"Flat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... entertain the same opinion, for he disengaged his feet from the stirrups, and threw himself from the animal, striking the water flat upon his stomach, and swimming, with quick strokes, towards the opposite bank, which he gained, and by aid of the branch of a gum tree, which overhung the brook, succeeded in swinging his light form upon ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... plateau, perched as it were on a rocky proclivity, jutting from the mountain side, exposed to the setting sun, on which stood a ruined castle where the shepherds were wont to seek shelter when the mistral overtook them. A flat space, some hundred and fifty feet long, and sixty wide, which might once have been the castle platform, was now to be the scene of the drama which ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... sound he had heard that night came to his ears. Chains creaked, hinges groaned, and the great black pall above him began gradually to rise. Faster it went, till, at last, it fell back into position, flat with the wall of the chateau, and such little light as there was from the moon was beating down upon his ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... and if Rachael had had to endure the comment that the second act was "the best yet," there was the panacea, immediately to follow, that the end of the play was "pretty flat." ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... them a piece of the dough is taken and worked into a round lump, which is pressed flat into a frying-pan. It is then placed before the fire till the upper side of the bannock is slightly browned, when it is turned and replaced till the other side is browned. As soon as the bannock is stiff enough to stand on its edge it is taken out of the pan to make room for ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... of sliding was with the feet foremost, but there are now various methods employed. Many runners now slide head foremost, throwing themselves flat on the breast and stomach. Some keep to the base-line and slide direct for the base, while others throw the body and legs out of the line and reach for the base with a hand or foot. Among those who always ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... corseted as to appear positively sylph-like. She danced like a fairy, she who had once been called "old" Lady Fulkeward; she smoked cigarettes; she laughed like a child at every trivial thing—any joke, however stale, flat and unprofitable, was sufficient to stir her light pulses to merriment; and she flirted—oh, heavens!—HOW she flirted!—with a skill and a grace and a knowledge and an aplomb that nearly drove Muriel and Dolly Chetwynd Lyle frantic. They, poor things, were ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... Ezekiel, this species of parable appears with great distinctness of outline, and considerable fulness of detail. When a frivolous people would not take warning of their danger, the prophet, godly and grave, took a broad flat tile, and sketched on it the outline of a besieged city, and lay on his left side, silently contemplating the symbol of his country's fate (chap. iv.) The strange act of the revered man attracted many eyes, and stirred new questionings ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... money to-morrow. I have promised to do so. As it chances, it will be convenient." The Count smiled to himself in a meaning way, as though already enjoying the triumph of laying the gold pieces upon the counter under Akulina's flat nose. ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... went ahead again, and the result was that she pulled the sampan upon the point; and as she was flat-bottomed, there was no difficulty in doing so. The Blanchita continued on her course, and the two crocodiles were landed after her. One of the Malays then produced a parong latok; and even more skilfully than Achang had done the job, he cut off the heads ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... Adirondacks, is it?" said Dolly, as they whirled along through the flat landscapes of ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... The nurse is poor. That is, she has been poor. Lately I've had a man keeping tabs on her. Since leaving the hospital, she's moved into an expensive flat, and has splurged out into ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... quarters over which her glance extends, as far as the limit where heaven stands up like a wall, as far as the bounds where the country stands up distant, as far as the limit where the blue clouds spread flat, as far as the bounds where the white clouds lie away fallen—the blue sea plain as far as the limit whither come the prows of the ships without drying poles or paddles, the ships which continuously crowd on the great sea plain, and the road which men travel by land, as far as the limit whither ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... design in that beautiful revelation. But how fine and full and regular are those white treasures of hers! seeming to speak for a strong and perfect physical organisation; and if your eye goes further, for her flat hat is on the ground, you will see in the bountiful rich head of hair another token of the same thing. Her figure is finely developed; her colour clear and healthy; not blonde; the full-brown hair and eyes agree with the ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... furnished with fair and high and round hips and wide at their lower part as a hill, and decked with chains of gold, and capable of shaking the saintship of anchorites, being decked with thin attire, appeared highly graceful. And her feet with fair suppressed ankles, and possessing flat soles and straight toes of the colour of burnished copper and high and curved like tortoise back and marked by the wearing of ornaments furnished with rows of little bells, looked exceedingly handsome. And ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... the Western plains was the great, shaggy-maned wild ox, the bison, commonly known as buffalo. Small fragments of herds exist in a domesticated state here and there, a few of them in the Yellowstone Park. Such a herd as that on the Flat-head Reservation should not be allowed to go out of existence. Either on some reservation or on some forest reserve like the Wichita reserve and game refuge provision should be made for the preservation of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... though she felt that the words were flat; "I'm glad you've come back. It seems like old times for us to be settin' here, talkin', and—" here she laughed shrilly—"we've both been ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... Gertrude, not yet fourteen, had been surfeited with weddings, and replied to Harry's old wit of 'three times a bridesmaid and never a bride,' that she hoped so, her experience of married life was extremely flat; and a glance at Blanche's monotonous dignity, and Flora's worn face, showed what that ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... itself felt in Fifth Avenue. It was said that he had bought a house in Seventy-second Street, then that he meant to build near the Park; one or two people (always "taken by a friend") had been to his flat in the Pactolus, to see his Chinese porcelains and Persian rugs; now and then he had a few important men to dine at a Fifth Avenue restaurant; his name began to appear in philanthropic reports and on municipal committees (there were even rumours of its having been put up at a ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... the flat which Renine had taken on the first floor looked out upon the street. The table in the dining-room ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... party that evening, and Mrs. Warrender's little pleasantry fell flat. It flew, perhaps, across the mind of all, that Chatty might be changed, in a similar way, into the Cavendishes. Dick grew hot and cold when the suggestion flashed through him. Then it was that he recollected how guilty he had been, and how little ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... across now," Dan shouted, and ran into the waves, falling flat as soon as he was deep enough and swimming fast away. The other children followed him, ready for a frolic. You or I would have found that water very cold, but these were hardy children; and one of them all winter had made comrades of the Snow ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... edge. As a matter of fact, this error probably turned out a blessing in disguise, because there was no glacis down which the enemy's infantry could fire, and the numerous bluffs, ridges, and broken ground afford good cover to troops once they have passed the forty or fifty yards of flat, sandy beach. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... poor Leonore, "that goes from ear to ear, and my nose is so flat and so long—how can you ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... simplicity, religion is now by their means busked with the vain trumpery of Babylonish trinkets, and her face covered with the whorish and eye-bewitching fairding of fleshly show and splendour; and I have also showed particularly(1323) how sundry of the ceremonies are flat contrary to the example of Christ and his apostles and the ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... lad, who answered in guttural tones and with words Graham did not recognise. The boy then went to conduct an incomprehensible monologue in the corner, and the tailor pulled out a number of slotted arms terminating in little discs, pulling them out until the discs were flat against the body of Graham, one at each shoulder blade, one at the elbows, one at the neck and so forth, so that at last there were, perhaps, two score of them upon his body and limbs. At the same time, some other person entered the ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... a bit of headway," said Celia. "What we have written sounds so silly and flat. I'm afraid it will never be the kind ...
— A Dear Little Girl at School • Amy E. Blanchard
... policeman in the roadway. But that stout person, who had been exiled to these faraway precincts by reason of his increasing girth and a tendency toward fallen arches, only took one or two steps upon his flat feet and then halted, being in doubt as to what it was all about. Before he could make up his mind whether or not to join the chase, it was too late to join it. The fugitive, travelling a straight course, had crossed the field at its narrowest point and had bounded into the fringe ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... every line of his great torso, revealed through great rents in his blouse. His thighs were as big around as an ordinary man's body, and the smooth pink skin of his mighty arms and shoulders rippled with every movement that brought into play the broad, flat bands of ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... down to a flat ledge which overlooks the desert, and which is the observatory whither countless generations of mountain-sheep have been wont to resort to survey the strange world beneath them—with what purpose and what feelings, it remains for some imaginative writer of animal-stories ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... the low, flat valleys of the Little Sioux and the Ocheyedan rivers were covered six or eight feet deep by the annual overflow; and torrents of yellow snow-water, the melting of tremendous drifts, rushed ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... the strengthening of the weak, as the light gradually wins its way, that the true results can be seen. It is, to use a simile of a graceful modern writer,[71] "As when you raise with your staff an old flat stone, with the grass forming a little hedge, as it were, around it as it lies. Beneath it, what a revelation! Blades of grass flattened down, colorless, matted together, as if they had been bleached and ironed; hideous crawling things; black crickets with their long filaments sticking out ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... his blood upon the sword stood red but never dry, He wiped it slowly, till the blade was blue as the blue sky: But the blue sky split with a thunder-crack, spat down a blinding brand, And all of him lay back and flat as his ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... the Free Level, and I marvelled at the nature of this freedom. Freedom for licentiousness, for the getting and losing of money at the wheels of fortune, freedom for temporary gluttony and the mild intoxication of their flat, ill-flavoured synthetic beer. A tragic symbol it seemed to me of the ignobility of man's nature, that he will be a slave in all the loftier aspects of living if he can but retain his freedom for his vices and corruptions. Had the Germans then, like the villain of the ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... Saxony the women wore flat straw hats, like a dinner plate, hair plastered down, head-dresses of gigantic black ribbons, aprons of gay stripes, and ten petticoats coming only a little below the knee. The men wore ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... doing it by heating a flat stone, and cooking the fish on that," replied Tom. "Then some old hunters who won't bother to carry a frying-pan into the woods with them manage by toasting the meat or fish at the end of a long sliver of wood. Given the fish and a hot fire, the fellow who couldn't invent some ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster
... took in coal here after a style quite Japanese. Large flat boats came alongside, each laden with many tons of coal from a native mine near at hand; and a broad port-hole being opened near the ship's coal bunks, a line of Japanese girls and boys, each not more than twelve or thirteen ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... a changed city since the day before! Then all was joy over the end of the war; now we were plunged in a deeper gulf of woe. The sun rose on a city smitten and weeping. All traffic stood still; the icy hand of death lay flat on the heart of commerce, and it gave not a throb. Men stood by their open stores saying, with hands on each other's shoulders, 'Our President is dead.' Over and over, in a dazed way, they said the fateful syllables, as if the ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... again flat on his back with his hands under his head. "If I stay at the University, it means no money for either of us except ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... bark camp one summer and were staying on one of the popular lakes of the Saranac region. It would be a very pretty region if it were not so flat, if the margins of the lakes had not been flooded by dams at the outlets, which have killed the trees, and left a rim of ghastly deadwood like the swamps of the under-world pictured by Dore's bizarre pencil,—and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... had now pretty much ceased. Some sudden change took place in the air's density; for the fog, which had all along lain flat on the sea, now rapidly rose up like a curtain, twenty, thirty, fifty feet, leaving all clear below. We looked around us. The dark water was besprinkled with white patches, among which the seals were leaping and frisking about. Half a mile to the ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... or less; and the gale so mixed it up with fine snow that we made our journeys to and from the house, so to speak, blindfold, and took our chance of the drifts. But the evening of the 11th promised better. The wind dropped, and in an hour fell to a flat calm: then, after another hour, began to draw easily off shore—the draught itself being less noticeable than the way in which it smoothed down the heavy sea running. Though the cold did not lift, the weather grew tolerable once more: ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... obtain a better view. It was the half-decayed mausoleum of some saint, and Heideck had some trouble to climb up to the top of the minaret, a height of about twenty feet, whilst his servant waited with the horses down below. But the exertion was fully rewarded. He overlooked the flat plains. The sinuous Ravi river was hardly half an English mile distant. Its banks were covered with high grass and thick jungle growth; on the other side of the river immense thickly-packed masses of troops appeared—the advancing ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... dark-complexioned man with very large mouth and very flat nose, looked a little disdainful at this speech, which to any one else would have sounded ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... in the forenoon when the prince rang the bell at General Epanchin's door. The general lived on the first floor or flat of the house, as modest a lodging as his position permitted. A liveried servant opened the door, and the prince was obliged to enter into long explanations with this gentleman, who, from the first glance, looked at him ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... of the man was common-place and ordinary; one sees a hundred such, every day, in Fleet-street or the 'Change; the features were small, irregular, and somewhat flat: yet, when you looked twice upon the countenance, there was something marked and singular in the expression, which fully atoned for the commonness of the features. The right eye turned away from the left, in that watchful squint which seems constructed on ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... woollens. When preparing for a regular day's washing, it is a good plan to boil an abundance of ashes in water, strain off the lye, adding the gall of any animal you may have killed, and let the clothes soak in it. Next morning, take them to the water-side, and wash and beat them with a flat piece of wood, or lay them on a broad stone and knead and ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... 30th of March, at 7.30 A.M., and entered from the valley of Ellyria upon a perfectly flat country interspersed with trees. The ground was most favorable for the animals, being perfectly flat and free from ravines. We accordingly stepped along at a brisk pace, and the intense heat of the sun throughout the hottest hours of the day made the journey fatiguing for all but the camels. ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... not like the flat scenery of Warwickshire He described himself as "in it like a plant sunk in the ground in a pot." His holidays were always spent away from Rugby, either on the Continent, or, in later years, at his Westmoreland home, Fox How, a small ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... under sail. The fishermen who frequented our northern coast rarely came into these waters, and the little craft of our voyagers, moving without oars or any apparent human aid, seemed doubtless to them a monster gliding upon the wings of the wind. At the setting of the sun, they were near the flat and sandy coast, now known as Wallace's Sands. They fought in vain for a roadstead where they might anchor safely for the night. When they were opposite to Little Boar's Head, with the Isles of Shoals directly east of ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... the guards that are here, don't you? As soon as night comes on, you shall order fifteen or twenty men, under the command of your sergeant La Place, to be under arms, and to lay themselves flat on the ground, between this place and the head-quarters." "What the devil!" cried Matta, "an ambuscade? God forgive me, I believe you intend to rob the poor Savoyard. If that be your intention, I declare I will have nothing to say to it" "Poor devil!" said the Chevalier, "the matter is ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... where only flat leaves lie, And showing but the broken sky, Too surely is the sweetest lay That wins the ear and wastes the day, Where youthful Fancy pouts alone And lets not Wisdom touch ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... Vulgate lying open on the table, and pounced upon it like a hawk. MSS. were his delight; but before he could get to it two white hands quickly came flat upon the page, and a red face ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... influence on landscape etching all the world over, is "Omval" (No. 210). Its creator seemed fond of the fine old tree in this plate. He used it several times elsewhere. "Six's Bridge" (No. 209) which is almost pure outline, and the "Three Trees" (No. 205), with its great sweep of flat country, have a right to all the praise showered upon them. They, too, ...
— Rembrandt and His Etchings • Louis Arthur Holman
... Goruckpore occupied us two nights and a day of incessant travelling over a flat but cheerful-looking wheat country. It is a pretty little station, containing a regiment and a few civilians, and is situated on the banks of the Rapti, our old Nepaulese acquaintance under a very ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... and—and the woman making the two ends of it meet. That's why, Jimmie, these last two years and eight months, if not for what I was hoping for us, why—why—I—why, on your twenty a week, Jimmie, there's nobody could run a flat like I could. Why, the days wouldn't be long enough to putter in. I—Don't throw away what I been building up for us, Jimmie, ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... which in certain parts of the world has so increased the area available for human habitation. The water which is a necessity to man may become his enemy unless it is controlled. The alluvium which a river deposits in its flood-plain, whether in some flat stretch of its middle course or near the retarding level of the sea, attracts settlement because of its fertility and proximity to a natural highway; but it must be protected by dikes against the very element ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... with loud shouts upon an enemy. Here one was filled with fear at another's roar. There another slew with sharp shafts a friend or a foe. Here an elephant, huge as a hill, slain with a long shaft, fell down on the field and lay like a flat island in a river during the summer season. There an elephant, with sweat trickling down its body, like a mountain with rills flowing down its breast, having crushed by its tread a car-warrior with his steeds and charioteer on the field. Beholding brave ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... it obtrudes; it stares eternally on in all its stark unforgetfulness, absorbing its background, constantly rescuing itself from legend by turning guesswork and theory into facts, till it appears bare, irremediable, and complete,—witnessed at high noon, and in New Jersey of all places, flat, unillusive, and American. ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... leaps in 'Bridging the Abyss,'" he thought, "if not a fractional flight? If I had two flat surfaces, one on either side, and a motor behind me, it seems to me that I should continue to go upward; and the best rudder would be the man riding it, with his flexible body, his springy back: a live weight is ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... moccasin snake hanging in a sumac bush just a swinging his head back and forth. I swung at 'im with a stick and he swelled his head all up big and rared back. Then I hit 'im and knocked him on the ground flat. His belly was very big so we kept hittin' 'im on it until he opened his mouth and a catfish as long as my arm (forearm), jumped out jest a flopping. Well the catfish had a big belly too, so we beat 'em on his belly until he opened his ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States, From Interviews with Former Slaves - Virginia Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... wall, hospital, and storage tents: Spread the tent flat on the ground, folded at the ridge so that bottoms of side walls are even, ends of tent forming triangles to the right and left; fold the triangular ends of the tent in toward the middle, making it rectangular in ...
— Infantry Drill Regulations, United States Army, 1911 - Corrected to April 15, 1917 (Changes Nos. 1 to 19) • United States War Department
... accepted all, and said he would insert what he thought fit, an assurance which delighted Simon, who immediately sat down and wrote some more "pieces," in case at the last moment there might be room for them too. But, in spite even of these valuable contributions, the Dominican fell flat. There were a few good things in it here and there, but it was far below its ordinary form; and not a few of the writers repented sorely that ever they had put pen to ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... sound to be heard was the heavy tread of Varr himself as he walked through the main office to the small room where his own desk was located. He frowned at the difference, and sniffed discontentedly at the stale air which seemed already to have taken on the peculiar flat mustiness appropriate to closed and deserted habitations. He frowned again when he drew his finger along a desk and noted the depth of the furrow it had made ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... nothing here that resembled that. Kielland could see a group of little wooden shacks that looked as though they were ready at a moment's notice to sink with a gurgle into the mud. Off to the right across a mud flat one of the dredges apparently had done just that: a swarm of men and natives were hard at work dragging it up again. Control Tower was to the left, balanced precariously at a slight tilt in ...
— The Native Soil • Alan Edward Nourse
... he stuck into the nozzle a round piece of wood, which reached from the nozzle to the fire-place, and when the mud work was finished the stick was withdrawn, leaving an uninflammable tweer. When the structure of mud was completed a flat rock about four inches thick was laid on at the head of the forge—the end next to the bellows—to form a back to the fire, and lastly the bellows was tied on to the nozzle, which, as mentioned above, was built into the forge, with a portion projecting to receive ...
— Navajo Silversmiths • Washington Matthews
... handsome and useful knot and is widely used on ends of ropes where they pass through holes, as for bucket handles, ropes for trap-door handles, chest handles, etc. The knot is well adapted for such purposes, as it is hard, close, and presents an almost flat ...
— Knots, Splices and Rope Work • A. Hyatt Verrill
... evening meal Rose appeared in pale blue, and it seemed to Langham, fresh from the absolute seclusion of college rooms in vacation, that everything looked flat and stale beside her, beside the flash of her white arms, the gleam of her hair, the confident grace of every movement. He thought her much too self-conscious and self-satisfied; and she certainly did not make herself agreeable to ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Wilson adds, in his note on the passage: "The Matsya says that there were born outcast or barbarous races, Mlechchhas, as black as collyrium. The Bhagavata describes an individual of dwarfish stature, with short arms and legs, of a complexion as black as a crow, with projecting chin, broad flat nose, red eyes, and tawny hair, whose descendants were mountaineers and foresters. The Padma (Bhumi Khanda) has a similar deccription; adding to the dwarfish stature and black complexion, a wide mouth, large ears, and a protuberant belly. It also particularizes his posterity as Nishadas, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... you want with money?" she would say to me with air of absolute simplicity; and I never disputed the point. Nevertheless, though she fitted out her flat very badly with the money, the fact did not prevent her from saying when, later, she was showing me over the rooms of her new abode: "See what care and taste can do with the most wretched of means!" However, her "wretchedness" had cost fifty thousand ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... with him Jack Warford, had descended more leisurely. Before leaving the building Darrow placed the flat of his hands over his ears, and motioned Jack to do the same. Thus they missed the stunning effect of receiving the world of noise all at once; as a man goes to a bright light from a dark room. Furthermore, Darrow returned several times from the sound to the silence, ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... dat song?" she asked, with a chuckle, as she let down from her turbaned head a flat Indian basket ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... to rise from its ashes with all its phoenix-egg domes,—bubbles of wealth that broke, ready to be blown again, iridescent as ever, which is pleasant, for the world likes cheerful Mr. Barnum's success; New Haven, girt with flat marshes that look like monstrous billiard-tables, with haycocks lying about for balls,—romantic with West Rock and its legends,—cursed with a detestable depot, whose niggardly arrangements crowd the track so murderously close to the wall that the peine forte et dure must ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... last night, so, if she gives you the gimlet eye at first, just josh her along a bit. Now slick yourself up an' come on." Obediently Mr. Ravenslee arose and having tightened his neckerchief and smoothed his curly hair, crossed the landing and followed Spike into the opposite flat, a place of startling cleanliness as to floors and walls, and everything therein; uncomfortably trim of aspect and direfully ornate as to rugs and carpet ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... time, there were no rascals and no tin-horn gamblers. Games were conducted honestly, and men trusted one another. A man's word was as good as his gold in the blower. A marker was a flat, oblong composition chip worth, perhaps, a cent. But when a man betted a marker in a game and said it was worth five hundred dollars, it was accepted as worth five hundred dollars. Whoever won it knew that the man who issued it would redeem it with five hundred dollars' ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... above me go rolling the storm clouds, the formless dark gray daughters of air, which from the sea in cloudy buckets scoop up the water, ever wearied lifting and lifting, and then pour it again in the sea, a mournful, wearisome business. Over the sea, flat on his face, lies the monstrous, terrible North Wind, sighing and sinking his voice as in secret, like an old grumbler; for once in good humor, unto the ocean he talks, and he tells ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... artist like you I would draw a true picture of Traveller— representing his fine proportions, muscular figure, deep chest and short back, strong haunches, flat legs, small head, broad forehead, delicate ears, quick eye, small feet, and black mane and tail. Such a picture would inspire a poet, whose genius could then depict his worth and describe his endurance of toil, hunger, thirst, heat, ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... us after you come into a room?" asked Ailsa, laughing; and, turning impulsively, she pressed Celia's pretty hands flat together and kissed them. "You darling," she said. An unaccountable sense of expectancy—almost of exhilaration was taking possession of her. She looked into the mirror and stood content with ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... said the old soul, hobbling to the door, and looking in at Elsie, who was sitting flat on the stone floor of her cottage, sorting a quantity of flax that lay around her. The severe Roman profile was thrown out by the deep shadows of the interior,—and the piercing black eyes, the silver-white hair, and the strong, compressed lines ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... mounted them, the animals kneeling at the word of command for us to do so. Our party, six in number, was divided so that four persons, including the driver, rode on each elephant. They were large and docile creatures, being respectively seventy and ninety years of age. Their shuffling, flat-footed tread is peculiar, but not very unpleasant, except when the driver hurries the animals; but even then the gait is not nearly so trying to the rider as is that of the camel, which is only comparable to a Cunarder pitching in a head sea. The elephants seem to be very easily ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... Leech Lake Agency it was our good fortune to meet the post-missionary, Rev. Edwin Benedict; Major A. C. Ruffe, the Indian Agent; Paul Beaulieu, the veteran Government Interpreter; White-Cloud, chief of the Mississippi Indians; Flat-Mouth, head chief of the Chippewas, and others well known at the Agency. Through conversations with these parties I learned that pioneers of that region were of the opinion that the lake located by Schoolcraft was the source ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... associated, too, with one of the Ottoman banks. I presume his nationality is Persian, but I can't be sure of it. He periodically turns up in the various big capitals when international loans and that sort of thing are being negotiated. I understand that he has a flat somewhere in Paris, and the Service de Surete tells me that his name is good for several million francs over there. He appears to have a certain fondness for London during the spring and early summer months, and I am told he has ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... Aruba a flat, riverless island renowned for its white sand beaches; its tropical climate is moderated by constant trade winds from the Atlantic Ocean; the temperature is almost constant at about 27 degrees Celsius ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... or surfaces diversified with variety of paint; but even then he was no less surprised, expecting the pictures would feel like the things they represented, and was amazed when he found those parts, which by their light and shadow appeared now round and uneven, felt only flat like the rest, and asked which was the lying sense, feeling ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... describes rather the restlessness of a largely-gifted nature which, missing the guidance of the heart, plays experiments with life, trying knowledge, pleasure, dissipation, one after another, and hating them all; and then hating life itself as a weary, stale, flat, unprofitable mockery. The temper exhibited here will probably be perennial in the world. But the remedy for it will scarcely be more clear under other circumstances than it is at present, and lies in the disposition of the ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... seein' you or knowin' what your business is? I should guess not! Besides, you couldn't be gettin' inside his flat anyways. He's locked it, unless he's forgot to, which ain't likely, him bein' a careful man, and he must a-took the key with him. I know I ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... Hearing the sound of further pursuit, Vampa paused in dismay and listened. Three persons seemed to be rapidly approaching. The chief thereupon concealed the unconscious girl behind a huge fragment of rock and threw himself flat upon the ground, hoping thus to escape observation. As he did so he saw the glare of old Solara's torch. It flashed full in the face of a peasant, a perfect stranger, who had heard Annunziata's cry and come to the rescue. The shepherd had a knife in one ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... the place," he murmured, and opening the door he entered the office, to find himself in a plain but neatly furnished apartment, containing several chairs, and a flat-top desk, at which a young lady ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... service in the army. Day by day, as German aeroplanes are seen overhead, the alarm is raised in the shop. The men are panic-stricken. If there are a dozen alarms they do the same thing. They rush out like frightened rabbits, throw themselves flat on the sand, and wriggle through that hole into a cave that they have dug underneath. It is hysterically funny; they all try to get in at ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... habits acquired by cultivation are transmitted to the next generation and exalted or perpetuated; the history of particular races of men affords distinct proofs of this. The Caucasian stock has always preserved its superiority, whilst the negro or flat-nosed race has always been marked for want of intellectual power and capacity for the arts of life. This last race, in fact, has never been cultivated, and a hundred generations, successively improved, would be required to bring it to the state in which the Caucasian race ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... single oar working upon a wooden peg, is not yet obsolete; and at many a country ferry you may still see the hiki-fun['e] in which Tanabata-tsum['e] prayed her husband to cross in a night of storm,—a flat broad barge pulled over the river by cables. And maids and wives still sit at their doors in country villages, on pleasant autumn days, to weave as Tanabata-tsum['e] wove for the sake of her lord ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... are great stretches of adobe soil, known as "dobie" by the natives. This soil is a yellowish brown, or perhaps more of a gray color, and as fine as flour. Water plays sad havoc with it, if the soil lies so as to oppose the flow, and it moves like dust before a slight stream. On the flat, hard-baked plains, the water makes no impression, but on a railroad grade, be it ever so slight, the tendency is to dig pitfalls. I have seen a little stream of water, just enough to fill the ditches on each side ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... real poser. I had certainly seen through those spectacles as clearly as if they had been plain window-glass; and they had certainly given an inverted reflection of the candle-flame like that thrown from the surface of a concave lens. Now they obviously could not be both flat and concave; but yet they had the properties peculiar to both flatness and concavity. And there was a further difficulty. If I could see objects unaltered through them, so could Mr. Weiss. But the function of spectacles ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... Miss Tilly," said the woman, at the same time presenting a flat package in brown paper, "but WILL you give this pattern back to your mother. I am so very much obliged. I don't know how I WOULD git along without ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... gardens, with stone balls on the corner-posts and a quaint pavilion, the river running below; and so on to a bridge over the yet slender Thames, where the river water spouted clear and fragrant into a wide pool; and across the flat meadows, bright with kingcups, the spire of Lechlade towered over the clustered ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Selma entered it as a bride. Her coming signified the breaking up of the household and the establishment. Pauline had thought that out in her clear brain over night since receiving Wilbur's telegram. Wilbur must move into a modern house, and she into a modern flat. She would keep the very old things, such as the blazer and some andirons and a pair of candlesticks, for they were ancient enough to be really artistic, but the furniture of the immediate past, her father and mother's generation, should be sold at auction. Wilbur and she ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... died of thirst before I got out. All those blistering days, while I stumbled along in that baking hell, I kept thinking of a cool spring we had on our place when I was a boy. It bubbled up in moss at the foot of a big cedar, and I used to lie flat and drink till I couldn't hold any more. It was the sweetest water in the world. All those days I tortured myself by thinking of it. I'd have given my soul, if I have one, to satisfy my thirst at that spring. And that's how I feel about you. I want ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... The flat roofs of the houses of the city of Van may be seen to the left of the photograph nestling below ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... reaching for his sword-hilt, but as he freed it from scabbard I closed with him and, wrenching it from his hold, belaboured him soundly with the flat of it, and such of his companions as chanced within my reach, until hearing shouts, I espied Adam approaching with divers of his grinning fellows; whereupon I snapped the blade across my knee ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... thing; so it's no use to tease me. Why don't you play with your own dollies? I won't lend Lady Jane—that's flat." ...
— Proud and Lazy - A Story for Little Folks • Oliver Optic
... such matters. But he had signed no letter when he was tight. 'Never did such a thing in my life, and nothing could make me,' said Dolly. 'I'm never tight except at the club, and the letter couldn't have been there. I'll be drawn and quartered if I ever signed it. That's flat.' Dolly was intent on going to his father at once, on going to Melmotte at once, on going to Bideawhile's at once, and making there 'no end of a row,'—but Squercum stopped him. 'We'll just ferret this thing out quietly,' said Squercum, who perhaps thought that there would be high honour ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... voice still hovering around them. There had been a season of low tides, and when, to save the weary work of rowing a heavy sail-boat farther, it was decided to make the shore, they were hindered by a length of shallow water and weedy flat, through which the ladies of the party must consent to be carried. A late weird moon was rising down behind the light-houses, all red and angry in the mist still brooding over the horizon, the boat lay in the deep ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... see Holland. It is beautiful, is it not? Flat as ze Dutchman face. Not like your Cormorant Crag, eh? But nevaire mind. It vas time, and soon ve get butter, bread and milk, ze sheecan, ze potate, for you hungry boy have eat so much ve get to ze ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... prince of Germany, which the faculty expect to prove fatal, which it calls "a physical disorder for which medical science has yet to discover a remedy; it is not at all likely that this fortunate discovery will occur soon enough to be of service to the heir-apparent." This flat denial of the curability of cancer is in the same columns in which an enlightened correspondent gave ample proof of cures with names and dates. Such denials are published in a city where a diligent inquiry would reveal about three hundred cases ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... 1620; some kinds were not yet made, and pewter, wood, and leather largely filled their places. Wooden trenchers (taking the place of plates), trays, "noggins" (jug or pitcher-like cups), cups, and "lossets" (flat dishes like the bread-plates of to day), were of course part of every housewife's providings. Some few of Pilgrim origin possibly still exist. As neither coffee, tea, nor china had come into use, the cups and saucers which another ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... man, brightening up, "now I know. Look," turning the leaves forward and back, till all the Old Testament lay flat on one side, and all the New Testament flat on the other, while in his fingers he supported vertically the portion between, "look, sir, all this to the right is certain truth, and all this to the left is certain truth, but all I hold in my hand here ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... reached Nain, where Christ raised the widow's son to life. Nain is Magdala on a small scale. It has no population of any consequence. Within a hundred yards of it is the original graveyard, for aught I know; the tombstones lie flat on the ground, which is Jewish fashion in Syria. I believe the Moslems do not allow them to have upright tombstones. A Moslem grave is usually roughly plastered over and whitewashed, and has at one end an upright projection which is shaped into exceedingly rude attempts at ornamentation. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... coral and limestone plateau, flat to undulating; ringed by vertical white cliffs ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... flat on the bottom Of the boat; and the captain said: "If we lie here, we all are captured, And the ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... last meeting was over, and I felt as wretched as Garm, who moaned in his sleep all night. When we went to the office he found a place under the table close to Vixen, and dropped flat till it was time to go home. There was no more running out into the verandahs, no slinking away for stolen talks with Stanley. As the weather grew warmer the dogs were forbidden to run beside the cart, but sat at my side on the seat, Vixen with her head under the crook of ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... speech, stamped with the exquisite stupidity given to the mind by the first disturbing symptoms of true love, Hippolyte looked at the young girl. Adelaide was lighting the Argand lamp, no doubt that she might get rid of a tallow candle fixed in a large copper flat candlestick, and graced with a heavy fluting of grease from its guttering. She answered with a slight bow, carried the flat candlestick into the ante-room, came back, and after placing the lamp on the chimney shelf, seated herself by her mother, a little ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac
... cocoa, wax, and many other articles. In their agricultural operations the people are industrious, although much labor is lost by the use of defective implements. The plough, of very simple construction, has been adopted from the Chinese; it has no coulter, the share is flat, and being turned partly to one side, answers, in a certain degree, the purpose of a mould-board. This rude implement is sufficient for the rich soils, where the tillage depends chiefly upon the harrow, in constructing which a thorny species of bamboo is used. The harrow is formed of ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... out of her wits at the sudden call, came rushing to the piazza, flat-iron in hand, and stood riveted to the spot where she first saw the features on which the awful shadow ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... said to him, "Woe to thee! who brought thee hither and what dost thou want?" My brother could make no answer, being tongue-tied for fear; so the black seized him and stripping him of his clothes, beat him with the flat of his sword till he swooned away. Then the pestilent black concluded that he was dead, and my brother heard him say, "Where is the salt-wench?" Whereupon in came a slave-girl, with a great dish of salt, and the black strewed salt upon my brother's wounds; but he did ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... fairly perplexed all antiquarian research. Its name is derived not, as might be supposed, from the nation to whom this distinctive appellation was given, but from the Latin word celtis, a chisel. It is not known whether these celts, or the round, flat, sharp-edged chisels, were called Lia Miledh, "warriors' stones." In the record of the battle of the Ford of Comar, Westmeath, the use of this ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... an adventurer by the courtiers of Lisbon, mocked as a visionary by the learned priests of the Council in Salamanca, who, with texts from the Scriptures and quotations from the saints, had tried to convince him that the world was flat; he had been pointed at by the rabble in the streets as a madman who maintained that there was a land where the people walked with their heads down; and, after months of trial, he had been able to equip his three small craft and collect a crew of ninety ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... are said to permit. Indeed, we do not recollect to have seen a quantity of verse with so few deviations in either direction from that exact standard. His effusions are spread over a dead flat, and can no more get above or below the level, than if they were so much stagnant water. As an extenuation of this offence, the noble author is peculiarly forward in pleading minority. We have it in ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... over the hills we could see a village near the southern base and it seemed quite near us. It was a new and strange sight to us as we approached. The houses were only one story high and seemed built of mud of a gray color, the roofs flat, and the streets almost deserted. Occasionally a man could be seen, sometimes a dog, and now and then an Indian, sitting with his back to the house. The whole view indicated a thinly populated place, ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... turns in the helix is reduced until but a single loop remains, the result is the same; the single loop acts like a flat magnet, one side of the loop always facing northward and one southward, and one face attracting the north pole of the suspended magnet and one ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... my neck isn't right, and my back isn't right! My skirt sticks out where it should be flat, and is flat where it ought to stick out. My hat looks like the ark, and my gloves are too big. I ought to be superior like Esther, and not care a bit, but I do. I care frightfully. I feel a worm, and as it I'd ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... river. "Such the feelings of the happy, Such the minds of merry maidens: Like the early dawn of spring-time, Like the rising Sun in summer No such radiance awaits me, With my young heart filled with terror; Happiness is not my portion, Like the flat-shore of the ocean, Like the dark rift of the storm-cloud, Like the cheerless nights of winter! Dreary is the day in autumn, Dreary too the autumn evening, Still more dreary is my future!" An industrious old maiden, Ever guarding home and kindred, Spake ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... St. Louis and New Orleans. I can't just figure out yet what he is doing up here. I asked him flat out, but he only laughed, and he isn't the sort of man you get very friendly with, some say he has Indian blood in him, so I dropped it. He and the Judge seem pretty thick, and they may ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... need detailed repetition. Most of the publishers had absolutely refused to look at his manuscripts; one or two had good-naturedly glanced over and returned them at once with a civil word or two of flat rejection. One publisher alone—himself a man of letters, and who in youth had gone through the same bitter process of disillusion that now awaited the village genius—volunteered some kindly though stern explanation and counsel to the unhappy boy. This gentleman read a portion ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the tall flat walls of the houses in a narrow court in Fleet Street, London, any one who has eyes can see the gleam of the moon, and the two or three stars that hang in the long strip of blue overhead. They can hear the rumble of the late cab, and the tramp of the policeman outside ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... evidences of a ruined forest land. A landscape of flat wastes, of thinned and burned and uprooted trees. A desolate ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland |
