"Oblong" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... show differences. The most marked are those of the leaves, which may be small or large, linear or elliptic or oblong and even rhomboidal in shape, more or less hairy with simple or with stellate branched hairs, and finally of a pure green or of a glaucous color. The petals are as a rule obcordate, but this type may be combined with others having more or less broad emarginations at the summit, and with ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... huts of Hawaii, the birdcage houses of Tahiti, or the open shed, with the crazy Venetian blinds, of the polite Samoan—none of these can be compared with the Marquesan paepae-hae, or dwelling platform. The paepae is an oblong terrace built without cement of black volcanic stone, from twenty to fifty feet in length, raised from four to eight feet from the earth, and accessible by a broad stair. Along the back of this, and coming to about half its width, runs the open front ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was there further sight of the one-sided battle. Half a mile or more beyond the bare divide there rose against the southern sky a bold, oblong height or butte, studded with bowlders and stunted pine, and watchers at the fort became aware as the sun climbed higher that the smoke cloud, thinning gradually but perceptibly, was slowly drifting thither. The fire, too, grew faint and scattering. ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... table, and all the other stuffy misconceptions so firmly established by the civilisation of the nineteenth century, I discovered the authentic marks of the old English aesthetic—whitewashed walls and black oak. And the dresser, the settles, the oblong table, the rush-bottomed chairs, the big chest by the side wall, all looked sturdily genuine; venerably conscious of the boast that they had defied the greedy collector and would continue to elude his most insidious approaches. Here, they were in their ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... feature is the human eye; not the outa of Horus,[EN38] so well known to those who know the Pyramids, but the last trace of Athene's profile. Two are Roman: a Nerva with S.C. on the reverse; and a Claudius Augustus, bearing by way of countermark a depressed oblong, of 20/100 by 14/100 (of inch), with a raised figure, erect, draped, and holding a sceptre or thyrsus. There is also a Constantius struck at Antioch. The gem of the little collection was a copper coin, thinly encrusted ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... before two men, whose naked swords plainly intimate the consequences of any attempt to give alarm, or to offer resistance to their demands, have apparently been collecting all the money in the house and are laying it before the thieves. The oblong boxes are iron safes, in which the Japanese ...
— Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs • J. M. W. Silver
... grind it by means of another stone or pestle. It was with great difficulty that he could get a stone of suitable size and form. After several days' trial he at last got one cut out from some layers of rock near the shore. He made a hollow place in it. Then he took a smaller oblong shaped rock for ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe - for American Boys and Girls • Samuel. B. Allison
... a specimen to use, you can find a picture in the encyclopedia or geology, or you can tell the pupils how in some places it is possible to pick up from among the rocks on the surface of the ground oblong pieces perhaps a half inch thick, in which, when they are split open, you can see the impression of a fern, every vein showing plainly and looking as clear in the dull gray as it showed when alive ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... a flower in an oblong cream-colored spike, with purple blotches, was named Castilleia inconspicua, possibly because it is so much less conspicuous and alluring to the eye than its well-known and striking brother of the California fields, C. parviflora. This species has been of great interest to botanists, ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... another room and presently returned with some oblong pieces of cardboard. These had a checked surface, and upon these checks were painted or stained partial patterns, designs for the ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... There are five oblong factories and two circular ones. The five are six stories high, with ten or twelve windows on each story, so that in the five there are, at least, as many regular windows as days in the year. The circular buildings ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... loading is plainly alluded to, and some skill seems to have been occasionally exercised in the rattling of the dice-box. In the more modern game, known by the name of pasha, the dice are not cubic, but oblong; and they are thrown from the hand either direct upon the ground, or against a post or board, which will break the fall, and render the result more ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... impression of incompleteness favors this claim. Nebuchadnezzar says on a tablet that another king began it but left it unfinished. It fell into disrepair and was completed by Nebuchadnezzar and was used as one of the great temples. It was built of brick and was oblong in form. It measured seven hundred yards around and rose to a height of from one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet high. It consisted o? seven stages or stories colored to represent the tints which the Sabeans thought appropriate to the seven planets. Beginning from ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... plain, the immense flat land, contains cultivated fields, square, oblong, varying in colour with the seasons, from the light green of barley to the gold of wheat and the dirty yellow of stubble. Near the river are truck-gardens and orchards of ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... interior is carefully coated with fine lime, and from the roof long stalactites depend. Near it is a cemetery: the graves are, for the most part, provided with large slabs of close black basalt, planted in the ground edgeways, and in the shape of a small oblong. The material was most probably brought from the mountains near Tajurrah: at another part of the island I found it in the shape of a gigantic mill-stone, half imbedded in the loose sand. Near the cemetery we observed a mound of rough ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... dark, old and ill instructed plan. The streets are left narrow,—very narrow. The black doorways and halls, as we peer in, in passing, are cramped and forbidding; the projecting balconies approach each other overhead, and the oblong yellow buildings themselves rise to overshadowing height. Like soldiers on dress parade they stand, relentlessly regular and uniform, block after block, and their walled lanes, straight and similar and uncharacteristic, cross and weave themselves into a stiff, right-angled ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... hatched the males seek the underside of the leaves, while the females prefer the young shoots as a place of abode. If the under surface of a leaf be examined, it will be found to be studded, particularly on its basil half, with minute yellowish-white specks of an oblong form.[1] These are the larvae of the males undergoing transformation into pupae, beneath their own skins; some of these specks are always in a more advanced state than the others, the full-grown ones being whitish ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... the dining room and told them to help themselves.... Then we roamed through the living rooms, the boudoirs, straight through to the washing room and bath; then back through the oblong archway into the little square room beyond the study, where I halted them and said: 'Men, these women will die before they'll tell us where the treasure is at present. The OLD MAN and WOMAN seem utterly indifferent to their fate; we can get nothing out of them. Now, what do you say to giving ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... the original form of Kilcolman was an oblong square, flanked by a tower at the south-east corner. The apartment in the basement story has still its stone arched roof entire, and is used as a shelter for cattle; the narrow, screw-like stairs of the tower are nearly perfect, and lead to an extremely small chamber, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... Hatyk.—An oblong piece of blue (or yellow) silk cloth, presented to honored guests, chiefs, Lamas and gods. Also a kind of coin, worth ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... wicker throne, six feet high, covered with purple silk, brocaded with dragons in white and gold, and overhung by a canopy of tattered blue silk, with which material part of the walls also was covered. An oblong box (containing papers) with gilded dragons on it, was placed on the stage or throne, and behind it was perched cross-legged, an odd, black, insignificant looking old man, with twinkling upturned eyes: he was swathed in yellow silk, and wore on his head a pink silk ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... been fractured and cleft open by a sudden blow. They were piled in regular layers, but with no regard to size or sex. Pieces of pottery were picked up in the pit, and had also been plowed up in the field adjacent. Traces of a log council house were plainly discernable. For, in an oblong square, the soil was poor, as if it had been cultivated, till the whites broke it up, and where the logs of the house had decayed, was a strip of rich mould. A maple tree, over the pit, being cut down, two hundred ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... parent looked guiltily at some oblong boxes tied up in white paper with narrow red ribbon, which, innocently enough I consider, enhance the value of life to us both. But she ignored the charge—momma ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... one: and Capella and Menkalina in Auriga, with Bellatrix and Betelgueux in Orion, form two isosceles triangles with β Tauri, that is equidistant from each pair; while the first four make a right-angled parallelogram,—the oblong square so often mentioned in ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... those bits of paper about, eh?" Paul asked, pointing to an oblong strip of blue paper which lay, face uppermost, ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... happened nearly every evening, for the neighbors, pitying her situation, would frequently come to play at boston in her salon, Margaritis remained silent in a corner and never stirred. But the moment ten o'clock began to strike on a clock which he kept shut up in a large oblong closet, he rose at the stroke with the mechanical precision of the figures which are made to move by springs in the German toys. He would then advance slowly towards the players, give them a glance like the automatic gaze of the Greeks and Turks exhibited on the Boulevard du Temple, and say sternly, ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... experienced cascarillero, who laboriously cuts his way through the dense forest ta the spot where he discovers a tree. Having freed the stem from adhering parasites and twining plants, he proceeds, by beating and cutting oblong pieces, to detach the stem bark as far as is within his reach. The tree is then felled, and the entire bark of stem and branches secured. The bark of the smaller branches, as it dries, curls up, forming ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... the person of his venerable father, who has nurtured him from childhood, stored his mind with useful knowledge, or perchance played mumblety peg with a shingle across the place where in later years another father may plant oblong pieces of leather, because of his habit of leaning his youthful stomach across the gate whereon swings a gentle maiden belonging to this other father, the while giving her glucose in regard to a beautiful castle that he will rear with his own hands ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... principles, and that very traditional article—green baize—plays an important and goodly part in them. At the top and bottom of the middle range, on the ground floor, the seats are of various shapes—some narrow, some broad, a few oblong, and others inclining to the orthodox square. The central ones are regular, and so are those at the sides. In the galleries there is a slight irregularity of shape in the seats; but they are all substantial, and the bulk easy. There are 46 free pews or benches in the church. They run along the sides ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... path past the mill, 'way out to the end of the peninsula, but we don't this time; instead we turn right here and then"—the speaker waved his hand up a gentle incline, at the head of which stood an oblong white house with green ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... side of the plain was bordered by a row of palms, and just in front of the palms rose a queerly shaped hill that towered above the plain like a mountain. The sides of this hill were straight up and down; it was oblong in shape and the ...
— Glinda of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... have been introduced since the days of American boards and boxes. In Zui, however, the Indians still use a small wooden receptacle for the precious ceremonial articles, such as feathers and beads. This is an oblong box, provided with a countersunk lid, and usually carved from a single piece of wood. Typical specimens are illustrated in Figs. 103 and 104. The workmanship displayed in these objects is not beyond the aboriginal ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... size, both in this country and England, for a lady's visiting card is three and one-half inches in length and two and one-half inches in width. This oblong form is most generally used, but there is an almost square shape, two and a half inches by three, also in favor, and especially used by unmarried ladies where the shortness of their name would be too much emphasized in the longer card. For instance: "Miss Ray" would be quite justified ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... descendants are still proprietaries of the country. Philadelphia, the capital, stands on a tongue of land at the confluence of the two navigable rivers, the Delaware and Sculkel, disposed in the form of a regular oblong, and designed by the original plan to extend from the one to the other. The streets, which are broad, spacious, and uniform, cross each other at right angles, leaving proper spaces for churches, markets, and other public edifices. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... embracing it with her legs, flies home with it, often appearing to have a bundle disproportionately large. Each cell is made up of a dozen or more pieces: the larger ones, those that form its walls, like the walls of a paper bag, are oblong, and are turned down at one end, so as to form the bottom; not one thickness of leaf merely, but three or four thicknesses, each fragment of leaf lapping over another. When the cell is completed, it is filled about two thirds full of bee-bread,—the color of that in the comb in ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... practitioners, that although they had brought cholera patients into crowded wards of hospitals, no case of the disease occurred among the sick previously in hospital, or among the hospital attendants. My own experience enables me fully to confirm this. The Military Hospital at Dharwar, an oblong apartment of about 90 feet by 20, was within the fort, and the lines of the garrison were about a mile distant outside of the walls of the fort. On two different occasions (in 1820 and 1821), when the disease prevailed epidemically among the troops of that station, while I was in medical charge ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... another hour the boat appeared. It came from down the river, propelled close inshore by two members of their own party who had gone to fetch it. At first the travelers thought it a long, oblong raft. Then as it came closer they could see it was constructed of three canoes, each about thirty feet long, hollowed out of tree-trunks. Over these was laid a platform of small trees hewn roughly into boards. The boat was propelled by long, slender ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... picture to himself now, this immense, oblong hall, illuminated by the pallid light of a January day, invaded by a motley and noisy throng which drifts along the walls, and eddies round the seven pillars, and he will have a confused idea of the whole effect of the picture, whose curious details we shall make ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... developed, the beet-plant rises about four feet in height, with an angular, channelled stem; long, slender branches; and large, oblong, smooth, thick, and fleshy leaves. The flowers are small, green, and are either sessile, or produced on very short peduncles. The calyxes, before maturity, are soft and fleshy; when ripe, hard and wood-like in texture. These calyxes, which are formed ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... thickly wrapped up from head to heels. She skimmed across the park and under the boughs like a shade, mounting then the stone steps for pedestrians which were fixed beside the park gates here as at all the lodges. Outside and below her she saw an oblong shape—it was a brougham, and it had been drawn forward close to the bottom of the steps that she might not have an inch further to go on foot than to this barrier. The whole precinct was thronged ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... classification and definitions of the various classes of numbers, odd, even, prime, composite, and sub-divisions of these such as odd-even, even-times-even, &c. Again there were figured numbers, namely, triangular numbers, squares, oblong numbers, polygonal numbers (pentagons, hexagons, &c.) corresponding respectively to plane figures, and pyramidal numbers, cubes, parallelepipeds, &c., corresponding to solid figures in geometry. The treatment was mostly ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... a great oblong whorl in the Atlantic some four hundred miles wide and fifteen hundred long. Trade routes cut along its northern boundaries, and skirt its southwestern boundary. The dock might very well traverse two thousand miles without seeing a sail. At a rate of six miles a day, it would ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... imperatively requires shade and moisture, and over-pruning is prejudicial. If allowed to run to its natural height it would grow up to 15 to 25 feet high, but it is usually kept at 7 to 10 feet. The leaves are evergreen, very shining, oblong, leathery, and much resemble those of the common laurel. The flowers are small, and cluster in the axils of the leaves. They are somewhat similar to the Spanish jasmine, and being snow-white, the effect of a coffee plantation in ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... is a coffin (Sarg), or what the Americans call a "casket," in the opinion of Helbig: [Footnote: OP. laud., p.217.] it is an oblong receptacle of the bones and dust. Hector was buried in a larnax; SO will Achilles and Patroclus be when Achilles falls, but the dust of Patroclus is kept, meanwhile, in a golden covered cup (phialae) in the quarters of Achilles; it is not ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... will be, locked, but who can say that he is safe this side of the stake in a land where the rats and mice carry news and the wind bears witness? Come, I will show you were I keep it," and going to the mantelpiece he took down a candle-stick, a quaint brass, ornamented on its massive oblong base with two copper snails, and lit the candle. "Do you like the piece?" he asked; "it is my own design, which I cast and filed out in my spare hours," and he gazed at the holder with the affection of an artist. Then without waiting for an answer, he led the way to ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... the White House was embedded among the blue hills. It was an old and extremely simple building, having an oblong front, two sides, and a back; two stories, six windows, and one door; which last, imbued, apparently, with a dislike to being shut, was always open. The house appeared to have an insatiable thirst for mountain air, and it was well supplied with this ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... her sex's ingenuity would have been puzzled to construct a neck capable of supporting it; wherefore she wisely declined the attempt, and settled it firmly on the top of his backbone just between the shoulders. His body was oblong and particularly capacious at bottom; which was wisely ordered by Providence, seeing that he was a man of sedentary habits and very averse to the idle labor of walking. His legs were short, but sturdy in proportion to the weight they had to ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... front. In the center of the square was a little group of men, seventy perhaps but the space was vast. Some were standing, some seated with stiff stumps of legs sticking out queerly. Here and there a nurse stood by a blind man, and there were white oblong gaps in the line which designated the beds of ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... is about the size of an apple, but rather oblong. The skin is reddish-yellow, hard, and rather thick. The edible part is grey and gelatinous, and it contains numerous dark-colored seeds. The fruit is very agreeable, and in taste resembles the gooseberry, and is very cooling. The Granadilla is a shrub ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... a live or boiled condition; and as fishermen can get better prices for them alive than boiled, each fisherman generally has a live-car in which to hold them until they can be sold. These cars are usually oblong, rectangular boxes, with open seams or numerous small holes to permit the free circulation of the water. They are of various sizes, according to the needs of the fisherman, a good average being about 6 feet long by 4 feet wide and about 2 feet ...
— The Lobster Fishery of Maine - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission, Vol. 19, Pages 241-265, 1899 • John N. Cobb
... oblong-shaped observatory, built apparently of wood, and blackened by age. The house is a good-looking one—it seems to be of stone. The girl said the ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... we were soon installed in what I believe to have been the best-appointed private house in Fakarava. It stood just beyond the church in an oblong patch of cultivation. More than three hundred sacks of soil were imported from Tahiti for the Residency garden; and this must shortly be renewed, for the earth blows away, sinks in crevices of the coral, and is sought for at last in vain. I know ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... now begin my labours in good earnest. An oblong, narrow, boudoir-sort of apartment, contains the more precious MSS., the block books, and works printed upon vellum. This room is connected with another, at right angles, (if I remember well) which receives the more valuable works of the fifteenth century—the number of which latter, alone, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... acknowledge freely that the belief in omens was unworthy of a man of sense, have yet confessed at the same time that, in spite of their reason, they have been unable to conquer their fears of death when they heard the harmless insect called the death-watch ticking in the wall, or saw an oblong hollow coal fly ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... came out to the wood-yard through the open door. Lemuel and his friend finished their last stick at the same time, and went in together, and found places side by side at the table in the waiting- room. The attendant within its oblong was serving the men with heavy quart bowls of the steaming broth. He brought half a loaf of light, elastic bread with each, and there were platters of hard-tack set along the board, which every one helped himself from freely, and broke into ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... allowed Tom to leave the station, and showed him how two of his men opened the shutters of the windows that looked out on the tracks and cut two oblong holes in them down on the side, through which they stuck the barrels of their guns. Then Bill's cart was pushed forward, so that only the horses were hidden by the station. One of the men held the horses to prevent their running away when the train came, and ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... under in his time, lying around him field after field. Holy fields. More room if they buried them standing. Sitting or kneeling you couldn't. Standing? His head might come up some day above ground in a landslip with his hand pointing. All honeycombed the ground must be: oblong cells. And very neat he keeps it too: trim grass and edgings. His garden Major Gamble calls Mount Jerome. Well, so it is. Ought to be flowers of sleep. Chinese cemeteries with giant poppies growing produce the best opium Mastiansky told ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... undertook to take the public by storm with his "New and Sure Cure for Dyspepsia," Fink & Co. put a colored poster as large as a dining table on every wall and high fence below Sixty-first street; small oblong bills every ten feet along the curbstones of Broadway, Bowery, Wall street, Fulton street, Cortlandt street, and Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, Madison, and Lexington Avenues; besides throwing ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... holes) which the engineer describes as "rapidly reciprocating and arranged on a slight incline and mounted on spring bars." This allows grit to pass through. The beans then roll down a plane on to a sieve (3/8-inch holes) which separates the broken beans, and finally on to a sieve with oblong holes which allows the beans to fall through whilst retaining the clusters. The beans encounter a strong blast of air which brushes from them any shell or ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... against one of the lower rocks of Moel Gest, which, indeed, formed a side to the low, lengthy house. The materials of the cottage were the shingly stones which had fallen from above, plastered rudely together, with deep recesses for the small oblong windows. Altogether, the exterior was much ruder than Owen had expected; but inside there seemed no lack of comforts. The house was divided into two apartments, one large, roomy, and dark, into which Owen entered immediately; and before the blushing Nest came from the inner ...
— The Doom of the Griffiths • Elizabeth Gaskell
... constructed for themselves at their home in Dayton a wind tunnel 16 inches square by 6 feet long in which they measured the lift and 'drag' of more than two hundred miniature wings. In the course of these tests they for the first time produced comparative results of the lift of oblong and square surfaces, with the result that they re-discovered the importance of 'aspect ratio'—the ratio of length to breadth of planes. As a result, in the next year's glider the aspect ration of the wings was increased from the three to one of ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... of the brass lever was an oblong hatch about eight inches long, flush with the hull, and held in place by screws. Three seams, with lines of screws, encircled the round hull, showing that it was constructed in four sections; and these screws, with those in the hatch, were ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... the dark, dust-stained walls, and the scant and crude furniture of her home. A clock, in a splintered and battered oblong box of varnished wood, she suddenly regarded as an abomination. She noted that it ticked raspingly. The almost vanished flowers in the carpet-pattern, she conceived to be newly hideous. Some faint attempts she had made with blue ribbon, to freshen the appearance of a dingy curtain, ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... eating itself in indelible characters into his heart, and he will refrain from mercy to working bullocks as long as he lives. But as there are few positive pleasures equal in intensity to the negative one of release from pain, so it is when at last a group of six oblong objects, five dark and one white, appears in remote distance, distinct and unmistakable. Yes, they are our bullocks; a sigh of relief follows, and we drive them sharply home, gloating over their distended tongues and slobbering ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... fields, and Chester had not come. Across the lane Cynthia White had pulled down her blind, in despair of out-watching Thyra, and had lighted a lamp. Lively shadows of little girl-shapes passed and repassed on the pale oblong of light. They made Thyra conscious of her exceeding loneliness. She had just decided that she would walk down the lane and wait for Chester on the bridge, when a thunderous knock came ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... substantially as and for the purposes set forth and described in the drawing and specification hereunto annexed, without confining myself to any particular form, size, or shape of the pipes or tubes, whether they be vertical or horizontal, round, square, oval, oblong, or in any other form, neither do I confine myself to any particular form of ice ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... by an oblong deal-box, in such a manner that the cylinder could turn water-tight in the centre of the box, while the borer was pressed against the bottom of the cylinder. The box was filled with water until the entire cylinder was covered, and then the apparatus was set in action. ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... cleave the yielding bosom of the earth, or when, about St. Peter's Day, he plied his scythe with a. furious energy that might have mown a young birch copse up by the roots, or swiftly and untiringly wielded a flail over two yards long; while the hard oblong muscles of his shoulders rose and fell like a lever. His perpetual silence lent a solemn dignity to his unwearying labour. He was a splendid peasant, and, except for his affliction, any girl would have been glad ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... club. I saw the whole thing. It landed on Pee-lat, and at that instant the white brute jumped him. The club caused it. Their two bodies struck the box, and it began to slide, its lower end tilting down. It was a long oblong box, and it slid down slowly until it reached the perpendicular, when it came down on the run. The onlookers on that side the circle had time to get out from under. Flush of Gold and the Count, on the opposite side of the circle, were facing the box; the missionary had his back to it. ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... went into the dining-room. A table, which looked very imposing with its four legs carved in the shape of lions' paws, and a huge side-board to match, stood in the oblong room, the floor of which had been polished by three men the day before. On the table, which was covered with a fine, starched cloth, stood a silver coffeepot full of aromatic coffee, a sugar basin, ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... seventy-two pillars. These were still erect, standing in six lines of twelve columns; every stone appeared to be about fourteen feet high by two feet square and twenty-five feet apart. This building must therefore have formed an oblong of 300 feet by 150. Many of the granite blocks were covered with rough carving; large flights of steps, now irregular from the inequality of the ground, were scattered here and there; and the general appearance of the ruins was similar to that ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... than three blocks from Benny's Place, and still undetected, when I passed the window. It was a large, cheerful oblong of light, so quite naturally I stopped to investigate, being slightly phototropic, by virtue of the selenium grids in my rectifier cells. I went over and looked in, unobtrusively resting my grapples on the ...
— B-12's Moon Glow • Charles A. Stearns
... Marechale came in last, giving her arm to a handsome old man, magnificently dressed, whom she placed upon her left hand. She seated herself in a large gilded arm-chair at the middle of one side of the table, which was oblong in form. Another seat, rather more ornamented, was at her right, but it remained empty. The young Marquis d'Effiat, seated in front of his mother, was to assist her in doing the honors of the table. He was not more than twenty years old, ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... let us concentrate attention on the table. To the eye it is oblong, brown and shiny, to the touch it is smooth and cool and hard; when I tap it, it gives out a wooden sound. Any one else who sees and feels and hears the table will agree with this description, so that it might seem as if no difficulty ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... before which hers fell, for she guessed what it was he wished to say to her, and her heart beat painfully as, without another word, she walked rapidly on until they were in the woods near a place where four tall pines formed a kind of oblong square. Here an iron seat had been placed years before, when the Tracy children were young, and held what they called their picnics there under the thick boughs of the pines which shaded them from both heat and cold. Laying his hand on Jerrie's ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... long, low— hulled leviathans that plough the briny waste of ocean. The steamboat of the Mississippi more resembles a house, two stories in height, and, not unfrequently, something of a third—abode of mates and pilots. Rounded off at stern, the structure, of oblong oval shape, is universally painted chalk-white; the second, or cabin story, having on each face a row of casement windows, with Venetian shutters, of emerald green. These also serve as outside doors to the state-rooms—each having its own. Inside ones, opposite them, give admission ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... had her Tyburn, to which the devoted victims of justice were conducted in solemn procession up what is now called Oxford Street. In Edinburgh, a large open street, or rather oblong square, surrounded by high houses, called the Grassmarket, was used for the same melancholy purpose. It was not ill chosen for such a scene, being of considerable extent, and therefore fit to accommodate a great number of spectators, such ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... touch of the small finger the man trembled through all his length of limbs, and lay still. Up the road rose a cloud of dust and the sound of determined feet, and presently a martial figure came in sight, clad in bronze and leather helmet and cuirass, and carrying an oblong shield and a short, broad-bladed sword of double edge. Short yet agile, a soldier every inch, he looked neither to the right nor to the left, but marched steadily and purposefully upon his business. His splendid muscles, shining with sweat, gleamed satinwise in the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... golden lustre, its iron rods and bars, cranks and pistons glittered with silvery sheen, and its heavier parts and body were gay with a new coat of green paint. Every nut and screw and lever and joint had been screwed up, and oiled, examined, tested, and otherwise attended to, while the oblong pit over which it stood when in the shed—and into which its ashes were periodically emptied—glowed with the light of its intense furnace. Ever and anon a little puff issued from its safety-valve, proving to ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... seventeenth century which outsiders called "alchymists" or "rosicrucians," the characteristic emblems of the old lodge appeared, as, for instance, the circle, the cubic stone, the level, the man facing the right, the sphere, the oblong rectangle (symbol of the Lodge), etc. (Keller, Zur Gesch. d. Bauh., p. 17.) These "alchymists" honored St. John in the same way as can be shown for the companies of the fifteenth century. I need not mention that modern masonry, in its ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... classes. When a Chinese wishes to consult a god in this way, he sends for a professional medium. Before the image of the god are set candles and incense, and an offering of tea or mock money. In front of this on another table is placed an oblong tray of dry sand. The writing instrument is a V-shaped wooden handle, two or three feet long, with a wooden tooth fixed at its point. Two persons hold this instrument, each grasping one leg of it, and the point resting on the sand. Proper prayers and ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... Nipissing, or into the mining districts of the Timiskaming country, there was a bright little reception. North Bay is a characteristic Canadian town. It was born in a night, so to speak, and its growth outstrips editions of guide books. Outside the neat station there is a big grass oblong, and about this green the frame houses and the shops extend. Behind it is the town so keen on growing up about the big railway repair shops, that it has no time yet to ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... were, I believe, my constant companions during the journey. We got permission, with but little difficulty, to pass the outguards of the king's army at Kingsbridge, and proceeded to Westchester. We afterwards attended meetings at Harrison's Purchase, and Oblong, having the concurrence of our monthly meeting to take some meetings in our way, a concern leading thereto having for some time previously attended my mind. We pass'd from thence to Nine Partners, and attended their monthly ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... flute, arranged the light and a small oblong music-book to the best advantage, and began to play ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... her into the sitting-room, realised that she had all at once retreated a thousand miles away from him. He wondered what the contents of the telegram could have been. The oblong red envelope seemed to have descended suddenly between ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... round with one eye on his employer and another on a possible chair, seat himself with a sigh that meant 'I have written a new poem in the night, and would love to read it to you if I dared,' then flatten out his oblong note-book and look up, expectant and receptive. Rogers would say 'Good morning, Mr. Minks. We've got a busy day before us. Now, let me see—-' and would meet his glance with welcome. He would look quickly from one eye ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... reclining cool, A Hamadryad, like a pool Of moonlight, palely beautiful? Or Limnad, with her lilied face, More lovely than the misty lace That haunts a star and gives it grace? Or is it some Leimoniad, In wildwood flowers dimly clad? Oblong blossoms white as froth; Or mottled like the tiger-moth; Or brindled as the brows of death; Wild of hue and wild of breath. Here ethereal flame and milk Blent with velvet and with silk; Here an iridescent glow Mixed with satin and with snow: Pansy, poppy and ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... is called the potato or tomato worm. It is a long, green, smooth, caterpillar, as long and as fat as your finger and provided with a horn upon his tail. The gardener may not know that after a while this creature will burrow into the ground, and there change into an oblong brown mass with a sort of a pitcher handle at one side. Next year this pupa will split down the back, and from out of the brown case will come a hawk-moth, which soon will fly with rapidly quivering wings and feast upon the nectar of our moon flowers or on that of ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... moved cautiously forward, and then gave a sudden leap back as the boyish figure sprang to his feet, clasping a dark, oblong object in his arms. ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... natural order scitamineae, Hellenia coerulea, Brown: two parasitical plants of orchideae were found growing upon the bark of trees in the shady place near our watering-place; one was Dendrobium caniculatum, Brown; the other was also subsequently found at Cape Grafton and is not yet described; it has oblong, three-nerved, thick and leathery leaves; we saw no quadrupeds and but very ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... not wake until afternoon, when the thin winter sunlight was falling in a dazzling oblong on the floor of his room; and even then he felt a little tired and stiff. He reached for his watch—almost one o'clock! Duncan's heart stood ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... head-master's valediction and the grave elder-brotherliness of old Henson, and the shrill cheers of a little crowd of juniors still echoing in my head, I very naturally came home in a mood of exalted gravity, and I can still remember pacing up and down the oblong lawn behind the rockery and the fig-tree wall with my father, talking of my outlook with all the tremendous savoir faire that was natural to my age, and noting with a secret gratification that our shoulders ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... wall of each of the rooms was the wall of the corridor into which all the offices opened, and this corridor was lighted—and the offices partly ventilated—by a sort of hinged casement or fanlight close up by the ceiling, oblong, and extending the most of the length of each room. Plainly an active man, not too stout, might mount a chair-back, and climb very quietly through the opening. "That's the only ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... inspiration came to him. Reaching up to a shelf, he took down an oblong box, about nine inches in length, adjusted several parts of it on the inside, wound it up with a key which was in the back, and set it on the counter. A whirring, coughing noise was heard, as though a creature hidden inside was clearing its ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... themselves. The lieutenant told me whilst we were at dinner that one of the men had found some alligators' eggs; two of them were broken and the young ones alive. They were about half-a-foot long, of a dirty brown. The eggs were oblong, and larger than a swan's, ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... Her stature was tall, and all her motions breathed; unstudied ease and harmony. In color, her long, abundant hair was beautifully fair—precisely of that delightful shade which generally accompanies a pale but exquisitely clear and almost transparent complexion. Her face was oblong, and her features so replete with an expression of innocence and youth, as left on the beholder a conviction that she breathed of utter guilelessness and angelic purity itself. This was principally felt in the bewitching charm of her smile, which was irresistible, and might turn the ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... vigil very distinctly: the black and silent observatory, the shadowed lantern throwing a feeble glow upon the floor in the corner, the steady ticking of the clockwork of the telescope, the little slit in the roof—an oblong profundity with the stardust streaked across it. Ogilvy moved about, invisible but audible. Looking through the telescope, one saw a circle of deep blue and the little round planet swimming in the ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... cross at Eyam, and in the distance of the Cut, is the tomb of Mrs. Mompesson, on one end of which is an hour-glass with two expanded wings; and underneath on an oblong tablet is inscribed CAVETE; (beware,) and nearer the base, the words Nescitis Horam (ye know not the hour). On the other end of the tomb is a death's head resting on a plain, projecting tablet; and below the words Mihi lucrum ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 563, August 25, 1832 • Various
... morning-glory seeds where it was to be. By dint of much pushing and hauling the logs were finally put in place, and the roof battened down. The window was truly worthy of a mediaeval castle, for it was simply an oblong hole, boxed in with a casement made from some scraps of boards, while a slab shutter, swung on leather ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... the amplitude was obtained at the cemetery at Cherrapunji, situated near the southern margin of the epicentral area. Here were two oblong masonry tombs (Fig. 69), standing close together with their longer axes pointing north and south. Their inner sides were partially destroyed. "On the outer sides, they are almost intact, but the tombs have been driven ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... National Trust, to give an extra tug to his still lagging courage. He leaned for a moment against the huge steel grillwork that covered the wide bank window behind him, looking eastward along the side street to where he could see the oblong of light from ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... machining—for mother had lent her the help of her little "common sense" awhile—had done it all; and Ruth's room, with its oblong of carpet,—which Mrs. Holabird and she had made out before, from the brightest breadths of her old dove-colored one and a bordering of crimson Venetian, of which there had not been enough to put upon the staircase,—looked, as ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... the window, effecting an oblong block of mote-swimming light. In the midst of this light stood a young woman. To O'Higgins—for all his sordid business he was not insensible to beauty—to O'Higgins she appeared to have entered the room with the light. Above her head was an aura of white fire. The sunshine broke ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... to right, left, and centre; then his eyes fell upon his companion wriggling back into the open, a shallow, oblong box in his arms, its polish dimmed and dusted with the mould, as though they had violated ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... of which a chief object is the initiation of young men. In recent years the true nature of the association has been duly recognised by the distinguished Dutch ethnologist, J. G. F. Riedel. The Kakian house is an oblong wooden shed, situated under the darkest trees in the depth of the forest, and is built to admit so little light that it is impossible to see what goes on in it. Every village has such a house. Thither the boys who are to be initiated are conducted blindfold, followed by their ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... of the dead are never laid in the mosques or near them, but are invariably carried out of the town, to some coba[181] in 273 the vicinity. The bodies of the dead are washed, and covered with lawn, and placed on an oblong wooden machine, resembling a box without a cover, called a kiffen; it has four legs about six inches long, to uphold it from the ground, and two horizontal projections at each end, to place on the shoulders of four men, generally the nearest relations of ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... walked past the old house, and thought, as he looked at it, what a bare, staring, hopeless, joyless-looking old house it was. It had originally been a small, square house. The addition which Billy Jacobs had made to it was oblong, running out to the south, and projecting on the front a few feet beyond the other part. This obtrusive jog was certainly very ugly; and it was impossible to conceive of any reason for it. Very possibly, it was only a carpenter's blunder; for Billy Jacobs was, ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... which he pointed was a small, oblong piece of thin, much-worn silver, about the size of a railway ticket. On one side of it was what seemed to be a heraldic device or coat-of-arms, almost obliterated by rubbing; on the other, similarly worn down by friction, was the figure ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... piece of parchment, inscribed with the SHEMA (which see), together with Deut. 11:13-21, rolled up, and enclosed in an oblong box, which is attached in a prescribed way to ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg
... either side, and both in full glory of bloom. There could not have been a more beautiful, natural, or dignified entrance; and it was just as beautiful in the early fall, when the deep green of the oblong-toothed leaves had changed to clear and glowing yellow, while the flowers had left their perfect work in the swelling and prickly green burs which hid nuts of a brown as rich as the flesh ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... colours. The narrow walks among them were bordered with box, and strewn with fine sand of various tints, and several little fountains threw up their sparkling jets among the flowers. In the centre of the garden was a magnificent fountain, with a large, oblong, marble basin, and a Triton, on a high pedestal, pouring water from a shell. A row of yews, skilfully trimmed into pyramids, balls, and various fanciful shapes, and placed at regular distances on each side of the grand avenue, extended from ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... half-way point he put his load down and shouted clamorously for help, until the black wall of the Harper house showed an oblong of red light and the girl's voice came back ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... term is here used, is nearly synonymous with the household. It is composed of the persons who occupy one lodge, or, in their permanent wigwams, one section of a communal dwelling. These permanent dwellings are constructed in an oblong form, of poles interwoven with bark. The fire is placed in line along the center, and is usually built for two families, one occupying the place on each side of ...
— Wyandot Government: A Short Study of Tribal Society - Bureau of American Ethnology • John Wesley Powell
... Dame; and still in the blue sky looms the guillotine by the Barriere du Trone. Turn to that time-worn building, once the church and the convent of the Freres-Precheurs, known by the then holy name of Jacobins; there the new Jacobins hold their club. There, in that oblong hall, once the library of the peaceful monks, assemble the idolaters of St. Robespierre. Two immense tribunes, raised at either end, contain the lees and dregs of the atrocious populace,—the majority of that ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Still there was no sound from the window at which the other had stared just now: no oblong of light shone out into the darkness to explain that sudden ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... entire head and part of the breast and arms of one of the statues are yet above the surface. The head has a most expressive youthful countenance, approaching nearer to the Grecian model of beauty than that of any ancient Egyptian figure I have seen. Indeed, were it not for a thin, oblong beard, it would pass for a head of Pallas. This statue measures seven yards across the shoulders, and could not, if in an upright posture, be less than sixty-five or seventy feet in height. The ear is one yard and four ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... pleasant one. Quite unlike the usual oblong wooden building, which in many country places serves for a secular school during the week and a Sunday-school on Sunday, it was a pretty gothic brick building, handsomely fitted up with folding-seats, a reed organ, and an uncommonly good ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... was roofed with an oblong dome of levium, through which rose four great metallic chimneys, placed above the mighty engines. The roof sloped down to the vertical sides, to afford protection from in-bursting waves. Rows of portholes, ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... component parts of a sweet pea and scenes from the life of Abraham. As usual an attempt was made at hide-and-seek under strange conditions. Some inglorious inventor had solved the problem of playing that royal game in an empty oblong room. His method was to plant out the "juniors" in clusters or copses on the floor, whilst the "seniors" lurked and ran and hunted in and out their undergrowth. To add zest to the chase, Clem now let Looney slip ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... uncommonly cheerful, and the cause of it was quite largely the oblong yellow missive then reposing on his desk. He knew he would have to wait a day or two before he could learn the details of Smith's doings in Boston, but it was at least a relief to feel that some decisive action ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... with twenty-five miles behind them, Linday and Tom Daw went into camp. It was a simple but adequate affair: a fire built in the snow; alongside, their sleeping-furs spread in a single bed on a mat of spruce boughs; behind the bed an oblong of canvas stretched to refract the heat. Daw fed the dogs and chopped ice and firewood. Linday's cheeks burned with frost-bite as he squatted over the cooking. They ate heavily, smoked a pipe and talked while they dried their moccasins before the fire, and turned in to sleep the ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... the streets, in Boston." And while, lifting and pushing, he was helping again to insert her into the oblong receptacle, she turned a little and repeated, "She will affect you! If that's to be your secret, I will keep it," Ransom heard her subjoin. He raised his hat and waved her a farewell, but she didn't see him; she was squeezing further into the car and making the discovery that this time it ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... try to wrest away the food, as they were driven mad by hunger. They were frequently fed with bread made from old, worm-eaten ship biscuits, reground into meal and offensive to the smell. Many of the prisoners died, and some were put into oblong boxes, sometimes two in a box, and buried in Trinity church-yard, and the boy, himself, witnessed some of the interments. A part of Trinity church-yard was used as a common burying-ground,—as was also the yard of St. George's Church, and what ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge |
