"Floating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... Ovum is the Nucleus, which contains the actual bodies that carry heritage—the little grains that are the mother's characteristics—Chromosomes. This nucleus is nourished by oils, salts and other inclusions, known as Cytoplasm. Floating in the cytoplasm may be found a tiny body known as the Centrosome, which acts as a magnet in certain phases of cell development. Around this whole mass is a Cell Wall, more ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... ravine; I see the chateau, long and white and straggling, with the red tiled towers and the tall French windows; I see the terrace where the hound must still sleep; I see the square side tower with the black iron shutters; I see the very window where Hortense has set her light; I see the floating cribs on the river, I hear the ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... sometimes starting from the mist, and then sinking back into it again. Among all these lines there were stiff, crabbed, and cramped designs, as though they were drawn with a set-square—patterns with sharp corners, like the elbow of a skinny woman. There were patterns in curves floating and curling like the smoke of a cigar. But they were all enveloped in the gray light. Did the sun never shine in France? Christophe had only had rain and fog since his arrival, and was inclined to believe so; but it is the artist's ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... person in the box quite oblivious of Lady Dolly. He looked steadily over her animated shoulders at the play, wholly involved in an effort to keep its current and direction through the floating debris of constrained sayings with which it was encumbered; to know in advance whither it was carrying its Mrs. Halliday, and how far Lord Ingleton would accompany. When Lord Ingleton paused as it were to beg four people to "have nothing to do ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... north-west Germany processions of children with paper or turnip lanterns take place on St. Martin's Eve. In the Eichsfeld district the little river Geislede glows with the light of candles placed in floating nutshells. Even the practice of leaping through the fire survives in a modified form, for in northern Germany it is not uncommon for people on St. Martin's Day or Eve to jump over lighted candles set on the parlour floor.{83} In the fifteenth century the Martinmas ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... happy voices from the village playground stealing, With the cadence of their laughter, come floating through the air; And the face of Nature smiling, every thought of care beguiling, Soothes my restless soul to musing in the twilight calm ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl
... Grainger; it's vulgar. Say 'My own emolument, derived in less than one year from the auriferous wealth of Chinkie's Flat, amounts to L16,000.' You'll be going to London soon, and floating the property ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke
... seriously our adoption at Atuona. On the part of Paaaeua it was an affair of social ambition; when he agreed to receive us in his family the man had not so much as seen us, and knew only that we were inestimably rich and travelled in a floating palace. We, upon our side, ate of his baked meats with no true animus affiliandi, but moved by the single sentiment of curiosity. The affair was formal, and a matter of parade, as when in Europe sovereigns call each other cousin. Yet, had we stayed at Atuona, Paaaeua would have held himself bound ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... contour of a lion's back. At length we reached a village at the foot of this commanding range, and asked for tigers. We were told that they were farther on. A man came with us to a point of vantage whence he was able to point out the very place—a crag in the far distance floating in a haze of heat. After riding for a day and a half we came right under it, and at a village near its base renewed inquiry. 'Oh,' we were told, 'the tigers are much farther on. You see that eminence?' Again a mountain afar off was indicated. At the next village ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... with much precaution, that I was absolutely without a duckling or a chicken in the world! They had been drowned in the night, and nothing was to be seen but countless draggled little corpses, what Mr. Mantilini called "moist unpleasant bodies," floating on the pond or whirling in the eddies of the creek. That was not even the worst. Every one of my sitting hens was drowned also, their nests washed away; so were the half-dozen beautiful ducks, with some twelve or fourteen eggs under each. I felt angry with the ducks, and thought ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... 'Floating on his fearless pinions, lost amid the noon-day skies, Even thence the Eagle's vision kens the carcase where it lies; But the hour that comes to all things comes unto the Lord of Air, And he rushes, madly blinded, to his ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... seemed to be under sail in the Euxine Sea with a prosperous gale, and just in view of Bosporus, discoursing pleasantly with the ship's company, as one overjoyed for his past danger and present security, when on a sudden he found himself deserted of all, and floating upon a broken plank of the ship at the mercy of the sea. Whilst he was thus laboring under these passions and phantasms, his friends came and awaked him with the news of Pompey's approach; who was now indeed so near at hand, that the fight must be for the camp itself, and the commanders ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... of the Cathedral with its beautiful windows completed the square, and in the evenings it was very restful to hear the muffled sounds of the old organ floating up through the darkness. ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... on our oars after the victory at Manassas, while the enemy is drilling and equipping 500,000 or 600,000 men. I hope we may not soon be floating down stream! We know the enemy is, besides, building iron-clad steamers—and yet we are not even erecting casemate batteries! We are losing precious time, and, perhaps, ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... miles distant. Hili-li received some direct light from a hundred or more volcanic fires—two within its own shores; but by far the greater illumination came from the reflected light of the great central lake of boiling lava. The sky, constantly filled with a circle of high-floating clouds formed of volcanic dust, the circumference of which blended away beyond the horizon, but in the centre of which, covering a space the diameter of which was about thirty miles, was a circle of light of about the same brilliancy as ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... And Octave Mirbeau, by virtue of his feverish artistic and moral enthusiasms, of his notorious generosity, and of his enormous vogue, was obviously the heaven-appointed man. Francis Jourdain went to Octave Mirbeau and offered him the privilege of floating "Marie Claire" on the literary market of Paris. Octave Mirbeau accepted, and he went to work on the business as he goes to work on all his business; that is to say, with flames and lightnings. For some time Octave Mirbeau lived for nothing, but "Marie Claire." The result has ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux
... every nerve was on the strain. He spoke of their leader, the red-haired man, as a pagan speaks of his God; for it was he who cheered them and slew them impartially as he thought best for their needs; and it was he who steered them for three days among floating ice, each floe crowded with strange beasts that "tried to sail with us," said Charlie, "and we beat them back with the handles of ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... was a pause, while Mr. Bill Hen wondered if this were a floating lunatic asylum or a nest of pirates, that had come so easily up their quiet river and turned the world topsy-turvy. At length—"Your force, Senor Pike," the Skipper said, "I perceive it not, for to take away this child. Have you the milizia—what you call soldiers, police—have you ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... matter what may be the convulsions to which the atmosphere is subjected, nor how violent its effects in sound and motion upon the agitated surface of the earth, not the slightest sensation of either can be detected by the individual who is floating in its currents. The most violent storm, the most outrageous hurricane, pass equally unheeded and unfelt; and it is only by observing the retreating forms of the stable world beneath, that any certain indication can be obtained as to the amount or violence ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... earth, their life is counted to them as eternity. Those that gained the shore, I caused to fall at the water's edge, they lay slain in heaps; I overturned their vessels; all their goods sank In the waves." After a brief combat, all resistance ceased. The empty ships, floating at random upon the still waters of the lagoon, or stuck fast in the Nile mud, became the prize of the victors, and were found to contain a rich booty. Thus ended this remarkable struggle, in which nations widely severed and of various bloods—scarcely, as one would have thought, known to each ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... all budding," said Mr. Lewisham, "the rushes are shooting, and all along the edge of the river there are millions of little white flowers floating on the water, I don't know the names of them, but they're fine.... May I ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... operator is light and the patient an overweight adult, he can utilize over 80 per cent of his weight by raising his knees from the ground and supporting himself entirely on his toes and the heels of his hands, the latter properly placed on the ends of the floating ribs of the patient. In this manner he can work as effectively as a ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... Llyn-yr-Afange (Beaver Pool Bridge) I lingered to look down the lovely lane on the left, through which I was to pass in order to reach the rocky dell of Fairy Glen, for it was perfumed, not with the breath of the flowers now asleep, but with the perfume I love most of all, the night's floating memory of ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... great majority of our readers, while long Tom was actually indulging in a paroxysm of his low spiritless laughter, as these certain intimations of the safety of the Ariel, and of the vigilance of her crew, were conveyed to their ears; when the whole hull and taper spars of their floating home became unexpectedly visible, and the sky, the placid basin, and the adjacent hills, were illuminated by a flash as sudden and as vivid as the keenest lightning. Both Barnstable and his cockswain seemed ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... tender and considerate father, and less a lawgiver and a judge. For such a generation, there exists a deposit of divine truth almost unknown by Christendom. Only here and there have men gathered it, floating upon the surface. The great deposit waits the touch of ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... in hand, looking down over the parapet upon the shimmering landscape which stretched forth beneath them into sapphirine space, and the Spirit of Life, who kept watch near the threshold, heard now and then a floating fragment of their talk blown backward like the stray swallows which the wind sometimes separates from ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... I hoped to see the city's ramparts before the gloaming fell on that desolate place, I suddenly saw a long high wall of whiteness with pinnacles here and there thrown up above it, floating towards me silent and grim as a secret, and knew it for that evil thing the mist. The sun, though low, was shining on every sprig of heather, the green and scarlet mosses were shining with it too, it seemed incredible that in three minutes' time all those colours would be gone and nothing left all ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... knight's shield quite as radiantly as on the monk's picture. Examining farther into the sources of your emotion in the Angelico work, you will find much of the impression of sanctity dependent on a singular repose and grace of gesture, consummating itself in the floating, flying, and above all, in the dancing groups. That is not Angelico's inspiration. It is only a peculiarly tender use of systems of grouping which had been long before developed by Giotto, Memmi, and Orcagna; and the real root of it all is simply—What ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... shall stray by many a stream, Where the half-shut lilies gleam. Napping out the sultry days In the quiet secluded bays; Where the tasseled rushes tower, O'er the purple pickerel-flower. And the floating dragon-fly— Azure glint and crystal gleam— Watches o'er the burnished stream With his eye of ebony; Where the bull-frog lolls at rest On his float of lily-leaves, That the swaying water weaves, And distends ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... have twice made the voyage of the Mississippi, they will not refuse, again, to run the risk of its floating snags, sandbars and boat races; so stepping on board the same steamer which bears Mrs. Carrington's letter, we will once more, visit Louisiana, and stopping with Dr. Lacey, will see how much of Julia's letter ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... ragged staves. A poet standing at the end of the bridge explained in Latin verse the meaning of all. The Lady of the Lake, invisible since the disappearance of the renowned prince Arthur, approached on a floating island along the moat to recite adulatory verses. Arion, being summoned for the like purpose, appeared on a dolphin four-and-twenty feet long, which carried in its belly a whole orchestra. A Sibyl, a "Salvage man" and an Echo posted in the park, all harangued in ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... Sea, together drive 290 Mountains of Ice, that stop th' imagin'd way Beyond Petsora Eastward, to the rich Cathaian Coast. The aggregated Soyle Death with his Mace petrific, cold and dry, As with a Trident smote, and fix't as firm As Delos floating once; the rest his look Bound with Gorgonian rigor not to move, And with Asphaltic slime; broad as the Gate, Deep to the Roots of Hell the gather'd beach They fasten'd, and the Mole immense wraught on 300 Over the foaming deep high Archt, a Bridge Of length prodigious joyning to the ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... any one could have otter," said Kalitan. "We hunted them with spears and bows and arrows. Now they are very few, and we find them only in dangerous spots, hiding on rocks or floating kelp. Sometimes the hunters have to lie in hiding for days watching them. Only Indians can kill the otter. Boston men can if they marry Indian women. That makes ...
— Kalitan, Our Little Alaskan Cousin • Mary F. Nixon-Roulet
... made into spectacles, and it was a bad business when people put on these spectacles meaning to be just. The bad demon laughed till he split his sides; it tickled him to see the mischief he had done. But some of these fragments were still left floating about the world, and you shall hear ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... night passed away and he came not. His wife and daughter, who had not gone to bed, went to the nearest house and told their tale. In an hour a hundred feet were traversing all the loneliest places—till a hat was seen floating on Loughrigg-tarn, and then all knew that the search was near an end. Drags were soon got from the fishermen on Windermere, and a boat crossed and recrossed the tarn on its miserable quest, till in an ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... beating against the wind, we came to the fishing banks and towards our buoys. The water for as far as I could see was filled with buoys and glass balls (floaters to hold the nets) enclosed in netted ropes. These glass balls were attached by a short cord to the nets to keep them floating, while stones at the bottom held the nets stretched. It was no easy matter ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... the evening service from the text in Luke xvi. 5: "How much owest thou unto my Lord?" It was a wonderful day for us all. Enough money was taken in by collections and subscriptions at the morning and evening services to pay the floating debt of the church. We received ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... feet. She was bearing in her arms the semblance of a sick child, which struggled convulsively and filled the air with dismal wails. These cries seemed to be answered by a multitude of other children, some bloated like toads, others mere skeletons lying upon the bank, or floating upon the thick brown waters of the pond. And all seemed to address their cries to her, as if she were the cause of their weeping; nor could all her efforts quiet or console them ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... on the fallen pine, sat as though he had been there through eternity, and would remain through eternity. The gun thundered, the minies sang. One of the latter struck a tree above his head and severed a leafy twig. It came floating down, touched his shoulder like an accolade and rested on the pine needles by his foot. He gave it no attention, sitting like a graven image with clasped hands, listening to the South Carolinian's report. Hampton ceased ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... was 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 ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... of the siege many Arabs made attempts to escape by swimming the river and going to the British lines, twenty miles below. Of nearly 100, only three or four succeeded in getting away. One penetrated the Turkish lines by floating ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... the present period. The day spent in Woodbury and its vicinity was a bright spot in Friend Hopper's life, to which he always reverted with a kind of saddened pleasure. The heat of the season had been tempered by floating clouds, and when they returned to Philadelphia, there was a faint rainbow in the east. He looked lovingly upon it, and said, "These clouds seem to have followed us all day, on purpose to make everything ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... the man in the blouse, with unfeigned admiration. "You always must have been a precious sight downier than I thought. Why, your old man was no fool. He made a brown or two floating his coffins, but he was a guileless pup compared ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... he had now acquired a certain confidence; he took no shame that he reserved for himself the easy shots; the nasty ones he could safely leave to his companions. At last, as they came in sight of a lovely little tarn lying under a distant hillock, and could descry two small dots floating on the surface of the water, Sir Hugh said to his ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... the very salt sea-water. Finally they reached another archipelago a few hundred miles in extent, the larger islands of which were covered with a sheet of ice, at the edges of which small icebergs were being formed by breaking off and slowly floating. Finding a small island on which the coating was thin, they grounded the Callisto, and stepped out for the first time in several days. The air was so still that a small piece of paper released at a height of six feet sank slowly and went as straight as the string of a plumb-line. The sun ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... now flaunt to the sky their proud domes and floating debts, the rank jimson weed nodded in the wind and the pumpkin pie of to-day still slumbered in the bosom of the future. What glorious facts have, under the benign influence of fostering centuries, been born of apparent impossibility. What ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... expression of fatalism was genuine enough. It manifested a habit of his thought. One of the characteristics of our time is that it produces men who are determinists by instinct; who, anything but profound students or subtle reasoners, catch at the floating phrases of philosophy and recognize them as the index of their being, adopt them thenceforth as clarifiers of their vague self-consciousness. In certain moods Elgar could not change from one seat to ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... unfavourable for our course. On the 16th, we were in latitude 44 deg. 45' south, and in longitude 135 deg. 30' east; and at night we perceived the sea spread over with luminous spots, resembling lanthorns floating on its surface; when nearly about the same longitude on the last voyage we discovered the same appearance upon the sea: this observation may have its use, and serve as a hint for your being at no ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... to conceal a sort of cellar containing mysterious things which had no name and were of incalculable value. Hamilcar went down the three steps, took up a llama's skin which was floating on a black liquid in a silver vat, and ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... carelessly hitched rope was loose on the water, and ahead, in the track of the moonlight, a small black object was floating out of ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... and the weakness of the American force at Mount Holly. He stated, also, his own belief that it was merely a feint to draw off Colonel Donop, and that preparatory to an attack on Trenton. The officer treated the information lightly, and pointing to the mass of ice floating down the river asked whether it would be possible for ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... of this loving pair that, for a long time, they sat rocking in each other's arms, and thought of nothing but their sorrows past, and the sea of bliss they were floating on. ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... though with small 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 come ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... inmates of the usual adjoining lodge by magnifying every little sound. Most of the way, moored at the water's edge, were barges laden with peat, containing all sorts of dogs; in fact, in several instances they seemed to be veritable floating dogs' homes. These creatures barked as if paid to, and were usually sympathetically answered by dogs some distance in advance, thus inadvertently proclaiming the news of my arrival. Once two men came out of a cottage twenty yards ahead, and, ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... men and wounded. It is reckoned that nine men must have lost their lives there. Eyjolf asks his cousin whether he can move at all. Aron says that he can, and stands on his feet; and now they go both together for a while by the shore, till they come to a hidden bay; there they saw a boat ready floating, with five or six men at the oars, and the bow to sea. This was Eyjolf's arrangement, in case of sudden need. Now Eyjolf tells Aron that he means the boat for both of them; giving out that he sees no hope of doing more for the Bishop at ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... than even his generous impulses would have allowed him to charitably dispose of, and more by far than he could patiently submit to be defrauded of. As he thought thus, his good resolutions of the morning in a measure melted away before his indignant resentment, and vague plans were floating through his mind, as to how he might and would recover it, the bearing he should feel called upon to assume when next he met Mr. Clinton, &c., &c. To tell Guly of the loss he had sustained, after some ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... in sore perplexity, with clouded brow. But as soon as he had passed the door he resumed his smiling, cordial manner, being one of those men who wear a mask on the street. The mist, still visible in the neighborhood of the Seine, was reduced to a few floating shreds, which gave an air of vapory unsubstantiality to the houses on the quay, to the steam-boats of which only the paddle-wheels could be seen, and to the distant horizon, where the dome of the Invalides hovered like a gilded balloon, whose netting shed ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... was a glorious one. Peggy called it a "blue day" because the sky was so blue. It was a deep blue, and there were great fleecy clouds floating about. The blueberries were the most wonderful blue, two shades, dark and light, with a shimmer to them, and Peggy's blue frock seemed a part of all the brightness of the day. Alice had on her yellow frock, and Diana was ...
— Peggy in Her Blue Frock • Eliza Orne White
... Thither, then, we went, crossing the valley by a grassy trail; and there lunched out of the basket, sitting in a kind of portico, and wondering, while we ate, at this great bulk of useless building. Through a chink we could look far down into the interior, and see sunbeams floating in the dust and striking on tier after tier of silent, rusty machinery. It cost six thousand dollars, twelve hundred English sovereigns; and now, here it stands deserted, like the temple of a forgotten religion, the busy millers toiling somewhere else. All the time we were there, ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Civilians of all ages came out to greet us. Their national flags—Heaven only knows where they came from or how they were concealed from the enemy—were displayed on all sides, and even before the enemy were clear of the village the Tricolour was floating from the Church Tower! It was truly a wonderful sight, and a day never to be forgotten. We were surrounded by offers of coffee and fruit, cider and cognac, plentifully mingled with the tears and kisses of the grateful inhabitants. ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... near the beach. By this time the rain had stopped, and by next morning we saw the water subsiding gradually. Fortunately it was a misty morning, and we could wander about on top, though we did have one or two shrapnel bursts over us. We then discovered that our valises and stores were still floating in the water-cart emplacement—the Sikhs having turned tail when the storm broke. It was six weeks later when ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... the technical name for a thicker kind. Pine trunks are used for the masts of ships. "In the north of Russia and in Lapland the outer bark is used, like that of the birch, for covering huts, for lining them inside, and as a substitute for cork for floating the nets of fishermen; and the inner bark is woven into mats like those made from the lime-tree. Ropes are also made from the bark, which are said to be very strong and elastic, and are generally used by ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the chant of the boatmen is suddenly hushed, and the passing labourers shroud their heads in token of reverence, as, surrounded by her attendants, the daughter of Pharaoh approaches the river. The slight ark, with its precious burden, floating among the reeds, attracts her eye, and, as her maidens draw it from the water, the wail of the desolate infant ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... and then—a last good-by—two of them refusing his hand. They had resigned and followed their state. They had striven to take him with them to swell the ranks of the proud young army of the South. They had loved him well and he them, but there was something floating overhead, from the white staff at the stern, he held still dearer. One officer, who was most urgent in his pleadings, was her bonny "Uncle Barney," mother's own brother, and when he left, without ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... troubled, as was usual when I slept, with painful dreams. I did not dream at all; but, on awaking to consciousness, I had a dread feeling upon me, just as if I had been cast from off the earth into infinite space, and was rapidly floating onwards, or falling from some great height, without ever reaching a point of rest. It was a feeling of a most unpleasant kind—in fact, ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... rapidly diminishes, while eager eyes are directed ahead, until it is seen from the deck. Hope fills the breast of the sanguine, despair that of the gloomy and desponding. Sure eyes and good telescopes soon descry the Yankee ensign floating aloft in lazy folds; and as we come still nearer, those accustomed to observe the shape of sails and set of masts, detect the peculiarities of an old acquaintance. It is the Lucy Ann, an American vessel ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... now less favourable, since the invaders had had time to prepare their defence against this under-water peril. As we flew over East Hampton on the following afternoon, we were surprised to see five fully inflated air-ships of the nonrigid Parseval type floating in the blue sky, like grim sentinels guarding the German fleet. Down through the sun-lit ocean they could see the shadowy underwater craft lurking in the depths, and they carried high ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... 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 realized in these ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... set out on what the boys call a dead run, though he hardly knew in what direction to look for refuge. But through the trees at the west side of the road he caught sight of something that put new hope into his heart. It was a boat, floating within three feet of shore. In it sat a boy of about Harry's own age. It was ...
— Facing the World • Horatio Alger
... was a financial scheme which occupied the attention of prominent politicians, communities, and even nations in the early part of the eighteenth century. Briefly the facts are: In 1711 Robert Hartley, Earl of Oxford, then Lord Treasurer, proposed to fund a floating debt of about L10,000,000 sterling, the interest, about $600,000, to be secured by rendering permanent the duties upon wines, tobacco, wrought silks, etc. Purchasers of this fund were to become also shareholders ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... fair they sailed from the island. They had not gone far when the weather changed, and a storm of thunder and lightning ensued. A stroke of lightning shattered their mast, which in its fall killed the pilot. At last the vessel itself came to pieces. The keel and mast floating side by side, Ulysses formed of them a raft, to which he clung, and, the wind changing, the waves bore him to Calypso's island. All the rest of ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... the pigs, and the cackling of the fowls, and the occasional bleating of the calves, responded to by the lowing of the cows, gave life and animation to the picture. At a short distance from the shore the punt was floating on the still waters. John and Malachi were very busy fishing; the dogs were lying down by the palisades, all except Oscar, who, as usual, attended upon his young mistresses; and, under the shade of a large ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... falling upon some combustibles led to the invention of gunpowder. Irritable tempers have marred the reputation of many a great man, as in the case of Edmund Burke and of Thomas Carlyle. A few bits of seaweed and driftwood, floating on the waves, enabled Columbus to stay a mutiny of his sailors which threatened to prevent the discovery of a new world. There are moments in history which balance years of ordinary life. Dana could interest a class for hours on a grain ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... the tide was flowing in warmer than usual, Rolf amused himself with more evolutions in bathing than he had hitherto indulged in. He forgot his troubles and his foes in diving, floating, and swimming. As he dashed round a point of the rock, he saw something, and was certain he was seen. Hund appeared at least as much bewitched as the island itself, for he could not keep away from it. He seemed irresistibly drawn to the scene of his guilt ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... judgment in such a juncture; even the greatest navigator in the world. What alarmed us still more was the short distance we could see, and the fact that the night was coming on, and that we could not make a shift of a quarter of a league without finding a bank or some ice, and a great deal of floating ice, the smallest piece of which would have been sufficient to cause the loss of any vessel whatever. Now, while we were still sailing along amid the ice, there arose so strong a wind that in a short time the fog broke ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain
... impulse, Johnny's hand, all by itself, slid over and gently clasped the whiter and slenderer one. It did not draw away; and, huddled up on their low narrow seat, bumping against the wooden banks and floating on and on, they cared not whither, they stared into oblivion in that semi-trancelike condition that sometimes accompanies the peculiar state in which ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... ministers was unwise enough frequently to express disloyal views in the pulpit, until one Sunday morning he found the banner he would dishonor floating over his church, and hanging to a post in front of the door a figure intended to represent himself, with his name and the word "traitor" pinned to it. The next day he left for Europe, where he stayed until the close ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... sees, like tulip buds, go floating by like birds, With wavering tips that warbled sweetly strange enchanted words; And as with ropes of amethyst the boughs with lamps were hung, And clusters of green emeralds ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... morning that might have made anyone happy, even with no Golden River to seek for. Level lines of dewy mist lay stretched along the valley, out of which rose the massy mountains, their lower cliffs in pale gray shadow, hardly distinguishable from the floating vapor but gradually ascending till they caught the sunlight, which ran in sharp touches of ruddy color along the angular crags, and pierced, in long, level rays, through their fringes of spearlike pine. Far above shot up red, splintered masses of castellated rock, jagged and shivered ...
— The King of the Golden River - A Short Fairy Tale • John Ruskin.
... innumerable agents at work, to say nothing of the general public; and yet not so much as a whisper has come to me in regard to her whereabouts or situation. I am only afraid we shall find her floating in the river some fine morning, without ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... is not drawn up to the bank," said Frank, in a puzzled way. "It seems to be floating at some ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... plantation, and he was suddenly grave and silent. A night-wind was blowing fragrant and cool. The dark boughs of the trees waved to and fro against the background of deep blue sky. The lime leaves rustled softly, the perfume of roses came floating across from the flower-gardens. Trent stood quite ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... out of immeasurable deeps toward a distant light which was like the mouth of a well filled with clouds of misty vapor. Occasionally he saw a brown big hairy face floating in over this lighted horizon, to smile kindly and go away again. Others came with shaggy beards. He heard a cheery tenor voice which he recognized, and then another face, a big brown smiling face; very lovely it looked now to him-almost as lovely as his ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... footsteps, which attest to the antiquity of that fable. But the north wind opposes and beats upon the shore, and dashes mighty waves against the rocks which receive them, and renders the haven more dangerous than the country they had deserted. Now as those people of Joppa were floating about in this sea, in the morning there fell a violent wind upon them; it is called by those that sail there "the black north wind," and there dashed their ships one against another, and dashed some of them ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... expression alone. His gamut of tones became contracted. "Physical magnetism" is exactly the phrase that illuminates his later methods. Often cavernous in tone, sooty in his blacks, he nevertheless contrives a fluid atmosphere, the shadows floating, the figure floating, that arrests instant attention. He became almost sculptural, handled his planes with imposing breadth, his sense of values was strong, his gradations and degradation of tones ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... unconscionable, and actual murderer,—he goes off scott-free; marries, perchance, shortly after, the daughter of a "respectable and honest" family, and becomes a much honored, upright man. There is many a gentleman, floating about in honors and distinctions, who has soiled his honor and his conscience in this manner. Had women a word to say in legislation, much would be otherwise in ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... us a wide lake-like expanse on one side, and on the other a cloud of spray floating in the air. As we drew nearer, a broad stream appeared, rushing over a ledge of rocks and falling into a deep chasm below, after which it ran towards the south ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... exclaim, "There comes one of Old Sleuth's veiled women again," for I tell you veiled women are floating around every day and night in great cities, and especially those who, like our veiled women, are out at such a ...
— Oscar the Detective - Or, Dudie Dunne, The Exquisite Detective • Harlan Page Halsey
... inadequate, indeed, as we shall presently see, but "the little red schoolhouse on the hill," with the stars and stripes floating proudly above it, was not of that day. There were itinerant preachers who went from one locality to another, holding "revival meetings." But church buildings were rare and, to say the least, not of artistic design. There were no regular means of travel, and ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... I did my best to break in his floating ribs. Heaven only knows how late we talked that night. And Dinky-Dunk had a bundle of surprises for me. The first was a bronze reading-lamp. The second was a soft little rug for the bedroom—only an Axminster, but very acceptable. The third ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... the night. The savage attempt to starve them out. Planning to escape. Determine to build a raft. John and Harry's night adventure after material. Crossing the tributary to the north. Bringing in logs. The structure to imitate the wagon. Driving the team into the river. Floating the logs under the wagon. Crossing the stream. A safe passage. A good retreat. How the ruse affected the natives. The amused captive chief. Starting northward. The disapproval of the chief. Viewing a fight between tribes. Short of ammunition. An unexpected native village. The startled ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... treatises of a single hand, but are rather collations or compilations of floating monologues, dialogues or anecdotes. There are no doubt here and there simple discussions but there is no pedantry or gymnastics of logic. Even the most casual reader cannot but be struck with the earnestness and enthusiasm of the sages. They run from place to place with great eagerness ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... business of the day had not yet commenced. Tom directed his Cousin's eye in the first instance to the very large and celebrated painting by Copley, which fronts the Lord Mayor's chair, and represents the destruction of the floating batteries before Gibraltar, to commemorate the gallant defence of that place by General Elliott, afterwards Lord Heath field, in 1782. The statue of the late King George the Third; the death of David Rizzio, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... 