"Flat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... become vessicular, have flattened tops, and contain a limpid fluid. The parts continue to swell, the eruptions to enlarge, and become filled with purulent matter, having a dark color at the top, up to about the fourteenth or fifteenth day, when they begin to flat down, to dry up, and some of the scabs become loose. At this time, some fever arises, often quite severe, with headache and other inflammatory symptoms. If the eruption is very severe, fever will be of corresponding violence, and lighter or wanting ...
— An Epitome of Homeopathic Healing Art - Containing the New Discoveries and Improvements to the Present Time • B. L. Hill
... there are larks yonder singing higher still, suspended in the brown light. Turning away at last and tracing the fosse, there is at the point where it is deepest and where there is some trifling shelter, a flat hawthorn bush. It has grown as flat as a hurdle, as if trained espalierwise or against a wall—the effect, no doubt, of the winds. Into and between its gnarled branches, dry and leafless, furze boughs have been woven in and out, so as to form a shield against ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... events may present figures or surfaces in which the slopes of the curves are very different, namely, more or less steep; and if the curve is very steep, the figure runs into a peak; whereas, if the curve is gradual, the figure is comparatively flat. In the latter case, where the figure is flat, fewer events will closely cluster about the average, and the deviations ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... term applied in common use to all classes of sustaining surfaces; strictly applicable only to flat surfaces. ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... early snatched from the world of letters, which was amusing to those who were in the secret, but which even then had not the merit of novelty. Such practical jokes, capital so long as the author remains unknown, fall rather flat if subsequently the ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... services of eleven men; all, with the exception of Ithuel's four, in the ruin. The loss of the English amounted to thirty-three, including several officers. The master's mate who had commanded the crippled cutter lay over its stern, flat on his back, with no less than five musket-balls through his chest. His passage into another state of existence had been sudden as the flight of the electric spark. Of his late companions, several were dead also; though most were still ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... is a beautiful Library Pocket Edition, printed on good paper, clear type, cloth bound covers modern flat back, with title, and the author's portrait and signature embellished on the cover; each set ...
— Wholesale Price List of Newspapers and Periodicals • D. D. Cottrell's Subscription Agency
... real lovers she would have repaid him with such miracles of tenderness. The gesture was always followed, he remembered, by a period of silence when she laid the flowers aside for some servant's attention, which was surely a moment of flat ironic regret. ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... opened his Evening Hate. There was the distant boom of a shell. Before we could realise what the sound was, and say "Hallo! they've begun," the missile had exploded among the stores on the beach. That was my baptism of fire. Without the least hesitation I copied Major Hardy and Monty, and went flat on my face behind some brushwood. Only Doe, too proud to take cover, remained standing, and then blushed self-consciously lest he ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... brought before the same governor. To his interrogatories, Joseph answered, that he was a Christian, and had always taught the sun to be an inanimate creature. The issue was, that he was stretched flat on the ground, and beaten with thick twigs stripped of the thorns, by ten executioners who succeeded one another, till his body seemed one continued wound. At the sight of himself in this condition the martyr with joy said: "I return you the greatest thanks I am able, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... off a vast flat as it was upheaved out of the sea? That is a likely guess. The valley at its upper end spreads out like the fingers of a hand, as ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... heart of England," and the heart of England it is today—rich, luxuriant, slow. The great colonies of rabbits that I saw at Charlcote seemed too fat to frolic, save more than to play a trick or two on the hounds that blinked in the sun. Down toward Stratford there are flat islands covered with sedge, long rows of weeping-willows, low hazel, hawthorn, and places where "Green Grow the Rushes, O." Then, if the farmer leaves a spot untilled, the dogrose pre-empts the place and showers its petals on the vagrant winds. Meadowsweet, forget-me-nots ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... extending his line, and (on the Russian side) as to luring the enemy into the depths of Russia, are evidently of that kind, and only by much straining can historians attribute such conceptions to Napoleon and his marshals, or such plans to the Russian commanders. All the facts are in flat contradiction to such conjectures. During the whole period of the war not only was there no wish on the Russian side to draw the French into the heart of the country, but from their first entry into Russia everything was done to stop them. And not only was Napoleon not afraid ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... 1780, maintaining the propriety of condemning the Nabob to sustain the whole of the burden imposed upon him, and his minutes and letters maintaining the propriety of relieving him from those burthens in 1781. The arguments and facts adduced on the one occasion, as well as the conclusion, are a flat contradiction to those exhibited on the other."] which entirely takes away our respect even for success, when issuing out of such a chaos of self-contradiction and shuffling. It cannot be denied, however, that such a system of exposure—submitted, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... Shellfishes" our Portuguese Lucullus sets down the "hedgehog," "snail," and "wolf." After this such trifles as "starch" arranged under the heading of "Metals and Minerals," and "brick" and "whitelead" under that of "Common Stones" fall almost flat; but one would like to be initiated into the mysteries of "gleek," "carousal," and "keel," which are gravely asserted to be "Games." Among "Chivalry Orders" one has a glimmering of what is intended by "Saint Michaelmas" and "Very-Merit"; but under the heading of "Degrees," although by a slight ...
— English as she is spoke - or, A jest in sober earnest • Jose da Fonseca
... scouring and her drowsiness, the heat and fatigue had doubtless overcome her. She could be made out dimly in the light of the small lamp that hung by the hearth. She was a thin, scrawny woman, flat-chested, with lean arms, big red hands and skin of greyish hue. She slept seated upon a chair with her mouth open; her ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... of saying most expensive. The Wyandotte had gone up before landlords grasped the obvious truth that in a fire-proof structure locations farthest from noise and dust should and could command highest prices; so Joshua Craig's flat was the cheapest in the house. The ninety dollars a month loomed large in his eyes, focused to little-town ideas of values; it was, in fact, small for shelter in "the de luxe district of the de luxe quarter," to quote Mrs. Senator Mulvey, that simple, ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... up again when he suddenly bethought himself, and lay down flat, with the same sort of smile on his face. "The pony heard it, too," he said. "She jumped as if she had been shot. If I had not grasped at the reins—for I was ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... was one drawback. The "campus,'' on which stood the four buildings then devoted to instruction, greatly disappointed me. It was a flat, square inclosure of forty acres, unkempt and wretched. Throughout its whole space there were not more than a score of trees outside the building sites allotted to professors; unsightly plank walks connected the buildings, and in every direction were meandering paths, which in dry weather were dusty ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... who were well acquainted with the country, to observe the movements of the Queen's troops, and give notice of their approach. The evening was drawing in, when a peasant came up in all haste, laden with a large stone of a thin flat form, nearly a foot and a half long. On reaching the presence of Zumalacarregui, he laid it down, and requested the general to read what was written on it. One of the scouts having no writing materials, and thinking the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... two men. Jim played with the gems, running them through his fingers, sorting them into piles, and spreading them out flat and wide. He was a slender, weazened man, nervous, irritable, high-strung, and anaemic—a typical child of the gutter, with unbeautiful twisted features, small-eyed, with face and mouth perpetually and feverishly ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... herbage on the flat behind the trapper was a lank, long-limbed horse from which he had just dismounted, and which looked travel-stained and weary like his master. The news the man brought was worthy of consideration, and Ralph listened with rapt attention ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... flat between the two. If the old lady could have been induced to remain up-stairs, Harry felt that the evening would have been much more satisfactory. But, as it was, he found himself enabled to make some progress. He at once began to address Florence as ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... handsome and imposing looking flowers of the Cananga odorata occur to the number of four on short peduncles. The lobes of the tripartite leathery calyx are finally bent back. The six lanceolate petals spread out very nearly flat, and grow to a length of 7 centimeters and a breadth of about 12 millimeters; they are longitudinally veined, of a greenish color, and dark brown when dried. The somewhat bell-shaped elegantly drooping flowers impart quite a handsome appearance, although the floral beauty of other closely ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... caliphs. [133] Our reason must be startled by these extravagant assertions; and they will become more palpable, if we assume the compass and measure the extent of habitable ground: a valley from the tropic to Memphis seldom broader than twelve miles, and the triangle of the Delta, a flat surface of two thousand one hundred square leagues, compose a twelfth part of the magnitude of France. [134] A more accurate research will justify a more reasonable estimate. The three hundred millions, created by the error of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... the Battery to B 35d 45.25. Reader, have you ever lived in, or on, an unfurnished map-reference in Flanders? If not, permit me to inform you that this group of letters and numerals represented a mud-flat pocked with ancient shell-craters, through which loafed an unwholesome stream under a bilious-looking sky. The Junior Subaltern, fresh from home, asked where the billets were. We could but bless his happy innocence and remind him that as Army Field Artillery we ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 5, 1917 • Various
... Master Hoey and the ladies.... Sometimes I think of Mrs. Molie. She sits sewing while the Associate Master gravely keeps her company; they talk about the servants at home whose only desire is to stay out all night. Mrs. Molie is a thin, flat-chested lady, but probably she has at one time been less plain; her bluish teeth look as though they were cold, as though they were made of ice, but perhaps a few years ago, her full lips and the dark down at ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... or put to shame.' But the rendering of our text seems to be accurate enough. 'He shall not make haste.' Remember the picture of the context—a suddenly descending storm, a swiftly rising and turbid flood, the lashing of the rain, the howling of the wind. The men in the clay-built hovels on the flat have to take to flight to some higher ground above the reach of the innundation, on some sheltered rock out of the flashing of the rain and the force of the tempest. He who is built upon the true foundation ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... bidding, so that he deemed the gain was his. So sprang up talk in the hall betwixt man and man, and folk drank about and were merry, till the chieftain arose again and smote the board with the flat of his sword, and cried out in a loud and angry voice, so that all could hear: "Now let there be music and minstrelsy ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... a tiny scrap of dough, And rolled and rolled it flat; And baked it thin as a wafer— But ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... very big fellow, (fully thirty feet long), and just as strong and ugly as he was big. Once, down in the tropics where he usually lives, I saw him break a man's leg with one stroke of his tail. His temper was awful, and he would stop at nothing when angry. He had enormous jaws, with six rows of flat teeth, and to see him turn on his side, and open those jaws was enough to give you cold chills ...
— How Sammy Went to Coral-Land • Emily Paret Atwater
... castle of Motte-Broon, near Rennes, France, there was born about the year 1314 "the ugliest child from Rennes to Dinan," as an uncomplimentary chronicle says. He was a flat-nosed, swarthy, big-headed, broad-shouldered fellow, a regular wretch, in his own mother's words, violent in temper, using his fist as freely as his tongue, driving his tutor away before he could teach him to read, but having ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... bold statement (i.e. that love-letters were found in Branwell's pockets) Martha Brown gave to me a flat contradiction, declaring that she was employed in the sick room at the time, and had personal knowledge that not one letter, nor a vestige of one, from the lady in question, was so found.'—Leyland. The Bronte ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... the yard, and away down the lane. And then the Over-Lord turned into the fields and struck a right-of-way that led in direction of a hamlet two miles distant. Here many of the meadows were thirty acres and over in extent, flat as any floor, with great elm trees in their hedgerows. They were untenanted now by sheep or cattle, for these had been driven off the night before to higher ground, by men who kept an eye upon the weather. The virgin surface of ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... flowers, like Eastern beauties, can only be seen "half hidden and half revealed," in the general unsteadiness. As for bees, you cannot hear or see them at all; and the songs of the happiest birds are drowned altogether by the clatter of a hundred wheels on the metal track. If there are any poor, flat, or fen lands, your way is sure to lie through them. In a picturesque and undulating country, studded with parks and mansions of wealth and taste, you are plunging through a long, dark tunnel, or walled into a deep cut, before your eye can catch the view that ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... write. After I had washed the dishes I said, "I am going to town to get those two articles." To which she replied, "It is up to you. No hurry about it." I went out to the garage to get the car and found I had a flat tire, so I went back into the house and said, "It is cold out there and there is a flat tire." ...
— Personal Experiences of S. O. Susag • S. O. Susag
... "I do not desire to kill you, but to treat you as you deserve, for having presumed to address yourself to a prince of such birth as mine, without his having given you just cause,"—and he struck him with the flat of his sword-blade. Coligny, furious, collected his strength, threw himself backwards, disengaged his sword, and recommenced the strife. In this second bout, Guise was slightly wounded in the shoulder, and Coligny in the hand. At length, Guise, in making another ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... the long railway journey across the flat plains of Germany very dull, as he was unable to exchange a word with his fellow-passengers; but as soon as he crossed the Russian frontier he felt at home again, and enjoyed the run through the thickly-wooded country lying between Wilna and St. Petersburg. As he stepped ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... these dangerous shots were not accident. They were well aimed, and most of them hit low down. The cunning rustlers had some unerring riflemen and they were picking out the vulnerable places all along the front of the cabin. If Jean had not been lying flat he would have been hit twice. Presently he conceived the idea of driving pegs between the logs, high up, and, kneeling on these, he managed to peep out from the upper edge of the window. But this position was awkward and ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... mountain snow, was a hundred feet from the stockade gate, and on its bank stood the log cavalry stables. Below, a scant half mile away, were the only trees visible, a scraggly grove of cottonwoods, while down the face of the bluff and across the flat ran the slender ribbon of trail. Monotonous, unchanging, it was a desolate picture to watch day after ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... another home that evening was the wedding of Billy Neilson and Bertram Henshaw uppermost in thought and speech. In a certain little South-End flat where, in two rented rooms, lived Alice Greggory and her crippled mother, Alice was talking to Mr. M. J. Arkwright, commonly known to his friends as "Mary Jane," owing to the mystery in which he had for ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... says my subconscious mind is desirous of learning now, and I dare say they're both right. Anyhow, I can make dandy short-bread and fruitcake. I got ambitious last week and attempted cream puffs, but made an awful failure of them. They came out of the oven flat as flukes. I thought maybe the cream would fill them up again and make them plump but it didn't. I think Susan was secretly pleased. She is past mistress in the art of making cream puffs and it would break her heart if anyone else here could ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... arm and they ran on together to the flat piece of ground on the edge of the wood, where the races were to take place. The steep side of the down descended abruptly from this, and Lilac knew that by taking that way, which was quite an easy one to her active feet, she could ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... deep impression on many people yet. But it is simply impossible for you to give them; and if you should force yourself some rainy Sunday to preach one of them, you would give it with such a sense of its errors, and with such an absence of corresponding feeling, that it would fall very flat and dead. Your views are maturing; your taste is growing fastidious; the strong things you once said you could not bring yourself to say now. If you could preach those old sermons, there is no doubt they would go down with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... in his times, to be qualified to judge of this. The subtle salt and spirit of the ancient raillery, according to father Brumoi, is evaporated through length of time, and what remains of it is become flat and insipid to us; though the sharpest part will retain its vigour throughout ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... every thicket with the goldfinch rings. Of Libya's shepherds why the tale pursue? Why sing their pastures and the scattered huts They house in? Oft their cattle day and night Graze the whole month together, and go forth Into far deserts where no shelter is, So flat the plain and boundless. All his goods The Afric swain bears with him, house and home, Arms, Cretan quiver, and Amyclaean dog; As some keen Roman in his country's arms Plies the swift march beneath ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... the half-dozen decent villages standing in the flat bottom of the Val de Travers, a widish valley that lies between the gorges of the Jura and the Lake of Neuchatel, and is famous in our day for its production of absinthe and of asphalt. The flat of the valley, with the Reuss making a bald and colourless way through ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... conducted Morton to the brook. A hoarse and sullen roar had in part prepared him for the scene which presented itself, yet it was not to be viewed without surprise and even terror. When he emerged from the devious path which conducted him through the thicket, he found himself placed on a ledge of flat rock projecting over one side of a chasm not less than a hundred feet deep, where the dark mountain-stream made a decided and rapid shoot over the precipice, and was swallowed up by a deep, black, yawning gulf. The eye in vain strove to see the bottom of ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... leisurely step. But when she drew near a building, she could not make out where the door could be. After searching and searching, she accidentally caught sight of a bamboo fence. "Here's another trellis with flat bean plants creeping on it!" Goody Liu communed within herself. While giving way to reflection, she skirted the flower-laden hedge, and discovering a moonlike, cavelike, entrance, she stepped in. Here she discerned, stretching before her eyes a sheet of water, forming ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... and the house itself—inch by inch. Not a trace. I went out aft again. The cat sat on the wheel-box, washing her face. I hadn't noticed the scar on her head before, running down between her ears—rather a new scar—three or four days old, I should say. It looked ghastly and blue-white in the flat moonlight. I ran over and grabbed her up to heave her over the side—you understand how upset I was. Now you know a cat will squirm around and grab something when you hold it like that, generally speaking. This one didn't. She just drooped and began to purr and looked up at me out of her ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... to be among the saints of the earth, but that it is easier to be good when one is well no one will deny. Every big school has now its class or classes in corrective or medical gymnastics, in which stooping shoulders, ewe necks, curved spines, flat insteps, small waists and narrow chests are rectified as far as possible in the limited ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... upright—shook his clenched fist at his conquerors, and a fearful gurgling howl, which the nature of his wounds did not allow him to syllable into a curse, came from his breast—with that he fell flat on ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... place weel," said she, when she heard Lord Cairnforth inquiring for the address Helen had given. "It's ane o' thae high lands in the New Town—a grand flat wi' a fine ha' door—and then ye gang up an' up, till at the top flat ye find a bit nest like a bird's —and the folk living there are as ill off as a ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... anticipations of a "scenic effect" were amply realized. The walls and buttresses of the old Church stood out dark against the sky; the white clouds sailed slowly by the moon, which reflected itself on the damp grass, and shone upon the flat wet tombstones till they looked like pieces of water. It was not less bright upon the upright ones, upon quaint crosses, short headstones, and upon the huge, ungainly memorial of the murdered Ephraim Garnett. But the sight on which it shone that night was the figure ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... instantly observing, may at once counteract them by the aid of a good reserve. Moreover, the party advancing upon the enemy has against him all the disadvantages arising from accidents of ground that he must pass before reaching the hostile line; and, however flat a country it may be, there are always inequalities of the surface, such as small ravines, thickets, hedges, farm-houses, villages, &c., which must either be taken possession of or be passed by. To these natural obstacles may ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... the cannibal Mayorunas," said Lourenco. "The point, with its sawtooth barbs, is made from the tail bone of the araya, the flat devilfish of the swamp lakes. That fish, as you perhaps know, has a whiplike tail armed with that bone; and if he strikes the bone into your flesh it breaks off and stays in the wound, and you are ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... shares, script, bonds, promissory notes, it is a flea-bite. But when it has to be produced in the raw, in flat, hard lumps of gold or in crackling bank-notes, it's more like a bite from a hippopotamus. I can't raise it, and that's all about it. So—St. ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... toward him. You'll see, too, that he never sharpens a blade on both sides, but puts all the bevel on one side—look at my big hunting-knife here—it's only sharpened on one side, and the other is perfectly flat." ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... are seen in the background, and Wittenham Clump stands forth—a conspicuous object for miles. The country round Didcot reminds one very much of the north of France: between Calais and Paris one notices the same chalk soil, the same flat arable fields, and the same old-fashioned farmhouses and ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... fears. The third morning broke bright and clear, the clouds dispersed, and the wind, changing, blew with a gentle breath down the harbour. Had a boat remained on the island she would have been sent in search of the missing ships. Some proposed building a flat-bottomed raft, which might be finished in a few hours and serve to navigate the smooth waters of the bay. Villegagnon gave the order to commence the work, and already it had made some progress, when a shout was raised of "A sail! a sail!" It was one of the ships standing down before ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... Compiegne," she said, "because it was good for dealing sound clouts and good buffets."[2288] The buffet was a flat blow, the clout was a side stroke. Some moments later, on the subject of her banner, she said that, in order to avoid killing any one, she bore it herself when they charged the enemy. And she added: "I ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... and Father Point (called by the French Pointe a Pere) is a long dusty road, very flat, and, except where the gulf comes in to the coast in frequent little ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... in the smoking-room, that he proposed to establish sport in his particular district on a broad and enduring basis. On the following morning there was a lawn-meet at the Manor, and, as I'm a living sinner, our wretched host was flung flat on his back before the eyes of all the neighbouring sportsmen and sportswomen by a fiery chestnut which he bought for L400 from a well-known dealer. What became of him during the rest of the day I know not. Indeed I shrink from continuing the story of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various
... and of the queer goings-on in the Negro quarters. She knew all the "Br'er Rabbit" stories, and I was brought up on them. One of my uncles, Robert Roosevelt, was much struck with them, and took them down from her dictation, publishing them in Harper's, where they fell flat. This was a good many years before a genius arose who in "Uncle Remus" ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... grinned. "'Storm is a word that an old salt reserves for one of those hurricanes that blow a field of turnips flat, and teeth down your throat. You can turn round and lean your back against it like a post; and a carrion-crow making for the next parish gets fanned into another county. ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... speak, but the first thing he wrote in the little book the nurse handed him was, "The Germans were very kind to me." There was a line about his father and mother; then "We had to lie flat in the bushes for two days. One German took off his coat and wrapped it around me, though he was cold himself. Another German gave me all the water in his canteen." Then came a line about a friend, and finally: "The Germans were very kind to me." I fear that Max would ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... lengthened form, as the text would imply, but are sometimes quite shallow. They are invariably lined with the softest vegetable materials and covered with moss. The nests are not as compact as those of our Northern hummer, and, so far as we observed, are never shingled with flat lichens. ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... second evening we reached the flat and uninteresting coast of Holland. But if the coast was repellent, nothing could exceed the eagerness of the inhabitants to welcome our arrival. On our first approach to the land every boat that could swim came off, crowded with people, some ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... what for themselves they say. And, Venus, here I charge thee on my grace, Not that I found thee heretofore untrue, But for thine adversary is not yet in place, Thou tell uprightly whence your quarrel grew; What words betwixt you thereof did ensue. Say, lovely daughter; tell us flat thy mind: They shall be blamed on ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... Now flat on his face the boy ventured to peep over the roof ridge down into the village street at no great distance below. Not an eye was directed upwards, so far as he could see, the men laughing and chattering gaily as they drank. Then the ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead
... my dying day, forget the look of that ship as we pulled away from her. The Joan had been as handsome a craft as ever left the stocks when we hauled out of dock at London some three weeks earlier; but now—her bows were crumpled in until she was as flat for'ard as the end of a sea-chest; her decks were lumbered high with the wreckage of her masts and spars; the standing and running rigging was hanging down over her sides in bights; and she had settled so low in the ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... possessed two distinctive features which the detective was quick to notice. One, was that—at any rate on the two sides which he could see—its windows were set at a height of quite twelve feet from the ground: the other, that from its flat parapeted roof rose a conical structure something like the rounded stacks of glass foundries and potteries. This was obviously a chimney, and from its mouth at that moment was emerging a slight column of smoke which threw back curiously coloured reflections, blue, and yellow, and red, ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... "muscle-layer" comes the "vessel-layer," which gives origin to the main blood-vessels. The innermost layer of the four will form the mucous membrane of the alimentary canal and its dependencies; at the present stage, however, it is, like the other layers, a flat plate. ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... grey in summer, furred a brownish yellow in winter, and with little chin whiskers and a pair of big, curved, heavily ridged horns, thick and flat and looking as though they ought to belong to something ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... of other deformities and defects of the body, as, for instance, round shoulders, or "flat-foot," or even such serious ones as "club-foot" and "bow-legs." Nearly all these are caused by the weakness or wrong action of some muscle, or groups of muscles. If this be long continued or neglected, the bones—which, you will remember, were ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... were traveling together, when a Bear suddenly met them on their path. One of them climbed up quickly into a tree and concealed himself in the branches. The other, seeing that he must be attacked, fell flat on the ground, and when the Bear came up and felt him with his snout, and smelt him all over, he held his breath, and feigned the appearance of death as much as he could. The Bear soon left him, for it is said he will not touch a dead body. When he was ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... precedent from our best authors. Never be at the pains, for instance, of telling, from Joe Miller, a good story of an Irish sailor, who travelled with Captain Cook round the world, and afterwards swore to his companions that it was as flat as ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... banks of the Volga (hence their name, Bulgarian Volgarian), they adopted the speech and religion of the Slavs. They have lived this new life for about a thousand years[184]; and in this time have been completely changed. Though their flat lips and noses bespeak an Asiatic origin, they are practically Slavs, save that their temperament is less nervous, and their persistence greater than that of their co-religionists[185]. Their determined adhesion to Slav ideals and rejection of Turkish ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... rope slung over his shoulders. He called to the men to haul in. At the end of it was a large piece of canvas, an old sail. With nothing to which they could hold on, with the waves dashing high and that great iron drum reeling drunkenly on the sea, those men lay flat on their stomachs and spread that sail over the top of the cylinder. More than once it seemed as though wind and sea would get under that sail and with one vast heave, pitch every man into the sea, but they held on. One of ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... very soon. We double reefed the mainsail reefed the foresail and hauled the flying jib down. About 8 P.M. we laid to with the jib hauled down, on the starboard tack. The wind had backed to the east about four points and was blowing a gale. About 12 M. it suddenly dropped, a flat calm, leaving a tremendous sea running from the southeast, combined with a smaller one from the east. Our motions, jumps, rolls and pitches, can be better imagined than described. It seemed at times that our bow and our stern ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley
... friend says into a compliment on the sweetness of my temper. But I am afraid you are giving it a turn which that gentleman did by no means intend; for he would certainly think better of me, if under such a circumstance I were to give a flat denial, and ride off as fast ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... said, "I wish you could see my home and family. Will you come up with me?" It was 10 P. M. and going would mean home for me about the early hours. But I went up to the Bronx, got to his home, saw him in, was bidding him good-night; nothing would do but I should come in. He had a nice little flat of five rooms. I was introduced to his wife, who was a perfect lady. He wanted to send out for beer. I objected, and his wife said, "George, don't drink any more! I think ...
— Dave Ranney • Dave Ranney
... night at Pavia, the travellers set forward next morning for the city of Vercelli. The road, though it ran for the most part through flat mulberry orchards and rice-fields reflecting the pale blue sky in their sodden channels, would yet have appeared diverting enough to Odo, had his mother been in the mood to reply to his questions; for whether their ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... which is round, will likely please ye best at the first off-go; but, O Davie, laddie, it's but a drop of water in the sea; it'll help you but a step, and vanish like the morning. The second, which is flat and square and written upon, will stand by you through life, like a good staff for the road, and a good pillow to your head in sickness. And as for the last, which is cubical, that'll see you, it's my prayerful wish, ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... less worth than pebbles on the beach. But when an old comrade and tried friend needs help and comes to them with his modest requirements, ah, then there is silence and searchings of heart, unlearning of tenets and flat renunciation of doctrines. All their fine talk of friendship, with Virtue and The Good, have vanished and flown, who knows whither? they were winged words in sad truth, empty phantoms, only meant ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... their flat at Christmas time, Beason had come to live with the Hubers. Ernestine prided herself upon some cleverness in having rented two rooms without Karl's suspecting it was a matter of renting the rooms. When he engaged Ross as his secretary in the fall ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... three sides of an extensive rectangular enclosure or courtyard. On the inside, facing upon the courtyard, the structure is but one story in height; on the outside, looking out upon the surrounding country, it rises to three, or perhaps even five or six stories. From inside to outside the flat roofs rise in a series of terraces, so that the floor of the second row is continuous with the roof of the first, the floor of the third row is continuous with the roof of the second, and so on. The fourth side of the rectangle is formed by a solid block of one-story apartments, ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... hands on. Our guide saw full a thousand men drunk that day on "the wine of Ossey and Spain." The scene of this extraordinary incident is conjectured to have been at or near Arklow, where the beach is sandy and flat, such as it is not at any point of Wicklow north ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... had gone. So engrossed had I become in Dulcie's movements that for the time all thought of my two companions had passed out of my mind. I thought of returning to the house in Cumberland Place; then, deciding that it was too late, I told the driver to go direct to my flat in South ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... interested in Twaddles' gift than in their own because it was the only one they had not seen. Bobby carefully untied the string and wound it up in a neat ring; then he slowly took off the paper and folded that; finally he opened the flat box. ...
— Four Little Blossoms at Brookside Farm • Mabel C. Hawley
... dull sound like the popping of the corks of flat soda-water bottles. There was a humming, too, from very far up in the skies. People in the street were either staring at the heavens or running wildly for shelter. A motor-bus in front of me emptied its contents in a twinkling; a taxi pulled up with a jar and the driver and fare dived into ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... black bosom took on extra splendor. Robert (our colored valet), who was waiting in the corridor, caught sight of her as she walked by, and remarked, when he reached home, to my maid that he was "surprised that they should make such a fuss over a colored person"; and he attempted to turn his flat nose in the air; but, as it is not the kind that turns, ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... allowed to take Dorothy along. "I can't bear to think of that darling child spending July and August in a fourth-floor flat, looking down on the tops of street-cars. And I don't think she'd bother you girls ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... and started to climb the steps to the great door, we found the landlord and his retinue waiting to receive us. Frances was in the lead, and when we reached the broad, flat stone in front of the door, the head porter stepped before her, bowed, ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... should be separated from the body at f, and then the meat cut off from each side, and divided into moderate sized pieces. If the brains and ears are required, cut off the head, and put your knife between the upper and lower jaw, and divide them, which will enable you to lay the upper jaw flat on the dish: then force the point of your knife into the centre, and having cut the head into two parts, distribute the brains with the ears to ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... the western sky was the town of San Augustin,—square walls and low, flat roofs built along a low, green shore. The watch-tower of the castle fort rose up in menace as we ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... to France with Trevor. Instead of that, Jack tells me, she has been with his sister in Yorkshire all this time. She has been ill, is so still, I believe. They are coming to town to-morrow, to Percy Davenant's flat. Jack is very worried about it. He saw Trevor before he left England, but couldn't get him to listen to reason. He seems to have made up his mind to have no more to do with her, while she is fretting herself to a skeleton over it, but daren't make the first move ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... eastward, skirting shores which were at times marshy, and again firm and sandy. At Oak Point, and Belle Fontaine Point, green magnolia trees, magnificent oaks, and large pines grew nearly to the water's edge. Beyond Belle Fontaine the waters of Graveline Bayou flow through a marshy flat to the sea, and offer an attractive territory to sportsmen in search of wild-fowl. Beyond the bayou, between West and East Pascagoula, we found a delta of marshy islands, and an area of mud flats, upon which had been erected enclosures of brush, within the cover of which ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... way and dropped flat. Jack thought his enemy was disposed of, but the shifty mountaineer had only fallen along the lip of the gulf to dodge the powerful strokes delivered by the English lad. With a swift movement the Kachin rolled under the bar, and then was ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... northern horizon that we could not make out their signals; we and they were obliged to wait till they had passed through two-thirds of their month before we could communicate again. I used the time in speeding to No. 9. We got a few carpenters together, and arranged on the Flat two long movable black platforms, which ran in and out on railroad-wheels on tracks, from under green platforms; so that we could display one or both as we chose, and then withdraw them. With this apparatus we could give forty-five ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... took coffee again with me this morning. A cup of coffee is a rare treat in Rujban. The Shadow of his Excellency brought me a few bad Fezzan dates, from which oases The Mountains are mostly supplied. Dates are not cultivated in The Mountains. The palm requires a low and flat sandy soil. The climate is not of so much consequence as the soil. Jerbah, and the Karkenahs, islands in the Mediterranean, produce as fine dates as the most favoured oasis of The Sahara. The Sheikh tells me there are thirty negro slaves in his district. One would wonder how the people ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... cried he, laughing, and as he spoke stunning one of the bourgeois with a blow on the head with the flat of his sword. However, as more and more bourgeois crowded to the attack, and Antragues began to feel tired, he said, "Well, you are as brave as lions; I will bear witness to it; but, you see, you have nothing left but the handles of your halberts, and you do not ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... the rails of a small tramway followed the road by which our carriage was slowly rolling toward the level plains of the Cologne, but we gradually left such uncompromising signs of activity, and came into a flat country of endless vineyards, with here and there a small plaster tower showing its slated roof above the low green clusters of the vines. We passed through several villages, whose inhabitants that day seemed to have but one care upon their minds, like the famous Scilly Islanders, to ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... professors of religion, by preachers of the gospel, by governors of states, by "gentlemen of property and standing," and by delicate females moving in the "highest circles of society." We know, full well, the outcry that will be made by multitudes, at these declarations; the multiform cavils, the flat denials, the charges of "exaggeration" and "falsehood" so often bandied, the sneers of affected contempt at the credulity that can believe such things, and the rage and imprecations against those who give them currency. We know, too, the threadbare sophistries by which slaveholders and their ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... loyally the republican principle of liberty, equality and fraternity. The women seemed to do all the hard work, while the men in snowy shirts and blue cotton trousers, with scarlet girdles about their waists, pushed deftly to and fro the hot flat or box ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... answered Billy, in horror. "That's flat libel, an' I'd be the last to voice any such thing for money. If a man gets a cheel wrong side the blanket 'tis just a passing sarcumstance, an' not to be took too serious. Half-a-crown a week is its awn punishment like. But if a gal do, 'tis destruction to the ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... 1766, For the better cleansing, paving, and enlightning the City of London and Liberties thereof, &c., powers are granted in pursuance of which the great streets have been paved with whyn-quarry stone, or rock-stone, or stone of a flat surface.' —A Tour through the whole Island of Great Britain, ed. 1769, vol. ...
— Life of Johnson, Volume 6 (of 6) • James Boswell
... of storage for their ill gotten plunder. This cavern had had many, and various ways of entrance, the principal one of which, was near the outside of the palace, and was opened by removing a broad, flat stone, which had been ingeniously set upright in a small banking, apparently of earth, which surrounded ...
— Blackbeard - Or, The Pirate of Roanoke. • B. Barker
... the chair—opposite the owner's chair—which she had occupied at her first visit, and thus surveyed, across the large flat desk, all the ranged documents and bundles with the writing thereon upside down. There also was his blotting-pad, and his vast inkstand, and his pens, and his thick diary. The disposition of the things on the desk seemed to indicate, sharply ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... Jew; worth every cent of fifty thousand dollars. They calls him congeneyetul, 'cause he was born with his legs lef off him. Fun Barnheim: he's German, went asleep in the shade of a steam-roller, and never woke up till his legs was rolled out flat as a pair of pants that's just bin ironed. Then o' course ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... fury, and Forster was obliged to cling for his existence as he sank, from his kneeling posture, flat upon the wet herbage. Still he had approached so near to the edge of the cliff that his view below was not interrupted by his change of posture. Another flash of lightning. It was enough! "God have mercy on their souls!" ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... nerve to make it then, which he doubted) could possibly seem anything more than a desperate and far-fetched excuse; if he could anticipate Chawner, on the other hand, and once convince the Doctor of the truth of his story, the informer's malice would fall flat. ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... heavy wood resembling ebony, is about twelve inches in length, and perhaps two in breadth, with a rounded handle at one end, and in shape is the exact counterpart of one of our four-sided razor-strops. The flat surfaces of the implement are marked with shallow parallel indentations, varying in depth on the different sides, so as to be adapted to the several stages of the operation. These marks produce the corduroy sort of stripes discernible in the tappa ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville |
