graceful spire of purest white gleaming and flaming in the hot sunshine, like marble set in a foil of malachite. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... raised his rending voice: Thou darkening sky, Deepen thy damps, the fiend of death is nigh; Behold him rising from his shadowy throne, To veil this heaven and drive the conquer'd Sun; The glaring Godhead yields to sacred night, And his foil'd armies imitate his flight. Confirm, infernal Power, thy rightful reign, Give deadlier shades and heap the piles of slain; Soon the young captive prince shall roll in fire, And all his race accumulate the pyre. Ye mountain vultures, here your food explore, Tigers ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... on them now that they are being used, so the general effect at dinner-time is of a huge laundry in a gale, with beautiful laundresses in low dresses sitting at table under a world of wildly flapping linen; with the lamps lit, and our black coats for a foil, the colours are really extremely pretty, though the discomfort is great. Men and women are all getting a little brown with the sea air, and the ladies have a little of the blush of spring now, instead of the pallor of winter with which they ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... again re-told, Must you crowd on the weary brain, Till the fingers are cold that entwin'd of old Round foil and trigger and rein, Till stay'd for aye are the roving feet, Till the restless hands are quiet, Till the stubborn heart has forgotten to beat, Till the hot ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... of the Angle King Offa and mother of Eomaer, is mentioned in contrast to Hygd, just as Heremod is a foil to Beowulf. She is at first the type of a cruel, unwomanly queen. But by her marriage with Offa, who seems to be her second husband, she is subdued and changed until her fame even adds ...
— The Tale of Beowulf - Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats • Anonymous
... have received from the contrast, supposing them real, between the two brothers. You did not believe in Joseph with the same faith with which you believed in Charles. The latter was a pleasant reality, the former a no less pleasant poetical foil to it. The comedy, I have said, is incongruous; a mixture of Congreve with sentimental incompatibilities: the gaiety upon the whole is buoyant; but it required the consummate art of Palmer to reconcile ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... appears to be derived from the same root as Paup-puk-ke-nay, a grasshopper, the inflection iss making it personal. The Indian idea is that of harum scarum. He is regarded as a foil to Manabozho, with whom he is frequently brought in contact in ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... Chem. Ind., xxiv., April 1905) process is as follows:—The cap composition is removed by squeezing the cap with pliers, while held over a porcelain basin of about 200 c.c. capacity, and removing the loosened foil and broken composition by means of a pointed wooden chip. Composition adhering to the shell or foil is loosened by alcohol, and washed into the dish by means of alcohol in a small wash bottle. The shell and foil are put to one side and subsequently weighed when dry. The composition ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... was as complete a contrast to his companion as could be desired by the humorous painter. He was a plump, spry little fellow, brightly dressed and bubbling over with merry, roguish spirits, which formed the most fantastic foil to the lugubriousness of his fellow-worker. Any good citizen of Paris, arising belated, if any such there may have been, and hurrying to the walls to know how things went for the king's cause, would ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... superb dramatic faculty, which enabled him to arrange his other characters around the main figure, and to subordinate them all to his central emphasis—all these qualities are undeniable. Moreover he was himself the most perfect foil and contrast to Johnson that could be imagined, while he possessed in a unique degree the power of both stimulating and provoking his hero to animation and to wrath. Boswell may not have known what an artist he ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... ask what Mr. OWEN NARES was doing in this galley; and I cannot tell you. I can only say that he was very brave about it all. In a sense it was a serious performance, the only one of its kind in the play; yet not serious enough to serve as a foil for the general frivolity, for he was constantly bringing his own high sentiments into ridicule, and so burlesquing the OWEN NARES that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... your ground for Barley the next yeere: the next Ardor is the Summer-stirring of that which you fallowed: the next is the foyling of that which you Summer-stirde: and the last is the Winter rigging of that which you foil'd: of all which Ardors, and the manner of Plowing them, with their seasons, I haue written sufficiently in the first Chapter of the next part; where I speake of ...
— The English Husbandman • Gervase Markham
... not driven from his command. That they insisted on keeping him there shows beyond everything that he had already impressed himself so strongly on Virginia that the authorities, although they smarted under his attacks, did not dare to meddle with him. Dinwiddie and the rest could foil him in obtaining a commission in the king's army, but they could not shake ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... "Ma foil!" exclaimed Mademoiselle. She seized an end of the boa and drew Gwendolyn to her knee. "You make ze head buzz. Come!" She reached for a book on the school-room ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... would hardly be tolerated, even as a foil to the virtue and generosity of the other characters in the play, but for its indefatigable industry and inexhaustible resources, which divert the attention of the spectator (as well as his own) from the end he has in view to the means ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... subsidiary characters, two, Vautrin and Rastignac, furnish a second interest in the story parallel to that of Goriot and his daughters, and constituting a foil. Under the influence of Paris surroundings and experience, Rastignac passes from his naive illusions to a state of worldly wisdom, which he reaches all the more speedily as Vautrin is at his elbow, ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... son, Fathom, the hero of the book. Because he is placarded, "Shrewd villain of monstrous inhumanity," we are fain to accept him for what his creator intended; but seldom in word or deed is he a convincingly real villain. His friend and foil, the noble young Count de Melvil, is no more alive than he; and equally wooden are Joshua, the high-minded, saint-like Jew, and that tedious, foolish Don Diego. Neither is the heroine alive, the peerless Monimia, but then, in her case, want of vitality is not surprising; the presence of it ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... gained notoriety by the raising of wrecks and the patronage of Mr. Plimsoll. And since both preserved a certain courage to the end, since both died on the scaffold as becomes a man, the contrast is once more characteristic. Brodie's cynicism is a fine foil to the piety of Peace; and while each end was natural after its own fashion, there is none who will deny to the Scot the finer sense of fitness. Nor did any step in their career explain more clearly the difference in their temperament than their definitions ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... early sacrifice in the war. His descriptions of prairie life, his fresh and vigorous individualization of character and power of narrative indicate a vein of original genius which was foil of promise. William Dean Howells and Henry James are foremost as writers of the analytic and realistic school. Their studies of character are life-like and finished, their satire keen and good-natured. The romances of Julian Hawthorne deal with the marvelous and unreal. Bret Harte ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... corner of the room. I flung my fine cloak over the monk, and the fellow looked as if he had stolen it. I must have looked like a man who has been to a dance and has spent the rest of the night in a disorderly house, though the only foil to my reasonable elegance of attire was ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Out of the nacre of any mussel or oyster-shell you might cut, at your pleasure, any quantity of small flat circular discs of the prettiest colour and lustre. To some extent, such tinsel or foil of shell is used pleasantly for decoration. But the mussel or oyster becoming itself an unwilling modeller, agglutinates its juice into three dimensions, and the fact of the surface being now geometrically gradated, together with the savage instinct of attributing value ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... Whalley, "I have some clue to the search, if the glance of his eye, which these varlets have reported, do show truly where the treasure is hidden. I will foil the old fox ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... fight or fly, We wallow in trenches like pigs in a sty, We dive under water to foil a foe, We wait in quarters, or rise and go. And staying or going, or near or far, One thought is ever our guiding star: We are the Allies of God to-day, We are the ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... that would have been another matter. Those two fenced often; I saw them many times. True, Joan was easily his master, but it made a good show for all that, for La Hire was a grand swordsman. What a swift creature Joan was! You would see her standing erect with her ankle-bones together and her foil arched over her head, the hilt in one hand and the button in the other—the old general opposite, bent forward, left hand reposing on his back, his foil advanced, slightly wiggling and squirming, his watching eye boring straight into hers—and all of a sudden she would ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... different region in John's writings. The old controversies are dead—settled, I suppose, mainly by Paul's own words, and also to a large extent by the logic of events. This verse is almost the only one in which John touches upon that extinct controversy, and here the Law is introduced simply as a foil to set off the brightness of the Gospel. All artists know the value of contrast in giving prominence. A dark background flashes up brighter colours into brilliancy. White is never so white as when it is relieved against black. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... for aluminum-foil ribbon to come up in the next supply ship," said Joe. "We could have masses of that, or maybe metallic ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... shall marvel when you hear her tale, Oh! had you known her in her softer hour, Marked her black eye that mocks her coal-black veil, Heard her light, lively tones in Lady's bower, Seen her long locks that foil the painter's power, Her fairy form, with more than female grace, Scarce would you deem that Saragoza's tower Beheld her smile in Danger's Gorgon face, Thin the closed ranks, and lead ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... iron and so forth, by being taken up with the lead present in it. That you may have a notion of the great power that platinum has of combining with other metals, I will refer you to a little of the chemist's experience—his bad experience. He knows very well that if he takes a piece of platinum-foil, and heats a piece of lead upon it, or if he takes a piece of platinum-foil, such as we have here, and heats things upon it that have lead in them, his platinum is destroyed. I have here a piece of platinum, and if ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday
... Neighboring garrisons were summoned, but all battling with goblins was fruitless. One night a dark and hostile throng emerged from the wood and moved toward the blockhouse, where twenty musketeers were keeping guard. "If you be ghosts or devils I will foil you," cried the captain, and tearing a silver button from his doublet he rammed it into his gun and fired on the advancing host. Even as the smoke of his musket was blown on the wind, so did the beleaguering army vanish, ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... getting his play represented. Remonstrance merely irritated Tobias. His new novel was but a fainter echo of his old novels, a panorama of scoundrelism, with the melodramatic fortunes of the virtuous Monimia for a foil. If read to-day, it is read as a sketch of manners, or want of manners. The scene in which the bumpkin squire rooks the accomplished Fathom at hazard, in Paris, is prettily conceived, and Smollett's indignation ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... surprise. "We are fencing—and I hate it. Once at West Point I was fencing with a man, my friend; the button broke off my foil and I hurt him seriously. He fell dead beside me ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... kind, from their sire's brother sprung. And on their track, astir with wild desire, Like falcons fierce closing on doves that flee, Shall speed the suitors, craving to achieve A prey forbidden, a reluctant bride. Yet power divine shall foil them, and forbid Possession of the maids, whom Argive land Shall hold protected, when unsleeping hate, Horror, and watchful ambush of the night, Have laid the suitors dead, by female hands. For every maid shall smite a man to death, Dyeing a dagger's edges in his throat— Such bed ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... none seemed practicable. Frank was intensely dogged in his determination to accomplish anything he had set out to do. The idea of giving up now, even to mislead his pursuers and so save Captain Greene from capture, was repugnant to him. He wanted to foil the men behind him—unless, as was possible, he only imagined that they were behind him—and still do what he had set out to do, which was in this instance to refill that empty petrol tank ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston
... covering whole sheets of paper with careful copying out of passages taken at random from the volumes beside him. A Latin grammar was ordinarily on the table—a book which the young gentleman had brought back from school free from thumb-marks. Occasionally a fencing-foil lay among these evidences of study, while the small aquaria, the cases of stuffed animals with fancy backgrounds and the numerous bird-cages had been thrust aside ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... wrested from him. His jester had acquainted him with the discovery just made of the secret hoard, and he was therefore compelled to have recourse to this desperate move. But I was apprized of his intentions by Will Sommers, and have come in time to foil him." ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Frank's furtive whisper at the Sultan's ear was heard. (When the Frank may foil the Saxon won't he do so? Like a bird!) And the treacherous Moorish Monarch, to his people's interest blind, Sold the sham he dubbed his honour, changed the thing he ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 30, 1892 • Various
... guerdon ye sought with your bloodshed and toil, Was it slaves, or dominion, or rapine, or spoil? No! your lofty emprise was to fetter and foil The uprooter of Greece's domain, When he tore the last remnant of food from her soil, Till her famished sank pale ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... will be better for all parties, if you make your offer to my proprietor before you dismount.' I was too vexed to speak: this animal's infernal intelligence had foreseen my manoeuvre—he meant to foil it, if he could. ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... board a pirate ship, and who fights with Laertes in the grave; the Hamlet of the catastrophe, an omnipotent fate, before whom all the court stands helpless, who, as the truth breaks upon him, rushes on the King, drives his foil right through his body,[36] then seizes the poisoned cup and forces it violently between the wretched man's lips, and in the throes of death has force and fire enough to wrest the cup from Horatio's hand ('By heaven, I'll have it!') lest ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... us the other religions mainly to place Christianity and its renewing and redeeming power in a brighter light. The former served, as it were, for a foil to the picture of our Saviour's religion and character, which he desired to imprint upon the soul. Whether he succeeded in bringing us into complete "unity" with the personality of Christ, to which he stood in such close relations, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... three months prior to August the German underseas boats had sunk 464 vessels, or an average of 426,000 tons of shipping a month, while America, working with her fleets in conjunction with the British Navy to foil the submarine in its endeavors, was also building more than 12,000 cargo-carrying craft and submarine chasers with which to flood the traffic ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... will gather round, and they'll launch me in the ground, And pile the stones the timber wolf to foil; And the moaning pine will wave overhead a nameless grave, Where the black snake in the sunshine loves to coil. And they'll leave me there alone, and perhaps with softened tone Speak of me sometimes in the camp-fire's glow, As a played-out, ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... from the basement called him back down to where Izzy was busily going through piles of crates and boxes stacked along one wall. He was pointing to a lead-foil-covered box. "Dope! And all that other ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... many of XIII, 20. Nearly all were, however, broken, for, as in all these tombs, the arch had fallen in. This tomb contained also a string of beads, barrel beads of lapis lazuli, carnelian and gold foil, ...
— El Kab • J.E. Quibell
... and if its recorded and unrecorded history and action in the universe be of this height, it is not astonishing that the laws and operations of the soul of the State, which is of an order yet more complex and mysterious, should baffle investigation, and foil the most assiduous efforts to reduce them to a system, and compel speculation to have recourse to such false analogies and misleading resemblances as those to which reference has in these lectures more than once ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... Charley was back with the painters from the two canvas canoes knotted together. His first toss confirmed the captain's fears, the rope foil ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... hundred comic packets that would make a Twain of Job; I have "Seeds of Tales Narcotic; Tales of Surgeons and the Probe." I've a most superb assortment, on the very cheapest terms, Done up carefully in tin-foil, of ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... in these warmer regions took firm hold of the doctrine of a foil, a something thrust between itself and the sapping influences of weather, sun and soil. The Negro was pressed into service as that foil. He was to stand in the open and bear the brunt of nature's hammering, while the Anglo-Saxon, under the shade of tree or on cool veranda, ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... whether what we call hell, or something speechlessly worse, if nothing less will do. He has a claim to be compelled to repent; to be hedged in on every side; to have one after another of the strong, sharp-toothed sheep-dogs of the great shepherd sent after him, to thwart him in any desire, foil him in any plan, frustrate him of any hope, until he come to see at length that nothing will ease his pain, nothing make life a thing worth having, but the presence of the living God within him; ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... of Mr. Mansfield's devotion to his art. He was acting as porter on Mansfield's car, when he was making a tour of the country. This porter was an exceedingly intelligent man. He appreciated Mansfield's achievements and played up to his humor in using him as a foil while always acting. When they were in a station William never left the car, but remained on guard for the protection ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... you will give him—something to reduce that fever." Mostyn knew that the remark was a mere tentative foil against the verdict stamped upon the bearded face. The doctor slowly wiped the tiny tube and restored it to ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... brightness always—except when I hold the package of tobacco in front of it at this spot," he said wonderingly, half to himself. "If I remember my science right, ultra-violet light would make the radium on the dial glow; and the lead in the tin-foil of the tobacco wrapping would screen it ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... foil these intents, and received the scant amount of encouragement which falls to well-meaning interference in real life; the Certified Poisonmonger presided over three tin pails of liquids, labelled respectively, ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... to the attacks of the Consolidated about as long as a dove to a hawk. I meet fire with fire to avoid being wiped off the map of the mining world. I play the game. I can't afford to keep a button on my foil when my ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... purposes she was to carry out, of the officers' quiet contempt of scientific pursuits, which not even the captain's influence was able to subdue, of the illusory promises of help and advancement held out by the Admiralty to young investigators, makes a striking foil to the spirit in which the Government of thirty years later undertook a greater scientific expedition. Perhaps some vivid recollections of this voyage did something to better the conditions under which ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... blood, More kin than kind, from their sire's brother sprung. And on their track, astir with wild desire, Like falcons fierce closing on doves that flee, Shall speed the suitors, craving to achieve A prey forbidden, a reluctant bride. Yet power divine shall foil them, and forbid Possession of the maids, whom Argive land Shall hold protected, when unsleeping hate, Horror, and watchful ambush of the night, Have laid the suitors dead, by female hands. For every maid shall smite a man to death, Dyeing a dagger's edges in his throat— Such bed of love befall ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... but a moment later his smile died away, and he drew his lips inward with anxiety. He felt a new power in the foil slithering up and down his own. Suddenly a thousand needles stung his wrist: his foil lay rolling about the deck. The vicomte bowed jestingly, stepped forward and picked up the foil, presenting it to its owner. Again they resumed guard. Quick as light the vicomte's foil went almost ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... of it, that the plan of the blossom in all the kinds is the same; an irregular quatre-foil: and irregular quatrefoils are of extreme rarity in flower form. I don't myself know one, except the Veronica. The cruciform vegetables—the heaths, the olives, the lilacs, the little Tormentillas, and the poppies, are all perfectly symmetrical. Two of the petals, indeed, ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... in her obvious stupid way that Hans had been enabled to transmit the most useful information to his country, which had assisted to foil more than one Allied plan. Harietta saw numbers of old gentlemen who pulled strings in that time, and although they wearied her, she found them easier to extract news from than the younger men. Her method was so irresistible: a direct appeal to the senses, and it hardly ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... wife couldn't have asked a better foil; yet I'm sure she never consciously used his dullness to relieve her brilliancy. She may have felt that the case spoke for itself. But I believe her reserve was rather due to a lively sense of justice, and to the rare habit (you said she was rare) of looking at facts as they ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... I could, it was not long before Yvon sent my foil flying from my hand; but still he professed amazement at my ready mastering of the art, and I felt truly that it was natural to me, and that with a few trials I might do as well ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... giving the ladies of Brookfield further opportunity for studying one of the levels from which they had risen. Arabella did almost all the fencing with Laura Tinley, contemptuously as a youth of station returned from college will turn and foil an ill-conditioned villager, whom formerly he has ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... is dark and massive—a splendid foil for his wife's slenderness and fairness. They are much in love with each other. He always sits beside her if he can, and she looks up at him and smiles, and last night I saw him take her hand where it hung among the folds of her gown, and he held it after that—and it made me ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... "inclines the Court today to favor chaos."[59] In the second, the Court upset the conviction of a group of Jehovah's Witnesses in Maryland for using a public park without first obtaining a permit.[60] The third case,[61] which had nothing to do with religion, affords an interesting foil to the other two. It is ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... A ready remedy, and is Himself Their great physician. Now grown stiff with age, And many a painful chase, the wise old hound Regardless of the frolic pack, attends His master's side, or slumbers at his ease Beneath the bending shade; there many a ring 220 Runs o'er in dreams; now on the doubtful foil Puzzles perplexed, or doubles intricate Cautious unfolds, then winged with all his speed, Bounds o'er the lawn to seize his panting prey: And in imperfect whimperings speaks his joy. A different hound for every different chase Select with judgment; nor the timorous ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... Horace; he determined it should be so, and though it was again a wet day, he now showed that he could rule the weather of his own humour, when intensity of will was wakened by rivalry. He made himself most agreeable, and the man of yesterday was forgotten or remembered only as a foil to the man of to-day. The words he so much loved to hear, and to which he had so often surreptitiously listened, were now repeated, 'No one can be so agreeable as Horace Churchill ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... the Screech-Owl, Hoppy, and the other wretches whose misdeeds blacken these pages, form the foil; while Fleur-de-Marie, Clemence d'Harville, Miss Dimpleton, and Mrs. George are the gems which will be seen to shed their luster and charm over the no less interesting pages of the Second Division of this work, entitled, "Part ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... Hell-gates till now; thou us impowered To fortify thus far, and overlay, With this portentous bridge, the dark abyss. Thine now is all this world; thy virtue hath won What thy hands builded not; thy wisdom gained With odds what war hath lost, and fully avenged Our foil in Heaven; here thou shalt monarch reign, There didst not; there let him still victor sway, As battle hath adjudged; from this new world Retiring, by his own doom alienated; And henceforth monarchy with thee divide Of all ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... sigh on, Till made by my losses as bold as a lion, I venture at all, — while my avarice regards The whole pool as my own — 'Come, give me five cards.' 'Well done!' cry the ladies; 'Ah, Doctor, that's good! 25 The pool's very rich — ah! the Doctor is loo'd!' Thus foil'd in my courage, on all sides perplex'd, I ask for advice from the lady that's next: 'Pray, Ma'am, be so good as to give your advice; Don't you think the best way is to venture for 't twice?' 30 'I advise,' cries the lady, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... Lady Kirkbank in her cotton frock was a spectacle at which youth laughed and age blushed. But after all it did not matter to Lesbia. She would have liked a less rowdy chaperon; but as a foil to her own fresh young beauty Lady ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Shah Jehan's architects seems inexhaustible. All the exquisite white marble pavilions of Agra palace differ absolutely both in design and decoration, and Akbar's massive red sandstone buildings make the most perfect foil to them that ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... furious, for he had felt on his breast the point of his adversary's sword, but so lightly that he might have taken it for the button of a foil. His anger redoubled at the conviction that he owed his life to the captain, and his attacks became more numerous and more furious ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... presence every passing hour; What but Thy grace can foil the tempter's power? Who like Thyself my guide and stay can be? Through cloud and sunshine, ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... a trap. During the ensuing autumn months there went on between the opposing generals an unceasing game of strategy, a succession of moves and counter-moves in which the opposing commanders handled their great armies with the same consumate skill with which the expert fencing-master uses his foil, but in which neither could break through the other's guard. Repeated minor encounters took place which, in other wars, would have rated as heavy battles; but the weeks lengthened into months without decisive results, and when the opposing armies finally went into ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... and cordial reception which greeted the author's "Letters to the Young," and his more recent series of essays entitled "Gold Foil," and the constant and substantial friendship which has been maintained by the public toward those productions, must stand as his apology for this third venture in a kindred field of effort. It should be—and probably is—unnecessary for the author to say that in this book, as in its ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... house, the front windows of which were all removed and it was used for the accommodation of the lady guests. On the walls of the temporary structure hung red satin and silk banners on which were pinned ideographs cut out of gold foil or black velvet, expressive of beautiful sentiments and good wishes for many happy returns of the day. The Emperor, wishing to do this official honour, has informed him that on his mother's birthday an imperial present will be sent her which is a greater compliment ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... then a shrine to him above They built, with worship sin to foil, On threshold and on corner-stone They poured out ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... the electric current was as follows. The positive pole of the battery was connected by a wire with the platina plate in the ice; the plate was in contact with the ice, the ice with the tin jacket, the jacket with a wire, which communicated with a piece of tin foil, on which rested one end of a bent platina wire (312.), the other or decomposing end being supported on paper moistened with solution of iodide of potassium (316.): the paper was laid flat on a platina spatula connected with the negative end of the battery. All that part of the arrangement between ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... picked up his speech, which was made by spreading the beam from an eighty-foot diameter parabolic reflector and aiming it at Earth from a hundred thousand miles out. It was a collapsible reflector, made of thin foil, like the ones ...
— By Proxy • Gordon Randall Garrett
... in the church. To him as to innumerable other honest, middle-aged and comfortable men, Darwinism came as a dreadful invitation to go out into the wilderness. Over my head and just out of range of my ears he was debating that issue with Siddons as a foil and my cousin as a horrified antagonist. Slowly he was developing his conception of compromise. And meanwhile he wasn't going out into the wilderness at all, but punctually to and fro, along the edge of the lawn by the bed of hollyhocks and through ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... to be derived from the same root as Paup-puk-ke-nay, a grasshopper, the inflection iss making it personal. The Indian idea is that of harum scarum. He is regarded as a foil to Manabozho, with whom he is frequently brought in ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... the crown itself was immersed, and of course—for the story must not lack its dramatic sequel—was found bulkier than its weight of pure gold. Thus the genius that could balk warriors and armies could also foil ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... His Cousin Adair, by GORDON ROY. The book has all the requisites of a good novel, including the perhaps rarest one of literary style. Cousin Adair is well worth knowing, and her character is skilfully portrayed. As a foil against this high-minded, pure-souled unselfish girl, there are sketched in two or three of the sort of people, men and women, more frequently met with in this wicked world. But Cousin Adair is good ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... determined to hear the first movement that the kneeling figure made behind him. So he sat minute after minute. The Cathedral was full of echoes—murmurous rebounds of the noises of the streets, drawn out and mellowed into long, soft, rolling tones, against which, as against a foil, there stood out detached, now and then, the sudden footsteps of someone leaving or entering a confessional, the short scream of a slipping chair—once the sudden noise of a confessional-door being opened ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... blood, and pictured them as a kind of beneficent aristocracy seven feet high, with minds and manners to match their physique, and set above the rest of the world for its good; for I found it necessary (so that my dream should have a point) to provide them with a foil in the shape of millions of such people as we meet every day. I was egotistic and self-seeking enough, it is true, to enroll myself among the former, and had chosen for my particular use and wear just such a frame as that of the Theseus, with, of course, the nose and hands and feet (of which ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... metallic Propionic acid in small silver formic acid. quantities cannot be distinguished from butyric (c) Evaporate to dryness; mix acid by tests within the with equal quantity of scope of the bacteriological arsenious oxide and heat laboratory. on platinum foil. ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... and receive those speechless lip-messages that are out of the reach of words, and Mrs. Rossitur's half-spoken last charge, to take care of herself; and with these seals upon her mission Fleda set forth and joined the doctor; thankful for one foil to curiosity in the shape of a veil and only wishing that there were any invented screen that she could ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... generals, partly to wounds received in the last Austrian campaign, which unfitted him for the time for active service. In sending him to this Royalist province of the West, Napoleon might have aimed at providing the Prefect with an effective foil to his own character and connections. The great Emperor by no means despised the trick of setting his servants to ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... soul, with Christ join thou in fight; Stick to the tents that He hath pight; Within His crib is surest ward, This little Babe will be thy guard; If thou wilt foil thy foes with joy, Then flit ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... he, "I thee forgot, And see thy cause of foil; An hog came since into my house, And broke thy pot ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... but haply beautiful as these, Which now I gaze on; but which, wanting thee, Want half their charms, for, to thy poet's thought, More deeply glow'd the heaven, when thy fine eye, Surveying its grand arch, all kindling glow'd; The white cloud to thy white brow was a foil; And, by the soft tints of thy cheek outvied, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 322, July 12, 1828 • Various
... "Look ye, Squire, I am hot and weary, and ill-content; but presently it will be better with me; for my knees have been telling my shoulders that the cold water of this little lake will be sweet and pleasant this summer noonday, and that I shall forget my foil when I have taken my pleasure therein. Wherefore, go thou with thine hounds without the thicket and there abide my coming. And I bid thee look not aback as thou goest, for therein were peril to thee: I shall not ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... Blaise were glad, Richard was twice glad, and quoth he: "Said I not, Lord Blaise, that this chick would be the hardest of all to keep under the coop? Welcome to the Highways, Lord Ralph! But where is thine horse? and whence and whither is it now? Hast thou met with some foil and been ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... to foil his good intentions towards us: sooner or later we must fight him, and why not now? Haga, my father, thou art the oldest and wisest here present; speak, and we will be ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... Francis Drake came near involving him in serious trouble, but ultimately ended by procuring him the commission he had so long desired. Tired of a life of inactivity, anxious to foil the Spanish in the New World, and sick to death of the busy idleness of the court, Sidney at length determined to go with Drake to a new world and a new career. Accordingly, he made ready, and actually went as far ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... her she happened to say to the director that she would have preferred a woman of a different type, dark, taller, so as to provide a more effective foil to her own type of beauty. As a result, the girl did not ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... much softer. So quiet, so like a wraith, and yet with a fascinating loveliness in her eyes, in her tender, blossom-like face, in her fresh young voice. She makes no blunders, she is not awkward, she is not loud. Cecil is her foil,—Cecil, in lace over infantile blue, with a knot of streamers on one shoulder in narrow blue satin ribbon and a blue sash. Floyd is host, of course, so Cecil would be left exclusively with her pretty mamma, if it was not her own choice. Madame watches them. How did this girl charm ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... fencing match, and all the Court were present. Hamlet had the blunt foil always used in fencing, but Laertes had prepared for himself a sword, sharp, and tipped with poison. And the wicked King had made ready a bowl of poisoned wine, which he meant to give poor Hamlet when he should grow warm with the sword play, and should ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... without molestation, but there the former died on the 2nd November, worn out by the fatigue and privations of the journey across the desert. Lyon, who was ill for some time from the same causes, recovered soon enough to foil the designs of the sultan, who counting on his death, had already begun to take possession of his property, and also of Ritchie's. The captain could not penetrate beyond the southern boundaries of Fezzan, but he had time to collect a good deal of valuable information about the chief ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... successful combination. Bakkus sang his ballads and an occasional humorous song of the moment to Andrew's accompaniment on mandolin or one-stringed violin, and Andrew conjured and juggled comically, using Bakkus as his dull-witted foil. A complete little performance, the patter and business artistically thought out and perfectly rehearsed. They wore the conventional Pierrot costume with whited faces and black ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... with undaunted hearts, immortal mitred Few! For Truth's dear sake, the Tyrant foil'd to whom ye still were true—[37] Rejoice! Who knows what scatter'd thoughts of yours were buried seeds, Slow-springing for th' oppress'd and poor, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... that overrul'd I oversway'd, Leading him prisoner in a red-rose chain: Strong-temper'd steel his stronger strength obey'd, Yet was he servile to my coy disdain. 112 O! be not proud, nor brag not of thy might, For mastering her that foil'd ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... said Hugh. "I began to learn two years ago, and I have outgrown my first foil, and the Colonel has given me a new ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... go to Philadelphia as soon as possible and get the steam yacht ready for the trip. The best way to foil Merrick and his crowd is to find the isle, get possession of the treasure, and get away before they know what we ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer
... think-tank. This will enable a brainy man to sit at home, and, with an electric motor and a perfected phonograph, he can think into a tin dipper or funnel, which will, by the aid of electricity and a new style of foil, record and preserve his ideas on a sheet of soft metal, so that when any one says to him, "A penny for your thoughts," he can go to his valise and give him a piece of his mind. Thus the man who has such wild ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... told him what I wished to do, and after a little persuasion he agreed to carry a letter to her on his next marketing trip. My message was prepared by writing it on tissue paper, which was then compressed into a small pellet, and protected by wrapping it in tin-foil so that it could be safely carried in the man's mouth. The probability, of his being searched when he came to the Confederate picketline was not remote, and in such event he was to swallow the pellet. The letter appealed to ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... Against such foil the mistress stood— A pearl upon a cross of gold— White with consistent womanhood, And fixed with unrelaxing hold Upon the centre of ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... nourishment his stomach will retain, he is driven to the conviction that there is something wrong, and that he had better see the doctor. The result of the young athlete's visit to the doctor was that he mournfully laid down the dumb-bells and the foil, eschewed gymnastics, and ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... Shelleyan[15] democrat, pleading the Guelph cause before the great Ghibelline soldier Salinguerra,—as he had once pitted the young might of native song against the accomplished Troubadour Eglamor. Salinguerra is the foil of the political, as Eglamor of the literary, Sordello, and the dramatic interest of the whole poem focusses in those two scenes. He had enough of the lonely inspiration of genius to vanquish the craftsman, but too little of its large humanity to cope with the ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... inverted. At present we may illustrate and expand the subject thus: In front of our camera is a large opening (L, fig. 2), from which the lens has been removed, and which is closed at present by a sheet of tin-foil. Pricking by means of a common sewing-needle a small aperture in the tin-foil, an inverted image of the carbon-points starts forth upon the screen. A dozen apertures will give a dozen images, a hundred a hundred, a thousand a thousand. But, as the apertures come closer to each other, that is ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... always to take with him two or three Bhainas, who are considered as his retainers, though not being so in fact. This enhances his importance, and it is also said that the stupidity of the Bhainas acts as a foil, through which the superior intelligence of the Kawar is made more apparent. All these details point to the same conclusion that the primitive Bhainas first held the country and were supplanted by the more civilised ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... impertinent slave provides the foil. When the lovers succeed in meeting, they are interlocked in embrace from 172 to 192, probably invested with no small amount of suggestive "business." This would doubtless hardly be tolerated by the "censor" today. Another variety of lover's extravagance ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... if my Lord Mohun were a commoner, I would say, 'twas a pity he was not hanged. He was familiar with dice and women at a time other boys are at school being birched; he was as wicked as the oldest rake, years ere he had done growing; and handled a sword and a foil, and a bloody one, too, before he ever used a razor. He held poor Will Mountford in talk that night, when bloody Dick Hill ran him through. He will come to a bad end, will that young lord; and no end is bad enough for him," says honest Mr. Westbury: whose ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... also carry a handjar, which used to be their national weapon. It is a sort of heavy, straight cutlass, and they are so expert with it as well as so strong that it is as facile in the hands of a Blue Mountaineer as is a foil in the hands of a Persian maitre d'armes. They are so proud and reserved that they make one feel quite small, and an "outsider" as well. I can see quite well that they rather resent my being here at all. ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... what Mr. OWEN NARES was doing in this galley; and I cannot tell you. I can only say that he was very brave about it all. In a sense it was a serious performance, the only one of its kind in the play; yet not serious enough to serve as a foil for the general frivolity, for he was constantly bringing his own high sentiments into ridicule, and so burlesquing the OWEN NARES that we love to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... and it could not return to its hole. It was a harvest mouse, rejoicing in the enormous weight of 4.7 grains and a length of 57 mm., but with as much love of life and fear of death as an elephant. Heaven knows what had smitten it! Perhaps it was one of the very few who just escape the owl, or who foil that scientific death, the weasel, at the last moment—but no matter. The result was the ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... of humour, and (ii.) that occasional dulness is the inalienable privilege of every free-born Briton. Many a spry wight thinks it his duty to be continuously funny and monotonously merry. Let a quiet and demure dulness be the foil of your side-splitting sallies. Learn to keep the peace, yea for hours at a time. If you are in a mixed company, cultivate the dictum of "give and take." Be not for ever doling out your scraps of mirth to the dyspeptic stomachs of your associates. A wise reciprocity and interplay ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... compact. After the bits of cabbage and onion had been removed, I looked beneath them to see whether the worms had accidentally come up from below, but there was no sign of a burrow; and twice the buried objects were laid on pieces of tin-foil which were not in the least displaced. It is of course possible that the worms whilst moving about on the surface of the ground, with their tails affixed within their burrows, may have poked their ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin
... degraded scolding of enemies that does not emanate from passion but out of greedy hankering for the applause of the masses, and which continually nauseates us amid the piety of this hour! Because our statemen failed to discover and foil shrewd plans of deception is no reason why we may hoist the flag of most pious morality. Not as weak-willed blunderers have we undertaken the fearful risk of this war. We wanted it. Because we had to wish it and could wish it. May the Teuton devil throttle those whiners whose pleas for excuses ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... which was packed by the Regent, and by the actual conclusion of a marriage-treaty. But if Francis could spare neither horse nor man for action in Scotland his influence in the northern kingdom was strong enough to foil Henry's plans. The Churchmen were as bitterly opposed to such a marriage as the partizans of France; and their head, Cardinal Beaton, who had held aloof from the Regent's Parliament, suddenly seized the Queen-mother and ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... no milder way but the small-pox; The very filthiness of Pandora's box? So many spots, like naeves, our Venus soil? One jewel set off with so many a foil? Blisters with pride swelled, which through 's flesh did sprout, Like rose-buds, stuck i'the lily-skin about. Each little pimple had a tear in it, To wail the fault its rising did commit, Which, rebel-like, ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... would come to some bad ind. It wur thot spalpane thot troied to run Frank through with a sharpened foil wan toime whin they wur fencing. He had black murder in his hearrut thin, an' it's not loikely th' whilp has ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... of the nacre of any mussel or oyster-shell you might cut, at your pleasure, any quantity of small flat circular discs of the prettiest colour and lustre. To some extent, such tinsel or foil of shell is used pleasantly for decoration. But the mussel or oyster becoming itself an unwilling modeller, agglutinates its juice into three dimensions, and the fact of the surface being now geometrically gradated, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... payment by results. A certain number of teachers made it their chief effort to secure the largest possible number of grants. Huxley regarded these as poachers of the worst kind, and did all he could to foil them. He did all he could to promote systematic practical instruction in the classes, and to aid teachers who desired to learn their business more thoroughly. He insisted again and again upon the popular nature of the classes; their great advantage was that they were accessible ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... bright in her hair, and in the soft garnish of health on her cheeks, and the vigorous play of young life in her eyes; while the silvery glance of the sloping shore, and breezy ruffle of the darkening sea, did nothing but offer a foil for the form of the shell-colored frock and the ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... dissolving gold in aqua regia, a composition of one part of nitric to two parts of muriatic acid. Gold foil is the best for our purposes; coin, however, answers, in most cases, for the daguerreotype operator, as the alloy, being so slight is not noticed in the gilding process. When the latter is used, it will facilitate the operation to beat it out, forming ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... Derwentwater, and the disinterested Nithisdale. When we contrast the petty and selfish policy of the Earl of Mar with the integrity and fidelity of those who fought in the same cause, and over whom he was commander, his character sinks low in the estimate, and acts like a foil to the purity and brightness of his ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... spread; the raw crew set at spar and coil. Now round the prow Charybdean waters boil And ever higher surges war's red tide. The mate who should the captain's care divide Has strengthless proved. Where shall, the foe to foil, A man be found able to bear the toil And stand, to steer the ship, ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... he had been covering whole sheets of paper with careful copying out of passages taken at random from the volumes beside him. A Latin grammar was ordinarily on the table—a book which the young gentleman had brought back from school free from thumb-marks. Occasionally a fencing-foil lay among these evidences of study, while the small aquaria, the cases of stuffed animals with fancy backgrounds and the numerous bird-cages had been thrust ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... Against the foil of the butcher-bird's stolidity we may set the inquisitive, garrulous temperament of the white-eyed vireo and the yellow-breasted chat. The vireo is hardly larger than the goldfinch, but let him be in one of his conversational moods, ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... yourself about Mr. Merwyn, Arthur. I have my own personal score to settle with him. He has made a good foil for you and my other friends, and I have learned to appreciate you the more. YOU have won my entire esteem and respect, and have taught me how quickly a noble, self-sacrificing purpose can develop manhood. O Arthur, Heaven grant that we may all meet again! How proud I shall then be of my veteran ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... revelations. Fuller adds that they "grieved the Comforter, charging all their sins on God's Spirit, for not effectually assisting them against the same . . . sinning on design that their wickedness might be a foil to God's mercy, to set it off the brighter." But that they were Communists, Anarchists, or Libertines, there is no evidence; and the Queen's menial servant who wrote and presented to Parliament an apology for the Service of Love ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... the shape of the insect. Cut this out of a piece of cork about three inches long, and make the legs of thin wire (after the manner of the spider we described in a previous number); then get some strips of thin tin-foil, and gum them on the back of the cucuius; then paint over the whole with transparent green color (oil paints if possible). Now gouge out two holes about the size of the head of a common match, ...
— Harper's Young People, September 14, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... in robustuously, and put for it with a great deal of violence, are received for the braver fellows: when many times their own rudeness is the cause of their disgrace, and a little touch of their adversary gives all that boisterous force the foil. I deny not, but that these men, who always seek to do more than enough, may some time happen on some thing that is good, and great; but very seldom; and when it comes it doth not recompense the rest of their ill. It sticks out, perhaps, ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... despite many daring and dubious adventures in new territories, there has yet been an avoidance of material in itself ugly and repulsive. We have been asked to contemplate the libertinism of Don Juan, but at its worst it has served only as a foil to the virtue of his victims, which in the end emerged triumphant. We have seen exposed the monstrous double nature of Rigoletto, but only that the pathos of paternal love should thereby be thrown into brighter relief. We have seen convention sanctified ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... understand, Is but thy interest, pleasure, or caprice:— Pronounce my sentence on such laws as these. But give me leave to tell thee, while I can, The type of all ingratitude is man.' By such a lecture somewhat foil'd, The other back a step recoil'd, And finally replied,— 'Thy reasons are abusive, And wholly inconclusive. I might the case decide Because to me such right belongs; But let's refer the case of wrongs.' The snake agreed; they to a cow referr'd it. Who, being called, came graciously and heard ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... to eat not of that bread," the whole company, when they saw the champagne bottles, with their necks covered with gold foil appear, burst out singing, as if ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... He was his old self again, simple, friendly, contented. Theobald was in one of his self-satisfied moods. Perhaps he enjoyed the triumph of his position in regard to Hadria. At any rate, he seemed to pounce on the new-comer as a foil to his own brilliancy. Joseph had no talent to oppose to it, but he had a simple dignity, the offspring of a kind and generous nature, which made Professor Theobald's conduct towards him appear contemptible. Professor Fortescue shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Hadria tried to change ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... may have a notion of the great power that platinum has of combining with other metals, I will refer you to a little of the chemist's experience—his bad experience. He knows very well that if he takes a piece of platinum-foil, and heats a piece of lead upon it, or if he takes a piece of platinum-foil, such as we have here, and heats things upon it that have lead in them, his platinum is destroyed. I have here a piece of platinum, and ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday
... yonder sat, a kind of day Lit up what seems so gloomy now. These grim oak walls even then were grim; That old carved chair was then antique; But what around looked dusk and dim Served as a foil to her fresh cheek; Her neck and arms, of hue so fair, Eyes of unclouded, smiling light; Her soft, and curled, and floating hair, Gems and attire, as ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... beholder can be content to be such a one. Now, as in geometry, the oblique must be known as well as the right, and in arithmetic, the odd as well as the even; so in the actions of our life, who seeth not the filthiness of evil, wanteth a great foil to perceive the beauty of virtue. This doth the comedy handle so, in our private and domestical matters, as, with hearing it, we get, as it were, an experience of what is to be looked for, of a niggardly Demea, ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... no, my lads. Infantry drill; clubs and dumb-bells; singlestick and foil; riding with a military seat; but—use of the gloves! Oh dear no! What do you think the ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... crumpled tie with not too steady fingers, while Jim was applying to his brown crest a pomade sent to him by a girl in Cheyenne, while Babe was wondering anxiously whether green slippers could be considered a match or a foil to a dress of turquoise blue, while Girlie touched her cream-gold hair with cream-padded finger-tips, Sheila Arundel prowled about her room with hot anger and cold fear in ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... True, Joan was easily his master, but it made a good show for all that, for La Hire was a grand swordsman. What a swift creature Joan was! You would see her standing erect with her ankle-bones together and her foil arched over her head, the hilt in one hand and the button in the other—the old general opposite, bent forward, left hand reposing on his back, his foil advanced, slightly wiggling and squirming, his watching eye boring straight into hers—and all of a sudden she would give a spring forward, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... its own. Its main and lower portion is not divided into nave and transept, but seems like a system of huge semi-cylinders erected on their bases, and united with reentrant angles, their convex surfaces toward us, so that the ground-plan might be called a species of quatre-foil. In each of the convex faces is an admirably proportioned door-way, a Gothic arch with deep-carved and elaborately fretted mouldings, so wonderfully perfect in its imitation that you almost feel like ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... and receive those speechless lip-messages that are out of the reach of words, and Mrs. Rossitur's half-spoken last charge, to take care of herself; and with these seals upon her mission, Fleda set forth and joined the doctor, thankful for one foil to curiosity in the shape of a veil, and only wishing that there were any invented screen that she could place between ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... rode behind me; and poor Dad saying, '"'Pon my honour, Arthur, I can't account for it!" Oh, how my cheeks tingled when I reached my room! But Cissie had laid out my very best evening dress, the white satin one, vandyked at the bottom with spots of morone foil, and the pearl knots, you know, catching up the drapery from the left shoulder. I had poor mother's lace tucker ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... had read his character aright. He was instantly on the alert. Crane evidently was on a thief's errand, and was likely to steal not only Miles's money but Tom's. Our hero was alive to the emergency, and resolved to foil him. He had his revolver with him; for in the unsettled state of society, with no one to enforce the laws, and indeed no laws to enforce, it was the custom for all men ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... that worked for Fern," explained Mr. Weil. "He got hold of some of these notes and checks, in Fern's office, and is coming to look us up to-day, for the purpose of having his employer arrested. A nice game, eh? But we will foil him, won't we? We'll show him a trick worth several of his! He's probably gone to the Hoffman House and he'll hang round till he finds me. I'll send word that I am to be home this afternoon at five. You will be there with me. We'll tackle him together. When he tells us that ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... telephone vibrates when spoken to? Mr. Edison took away from the telephone all except the mouth-piece and the diaphragm, fastened a point of metal, which we will call a "style," to the center of the diaphragm, and then contrived a simple arrangement for making a sheet of tin-foil pass in front of the style. When the diaphragm is still, the style simply scratches a straight line along the foil. When a sound is made, however, and the diaphragm set to vibrating, the mark of the style is not a simple scratch, but an impression varying in depth according to the diaphragm's ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... his hand on his sword and replied, "Your dogs would devour me, my good fellow, and I foil them. They would employ their teeth upon me as I would mine if I had before me a morsel of that appetizing boar, for I am lost in the forest since yesterday morning and have a ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... back with a sigh of relief. A companion like Miss Martin makes a most excellent foil to solitude, and after she had departed, Lady Gore lay for a while in a state of pleasant quiescence. Why, she wondered, even supposing she herself did think too well of her husband, should Miss Martin object? Why ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... consider the Society as out of date? You do not think, as is sometimes said, that the establishment of the Grosvenor took away the raison d'etre and original intention of the Society—that of being a foil ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... the originality? There is nothing in what I am treating as this phase of our author's thought to separate it from the old-fashioned rationalism. There must be a reason for every fact; and so much reason, so fact. The reason is always the whole foil and background and negation of the fact, the whole remainder of reality. "A man may feel good only by feeling better. . . . Pleasure is ever in the company and contrast of pain; for instance, in thirsting and drinking, the pleasure of the one is the exact measure ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... I said. "You remember that Roman emperor who used to descend into the arena fully armed, and pit himself against some poor wretch who had only a leaden foil which would double up at a thrust. According to your theory of your Master's life, you would have it that He faced the temptations of this world at such an advantage that they were only harmless leaden things, and not the sharp assailants which we find them. I confess, ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... really to be considered a forgery, this, instead of being a matter of surprise, ought to be just the thing to be expected; because a clever fabricator, foreseeing that he would be suspected, and eager to foil detection, would know that the curious inquirer into a research of the present description would thus become baffled at every turn from inability, if not to discover it himself, at least, to explain to the satisfaction and conviction of others, the incompatibility ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... thunder-darkened highlands And lowlands hot with fruit, Sea-bays and shoals and islands, And cliffs that foil man's foot, And all the flower of large-limbed ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... horse, stood Lassiter, his dark apparel and the great black gun-sheaths contrasting singularly with his gentle smile. Jane's active mind took up her interest in him and her half-determined desire to use what charm she had to foil his evident design in visiting Cottonwoods. If she could mitigate his hatred of Mormons, or at least keep him from killing more of them, not only would she be saving her people, but also be leading back this bloodspiller to ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... had come to Briar Hills, flattering Jerry, of course, that they could be alone, intriguing meanwhile with Channing Lloyd, a wild fellow, according to Jack Ballard, who at thirty could have unprofitably shared his omniscience with the devil. A fine foil for Jerry! ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... with their committee-men, and sometimes punch was brought, and they drank with their friends. Occasionally they spoke to each other; when they did this, it was with extreme courtesy. Cary used the buttoned foil with polished ease. Rand's manner was less assured; there was something antique and laboured in his determined grasp at the amenities of the occasion. It was the only heaviness. To the other contest between ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... the substance is wanting, as potassium nitrate was shown not to give an explosive substance with tin. A thin layer of a mixture of sulphur and potassium nitrate was placed between sheets of tin and copper foil, and allowed to stand, being kept constantly moist. After a time the copper was found to have become coated with sulphide, while the tin was largely converted into the explosive basic nitrate. The conditions are obviously the same as those ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... help acting as she had. She was so sorry for them all that she had really tried to like them all. She had succeeded but once—and even that was a mistake. But she remembered one thing: through it all—far back as it all was—she had never trifled with Crittenden. Before him she had dropped foil and mask and stood frankly face to face always. There was something in him that had always forced that. And he had loved her through it all, and he had suffered—how much, it had really never occurred to her until she thought of a sudden ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... work is. That revelation will be accomplished in terms of the critic's own experience of the beauty of the work, an experience imaged forth in such phrases that the pleasure the work communicates is conveyed to his readers in its true quality and foil intensity. It is not enough to dogmatize as Ruskin dogmatizes, to bully the reader into a terrified acceptance. It is not enough to determine absolute values as Matthew Arnold seeks to do, to fix certain canons of intellectual judgment, and by the application of a formula as a touchstone, ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... I take it there is even a limit to the degree of a smile when you are on the official ladder, that it is then seemly, even expedient, to walk with a certain dignity of pace—so you show the sweep of the modern skirt to great advantage. As a foil were one or two blooming girls, "just out," and bound to have a "good time." Their exuberant buoyancy will be toned down, I am told, after two seasons here (I'd have thought one would have been enough), and up north people are ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... Lloyd was a "light juvenile," off as well as on the stage. Jesse played father, judge, guardian, prime minister, and old family doctor in turn. Mabel, rouged and befrilled, still made an attractive foil for Wallace as the hero. Martie liked them all; their chatter of the fairyland of the stage, their trunks plastered with labels, their fine voices, their general air of being incompetent children adrift in a puzzling world. Deep ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... ANTONIUS. And may be foil'd like Tarquin, if you follow Not the dry light of Rome's straight-going policy, But the fool-fire of love or lust, which well May make you lose yourself, may even drown you In ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... (both of which I suppose were Sir Oliver's best of long standing) he may cut a tolerable figure dangling to church with Miss Bell!—The woman, as she observes, should excel the man in features: and where can she match so well for a foil? ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... "The glare of the silver-foil reflectors is unbearable," she looked up, with a pointed and famous effect. "But ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... hero, and so misses an opportunity which would have delighted the heart of Thackeray. I say "appears," because I consider that this sympathy was nothing but a pose which he considered necessary for the popularity of his book. It is important however to observe that the idea of one character as a foil to another, though undeveloped, is here present for the first time in our national ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... can be no jealousies against you. On the contrary, it will bring you followers. None but Lotzen and his circle will resent it, and they, already, are your enemies. The Governorship will make them no more so. Instead, it will keep them careful; for it will give you immense power to detect and foil their plots." ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... "home" whom she guarded, batted balls with ferocious lunges of her big fist back to the centre field, where a dainty little freshman with soft, appealing brown eyes, half hidden under a mist of yellow hair, occasionally managed to foil T. Reed's pursuit and sent them pounding back into the outstretched arms of a tall, ungainly home who tossed or dropped them—it was hard to tell which—into the freshman basket. It was a shame to let her play, the sophomores grumbled. She was a giantess, ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... he usually charged 11s., remarking that unless he took it from the person affected his incantation would be of no avail. Smith then handed it to his wife, who gave it to the witch doctor, and he returned 1s. to her. He then proceeded to foil the witch's power over his patient by tapping her several times on the palm of her hand with his finger, telling her that every tap was a stab on the witch's heart. This was followed by an incantation. He then gave her a parcel of herbs (which evidently consisted of dried bay leaves and peppermint), ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... And with a hostile step profane our sod! We shall not shrink, my brothers, but go forth To meet them, marshaled by the Lord of Hosts, And overshadowed by the mighty ghosts Of Moultrie and of Eutaw—who shall foil Auxiliars such as these? Nor these alone, But every stock and stone Shall help us; but the very soil, And all the generous wealth it gives to toil, And all for which we love our noble land, Shall fight beside, and through us; sea ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... solid rice paper, with cross-bars of chop-sticks, was much damaged. It is now under repair, and will be coated entirely with tea-chest lead, to render it perfectly impregnable. The whole of the household troops and body-guard of the emperor have also received new accoutrements of tin-foil and painted isinglass. They have likewise been armed with varnished bladders, containing peas and date stones, which produce a terrific sound upon the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 28, 1841 • Various
... an excellent foil. He was as silent and secretive as sand. He moved, as it were, in circles, thus always eluding dangerous corners. He was tall, angular, with a thin, immobile countenance, well guarded by his gray eyes and straight lips. He was a born financier, with almost limitless ambition, ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... Nothing would please either Talleyrand or Bonaparte better than to inflame us into a civil war, then swoop down upon us, under the pretence of coming to the rescue. Burr would be just the man to play into their hands, although with no such intention. Jefferson is quite clever enough to foil them, if he found that more to his interest. Well, neither is elected yet. Let us hope for the best. Go and ask Angelica to play for you. I have letters to write to leaders ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... have looked with a favorable eye on the wild science of the false religions, and professed to detect in it at least striking analogies with the deductions of both the geologist and the astronomer. When the skeptical wits of the last century wished to produce, by way of foil, a morality vastly superior, as they said, to that of Christianity, they had recourse to the Brahmins and the Chinese. And though we hear less of the ethics of these people since we have come to know them better, we are still occasionally ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... archery defied. Soon, therefore, died huge Eurytus, ere yet Old age he reach'd; him, angry to be call'd To proof of archership, Apollo slew. But if ye name the spear, mine flies a length By no man's arrow reach'd; I fear no foil 280 From the Phaeacians, save in speed alone; For I have suffer'd hardships, dash'd and drench'd By many a wave, nor had I food on board At all times, therefore I am much unstrung. He spake; and silent the Phaeacians sat, Of whom alone Alcinoues thus replied. Since, stranger, not ungraceful ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... romance, with its hero and villain and moral ending. But if you study this or any subsequent work of Dickens, you are apt to find the four elements already noted; namely, an unfortunate child, humorous interludes, a grotesque or horrible creature who serves as a foil to virtue or innocence, and a medley of characters good or bad that might be transferred without change to any other story. The most interesting thing about Dickens's men and women is that they are human enough to make themselves ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... lads. Infantry drill; clubs and dumb-bells; singlestick and foil; riding with a military seat; but—use of the gloves! Oh dear no! What do you think ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... the eight women to eat pieces of dark meat from a tin set on the top of the sitting-room stove—then cheese and bread. The watery night turned into sleet and rattled like tin-foil on the panes. ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... and horrid devices, with which the children of the forest are accustomed, like the more civilised heroes of the moustache, to back their reputation for courage, contenting himself with a broad and deep shadowing of black, that served as a sufficient and an admirable foil to the brighter gleamings of his native swarthiness. His head was as usual shaved to the crown, where a large and gallant scalp-lock seemed to challenge the grasp of his enemies. The ornaments that were ordinarily pendant from the cartilages of his ears had been ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... think we could be much help to them; anyway they didn't hire Pee-wee to foil the bandit the way men do in stories. I'd like to see that kid capturing a bandit. Judging by the way he treats ice cream cones there wouldn't be much left of the bandit. I'm not crazy about bandits, anyway, but some fellows are. Anyway, I'd like a blue one better ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... to make someone happy, and her endeavour carries with it a train of incident, solving a mystery which had thrown a shadow over several lives. A charming foil to her grave elder sister is to be found in Miss Babs, a small coquette of five, whose humorous child-talk ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... as a wit. Manly too, a daring rider, who had won many a fox's brush; a famous deer-stalker, and one of the few English gentlemen who still keep up the noble art of fencing,—twice a week to be seen, foil in hand, against all comers in Angelo's rooms. Thin, well-shaped,—not handsome, my dear young lady, far from it, but with an air so thoroughbred that, had you seen him in the day when the opera-house had a crushroom and a fops' alley,—seen him in either ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... perhaps the moment when I may best explain to you the character of what you are to read: I conceive you as a man quite beyond and below the reticences of civility: with what measure you mete, with that shall it be measured you again; with you, at last, I rejoice to feel the button off the foil and to plunge home. And if in aught that I shall say I should offend others, your colleagues, whom I respect and remember with affection, I can but offer them my regret; I am not free, I am inspired by the consideration of interests far more large; and such pain as can be inflicted by anything ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that." She clambered into the wagon. Before she came out with her bundle they piled the cairn, a mask of broken rim-rock heavy enough to foil the scratching ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... against her, her surprise gave place to a mingled feeling of impatience and anger. She drew her foot back with a sudden movement, but unfortunately the foot went one way and the slipper another. A fencing-master, who sees his foil carried ten steps away from him by a back stroke, could not feel more astonishment than that felt by Madame de Bergenheim. Her first movement was to place her foot, so singularly undressed, upon the ground; an instinctive ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... their devotion dull their vigilance?— Uncertainly, by fits, the Will doth work In Brunswick's blood, their chief, as in themselves; It ramifies in streams that intermit And make their movement vague, old-fashioned, slow To foil ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... opened apprised us that we had onlookers at our sport; but the captain's eyes never left mine until with a dexterous turn of the wrist, which I had long envied and sought in vain to copy, he sent my foil flying to the end of ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... with surprise. "We are fencing—and I hate it. Once at West Point I was fencing with a man, my friend; the button broke off my foil and I hurt him seriously. He fell dead beside me in the ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... have felt, would have been a false note in the whole rosy glow; but what note so false as that of the dingy little presence that she might actually, by a refinement of her perhaps always too visible study of effect, have provided as a positive contrast or foil? whose name and intervention, moreover, she appeared to be no more moved to mention and account for than she might have been to "present"—whether as stretched at her feet or erect upon disciplined haunches—some shaggy old domesticated terrier ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... There is nothing in what I am treating as this phase of our author's thought to separate it from the old-fashioned rationalism. There must be a reason for every fact; and so much reason, so fact. The reason is always the whole foil and background and negation of the fact, the whole remainder of reality. "A man may feel good only by feeling better. . . . Pleasure is ever in the company and contrast of pain; for instance, in thirsting and ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... elsewhere, to equal that piece of workmanship, or else acknowledge themselves his underlings and vassals. For many days had Mimer himself toiled, alone and vainly, trying to forge a sword whose edge the boasted armor of Amilias could not foil; and now, in despair, he came to ask the help ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... mail for Lieutenant Logan to wear in one of the tableaux. Ranald, with a huge sheet of cardboard and the library shears, was manufacturing a pair of giant scissors, half as long as himself, which a blonde in blue was waiting to cover with tin foil. She was singing coon songs while she waited, to the accompaniment of a mandolin, and in such a gay, rollicking way, that every one was keeping time either with ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... a somewhat insipid pastoral, betraying the influence of the Lake School, more especially Coleridge, on a belated and irresponsive disciple, and wholly out of place as contrast or foil ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... show how this system is conducted. As a general rule, the wretches are easily disposed of with the aid of the police, but sometimes it requires all the ingenuity of the most experienced detective to ferret out and foil the plot. These wretches know that respectable people dread scandal, and they profit by this knowledge. They are sometimes bold and unscrupulous in their way of conducting their business, and at other times endeavor to palm themselves off as injured innocents. They rarely ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... enough to inform against him, and this with an air of affected secrecy and mysterious importance; and, as if the dishonesty of another constituted a virtue in themselves, they would repeat this information frequently, perhaps for a month afterward, setting up their neighbour's offence as a foil to their own ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... officers' quiet contempt of scientific pursuits, which not even the captain's influence was able to subdue, of the illusory promises of help and advancement held out by the Admiralty to young investigators, makes a striking foil to the spirit in which the Government of thirty years later undertook a greater scientific expedition. Perhaps some vivid recollections of this voyage did something to better the conditions under which the later ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... none is lost, And it is soon extinct; thus from the horn, That on the dexter of the cross extends, Down to its foot, one luminary ran From mid the cluster shone there; yet no gem Dropp'd from its foil; and through the beamy list Like flame in alabaster, glow'd ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... basket. Hilda is a capable person; there is no ignoring her militant character; the battles of Saxon kings ring still in her blood. Marjorie has scribbled verses in secret, and Celia is the quietest auditor at the symphony. And you may have observed that there is no button on Elizabeth's foil; you do well not to clash wits with her. Do you say that these ascriptions are not square with your experience? Then verily there must have been a sad mixing of infant candidates for the font in your parish. Shirley, in such case, will mean nothing to you. It is a waste of time to tell ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... other religions mainly to place Christianity and its renewing and redeeming power in a brighter light. The former served, as it were, for a foil to the picture of our Saviour's religion and character, which he desired to imprint upon the soul. Whether he succeeded in bringing us into complete "unity" with the personality of Christ, to which he stood in such close relations, is doubtful, but he certainly taught us to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... water upon it. A further washing in hot lye, and a bath in an acid pickle, completely removes every vestige of wax from the shell. The back of the shell is now moistened with soldering fluid and covered with a layer of tin-foil, which acts as a solder between the copper and the ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... and Tayoga. He was still glad of the lucky chance that had taken away the Governor General. There was also a certain keen delight in speculating what their enemies would do next. Conscious of right and strength he believed they could foil all attempts upon them, and while the question was still fresh in his mind Father Philibert Drouillard came in. Wrapped closely in his black robe he looked taller, leaner, and more ascetic than ever, and his gaze was even stronger ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... ready remedy, and is Himself Their great physician. Now grown stiff with age, And many a painful chase, the wise old hound Regardless of the frolic pack, attends His master's side, or slumbers at his ease Beneath the bending shade; there many a ring 220 Runs o'er in dreams; now on the doubtful foil Puzzles perplexed, or doubles intricate Cautious unfolds, then winged with all his speed, Bounds o'er the lawn to seize his panting prey: And in imperfect whimperings speaks his joy. A different hound for every different chase Select ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... inopportune moment, and who will give us because we are His friends, and He ours! The very ugliness of character ascribed to the owner of the loaves, selfish in his enjoyment of his bed, in his refusal to turn out on an errand of neighbourliness, and in his final giving, thus serves as a foil to the character of Him to whom our prayers ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... strength and art were tried, The stately tree all force defied. Well might the elm resist and foil their might, For though his branches were decay'd to sight, As many as his leaves the roots spread round, And in the firm set earth ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... undaunted hearts, immortal mitred Few! For Truth's dear sake, the Tyrant foil'd to whom ye still were true—[37] Rejoice! Who knows what scatter'd thoughts of yours were buried seeds, Slow-springing for th' oppress'd and poor, and ripen'd ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... distant on both sides some nine hundred to a thousand paces. Vessels could pass up the river only at the mercy of the cannon on this island, and we deemed the location the most advantageous, not only on account of its situation and good foil, but also on account of the intercourse which we proposed with the savages of these coasts and of the interior, as we should be in the midst of them. We hoped to pacify them in the course of time, and ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... of du Maurier's art, that which survives in it better than its sometimes scathing commentary upon a passing "craze," is his close representation of the air with which people seek to foil each other in conversation and conceal their own trepidations. His "Social Agonies" are among the best of this series. If he does not lay stress upon individual character, he still remains the master draughtsman of a state of mind. ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... by my losses as bold as a lion, I venture at all, — while my avarice regards The whole pool as my own — 'Come, give me five cards.' 'Well done!' cry the ladies; 'Ah, Doctor, that's good! 25 The pool's very rich — ah! the Doctor is loo'd!' Thus foil'd in my courage, on all sides perplex'd, I ask for advice from the lady that's next: 'Pray, Ma'am, be so good as to give your advice; Don't you think the best way is to venture for 't twice?' 30 'I advise,' cries the lady, 'to try ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... think he'll get from me? Nothing that isn't false, no information that won't mislead him, no facts save those I shall distort until they may seem so near the truth that he will build and count upon them. Every minute of my time will be spent to foil his schemes. They don't believe me in Whitehall, or Selingman would be at Bow Street to-morrow morning. That's why I am going my own way. Tell him, if you will. There is only one thing strong enough to bring me here, to risk ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... muscle and bone. Jan's knife swept in an upward flash and plunged to the hilt through the flesh of his enemy's forearm. With a cry of pain O'Grady dropped his club, and the two crashed to the stone floor of the trail. This was the attack that Jan had feared and tried to foil, and with a lightning-like squirming movement he swung himself half free, and on his back, with O'Grady's huge hands linking at his throat, he drew back his knife arm for ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... the danger of deliberately contrasting with her maturity the vividness of youth. To do what she thought of doing would be to run a great risk. When she had married Lord Sellingworth she had provided herself with a foil to her beauty and to her comparative youth. To marry a young man would be to make herself the foil. He would emphasize her age by his lack of ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... he clear, and on this he became more settled with every hour: whatever he did he must do with the idea of a fundamental awakening in Maggie. Merely to foil her in this one scheme would be to solve the lesser part of his problem; Maggie would be left unchanged, or if changed at all the change would be toward a greater hardness, and his major problem would be made more ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... them to be inured to hardships and hazards, as they ought to be. They will not endure to see them return all dust and sweat from their exercise, to drink cold drink when they are hot, nor see them mount an unruly horse, nor take a foil in hand against a rude fencer, or so much as to discharge a carbine. And yet there is no remedy; whoever will breed a boy to be good for anything when he comes to be a man, must by no means spare him when young, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind fury with the abhorred shears, And slits the thin-spun life. But not the praise, Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears; Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, Nor in the glistering foil Set off to the world, nor in broad rumor lies; But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes And perfect witness of all-judging Jove; As he pronounces lastly on each deed, Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed. O fountain Arethuse, and thou honored flood, Smooth-sliding Mincius, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... put his hand on his sword and replied, "Your dogs would devour me, my good fellow, and I foil them. They would employ their teeth upon me as I would mine if I had before me a morsel of that appetizing boar, for I am lost in the forest since yesterday morning and ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... Bravo! performed with perfect precision." And so he went on. Each time, however, that Jones's division had to assault, he saw that Blackall endeavoured to take some undue advantage of Ernest, who with equal regularity contrived quietly to foil him. Ernest kept his eye on his opponent's, but said nothing, and in no other way showed that he was aware of his evil intentions. Blackall at length began to lose his temper at his own failures: he ground his teeth and turned savage glances towards Bracebridge, who met them ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... have a look at it, and what do you suppose he found? My foot had become gangrenous! An accident which had occurred many years ago was the cause of this. While I was at Sorze, my right foot had been pierced by the foil of a fencing opponent, which had lost its button. It seems that this injury had made my foot more sensitive to cold, and while I was lying on the snow it had become frostbitten, and not having been treated in time, gangrene had set in at the ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... Teutonic poet's shock of hair. So he came to himself, and for the rest of our walk he kept to himself as the thread of his discourse, and went over himself from top to toe, and strung thereon all topics under the sun by way of illustrating his splendours. But especially his foil was the relative folly, the unnaturalness and want of logic in his fellow men. He held strong views about the extreme simplicity of everything, only that men, in their muddle-headedness, had confounded it all. "Hence, ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... landscape by Corot the letter L is plainly shown. In the diagram of Fundamental Forms also, the tree-mass, cow and river bank in shadow serve as a sombre foil for the clump of trees upon the opposite shore which are bathed in the soft luminous haze of early morning. This is the real attraction which, grafted upon the heavy structure of the foreground affects us the more through the contrast. In Mr. Pettie's ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... roofs and spires. To us the Abbey which is gone can do no more than add solemnity to the scene which once it graced. It matters little by which entrance we approach the churchyard, for from every side the buildings group harmoniously; each of the steeples acting as it were as a foil to the other: and both the spires unite in adding dignity to the bell tower. The churchyard in Norman times would seem to have been part of the Abbey precincts, as it is enclosed within Abbot Reginald's wall already described, and a second wall, part ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New
... the foil that time, because the thrust brought blood—a bright flush into her cheeks and a sudden brightness into her eyes that would have induced him to relent if she hadn't followed the thing ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... her word, and I am lost; Yet let not my ambition shew it to her; For, after all, she does it but to try me, And foil my vowed design.—Madam, I see You're come to court; the robes you wear become you; Your air, your mien, your charms, your every grace, Will kill at least ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... am mortal: and I cannot write Aught that may foil the fatal wing of Time. Silent, I look at Fame: I cannot climb To where her Temple is—Not mine the might:— I have some glimmering of what is sublime— But, ah! it ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... word, being resolved to cheat her again as he had done before. He went to find little Day, and saw him with a foil in his hand, with which he was fencing with a great monkey: the child was then only three years of age. He took him up in his arms and carried him to his wife, that she might conceal him in her chamber along with his sister, and instead ...
— The Tales of Mother Goose - As First Collected by Charles Perrault in 1696 • Charles Perrault
... Hissing and seething at the opposition she offered, the larger waves burst over her bows, and swept the deck from stem to stern; but her ample scuppers discharged it quickly, and up she rose again, dripping from the flood, to face and fight and foil ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... you. You know I tried to mark Merriwell for life by punching my foil through the mask that protected his face while we were engaged in a fencing bout. I had prepared my foil for that in advance by fixing the button so I could remove it, and by sharpening the point of the foil. I wanted to spoil the fellow's ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... had been busy for hours with pasteboard and glue, tin-foil and scissors, held up the suit of mail which she had ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... a little puzzled. As I broke the seal, pulled out the cork and unwrapped the cigar from its gold foil he took a stick and rapped loudly on the floor. After a brief interval footsteps were heard on the stairs and Mike Monahan, white aproned and scarlet faced, appeared ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... took the diamond from its setting, and left me nothing but the foil," says he. "Oh, I would order it another way: give me the gem, and let who will take what remains. Unless these little hands are mine to hold for ever, I will take ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... very coach side, and threaten your letters. Is the poison [and dagger] you boast in your jaws, trow? Are you still in your cart with convitia ex plaustro? But to scold is your trade, which I soon should be foil'd in, For scolding is just quasi diceres—school-din: And I think I may say, you could many good shillings get, Were you drest like a bawd, and sold oysters at Billingsgate; But coach it or cart it, I'd have you ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... sender or funnel-shaped tube, with its open mouth-piece standing toward the operator; the diaphragm and stylus connected therewith, which receives the sound spoken into the tube; and thirdly, the revolving cylinder, with its sheet-coating of tin-foil laid over the surface of a spiral groove to receive the indentations of the point of the stylus. The mode of operation is very simple. The cylinder is revolved; and the point of the stylus, when there is no sound agitation in the funnel or mouth-piece, makes a smooth, continuous depression ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... of curious fruit—sweet-cake rings and stars and two gingerbread men hanging by pack-thread from the white and green branches, the Noah's Ark lodged in one crotch, the very amateur snow-shoes in another, and the lost toys wrapped up, transfigured in tobacco-foil, dangling ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... bring some pressure to bear upon Greece," said the younger man. "We cannot permit that. Bulgaria must get in the game sooner and thus foil such ...
— The Boy Allies in the Balkan Campaign - The Struggle to Save a Nation • Clair W. Hayes
... Evil, Virtue the offspring of Vice. You know how virtuous a man feels after a jag. You've got to sin to feel really good. Consequently, Sin must be good to be the means of good, to be the raw material of good, to be virtue in the making, mustn't it? The dance-halls are a good foil to the gospel-halls. If we were all virtuous, there would be no virtue in virtue, and if we were all bad no one would be bad. And because there's so much bad in this old burg of ours, it makes the good ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... winter quarters, and the equinox was on us, with an east wind that parched the blood in the trees, so that their leaves for once knew no gradations of red and yellow, but turned at a stroke to brown, and crackled like tin-foil. ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... father did not object. For that man's condition was an excellent foil to his own success and prosperity and thus he was permitted, at times, to stay a week in the house where, otherwise, charity was ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... declare that when I speak thereof Love sheds such perfect sweetness over me That if my courage failed not, certainly To him my listeners must be all resign'd. Wherefore I will not speak in such large kind That mine own speech should foil me, which were base; But only will discourse of her high grace In these poor words, the best that I can find, With you alone dear dames and damozels: 'Twere ill to speak thereof with any else. . . . . . . . . My lady is desired in ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... his position" in the church. To him as to innumerable other honest, middle-aged and comfortable men, Darwinism came as a dreadful invitation to go out into the wilderness. Over my head and just out of range of my ears he was debating that issue with Siddons as a foil and my cousin as a horrified antagonist. Slowly he was developing his conception of compromise. And meanwhile he wasn't going out into the wilderness at all, but punctually to and fro, along the edge of the lawn by the bed of hollyhocks and through the little green door in the garden ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... no less wilt be my life, And I shall know it better than before, Praying and trusting, hoping, claiming more. From effort vain, sick foil, and bootless strife, I shall, with childness fresh, look up to thee; Thou, seeing thy child with age encumbered sore, Wilt round him bend thine ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... Even Sammy Brown was shone upon by the far-flung rays of the renaissance. Sammy, with his ultra clothes, his horseshoe pin, his plump face, his trite slang, his uncomprehending admiration of Ravenel—the broker's clerk made an excellent foil to the new, bright unseen visitor to ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... chaperones. And here was Thorny, very pretty in her best gown, with a little unusual and unnatural color on her cheeks, and Billy Oliver, who would watch the game from the "dollar section," providentially on hand to help them through the crowd, and buy Susan a chrysanthemum as a foil to Thorny's red ribbons. The damp cool air was sweet with violets; a delightful stir and excitement thrilled the moving crowd. Here was the gate. Tickets? And what a satisfaction to produce them, and enter unchallenged into the rising roadway, leaving behind ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... Mrs. Bennet—her archness, her querulousness, and above all her talkativeness. Was it Sally May or Mrs. Bennet? Molly Seaton, as Mr. Bennet, proved an excellent foil—reserved, quiet, full ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... this day hath foil'd the many Fallacies of GEORGE their King, Let the echo reach Britan'y, ...
— The Battle of Bunkers-Hill • Hugh Henry Brackenridge
... Wagner. The Hallelujah Chorus in particular is a magnificent piece of work. As is the case with the Messiah, its beauties as well as its defects are so apparent, so pronounced, that the latter serve as a foil to bring out its good qualities in the strongest relief. It was first performed in the spring of 1803, in Vienna, on which occasion Beethoven played some of his other compositions. It was repeated ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... it is, is often alluded to still, and remains as a foil to those flattering and courtly anecdotes which I have been repeating of royal and imperial homage paid to Duerer, Titian, and Holbein. I fancy the last-mentioned stories may have grown from small beginnings, and circulated ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... is brought into the bell-jar, and held there four or five seconds; it is then found entirely discharged. That the real cause of this, however, is condensation of the vapor on the part of the glass that is not coated with tin foil (the liquid layer acting by conduction) can be proved; for if that part of the jar be passed several times rapidly through the flame, so as to heat it to near 100 C., before inserting in the bell-jar, a different effect will be had; the Leyden jar will give out long sparks after withdrawal. ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... not yet learned the difference between man and woman. It does not take the difficult right way, but quite intelligibly, the left. The wanderer himself turns back to his childish irresponsibility; he takes the left path. The many people that fall down may be a foil to illustrate the dangers of the path, for the purpose of deepening the impression of improvement. Phantasies of extraordinary abilities, special powers; contrasts to the anxiety of examinations; all these in the case of the wanderer mark ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... in very suddenly to explain about the Christmas tree. There were lots of little pencils on the table. And blocks of paper. And nice cold, shining sheets of tin-foil. There was violet-colored tin-foil, and red-colored tin-foil—and green and ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... dhows, lookout-man!" he cried, fully awake at last, not only in his own person, but as regarded the responsibility attaching to him should he unhappily let our prey escape and so foil his captain's carefully arranged ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... As a foil for his royal clemency, there should be humble gratitude. Maximilian often mistook ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... to begin at nine o'clock. They were to come in this order: Standing broad jump, running broad jump, high jump, foil match, revolver contest and ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake
... hate you!" exclaimed Gerardin, turning round in his saddle, and shaking his clenched fist at the English lieutenant. "You have foiled me again and again. I know you, and who you are; you stand between me and my birthright; you shall not foil me again. I have before sought your life; the next time we meet we will not separate till one or ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... gather round, and they'll launch me in the ground, And pile the stones the timber wolf to foil; And the moaning pine will wave overhead a nameless grave, Where the black snake in the sunshine loves to coil. And they'll leave me there alone, and perhaps with softened tone Speak of me sometimes in the camp-fire's glow, As a played-out, broken chum, who has gone to ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... unwariness of the Legislature, and closed the doors of the medical schools to female applicants. Against unqualified female practitioners they never acted with such zeal and consent; and why? The female quack is a public pest, and a good foil to the union; the qualified doctress is a public good, and a blow to ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... a dog, old, lame, and lean; He once had been a noble hound; And day by day he lay and starv'd, Or gnaw'd some bone that he had found. They shar'd with him the scanty crust, That barely foil'd starvation's pain; He'd wag his feeble tail and turn To gnaw that polish'd bone again. Vogue la galere! why don't ye greet My tale ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... The play of fancy and invention of Shah Jehan's architects seems inexhaustible. All the exquisite white marble pavilions of Agra palace differ absolutely both in design and decoration, and Akbar's massive red sandstone buildings make the most perfect foil to them that could ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... tent, but does not bow to the audience. In one hand he carries a fencing foil, well constructed, of European workmanship; in his other hand he holds a number of pretty toy balloons which he ...
— A Parody Outline of History • Donald Ogden Stewart
... similar compounds should be potted as quickly as made, and the lids of the pots banded either with strips of tin-foil or paper, to exclude air. When the amandine is filled into the jars, the top or face of it is marked or ornamented with a tool made to the size of half the diameter of the interior of the jar, in a similar ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... hand, the rationalist movement had always had over against it the great foil and counterpoise of the pietist movement. Rationalism ran a much soberer course than in France. It was never a revolutionary and destructive movement as in France. It was not a dilettante and aristocratic movement as deism had been in England. It was far more creative ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... to supper, and so closely cover The rusty canker of mine iron spite With golden foil of goodly semblances. But if I do not ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... contraries should also be set before us, these divine qualities, though inseparable from all divine works, are yet suffered to exist in such varieties of degree, that their most limited manifestation shall, in opposition to their most abundant, act as a foil or contrary, just as we conceive of cold as contrary to heat, though the most extreme cold we can produce or conceive is not inconsistent with an unknown amount of heat in ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... on the market as Vino Regalis. The advertisements hinted without actually stating that the King had succeeded in carrying off a thousand dozen bottles of this wine out of the royal cellars when he fled from his subjects in Megalia. The bottles in which Vino Regalis was sold had yards of gold foil wrapped round their necks. They were in their way quite as splendid and obtrusive as Madame Corinne was in hers. I always think that Gorman must have had the lady before his eyes when he arranged the get-up of ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... most utterly-uppermost," he murmured. "It's positively uncanny. No uninitiated adult of the utmost intelligence ever held an Italian-pattern foil correctly yet—nor until he had been pretty carefully shown. Who the devil put him up to the design in the first place, and the method of holding, in the second? Explain yourself, you two-anna[6] marvel," he demanded of the ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... cordial reception which greeted the author's "Letters to the Young," and his more recent series of essays entitled "Gold Foil," and the constant and substantial friendship which has been maintained by the public toward those productions, must stand as his apology for this third venture in a kindred field of effort. It should be—and probably ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... brilliant, warm, penetrating; his contours melting, graceful; his atmosphere omnipresent, enveloping. In composition he rather pushed aside line in favor of light and color. It was his technical peculiarity that he centralized his light and surrounded it by darks as a foil. And in this very feature he was one of the first men in Renaissance Italy to paint a picture for the purpose of weaving a scheme of lights and darks through a tapestry of rich colors. That is art for art's sake, and that, as will be seen further on, was the ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... thy lids and thou shalt see Angel faces wreathed with light, Mystic forms long vanished hence. Ah, too fine, too rare, they be For the grosser mortal sight, And they foil our waking sense. ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... with harvests in its heat, And that, sky-hidden, makes the moon at night, An earth-ward cascade for its leaps of light, More real, or a world force more complete, Than Faith and Hope, that brake through clouds with sight Of evil's foil ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... day in question we stood before each other, foil in hand, both of us nerved by an intense, though as yet unspoken, enmity. This had been observed by most of the spectators, who approached and formed a circle around us; all of them highly interested in the result—which, they knew, would be ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... that I still survived was itself a mere accident. Yet the very fact that I lived yielded me fresh confidence, a fatalistic belief that my life had thus been spared for a specific purpose. It might yet be my privilege to foil these villains, and rescue Mrs. Henley. It was my belief she was also on board this vessel. I had no reason to assume this, except the wording of Broussard's report which I had overheard. But she was a prisoner, and this vessel would be the most ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... practically Lincoln while he himself stood at the front to manage the turmoil, he made no more mistakes than statesmen in general. He had been powerful for good before the war, and during its course, with what virile stiffness of the upper lip did he face and foil the frowning foreign world! He had the insight and candour to do full justice at last to Lincoln, whom at first he depreciated. Then the purchase of Alaska! Writing as I do on the western coast I am perhaps affected ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... on one side, and Jane began to mount the stairs. He did not look at her, but it seemed to Jane that his eyes were on the hem of her gown as it trailed past him. She paused beside Miss Lister. She knew exactly how effectual a foil she made to the American girl's white loveliness. She turned and faced him. She wished him to look up and see them standing there together. She wanted the artist eyes to take in the cruel contrast. She wanted the artist soul of him to realise ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... someone happy, and her endeavour carries with it a train of incident, solving a mystery which had thrown a shadow over several lives. A charming foil to her grave elder sister is to be found in Miss Babs, a small coquette of five, whose humorous child-talk is ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... the other. According to Mr. Feis, Shakspere detested such a creed and such conduct as Hamlet's, and made him die by poison in order to show his abhorrence of them—this, when we know Hamlet to have died by the poisoned foil in the earlier play. On that view, Cordelia died by hanging in order to show Shakspere's conviction that she was a malefactor; and Desdemona by stifling as a fitting punishment for adultery. The idea is outside of serious discussion. Barely to ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... use is reported to be made of the fat of children digged out of their graves; of the juices of smallage, wolf-bane, and cinque-foil, mingled with the meal of fine wheat; but I suppose that the soporiferous medicines are likest to do it." See Sylva Sylvarum, cent. X, 975, in Works, ed. Spedding, II, 664. But even this passage shows Bacon a skeptic. His suggestion ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... girl of twenty-five, a face peaceful, placid, and beautiful with the austere and almost unearthly beauty of the youthful dead. The lips were slightly parted, the eyes half closed and drowsy, shaded with sweeping lashes; and a wealth of dark hair in massive plaits served as a foil to the ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... very suddenly to explain about the Christmas tree. There were lots of little pencils on the table. And blocks of paper. And nice cold, shining sheets of tin-foil. There was violet-colored tin-foil, and red-colored tin-foil—and green and blue and silver ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... fire is ingraff'd, Yet flourisheth, as Flora in her pride, With apples like the heads of damned fiends. The devils there, in chains of quenchless flame, Shall lead his soul, through Orcus' burning gulf, ]From pain to pain, whose change shall never end. What say'st thou yet, Gazellus, to his foil, Which we referr'd to justice of his Christ And to his power, which here appears as full As rays of ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... keen women were. She felt my distress, and that growing, stern, and powerful thing I scarcely dared to acknowledge to myself. Strangely, then, I relaxed and faced her. There was no use trying to foil these feminine creatures. Every second I seemed to grow farther from her. The swiftness of this mood of mine was my only hope. I realized I had to get away quickly, and make up my mind after that what I intended to do. It was an earnest, soulful, and loving ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... form a part of every naturalist's daily routine. After a certain time, it need not be consciously done. The movements of thought and action will, indeed, become as automatic as those which the trained fencer makes with his foil. ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... pigments. Every isolated copse was a mimic forest fire, each bivouacked corn-field a russet foil, the air a heady wine. Shelby thrilled with dumb pastorals and a vague longing to do and speak in keeping with the spirit of the scene. A tuft of oxeye daisies in the shelter of a ruinous worm fence attracted him, and he reined the cob from the highway to fetch ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... flung my fine cloak over the monk, and the fellow looked as if he had stolen it. I must have looked like a man who has been to a dance and has spent the rest of the night in a disorderly house, though the only foil to my reasonable elegance of attire was the bandages round ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... courtiers, as both Hamlet and Laertes were known to excel at this sword-play; and Hamlet taking up the foils chose one, not at all suspecting the treachery of Laertes, or being careful to examine Laertes' weapon, who, instead of a foil or blunted sword, which the laws of fencing require, made use of one with a point, and poisoned. At first Laertes did but play with Hamlet, and suffered him to gain some advantages, which the dissembling king magnified and extolled beyond measure, drinking ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... orifice, the image is inverted. At present we may illustrate and expand the subject thus: In front of our camera is a large opening (L, fig. 2), from which the lens has been removed, and which is closed at present by a sheet of tin-foil. Pricking by means of a common sewing-needle a small aperture in the tin-foil, an inverted image of the carbon-points starts forth upon the screen. A dozen apertures will give a dozen images, a hundred a hundred, a thousand a thousand. But, as ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... will always remain Mozart's greatest work, for in it he for the first time showed himself to be a German musician. 'Don Juan' still has the complete Italian cut; besides our sacred art ought never permit itself to be degraded to the level of a foil for ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... introduced into India. A large proportion of the native gold is consumed by local artisans in the manufacture of these ornaments, and is not counted in the official returns. An equal amount, perhaps, is worked up into gold foil and used for gilding temples, palaces and the houses of the rich. Like all orientals, the Indians are very fond of gilding, and immense quantities of pure gold leaf are manufactured in little shops that may be seen ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... divine one. The gleam of spring sunset was bright in her hair, and in the soft garnish of health on her cheeks, and the vigorous play of young life in her eyes; while the silvery glance of the sloping shore, and breezy ruffle of the darkening sea, did nothing but offer a foil for the form of the shell-colored frock and ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... already given, will show how this system is conducted. As a general rule, the wretches are easily disposed of with the aid of the police, but sometimes it requires all the ingenuity of the most experienced detective to ferret out and foil the plot. These wretches know that respectable people dread scandal, and they profit by this knowledge. They are sometimes bold and unscrupulous in their way of conducting their business, and at other times endeavor to ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... where the surrounding sandridges sheltered them from view, they crouched over a small basket they had brought with them and performed certain ceremonies. First the pouch was wrapped in many sheets of tin foil, which Richard had been long in collecting from various tobacco-loving friends. When that was done it flashed in the sun like a nugget of wrinkled silver. This was stuffed into a baking-powder can from which the label had been carefully scraped, and on ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... folded into the tops of his very high boots, and his shirt-bosom was broad and none too clean, and his flowered silk waistcoat was cut so low that two buttons sufficed to keep it in place. He wore a flowing, black necktie, glistening foil-back studs, and rings of the ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... off with him on a quiet holiday, His Cousin Adair, by GORDON ROY. The book has all the requisites of a good novel, including the perhaps rarest one of literary style. Cousin Adair is well worth knowing, and her character is skilfully portrayed. As a foil against this high-minded, pure-souled unselfish girl, there are sketched in two or three of the sort of people, men and women, more frequently met with in this wicked world. But Cousin Adair is good enough to leaven the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... cigar. "Well, well, we certainly have made a stir with our little meetings here. An inspired English Cabinet Minister, travel-stained and dusty, arrives with his valet and a black dispatch-box, to foil our schemes. Send him along, my friend. We are not at all afraid of Mr. Simpson. Perhaps we may even ask him to join ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Your bolts distress not me, But injure the fair mistress of these bowers, Whose sordid guardian would her husband be, For lucre, not for love. Rather than quarrel, let us use our powers, And gift with magic aid some active sprite, To foil the guardian and the girl ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... Unlook'd for joy in that I honour most. Great princes' favourites their fair leaves spread But as the marigold at the sun's eye, And in themselves their pride lies buried, For at a frown they in their glory die. The painful warrior famoused for fight, After a thousand victories once foil'd, Is from the book of honour razed quite, And all the rest forgot for which he toil'd: Then happy I, that love and am belov'd, Where I may not remove ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... give him—something to reduce that fever." Mostyn knew that the remark was a mere tentative foil against the verdict stamped upon the bearded face. The doctor slowly wiped the tiny tube and restored it ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... spreading tree, filling one end of the room completely. Strings of pop-corn festooned the branches, and flakes of cotton-wool snow were cunningly disposed here and there. Bright apples peeped from amid the green, and from every tip hung a splendid star of tinsel or tin foil. No "boughten stuff" these; all through the year Miss Fidely patiently begged from her neighbors: from the women the tinsel on their button-cards, from the men the "silver" that wrapped their tobacco. Carefully pressed under the big Bible, they waited till Christmas, to become the glory of the Tree. ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... consequence, he made this confession to me in a moment of agitation. He was, he said, overpowered by a sentiment with regard to me which amounted to this—that a man wanted, after all, to be something more than a cipher in his own house, where, if anywhere, it is not pleasant to serve as a mere foil to some one else. This sentiment was merely excusable, he thought, in a man who, though he might reasonably suppose himself of some account among his fellows, had been brought into close contact with another to whom he felt ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... and treasure he had achieved it. Ferdinand's character, the very opposite of his noble father's, was dark, wily, and ferocious. His life was spent in conflict with his great feudal nobility, many of whom supported the pretensions of the Angevin family. But his superior craft enabled him to foil every attempt of his enemies. In effecting this, indeed, he shrunk from no deed of treachery or violence, however atrocious, and in the end had the satisfaction of establishing his authority, undisputed, on the fears of his subjects. He was about seventy years ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... drawl was a capital foil to Lady Georgina's acidulous soprano. It seemed to disarm her. She turned to me with a benignant wave of her hand. 'Miss Cayley,' she said, introducing me; 'my nephew, Mr. Harold Tillington. You've heard me talk of poor Tom Cayley, Harold? This is ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... slightly soluble. At ordinary temperatures it unites directly with many other elements; thus with hydrogen, combination takes place in direct sunlight with explosive violence; arsenic, antimony, thin copper foil and phosphorus take fire in an atmosphere of chlorine, forming the corresponding chlorides. Many compounds containing hydrogen are readily decomposed by the gas; for example, a piece of paper dipped in turpentine inflames in an atmosphere of chlorine, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... in cavities which had sound walls for its retention. In the form of rolls or tape it was forced into the previously cleaned and prepared cavity, condensed with instruments under heavy hand pressure, smoothed with files, and finally burnished. Tin foil was also used to a limited extent and by the same method. Improvements in the refining of gold for dental use brought the product to a fair degree of purity, and, about 1855, led to the invention ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... station now stands. She writes: "Wrapped in his cloak, he moved like a self- impelled Greek statue, stately and grave." This is the manner in which we should imagine Hawthorne to have skated; but all others were a foil to her husband in the eyes of his wife. [Footnote: "Memories of Hawthorne," 52.] He was evidently a fine skater, gliding over the ice in long sweeping curves. Emerson was also a dignified skater, but with a shorter stroke, and ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... soft and may disappear during vermicomposting. If you could grind bones before sending them to the worm bin, they would make valuable additions to your compost. Avoid putting non-biodegradable items like plastic, bottle caps, rubber bands, aluminum foil, and glass ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... to doubt his own possession of sufficient wit for all purposes,—something which no amount of argument could have accomplished. But to-day Hugo felt no contempt for him. He smiled only at the one weakness which was a foil to Humphrey's many excellent qualities. And he said pleasantly, "Why, how now, Humphrey? Thou dost need another ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... that in using it, I did n't place the same construction that you did in hearing it. But let that pass. I apologize. What I should have said was that, if you will pardon me, she used you, as young women will do, as a foil against her fiance in a time of petty quarreling ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... made this foil of his so very widely known, that third parties took it up, and handled it on some occasions with considerable briskness. It was one of the most exasperating attributes of Bounderby, that he not only sang his own praises but stimulated other men to sing ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... of the British Parliament were set off to the greatest advantage by a foil. The wretched government of Lewis the Fifteenth had murdered, directly or indirectly, almost every Frenchman who had served his country with distinction in the East. Labourdonnais was flung into the Bastile, and, after years of suffering, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... silly title) was the engaging personality of Miss MAY BLAYNEY. Always a fascinating figure to watch, she showed an extraordinary sensitiveness of voice and expression. As for that honest and admirable actor, Mr. MCKINNEL, who made the perfect foil to her charms that every good husband should wish to be, he seems never to tire of playing these stern, dour, semi-brutal parts. That more genial characters are open to him his success in Great ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... of my coat and climbed down. I kept those persimmons and am tasting them to-night. Lupton's Pond may fill to a puddle, the meadows may shrivel, the creek dry up and disappear, and old Time may even try his wiles on me. But I shall foil him to the end; for I am carrying still in my pocket some of yesterday's persimmons,—persimmons that ripened in the rime of a winter when I was ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... me to a further experiment. I made a drawing of a model, and took it to Mr. Kruesi, at that time engaged on piece-work for me. I told him it was a talking-machine. He grinned, thinking it a joke; but he set to work and soon had the model ready. I arranged some tin-foil on it and spoke into the machine. Kruesi looked on, still grinning. But when I arranged the machine for transmission and we both heard a distinct sound from it, he nearly fell down in his fright. I must admit that I was a little scared myself." The words which ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... Sammy Brown was shone upon by the far-flung rays of the renaissance. Sammy, with his ultra clothes, his horseshoe pin, his plump face, his trite slang, his uncomprehending admiration of Ravenel—the broker's clerk made an excellent foil to the new, bright unseen visitor to ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... length; the sails untried Were spread; the raw crew set at spar and coil. Now round the prow Charybdean waters boil And ever higher surges war's red tide. The mate who should the captain's care divide Has strengthless proved. Where shall, the foe to foil, A man be found able to bear the toil And stand, to steer the ship, ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... composition which suggests that its object may have been quite as much to raise disgust at the elders' crime as to raise admiration at Susanna's purity; in fact that the whiteness of her character was designed as a foil to make more prominent the blackness of her oppressors. On this account Jer. xxix. 23 might perhaps be taken as a verse which gave his cue to the writer. But these are points on which opinions will inevitably vary according ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... purpose, thirty thousand napoleons from the Bank of France. It has become known that we have never had occasion to unpack the money, and that it is still lying in our cellar. The crate upon which I sit contains two thousand napoleons packed between layers of lead foil. Our reserve of bullion is much larger at present than is usually kept in a single branch office, and the directors have ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... with his usual uncompromising aggressiveness. Then Quisante put his arms on the table, interrupted Morewood without apology, and began to talk. May thought that she would not have known how good the talk was—for it came so easily—had she not seen how soon Morewood became a listener, or even a foil, ready and content to put his questions not as puzzles but as provocatives. Yet Morewood was proverbially conceited, and he was fully a dozen years Quisante's senior. She stole a look round; the brothers were open-mouthed, ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... without minding your betters, To the very coach side, and threaten your letters. Is the poison [and dagger] you boast in your jaws, trow? Are you still in your cart with convitia ex plaustro? But to scold is your trade, which I soon should be foil'd in, For scolding is just quasi diceres—school-din: And I think I may say, you could many good shillings get, Were you drest like a bawd, and sold oysters at Billingsgate; But coach it or cart it, I'd have you ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... and listened to the cacophonous sounds of the names: the Encephalartos horridus, a gigantic iron rust-colored artichoke, like those put on portals of chateaux to foil wall climbers; the Cocos Micania, a sort of notched and slender palm surrounded by tall leaves resembling paddles and oars; the Zamia Lehmanni, an immense pineapple, a wondrous Chester leaf, planted in sweet-heather soil, its top bristling with barbed javelins ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... additions in 1679. The Second Part, after an interval of seven years, followed early in 1685. Between the two parts appeared two of his most celebrated works—the "Life and Death of Mr. Badman," published in 1680, originally intended to supply a contrast and a foil to "The Pilgrim's Progress," by depicting a life which was scandalously bad; and, in 1682, that which Macaulay, with perhaps exaggerated eulogy, has said, "would have been our greatest allegory if the earlier allegory had never been written," the "Holy War made ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... did. He put on an apron as of yore and started his son under his personal supervision in the washing-room. He took off his apron when Johann knew all about handling chicle products, from importing-bag to tin-foil ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... first-rate mimicry, running through the Thespian Club by dinner-time; it would spread in twenty-fours through all of the London that knew him and half of the London that knew her; and Eric Lane would be quoted as the latest foil or companion in the latest Barbara Neave story. One did not even want the girl to be made a peg for Manders' ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... the Grand Duchess was plainly visible from where they sat; to every sense a woman of snow, his Highness mentally decided, for her gown this evening was white and the black hair powdered; all white she was, a cloud-tatter in the moonlight: yet with the Comte de Chateauroux as a foil, his uniform of the Cuirassiers a big stir of glitter and color, she made an undeniably handsome picture; and it was, quite possibly, the Grand Duke's aesthetic taste which held ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... abroad, and that this had been done by combinations made with a purpose and effect to stifle competition, control prices, and establish a monopoly, not only in the manufacture of tobacco, but also of tin-foil and licorice used in its manufacture and of its products of cigars, cigarettes, and snuffs. The tobacco suit presented a far more complicated and difficult case than the Standard Oil suit for a decree which would effectuate the will of the court ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... no answer, being determined to trick her as he had done previously. He went in search of little Day, whom he found with a tiny foil in his hand, making brave passes—though he was but three years old—at a big monkey. He carried him off to his wife, who stowed him away in hiding with little Dawn. To the ogress the steward served up, in place of Day, a young kid ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... precipitate of metallic Propionic acid in small silver formic acid. quantities cannot be distinguished from butyric (c) Evaporate to dryness; mix acid by tests within the with equal quantity of scope of the bacteriological arsenious oxide and heat laboratory. on platinum foil. ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... Miss Morton saw her she happened to say to the director that she would have preferred a woman of a different type, dark, taller, so as to provide a more effective foil to her own type of beauty. As a result, the girl did ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... do not belittle the man of genius, but set off his greatness as with a foil. They illustrate the thought of Goethe: "It is all the same whether one is great or small, he has to ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... he had felt on his breast the point of his adversary's sword, but so lightly that he might have taken it for the button of a foil. His anger redoubled at the conviction that he owed his life to the captain, and his attacks became more numerous and more furious ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... from Aristotle's words that the Iliad and the Odyssey were in this, as in all respects, above and beyond the other Greek epics known to Aristotle. Homer had not to wait for Beowulf to serve as a foil to his excellence. That was provided in the other epic poems of Greece, in the cycle of Troy, in the epic stories of Theseus and Heracles. It seems probable that the poem of Beowulf may be at least as well knit ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... you all to eat not of that bread," the whole company, when they saw the champagne bottles, with their necks covered with gold foil appear, burst out singing, as ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... discover the whereabouts of little Joe, the "kid" of the patrol, by means of smoke telegraphy and track his abductors to their disgrace; how they assist the passengers of a stranded steamer and foil a plot to harm and perhaps kill an aged sea-captain, one must read the book to learn. A swift-moving narrative of convincing interest ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... his Teutonic poet's shock of hair. So he came to himself, and for the rest of our walk he kept to himself as the thread of his discourse, and went over himself from top to toe, and strung thereon all topics under the sun by way of illustrating his splendours. But especially his foil was the relative folly, the unnaturalness and want of logic in his fellow men. He held strong views about the extreme simplicity of everything, only that men, in their muddle-headedness, had confounded it all. "Hence, for example, these trams! They are always running up and down as though they ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... erewhile at rest, And seems some star that shifted place in heav'n, Only that, whence it kindles, none is lost, And it is soon extinct; thus from the horn, That on the dexter of the cross extends, Down to its foot, one luminary ran From mid the cluster shone there; yet no gem Dropp'd from its foil; and through the beamy list Like flame ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... her retirement. There, beside his horse, stood Lassiter, his dark apparel and the great black gun-sheaths contrasting singularly with his gentle smile. Jane's active mind took up her interest in him and her half-determined desire to use what charm she had to foil his evident design in visiting Cottonwoods. If she could mitigate his hatred of Mormons, or at least keep him from killing more of them, not only would she be saving her people, but also be leading back this bloodspiller to some semblance ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... for the rest, one of those commodious persons in society who are nothing particular themselves, but are understood to be acquainted with the best in every department; close-clipped, pale-eyed, nonchalant, as good a foil as could well be found to the intense coloring and ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... for me," she said; and as she stroked the skinny old hand, the tears came at the thought of it. Everybody was so kind to her! The world was so foil of love! God was so good to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... robustuously, and put for it with a great deal of violence, are received for the braver fellows: when many times their own rudeness is the cause of their disgrace, and a little touch of their adversary gives all that boisterous force the foil. I deny not, but that these men, who always seek to do more than enough, may some time happen on some thing that is good, and great; but very seldom; and when it comes it doth not recompense the rest of their ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... cupelling and "parting," is for most purposes sufficiently pure. It is best kept in the shape of foil. When the purer metal is required, gold should be dissolved in aqua regia, the solution evaporated to a paste, diluted, allowed to stand, and filtered. The filtered solution is acidified with hydrochloric acid, warmed, and precipitated ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... photography has always been a real stimulus to me in all the years I have been personally associated with it through the various exhibitions held along with those of modern painting at the gallery of the Photo-Secession, or more intimately understood as "291". Photography was an interesting foil to the kind of veracity that painting is supposed to express, or rather to say, was then supposed to express; for painting like all other ideas has changed vastly in the last ten years, and even very much since the interval created by the war. I might have learned this anywhere else, ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... in the Austrian capital, and for the first time Davos felt almost cheerful. Perhaps the absolute hush of the country and the purity of the atmosphere, with its suggestion of recent rain,—the skies weep at least once a day in the Salzkammergut region,—proved a welcome foil to fashionable Ischl, with its crowds, its stiffness, its court ceremonial—for the emperor enjoys his villegiatura there. And Davos was sick and irritable after a prolonged musical season. He ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... irregular reach of water holding the reflection of the trees on a mirror still dulled by a vanishing trace of mist, above which the leaves hung in the motionless air, in the aureate wash of the early sun, as if they had been pressed from gold foil. Beyond the dam the path—he had left the road that connected Forge and Furnace for a more direct way—followed the broad, rippling course of the Canary, the stream that supplied the life of Myrtle Forge. He automatically avoided the ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... so be that I may but cross over, and will but await tomorrow's dawn. Since that I have heard he rideth not so far ahead I may well overtake him, an my steed, which is so swift, and strong, and good, foil me not!" ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston
... the other religions mainly to place Christianity and its renewing and redeeming power in a brighter light. The former served, as it were, for a foil to the picture of our Saviour's religion and character, which he desired to imprint upon the soul. Whether he succeeded in bringing us into complete "unity" with the personality of Christ, to which he stood in such close relations, is doubtful, but he certainly taught us to understand ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... temporary chapels, fountains running wine, great cellars full of wine free as water to all comers, silk tents, gold lace and foil, gilt lions, and such things without end; and, in the midst of all, the rich Cardinal out-shone and out-glittered all the noblemen and gentlemen assembled. After a treaty made between the two Kings with as much solemnity as if they had intended to ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... this most difficult of all literary forms. She has learned to handle some orders of drama pleasantly, the farce more than pleasantly, and, very recently, the folk-tragedy nobly; but had it not been that plays of other than romantic tone were needed for the Abbey Theatre as a foil to those of Mr. Yeats and of Synge, I doubt whether it is drama that Lady Gregory would have chosen as the medium through which to express her reading of life. I can just as well imagine her shrewd kindliness of judgment upon the foibles and virtues ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... he cried, fully awake at last, not only in his own person, but as regarded the responsibility attaching to him should he unhappily let our prey escape and so foil his captain's carefully arranged ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... Hugh. "I began to learn two years ago, and I have outgrown my first foil, and the Colonel has given me a new one, ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... second cousin, the heir, an avaricious-looking man, with pinched nose and narrow temples, who, indeed, I heard long afterwards, turned out a thorough miser: a direct contrast to his generous kinswoman, and a foil to her memory, blessed to this day by the poor and needy. The possessor, then, of fifteen pounds; of health, though worn, not broken, and of a spirit in similar condition; I might still; in comparison with many people, be ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... whose name she had caught and remembered. To her, Beauvouloir was a being to whom she owed an untold debt of gratitude; and she desired of all things to question him on certain points relating to her son. If an attempt were made to poison him, how should she foil it? In what way ought she to manage his frail constitution? Was it well to nurse him long? If she died, would Beauvouloir undertake the care of ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... things. But not to Gladys Graham. In these few days they had become united in the bonds of a love which was to stand all tests. Clara was sitting on a low chair, Gladys kneeling by her side, with her arm on her knee. So sitting, they presented a contrast, each a fine foil to the other. The stately, dark beauty of Clara set off the fairer loveliness of the younger girl; neither suffered by the contrast. These days of peace and restful, luxurious living had robbed Gladys of her wearied listlessness, had given to her delicate ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... which the bandages had decayed and fallen off. In the powerful glare of the electric light which we carried, the bare skull, with a golden vulture upon it, could be seen protruding from the remains of the linen bandages and from the sheets of flexible gold-foil in which, as we afterwards found, the whole body was wrapped. The inscription on the coffin, the letters of which were made of rare stones, gave the titles of Akhnaton, "the beautiful child of the Sun"; but turning to the shrine we found other inscriptions ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... Church authorities in repressing its romantic manifestations. In the first place, the submergence of the old pagan world, with its practice and, to some extent, ideal of sexual indulgence, removed the foil which had given grace and delicacy to the tender freedom of the young Christians. In the second place, the austerities which the early Christians had gladly practised for the sake of their soul's health, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... it is impossible that any beholder can be content to be such a one. Now, as in geometry, the oblique must be known as well as the right, and in arithmetic, the odd as well as the even; so in the actions of our life, who seeth not the filthiness of evil, wanteth a great foil to perceive the beauty of virtue. This doth the comedy handle so, in our private and domestical matters, as, with hearing it, we get, as it were, an experience of what is to be looked for, of a niggardly Demea, of a crafty Davus, of a flattering Gnatho, of a vain-glorious Thraso; ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... half of a thin Leyden jar charged is brought into the bell-jar, and held there four or five seconds; it is then found entirely discharged. That the real cause of this, however, is condensation of the vapor on the part of the glass that is not coated with tin foil (the liquid layer acting by conduction) can be proved; for if that part of the jar be passed several times rapidly through the flame, so as to heat it to near 100 C., before inserting in the bell-jar, ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... printing from my impromptu notes, hardly even the seasons group'd together, or anything corrected—so afraid of dropping what smack of outdoors or sun or starlight might cling to the lines, I dared not try to meddle with or smooth them. Every now and then, (not often, but for a foil,) I carried a book in my pocket—or perhaps tore out from some broken or cheap edition a bunch of loose leaves; most always had something of the sort ready, but only took it out when the mood demanded. In that way, utterly out of reach of literary ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... this subject. Thou lovest to make thy friends the objects of ridicule to ladies; and imaginest, from the vanity, (and, in this respect, I will say littleness,) of thine own heart, that thou shinest the brighter for the foil. ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... Volumnia, is severely contrasted with the submissive gentleness of Virgilia, Coriolanus's wife. The hero falls a victim to no sensual flaw, but to unchecked pride of caste, and there is a searching irony in the emphasis laid on the ignoble temper of the rabble, who procure his overthrow. By way of foil, the speeches of Menenius give dignified expression to the maturest political wisdom. The dramatic interest throughout is as single and as unflaggingly sustained as ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... wrestles with amazing dexterity, and is an excellent cricketer. He runs like a buck, leaps like a wild goat, and plays at skittles like a wizard. Then he has a fine voice for singing, he touches the guitar so as to make it speak, and handles a foil as well as any fencer in Spain.—Cervantes, Don ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... have to note of it, that the plan of the blossom in all the kinds is the same; an irregular quatre-foil: and irregular quatrefoils are of extreme rarity in flower form. I don't myself know one, except the Veronica. The cruciform vegetables—the heaths, the olives, the lilacs, the little Tormentillas, and the poppies, are all perfectly symmetrical. ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... give us because we are His friends, and He ours! The very ugliness of character ascribed to the owner of the loaves, selfish in his enjoyment of his bed, in his refusal to turn out on an errand of neighbourliness, and in his final giving, thus serves as a foil to the character of Him to whom ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of it is, that she manages to make me appear so unamiable and unattractive in my husband's eyes," she sighed to herself. "But I'll foil her efforts," she added, between her shut teeth, springing up, and beginning her toilet as she spoke: "he likes to have me bright and cheery, and well and becomingly dressed, ...
— Elsie's Kith and Kin • Martha Finley
... morn in other scenes? Other, but haply beautiful as these, Which now I gaze on; but which, wanting thee, Want half their charms, for, to thy poet's thought, More deeply glow'd the heaven, when thy fine eye, Surveying its grand arch, all kindling glow'd; The white cloud to thy white brow was a foil; And, by the soft tints of thy cheek outvied, The ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 322, July 12, 1828 • Various
... Court today to favor chaos."[59] In the second, the Court upset the conviction of a group of Jehovah's Witnesses in Maryland for using a public park without first obtaining a permit.[60] The third case,[61] which had nothing to do with religion, affords an interesting foil to the other two. It is ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... Alfred Bates Richards, who became a life friend. Richards, an undergraduate of Exeter, was a man of splendid physique. A giant in height and strength, he defeated all antagonists at boxing, but Burton mastered him with the foil and the broad-sword. Richards, who, like Burton, became a voluminous author [47] wrote long after, "I am sure, though Burton was brilliant, rather wild, and very popular, none of us foresaw ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... son," said she, "know that Mardas hateth thee and doth but send thee to this mountain, to bereave me of thee; then take me with thee and let us depart the tents of this tyrant." But he answered, "O my mother, I will not depart hence till I win my wish and foil my foe." Thereupon he slept till morning arose with its sheen and shone, and hardly had he mounted his charger when his friends, the young men, came up to him; two hundred stalwart knights armed cap-a-pie and cried out to him, saying, "Take us with thee; we will help thee and company ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... have this secret in practice, though some, perhaps, have not much studied the theory. The jeweller knows that the finest brilliant requires a foil; and the painter, by the contrast of his ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... that he was not driven from his command. That they insisted on keeping him there shows beyond everything that he had already impressed himself so strongly on Virginia that the authorities, although they smarted under his attacks, did not dare to meddle with him. Dinwiddie and the rest could foil him in obtaining a commission in the king's army, but they could not shake his hold upon ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... wanted a foil, it was there; the gold glittered upon a cloudy background. My treasure was not exactly in my hand to enjoy. There might be many days before Thorold and I saw each other's faces again. Dangers lay threatening ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... cuts herself or himself a slice. If there are two sets of favors hidden in the cake, there is a mark in the icing to distinguish the bridesmaids' side from that of the ushers. Articles, each wrapped in silver foil, have been pushed through the bottom of the cake at intervals; the bridesmaids find a ten-cent piece for riches, a little gold ring for "first to be married," a thimble or little parrot or cat for "old maid," a wish-bone for the "luckiest." On the ushers' side, ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... character of importance not mentioned here is Aristippus, 'a pleasant gentleman' and a successful courtier, whose friendship with Carisophus, an alliance hollow, suspicious, and most unloving on one side at least, forms an admirable foil for the true friendship of Damon ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... am such a wretch, therefore Jesus Christ calls me; yea, he calls me first; the first proffer of the gospel is to be made to the Jerusalem sinner; I am he, wherefore stand back, Satan; make a lane, my right is first to come to Jesus Christ.' This now would be like for like. This would foil the devil; this would make him say, I must not deal with this man thus; for then I put a sword into his hand to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... was more adventures happened to Delancey Calhoun in them five reels than Robinson Crusoe, Columbus, Kit Carson and Davy Crockett had in their combined lives! He was a heart-breaker one second and a head-breaker the next. He had insisted to Alex that one villain wasn't enough for him to foil, so they had about a dozen and he trimmed 'em all. They was also several heroines for him to save and clasp on his manly bosom, which same he did in evenin' clothes only. It was nothin' for him to save a maiden in distress from a sinkin' ship ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... table, dropped on his knees, inspected the tiny airplane. A perfect miniature, delicately beautiful; its slim, small wings were bright as silver foil. Carefully, he opened the door and peered into the diminutive cabin. Two minute rifles, several Lilliputian pistols, and boxes of ammunition to match, lay on the rear seat of ...
— The Pygmy Planet • John Stewart Williamson
... built of squared brick, Which cunningly was without mortar laid, Whose walls were high, but nothing strong, nor thick, And golden foil all over them displayed, That purest sky with brightness they dismayed. High lifted up were many lofty towers And goodly galleries far overlaid, Full of fair windows, and delightful bowers, And on the top a dial told the ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... their being, both as to subject-matter and style and method, remote a Scaevolae studiis. He sat by, as he would have done at a stage-play or a fencing-match, enjoying and applauding the skill exhibited, but without feeling much ambition to parade himself as a rival either of the foil or the buskin. I can easily believe, therefore, that in the earlier part of his life—before the blaze of universal fame had overawed {p.245} local prejudice, and a new generation, accustomed to hear of that fame from their ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... Distinction was considered as incomplete in its establishment, if it did not possess a certain whimsical Character called a Fool; who was either to afford amusement to his witty Master by the real singularity of his Humour,—or to act as a foil to his foolish Lord by well-timed displays of affected Folly.—These appendages to Greatness have long been laid aside.—Indeed, the present Age, which is remarkable for its refinements, has, in the general methods of forming the Great, ...
— The First of April - Or, The Triumphs of Folly: A Poem Dedicated to a Celebrated - Duchess. By the author of The Diaboliad. • William Combe
... is her son, Fathom, the hero of the book. Because he is placarded, "Shrewd villain of monstrous inhumanity," we are fain to accept him for what his creator intended; but seldom in word or deed is he a convincingly real villain. His friend and foil, the noble young Count de Melvil, is no more alive than he; and equally wooden are Joshua, the high-minded, saint-like Jew, and that tedious, foolish Don Diego. Neither is the heroine alive, the peerless Monimia, but then, in her case, ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... designed to provide some protection against dust and {programming fluid} without impeding typing. 4. 'elephant condom': the plastic shipping bags used inside cardboard boxes to protect hardware in transit. 5. /n. obs./ A dummy directory '/usr/tmp/sh', created to foil the Great Worm by exploiting a portability bug in one of its parts. So named in the title of a comp.risks article by Gene Spafford during the Worm crisis, and again in the text of "The Internet Worm Program: An Analysis", Purdue Technical Report ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... husband she grew as sentimental as a housemaid and as little heedful of the absurd. She grew young and amazingly pretty, the sister of her son. It would be untrue to say that, being in clover, she was unaware of it. For a woman of one-and-thirty to have her husband for a lover, and her lover for a foil, is a gift of the gods. So she took it—with the sun and green water, and wine-bright air. Let the moralists battle it out with the sophists: it did her ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... Ephesian hierarchy. But the female characters, as is almost always the case in the Greek romances, are far better drawn, and infinitely more interesting, than the men. Even Melissa, though apparently intended only as a foil to the perfections of Leucippe, wins upon us by her amorous weakness, and the invincible kindness of heart which impels her, even when acquainted with the real state of affairs, to protect the lovers against her husband's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... principal processes by which this will be effected. Hitherto the chief drawback has been the difficulty of imparting a suitable grain to the printing blocks made from these reliefs; but this has been practically overcome by the use of sheets of metallic foil previously impressed with the form of a finely-engraved tint-block. The actual printing surface, of course, consists of an electrotype or stereotype taken from this metallic-grained ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... analysis. As was stated in the study of oxygen, water may be separated into its component parts by means of the electric current. The form of apparatus ordinarily used for effecting this analysis is shown in Fig. 18. A platinum wire, to the end of which is attached a small piece of platinum foil (about 15 mm. by 25 mm.), is fused through each of the tubes B and D, as shown in the figure. The stopcocks at the ends of these tubes are opened and water, to which has been added about one tenth of its volume of sulphuric acid, is poured into the tube A until the side tubes B and D are completely ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson
... alyk. But of it we have sundrie diphthonges: oa, as to roar, a boar, a boat, a coat; oi, as coin, join, foil, soil; oo, as food, good, blood; ou, as house, mouse, &c. Thus, we commonlie wryt mountan, fountan, quhilk it wer more etymological to wryt montan, fontan, according to ...
— Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue - A Treates, noe shorter than necessarie, for the Schooles • Alexander Hume
... blinded in their rage, Our foes should fling us down their mortal gage, And with a hostile step profane our sod! We shall not shrink, my brothers, but go forth To meet them, marshalled by the Lord of Hosts, And overshadowed by the mighty ghosts Of Moultrie and of Eutaw—who shall foil Auxiliars such as these? Nor these alone, But every stock and stone Shall help us; but the very soil, And all the generous wealth it gives to toil, And all for which we love our noble land, Shall fight beside, ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... birds, and fish; the twelfth, of hares and venison, and fish with vinegar and sugar; the thirteenth, of beef and deer, with lemon and sugar; the fourteenth, of fowls, capons, and tench, covered with red and green foil; the fifteenth, of pigeons, small birds, beans, salt tongues, and carp; the sixteenth, of rabbits, peacocks, and eels roasted with lemon; the seventeenth, of sour milk and cheese; and the eighteenth, of fruits of the rarest ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various
... Boccaccio a thought, only the way they were placed being important. The elaborate preparation for the story-telling; the grouping of them as a whole, in contrast with the greater story he put as their contrast and foil; the solemn gloom, the deep chiaroscuro of this framing, painted like a miniature; the artful way in which he prepares for his lieta brigata the way out of the charnel-house: these are the real 'Decameron.' The author presents it in a prelude which ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... longing and vexation dimmed her eyes as she thought of the golden, halcyon days of youth that would never return. At any rate, Felipe and Chiquita must not meet until after she had warned the latter. Blanch must be used as a foil as long ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... to the middle; moth-eaten, stained, and ragged, the collegian's gown-relic of the dead man's palmy time; a bag of carpenter's tools, chiefly broken; a cricket-bat; an odd boxing-glove; a fencing-foil, snapped in the middle; and, more than all, some half-finished attempts at rude toys: a boat, a cart, a doll's house, in which the good-natured Caleb had busied himself for the younger ones of that family in which he had found the fatal ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... lofty in proportion; and many a bold heart beat loud, and no, shame to them, as she began firing away merrily,, determined, as all well knew, to wipe out in English blood the disgrace of her late foil. ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... Chapman, differed from him in every respect, and made an admirable foil for the other's impetuous temperament. Ned's father was a merchant in moderate circumstances, and he had just reason to be proud of his son's ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... flowed over the little wooden barriers with which an attempt had been made to arrest its course. Next came some Port Saluts, similar to antique discs, with exergues bearing their makers' names in print. A Romantour, in its tin-foil wrapper, suggested a bar of nougat or some sweet cheese astray amidst all these pungent, fermenting curds. The Roqueforts under their glass covers also had a princely air, their fat faces marbled with blue and yellow, as though they were suffering ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... thousand. Several of the daimios were converted to the new faith, and Nobunaga, who hated and strove to exterminate the Buddhists, received the Christians with the greatest favor, gave them desirable sites for their churches, and sought to set them up as a foil to the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the national measures, and her phenomenal leanness made her only comfortable in the national dress. She travelled from place to place in Spain with another woman whom she had taught to dance, and whose beauty she used cleverly as a foil to her own uncomeliness; and so wasted herself in these low resorts, earning hardly sufficient to keep body and soul together. I wish I could ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... all this was a veil of dark gauze at the horizon-line, its foil a golden, virgin moon, ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... it sunk and fail'd! What wonder that your plans prevail'd! In vain by stratagem you toil'd;— His skill and prudence all had foil'd; For one day's vigilance surpast Seeming perfection in the last. Each hour more active, more intent, Unarm'd and unassail'd he went; While every weapon glanc'd aside, His armour every lance defied. The blow that could that soul subdue At length was struck—but not by you! It ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... be taken by the banderilleros. These gay-looking people are men on foot with arrows two feet long, each with a hooked point. On the other end these arrows are decorated with little flags, brass foil, tinsel, and even bird cages whence gaily decked birds are permitted to escape. With these arrows the banderilleros walk right up to the bull, and, when he is ready to charge, jump to one side and thrust their weapons deep into his neck, halfway ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... was one in the very bud of young and active manhood. His years could not have exceeded two-and-twenty, nor would he probably have been thought so old, had not his features been shaded by a rich, brown hue, that in some degree, served as a foil to a natural complexion, which, though never fair, was still clear and blooming. A pair of dark, bushy, and jet-black, silken whiskers, that were in singular contrast to eye-lashes and brows of almost feminine beauty and softness, aided also ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... from thy birth my friend, Dorset, to thee this fable let me send: With Damon's lightness weigh thy solid worth; The foil is known to set the diamond forth: Let the feign'd tale this real moral give, How many ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... thing, and rich in blossoms and fruits of all kinds. Let the wonderful plant, which I will not name, have its place. It will serve at least as a foil to the bright-gleaming pomegranate and the yellow oranges. Or should there be, perhaps, instead of this motley abundance, only one perfect flower, which combines all the beauties of the rest and renders ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... of living, is very simple, and consists of but few articles. Their bed is a mat, usually of fine texture, and manufactured for the purpose, with a number of pillows, worked at the ends and adorned with a shining substance that resembles foil. A sort of canopy or valance, formed of various coloured cloths, hangs overhead. Instead of tables they have what resemble large wooden salvers, with feet called dulang, round each of which three ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... habits of frugality which are never harder to learn than by a Scots gentleman of the ancient strain accustomed to keep open house. I do not think it has ever been acknowledged that there is in this desperate struggle to keep afloat a certain intoxication of its own. To foil your pursuers, your enemies, whether they take the form of armed assailants or of pressing creditors, by ever another and another daring combination, by sudden reliefs unthought of, by a bold coup executed ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... flash and plunged to the hilt through the flesh of his enemy's forearm. With a cry of pain O'Grady dropped his club, and the two crashed to the stone floor of the trail. This was the attack that Jan had feared and tried to foil, and with a lightning-like squirming movement he swung himself half free, and on his back, with O'Grady's huge hands linking at his throat, he drew back his knife arm for the ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... envied the couple on the adjoining gallery had I been differently educated. For, strangely, the lady wore only a sarong of thin material, a diaphanous jacket, and very low sandals; she might almost have posed as a life model. As a foil, her husband appeared ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... were tempted more than any clique could bear by the unwariness of the Legislature, and closed the doors of the medical schools to female applicants. Against unqualified female practitioners they never acted with such zeal and consent; and why? The female quack is a public pest, and a good foil to the union; the qualified doctress is a public good, and a ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... is so constituted that a revealment to him of coming events in detail would be injurious; and experience proves that such disclosures, when made to him in dreams or otherwise, are profitless, as he always fails to foil the evil of which he ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... as a detail which should add its brilliant or subdued note to the color harmony. Not only do the paintings and sculpture take proper place in the tone scheme, but every bit of planting, every strip of lawn and every bed of flowers or shrubs, has its duty to perform as color accent or foil. Even the gravel of the walks was especially chosen to shade ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney
... eloquence. The Head and the Common-room, standing back on the dais, could not see the glaring offence, but a prefect left the line, rolled it up swiftly, and as swiftly tossed it into a glove and foil locker. ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... over in his mind various schemes to foil McKee, who now stood behind him with the muzzle of his revolver pressing into the middle of his back. Each was rejected ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... confined Within Hell-gates till now; thou us impowered To fortify thus far, and overlay, With this portentous bridge, the dark abyss. Thine now is all this world; thy virtue hath won What thy hands builded not; thy wisdom gained With odds what war hath lost, and fully avenged Our foil in Heaven; here thou shalt monarch reign, There didst not; there let him still victor sway, As battle hath adjudged; from this new world Retiring, by his own doom alienated; And henceforth monarchy with thee divide Of all things, parted by the empyreal bounds, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... du Maurier's art, that which survives in it better than its sometimes scathing commentary upon a passing "craze," is his close representation of the air with which people seek to foil each other in conversation and conceal their own trepidations. His "Social Agonies" are among the best of this series. If he does not lay stress upon individual character, he still remains the master draughtsman of a state of mind. He succeeds thus in the very field ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... efforts to suppress it, have affected nothing more than a three-fold increase of its horrors. There is a God who rules this world—all-powerful—far-seeing: He does not permit his creatures to foil his designs. It is he who, for his all-wise, though to us often inscrutable purposes, throws "impossibilities" in the way of our fondest hopes and most strenuous exertions. ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... contrariety, contrast, foil, antithesis, oppositeness; contradiction; antagonism &c (opposition) 708; clashing, repugnance. inversion &c 218; the opposite, the reverse, the inverse, the converse, the antipodes, the antithesis, the other extreme. V. be contrary &c adj.; contrast with, oppose; diller toto coelo [Lat.]. invert, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... perseverance, diligence, and success in the ministry, as of a vessel filled with grace, and ordained to honour. Still, when he spoke of himself as man, he used the strongest terms of self-abasement. He had no doubt he should be able to foil Dr. Beaumont in argument, and convince him that the Anglican church was really anti-christian. His benevolence and liberality urged him to undertake this office at this time, in hopes that, since the Doctor's subsistence depended upon his acquiescence, ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... that Fred, so tall and splendidly developed, was my son? From me he took his wealth of nature, for Mr. Fontevrault was one of those dried, wrinkled old men, women like me often marry; not because of the settlements only, but because of the foil. My figure was moulded like the Venus they copied in the colder marble from Pauline. Shoulders and arms, delicious in their curves, shining with a rosy fairness. A creamy skin, with a faint coralline tinge in the cheeks. The forehead is too low, some say; and yet artists have praised ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... please either Talleyrand or Bonaparte better than to inflame us into a civil war, then swoop down upon us, under the pretence of coming to the rescue. Burr would be just the man to play into their hands, although with no such intention. Jefferson is quite clever enough to foil them, if he found that more to his interest. Well, neither is elected yet. Let us hope for the best. Go and ask Angelica to play for you. I have letters to write to ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... fine feathers make fine birds. I saw many who were vastly richer dressed than your friends, but I will venture to say that I saw none neater or more elegant: which praise I ascribe to the taste of Mrs. Temple and my mantuamaker; for, after having declared that I would not have any foil or tinsel about me, they fixed upon the dress ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... not exhaust the story, however. In another part of the legend, to which, again, Zabara offers parallels, Solomon, being out hunting, comes suddenly on Marcolf's hut, and, calling upon him, receives a number of riddling answers, which completely foil him, and tor the solution of which he is compelled to have recourse to the proposer. He departs, however, in good humor, desiring Marcolf to come to court the next day and bring a pail of fresh milk and curds from the cow. Marcolf fails, and the king condemns him to sit up all night in ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... that I might possibly hear a word or so that would give hope of a future for the idea. Kruesi, when he had nearly finished it, asked what it was for. I told him I was going to record talking, and then have the machine talk back. He thought it absurd. However, it was finished, the foil was put on; I then shouted 'Mary had a little lamb,' etc. I adjusted the reproducer, and the machine reproduced it perfectly. I was never so taken aback in my life. Everybody was astonished. I was always afraid of things that worked the first time. Long experience proved that there were great drawbacks ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... in which Aeschylus was held, gave birth to a herd of imitators, among whom were sons and nephews of his own; but as, like most imitators, they could do little more than mimic his defects without reaching his excellencies, they served only as a foil to set off the lustre of his great successor Sophocles, who, while yet his scholar, aspired to be his competitor, and gained the preeminence at ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... be no casus belli; the younger son would bow to the law of primogeniture and that would end the matter. Schiller, however, felt the need of a bolder contrast to his hero. The 'sublime criminal' required a colossal foil; and as equality with the sword was out of the question, the most obvious recourse was to pit natural depravity against natural greatness; scheming intellect ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... of the public works are magnificent; but I cannot go so far as to say that one must approve of all. The St. Lawrence Canal has cost the best part of a million, is useless in time of war, and a mere foil at all times to the Rideau navigation, which the British government constructed free of any provincial funds. The timber slides on the Trent are so much money put into the timber-merchants' pockets, to the extreme detriment of the neighbouring settlers, whose ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... wanted to leave here he could take the bidarka almost any night and escape, but I believe he is afraid to leave the bay lest he may be found by some of these villagers whom he has offended. I don't think Skookie would go anywhere with him. As it is, one is a foil to the other here with us, but each is afraid of the other away ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... times of the war as to Sicily the Roman aristocracy had gradually raised itself to the height of its new position; and if it unconstitutionally usurped for the senate functions of government which by right foil to be shared between the magistrates and the comitia alone, it vindicated the step by its certainly far from brilliant, but sure and steady, pilotage of the vessel of the state during the Hannibalic storm and the complications ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... came from Captain Alec's lips. He was standing on the hearthrug with his arm round Cynthia's waist, and his other hand raising one of hers to his lips. He looked admirably handsome—strong, protecting, devoted. And Cynthia, in her fragile appealing prettiness, was a delicious foil, a perfect complement to the picture. But now, under stress of emotion—small blame to a man who was making a vow of eternal fidelity!—under stress of emotion, as, on a previous occasion, under that of indignation, the ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... recollecting that those parts of the mouth must be more ready to use for the purpose of forming the vowels, which were in the habit of being exerted in forming the other letters; I rolled up some tin foil into cylinders about the size of my finger; and speaking the vowels separately through them, found by the impressions made on them, in what part of the mouth each of the vowels was formed with somewhat greater accuracy, but not so as ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... Maclaren; and it was at Maclaren's he first met Alfred Bates Richards, who became a life friend. Richards, an undergraduate of Exeter, was a man of splendid physique. A giant in height and strength, he defeated all antagonists at boxing, but Burton mastered him with the foil and the broad-sword. Richards, who, like Burton, became a voluminous author [47] wrote long after, "I am sure, though Burton was brilliant, rather wild, and very popular, none of us foresaw ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... Thursday evening, in Oxford one roof sheltered both of them. Furthermore, there was even some measure of intimacy between them. It was the Duke's whim to condescend further in the direction of Noaks than in any other. He saw in Noaks his own foil and antithesis, and made a point of walking up the High with him at least once in every term. Noaks, for his part, regarded the Duke with feelings mingled of idolatry and disapproval. The Duke's First in Mods oppressed him (who, ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... Bacchus, and propounds the prize, The groom his fellow-groom at buts defies, And bends his bow, and levels with his eyes: Or, stript for wrestling, smears his limbs with oil, And watches with a trip his foe to foil. Such was the life the frugal Sabines led; So Remus and his brother king were bred, From whom th' austere Etrurian virtue rose; And this rude life our homely fathers chose; Old Rome from such a race derived her birth, The seat of empire, and the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... dance, while Dickie, bent close to his cracked mirror, was tying his least crumpled tie with not too steady fingers, while Jim was applying to his brown crest a pomade sent to him by a girl in Cheyenne, while Babe was wondering anxiously whether green slippers could be considered a match or a foil to a dress of turquoise blue, while Girlie touched her cream-gold hair with cream-padded finger-tips, Sheila Arundel prowled about her room with hot anger and cold ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... far, and overlay, With this portentous bridge, the dark abyss. Thine now is all this world; thy virtue hath won What thy hands builded not; thy wisdom gained With odds what war hath lost, and fully avenged Our foil in Heaven; here thou shalt monarch reign, There didst not; there let him still victor sway, As battle hath adjudged; from this new world Retiring, by his own doom alienated; And henceforth monarchy with thee divide Of all things, parted by ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... look up. He did not seem to expect to see more than he found, when he entered—a great bare room with its floor strewn with sawdust and its walls adorned here and there by a gaunt trophy of arms. In the middle of the floor, engaged apparently in weighing one foil against another, was a stout, dark-complexioned man, whose light and nimble step, as he advanced to meet his visitor, gave the lie ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... candy. Half the delectableness is in breaking down these frail and exquisite walls yourself, and tasting the nectar before it has lost its freshness by contact with the air. Then the comb is a sort of shield or foil that prevents the tongue from being overwhelmed by the first shock ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... agitation. He was, he said, overpowered by a sentiment with regard to me which amounted to this—that a man wanted, after all, to be something more than a cipher in his own house, where, if anywhere, it is not pleasant to serve as a mere foil to some one else. This sentiment was merely excusable, he thought, in a man who, though he might reasonably suppose himself of some account among his fellows, had been brought into close contact with another to whom ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... why so hot? Your bolts distress not me, But injure the fair mistress of these bowers, Whose sordid guardian would her husband be, For lucre, not for love. Rather than quarrel, let us use our powers, And gift with magic aid some active sprite, To foil the guardian ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... being resolved to cheat her, as he had done before. He went to find out little Day, and saw him with a little foil in his hand, with which he was fencing with a great monkey; the child being then only three years of age. He took him up in his arms, and carried him to his wife, that she might conceal him in her chamber along with his sister, and in the room of little Day cooked ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... that mighty Masque Along the pebbled path. A queer thought came Into my head that all the world without Was but a Masque, and I was creeping back, Back from the Mourner's Feast to Truth again. Yet—I grew bold, and tried the Southern door. 'Twas locked, but held no key on the inner side To foil my own, and softly, softly, click, I turned it, and with heart, sirs, in my mouth, Pushed back the studded door and entered in ... Stepped straight out of the world, I might have said, Out of the dusk into a night so deep, So dark, I trembled like a child.... And then I was ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... is the next study, No. 4! How well Chopin knew the value of contrast in tonality and sentiment! A veritable classic is this piece, which, despite its dark key color, C sharp minor as a foil to the preceding one in E, bubbles with life and spurts flame. It reminds one of the story of the Polish peasants, who are happiest when they sing in the minor mode. Kullak calls this "a bravura study for velocity and lightness in both hands. Accentuation fiery!" ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... praises through, But telling what I may to ease my mind. And I declare that when I speak thereof Love sheds such perfect sweetness over me That if my courage failed not, certainly To him my listeners must be all resign'd. Wherefore I will not speak in such large kind That mine own speech should foil me, which were base; But only will discourse of her high grace In these poor words, the best that I can find, With you alone dear dames and damozels: 'Twere ill to speak thereof with any else. . . . . . . . . My lady is desired in the ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... disagreeable things. But not to Gladys Graham. In these few days they had become united in the bonds of a love which was to stand all tests. Clara was sitting on a low chair, Gladys kneeling by her side, with her arm on her knee. So sitting, they presented a contrast, each a fine foil to the other. The stately, dark beauty of Clara set off the fairer loveliness of the younger girl; neither suffered by the contrast. These days of peace and restful, luxurious living had robbed Gladys of her wearied listlessness, ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... was to-night, her blue eyes still clouded with Ellen Montgomery's sorrows, her curls tumbled about her hot cheeks, would have made a pretty foil in a ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... glad his teammates could not know how he felt. Nervously he walked out to the mound, and caught the new ball which the umpire divested of its foil cover and tossed to him. Russell girded himself in protector and mask, and the batter stepped back to allow the usual ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... poet's unusually sensitive consciousness of the ephemeralness of love. The notion of permanence often seems to rob love of all its poetical quality. The dark despair engendered by a sense of its transience is needed as a foil to the fiery splendors of passion. Thus Rupert Brooke, in the sonnet, Mutability, dismisses the Platonic idea of eternal love ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... milder way but the small-pox; The very filthiness of Pandora's box? So many spots, like naeves, our Venus soil? One jewel set off with so many a foil? Blisters with pride swelled, which through 's flesh did sprout, Like rose-buds, stuck i'the lily-skin about. Each little pimple had a tear in it, To wail the fault its rising did commit, Which, rebel-like, with its own lord at strife, Thus made an insurrection ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... had just been the victim, but of a crime laboriously conceived, and executed with unheard-of audacity,—of one of those crimes such as too many are committed, whose combinations, nine times out of ten, set aside even a suspicion, and foil all the ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... woods; New England. Round-leaved cornus White, berries Rich soil, copses; Middle blue States. Roxbury wax-work, climbing Red berries Thickets; N. E., Middle States. Seneca snakeroot White Rocky soil; N. E., West, South. Sheep-laurel Crimson Hill-sides, pastures. Common. Shrubby cinque-foil Yellow Wet grounds; N. E. Common. Silver-weed Yellow Brackish marshes and meadows; New England, West. Small cranberry Rose-color Peat bogs; N. E., Middle States. Spotted wintergreen Pink and white Open woods; Middle States. Staghorn sumac Greenish Hill-sides, dry banks. Common. ...
— Harper's Young People, June 8, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... You fool!" he hissed. "Do you think that you are going to be allowed to get away from here to foil Arabi's plans? I tell you no! I have but to go from here and summon the guard, and you ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... Propionic acid in small silver formic acid. quantities cannot be distinguished from butyric (c) Evaporate to dryness; mix acid by tests within the with equal quantity of scope of the bacteriological arsenious oxide and heat laboratory. on platinum foil. ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... delicious Mrs. Bennet—her archness, her querulousness, and above all her talkativeness. Was it Sally May or Mrs. Bennet? Molly Seaton, as Mr. Bennet, proved an excellent foil—reserved, quiet, full of ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... the morn in other scenes? Other, but haply beautiful as these, Which now I gaze on; but which, wanting thee, Want half their charms, for, to thy poet's thought, More deeply glow'd the heaven, when thy fine eye, Surveying its grand arch, all kindling glow'd; The white cloud to thy white brow was a foil; And, by the soft tints of thy cheek outvied, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 322, July 12, 1828 • Various
... a sigh of relief. A companion like Miss Martin makes a most excellent foil to solitude, and after she had departed, Lady Gore lay for a while in a state of pleasant quiescence. Why, she wondered, even supposing she herself did think too well of her husband, should Miss Martin object? Why do onlookers appear to resent the spectacle ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... of his formal speech he began on his statement of the action of the naval affairs committee in buying control of the Altacoola land to foil attempts to rob the Government. As he had predicted, the Senate did "sit up." The Senate did agree that a new kind of politics ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... he finally refused to charge another one of the picadores. Their places, therefore, had to be taken by the banderilleros. These gay-looking people are men on foot with arrows two feet long, each with a hooked point. On the other end these arrows are decorated with little flags, brass foil, tinsel, and even bird cages whence gaily decked birds are permitted to escape. With these arrows the banderilleros walk right up to the bull, and, when he is ready to charge, jump to one side and thrust their weapons deep into ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... assault with the fourth cut. Bravo! performed with perfect precision." And so he went on. Each time, however, that Jones's division had to assault, he saw that Blackall endeavoured to take some undue advantage of Ernest, who with equal regularity contrived quietly to foil him. Ernest kept his eye on his opponent's, but said nothing, and in no other way showed that he was aware of his evil intentions. Blackall at length began to lose his temper at his own failures: he ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... very high boots, and his shirt-bosom was broad and none too clean, and his flowered silk waistcoat was cut so low that two buttons sufficed to keep it in place. He wore a flowing, black necktie, glistening foil-back studs, and rings ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... being barely eighteen years of age; but there were not wanting indications that her charms would one day even surpass those of the lovely Mrs Henderson Mrs Gaunt was a petite blonde, very pretty and engaging, and an excellent foil to Mrs Henderson, the two ladies being of exactly opposite types of beauty. Of the children no more need be said than that they were light-hearted, joyous, and just well-behaved enough to show that their parents did not intend ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... the stream that gathered its three forks at this point roared over its rocks; the stunted willows were in full leaf; the thick, soft moss of every dark shade of green and yellow and red made a foil for innumerable brilliant flowers. The fat, gray conies chirped at us from the rocks; the ground-squirrels, greatly multiplied since the wholesale destruction of foxes, kept the dogs unavailingly chasing ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... fancy for displaying their talents where they are not in demand; their chat is perfectly simple and effortless, it never makes play, as in France, under the lead of a fencing master, each one flourishing his foil, or, if he has nothing to ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... you care; now I'm coming with my expeditionary forces, and you and I'll foil them yet. One of our office men was taken sick, that was the trouble. And I've been so busy doing his work and my own, and getting this crew of wild Indians ready to invade Temple Camp, that I haven't had time ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... phenomenal leanness made her only comfortable in the national dress. She travelled from place to place in Spain with another woman whom she had taught to dance, and whose beauty she used cleverly as a foil to her own uncomeliness; and so wasted herself in these low resorts, earning hardly sufficient to keep body and soul together. I wish I could remember ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... method of construction shown in Fig. 41, the anode is put in first. This anode simply consists of a square bit of platinum or platinum-iridium foil, measuring about 0.75 inch by 1 inch, and riveted on to ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... Filter to remove insoluble sulphates, silica and any silver that may have been precipitated as silver chloride, and receive the filtrate in a small beaker, washing the precipitate and filter paper with warm water until the filtrate and washings amount to 75 cc. Bend a strip of aluminium foil (5 cm. x 12 cm.) into triangular form and place it on edge in the beaker. Cover the beaker and boil the solution (being careful to avoid loss of liquid by spattering) for ten minutes, but do not evaporate to ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot
... we were soon made to understand what such spiritual infanticide involved; and were committed to a kind of Massacre of the Innocents. In Ireland the young world was represented by young men, who shared the democratic dream of the Continent, and were resolved to foil the plot of Pitt; who was working a huge machine of corruption to its utmost to absorb Ireland into the Anti-Jacobin scheme of England. There was present every coincidence that could make the British rulers feel they were mere abbots of misrule. The stiff and self-conscious figure ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... to a bloody end. Here the interest centred itself in the Bandit's child, who, we need not say, was the little girl in the wreath and spangles, styled in the playbill "Miss Juliet Araminta Wife," and the incidents consisted in her various devices to foil the pursuit of the Baron and save her father. Some of these incidents were indebted to the Comic Muse, and kept the audience in a broad laugh. Her arch playfulness here was exquisite. With what vivacity she duped ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... violets, so doth the primrose fall At once the spring's pride and its funeral, Such early sweets get off in their still prime, And stay not here to wear the foil of time; While coarser flowers, which none would miss, if past, To scorching summers and ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... mad and blinded in their rage, Our foes should fling us down their mortal gage, And with a hostile step profane our sod! We shall not shrink, my brothers, but go forth To meet them, marshalled by the Lord of Hosts, And overshadowed by the mighty ghosts Of Moultrie and of Eutaw—who shall foil Auxiliars such as these? Nor these alone, But every stock and stone Shall help us; but the very soil, And all the generous wealth it gives to toil, And all for which we love our noble land, Shall fight beside, and through us, sea and strand, The heart of woman, and her hand, Tree, fruit, ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... and evening primroses floated in on the warm, moist air, and mingled with the steam of the tea-kettle and the fume in the chafing-dish; and the patter, patter of rain drops, and the dash of wet leaves against each other, were a foil to the tea-kettle's song. Wych Hazel looked on, musingly, till Rollo came back and took her round the room looking at books. Then offering her his arm, he somewhat suddenly brought her face to face with some one just entering by ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... the north-gate of the Forest (Here General Hawley thought it prudent to change his horse for a true-blue that staid up the hills). Billy Ives likewise took a horse of Sir Harry Liddell's, went quite through the Forest and run the foil through Nightingale Bottom to Cobden at Draught, up his Pine Pit Hanger to My Lady Lewknor's Puttocks, through every mews she went in the morning; went through the Warren above Westdean (where we dropt Sir Harry Liddell) ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... Royale. In the dead of night, however, Dormy Jamais drew it from under the mattress whereon the deathman slept, and substituted one a foot longer. This had been Ranulph's idea as a last resort, for he had a grim wish to foil the law even ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... notwithstanding her legerete. What makes me think the tradition that Celimene was Mademoiselle[1] Moliere true, is that Moliere was certainly in love with Celimene. She is made as engaging as possible, and her worst faults do not rise above foibles. Her satire is good-natured. Arsinoe is her foil, introduced to ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... of. It was still worse at the fencing-school, where, after three months' practice, I made but very little progress, and could never attempt fencing with any but my master. My wrist was not supple enough, nor my arm sufficiently firm to retain the foil, whenever he chose to make it fly out of my hand. Add to this, I had a mortal aversion both to the art itself and to the person who undertook to teach it to me, nor should I ever have imagined, that anyone could ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... the surrounding sandridges sheltered them from view, they crouched over a small basket they had brought with them and performed certain ceremonies. First the pouch was wrapped in many sheets of tin foil, which Richard had been long in collecting from various tobacco-loving friends. When that was done it flashed in the sun like a nugget of wrinkled silver. This was stuffed into a baking-powder can from which the label had been carefully scraped, and on whose lid had been scratched ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... did she amuse me, although without intending it, that I thought it would be only fair, in my turn, to do something for her entertainment. I was engaged one day in shaping a wooden foil with my knife, whistling and singing snatches of old melodies at my work, when all at once I caught sight of the ancient dame looking greatly delighted, chuckling internally, nodding her head, and keeping time with her hands. Evidently she was able to appreciate a style of music superior ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... several among them; in watching over their legislatures, in enacting that the vote of secession shall be submitted to the ratification of the whole people, certain frontier States seem to have already shown themselves resolved to foil ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... their purpose. They had already killed without remorse, and that I still survived was itself a mere accident. Yet the very fact that I lived yielded me fresh confidence, a fatalistic belief that my life had thus been spared for a specific purpose. It might yet be my privilege to foil these villains, and rescue Mrs. Henley. It was my belief she was also on board this vessel. I had no reason to assume this, except the wording of Broussard's report which I had overheard. But she was a prisoner, and this vessel would be the most likely place for her to be confined. ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... disinterested Nithisdale. When we contrast the petty and selfish policy of the Earl of Mar with the integrity and fidelity of those who fought in the same cause, and over whom he was commander, his character sinks low in the estimate, and acts like a foil to the purity and brightness of his fellow sufferers ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... their clothes than their guns if they had to choose between them. They also carry a handjar, which used to be their national weapon. It is a sort of heavy, straight cutlass, and they are so expert with it as well as so strong that it is as facile in the hands of a Blue Mountaineer as is a foil in the hands of a Persian maitre d'armes. They are so proud and reserved that they make one feel quite small, and an "outsider" as well. I can see quite well that they rather resent my being here ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... at them, it flashed in the pan. Neighboring garrisons were summoned, but all battling with goblins was fruitless. One night a dark and hostile throng emerged from the wood and moved toward the blockhouse, where twenty musketeers were keeping guard. "If you be ghosts or devils I will foil you," cried the captain, and tearing a silver button from his doublet he rammed it into his gun and fired on the advancing host. Even as the smoke of his musket was blown on the wind, so did the beleaguering army vanish, the silver bullet proving that ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... the degraded scolding of enemies that does not emanate from passion but out of greedy hankering for the applause of the masses, and which continually nauseates us amid the piety of this hour! Because our statemen failed to discover and foil shrewd plans of deception is no reason why we may hoist the flag of most pious morality. Not as weak-willed blunderers have we undertaken the fearful risk of this war. We wanted it. Because we had to wish it and could wish it. May the Teuton ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... double the size, in fact, of he Rose, though not so lofty in proportion; and many a bold heart beat loud, and no shame to them, as she began firing away merrily, determined, as all well knew, to wipe out in English blood the disgrace of her late foil. ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... the present campaign of Alva against Orange was a more consummate masterpiece than the, more brilliant and dashing expedition into Friesland. The Duke had resolved to hang upon his adversary's skirts, to follow him move by move, to check him at every turn, to harass him in a hundred ways, to foil all his enterprises, to parry all his strokes, and finally to drive him out of the country, after a totally barren campaign, when, as he felt certain, his ill-paid hirelings would vanish in all directions, and leave their patriot Prince a helpless and penniless ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... closer the particles pack together, the less the circulation of air through the mass, and the smaller the amount of aroma which is carried away. He also found that glass makes the best container for coffee, with the tin can, and the foil-lined bag with an inner lining of glassine, ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... down he thought again of that night when he had last seen Beatrice. How splendid she had looked in her boat on the water; how unreserved, and yet how reticent she was; how beautiful, and yet how unconscious of her beauty. What a foil she made to ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... not exactly even. The small-pox had left one only mark on her chin, which was so large, it might have been mistaken for a dimple, had not her left cheek produced one so near a neighbour to it, that the former served only for a foil to the latter. Her complexion was fair, a little injured by the sun, but overspread with such a bloom that the finest ladies would have exchanged all their white for it: add to these a countenance in which, though she was extremely bashful, a sensibility appeared ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... Gold foil may be cut to any shape and sewn on to embroidery, but spangles take mainly one of two shapes, best distinguished as disc-like and ring-like. The discs are flat, pierced in the centre, and sewn down usually with two or three radiating stitches (A, Illustration 51, and Illustration ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... these chambers should be noted the fine ivory carving from chamber 23, showing a bound captive; the large stock of painted model vases in limestone in a box in chamber 20; the set of perfect vases found in chamber 21; a fine piece of ribbed ivory; a piece of thick gold-foil covering of a hotep table, patterned as a mat, found in the long chamber west of the tomb; the deep mass of brown vegetable matter in the north-east chamber; the large stock of grain between chambers 8 and 11; and the bed of currants ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... answered these artless inquiries as best he could; they came as a refreshing foil to the sweet but melancholy memories of the past. They were interesting, too, from this very pretty but very ignorant little girl in this backward little Southern town. She was a flash of sunlight through a soft gray cloud; a vigorous shoot from an old moss-covered stump—she ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... cutter, that he always had on his table. It had a top like a fencing foil; in fact, that's what it was in miniature, except that it was edged. It was that top, flattened close down, that stopped any flow of blood, so that everyone thought at first it was the blow on the temple that killed him. There's this ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... lost, or can be lost, No birth, identity, form—no object of the world. Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing; Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain. Ample are time and space—ample the fields of Nature. The body, sluggish, aged, cold—the embers left from earlier fires, The light in the eye grown dim, shall duly flame again; The sun ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... were to begin at nine o'clock. They were to come in this order: Standing broad jump, running broad jump, high jump, foil match, revolver ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake
... the advantage of dressing on the condition that other ladies shall forego the same advantage; but when this compact is broken by any special lady, the treason is thought to be very treacherous. It is as though a fencer should remove the button from the end of his foil. But Mrs Greenow was so good-natured in tendering the services of Jeannette to all the young ladies, and was so willing to share with others those good things of the toilet which her care had provided, that her cap was forgiven her by the most ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... in a hundred fights should in his hundred-and-first, [Footnote: "The painful warrior, famoused for fight, After a thousand victories once foil'd, Is from the book of honor razed quite, And all the rest forgot for which he toil'd." Shakespeare's Sonnets.] as in his first, risk the loss of that particular battle, is inseparable from the condition of man, and the uncertainty ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... prevent his most telling points or his keenest wit from having dramatic expression. If he tells an anecdote which holds the attention of the table or of the circle of listeners, he permits his duller neighbor to tell the next, not only that his own wit may have a foil, but that his next anecdote may meet the sharp edge ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... shifted place in heav'n, Only that, whence it kindles, none is lost, And it is soon extinct; thus from the horn, That on the dexter of the cross extends, Down to its foot, one luminary ran From mid the cluster shone there; yet no gem Dropp'd from its foil; and through the beamy list Like flame in alabaster, glow'd ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... William Meredith Simpson!" Selingman recited, waving his cigar. "Well, well, we certainly have made a stir with our little meetings here. An inspired English Cabinet Minister, travel-stained and dusty, arrives with his valet and a black dispatch-box, to foil our schemes. Send him along, my friend. We are not at all afraid of Mr. Simpson. Perhaps we may even ask him ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... resemble just about as much in my person as in my writing. He, Addisonian and Goldsmithian to the back-bone, and steeped to the very lips in what is called classical literature, of which I have a horror and a loathing, as the deadest of all dead languages; he, foil of subdued pleasantry, quiet humor, and genial blandness, upon all subjects. I, altogether—but never mind. He is a generous fellow, and led the way to all our triumphs in that 'field of the cloth of gold' which men ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... time grew up for Vic Gregg, and the thought of free men who laughed at the law, strong men, fierce men. What would one of these have done if the girl he intended to marry had treated him like a foil? ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... all literary forms. She has learned to handle some orders of drama pleasantly, the farce more than pleasantly, and, very recently, the folk-tragedy nobly; but had it not been that plays of other than romantic tone were needed for the Abbey Theatre as a foil to those of Mr. Yeats and of Synge, I doubt whether it is drama that Lady Gregory would have chosen as the medium through which to express her reading of life. I can just as well imagine her shrewd kindliness of judgment upon the foibles and virtues of her countrymen in stories whose ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... filled with spiritual love. Contrary to the striving of the greater number of the men, who raised their love into heaven so as to keep it pure, and made it one with their religious aspirations, all the figures and symbols of religion were used by these women as an outlet and a foil to their sexuality. The loving soul repairing to the nuptial chamber is the transparent veil of desire half-concealed by religious conceptions. Women have described similar situations in metaphors which—for sensuous ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... for he had felt on his breast the point of his adversary's sword, but so lightly that he might have taken it for the button of a foil. His anger redoubled at the conviction that he owed his life to the captain, and his attacks became more numerous and more furious ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... Government has done a thing To make its guardian-angel droop her wing In sickened indignation: That is, has striven to strengthen its redoubts, Perfidious 'Ins,' to foil the eager 'Outs.' Hence ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... bullet-shaped head seemed too large for the thin bony little figure. Worn, fagged, and aged as Flora looked, she had still so much beauty, and far more of refinement and elegance, as to be a painful foil and contrast to the child that clung to her, waywardly refusing all response ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... divine qualities, though inseparable from all divine works, are yet suffered to exist in such varieties of degree, that their most limited manifestation shall, in opposition to their most abundant, act as a foil or contrary, just as we conceive of cold as contrary to heat, though the most extreme cold we can produce or conceive is not inconsistent with an unknown amount of heat in ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... body, nor blood sacrifice, Entreat you to your wonted furtherance? Then take my soul; my body, soul, and all, Before that England give the French the foil.' ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... her Lodgings are remembred? After this, who will trust the gratitude of a Common-wealth? or who will blame the Conduct of a silly Court, for being over-reach'd by the whole French Council, when the able part of the Nation, the designing heads, the gray wisdom, and the Beaux Garcons, are all foil'd by a single French Woman, at their own Weapon, dissimulation? for the other French Dutchess, since I perceive our Author is unacquainted with her Character, I will give it him; she is one who loves her ...
— His Majesties Declaration Defended • John Dryden
... to have lived, and I hope to live hereafter. Goodness and mercy went before my birth, and goodness and mercy will follow my death. For the ills of this life, if there was no silence there would be no music. Ignorance is a spur to knowledge. Darkness is a pavilion for the Almighty, a foil to the painter to make his shadows. So are afflictions good for our instruction, and adversities for our amendment. As for the article of death, shall I shun to meet what she who lay in my bosom hath passed through? And look you, fair ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... perils still remained, how many criminal designs, how many treasonable plots, which only Marat's perspicacity and vigilance could unravel and foil! Now he was dead, who was there to denounce Custine loitering in idleness in the Camp of Caesar and refusing to relieve Valenciennes, Biron tarrying inactive in the Lower Vendee letting Saumur be taken and Nantes blockaded, Dillon betraying the ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... Wherein he best may grow And bring forth guerdon of the planter's toil— The lily is most fair, But says not' I will only blow Upon a southern land'; the cedar makes no coil What rock shall owe The springs that wash his feet; The crocus cannot arbitrate the foil That for his purple radiance is most meet— Lord, even so I ask one prayer, The which if it be granted, It skills not where Thou plantest me, only ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... but they do show a preference, and to obtain rapid combustion, the body, if not already black, ought to be blackened. When metals are to be burned, it is necessary to blacken or otherwise tarnish them, so as to diminish their reflective power. Blackened zinc foil, when brought into the focus of invisible rays, is instantly caused to blaze, and burns with its peculiar purple light. Magnesium wire flattened, or tarnished magnesium ribbon, also bursts into flame. Pieces of charcoal suspended ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... wanton malice wrung, By blockheads' daring into madness stung; His well-won bays, than life itself more dear, By miscreants torn, who ne'er one sprig must wear: Foil'd, bleeding, tortur'd, in the unequal strife, The hapless poet flounders on through life; Till, fled each hope that once his bosom fir'd, And fled each muse that glorious once inspir'd, Low sunk in squalid, unprotected age, Dead, even resentment, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... seek him, but was almost slain, Perhaps is dead now; everywhere The knights come foil'd from the great quest, in vain; In vain they struggle for ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... with nitrate of silver, soluble in nitric acid and ammonia. When the precipitate is dried and heated on platinum-foil, it disperses as white vapour with slight detonation. Sulphate of lime in excess gives a white precipitate, soluble in nitric or hydrochloric acid, but insoluble in oxalic, tartaric, acetic, or any ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... tortured with thirst, he had ventured near the spring at the headwaters of Broderson Creek, on Quien Sabe, and had all but fallen into the hands of the posse that had been watching for that very move. It was useless now to regret that he had tried to foil pursuit by turning back on his tracks to regain the mountains east of Bonneville. Now Delaney was almost on him. To distance that posse, was the only thing to be thought of now. It was no longer a question of hiding till pursuit should ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... The Gods themselves in archery defied. Soon, therefore, died huge Eurytus, ere yet Old age he reach'd; him, angry to be call'd To proof of archership, Apollo slew. But if ye name the spear, mine flies a length By no man's arrow reach'd; I fear no foil 280 From the Phaeacians, save in speed alone; For I have suffer'd hardships, dash'd and drench'd By many a wave, nor had I food on board At all times, therefore I am much unstrung. He spake; and silent the Phaeacians sat, Of whom alone ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... She knew full well that her friend would resent the slightest semblance of love-making on the part of any man on board. Already her astonishment at Elsie's unlooked-for vivacity was yielding to the humor of meeting such a rival. The Count might serve as a foil, but the real quarry now was the captain. That very night there would be a moon. And the sea was calm as a sheltered lake. Isobel's lips parted in a delighted smile as she tried to imagine Courtenay deserting her to discuss those celebrities ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... herself from possible Austrian attacks. Russia definitely notified Germany that her mobilization was directed against Austria only. Meanwhile England continued her efforts to bring about a conference of the powers, a plan which Germany continued to foil. The Czar in a formal telegram to the Kaiser on July 29 suggested that the Austro-Serbian problem be given over to the Hague Tribunal, a suggestion which would have led to peace. Nothing came ...
— A School History of the Great War • Albert E. McKinley, Charles A. Coulomb, and Armand J. Gerson
... turn back at the end of each sentence, ask himself what it meant, if he believed it or disbelieved it, and, so to speak, that he must pack it away as part of his mental furniture before he took in another sentence. That is just as a dentist jams one little bit of gold-foil home, and then another, and then another. He does not put one large wad on the hollow tooth, and then crowd it all in at once. Capel Lofft says that this reflection—going forward as a serpent does, by a series of backward ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... ignoble spoil, The beggar's dole, the greed of chiffonnier, The scum of camps, the implements of toil Snatched from dead hands, to rust as useless here; All they could rake or glean from hut or soil Piled their lean ponies, with the jackdaw's greed For vacant glitter. It were scarce a foil To all this tinsel that one feathered reed Bore on its barb ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... She has in her favour a memory for places and nothing more. A deviation amounting to two or three of our strides is enough to make her lose her way and to keep her from returning to her people, whereas miles across unknown country will not foil the Mason-bee. I expressed my surprise, just now, that man was deprived of a wonderful sense wherewith certain animals are endowed. The enormous distance between the two things compared might furnish matter for discussion. In the present case, ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... steam Of black, fermenting, putrid gore, Rank oozing through each burning pore; Behold, as on a dungeon wall, The worms upon my body crawl, The which, if I would brush away, Around my clammy fingers play, And, twining fast with many a coil, In loathsome sport my labor foil. ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... part of a little fortune, and had married a very agreeable woman for love, by whom he then had two children. As our reader is to be more acquainted with this person, it may not be improper to open somewhat of his character, especially as it will serve as a kind of foil to the noble and great disposition of our hero, and as the one seems sent into this world as a proper object on which the talents of the other were to be displayed with a proper and ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... curious fruit—sweet-cake rings and stars and two gingerbread men hanging by pack-thread from the white and green branches, the Noah's Ark lodged in one crotch, the very amateur snow-shoes in another, and the lost toys wrapped up, transfigured in tobacco-foil, dangling merrily before ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... would be wrested from him. His jester had acquainted him with the discovery just made of the secret hoard, and he was therefore compelled to have recourse to this desperate move. But I was apprized of his intentions by Will Sommers, and have come in time to foil him." ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... horrid devices, with which the children of the forest are accustomed, like the more civilised heroes of the moustache, to back their reputation for courage, contenting himself with a broad and deep shadowing of black, that served as a sufficient and an admirable foil to the brighter gleamings of his native swarthiness. His head was as usual shaved to the crown, where a large and gallant scalp-lock seemed to challenge the grasp of his enemies. The ornaments that were ordinarily pendant from the cartilages of his ears had been removed, on account of ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... at its best is as vulgar as house-painting beside the green of bird's plumage or of clear water. No diamond shows colour so pure as a dewdrop; the ruby is like the pink of an ill-dyed and half-washed-out print, compared to the dianthus; and the carbuncle is usually quite dead unless set with a foil, and even then is not prettier than the seed of a pomegranate. The opal is, however, an exception. When pure and uncut in its native rock, it presents the most lovely colours that can be seen in the world, ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... below Trim, and an equal distance from the old royal palace of Tara, Bective Abbey stands on the northern bank of the Boyne, with a square, battlemented tower overshadowing its cloistered quadrangle. The cinque-foil cloister arches, the fillets that bind the clustered shafts of the pillars, the leaf ornaments of the plinths at their base all speak of a luxuriant sense of beauty and grace, of a spirit of pure and admirable artistic work. This rich creative power thus breaking ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... among ladies, but which my son and I had only gained by constant practice, was of great service in my performances, for while I was executing my tricks, I could see everything that passed around me, and thus prepare to foil any difficulties presented me. This exercise had given me, so to speak, the power of following two ideas simultaneously, and nothing is more favorable in conjuring than to be able to think at the same time both of what you are saying and of what ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... feeling and with some hilarity. Mamie, in a plush Gainsborough hat and a gown of wine-coloured silk, sat, an apparent queen, among her rude surroundings and companions. The dusky litter of the cabin set off her radiant trimness: tarry Johnson was a foil to her fair beauty; she glowed in that poor place, fair as a star; until even I, who was not usually of her admirers, caught a spark of admiration; and even the captain, who was in no courtly humour, proposed that the scene should be commemorated ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... time of Ralegh's birth the family had lost its pristine splendour. But there has been a tendency to exaggeration of the extent of the decadence, by way of foil to the merit which retrieved the ruin. John Hooker, a contemporary Devonshire antiquary, uncle to the author of The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, described the family as 'consopited,' and as having 'become buried in oblivion, as though it had never been.' ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... intelligence. Intellectual smartness and abstract rational deductions entice you. But, to return to the SPECIAL CASE we were talking about just now. I must tell you that we have to deal with reality, with nature. This is a very important thing, and how admirably does she often foil the highest skill! Listen to an old man; I am speaking quite seriously. Rodion"—(on saying which Porphyrius Petrovitch, who was hardly thirty-five years of age, seemed all of a sudden to have aged, a sudden metamorphosis ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... "We might ask for aluminum-foil ribbon to come up in the next supply ship," said Joe. "We could have masses of that, or maybe metallic dust ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... few months to live. As for the last one, with the stern looks and bushy black hair, he appears to bear his fate in such a manner as ought to make us resigned to our own." "That," whispered a fellow-prisoner, "is Foresti, who, like Ajax, doubtless mutters between his teeth, 'I will foil them yet, though even the gods oppose me!'" [Footnote: "Memoires d'un Prisonnier d'Etat." Par ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... you have luck," Willoughby addressed him, still clutching Crossjay and treating his tugs to get loose as an invitation to caresses. But the foil barely concealed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... appears in the quotation from Edrisi below as Hindiah, and found its way into Spanish in the shapes of Alhinde, Alfinde, Alinde, first with the meaning of steel, then assuming, that of steel mirror, and finally that of metallic foil of a glass mirror. (See Dozy and Engelmann, 2d ed. pp. 144-145.) Hint or Al-hint is used in Berber also for steel. (See J. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... like a book with a purpose from which the purpose has been by some oversight omitted. When a young person fails to "find herself" (as the phrase used to go) there should surely be provided some foil to her instability, either implicit in the behaviour of other characters or expressed in the meditations of the author. Even if the author only means to tell us that human life is all like this, she ought ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 4, 1914 • Various
... Again Madame found her foil turned aside. She began to lose patience. Her boot patted the sod. "Monsieur, since the countess is not high enough, since gold and ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... vulgar nature, but gently pitiful to the lover of his kind, he looked like a half mouldered warrior, waked from beneath an ancient cairn, to walk about in a world other than he took it to be. Malcolm, in his commonplace Sunday suit, served as a foil to his picturesque grandfather; to whose oft reiterated desire that he would wear the highland dress, he had hitherto returned no other answer than a humorous representation of the different remarks with which the neighbours ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... offering to this great power. For its sake she would have found it impossible to make any mistake in her own singing, or do anything with her own voice, but just place it at the service of her companion, as a foil to her grand ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... of his generosity in this respect; for it was much talked of at the time. One of your countrymen, who had never handled a fencing-foil nor fired a pistol, took offence at something M. de Mauleon had said in disparagement of the Duke of Wellington, and called him out. Victor de Mauleon accepted the challenge, discharged his pistol, not in the air—that might have been an affront—but so as to be wide ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... stolen automobile. Maybe you'd like to help me take it back to its owner, hey? If you do you'll get an honourable mention in our troop-book. I was carried away in it by two thieves who didn't know I was in the car, because I was disguised, sort of, under the buffalo robe. Do you want to help me foil them?" ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Ray was recalled to town by an urgent telegram, therefore I was left alone at Basingstoke to foil the dastardly spies. I stayed there for thirteen weeks, and then went with my old friend to Grimsby, he having received news that a German hairdresser, named Macdonald, ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... see Lord Orville till we went into the tea-room, which is large, low, and under ground, and serves merely as a foil to the apartments above; he then sat next to us. He seemed to belong to a large party, chiefly of ladies; but, among the gentlemen attending them, ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... story!" he thought to himself as he strode across the turf, "to make myself a mere foil and stop-gap for that conceited brute! Not I." Far from practising the abstinence of the other two, he had eaten as much as he could stuff and drunk all the beer he could get, and this, combined with resentment at Robarts' words, caused him to go in for slogging just ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... lower portion is not divided into nave and transept, but seems like a system of huge semi-cylinders erected on their bases, and united with reentrant angles, their convex surfaces toward us, so that the ground-plan might be called a species of quatre-foil. In each of the convex faces is an admirably proportioned door-way, a Gothic arch with deep-carved and elaborately fretted mouldings, so wonderfully perfect in its imitation that you almost feel like knocking ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... pretend to invent, or decide upon, any one given type or form of head-dress. So many are the wants of a man in covering his head, so widely differing from each other are the exigencies of different people, that uniformity in hats is to be given up as a bad job: to attempt it would foil the strength of a Hercules: the utmost we can hope to effect is to lay down certain limits for the variations of this ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... Himself Their great physician. Now grown stiff with age, And many a painful chase, the wise old hound Regardless of the frolic pack, attends His master's side, or slumbers at his ease Beneath the bending shade; there many a ring 220 Runs o'er in dreams; now on the doubtful foil Puzzles perplexed, or doubles intricate Cautious unfolds, then winged with all his speed, Bounds o'er the lawn to seize his panting prey: And in imperfect whimperings speaks his joy. A different hound for every different chase Select with judgment; nor the timorous hare O'ermatched destroy, but ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... of bed he had climbed and downstairs he had come; and here he was, to all appearances, just in time to foil the very plot on which he had been brooding. Mr. Peters might be in bed, but there in the hall below him stood the accomplice, not ten paces from the museum's door. He arrived on the spot at racing speed ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... upward flash and plunged to the hilt through the flesh of his enemy's forearm. With a cry of pain O'Grady dropped his club, and the two crashed to the stone floor of the trail. This was the attack that Jan had feared and tried to foil, and with a lightning-like squirming movement he swung himself half free, and on his back, with O'Grady's huge hands linking at his throat, he drew back his knife arm for ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... "He will foil me there as in all else," replied Joseph, disconsolately. "Has he not already guessed my plans in Germany, and has he not torn my banner from my hand to flaunt it above his own head, as the defender of German liberties! And Maria Theresa, too, is deceived by his infernal logic. ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... Rome, proposed to illuminate the church as at Rome on Good Friday, with lights disposed overhead in the form of a cross, and carried out his idea. A cross fourteen feet long, covered with silver-foil and hung with six hundred glass lamps, was suspended overhead in the middle of the church, and diffused so bright a light that one could everywhere clearly read the text-books. The musicians and singers, ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... scene on the wharf-boat flashed on my recollection. I remembered the youth wore a cloak, and that he was of low stature. It was he who was standing before me! That puzzle was explained. I was but a waif—a foil—a thing for ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... of coureurs de bois, was too important to be thus set aside. He was now as usual in the wilderness of the north, the roving chief of a half savage crew, trading, exploring, fighting, and laboring with persistent hardihood to foil the rival English traders of Hudson's Bay. Inducements to gain his adhesion were probably held out to him by La Barre and his allies: be this as it may, it is certain that he acted in harmony with the faction ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... shining as if he had been polished with a shoe-brush) entered the kitchen of the hotel, and asked for the largest knife they had. The head-cook gave him a sort of carving-knife, some eighteen inches long, sharp as a razor, and pliant as a foil. The negro looked at it, shook his head as if in doubt whether it would do, but nevertheless took it up stairs with him. Presently he brought it down again, and asked for a larger one. The cook opened all his drawers, and at last found a sort of cutlass, which he hardly ever used on account of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... since has given me pleasure, by telling me how rapidly you recovered, and how perfectly well you are again. Pray, however, do not give me any more such Joys. I shall be quite content with your remaining immortal, without the foil of any alarm. You gave all your friends a panic, and may trust their attachment without renewing it. I received as many inquiries the next day as if an archbishop was in danger, and all the bench hoped he was going ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... mouth they were modulated; but recollecting that those parts of the mouth must be more ready to use for the purpose of forming the vowels, which were in the habit of being exerted in forming the other letters; I rolled up some tin foil into cylinders about the size of my finger; and speaking the vowels separately through them, found by the impressions made on them, in what part of the mouth each of the vowels was formed with somewhat greater accuracy, but not so as perfectly to ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... and each surrounded by a second tub, secured on the outside by hoops of twisted cane. Each tub contains about one cwt. Most of this goes to the continent. 2. Ordinary crude camphor is imported from Singapore and Bombay, in square chests lined with lead-foil, and containing 11/4 to 11/2 cwts. It is chiefly produced in the island of Formosa, and is brought by the Chin Chew junks in very large quantities to Canton, whence foreign markets get supplied.—("Pereira's ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... challenge to all other smiths, both in the Rhine country and elsewhere, to equal that piece of workmanship, or else acknowledge themselves his underlings and vassals. For many days had Mimer himself toiled, alone and vainly, trying to forge a sword whose edge the boasted armor of Amilias could not foil; and now, in despair, he came to ask the help of his ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... called Gaio. He was the most presumptuous donkey in the world, the one who knew least and who thought he knew most; the others were very modest and able craftsmen. In the presence of us all this Gaio began to talk, and said: "Miliano's foil should be preserved, and to do that, Benvenuto, you shall doff your cap; [1] for just as giving diamonds a tint is the most delicate and difficult thing in the jeweller's art, so is Miliano the greatest ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... he was compelled to charge for such refinements in the way of wine. Yet the total had mounted up in spite of all forbearance, and Miss Joliffe was at this moment reminded of its gravity by the gold-foil necks of three bottles of the universally-appreciated Duc de Bentivoglio brand, which still projected from a shelf above her head. Of Dr Ennefer's account she scarcely dared even to think; and there was perhaps less need of her doing so, for he ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... groom: so wrath compress'd, Recoiling, mutter'd thunder in his breast. "Poor suffering heart! (he cried,) support the pain Of wounded honour, and thy rage restrain. Not fiercer woes thy fortitude could foil, When the brave partners of thy ten years' toil Dire Polypheme devour'd; I then was freed By patient prudence from the ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... which occurred to Clarendon, and which he seems to have urged upon the King without success. The Parliament had now sat for six years, and perhaps contact with the constituencies might prove a solvent of their irksome obstinacy, and also of those dangerous combinations which were threatening to foil all schemes of sound policy. Might it not be that the sound loyalty of the nation would send to Westminster a Parliament, not servile or subservient, but less truculent and intractable, than the present? Whatever the soundness of his opinion— and it may perhaps be doubted if a new ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... moral, no too curious questions as to the essential nature of their so palpable well-being, [74] or the rival standards thereof, of origins and issues. And yet, with all their gaiety, as its last triumphant note in truth, they were ready to trifle with death, welcoming, by way of a foil to the easy character of their days, a certain luxurious sense of danger—the night-alarm, the arquebuse peeping from some quiet farm-building across their way, the rumoured presence in their neighbourhood ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... came not by withdrawal from the throng of positive facts, but by pushing through these to the light beyond them, or by the perception of some spear-like shaft of light piercing the denseness, which was serviceable as the sheathe or foil. And of course it was among men and women that he found suggestions for some of his most ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... a vain dissembling—a part of the work of the day, And the words that your voice makes music, but the dull, dead lines of the play. Little you care for the woman you woo, save as a foil designed. To prove your skill as a lover—yet—"I am ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... hardened Peace would have gained notoriety by the raising of wrecks and the patronage of Mr. Plimsoll. And since both preserved a certain courage to the end, since both died on the scaffold as becomes a man, the contrast is once more characteristic. Brodie's cynicism is a fine foil to the piety of Peace; and while each end was natural after its own fashion, there is none who will deny to the Scot the finer sense of fitness. Nor did any step in their career explain more clearly the difference in their temperament than their definitions of the gallows. For Peace it ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... Hester, was much delighted with the arrangement of everything. Mrs. Willis was in grey silk, with her favourite Honiton lace. She was a very striking and beautiful woman, and in her grand simplicity, made a perfect foil to the fantastic appearance of the younger members of ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... to Edinburgh the moment I heard of Mr Johnson's arrival; but so defective was my intelligence, that I came too late. It is but justice to believe, that I could never forgive myself, nor deserve to be forgiven by others, if I was to foil in any mark of respect to that very great genius.—I hold him in the highest veneration: for that very reason I was resolved to take no share in the merit, perhaps guilt, of inticing him to honour this country with a visit.—I could not persuade myself there ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... the street again it was evening. He walked over to State Street (the wrong side). He took the dance card out of his pocket and looked at it again. If only he had learned to dance. There'd be girls. There'd have to be girls at a dance. He stood staring into the red and tin-foil window display of a cigar store, turning the ticket over in his fingers, and the problem over in ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... what the opposite untrue statement would be. The error is needed to set off the truth, much as a dark background is required for exhibiting the brightness of a picture. And the error which I am going to use as a foil to set off what seems to me the truth of my own statements is contained in the philosophy of Mr. Herbert Spencer and {218} his disciples. Our problem is, What are the causes that make communities change from generation to generation,—that make the England of Queen Anne ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... tradition that Celimene was Mademoiselle[1] Moliere true, is that Moliere was certainly in love with Celimene. She is made as engaging as possible, and her worst faults do not rise above foibles. Her satire is good-natured. Arsinoe is her foil, introduced to ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... ill-content; but presently it will be better with me; for my knees have been telling my shoulders that the cold water of this little lake will be sweet and pleasant this summer noonday, and that I shall forget my foil when I have taken my pleasure therein. Wherefore, go thou with thine hounds without the thicket and there abide my coming. And I bid thee look not aback as thou goest, for therein were peril to thee: I shall not keep thee ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... that great stupid Captain Sprawler, who is very nice to look at, whose back is very beautiful, and who sprawls most gracefully over the railings, and pays her those delightful, absurd compliments about her and her horse "being such a capital pair," while, as a foil to so much grace and splendour, a poor little snub-nosed, ill-dressed, ill-conditioned dwarf of a snob looks on, sucking the top of his cheap cane in abject admiration and hopeless envy! Then she pats and kisses the nice soft nose ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... vaguely referred to the verb foil, to baffle, with which it has no connection. The Fr. feuille, leaf, is also invoked, and compared with Fr. fleuret, a foil, the idea being that the name was given to the "button" at the point. Now the earliest foils and fleurets were not buttoned; first, because they were pointless, and secondly, because the point was not used in early fencing. It was not until gunpowder ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... region in John's writings. The old controversies are dead—settled, I suppose, mainly by Paul's own words, and also to a large extent by the logic of events. This verse is almost the only one in which John touches upon that extinct controversy, and here the Law is introduced simply as a foil to set off the brightness of the Gospel. All artists know the value of contrast in giving prominence. A dark background flashes up brighter colours into brilliancy. White is never so white as when it is relieved against black. And so here the special preciousness and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... are known and used by the Grand Masters alone, the common members being wholly ignorant of their existence; and thus it is, that these grandees can so completely foil their followers, without the least risk of the latter being the wiser. The qualities are made for the special purpose of designating each individual, and at the same time be entirely safe from the least suspicion. When a Grand Master has had the honour of promotion conferred, he is supplied ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... smaller, point was, that hitherto she had generally been able so to dress Hesper as to make of her more or less a foil to herself. My reader may remember that there was between Hesper and Sepia, if not a resemblance, yet a relation of appearance, like, vaguely, that between the twilight and the night; seen in certain positions and circumstances, the one would recall the other; and it ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... undeniable touch!" said he. "I feel a foil as quick and supple as my own. He got home upon me very prettily that time. So his name was Sherlock ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... seem to expect to see more than he found, when he entered—a great bare room with its floor strewn with sawdust and its walls adorned here and there by a gaunt trophy of arms. In the middle of the floor, engaged apparently in weighing one foil against another, was a stout, dark-complexioned man, whose light and nimble step, as he advanced to meet his visitor, gave the lie to ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... or the Hideous (which is also evil) should never be used except as a foil. There is no immorality in exhibiting the prevailing vices of the epoch, but this is the physician's duty. The evil lies in presenting these evils under such forms as may lead many to enjoy or tolerate them, giving them the additional power of a charming style and the specious ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... malua-ula was a variety of tapa that was stained with hili kukui (the root-bark of the kukui tree). The ripe kukui nut was chewed into a paste and mingled with this stain. Mama ula refers to this chewing. The malua ula is mentioned as a foil to the ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... which is shown at i, is a soft rennet cheese made from cow's milk. It is made at Neufchatel-en-Bray, France, and not at Neufchatel, Switzerland. This variety of cheese is wrapped in tin-foil and sold in small packages. It is used chiefly for salads, sandwiches, etc. As it does not keep well after the package is opened, the entire contents should be ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 2 - Volume 2: Milk, Butter and Cheese; Eggs; Vegetables • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... footsteps in the sea, Making the heaven of heavens his dwelling-place, Spares but the cloudy border of his base To the foil'd searching ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... loathsomely dirty. A heavy charge was made for the use of the place, and also for the hire of the cook's lurky, a flat-bottomed kind of boat constructed of rough planks. These boats were invariably so leaky that on the passage to and from the shore they became half-foil of water, and the food was frequently spoiled in consequence. But, even if all went right, the crews often had to partake of badly cooked, cold rations. Many a meal was lost altogether, and once or twice a poor cook who could not swim was drowned by the boat ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... for Lady Kirkbank in her cotton frock was a spectacle at which youth laughed and age blushed. But after all it did not matter to Lesbia. She would have liked a less rowdy chaperon; but as a foil to her own fresh young beauty ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... me. He had reduced art and philosophy to a simple code. To take your adversary's head, to basket it at the portal of your castle, to see it lying there, a dead thing, with its cunning and stratagems and power gone— Is there a better way to foil his plots, to refute his arguments, to establish your superiority over his ...
— Options • O. Henry
... thought the Scot, snarls not now, because he intends to clear scores with me at once and for ever, when he can snatch me by the very throat, but we will try for once whether we cannot foil a ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... disturbance" ([Greek: ta me saleuomena]) "may remain." And what are these things? Nothing less than the spiritual, ultimate, all-fulfilling truths and glories to which the "things made" served as preparation, type, and foil, but which themselves to all eternity shall know no successors, no "new order" through which God shall otherwise "fulfil Himself." For what are they, in their inmost essence? They are the truths which spring always from the Incarnate Son, and return always ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... further experiment. I made a drawing of a model, and took it to Mr. Kruesi, at that time engaged on piece-work for me. I told him it was a talking-machine. He grinned, thinking it a joke; but he set to work and soon had the model ready. I arranged some tin-foil on it and spoke into the machine. Kruesi looked on, still grinning. But when I arranged the machine for transmission and we both heard a distinct sound from it, he nearly fell down in his fright. I must admit that I was a little scared myself." The words which he had spoken into the ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... with the lead present in it. That you may have a notion of the great power that platinum has of combining with other metals, I will refer you to a little of the chemist's experience—his bad experience. He knows very well that if he takes a piece of platinum-foil, and heats a piece of lead upon it, or if he takes a piece of platinum-foil, such as we have here, and heats things upon it that have lead in them, his platinum is destroyed. I have here a piece of platinum, and if I apply the heat of the spirit-lamp ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday
... representing in a graphic way the life of the place. If the sand box is lined with zinc, rivers and lakes may be represented with ease. In case there is no zinc lining, water may be represented by the use of tin foil, or by glass which may be laid in the bottom of the box, leaving only such portions uncovered as are needed in order to represent the water. Moss, twigs, grass, stones, toy animals—all help to make the scene ...
— The Tree-Dwellers • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... Coolidge were the life of the company, the latter seeming a different man from the one who had come to consult his old chum as to the trouble in his life. Mrs. Coolidge, quiet and very attractive in her reserved, fair beauty, made an interesting foil to Ellen Burns, and the two, beside the rather fussy aunt and ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... deplorable, Absurd and abnormal. To cling to the formal 'Twere such a good omen To drop the cognomen. So I beg you to promise That you'll call me "Thomas," Or better yet, "Tommie," Instead of th' abomi- Nable "Mr. Gilfoyle." You can, and you will foil My torments Mephistian By using my Christian Name and permitting Yours Truly To call you ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... overtopped them by pealing out still more loudly and exultantly, 'And David his ten thousands.' To be brought into comparison with this unknown stripling was bitter enough, but to be used as a foil to set off his superiority was too much to be borne. There are few men, holding high places in any walk of life, who could have stood such a comparison without wincing. Suppose a great soldier in our day, coming ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... stood before them, taking them in thoroughly with his sharp little eyes. More big men strolled up. As a particularly fine foil to the boy's diminutive form, Benny, the baggage smasher, whose overhanging shoulders testified whence came the power that had reduced many a proud Saratoga to elemental conditions, and "Happy Jack," the mammoth, soot-black, ...
— The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch • Henry Wallace Phillips
... in the ordinary squaw costume, with short, narrow petticoats, and embroidered metasses, or leggings. When going out, they fold a blue blanket over all, and put on a regular, unpicturesque, stove-pipe hat, with a band of tin-foil around it,—which makes them look like one of those mulatto coachmen one sees now and then on the box of a bonton barouche, with his silver-mounted hat and double-caped blue box-coat. The young girls are disposed to innovations upon the petticoats, and modifications of the metasses. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... of thin, shimmering stuff, diaphanous as finest silk. It was black, caught at one shoulder with a flashing green stone. The other shoulder was bared, and the black garment was a perfect foil for the whiteness of her perfect skin, her amazing blue eyes, and the pale gold ...
— Priestess of the Flame • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... rent free. It was proffered, and it accepted, the cutlery works. For a season the neighboring streets were acrid with the aroma of the passionate pickles that were bottled there. And then its briny deeps ceased to swim with knobby condiments. A tin-foil company abode awhile, and yet again a tamale-canning corporation, which in its turn sailed on to the Sargasso Sea of ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... sands begin To hem his watery march and dam his streams, And split his currents; that for many a league The shorn and parcell'd Oxus strains along Through beds of sand and matted rushy isles— Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had, In his high mountain-cradle in Pamere, A foil'd circuitous wanderer—till at last The long'd for dash of waves is heard, and wide His luminous home of waters opens, bright And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bathed stars Emerge, and shine upon the ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... her dark and very beautiful eyes to her stony parent, then they dropped, and she began tracing figures and arabesques on the polished floor with the point of her foil. "That is partly ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... and down he thought again of that night when he had last seen Beatrice. How splendid she had looked in her boat on the water; how unreserved, and yet how reticent she was; how beautiful, and yet how unconscious of her beauty. What a foil she made to that ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... brave felt no dismay, And calmly marched along his way. His shield was stuck with arrows o'er, He sneered and looked about—no more; Till one, whom all this pastime bored, Above him swung a crooked sword. The German's blood begins to boil, He aims the Turkish steed to foil, And off he knocks with hit so neat The Turkish charger's two fore-feet. And now that he has felled the horse, He grips his sword with double force And swings it on the rider's crown And splits him to the saddle down; He hews the saddle into bits, And e'en the charger's ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... revive The drooping patient, scarce alive; Where, as he gathers strength to toil, Not e'en thy heights his spirit foil, But nerve him on to bless, t'inhale, And triumph in the morning gale; Or noon's transcendent glories give The vigorous touch that bids him live. Perhaps e'en now he stops to breathe, Surveying the expanse beneath? Now climbs again, where keen winds blow. ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield
... step was to overthrow the belief that certain bodies are "electrics" and others "non-electrics"—that is, that some substances when rubbed show certain peculiarities in attracting pieces of paper and foil which others do not. Dufay proved that all bodies possess this quality in ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... may suffice to represent that new literature which began to rise after the violent removal of the old. They do not belong to the history of Anglo-Saxon literature except indirectly as a foil and a contrast. They show how ready were new forms to take the place of the old. But while the English language was thus following the natural and spontaneous course of its development, there still survived a powerful ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... if he had privately avowed infidelity to his kinsman. Cromwell found cant prevalent on his stage, just as any great actor of that century found rant on his, and, like the actor, he used it occasionally as a means of gaining his own lofty ends, and as a foil to his own ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... rage, Our foes should fling us down their mortal gage, And with a hostile step profane our sod! We shall not shrink, my brothers, but go forth To meet them, marshalled by the Lord of Hosts, And overshadowed by the mighty ghosts Of Moultrie and of Eutaw—who shall foil Auxiliars such as these? Nor these alone, But every stock and stone Shall help us; but the very soil, And all the generous wealth it gives to toil, And all for which we love our noble land, Shall fight beside, and through us, sea ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... subdued note to the color harmony. Not only do the paintings and sculpture take proper place in the tone scheme, but every bit of planting, every strip of lawn and every bed of flowers or shrubs, has its duty to perform as color accent or foil. Even the gravel of the walks was especially chosen to shade in ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney
... fatality hath cost me dear; But thou art dearest still, and I should be Fit for this cell, which wrongs me—but for thee. The very love which locked me to my chain Hath lightened half its weight; and for the rest, Though heavy, lent me vigour to sustain, And look to thee with undivided breast, And foil ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... chapters of the book, when Jane finally rejects St. John Rivers and goes back to Thornfield and to her "master," are all indeed excellent. St. John is not successful as a character; but he serves to produce the crisis and to be foil to Rochester. St. John, it is true, is not a real being: like Rochester, he is a type of man as he affects the brain and heart of a highly sensitive and imaginative girl. Objectively speaking, as men living and acting ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... boots, and his shirt-bosom was broad and none too clean, and his flowered silk waistcoat was cut so low that two buttons sufficed to keep it in place. He wore a flowing, black necktie, glistening foil-back studs, and ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... banknote, and held it up before me. "I have a heavy wager depending on a fencing match," he said, "and I have no time to improve myself. Teach me a trick which will make me a match for a man skilled in the use of the foil, and keep the secret—and there ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... be war to the knife between her and me. If she succeed, it must be with you. I will do anything to foil her except lie." ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... to be considered a forgery, this, instead of being a matter of surprise, ought to be just the thing to be expected; because a clever fabricator, foreseeing that he would be suspected, and eager to foil detection, would know that the curious inquirer into a research of the present description would thus become baffled at every turn from inability, if not to discover it himself, at least, to explain to the satisfaction and conviction of others, the incompatibility of the workings ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... which fills a rubber tube; first of all the tube is distended, and its compression, or secondary effect, really transmits the impulse. A remedy for this is a condenser formed of alternate sheets of tin-foil and mica, C, connected with the battery, B, so as to balance the electric charge of the cable wire (Fig. 60). In the first Atlantic line an impulse demanded one-seventh of a second for its journey. This ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... brightness wanted a foil, it was there; the gold glittered upon a cloudy background. My treasure was not exactly in my hand to enjoy. There might be many days before Thorold and I saw each other's faces again. Dangers lay threatening him, that I could ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... shall not have me. I have plans that will foil them yet. But think not too well of me, Rosamund. I am not the hero you would make me out. I am a mad fellow, and have played the fool once too often; but for all that they ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... sudden, an inspiration came to him, a means to snap the tension, to create a diversion wholly efficacious. He would turn to his boasting again, would call upon his vanity, which he knew well as his chief foible, and make it serve as the foil against his love. He strove manfully to throw off the softer mood. In a measure, at least, he won the fight—though always, under the rush of this vaunting, there throbbed the anguish ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... near the spring at the headwaters of Broderson Creek, on Quien Sabe, and had all but fallen into the hands of the posse that had been watching for that very move. It was useless now to regret that he had tried to foil pursuit by turning back on his tracks to regain the mountains east of Bonneville. Now Delaney was almost on him. To distance that posse, was the only thing to be thought of now. It was no longer a question of hiding till pursuit should flag; ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... respect, with any the least weakness either of hand or design, is only to set the weakness in a more glaring light, dressing it up, not in the gorgeous array and real jewellery of the court, but in the foil and tinsel glitter, and mock regality of a low theatrical pageantry. And this would be the case even if we had in use his luscious vehicle; but with an inferior one, too often with a bad one, the case of weakness is aggravated, and not unseldom the presumption ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... threads, nor is it purely white; it has the texture of horn, but the tone is warm. The pupil is surrounded by an orange circle; it is of bronze set in gold, but vivid gold and animated bronze. This pupil has depth; it is not underlaid, as in certain eyes, by a species of foil, which sends back the light and makes such eyes resemble those of cats or tigers; it has not that terrible inflexibility which makes a sensitive person shudder; but this depth has in it something of the infinite, just as the external radiance of the eyes suggests the ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... for like. This would foil the devil. This would make him say, I must not deal with this man. thus; for then I put a sword into his hand to ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... Something that has occurred to you primarily as an effect from your experience or observation? Or something you have carpentered out of the old stuff of your reading, with a wooden hero and heroine reciprocally dying for each other, and a wooden villain trying to foil them?" ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... is so much fighting, the students make it a point to keep themselves in constant practice with the foil. One often sees them, at the tables in the Castle grounds, using their whips or canes to illustrate some new sword trick which they have heard about; and between the duels, on the day whose history I have been ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... manifold thing, and rich in blossoms and fruits of all kinds. Let the wonderful plant, which I will not name, have its place. It will serve at least as a foil to the bright-gleaming pomegranate and the yellow oranges. Or should there be, perhaps, instead of this motley abundance, only one perfect flower, which combines all the beauties of the rest and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... I make, O fairest fair, on whom depends my life! Refuse not then the task I undertake, To please thy rage and to appease my strife; But with one smile remunerate my toil, None other guerdon I of thee desire. Give not my lowly muse new-hatched the foil, But warmth that she may at the length aspire Unto the temples of thy star-bright eyes, Upon whose round orbs perfect beauty sits, From whence such glorious crystal beams arise, As best my Chloris' seemly face befits; Which eyes, which ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... about it, if you choose. That's your way: giggle over everything. But when I play background, I want it to be with something worth while in the foreground. I don't hanker after making myself a foil to show off such fellers as our officers ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... we have tried to find out the main features of popular Latin. In doing so we have constantly thought of literary Latin as the foil or standard of comparison. Now, strangely enough, no sooner had the literary medium of expression slowly and painfully disassociated itself from the language of the common people than influences which it could ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... besides, Nan," and Patty had a new inspiration, "don't you see, this party was planned for the first of April, and Bee and Kit will call this thing an April Fool joke, and therefore entirely permissible. April Fool's Day is their Happy Hunting Ground. But I'm going to foil this thing, and don't you forget it! Seems to me it would be a pretty good joke if I'd turn the tables ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... be sure that they can profit by them, for they see between them and the king a power without any well-defined functions, and without responsibility, meddling with every thing and directing nothing—this power can foil the plans of the ministers at any time, reverse their ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... I have liked several women; never any With so full a soul, but some defect in her Did quarrel with the noblest grace she owned, And put it to a foil.' ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... inadequate equipment for the special purposes she was to carry out, of the officers' quiet contempt of scientific pursuits, which not even the captain's influence was able to subdue, of the illusory promises of help and advancement held out by the Admiralty to young investigators, makes a striking foil to the spirit in which the Government of thirty years later undertook a greater scientific expedition. Perhaps some vivid recollections of this voyage did something to better the conditions under which the later ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... of Hellenism and Hebraism alike this is, I say, the aim. When the two are confronted, as they very often are confronted, it is nearly always with what I may call a rhetorical purpose; the speaker's whole design is to exalt and enthrone one of the two, and he uses the other only as a foil and to enable him the better to give effect to his purpose. Obviously, with us, it is usually Hellenism which is thus reduced to minister to the triumph of Hebraism. There is a sermon on Greece and the Greek spirit by a man never to be mentioned without interest and respect, Frederick ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... thought to himself as he strode across the turf, "to make myself a mere foil and stop-gap for that conceited brute! Not I." Far from practising the abstinence of the other two, he had eaten as much as he could stuff and drunk all the beer he could get, and this, combined with resentment at Robarts' words, ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... absolutely necessary to a critick, it being very certain that he was, like this essayer, a very indifferent poet; he loved to be well dressed; and I remember a little young gentleman, whom Mr. Walsh used to take into his company, as a double foil to his person and capacity. Inquire, between Sunninghill and Oakingham, for a young, short, squab gentleman, the very bow of the god of love, and tell me, whether he be a proper author to make personal reflections? He may extol the ancients, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... holiday, His Cousin Adair, by GORDON ROY. The book has all the requisites of a good novel, including the perhaps rarest one of literary style. Cousin Adair is well worth knowing, and her character is skilfully portrayed. As a foil against this high-minded, pure-souled unselfish girl, there are sketched in two or three of the sort of people, men and women, more frequently met with in this wicked world. But Cousin Adair is good enough to leaven the lump. GORDON ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... to note of it, that the plan of the blossom in all the kinds is the same; an irregular quatre-foil: and irregular quatrefoils are of extreme rarity in flower form. I don't myself know one, except the Veronica. The cruciform vegetables—the heaths, the olives, the lilacs, the little Tormentillas, and the ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... it, erewhile at rest, And seems some star that shifted place in heav'n, Only that, whence it kindles, none is lost, And it is soon extinct; thus from the horn, That on the dexter of the cross extends, Down to its foot, one luminary ran From mid the cluster shone there; yet no gem Dropp'd from its foil; and through the beamy list Like flame ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... by all dealers in coffee. And even then the monotony was varied only by inserting the brand name, such as "Osborn's Celebrated Prepared Java Coffee. Put up only by Lewis A. Osborn"; "Government coffee in tin foil pound papers put out by ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... at the door of Mrs. Wilson's home she did not know that her approach had been watched. She meant to be very careful during her interview, for she realized that she and Ruth were endeavoring to foil two brilliant ...
— The Automobile Girls At Washington • Laura Dent Crane
... hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind fury with the abhorred shears, And slits the thin-spun life. "But not the praise," Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears; "Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, Nor in the glistering foil Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies, But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes, And perfect witness of all-judging Jove; As he pronounces lastly on each deed, Of so much fame in Heaven expect thy meed." O fountain ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... she continued after a pause which none interrupted, "I am resolved my husband shall not be a rival, but a foil to me. I will suffer no competitor near the throne; I shall exact an undivided homage: his devotions shall not be shared between me and the shape he sees in his mirror. Mr. Rochester, now sing, and I ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... a tube of very thin metal, such as gold leaf or tin foil, would not stand on end at all, being crushed down by its own weight. It is found, experimentally, that in malleable iron tubes of the respective thicknesses of .525, .272, and .124 inches, the resistances per ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... and all your native charm, she will never smile again upon your older brother," laughed his sister, "but in the meantime I suppose it's an open meeting, and we can't prevent his going. But don't worry; his fatal beauty will but serve as a foil to your more sparkling type. Besides, with your vivid imagination, unhampered by a slavish subserviency to facts, you should be able to furnish canards that will occupy all Miss Holland's time for ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... Angelo and a Scotchman named Maclaren; and it was at Maclaren's he first met Alfred Bates Richards, who became a life friend. Richards, an undergraduate of Exeter, was a man of splendid physique. A giant in height and strength, he defeated all antagonists at boxing, but Burton mastered him with the foil and the broad-sword. Richards, who, like Burton, became a voluminous author [47] wrote long after, "I am sure, though Burton was brilliant, rather wild, and very popular, none of ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... though the Bishop only speaks—concerning faith and doubt is full of admirable wisdom, and urges me to modify my statement that Browning took little or no interest in the controversies of his time. Yet, all through the fencing, nothing is decided. The button is always on the Bishop's foil. He never sends the rapier home. And no doubt that is the reason that his companion, with "his sudden healthy vehemence" did drive his weapon home into ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... be disposed to identify it if the characters of the prologue and epilogue were introduced as dramatis personae in action. But their doing and enduring are presupposed as accomplished facts, and employed merely as a foil to the dialogues, which alone are the work of the author. Perhaps the least erroneous way succinctly to describe what in fact is a unicum would be to ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... the tent, but does not bow to the audience. In one hand he carries a fencing foil, well constructed, of European workmanship; in his other hand he holds a number of pretty toy balloons which he has ...
— A Parody Outline of History • Donald Ogden Stewart
... answer to that. She sighed "Heigho," and for a moment there was silence. But messages pass without words, and there are speechless Mercuries who carry tidings from heart to heart. Then the air is full of whisperings, and silence is but foil to a thousand sounds which the soul hears though the dull corporeal ear be deaf. Did she still amuse herself, or was there more? Sometimes a part, assumed in play or malice, so grows on the actor that he ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... five days of his stay. Unobtrusively but effectively he had avoided her, shutting himself, when he was not in the sick-room, in his own room, under the pretext of fatigue or correspondence. And she had not submitted to this without repeated efforts to foil his intentions. ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... wanted to gain time until De Warenne should arrive, Wallace determined to foil him with his own weapons, and make the gaining of the castle the consequence of vanquishing the earl. He told the now perplexed governor that he should consider Lord de Valence as the hostage of safety for Lord Mar and his family, ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... apart from the influence of the Church authorities in repressing its romantic manifestations. In the first place, the submergence of the old pagan world, with its practice and, to some extent, ideal of sexual indulgence, removed the foil which had given grace and delicacy to the tender freedom of the young Christians. In the second place, the austerities which the early Christians had gladly practised for the sake of their soul's ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... power expended. The metal zinc can be burnt like paper; it might be ignited in a flame, but it is possible to avoid the introduction of all foreign heat and to burn the zinc in air of the temperature of this room. This is done by placing zinc foil at the focus of a concave mirror, which concentrates to a point the divergent electric beam, but which does not warm the air. The zinc burns at the focus with a violet flame, and we could readily determine the amount of heat generated by its combustion. But zinc ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... were not kept to this way of declaiming when Sophocles and Euripides influenc'd the age. Nor yet had any blind alley-professor foil'd their inclinations, when Pindar and the Nine Lyricks durst not attempt Homer's Numbers: And that I may not bring my authority from poets, 'tis certain, neither Plato nor Demosthenes ever made it their practice: A stile one would value, and as I may call it, a chast oration, is not ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... hundred to a thousand paces. Vessels could pass up the river only at the mercy of the cannon on this island, and we deemed the location the most advantageous, not only on account of its situation and good foil, but also on account of the intercourse which we proposed with the savages of these coasts and of the interior, as we should be in the midst of them. We hoped to pacify them in the course of time, and ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... all the merry company for a drive, and now Carrie came in alone. It was the first time that Hurstwood had had a chance to see her facing the audience quite alone, for nowhere else had she been without a foil of some sort. He suddenly felt, as she entered, that her old strength—the power that had grasped him at the end of the first act—had come back. She seemed to be gaining feeling, now that the play was drawing to a close and the opportunity for ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... converts is given at one hundred and fifty thousand. Several of the daimios were converted to the new faith, and Nobunaga, who hated and strove to exterminate the Buddhists, received the Christians with the greatest favor, gave them desirable sites for their churches, and sought to set them up as a foil to ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... a wet day, he now showed that he could rule the weather of his own humour, when intensity of will was wakened by rivalry. He made himself most agreeable, and the man of yesterday was forgotten or remembered only as a foil to the man of to-day. The words he so much loved to hear, and to which he had so often surreptitiously listened, were now repeated, 'No one can be so agreeable as Horace Churchill is on his ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... clouds: 50 Heaven would no longer trust its pledge; but thus Recall'd it; rapt its Ganymede from us. Was there no milder way but the small-pox, The very filthiness of Pandora's box? So many spots, like naeves on Venus' soil, One jewel set off with so many a foil; Blisters with pride swell'd, which through's flesh did sprout Like rose-buds, stuck i' th' lily-skin about. Each little pimple had a tear in it, To wail the fault its rising did commit: 60 Which, rebel-like, with its own lord at strife, Thus ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... done, With rural games play'd down the setting sun; Who struck with matchless force the bounding ball, Or made the pond'rous quoit obliquely fall; While some huge Ajax, terrible and strong, Engaged some artful stripling of the throng. And fell beneath him, foil'd, while far around Hoarse triumph rose, and rocks return'd the sound? Where now are these?—Beneath yon cliff they stand, To show the freighted pinnace where to land; To load the ready steed with guilty haste, To fly in terror o'er ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe
... sufficient to penetrate the ground, but merely tells it (if such an expression may be used) which course to pursue. Before we knew of Sachs' more precise observations we covered a flat surface of damp sand with the thinnest tin-foil which we could procure (.02 to .03 mm., or .00012 to .00079 of an inch in thickness), and placed a radicle close above, in such a position that it grew almost perpendicularly downwards. When the apex came into contact with the ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... him—that with such traitors no terms of honour were either binding or possible, and that, short of lying, he might use any means to foil them. And he could not doubt that the old princess had sent him ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... was yet a wise man and a brave courtier, but rough and participating more of active than sedentary motions, as being in his instillation destined for arms. There is a query of some denotations, how he came to receive the foil, and that in the catastrophe? for he was strengthened with honourable alliances and the prime friendship in Court of my Lords of Leicester and Burleigh, both his contemporaries and familiars; but that there might be (as the adage hath it) falsity in friendship: and we may rest satisfied ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... that the National Magazine, starting with a splendid flourish of knight-errantry, degenerated into the mere, "let-well-enough-alone" thrift-crier it is.... "'How I Became an Expert Tombstone Salesman' ... 'How I collected Tin Foil After Work-Hours and Added Three Hundred a Year Extra to My ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... fast, her bosom rising and falling with quick respirations, and her cheeks flushed with color, made a delicious foil to the pearly tone of her face, concealed on her neck and forehead by the escaping tresses of ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... favour of the theory of descent, the case becomes the same as that of a supposed revelation, which has been discredited by finding that all available evidence points to a natural growth. In short, the argument from ignorance is in any case available only as a negative foil against destructive criticism: in no case has it any positive value, or value of a constructive kind. Therefore, if a theory on any subject is destitute of positive evidence, while some alternative theory is ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... married to a lady of his own stamp. I foresaw the position I should occupy in his establishment. I had once been sent to the plantation for punishment, and fear of the son had induced the father to recall me very soon. My mind was made up; I was resolved that I would foil my master and save my children, or I would perish in the attempt. I kept my plans to myself; I knew that friends would try to dissuade me from them, and I would not wound their ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... going once into the attics of my grandfather's house at Penrith, upon some indignity having been put upon me, with an intention of destroying myself with one of the foils which I knew was kept there. I took the foil in hand, but my heart failed. Upon another occasion, while I was at my grandfather's house at Penrith, along with my eldest brother, Richard, we were whipping tops together in the large drawing-room, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... that Sir Ralph's head would be improved by punching. Neither of them would take any of the wine when it came, though it looked fascinating, fizzling out of beautiful bottles decked with gold and silver foil, like champagne. It tasted like champagne too, so far as I could tell; but perhaps I'm not a judge, as there was never any wine except elderberry at home, and I've only had champagne twice since I've been the child ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... committee-men, and sometimes punch was brought, and they drank with their friends. Occasionally they spoke to each other; when they did this, it was with extreme courtesy. Cary used the buttoned foil with polished ease. Rand's manner was less assured; there was something antique and laboured in his determined grasp at the amenities of the occasion. It was the only heaviness. To the other contest between them he brought an amazing sureness, a suppleness, power, and audacity beyond praise. He ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... gigantic scoop in front. He pushed a great mound of talc-fine dust before him to cover up the cargo. It was necessary. With freight costing what it did, fuel and air and food came frozen solid, in containers barely thicker than foil. While they stayed at space-shadow temperature, the foil would hold anything. And a cover of insulating moondust with vacuum between the grains kept even air frozen solid, ...
— Scrimshaw • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... peruke, and his broad-brimmed beaver (both of which I suppose were Sir Oliver's best of long standing) he may cut a tolerable figure dangling to church with Miss Bell!—The woman, as she observes, should excel the man in features: and where can she match so well for a foil? ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... resemblance to her sister, except that she was much younger, being barely eighteen years of age; but there were not wanting indications that her charms would one day even surpass those of the lovely Mrs Henderson Mrs Gaunt was a petite blonde, very pretty and engaging, and an excellent foil to Mrs Henderson, the two ladies being of exactly opposite types of beauty. Of the children no more need be said than that they were light-hearted, joyous, and just well-behaved enough to show that their parents did not intend to spoil them if it could ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... carry on the ripening process. Neufchatel is a soft cheese made from sweet milk to which the rennet is added at a high temperature. After pressing, it is kneaded and worked, and then put into packages and covered with tin foil. ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder
... gallery, and might have envied the couple on the adjoining gallery had I been differently educated. For, strangely, the lady wore only a sarong of thin material, a diaphanous jacket, and very low sandals; she might almost have posed as a life model. As a foil, her husband ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... progress from Peri to Wagner, however, despite many daring and dubious adventures in new territories, there has yet been an avoidance of material in itself ugly and repulsive. We have been asked to contemplate the libertinism of Don Juan, but at its worst it has served only as a foil to the virtue of his victims, which in the end emerged triumphant. We have seen exposed the monstrous double nature of Rigoletto, but only that the pathos of paternal love should thereby be thrown into brighter relief. We ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Africans know that gold never looks so well as on the foil of their dark skins. Dick found in his trunk a string of gold beads, such as are manufactured in some of our cities, which he had brought from the gold region of Chili,—so he said,—for the express purpose of giving them to old Sophy. These Africans, too, have a perfect passion for gay-colored ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... characters, two, Vautrin and Rastignac, furnish a second interest in the story parallel to that of Goriot and his daughters, and constituting a foil. Under the influence of Paris surroundings and experience, Rastignac passes from his naive illusions to a state of worldly wisdom, which he reaches all the more speedily as Vautrin is at his elbow, commenting with Mephistophelian shrewdness on his fellow-men and the society ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... But there is that in the cast of the composition which suggests that its object may have been quite as much to raise disgust at the elders' crime as to raise admiration at Susanna's purity; in fact that the whiteness of her character was designed as a foil to make more prominent the blackness of her oppressors. On this account Jer. xxix. 23 might perhaps be taken as a verse which gave his cue to the writer. But these are points on which opinions will inevitably vary ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... default, lack; deteriorate, decline, retrograde; disappoint, desert; miscarry, foil; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... north bank, opposite Windsor, and really a continuous town with that which nestles close to the castle walls, is on our way from Slough. The red-brick buildings of the school, forming a fine foil to the lighter-colored and more elegantly designed chapel, are on our left, the principal front looking over a garden toward the river and Windsor Home Park beyond. We become aware of a populace of boys, the file-closers of England's nineteenth ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... extensive plain, bounded by high mountains, and again crowned by the snowy peaks of those more distant, lay before us, its whole surface dotted with a multitude of white forts surrounded by a belt of the most vivid green, the barrenness of the uncultivated spots acting as a foil to the rich vegetation which springs under the foot of the Affgh[a]n husbandman wherever he can introduce the fertilizing stream. We rode leisurely on through this wilderness of gardens, till ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... with a brown, squarish face, quite thin, and twinkly blue eyes and a lot of dark hair that blew around like Jerry's. He looked from one to the other of us and nodded his head to himself. I suppose we did look very queer,—quite dirty, and Jerry with the tin-foil-buckled belt still around him and no shirt; and my bloomers dangling down like a Turkish person's because of the elastics having ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... more general favour with the matrons than he experienced with their lords, and not a little contrasted the formal and nervous compliments of the good Bishop, who served him on such occasions with an excellent foil. ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... crew set at spar and coil. Now round the prow Charybdean waters boil And ever higher surges war's red tide. The mate who should the captain's care divide Has strengthless proved. Where shall, the foe to foil, A man be found able to bear the toil And stand, to steer ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... the hanging woods which cover the W. bank of the Avon, near Clifton. They form a fine foil to the open downs opposite. To enter them cross the Suspension Bridge into Somerset, take first turning to R., cross the intervening combe, which runs up from the river, by the first available footpath, and then ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... previously the curtain has to fall upon the courtier. The conqueror at Cadiz, the explorer of Guiana, steps from behind a veil of darkness and disgrace which would have overwhelmed other men utterly, and served him as a foil. ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... And on their track, astir with wild desire, Like falcons fierce closing on doves that flee, Shall speed the suitors, craving to achieve A prey forbidden, a reluctant bride. Yet power divine shall foil them, and forbid Possession of the maids, whom Argive land Shall hold protected, when unsleeping hate, Horror, and watchful ambush of the night, Have laid the suitors dead, by female hands. For every maid shall smite a man to death, Dyeing a dagger's edges in his throat— Such bed of ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... me; yea, he calls me first; the first proffer of the gospel is to be made to the Jerusalem sinner; I am he, wherefore stand back, Satan; make a lane, my right is first to come to Jesus Christ.' This now would be like for like. This would foil the devil; this would make him say, I must not deal with this man thus; for then I put a sword into his hand to cut ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... to shut her off now. Cora was not here to foil or trip her. Corinne and the junior ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... look When, wearied with the music of the spheres, He laid him down upon a roseate bank To dream of holiness!—He hath not stirred.— 'Twas well I did not speak to Bellingham, For we have not been noted. Good, so far. All eyes are busy with their own affairs; I'll wake him now and foil discovery. ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... leaves. Steam-sieves sift it into grades, with jarrings and thumpings that make the floor quiver, and the thunder of steam-gear is always at its heels; but it continues to mutter unabashed till it is riddled down into the big, foil-lined boxes ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... her with surprise. "We are fencing—and I hate it. Once at West Point I was fencing with a man, my friend; the button broke off my foil and I hurt him seriously. He fell dead beside me in ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... Lassiter, his dark apparel and the great black gun-sheaths contrasting singularly with his gentle smile. Jane's active mind took up her interest in him and her half-determined desire to use what charm she had to foil his evident design in visiting Cottonwoods. If she could mitigate his hatred of Mormons, or at least keep him from killing more of them, not only would she be saving her people, but also be leading back this bloodspiller to some ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... Whose lavish of largesse all Empyrean! lieges scan: None other but he shall be Kaysar highs, * Lord of lordly hall and of haught Divan: Kings lay their gems on his threshold-dust * As they bow and salam to the mighty man; And his glances foil them and all recoil, * Bowing beards aground and with faces wan: Yet they gain the profit of royal grace, * The rank and station of high Earth's plain is scant for thy world of men, * Camp there in Kay wan's[FN135] Empyrean! May the King of Kings ever hold thee dear; * Be counsel shine ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... the particles pack together, the less the circulation of air through the mass, and the smaller the amount of aroma which is carried away. He also found that glass makes the best container for coffee, with the tin can, and the foil-lined bag with an inner lining of glassine, ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... careful copying out of passages taken at random from the volumes beside him. A Latin grammar was ordinarily on the table—a book which the young gentleman had brought back from school free from thumb-marks. Occasionally a fencing-foil lay among these evidences of study, while the small aquaria, the cases of stuffed animals with fancy backgrounds and the numerous bird-cages had been thrust ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... succeed in our first attempt; some little neglect or accident may foil our present efforts, but the present enterprise will result in gathering stores of experience which will make the next effort certain. Not that I do not expect success now, but accidental failure now will not be the evidence of ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... both Hamlet and Laertes were known to excel at this sword play; and Hamlet taking up the foils chose one, not at all suspecting the treachery of Laertes, or being careful to examine Laertes' weapon, who, instead of a foil or blunted sword, which the laws of fencing require, made use of one with a point, and poisoned. At first Laertes did but play with Hamlet, and suffered him to gain some advantages, which the dissembling ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of Philadelphia, proved that within four hours typhoid germs were completely destroyed by the introduction into the polluted water of copper foil. ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... Kawachi. Here the Ashikaga chancellor built a palace of such dimensions that sixteen superintendents and twenty assistant superintendents were required to oversee the work. Most conspicuous was the Kinkaku-ji, or golden pavilion shrine, so called because its interior was gilt, the gold foil being thickly superposed on lacquer varnish. On this edifice, on the adjacent palace, and on a park where deer roamed and noble pine trees hung over their own shadows in a picturesque lake, immense sums were expended. Works of art were collected from all quarters ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... sort that may be; so as it is impossible that any beholder can be content to be such a one. Now, as in geometry, the oblique must be known as well as the right, and in arithmetic, the odd as well as the even; so in the actions of our life, who seeth not the filthiness of evil, wanteth a great foil to perceive the beauty of virtue. This doth the comedy handle so, in our private and domestical matters, as, with hearing it, we get, as it were, an experience of what is to be looked for, of a niggardly Demea, of ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
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