"Contour" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sheer, fresh youth with her; her eyes had not lost their dewy beauty; the splendour of her hair remained unchanged. There were no lines, nothing lost, nothing hardened in contour. Clear and smooth her snowy chin; perfect, so far, the lovely throat: nothing of blemish was visible, no souvenirs ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... number of illustrations, the number of questions asked on a given point, the force of language—these are all means of bringing out the relative importance of constituent topics or principles. In retrospect, a well-organized lesson presents an appearance similar to a contour map; each part stands out in distinctive ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... her chin in her hand, her elbow on her knee. She looked at his wavy hair, his kindly, humorous gray eyes, the straight line of his fine-cut nose, his firm lips with the quaint upward twist of the corners, the fine contour ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... or the cliche—no doubt it is better known for what it is to good French writers—is the word or the phrase which has lost the original contour of its mintage and become a mere featureless coin, having still, as it were, its metallic meaning but no longer its fresh beauty and expressiveness. The young novelist whose hero "wends his way," and the journalist for whom a party of fifteen ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... long file of pelicans, their wings outspread, sailed close to the surface of the ocean, undulating over the waves and into the hollows exactly paralleling, at a height of only a few feet, the restless contour of the sea. Occasionally they would all flop their wings two or ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... plunged into the tin tub the orderly had placed beside my bed and went down to porridge in a glow. Porridge, for the major was Scotch, and had taught his French cook to make it as the Scotch make it. Then, going out into the hall, from a table on which lay a contour map of the battle region, the major picked up a hideous mask that seemed to have been made ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... mother were unlike in person. The dark hair, deep-set black eyes, and prominent features of the Ex-Queen were in entire contrast to the golden tresses, the full blue orbs, and the soft lines and contour of her daughter's countenance. Yet, in latter days, illness had taken from my poor girl the full outline of her face, and reduced it to the inflexible shape of the bone beneath. In the form of her brow, in her ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... of the young men. The contour of some of their heads peculiarly interested me. To be sure, you could not tell what the girls' heads were like because of so many etceteras bulging out all over; but as I looked at many of the young ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... tresses. Her dress was without a plait or a wrinkle, and fitted the form with an exactitude that might lead one to imagine the arch girl more than suspected the beauties it displayed. A tucker of rich Dresden lace softened the contour of the figure. Her head was without ornament; but around her throat was a necklace of gold clasped in front with a ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... steps and closer to the catafalque rest the familiar faces of many of our greatest generals—the manly features of Augur, whose blood I have seen trickling forth upon the field of battle; the open almost, beardless contour of Halleck, who has often talked of sieges and campaigns with this homely gentleman who is going to the grave. There are many more bright stars twinkling in contiguous shoulder bars, but sitting in a chair upon the beflowered carpet is Ulysses ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... very still, stood leaning one hand upon the table. His white hair was tossed back from his brow; his eyes flashed; his attitude though vengeful and threatening, was at the same time so bold and commanding that Lorimer caught himself lazily admiring the contour of his figure, and wondering how he would look in marble as ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... children, and was soon to have another. A small demure woman of thirty-five, with light soft hair and clear blue eyes and limbs softly rounded, the contour of her features was full with approaching maternity, but there was a decided firmness in the lines about her little mouth. As he watched her now, her father's eyes, deep set and gray and with signs of long years of suffering in them, ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... girlish that most people took her for Gabrielle's elder sister, while in the matter of dress she was admitted in society to be one of the leaders of fashion. Her hair was of that rare copper-gold tint, her features regular, with a slightly protruding chin, soft eyes, and cheeks perfect in their contour. Society knew her as a gay, reckless, giddy woman, who, regardless of the terrible affliction which had fallen upon the brilliant man who was her husband, surrounded herself with a circle of friends of ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... man there were other things which gave him the look of the great Napoleon. The contour of feature was the same: and on his brow, broad and massive, there might be seen those grand shadows with which French artists love to glorify the Emperor. Yet in addition to this he had that same serene immobility ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... general contour of the surrounding region, that if the ice were all melted away it would be seen that a cape projected from the American continent eastward at the point where they had entered the polar sea, and that it was in crossing the submerged continuation of this cape that they had found ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... the time are set before us with the baffling allusiveness of the expert. The Italian landscape is painted, not with richer imagination, for nothing in Browning exceeds some passages of the earlier books, but with more depth of colouring, more precision of contour and expression. And he has taken the "sad disheveled form," Humanity, for his bride, the mate of an art which will disdain no evil and turn away from nothing common, in the service of man. Doubtless the result was not all gain. The intermittent composition and the shifting ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... if one should have unearthed a statue, grey with time—a statue nobly formed, with a powerful head and severe features sternly set,—the growth of beard revealing, rather than concealing, the somewhat cruel contour of mouth and chin. The Professor walked slowly up to the bed and looked at this strange effigy of a human being for many minutes in silence,—Morgana watching him with strained but quiet suspense. Presently ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... a small bay backed by tumbled cliffs. A shelving beach can be deduced from contour and occasional boulders big enough to stick through the snow that smothers it all. A sort of mess of rocks and mud at the back may be glacial moraine. Over the sea the ice is split in all directions by jagged rifts and channels; the whole thing is a bit like Antarctica ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell
... up behind about as big as a nutmeg.... Now, observe the contour of her back as she sits up there; it is curiously ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... misfortune to women, to whom beauty is more important than life, and the beauty of whom consists in the roundness and graceful contour of their forms. The most careful toilette, the most, sublime needle-work, cannot hide certain deficiencies. It has been said that whenever a pin is taken from a thin woman, beautiful as she may be, she loses ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... the feast between them, and the girl leaned over to turn him a cup of tea from a pot that was already made and waiting. Her lovely head was near him, and he stared with hungry adoration at the thick, shining braids, and the soft white contour of her cheek and neck. She leaned back suddenly, and caught him. The words that were on her lips remained unspoken. The laughter went from her eyes. In a hot wave the blood flushed ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... Mademoiselle looked very angry, but my father pretending to show me, heaven knows what, from the window, led me to it, and the air revived me a little. Mademoiselle (for I cannot call her by her new name) is altered a good deal—more, however, in the character than in the contour of her face and figure. Certainly, however, she has grown a good deal fuller, and her color is higher; and whether it is fancy or not, I cannot say, but certainly to me it seems that the expression of her face has acquired something habitually lowering and malicious, and which, I know not how, inspires ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... from his cigar, Wolfe caught with a quick pleasure the contour of the white hand, the blood-glow of a red ring he wore. His voice, too, and that of Kirby's, touched him like music,—low, even, with chording cadences. About this man Mitchell hung the impalpable atmosphere belonging to the thoroughbred ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... head, high cheek bones, in general, large lips and mouth; a contour of face inclining, on the whole, to undue breadth, and lacking that pleasantly-rounded appearance so characteristic of the white. He has usually a scant beard, his chin and cheeks seldom, if ever, asserting that sturdy and bountiful growth of ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... were most excellent barometers, and their reaction to passing showers was invariable. The clay surface held water, and after each downfall the pools would be higher, and the contour of the little region altered. At the first few drops, all the ants would hasten, the throbbing corpuscles speeding up. Then, as the rain came down heavier, the column melted away, those near each end hurrying to shelter and ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... fillet binding her hair. The face bears a meditative expression, into which has entered a hint of pathos and wistfulness in the dawning wonder as to whether, after all, Ulysses will return. The classic beauty of the pose; the exquisite modelling of the bust and arms and hands, every curve and contour so ideally lovely; the distinction of the figure in its noble and refined patrician elegance, are combined to render this work one that well deserves immortality in art, and to rank as a masterpiece in ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... long glass and directed it at the dark stockade. The sun had sunk behind the forests leaving the contour of the tree-tops outlined by a thread of gold under a band of delicate green lying across the lower sky. Higher up a faint crimson glow faded into the darkened blue overhead. The shades of the evening deepened ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... air of disarrangement, to get her cap a little on one side, a stray curl loose on her forehead, to tear a bit of the dangling lace on her arms, and to splash her robe with a puddle. He was in air, feature, and complexion a perfect little dark Frenchman. The contour of her face, still more its rosy glow, were more in accordance with her surname, and so especially were the large deep blue eyes with the long dark lashes and pencilled brows. And there was a lively restless air about her full of intelligence, as she manoeuvred her brother towards a stone ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... colonies represents approximately the number of germs that were present in the milk drop. If the plate is not too thickly sown with these germs, the colonies will continue to grow and increase in size, and as they do, minute differences will begin to appear. These differences may be in the color, the contour and the texture of the colony, or the manner in which it acts toward gelatin. In order to make sure that the seeding in not too copious so as to interfere with continued study, an attenuation is usually made. This consists in taking a drop of the infected ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell
... of the advancing party was a tall, martial looking man, wearing the dress and insignia of a general officer. His rather florid countenance was eminently fine, if not handsome, offering, in its more Roman than Grecian contour, a model of quiet, manly beauty; while the eye, beaming with intelligence and candour, gave, in the occasional flashes which it emitted, indication of a mind of no common order. There was, notwithstanding, a benevolence of expression ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... a good contour, and many of its exterior architectural details are well conceived and arranged; but, like other buildings of the same order, it has got a multiplicity of strange hobgoblin figure-heads about it which serve no purpose either earthly or heavenly, and which are understood by hardly one out ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... cavities in molars and bicuspids can be perfectly preserved with tin. Tapes of No. 10 foil, from one to three thicknesses, can be welded together and will cohere as well or better than semi-cohesive gold foil, and it can be manipulated more rapidly; therefore, if desirable, any degree of contour can be produced, but the contour will not have the hardness or strength of gold, so in many cases it would not be practicable to make extensive contours with tin, ...
— Tin Foil and Its Combinations for Filling Teeth • Henry L. Ambler
... one, and, perhaps, the most conspicuous portrait of an opera frequenter; but there are a variety of characters in the same school all equally worthy of a descriptive notice, and each differing in contour and force of chiaroscuro as much as the one thousand and one family maps which annually cover the walls of the Royal Academy, to the exclusion of meritorious performances in a more elevated branch of art. The Dowager ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... Au contour des ravins, sur les hauteurs sauvages, Une molle vapeur efface les chemins; La lune tristement baigne les noirs feuillages; L'oreille ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... the blue, the billowing fields sailed away the gray steamer, cutting a path that sprayed and sang after. Sunlight danced and lay whitely as far as the eye could reach. It prolonged for those on shore the contour of the line of faces above each deck; it picked points of light from off everywhere—off smokestacks and polished railings, off plate-glass and brass-bound port-holes and even down the ship's flank, to where ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... upon insufficient observations, even if erroneous, were slow to die. Thus it used to be stated that an upper cloud floor adapted itself to the contour of the land over which it rested, giving what Mr. Monck Mason has called a "phrenological estimate" of the character of the earth below; the clouds, "even when under the influence of rapid motion, seeming to accommodate themselves to all variations of form ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... upon the contour and nature of the island, that it is hard to say. If it were low and heavily covered with their green-blue vegetation, we might not be able to see even a rather large one, whereas if it were hilly and bare, we could probably see one only ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... solitary rambles, and patient auditor of my most secret aspirations, you are becoming quite a work of art. A few more touches of the knife, and something like perfection shall have been attained! Look here, Dick, when I turn it towards the light—so—isn't there a beauty about the contour of that upper lip ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... base of the hill, the boy suggested that they separate and each follow its base in opposite directions, pointing out that much time could be saved, as the hill, which was of mountainous proportions, seemed likely to have a base contour of eight or ten miles. But 'Merican Joe flatly refused. He would accompany Connie, as he had agreed to, but not one foot would he go without the boy. All the way up the ridge, he had followed so closely that more than once he had stepped on the tails of Connie's snowshoes, ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... ornaments of various colors. Sometimes the dancing figures appear to have been perfectly naked; but this is from the outline of the transparent robe having been effaced; and, like the Greeks, they represented the contour of the figure as if seen through ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... candlelight had shone up the vale to the eyes of the bonfire group, was uncurtained, but the sill lay too high for a pedestrian on the outside to look over it into the room. A vast shadow, in which could be dimly traced portions of a masculine contour, blotted ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... not trace it," said Villiers calmly, "but nevertheless others will. Some people say that no man knows what he really is like, and that even his own reflection in the glass deceives him. Besides, it is not so much the actual contour for the features that impresses one, it is the LOOK,—you have the LOOK of the Greek god, the look of ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... places her hand familiarly upon my knee. In defence I remove her hand. Then she says: 'But you have always had such beautiful eyes.'.... I then distinctly see something like two eyes as a sketch or as the contour of a spectacle lens...." ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... of the stays to squeeze her waist into the dress, which gave her splendid figure an even more magnificent "contour." She also put on the wreath and looked at herself in the glass. Timea sighed deeply, and whispered to Athalie, in tones of undisguised admiration, "How lovely, how ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... part, as I said, we neither of us read anything in the world, and employed the very little while we were awake between bed and dinner in poring upon maps. I have always been fond of maps, and can voyage in an atlas with the greatest enjoyment. The names of places are singularly inviting; the contour of coasts and rivers is enthralling to the eye; and to hit, in a map, upon some place you have heard of before makes history a new possession. But we thumbed our charts on these evenings with the blankest ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... complexion was possessed of a certain freshness, not to be equalled by borrowed colours: her eyes were not large, but they were lively, and capable of expressing whatever she pleased: her mouth was full of graces, and her contour uncommonly perfect; nor was her nose, which was small, delicate, and turned up, the least ornament of so lovely a face. In fine, her air, her carriage, and the numberless graces dispersed over her whole person, made the Chevalier de Grammont not doubt but that she was possessed of every other qualification. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... pitted dark surface, as swift as feathers chased by the breeze. A chain of islands sat broken and massive facing the wide estuary, displayed in a sheet of pale glassy water reflecting faithfully the contour of the shore. High in the colourless sunshine a solitary bird, all black, hovered, dropping and soaring above the same spot with a slight rocking motion of the wings. A ragged, sooty bunch of flimsy mat hovels was perched over its own inverted image upon a crooked multitude of high piles ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... the summit of a mountain of red rocks, dotted here and there by dark masses of shrubbery, stood a broad yellow squat tower, with no opening on the side toward the sea except a window, a mere black hole of irregular contour. The outlines of a porthole in the battlement of the tower, that had formerly served for a small cannon, was outlined against the blue sky. On one side the promontory rose sheer above the sea, and on the other sloped landward, covered with ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... each other. Towards the border of her disc, on the contrary, the terrestrial attraction, having acted in a direction perpendicular to that of the lunar, should have exerted greater power, and therefore given a different shape to the general contour. But no remarkable difference had so far been perceived by terrestrial observers; and none could now be detected by our travellers. Therefore the Moon must have found in herself alone the principle of her shape and of her superficial development—that is, she owed nothing to external influences. ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... girl in the photograph, older, more beautiful—the same soft, sweet contour of face, the same dark eyes that had looked at him in MacGregor's office, filled with an indescribable sadness now, instead of the laughing joy of girlhood. In another moment he would have responded to her hesitation, to the pathetic ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... gentlemen, and among them Solivet pointed out the Count d'Aubepine. I should not otherwise have known him, so much was he altered in these six years, changing him from youth to manhood. His hair was much darker, he had a small pointed beard, and the childish contour of cheek and chin had passed away, and he was altogether developed, but there was something that did not reassure me. He seemed to have lost, with his boyhood, that individuality which we had once loved, and to have passed into an ordinary officer, like all the rest of the gay, dashing, handsome, ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... peculiar long, limp, formless house-shawl which in certain phases of Anglo-Saxon spinster and widowhood assumes the functions of the recluse's veil and announces the renunciation of worldly vanities and a resigned indifference to external feminine contour. The most audacious masculine arm would shrink from clasping that shapeless void in which the flatness of asceticism or the heavings of passion might alike lie buried. She had also in some mysterious way imported into ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... whom familiarity with the sight before him had bred weariness, if not contempt. He was a handsome man, with a broad brow and a pleasant gentleness of expression. The eyes were fine and thoughtful, and there was a combination of intellectual force with great delicacy of line in the contour of the head and face which was particularly attractive, especially to women of the more cultivated and impressionable sort. His thin grayish hair was rather long—not of that pronounced length which ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sharp, with hair slicked back from the forehead and narrow, slanting sharp eyes. He caught a glimpse of neck and shoulders above a brazen filmy waist, and in the splash of light and shadow there was no softness of contour, but cruel ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... girl, or such was my first impression. That is to say, that whilst her attractiveness was beyond dispute, analysis of her small features failed to detect from which particular quality this charm was derived. The contour of her face certainly formed a delightful oval, and there was a wistful look in her eyes which was half appealing and half impish. Her demure expression was not convincing, and there rested a vague smile, or promise of a smile, upon ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... success, began by slow degrees to rise again, solid and challenging, through the rosy clouds. His love, while he shouted to himself that it increased rather than diminished, none the less assumed a change of colour and contour. The bright vapours still shone and Sabina could always kindle ineffable glow to the fabric; but she away, they shrank a little and grew less radiant. The truth of himself and his ambitions showed through. At such times he dinned on the ears of his ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... Cophagus sitting in the room, she at work and he occupied with a book. When I opened my eyes, and perceived a female, I looked to ascertain if it was the young person whom Ephraim had stated to be Susannah Temple; not that I recollected her features exactly, but I did the contour of her person. Mrs Cophagus was taller, and I had a fair scrutiny of her before they perceived that I was awake. Her face was very pleasing, features small and regular. She appeared to be about thirty years of age, and ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... have a more pleasing expression, but the timid furtive look, the ungainly gait, and the ungraceful contour of their abak skirts, detract from the moderate beauty that they possess in their youth. After marriage their ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... back, mere jelly with a human contour. So she was discovered! She rolled her eyes wildly toward Matilda; Matilda rolled wild ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... billiard-table without pockets. On this absolute level, covered with coarse grass, Aigues-Mortes presents quite the appearance of the walled town that a school-boy draws upon his slate, or that we see in the background of early Flemish pictures—a simple parallelogram, of a contour almost absurdly bare, broken at intervals by angular towers and ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... he was and inured to such spectacles, was startled! The plate before him showed the Princess's face in all its beautiful contour, but only dimly veiling a ghastly death's-head below. There was the whole bony structure of the head and the eyeless sockets; even the graceful, swan-like neck showed the articulated vertebral column that supported it in all its hideous reality. The ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... others it was exceedingly difficult to evoke; while his partner was the very reverse, by constitution weak and ailing, but withal a woman of whom any man might and ought to have been proud. Her elegant form, her fair transparent skin, the classical contour of her refined and expressive face, might have led a Canova to have selected her as a model of feminine beauty. But alas! she was weak; she could not work like other women; her husband could not boast among his shopmates how much she contributed to the maintenance of the family, ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... or less! I wonder if I remember the new steps." For she had been taught the new steps—the new walking and swayings and pauses and sudden swirls and swoops. And her new dress was as short as other fashionable girls' dresses were, but in her case revealed a haunting delicacy of contour and line. ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... are indicated by "blazes" on trees, Fig. 2, so that the "cruiser" or "looker" as he goes thru the woods can identify them with those on his oil paper map. The cruiser also studies the kinds and character of the trees, the contour of the ground, the proximity to streams,—all with the view to marketing the product. Acting on the information thus gained by the cruiser, the lumberman purchases his sections at the proper land office, or if he is less scrupulous, buys only enough to serve as a basis for ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... the one in a street riot, the other while heading an armed sedition. But the criticism contained the elements of its own refutation. The youth, the brotherhood, the martyrdom of the men were the very elements that gave a softening radiance to the hard contour of their lives. The Gracchi were a stern and ever-present reality; they were also a bright and gracious memory. In either character they must have lived; but the combination of both presentments has secured them an ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... is deep and direct, but the high, jutting forehead above is like a table of stone, bearing the ten broken commandments. He keeps the lips ajar in a smile, or shut in a resolve, to hide their sensuality, and the fine black beard conceals the massive contour of jaws which are ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... America in the heart of Minnesota is also the pinnacle of its watershed—the central source of the majestic rivers whose vast basins determine the physical contour, climates, products, commerce, industry, and political destiny of two-fifths of the ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... feet above the bottom of the ditch. The berme usually left between the bottom of the parapet slope and the ditch was cut away so as to leave no level standing-place at the top of the scarp. This was the work which Longstreet afterward assaulted. Its chief defect was due to the situation and the contour of the ground around, which made its position so prominent a salient in the lines that the flanking fire was necessarily imperfect, leaving a considerable sector without fire beyond the angle of the northwest bastion. The point of ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... lovely girl at her side. Intrusiveness she might resent, but indifference she would and did. Who was this youth, she wondered, who not once had so much as stolen a look at the sweet, bonny face of her maiden sister? Surely 'twas a face any man would love to gaze upon,—so fair, so exquisite in contour and feature, so pearly in complexion, so lovely in the deep, dark brown of ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... the excitement starts from; partly upon the force and the form of force that is employed; and partly upon the length, thickness, weight, strain, and elasticity of the string, with some small allowance for gravitation. The vibrating sections are of wave-like contour; the nodes or points of apparent rest being really knots of the greatest pressure from crossing streams of molecules. Where the pressure slackens, the sections rise into loops, the curves of which show the points of least pressure. Now, if the string ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... he would fain add another touch, his ideal eludes him. Is a Gothic cathedral ever really finished? Is "Faust" finished? Is "Hamlet" explained? The modern spirit is mystical; its architecture, painting, poetry employ shadow to produce their highest effects: shadow and color rather than contour. On the Greek heroic stage there were a few figures, two or three at most, grouped like statuary and thrown out in bold relief at the apex of the scene: in Greek architecture a few clean, simple lines: in Greek poetry clear conceptions easily expressible in language ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... the peculiar contour of the banks on both sides, the whites could have done much better by simply paddling the canoe a quarter of a mile down the river and then hiding under the overhanging vegetation; but it has been explained ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... sometimes brought home an article of feminine apparel glimpsed in a shop window or showcase, but Lil soon put a stop to that. She had her own ideas on clothes. He turned to jewellery. On Lil's silken bosom reposed a diamond-and-platinum pin the size and general contour of a fish-knife. She had a dinner ring that crowded the second knuckle, and on her plump wrist sparkled an oblong so encrusted with diamonds that its utilitarian ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... by gunfire from the southern bank. Above this was a heavy chevaux-de-frise and barbed-wire entanglement, partly sunk and concealed from view; in many places pitted and covered with brushwood. Above this, following approximately a thirty-foot contour, came a line of trenches for infantry, and fifty yards behind a second line of trenches, commanding a further elevation of fifty feet. Two-thirds of the way up the hill came the trench-living quarters, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... eyes, and quickly drooped them again before the keen questioning gaze of the old soldier. "May God reward your Highness!" she stammered. In her confusion the blood rushed to her face, which was perfect in feature and expression. With her sweet delicate contour, her large gray eyes, and the sweep of the lustrous hair, setting off with its rich tint the little shell-like ears and the alabaster whiteness of the neck and throat, even Conde, who had seen all the beauties of three courts and of ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... graceful that he could not imagine a picture more pleasing. If he remembered that he had likened her to little Lois Boriskoff, he could now admit the preposterous nature of the comparison. True it was that nationality spoke in the contour of the face, in its coloring and its expression, but these elementals were forgotten in the amazing grace of the girl's movements, the dignity of her gestures and the vitality which animated her. Returning to the house unexpectedly, even a lad was ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... his career. If he had prepared his speeches for a body of men like the Roman senate, he might have been more nearly Cicero's equal. He used to wear a high-crowned soft felt hat, which was remarkably suited to the Roman-like contour of his face. He was skillful in all things, and might have been equally celebrated as a writer, an actor, or possibly as an artist, if his interest and inclination had led him in either of these directions. What we feel the lack of in him is contemplative depth: he was more ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... his quiet strength, and made him look like a bully and a soldier; and we can enter thoroughly into his feelings, and sympathise heartily with his uneasiness, because Boulanger has not quite caught the fineness of contour under the fatness of the face. Undoubtedly, the picture does not give the idea of a person of extreme refinement, or distinction of appearance. Nevertheless, judging from stories told by his contemporaries, and also from some of the books written by the ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... to the north, the eye gathers in the contour of a dense grove, hiding in its drooping folds "Auvergne," the former secluded country seat of Chief Justice Jonathan Sewell, now owned by George ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... of resemblance to that by which the discovery of America was accomplished. Almost as soon as Europe came into touch with the western hemisphere, discovery was pursued with unflagging energy, until its whole extent and contour were substantially known. Within fifty years after Columbus led the way across the Atlantic (1492), North and South America were laid down with something approaching precision; and Gerard Mercator's map of 1541 presented the greater part of the ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... the blemish of acute physical suffering had vanished; the clear pallor of her complexion, the full white throat, the rounded contour of the graceful form, bespoke complete restoration of all the vital forces; and never had she appeared ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... interested me, especially all about those wonderful moraines. I certainly think I quite realise the valleys, more vividly perhaps from having seen the valleys of Tahiti. I cannot doubt that the Himalaya owe almost all their contour to running water, and that they have been subjected to such action longer than any mountains (as yet described) in the world. What a contrast ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... recorded by a sounding on the last day of March was 256 fathoms. The continuous shoaling from 606 fathoms in a drift of 39 miles N. 26 W. in thirty days was interesting. The sea shoaled as we went north, either to east or to west, and the fact suggested that the contour-lines ran east and west, roughly. Our total drift between January 19, when the ship was frozen in, and March 31, a period of seventy-one days, had been 95 miles in a N. 80 W. direction. The icebergs around us had not ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... an instant protest, twin dimples peeped into life at the left corner of her bonny mouth. In regarding that attractive ripple the down-drawn eyebrows were forgotten until they rose again into their natural arches. A sweet, childish contour of face chimed with her expression; her full lips were bright as the bunch of ripe wood-strawberries at the breast of her cotton gown; her eyes as grey as Dartmoor mists; while, for the rest, a ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... fixed horizontally (by the aid of a spirit- level) across a third fallen stone, which was 7 feet 9 inches long; and the contour of the projecting parts and of the adjoining ground, which was not quite level, was thus ascertained, as shown in the accompanying diagram (Fig. 7) on a scale of 0.5 inch to a foot. The turf-covered border sloped up to the stone on one side to a height ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin
... century), music was noted in this way: an upstroke of the pen meant a raising of the voice, a downstroke lowered it, a flat stroke meant a repetition of the same note, thus [/ -] [G: c' g' c' c']. Gradually it became necessary to indicate the contour of the melodies with more accuracy; therefore the circumflex was added [Over-slur] [G: g' c'' g'] and reversed [Under-slur] [G: g' e' g']. Still later a sign for two steps was invented [Step] [G: e' g' b'] ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... ordinary attire of our modern European civilization; but peculiar care had been taken with the toilet of the senior of the two males. This individual had on the coat of a hussar, a cut that would have given a particular part of his body a more military contour than comported with his real character were it not for a red petticoat that was made shorter than common; less, however, with a view to show a pretty foot and ankle than to leave the nether limbs at liberty to go through with certain ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the flowers of the family are not geniuses or specially talented. Some are just beautiful to look at and yet unspoiled by flattery. It is a great gift of nature to be able to give happiness just by allowing people to look at one! The contour of the face, the turn of the head, the light in the eye, the freshness of the complexion, the grace of the movement, and the sweetness of the voice all go together, if the manner and the feeling only match the coloring and the form, to make it well worth while ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... I saw one, two, four, six guides loafing about the barriers leading to the main-line platforms. There seemed to be a lot of people in the hall and certainly a number of the men possessed that singular taste in dress, those rotundities of contour, by which one may distinguish the ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... that such a form should stand In raiment soiled, and travel stained; Yes, mark the contour of that hand, A hand by menial toil profaned. Can one from such a station reach All classes by ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... and polished chin, the contour of her glowing mouth, and the kindling beauty of her eyes were forever fresh delights to Le Rossignol. The dwarf watched the shapely and majestic woman moving down ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... plague you about contour, and grace, and expression? I have dreaded them all three since that hapless day at Compiegne, when you teased me so, and Mr. Thrale made what I hoped would have proved a lasting peace; but French ground is ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... hands and lifted his fierce gaze to the ceiling, without ceasing to suck the stub that singed his mustache. The master did not need the model except for the robes of the figure, to study the folds of the celestial garment, which must not reveal the slightest evidence of human contour. The possibility of copying a woman had never passed through his imagination. That was falling into materialism, glorifying the flesh, inviting temptation; Rodriguez was all he needed; one must ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... in the big timber now. The tall, straight pines of the Appleton holdings stretched away for a hundred miles, and formed a high wall on either side of the tote-road, which bent to the contour of ridge and swamp and crossed small creeks on rough ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... contour of the coast, involving easy access to the sea, there are other physical conditions which lead people to the sea or turn them from it. Although France was deficient in military ports on the Channel, ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... fully recognised the limits of his powers, he had great faith in his own critical judgment; and with good reason, for his perception of the beautiful in contour and attitude and grouping was almost unerring. All the drawings which Miss Thomson made for his "Three Sunsets" were submitted to his criticism, which descended to the smallest details. He concludes a letter to her, which contained ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... Dressed with excessive carelessness, he had the appearance rather of one at odds with fortune than of a substantial man of business. His short beard was raggedly trimmed; his grizzled hair began to show the scalp. Judging from the contour of his visage, one might have credited him with a forcible and commanding character; his voice favoured that impression; but the countenance had a despondent cast, the eyes seemed to shun observation, the lips ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... nicely set into the shoulders tapering to the head without any loose skin, as found in the Bulldog. SHOULDERS—The shoulders should be strong, muscular, and slanting; the chest wide and deep, with ribs well rounded. BACK—The back short and muscular, but not out of proportion to the general contour of the animal. LEGS—The fore-legs should be perfectly straight, with well-developed muscles; not out at shoulder, but set on the racing lines, and very strong at the pastern joints. The hind-legs ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... Paleolithic. In considering these divisions of relative time cultures, it must be remembered that the only way we have of measuring prehistoric time is through the geological method, based upon the Ice Ages and changes in the physical contour of ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... who moved with a jerking motion, as if his limbs were worked by a string like a child's toy, with dun-coloured hair lying thin and soft at the back and sides of his head; his forehead was so large it seemed to overbalance the rest of his face, which had, indeed, lost its natural contour by the absence of all the teeth. The eyes absolutely gleamed with intelligence; so keen, so observant, you felt as if they were almost wizard-like. Indeed, the whole room looked not unlike a wizard's dwelling. Instead of pictures were hung rude wooden frames of impaled insects; ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... angel of deliverance he looked to her as he stood in the starlight, outlined in silhouette against the wide, wonderful sky: broad shoulders, well-set head, close-cropped curls, handsome contour even in the darkness. There was about him an air of quiet ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... traveller had a holy shivering of awe, which crossed him at the very recollection of Lady Penelope, who had worked him rather hard during his former brief residence; and although Lady Binks's beauty might have charmed an Asiatic, by the plump graces of its contour, our senior was past the thoughts of a Sultana and a haram. At length a bright idea crossed his mind, and he suddenly demanded of Mrs. Dods, who was pouring out his tea for breakfast, into a large cup of a very particular species of china, of which he had presented her with a service ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... subdivided into smaller and smaller portions, until it is reduced to an aggregation of granules not too large to build withal the finest fabrics of the nascent organism. And, then, it is as if a delicate finger traced out the line to be occupied by the spinal column, and moulded the contour of the body; pinching up the head at one end, the tail at the other, and fashioning flank and limb into due proportions in so artistic a way, that, after watching the process hour by hour, one is almost involuntarily possessed by the notion, that ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... The general lay and contour of the ground in the region over which the British Army fought at the Battle of the Aisne are deeply impressed ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... was that before long, both by his glances and the language he used, she fully realised that she herself was as nothing to him. If ever he praised a limb, a tint, a contour, it was solely from the artistic point of view. Great enthusiasm and passion he often showed, but it was not passion for herself as in the old days. She felt confused and deeply mortified. Ah! this was the end; in her he no longer loved aught but his art, the example ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... abstract law of beauty, for in becoming sexually expressive as it were, the construction itself is sometimes weakened or falsified. The familiar classic console or modillion is an example: although in general contour it is well adapted to its function as a supporting bracket, embedded in, and projecting from a wall, yet the scroll-like ornament with which its sides are embellished gives it the appearance of not ...
— The Beautiful Necessity • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... Wanderers upon the Downs and in the highways and byways at their feet will find Bartholomew's "half-inch" map, sheet 32, the most useful. This scale is much to be preferred to the "one inch" parent which lacks the contour colouring. ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... powerful glass brought the satellite near. This body was like nothing else in the heavens. Antazzo had called it the golden crescent. Rather, it was of gleaming coppery hue, and now, as they swung around, it was fully illuminated—a brilliant sphere of unbroken contour. Smoothly globular, there was not one projection or indentation to indicate the existence of land or sea, mountain or valley, on its surface. It was like a ball of solid copper, scintillant there in the weak sunlight and the reflected light ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... left her three-year-old boy, who died two years afterward, and whose first tones saying "mamma" retained a difference from those of the children that came after. But now the years had brought many changes besides those in the contour of her cheek and throat; and that Grandcourt should marry her had become her dominant desire. The equivocal position which she had not minded about for herself was now telling upon her through her children, ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... the general contour of the coast, to Cape Charles at the northern entrance of Chesapeake Bay, is a distance of one hundred and thirty-six miles; from Cape Charles across the mouth of Chesapeake Bay to Cape Henry is thirteen miles; from Henlopen ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... simplicity in glossy bands; and her mouth large, but filled with teeth of pearl-like whiteness, contrasted by lips of coral wet with the spray. The entire outline of her face was Roman, and exhibited in its contour and lineaments even more than Roman sternness and decision; and its effect was still more heightened by a large mole at one corner of her mouth and the velvet robes in which she was ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... more or less even in the leaves of several grasses such as Panicum repens, P. flavidum and Eriochloa polystachya, it is wavy or undulating in the leaves of a few grasses. For example, the upper epidermis in the leaves of Panicum fluitans is undulating as it follows the contour of the ridges ...
— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar
... his hair back, looked out of the window, and then turned to Average Jones. The rather flabby lines of his face had abruptly hardened over the firm contour below. ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... looking leisurely round the house when I caught sight of a woman, in a box close by, whose head was turned from me, and who presented the somewhat unusual spectacle of a young neck and shoulders of the most exquisite contour—and perfectly gray hair; and not dull gray, but rather of a pleasing tint like frosted silver. This aroused my curiosity. I brought my glasses to a focus on her and waited patiently till she turned round. Then I recognized the Baroness Kassowski, ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... stranger's mind—the voice, the eye, the gait were Cassier's. He was familiar with the family, and in the hurried glance he got of the youths rushing by the saloon door he thought he recognized the contour of Alvira's beautiful face. He hastened to communicate his startling discovery to the Superintendent of the Police, and the city was once more in a state ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... place where a bluff of high and dry land faces, not indeed land equally dry immediately upon the farther bank, but at least a spur of dry land which approaches fairly near to the main stream. If the modern contour lines be taken and laid out upon a map of London this spur will be found to project from Southwark northward directly towards the river, and immediately opposite it is the dry hill, surrounded upon three sides by river or by marsh, upon which grew up the settlement of London. ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... a northern bound train and were soon off on what Uncle Henry called the "longest lap" of their journey. The train swept them up the line of Lake Michigan, sometimes within sight of the shore, often along the edge of estuaries, particularly following the contour of Green By, and then into the Wilderness of upper ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... would stand over a foot higher than halfway up. Look at your own writing desk; your own door. Furthermore, he was nine feet and eleven inches in a straight line from nose to end of tail, or over eleven feet along the contour of the back. If he were to rise on his hind feet to strike a man down, he would stand somewhere between seven and eight feet tall, depending on how nearly he straightened up. He weighed just under six hundred pounds, or as much as four ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... weeks a drawing by Parmigianino, the Venus and Cupid with a Bow, to be executed in four blocks. The print was done "intirely in Hugo's [da Carpi's] manner, with this Difference, that no Oscuro block has a Contour to resemble the original Drawing it was done from, which is seldom seen in Hugo's works...." Zanetti, surprised by the fine quality of the first proof, proposed to pass it off on Mariette in Paris as an original da Carpi print. He even stained it and cut holes in it ...
— John Baptist Jackson - 18th-Century Master of the Color Woodcut • Jacob Kainen
... month was June, there had been recent rains and the winding, dipping country road presented new beauties to the eyes at every stage. Wade, fresh from the mountains of Colorado, revelled in the softer and gentler loveliness about him. The lush, level meadow, the soft contour of the distant hills, the ever-present murmur and sparkle of running water delighted him even while they brought homesick memories of his own native Virginia. It was a relief to get away from the towering mountains, the eternal blue of unclouded skies, the ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... from England a black column of smoke was seen to port, and presently the contour of a heavy battleship could be determined bearing down on us. There was wild excitement till the Cross of St. George could be distinguished at her masthead. It was the ill-fated Queen Mary, our latest and finest battle-cruiser. ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... fringed with bullion buttons, an enormous flat sombrero,[147-2] and stiff, short embroidered velvet jacket, I was more concerned at the ponderous saddle and equipments intended for the slim Chu Chu. That these would hide and conceal her beautiful curves and contour, as well as overweight her, seemed certain; that she would resist them all to the last seemed equally clear. Nevertheless, to my surprise, when she was led out, and the saddle thrown deftly across her back, she was passive. Was ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... brings out this fact clearly. On a white sheet of paper is placed a card equally white; with a fine point, but without touching the paper, the contour of the card is followed while the idea of a line traced in black is suggested to the subject. The subject, when awakened, is asked to fold the paper according to these imaginary lines. He holds the paper at the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... to the contour of Manhattan Island, long and tongue-shaped, and running almost north and south. He showed them the main thoroughfares, the great arteries of north and south traffic. He traced for them the routes of subway, surface, and elevated car lines. Together they located the tunnels and the ferries. ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... of Sarah Bernhardt has always been a very conscious art, but it spoke to us, once, with so electrical a shock, as if nerve touched nerve, or the mere "contour subtil" of the voice were laid tinglingly on one's spinal cord, that it was difficult to analyse it coldly. She was Phedre or Marguerite Gautier, she was Adrienne Lecouvreur, Fedora, La Tosca, the actual woman, and she was also that other actual woman, Sarah Bernhardt. Two magics ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... gentleman felt grateful to the fine moonlight night, now nearly a fait-accompli, for enhancing this lady's white silk, which favoured a pretence that she was only reasonably passee, and enabled him to reflect upon the contour of her throat without interruption from its skin. For it had a contour by moonlight. Well!—sufficient to the day is the evil thereof; daylight might have its say to-morrow. Consider the clock put ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... used, their elevations must be reduced to the elevations of one common horizon by the addition or subtraction of the intervals between them. For instance, knowing the succession, an outcrop of a certain sandstone may indicate that the marking horizon is 200 feet below, and the structural contour is then drawn accordingly. Observations of strike and dip at the surface are helpful; but where the beds are but slightly flexed, small irregularities in deposition may make strike and dip observations useless in determining major ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... characterizes his country; and his genuine humour, ample obesity, and originality of delivery, entitle him to honourable identification with "Sir John." Now, by the soul of Momus! who ever beheld a woe-begone face at Paddy White's? Even our own, remarkable for "loathed melancholy," has changed its moody contour into the lineaments of mirth, while listening to him. View him holding forth to his auditors between the intervening whiffs of his soothing pipe, and you see written in wreaths of humour on his jolly countenance, the spirit of Falstaff's interrogatory, "What, shall I not take mine ease ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 374 • Various
... unconscious transition fell to contemplating her own face. It interested her. She looked at it critically, as at some face other than her own, some portrait, appraising and studying it. It was young and fresh, surely, as the morn—in its softness of contour and fine clear bloom; yet grave to the verge of austerity, owing partly to the brown hair which, parted in the middle and drawn down in a plain full sweep over the ears, hung thence in thick loose plait on either side ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... to carry the parallel still further, during the middle period of the reign, while the balance of parties and powers remained much the same, principles and tendencies began to assert themselves more definitely, just as muscles and sinews begin to appear through the round contour of the limbs of a ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... benevolence—in the best sense of the word, a sweet old man—looking out upon the world through large tinted spectacles with a beam which could not be otherwise than blind to all motes. In earlier years his face might, perhaps, have been a trifle hard in its contour; but Time, the lubricator, had eased some of the corners, and it was now the seat of kindness and love. He bowed ceremoniously to the first comer, and his manner seemed rather to breathe of fraternity than equality. As he ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... marked out in dark contrasting outline upon her pure forehead. On her upper lip, beneath the Grecian nose with its sensitively perfect curve of nostril, there lay a faint, swarthy shadow, the sign-manual of courage; but the enchanting roundness of contour, the frankly innocent expression of her other features, the transparence of the delicate carnations, the voluptuous softness of the lips, the flawless oval of the outline of the face, and with these, and more than all these, the saintlike expression ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... to popular notion, is one exhibiting a low order of intelligence, and characterized by small brain capacity, with great prominence of the superciliary ridges, occipital protuberance and zygomatic arches, the latter projecting beyond the general contour of the skull like the handles of a jar or a peach basket; and lines drawn from the most projecting part of the arches and touching the sides of the frontal bone are supposed to meet over the forehead, forming a triangle, for which reason the skull ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... at five, Blakely and I, on the roof of the hotel. I looked across the channel to the distant islands, followed the sweet contour of the shore, watched the aimless flight of sea-gulls; turning, I scanned the friendly hills, the mountains painted in the tender colors of late afternoon—I looked into Blakely's eyes. It was a beautiful world, after all. "Let's try and forget ...
— Cupid's Understudy • Edward Salisbury Field
... only. It had occurred to him that here was a remarkable model for a picture. He furtively studied the lines of her figure, which was clad in a long, tight-fighting cloak, trimmed with fur, and the contour and color of the knot of brown hair, whose living lustre shone richly between the dull fur that bordered her collar and her hat. Every moment the study fascinated him more, as he followed and turned, as they turned. Suddenly it struck him that perhaps ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... deal to a sufficient extent with statistics in matters of practical necessity, we will at this stage leave the reader to complete for himself the calculation of such a harbor's capacity. In this respect, in that of shelter, of contour of water-front, of accessibility from the high seas, New York Harbor has no rival on the continent. The Bay of San Francisco more nearly equals it than any other; but that is on the Pacific side, for the present much farther from the axis of national civilization, and backed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... series of observations is to be renewed. A comparison of them is likely—especially if the observer is a good artist and has executed several faithful delineations of the region under observation, to throw much light upon the real contour of the moon's ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor
... Dawson lay down to sleep and Vose Adams assumed his place as sentinel, the moon was near the zenith, but the contour of the canyon shut out its beams. While Vose was striving to pierce the gloom, over and about the four animals, he noted a flickering tremor against the vast wall which formed the other side of the canyon. A faint, fleecy veil of moonlight ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... That liquid sparkle of her eye, that lingual music, that turn of the head, how well he knew it all, despite the many superficial changes, and how instantly he would recognize it under whatever complexion, contour, accent, height, or carriage that it ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... with sorrowful glances, lost all doubt that the prisoner was in truth what he claimed to be, for, under the tension of strong feeling, the milder lines of the younger man's face assumed a set power of will,—immovable,—implacable,—until the force within him seemed to mold the whole contour of his face into a youthful image of that of the man who refused even to look ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... face of lovely cast and almost Grecian contour, with features of classic regularity; while the absence of obliquity in the orbs of the eye—despite the dusky hue of her akin—forbids the ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... more repose than his brother's; and his glance, instead of being keen, is confiding and benign. He has thrown off his paper cap, and you see that his hair is not thick and straight, like Adam's, but thin and wavy, allowing you to discern the exact contour of a coronal arch that predominates very decidedly ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... seldom see any shadows in Holbein's drawings; he seems to have put his sitters near a wide window, close against which he worked. Select also a background as near the tone of the highest light on the object to be drawn as possible. This will show up clearly the contour. In the case of a portrait drawing, a newspaper hung behind the head answers very well and is always easily obtained. The tone of it can be varied by the distance at which it is placed from the head, and by the angle at which it is turned away ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... his eyes now and again sought mine. I looked at him long and carefully. The likeness was certainly astonishing, though I saw the points of difference also. The King's face was slightly more fleshy than mine, the oval of its contour the least trifle more pronounced, and, as I fancied, his mouth lacking something of the firmness (or obstinacy) which was to be gathered from my close-shutting lips. But, for all that, and above all minor distinctions, the likeness rose ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... adapted to the stage, these portions would of course be omitted, and the character denuded of them would then more fully justify the idea which I have formed of it, than it may perhaps to many readers do at present, hidden as it is, both in shape and contour, ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... day. The sincere honesty of her plea—the knowledge that she actually meant it—only served to draw me closer, to strengthen my determination not to desert. Her face was ever before me as I advanced—a bravely pathetic face, wonderfully womanly in its girlish contour—appealing to every impulse of my manhood. I admitted the truth of what she said—it had been largely love of adventure, the rash recklessness of youth, which had brought me here. But this was my ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... vivid beauty, fiercely coloured, with her tawny gold hair, sunburnt skin, and jade-green, far-seeing eyes, her coiled crimson handkerchief and blue-green gown. She was finely made, slim, and in contour hardly more than a child; and yet she seemed to him very mature, a practised hand, with very various knowledge deep in her eyes, and a wide acquaintance behind her quiet lips. With her re-ordered toilette she had taken on self-possession and dignity, a reserve which baffled him. Without ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... and sucks nourishment from both. These with a regularity almost religious, spent an hour of every day, weather permitting, splashing in the gentle surf or posing on the beach in costumes more or less revealing, according to the contour of the wearer. The climax of the afternoon, the coup-de-theatre which all awaited, was the appearance of Mlle. Paul, late of the Varietes. This was such a masterpiece in its way that it is worth ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... were gradually becoming more and more convinced that all the important elements of the Globigerina ooze lived on the surface, and it seemed evident that, so long as the condition on the surface remained the same, no alteration of contour at the bottom could possibly prevent its accumulation; and the surface conditions in the Mid-Atlantic were very uniform, a moderate current of a very equal temperature passing continuously over elevations and depressions, and everywhere yielding to the ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... the girl's stockings were darned and badly needed further attention, for above her right shoe-heel a white scrap of Joan was visible. Her hands were a little large, but well shaped; her pose was free and fine, though the field-glasses spoiled the picture and the sun-bonnet hid the contour ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... just north from the corner of the west wall was a hole 19 by 7 inches which differed from the others in that the bottom instead of being rounded was irregular, and deeper at one side; the top, however, showed the usual hemispherical contour. ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... to break with English literature in order to become altogether American is like desiring to invent an entirely new kind of clothes. I shall not give up trousers because my fourth great-grandfather, who was a Yorkshireman, wore them, and his pattern no longer fits my different contour. I shall make me a pair better suiting my own shanks—yet they shall still be trousers. But in any ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... into words." The Instructor replied: "I suppose that under those circumstances, Mr. ——, the definition really would not help much." And so it is with contours—the definition does not help much if you know a contour when you meet it on a map. For examples of contours, turn to the map in section 2 and, starting at the United States penitentiary, note the smooth, flowing, irregular curved lines marked 880, 860, 840, ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... appearance, her cheeks were burning, her beautiful red lips were half opened, and revealed her ivory teeth, and her uplifted arms (from which the wide sleeves of her negligee had fallen back to the shoulders) were of the most charming contour. Concluding her dance, she glided breathless and with panting bosom toward Hardenberg, who had sunk into the easy-chair, and was looking on with wondering eyes. Bursting into loud, melodious laughter, she sat at his feet, and, pressing her glowing face against his knees, looked ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... changes brought about by the phonetic drift were allowed to stand, it is probable that most languages would present such irregularities of morphological contour as to lose touch with their formal ground-plan. Sound changes work mechanically. Hence they are likely to affect a whole morphological group here—this does not matter—, only part of a morphological ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... short, chunky partner checked alongside. Alec nodded and peered through the curtain of sky-darkened snow just beyond the rock face. He could see powder spume whipping off the ridge crest twenty feet above them but the contour of the sloping ridge was quickly lost in the ...
— The Thirst Quenchers • Rick Raphael |