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 ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... animals to the towers, those windows set in diamond pattern. And again he was visited by the impression that he was under observation. With the mist floating across those openings, it would be easy for a lurker to ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... and bound together in the doorway; at a four-went way a man and woman hung from an ash-tree; of a farmstead the four walls stood, with a fire yet burning in the rick-yard; in the duck-pond before the house the bodies of the owners were floating amid the scum of green weed. That night he slept by a roadside shrine, and next morning betimes took the lonely track again. Considering all this as he rode, he reached a sign-post which told him that here the ways of Wanmeeting and Waisford parted company. "Wanmeeting is my plain road," ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... Mr. Calthrop fitted her out as a floating chapel and filled her with Bibles printed in all languages, which he distributes in many lands. When his fatal attractiveness for women threatens to involve him in trouble he hastily puts to sea. He has never become a really accomplished sailor, and the Jasper B. is something of a menace to ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... Hinduized, and their kings finally adopted Hindu names and titles. They believed that there were in the beginning no heavenly bodies, air or earth, only water everywhere, over which at first hovered a formless Supreme Being called Pha. He took corporeal shape as a huge crab that lay floating, face upwards, upon the waters. In turn other animals took shape, the last being two golden spiders from whose excrement the earth gradually rose above the surrounding ocean. Pha then formed a female counterpart of himself, who laid four eggs, from which ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... fourth day came, but not a breath of air, And Ocean slumber'd like an unwean'd child: The fifth day, and their boat lay floating there, The sea and sky were blue, and clear, and mild— With their one oar (I wish they had had a pair) What could they do? and hunger's rage grew wild: So Juan's spaniel, spite of his entreating, Was kill'd and portion'd out for ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... then approached a large cask floating with one end out of the water, to represent a boat. An officer stood up with a little ball of gun-cotton in his hand, smaller than an orange, to which was attached a thin line of what is called lightning cotton, ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... at herself and at Horace. She became horribly ashamed of herself, and angry at him because of the shame. She gazed out at the wonderful masses of shadows which the trees made, and she gazed up again at the sky and that floating crystal, and it seemed impossible that it was within her as it was. Her clear face was as calm as marble, her expression as immovable, her gaze as direct. It seemed as if a man must be a part of the wonderful mystery of the moonlit night to come ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... life-preserver in which I floated? Was it not liable to go to pieces at any moment? I had heard of such things being made of paper and hollow rushes which quickly became saturated and lost all buoyancy. And I could not swim a stroke. And I was alone, floating, apparently, in the midst of a grey primordial vastness. I confess that a madness seized me, that I shrieked aloud as the women had shrieked, and beat the ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... buff hues to yellows. Hence changes of colour have been imputed before now to chemical alteration, when in reality the results have been physical, caused by the subsidence of the pigments, and the floating of the vehicles employed. ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... house, and he fell to thinking that if he had started to swim the lake that night he would be now somewhere between Castle Island and the Joycetown shore, in the deepest and windiest part of the lake. 'And pretty well tired I'd be at the time. If I'd started to-night a corpse would be floating about by now.' The wind grew louder. Father Oliver imagined the waves slapping in his face, and then he imagined them slapping about the face of a corpse drifting towards the ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... seconds later both guns spoke practically at the same instant, and up went the teal again with a great whir of wings and loud cries of consternation, leaving behind them a round dozen or more of dead and wounded floating upon the ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... which regiment lead. The Coldstreams were there, the Scotch and Welsh Guards, the Irish Guards with their saffron kilts and green ribbons floating from their bag-pipes. A British regimental band marched ahead of each American regiment to do it honour. Down the sunlit canyon of Pall Mall they swung to the tremendous cheering of the crowd. Quite respectable citizens had climbed ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... official positions and Jesuit missionaries carried on their work. The British island of Montserrat, in the West Indies, appears to have been settled in 1634 by Catholic refugees from Virginia; [Footnote: Eggleston, Beginners of a Nation, 261, n. 9.] and there were other floating proposals to colonize English and Irish Catholics in America. [Footnote: Cal. of State Pap., 1628, p. 95.] It was evidently quite within the bounds of possibility that Catholic colonies should be established ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... reader wishes to see the bubbles of reputation that were floating, some of them gay with prismatic colors, half a century ago, he will find in the pages of "Truth" a long catalogue of celebrities he never heard of. I recognize only three names, of all which are mentioned ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... engaging with Mr. John Ball, jun., in the final tie of the Amateur Championship in 1899. The Scottish favourite was in the bunker guarding the green with his second, and it so happened that the bunker on this occasion was filled with rain water, in which the ball was floating. Mr. Tait chipped the ball out beautifully on to the green, and saved a hole which seemed a certain loss. It is hard to find many holes that are worthy of being put in the same class as this. Man cannot make such ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... moment the river would be boiling against their sides, and eddying fiercely around the wheels. Inch by inch they receded from the shore, dwindling every moment, until at length they seemed to be floating far in the very middle of the river. A more critical experiment awaited us; for our little mule-cart was but ill-fitted for the passage of so swift a stream. We watched it with anxiety till it seemed to be a little motionless white ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... places widening into shallow lakes. On either side of this stream, vast forests extend in every direction as far as the horizon, bounded on one side by the distant ocean, clothing each hilly rise, and sending islets of matted trees and shrubs floating down the waters. ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... 5,140 meters; ice-free coastal areas include parts of southern Victoria Land, Wilkes Land, the Antarctic Peninsula area, and parts of Ross Island on McMurdo Sound; glaciers form ice shelves along about half of the coastline, and floating ice shelves constitute 11% of ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... right at me. I put out my right arm to ward it from me, and my hand closed on another arm, the wrist of which my fingers gripped like a vice. I am a very strong man, and had something to hold to, but my arm was nearly torn from its socket by the strain and weight of the floating body. Had the rush lasted another two seconds I might either have let go or gone with it. But it passed, leaving us up to our ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... brave men of Bothwell, and his two dear friends, filled his mind with dreadful forebodings that they had not outlived the storm. Sometimes, when wearied nature for a few minutes sunk into slumber, he would start, grief-struck, from the body of Edwin floating on the briny flood, and as he awoke, a cold despondence would tell him that his dream was, perhaps, too true. "Oh! I love thee, Edwin!" exclaimed he to himself; "and if my devoted heart was to be separated from all but a patriot's love!-why did I think of loving thee?-must thou, too, die, ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... hard and encouraged them with my voice, while Anscombe, who drove splendidly, kept their heads as straight as he could. Mercifully they came round again and struck out for the further shore, the water-logged cart floating after them. Would it turn over? That was the question in my mind. Five seconds; ten seconds and it was still upright. Oh! it was going. No, a fierce back eddy caught it and set it straight again. My mare touched bottom and there was hope. It struggled forward, ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... trust you will have a smooth administration. I know no government which would be so embarrassing in war as ours. This would proceed very much from the lying and licentious character of our papers; but much, also, from the wonderful credulity of the members of Congress in the floating lies of the day. And in this no experience seems to correct them. I have never seen a Congress during the last eight years, a great majority of which I would not implicitly have relied on in any question, could their minds have been purged of all errors of fact. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... hieratic as a figurehead, was the King himself, watching for a sign. The great ships rolled and plunged, the tide came racing by them, blue-green water lipped with foam, carrying upon it unknown weeds, golden fruit floating, wreckage unfamiliar, a dead fish scarlet-rayed, a basket strangely wrought—drifting heralds of a country of dreams. About noon, when mass had been said upon his galley, King Richard was seen to throw up his ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... like steam into the clear, cold air. All these things rise in image before the child's eye and are not soon forgotten, you may be sure. The work and life of the river-drivers might also be described, and their manner of floating the logs down river in springtime when the water is high and the current strong. Then perhaps the children will help to tell us about the mill of which they doubtless know something,—where the sawmills are built, how the water helps in turning the great wheel, the buzzing and hissing of the ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the story that the king fired with a long arquebus from one of the windows of the Louvre upon the fleeing Huguenots. "He took great pleasure," says Brantome, "in seeing from his windows more than four thousand corpses, killed or drowned, floating down the river." The same chronicler relates that when, on the 27th, in company with his mother and a number of seigneurs, he visited the gibbet of Montfaucon to inspect the corpse of the admiral, there hanging ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... lady, nursed in pomp and pleasure, will you ever cast one thought upon the miserable being who addresses you? Will you ever, as your gilded galley is floating down the unruffled stream of prosperity, will you ever, while lulled by the sweetest music—thine own praises—hear the far-off sigh from that world ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... thankfully. It was cooler in the shade of the tree. She looked up through the fluttering green leaves at the floating clouds shining in the sun. Jimmie hobbled around her, driving Sally with her knitted reins, but they did not keep their sister awake. The sun was almost noon-high when she opened her eyes, and she hurried guiltily back to ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means
... floating him," added the boy. "He took me first, because I could get over the rocks and get help soonest. He is ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Wordsworth and his good sister, with thine and Sara's, are become "familiar in my mouth as household words." You would make me very happy, if you think W. has no objection, by transcribing for me that inscription of his. I have some scattered sentences ever floating on my memory, teasing me that I cannot remember more of it. You may believe I will make no improper use of it. Believe me I can think now of many subjects on which I had planned gaining information from you; ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... I need not hurry. What a waste of life, just getting and spending. Sitting by my pansy beds, with the slow clouds floating leisurely past, and all the clear day before me, I look on at the hot scramble for the pennies of existence and am lost in wonder at the vulgarity that pushes, and cringes, and tramples, untiring and unabashed. And when you have got ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... have I seen finer foxgloves. I suppose they rejoice me so because of early memories—to a child it is the most impressive of wild flowers; I would walk miles any day to see a fine cluster, as I would to see the shining of purple loosestrife by the water edge, or white lilies floating upon the still depth. ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing |
