"Floating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... interfere with the vigorous prosecution of his design. He had the satisfaction to perceive that Brooks had gradually accommodated himself not a little to the element in which his brother-in-law, Tongs, was already floating happily; and the boy, his son, already wore the features of one over whose senses the strong liquor was momentarily obtaining the mastery. But these signs did not persuade him into any relaxation of his labors; on the contrary, encouraged by success, he ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... lake; where, as they said, two or three English traders in fur and skins had kept a trading house but a short time before, though they were then absent. We had passed the trading house but a short distance, when we met three white men floating down the river, with the appearance of having been recently murdered by the Indians, we supposed them to be the bodies of the traders, whose store we had passed the same day. Sheninjee being alarmed for fear of being apprehended as one of the murderers, if he should go on, ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... birds in the ivy outside his window. The mist from the moat crept up the glasslike steam, but through it he caught glimpses of a dappled autumn sky, and in the distance a bright green hill, with a trail of white clouds floating over the feathery trees on the summit. As he watched the rapid play of light and shade on the hill, he wondered why the moat-house had been built on the damp unwholesome flat lands instead of on the ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... repulsed.[1042] In great agitation the Maid galloped from the bastion to the bank, and from the bank to the bastion, calling for the knights; but the knights did not come. Their plans had been upset, their order of battle reversed, and they needed time to collect themselves. At last she saw floating over the island the banners of my Lord the Bastard, the Marshal de Boussac, and the Lord de Rais. The artillery came too, and Master Jean de Montesclere with his culverin and his gunners, bringing all the engines needed for the assault. ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... only way to save the country was to go along with those grim men of strength who dominated the Committee. In January, a formidable addition appeared in the ranks of Lincoln's opponents. Thaddeus Stevens made a speech in the House that marks a chapter. It brought to a head a cloud of floating opposition and dearly defined an issue involving the central proposition in Lincoln's theory of the government. The Constitution of the United States, in its detailed provisions, is designed chiefly to meet the exigencies of peace. With regard to the abnormal ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... could not help but think it immeasurably superior as an illustration of genius to the "Vestiges of Creation;" and as I admired the poem, (except the miserable attempt at humor in what purports to be a letter found in a bottle floating on the Mare tenebrarum,) so I regretted its pantheism, which is not necessary to its main design. To some of the objections to his work be made this answer in a letter to Mr. C.F. Hoffman, then editor of ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... Conchoderma, two or three are very long, highly flexible, and plumose, a double row of excessively fine hairs being articulated on them. I can hardly doubt that these latter spines, (within which the purple corium could be seen to enter a little way,) floating laterally outwards, serve as feelers. The antennae, at first, are well furnished with muscles. They serve, in Lepas, according to Mr. King, and in Balanus, according to Mr. Bate, and as I saw myself in another unnamed order, for the purpose of walking, ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... intense consciousness of high cost, which was heavy on the air like a musky odor, suggesting to a sensitive nose, as does the odor of musk, another smell, obscured but rancidly perceptible—the unwashed smell, floating up from the paupers' cellars which support ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... construction. They were slight flat-bottomed barks framed of timber only, without the least mixture of iron, and occasionally covered with a shelving roof, on the appearance of a tempest. [103] In these floating houses, the Goths carelessly trusted themselves to the mercy of an unknown sea, under the conduct of sailors pressed into the service, and whose skill and fidelity were equally suspicious. But the hopes of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... a little sideways [Jacob sat on the window-seat talking to Durrant; he smoked, and Durrant looked at the map], the old man, with his hands locked behind him, his gown floating black, lurched, unsteadily, near the wall; then, upstairs he went into his room. Then another, who raised his hand and praised the columns, the gate, the sky; another, tripping and smug. Each went up a staircase; three lights were ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... the miraculousness of the story deepens, as after the death of Jesus, the more does the texture of the incidents become loose and floating, the more does the very air and aspect of things seem to tell us we are in wonderland. Jesus after his resurrection not known by Mary Magdalene, taken by her for the gardener; appearing in another form, and not known by the two disciples going with him to Emmaus and at supper with him there; ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... the clear blue of the spring sky, the whiteness of snowy clouds floating out of the reach of the smoke, the cheerful light warming the red tiles whereon the pigeons were taking their morning exercise. Altogether the world seemed to wear an encouraging ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... dog, and I ain't overlooking any meat that's floating around," Daylight proclaimed that afternoon to Hegan; and Simon Dolliver went the way of the unfortunate in the Great Panic who were caught with plenty of paper and ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... all that might adhere to them. Their act reminded the Assembly of what was otherwise becoming apparent— to wit, that the Assembly was after all but an imperfect representation of contemporary English opinion. It was an ark floating on a troubled sea, with its doors and windows well pitched, and perhaps with Noah on board, but not all Noah's family, and certainly not specimens of all the living creatures, even of non-episcopal ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... make the same about the thickness of good cream. Season the sauce to palate, adding a little pounded mace or grated nutmeg. Let the whole stew gently until the mushrooms are tender. Remove every particle of butter which may be floating on the top ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... Paul's radiant enthusiasm was. Let us try, for our parts, to radiate out the warmth of the love of God, that it may kindle in others the flame which it has lighted in ourselves, and not be like icebergs floating southwards and bringing down the temperature of even the very temperate seas in ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... tails, wielded by the horsemen of Cabul. The walls are painted from designs brought from Lahore. The panels of the doors were decorated by Gerome. The great artist has painted Nautch girls twisting their floating scarves, and jugglers throwing poignards into the air. Around the room are low divans, covered with soft and brilliant Oriental cloth. The chandelier is quite original in form, being the exact representation of the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... along one of the walkways until he found an empty vat. He lowered himself over its edge and sank happily into the still, cool water, like a hippopotamus submerging. He immersed himself completely, then lay back in the water, with only his face floating ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... very terror would dignify the story of a life that, on the whole, was commonplace and vulgar. But, for ourselves, we confess that we cannot believe in the mysterious letter, the fatal summons, the sudden fulfilment. There are too many stories of the kind floating about history to allow us to attach any special significance to this particular tale. We doubt even whether, if the letter had been written, it would have greatly impressed the mind of George. Remorse for the treatment of his wife he could ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... Unconscious for the once of his appearing, Cicely had been swimming back and forth just outside the line of surf; then borne on the crest of a wave higher by far than any of its fellows had been, she came floating towards the beach. She landed on her feet as usual; but the wave, heavier than she expected, swept her off her balance and sent her sliding up the sand, straight against the retreating heels of her hero. There were two hurried exclamations, there ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... as he did so, Mantel sprang back among the shadows just in time to escape his observation. The full-throated music, floating on the motionless air, fell upon his ear like a benediction. He listened, and caught the words of a hymn with which he had been familiar ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... morning; yet was Spikeman confident that Philip at the time of their interview in the jail had no knowledge of the order for his release. Perhaps Bars had overcome in the struggle, and disregarded it. With doubts like these floating through his mind, ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... scattered artificial mounds on which stood the clustered huts of the villages; between this plain and the shore stretched a labyrinth of fens and peat-bogs, irregularly divided by canals and channels freshly formed each year in flood-time, meres strewn with floating islets, immense reed-beds where the neighbouring peasants took refuge from attack, and into which no one would venture to penetrate without hiring some friendly native as a guide. In this fenland dwelt the Kalda in ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... he ran along the bank with great quickness, holding his torch far over the water, so as to reveal any thing floating within it, but nothing met his view until he came within a short distance of the mill, when he beheld a black object struggling in the current, and soon found that it was his dog making feeble efforts to gain ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... air cooler and very refreshing. Walked down to the shore, saw the Philadelphia packet off. Immense quantity of wood put under the boiler. Bathed in the floating bath, not very tidy. Just in time for a most sumptuous breakfast. Sailed to Staten Island; had a most delightful walk to Factoryville; a pleasant breeze. Very large cherry trees. Found Ward in humble ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... his name and mingling cordial praise and anxious inquiry, and all the rancor seemed to float away with the smoke of the last carbine shots. He could only faintly return the pressure of that firm, muscular hand, only feebly smile his thanks and reassurance, and then he, too, seemed floating away somewhere into space, and he could not manage to connect what Webb had been saying with the next words that fastened on his truant senses. It must have been hours later, too, for darkness had settled on the valley. A little fire was ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... constant depth of the harbor allows goods to be landed on the quays without the assistance of boats; and it has been observed, that in many places the largest vessels may rest their prows against the houses, while their sterns are floating in the water. [12] From the mouth of the Lycus to that of the harbor, this arm of the Bosphorus is more than seven miles in length. The entrance is about five hundred yards broad, and a strong chain could be occasionally drawn across it, to guard the port and city from the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... "You'll be in a floating palace,"—said Francesca, as we approached Rothesay pier, and she bade me an affectionate adieu—"Now take care of yourself, and don't fly away to the moon on what you call an etheric vibration! Remember, if you get tired of the Harlands to ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... they unconsciously drew nearer to each other. The delicious aroma of the hay overcame their spirits with a drowsiness. New sensations thronged on Bobby's spirit, made receptive by the narcotic influences of the tepid air, the mysterious dimness, the wands of gold, the floating brief dust-motes. He wanted to touch Celia; and he found himself diffident. He wanted to hear her voice; and he suddenly discovered in himself an embarrassment in addressing her which was causeless and foolish. He wanted to look at her; and he did so; but it was ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... the event. I felt as if I were a hypocrite, and only the thought of my mother's satisfaction gave me the courage to go through the ceremony. We were baptized, my companions and I, in the little river in midwinter, after a partial thaw, the blocks of ice floating by ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... clad in steel, barbed with iron, floating in knightly plumes! With magic power I would invoke before you gothic towers and castellated turrets, bristling barbacans and mighty arches, baronial halls and clustered shafts; I would throw around you the giant shadows of vaulted domes and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... answered Thelma simply. "He was floating about in the Fjord in a basket, and my father saved him. He was quite a baby. He had this scar on his chest then. He has lived with us ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... was a kind of brigantine, not unlike a Dutch galliot of the present day, with a broad elevated bow and a broad elevated stern. Very flat in the bottom, she looked much larger than she really was, and when her "great" guns were fired off, the Indians stared marvellously at the floating fort. With the aid of tow-lines and sails the Niagara River was with difficulty ascended, and on the 7th of August, 1679, the first vessel that ever sat upon the lakes entered Lake Erie. The day was ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... is heard the slight grating sound of small cakes of ice, floating with various speed, full of content and promise, and where the water gurgles under a natural bridge, you may hear these hasty rafts hold conversation in an undertone. Every rill is a channel for the ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... the inundation had by this time partially subsided, still the flood ran onward with a swift current; and what with the danger from floating trees, and other objects that swelled the surface of the water, it was necessary to manage the canoe with caution. Thus retarded, it was near mid-day before the voyageurs arrived within sight of the hacienda. Along the way Don ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... to heap up in such an alluring pile upon his portion of the table. The watchers began to observe this, and gathered more closely about his chair, fascinated by the luck with which the cards came floating into his hands, the cool judgment of his critical plays, the reckless abandon with which he forced success. The little room was foul with tobacco smoke and electric with ill-repressed excitement, yet he played on imperturbably, apparently hearing nothing, ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... Other women surrounded the two. The group immediately suggested a composition to her. She went home and painted. She took the young man's bathing suit off and gave him wings; the women she dressed in lovely floating robes, and she called the picture, l'Amour Dorlote par les ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... had one of our own," said Link. "But one came floating down the river, and the boys nabbed that. A fust-rate boat, only it leaked ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... in the history of Karague led us on to further particulars of Dagara's death and burial, when it transpired that the old king's body, after the fashion of his predecessors, was sewn up in a cow-skin, and placed in a boat floating on the lake, where it remained for three days, until decomposition set in and maggots were engendered, of which three were taken into the palace and given in charge to the heir-elect; but instead of remaining as they were, one worm was transformed into a lion, another into a leopard, and the third ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... grass until I felt sure the shawl was not there, and starting back to the wharf again. But while I had been out of sight of the "May Queen" they had cast off the lines and steamed away. There she was, going merrily, her stern pointed toward the island, a trail of thick smoke floating back, the band playing "After the Ball," and no one paying the ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... beside the bars. 'Tis thine to mark The castle's floating message. Say, Oh, say What thing hath ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... I do not wish to be understood as giving this diagnosis as final at all, but from what I have already stated, taken together with other clinical and pathological data within my reach, and the fact that minute, tabulated gumboil bactinae were found floating through some of the cell nests, I have every reason to fear the worst. I would be glad to receive from you for microscopic examination a fragment of Mr. Flannery's malpighian layer, showing evidences of cell proliferation. I only suggest this, of course, as practicable in case there should be ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... the week past I see the flag of Amerique floating well high! And all the world is content because you come to aid us terminate by a peace victorious this war so terrible, and be like one brother for the triumph of the Justice, and the Liberty, and the Humanity. That is what the mistress ...
— Deer Godchild • Marguerite Bernard and Edith Serrell
... like the workhouse and the convent, obtruding itself upon the eye. It seems as if the inhabitants of the town must all of them be forced, and that at no distant date, either into religion or pauperism, just as small bodies floating in a pond are sucked into connection with one or other of the logs which lie among them. The shops in the one tortuous street block the footpaths in front of their doors with piles of empty packing-cases. The passenger is saluted, here by a buffet in the face ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... two friends, after threading their way through the obnoxious crowd, came to the principal Court of the Old Bailey, called the "Old Court," and a very evil-looking place it was. All the ghosts of past criminals seemed floating in the dingy atmosphere. Crowds of men, women and children were heaped together in all directions, except on the bench and in a kind of pew which was reserved for such ladies as desired to witness the last degradation ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... place," says the Portuguese Narrative, "was a mile and a half in breadth, so that a man standing still could scarcely be discerned from the opposite shore. It was of great depth, of wonderful rapidity, and very turbid, and was always filled with floating trees and timber, carried down by the ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... Channel and I was seasick—miserably, hopelessly, endlessly seasick, but when somebody shouted I managed to lift my head in time to see a floating mine—just a tiny, black buoy bobbing about, but I did not mind. I asked the stewardess if she were not afraid, making the journey every day, and her answer awed me by its conciseness and its confidence. "Oh, no," she said. "Our Admiralty has arranged a path for us ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... majestic course—they are the Rhine-motifs which open the piece,—came clambering, by some chance, the Nibelung Alberich. His night-accustomed eyes, as he blinked upward into the green light, were caught by a silvery glinting of scales, flashes of flesh-pink and floating hair. The Rhine-maidens, guardians of the gold, were frolicking around it; but this did not appear, for the sun had not yet risen to wake it into radiance. The dwarf saw just a shimmering of young forms, was touched ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... the valley lay the blue lake, a shining spread of water, quiet and silent, here and there upon it the shadow of a floating, fluffy cloud. She listened to the nagging chatter of the squirrels, mingled with the fluttering of the forest birds high above her head. As she stood on the hill, the only human being in all the wilderness about, in fancy she seemed to be at the very ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... wrong end, namely at Pagan spiritualistic seances, with the usual accompaniments of darkness and fraud. His perplexed letter to Anebo, with the reply attributed to Iamblichus, reveal Porphyry wandering puzzled among mediums, floating lights, odd noises, queer dubious 'physical phenomena.' He did not begin with accurate experiments as to the existence of rare, and apparently supernormal human faculties, and he seems to have attained no conclusion except that ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... practical result. The point is important in its bearing on the nature of the settlement. Quebec, despite such gardens as surrounded the habitation, was by origin an outpost of the fur trade, with a small, floating, and precarious population. Louis Hebert, the first real colonist, did not ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... between them. But when Commercial and Colonial expansion became a definite and avowed object of the former's policy, she found, whereso she might look, that Britain was there, in the way—"everywhere British colonies, British coaling stations, and floating over a fifth of the globe the British flag." Could anything be more exasperating? And these "absent-minded beggars" the English, without any forethought or science or design, without Prussian organization ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... woman of Mitylene, very fair and made of fire. But she loved another more than I, and for his sake threw herself from a rock into the sea. As she fell, the rose we had made together fell from her bosom, and was torn to pieces by the sea. Fishermen gathered here and there a petal floating on the waters,—but what were they?—and the world has never known how wonderful was that rose of our love which she took with her into the depths ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... bravadoes, with pouts, with little cries of suspense. In the midst of this he heard Mr. Willett saying, "You ought to get some one to come and write about this for your paper, Witherby." But Mrs. Macallister was also saying something, with a significant turn of her floating eyes, and the thing that concerned Bartley, if he were to make his way among the newspapers in Boston, slipped from his grasp like the idea which we try to seize in a dream. She made sure of him for the drive to the place which they visited ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... here we find them evoked in a restricted locale- an English county-where the rich, cool tranquil landscape gives a solid texture to the human show. What, I think, impresses one, thrills, like ecstatic, half-smothered strains of music, floating from unperceived instruments, in Mr. Housman's poems, is the encounter his spirit constantly endures with life. It is, this encounter, what you feel in the Greeks, and as in the Greeks, it is a spiritual waging of miraculous ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... have heard th' unearthly symphonies, Which o'er the starlight peace of Syrian skies Came floating like a dream, that blessed night When angel songs were heard by sinful men, Hymning Messiah's advent! O to have watch'd The night with those poor shepherds, whom, when first The glory of the Lord shed sudden day— Day without dawn, starting from midnight, day Brighter than morning—on those ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... countenance, her arm in that of her bridegroom; all whiteness, peace, and sweet emotion, joy touched with trembling and a thousand soft regrets. Chatty came along slowly, her soft eyes cast down, her soul floating in that ecstasy which is full of awe and solemn thoughts. Dick's eyes were upon her, and the eyes of all, but hers saw nothing save the wonderful event that had come to pass, the boundary between the old and the new upon which she stood. And Lizzie had ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... Harry beside her, her lace scarf embroidered with pink rosebuds floating from her lovely shoulders, her satin skirt held firmly in both hands that she might step the freer, her dainty silk stockings with the ribbons crossed about her ankles ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... we are," agreed Betty cheerfully. "A river never stands still, you know. We are floating down with the rest of the cakes. Pretty soon there will be an ice ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Winter Camp - Glorious Days on Skates and Ice Boats • Laura Lee Hope
... the homeward journey of Captain Horn and his party, for Cheditafa and Mok were needed as witnesses, but did not delay it long. It was early in August, when the danger from floating icebergs had almost passed, and when an ocean journey is generally most pleasant, that nine happy people sailed from Havre for New York. Captain Horn and Edna had not yet fully planned their future life, but they knew that they had enough ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... perfect fiend for punishment once he gets mad all through. These poor niggers will keep him half crazy as their want of water grows, and the hot calms strike us in the doldrums. It's my frank opinion, lad, that we'll be having a little floating place of torment of our own here before ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... illustrious friend; and yet I believe the heart of thee is full of sorrow, of unspoken sadness, seriousness,—profound melancholy (as some have said) the basis of thy being. Unconsciously, for thou speakest of nothing, this great Universe is great to thee. Not by levity of floating, but by stubborn force of swimming, shalt thou make thy way. The Fates sing of thee that thou shalt many times be thought an ass and a dull ox, and shalt with a godlike indifference believe it. My friend,—and it is all untrue, nothing ever falser in point of fact! Thou ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... and take exclusive possession of both sides of the river; and if the government at Washington would not help them, or, still worse, forbade them the emprise, they would set up an independent government of the West. The other faction, inspired by secret agents of the Spanish government, was for floating the Spanish flag and proclaiming themselves subjects of Charles of Aragon. Spain's secret emissaries were eloquent of the neglect of the home government in the East, and its powerlessness to help the Westerners if it would, and it was said they clenched their arguments with chink of ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... he asked. "We found it floating down the canal, and picked it up that we might give it to the rightful owner. But now I wish to heaven we had let it sink to the bottom ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... a street, is like a drift of wood in a river. It chokes up the stream, and catches all the other wood that is floating down. ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... fire through the air; a rich, high, whistled song floating in the wake of the feathered meteor: the Baltimore oriole cannot be mistaken. When the orchards are in blossom he arrives in full plumage and song, and awaits the coming of the female birds, that travel northward more leisurely in flocks. He is decidedly in evidence. No foliage is dense enough ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... malady which falls upon outwearied imagination. There were floating in his mind five or six possible subjects for a book, all dating back to the time when he first began novel-writing, when ideas came freshly to him. If he grasped desperately at one of these, and did his best to develop it, for a day or two he could almost ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... anvil, cutting away its iron horn. Then did Sigurd know that he had in his hands the Volsungs' sword. He went without and called to Grani, and like the sweep of the wind rode down to the River's bank. Shreds of wool were floating down the water. Sigurd struck at them with his sword, and the fine wool was divided against the water's edge. Hardness and fineness, Gram ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... behold, perhaps, the finest fleet of merchant shipping the world could produce. Here are seen, besides the flag of Old England, those of America, France, Holland, Spain, Portugal, and Arabia. I must not forget to mention the floating taverns or large passenger ships, which carry home from twenty to forty passengers every voyage; and besides the fleet of large ships, the river presents steamers, pleasure-boats, and native craft of all sorts and sizes, ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... for all time; he was a mere skimmer of books and reviews—mostly reviews; and he cared only for new books, new ideas, new theories, new paradoxes. His cleverness was the cleverness of the daily press—the floating froth upon the sea of knowledge. He liked to talk to a man of his own stamp, with whom he could argue upon equal terms; but not to a woman who had steeped her mind in the wisdom and poetry of ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... seen Cyrano de Bergerac coining money all around the world. There were not any endowed theatres in Elizabethan London. Give the crowd the sort of plays it wants, and you will not have to seek beneficence to keep your theatre floating. But, on the other hand, no endowed theatre will ever lure the crowd to listen to the sort of plays it does not want. There is a wise maxim appended to one of Mr. George Ade's Fables in Slang: "In uplifting, get underneath." If the theatre ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... helped by nature, as though she ever loves such brave hearts. I have heard the story told how the great Columbus who found a new world was beset by his followers to return. How nature sent him messages that he was nearing land—birds and driftwood, branches of trees and floating weed. He read the message with the eyes of one who loves all nature well, and promised sight of land to his men in three days, a ...
— The Strange Little Girl - A Story for Children • V. M.
... but Aunt Bessie, serving the floating island pudding, agreed, "Yes, it is wonderful. Folks can get away with all sorts of meannesses and sins in these terrible cities, but they can't here. I was noticing this tailor fellow this morning, and when Mrs. Riggs offered to share her hymn-book ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... for the time was short, and in another hour the boat was floating in the fishing-pool, securely tied to a pine tree on the bank. They packed pots and pans in the basket and lowered it over the rock by the rope, and when everything was done, Alan took the blue chalk and drew a sprig of pine on the ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... very uncanny. Heyst thought of some strange hallucination. Unlikely enough; but that a boat with three men in it should have sunk between the point and the jetty, suddenly, like a stone, without leaving as much on the surface as a floating oar, was still more unlikely. The theory of a phantom boat would have ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... fixed on the pad which she must keep moist. The difficulty of the task had suddenly become increased, for the pad seemed to become an animate thing. Now it appeared to retreat into the distance, and again it came floating back until it seemed about to smother her. There was a droning note in her ears; the words spoken by the other two sounded mixed ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... this measure and those who've authored various so-called soak-the-rich bills that are floating around this chamber should be reminded of something: When they aim at the big guy, they usually hit the little guy. And maybe it's time ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... thrown golden light upon strange waters, and set me floating there for ever. Oh, you on my earth and I on your ocean, ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... had one like that"—with a pleased creative air, "it would look rather ducky floating from my shoulder—or even my hat—or my hair in the evenings, just held by a tiny sparkling chain fastened with a diamond pin—and with lovely little pink and blue streamers." With the touch of genius she had at once relegated it to its place in the scheme of her universe. ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... its earliest visitors alone. But we are before the sunlight, though not before the sunrise, and can watch the pretty game of alternating mist and shine. Stray gleams of glory lend their trailing magnificence to the tops of chestnut-trees, floating vapors raise the outlines of the hills and make mystery of the wooded islands, and, as we glide through the placid water, we can sing, with the Chorus in the "Ion" of Euripides, "O immense and brilliant air, resound ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... encroachment of this insidious thing, but vague and raw. Whisky had been a cure. Temptation was now strong upon him to seek his companions and dull his faculties with strong drink. But he could not yield to that. Not now, with Lucy's face like a wraith floating in the starlight! He was conscious of a larger growth. He had accepted responsibilities that long ago he should have taken up. He now dreamed of love, home, children. Yet beautiful as was that dream it could not be ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... so soft, yet often so brilliant, their texture so transparent, that you seek in vain among terrestrial forms for terms of comparison, and are tempted to say that nature has done her finest work in the sea rather than on land. Sometimes hundreds of these smaller medusae might be seen floating together in the deep glass bowls, or jars, or larger vessels with which Agassiz's laboratory at Nahant was furnished. When the supply was exhausted, new specimens were easily to be obtained by a row in a dory a mile or two from shore, either in the hot, still noon, when the jelly-fish rise toward ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... see Freda's hair floating out from under that rubber hat!" insisted Bess. "Oh, I know it's Freda, and I can see ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... the ringing cheers, saw the floating flags, and the faces of women who wept as well as women who smiled in the throngs that ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... already myself. Floating in this blue aether, what the devil is my wife to me, and her dirty Earth! My persecuting enemies seem so many pismires; and as for my debts, which have occasioned me so many brooding moments, honour and infamy, credit and beggary, seem to ...
— Ixion In Heaven • Benjamin Disraeli
... country must solve is to provide such means of aggressive and defensive action as to be able to enforce a due observance of American public law on this continent, and, while doing this, to defend itself against insult and spoilation. The land defenses, including torpedoes and in a few cases floating batteries, should be entirely independent of the active navy, so that the latter may be free to act in one compact mass against any enemy which ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... of the Belgian army was one of our firm friends. My introduction to him was when I heard a bit of a Liszt rhapsody floating into the kitchen from our piano, the fingers rapid and fluent, and long nails audible on the keys. I remember the first meal with him, a luncheon of fried sardines, fruit cake, bread and cheese. The doctor across the way had sent a bottle of champagne. After luncheon ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... punishment will attend the breach of it. For if men can be ignorant or doubtful of what is innate, innate principles are insisted on, and urged to no purpose; truth and certainty (the things pretended) are not at all secured by them; but men are in the same uncertain floating estate with as without them. An evident indubitable knowledge of unavoidable punishment, great enough to make the transgression very uneligible, must accompany an innate law; unless with an innate law they ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... and the diminishing rain now felt almost like hail stones, but the clouds were floating away toward the northeast, and the skies steadily lightened. Henry felt the warming and strengthening influence of the vigorous exercise. His clothing was a wet roll about him, but the blood began to flow in a vigorous stream through his veins, ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... seen the frigate-bird, which has all its four toes webbed, alight on the surface of the sea. On the other hand grebes and coots are eminently aquatic, although their toes are only bordered by membrane. What seems plainer than that the long toes of grallatores are formed for walking over swamps and floating plants, yet the water-hen is nearly as aquatic as the coot; and the landrail nearly as terrestrial as the quail or partridge. In such cases, and many others could be given, habits have changed without a corresponding change of structure. The webbed feet of the upland goose may be said to have become ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... Russian cities. The conflagration of 1812 broke this tradition. The nobility, not willing or not being able to rebuild their houses, rented the ground to citizens, and industry, prodigiously developing since then, has taken possession of Moscow. This is how the city has lost its floating population of noblemen and serfs, which amounted to 100 thousand souls, and how the aristocratic city has become an industrial one. It is a new city, but the fire of 1812, from the ashes of which it has risen, has left impressions on the monuments. Step ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... it is impossible they should not have seen the ship by a casual glance as they walked along the shore; and though she must, with respect to every other object they had yet seen, have been little less stupendous and unaccountable than a floating mountain with all its woods would have been to us. At noon, our latitude, by observation, was 28 deg. 39' S., and longitude 206 deg. 27' W. A high point of land, which I named Cape Byron, bore N.W. by W. at the distance of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... when I was myself whipped up into the air. Lord John had me with a rat-trap grip round the legs, but I felt that he also was coming off the ground. For a moment I had a vision of four adventurers floating like a string of sausages over the land that they had explored. But, happily, there were limits to the strain which the rope would stand, though none apparently to the lifting powers of this infernal machine. There was a sharp crack, and we were in a heap upon the ground with coils ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... stern first and helpless. The Titanic reversed her engines, and tugs plucked the New York away barely in time to avoid a bad smash. If any old sailors regarded this accident as an evil omen, there is little reason to think the thing affected the spirits of the passengers on the great floating hotel. As the ship passed the time of day by wireless with her distant neighbors out of sight beyond the horizon of the ocean lanes, she reported good weather, machinery working ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... sucked back with every retreating wave and tossed about in the angry surf, yet keep your face towards the beach, where there is safety, and you will struggle through it all, and though it were but on some floating boards and broken pieces of the ship, will come safe to land. He will uphold you with His Spirit, and take away the weight of sin that would sink you, by His forgiving mercy, and bring you out of all the weltering waste of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... have a different brown from those that are dry, and the upper surface of the green growing leaf is different from the under surface. The yellow butterfly, if you meet one in October, has so toned down his spring yellow that you might fancy him a pale green leaf floating along the road. There is a shining, quivering, gleaming; there is a changing, fluttering, shifting; there is a mixing, weaving—varnished wings, translucent wings, wings with dots and veins, all playing over the purple heath; a ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... children tore the outspread hide from the window-hole, that the dead man might be carried to the ocean, the billowy ocean, that had given him food in life, and that now, in death, was to afford him a place of rest. For his monument, he had the floating, ever-changing icebergs, whereon the seal sleeps, while the storm bird flies round ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... all such little mishaps is to "imagine it is to-morrow morning," for in the morning one is sure to forget all the night's troubles; and so with the fiery rising sun on the sails we are floating out to sea. ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... Original Percentage of Dry Materials from 1-25 per cent. up to 20-70 per cent. — The Relative Proportion of the Heating Surfaces in the Elements of the Multiple Evaporator and their Actual Dimensions — The Pressure Exerted by Currents of Steam and Gas upon Floating Drops of Water — The Motion of Floating Drops of Water upon which Press Currents of Steam — The Splashing of Evaporating Liquids — The Diameter of Pipes for Steam, Alcohol, Vapour and Air — The Diameter ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech
... men who, after having submitted some portion of their religious belief to the principle of authority, will seek to exempt several other parts of their faith from its influence, and to keep their minds floating at random between liberty and obedience. But I am inclined to believe that the number of these thinkers will be less in democratic than in other ages; and that our posterity will tend more and more to a single ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... cliffs seem hinged upon the sky, The clouds are floating rags across them curled, They open to us like the gates of God Cloven in the last great wall of all ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... effort was bent on speed. Speed indeed it was. The wind roared in my ears. Yet above its surge I heard the neighing and squealing, the ever-approaching shudder of hoofs. My eyes distorted all they looked on. I seemed now floating twenty feet in air; now skimming within touch of ground. Now that sorrel squadron behind me swelled and nodded; now dwindled to an ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... that year; the trees showed gay sprigs of green already, the air was wonderfully mild and balmy, and in the exhilarating blue of the sky feathery white cloudlets were floating, whose course one was fain to follow with sweet dreams and fancies. It was a sin to stay indoors on such a lovely afternoon, Malvine declared, and so proposed that they should go out to the terrace overlooking the water and sit there till Paul ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... that he could never have come up alive, for there were bands of men with torches along both banks, and no sign of him had been perceived. However, they are searching the river down, and hope to come upon his body either floating or cast ashore. Robert went out again to try and gather more news, leaving me ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... were now sailing quickly over the smooth lagoon, with the streamers from their mat sails floating in the wind, and on the stages that ran from their sides to the outriggers were grouped parties of singers and dancers, with painted bodies and faces dyed scarlet with the juice of the mati berry, who sang and danced, and shouted, and made ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... But lo! floating light upon the wind And murm'ing o'er ocean crest, Come the thoughts of those I left behind, Bringing comfort and love and rest. Only a word—aye, only a thought! Each speeds like a heav'n-sent dart; Who can measure ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... no longer when my head rose above the surface. I struck out with a gasp of relief, which was, as it were, echoed close to me. I looked round, as well as darkness and water would allow, and observed an object floating near me. I pushed towards it, and just as I caught hold, I heard ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... no sign of life except here and there in the foreground a melancholy gull. The course which the boat bearing the hunted man took from Mill Pond stairs through the crowded shipping of the Pool, past the floating Custom House at Gravesend, and onwards, skirting the little creeks and mudbanks where the Thames widens to the sea—when every sound of the tide flapping heavily at irregular intervals against the shore, and every ripple, were fraught with the terror of pursuit—exemplifies ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... was down, but there was a great light over everything. The full moon had just risen above the hills to eastward and bathed every object in silver sheen. The far peaks, covered with snow, caught the reflection and sent the beams floating across the deep dark valleys between. The big boulder, against which the tent was pitched, caught it too, and seemed changed from rough stone to precious metal; it was on the tent-pegs and the ropes, it was upon Isaacs' lithe figure, as he tightened his sash round ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... unwound chains That mark for miles and miles The vast black mazy cobweb of the streets; Near us clusters and splashes of living gold That change far off to bluish steel Where the fragile lights on the Jersey shore Tremble like drops of wind-stirred dew. The strident noises of the city Floating up to us Are hallowed into whispers. Ferries cross thru the darkness Weaving a golden thread into the night, Their ...
— Rivers to the Sea • Sara Teasdale
... of fifteen and sixteen rows of oars, in the navy of Demetrius Poliorcetes. These were for real use: the forty rows of Ptolemy Philadelphus were applied to a floating palace, whose tonnage, according to Dr. Arbuthnot, (Tables of Ancient Coins, &c., p. 231-236,) is compared as 4 1/2 to 1 with an ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... succeeded by these artifices in capturing and murdering whole families, and plundering them of their effects. They even armed and manned some of the boats and scows they had taken, and used them as a kind of floating battery, by means of which they killed and captured many persons approaching ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... pleasure of thanking you for the very great pleasure which I have derived from just reading your paper on erratic blocks. The map is wonderful, and what labour each of those lines show! I have thought for some years that the agency of floating ice, which nearly half a century ago was overrated, has of late been underrated. You are the sole man who has ever noticed the distinction suggested by me (In his paper on the 'Ancient Glaciers of Carnarvonshire,' Phil. Mag. xxi. 1842.) between ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... of hope day followed day 15 While that stout Ship at anchor lay Beside the shores of Wight; The May had then made all things green; And, floating there, in pomp serene, That Ship was goodly to be seen, 20 ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... to come. But the Christian's hope being a very sure anchor cast within the vail, upon the sure ground of heaven, it keeps the soul firm and steadfast, though he be not unmoved, yet from tossing or floating; though it may fluctuate a little, yet his hope regulates and restrains it. And it being an helmet, it is a strong preservative against the power and force of temptations. It is that which guards the main part of a Christian, and keeps resolutions ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning |
