"Octagon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... neared it, proved to be a huddle of low, octagon-shaped huts (called hogans) made of short cedar logs and plastered over with adobe, with a hole in the center of the lid-like roof to let the smoke out and a little light in; and dogs, that ran out and barked and yelped and trailed into mourning rumbles ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... pupils and public concerts must have filled up the intervening five years. During a part of this time he lived in Leeds, with the family of Mr. BULMAN, whom he afterwards provided with a place as clerk to the Octagon Chapel, ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... with marbles of inestimable cost, and it is a Florentine mosaic on a grander scale than was ever executed elsewhere, the result is not gaudy, as in many of the Roman chapels, but a dark and melancholy richness. The architecture strikes me as extremely fine; each alternate side of the octagon being an arch, rising as high as the cornice of the lofty dome, and forming the frame of a vast niche. All the dead princes, no doubt, according to the general design, were to have been honored with statues within this stately mausoleum; but only two—those of Ferdinand ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... who was hanged on the city tower by the order of General Hislop in 1818. Four other mausoleums attracted our attention and we learned that one of them is celebrated throughout India. It is a white marble octagon, covered from top to bottom with carving, the like of which could not be found even in Pere La Chaise. A Persian inscription on its base records that it cost one ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... and the chapter-house adjoining to the church, are the finest here of any I have seen in England; the latter is octagon, or eight-square, and is 150 feet in its circumference; the roof bearing all upon one small marble pillar in the centre, which you may shake with your hand; and it is hardly to be imagined it can be any great support to the roof, ...
— From London to Land's End - and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman" • Daniel Defoe
... cheerful and artistic one, but large, simple windows are sometimes rather to be chosen than too much bay. In many, perhaps the majority, of cases, it is wiser to extend the whole wall of the room in the form of a half-hexagon or three sides of an octagon, costing no more, and repaying the ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... red walls of the college faced the dismal terraces, and the triple line of diamond-paned and iron-barred windows stared upon the ugly Staffordshire landscape. A square tower squatted in the middle of the building, and out of it rose the octagon of the bell tower, and in the tower wall was the great oak door studded with ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... off an octagon, with a diameter of 8-1/2 in. on the 8-1/2 x 8-1/2 x 7/8 in. piece, sawing off the corner pieces so as to just fit the leg. Glue and screw this to the under sides of the top piece, placing the grain across that of the top ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... gives you a much greater idea of the size. It has a more continuous range of facade. Here, at one end, is Scott's square tower, ascended by outside steps, and a round or octagon tower at the other; you can not tell, certainly, which shape it is, as it is covered with ivy. On this the flagstaff stands. At the end next to the square tower, i. e., at the right-hand end as you face it, you pass into ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... observations as at the present moment. What a charming and comfortable effect does that splendid drapery produce!" "I am very fond of drapery," he replied, "but that is nothing to what I had at Fonthill in the great octagon. There were purple ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... morning-room by this time. The room was steeped in rosy light—such a pretty room, with chintz curtains and chintz-covered easy-chairs, low, luxurious, inviting; the only ponderous piece of furniture an old Japanese cabinet, rich in gold work upon black lacquer. On the dainty little octagon table there was a large shallow brown glass vase full of Christmas roses; and there was an odour of violets from the celadon china jars on the chimney-piece. Aunt Betsy's favourite Persian cat, a marvel of fluffy whiteness, rose from the hearth ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... Famin was commissioned to furnish a series of architectural embellishments to the gardens of Rambouillet. Various stone statues were added and an octagon pavilion on the Ile des Roches was restored and redecorated. Two great avenues were cut through the parterre, and, as if fearing indiscretions on the part of his entourage, the emperor caused to be planted long rows of lindens and tulip trees, which were again masked by two rows of poplars. ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... than is possible with any other human structure, unless it be the dome. There is more play of light on the octagonal faces of the fleche as the sun moves around them than can be got out of the square or the cone or any other combination of surfaces. For some reason, the facets of the hexagon or octagon are more pleasing than the rounded surfaces of the cone, and Normandy is said to be peculiarly the home of this particularly Gothic church ornament; yet clochers and fleches are scattered all over France until ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... 1795, number 3221 was the home of Dr. William Thornton, the architect of the Capitol; the Octagon House, built by John Tayloe; of Tudor Place, and also of Woodlawn. He was later the first Superintendent of ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... of rooms, as I have said, opened one out of another, and terminated in an octagon antechamber hung with oil-paintings. Even in her haste she paused deliberately at the door of this room, double-locked it, and dropped the key into her pocket. This door once locked cut off all access to ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... a house looming out of the bareness of the slope. It dominated that long white incline. Grim, lonely, forbidding, how strangely it harmonized with the surroundings! The structure was octagon-shaped, built of uncut stone, and resembled a fort. There was no door on the sides exposed to Shefford's gaze, but small apertures two-thirds the way up probably served as windows and port-holes. The roof appeared to be made of ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... containing all sorts of deer, and on the left are vast hothouses and greenhouses; in the centre, enclosed in iron lattice work, is a large pond for the reception of foreign aquatic animals, very near which is a large octagon experimental beehive, about ten feet high, and at the end, near the banks of the Seine, is a fine menagerie, in which, amongst other beasts, there are some noble lions. Many of the animals have separate houses, and gardens ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... little bit of geography, and architectural fact, well into your mind. There is the little octagon Baptistery in the middle; here, ten minutes' walk east of it, the Franciscan church of the Holy Cross; there, five minutes walk west of it, the Dominican church ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... which then separated me from this article of furniture—twelve feet, I should say—I could see that the top was coated with dust, save for two spots where the rich red lustre of the polished mahogany shone conspicuously: one about five inches in diameter and forming a perfect octagon, the other much smaller, and ragged ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... yet be seen,—its shape a spacious octagon; but the walls now rude and bare were then painted and blazoned with scenes from the Old Testament. The door opened beneath the pointed arch in the central side (not where it now does), giving entrance from a small ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that now it is quite bare,—nothing but homely gray stone, with marks of age, but no beauty. The most curious thing about the church is the font. It is a massive pile, composed of five or six layers of freestone in an octagon shape, placed in the angle formed by the projecting side porch and the wall of the church, and standing under a stained-glass window. The base is six or seven feet across, and it is built solidly up in successive steps, to the height ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Memoranda: The Octagon is perhaps the most beautiful and original design to be found in the whole range of Gothic architecture. Remember also the retrochoir. The lower tier of windows consists of three long lancets, with groups of Purbeck shafts at the angles; the upper, of five ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... looked doubtfully at Madame de Lera, too well trained to ask any question, and yet sufficiently human not to be able to conceal his astonishment at Mrs. Pargeter's non-appearance. Then, preceding the two visitors upstairs, he led them through the suite of large reception-rooms into a small octagon boudoir which was habitually used by ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... of years after his return to England from This visit to his old home, we find that Herschel had received a further promotion to be organist in the Octagon Chapel, at Bath. Bath was then, as now, a highly fashionable resort, and many notable personages patronised the rising musician. Herschel had other points in his favour besides his professional skill; his appearance was good, his address was prepossessing, and even his nationality ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... forms so superb a feature at the eastern corner, the magnificent gateway receiving its name from George the Fourth, flanked by the York and Lancaster Towers, and opening in a continued line from the Long Walk; look at Saint George's Gate, Edward the Third's renovated tower, and the octagon tower beyond it; look at all these, and if they fail to excite a due appreciation of the genius that conceived them, gaze at the triumph of the whole, and which lords over all the rest—the Round Tower—gaze at it, and not here alone, but from the heights of the great park, from ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... was soon traversed, and the lad paused before a magnificent curtain of deep crimson velvet, heavily bordered with gold. Pulling a twisted cord that hung beside it, the heavy, regal folds parted in twain with noiseless regularity, and displayed an octagon room, so exquisitely designed and ornamented that I gazed upon it as upon some rare and beautiful picture. It was unoccupied, and my young escort placed a chair for me near the central window, informing me as he did so that "Monsieur ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... the ceiling of the room which was about thirty feet square, or roughly square, being irregular in shape, one side curving outward, another being indented by what might have been the corner of another building jutting into it, another alcoved by three sides of an octagon, while the fourth was serpentine in contour. Two windows let in more daylight, while two doors evidently gave ingress to other rooms. The walls were partially ceiled with thin strips of wood, nicely fitted and finished, partially plastered and the rest covered with a fine, ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... 6, 1804] 6th of October Satturday 1804 Cold Wind from the N. Saw many large round Stones near the middle of the River passed an old Ricara village of 80 Lodges Picketed in those lodges in nearly an octagon form, 20 to 60 feet Diameter Specious Covered with earth and as Close as they Can Stand, a number of Skin Canoes in the huts, we found Squashes of 3 different Kinds growing in the Village Shields Killed ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... the commonwealths. It is, however, right to add that what the communes had begun the princes continued. To the splendid taste of the Visconti dynasty, for instance, Milan owed her wonderful Duomo and the octagon bell-tower of S. Gottardo. The Certosas of Pavia and Chiaravalle, the palace of Pavia, and a host of minor monuments remain in Milan and its neighbourhood to prove how much a single family performed for ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... was of octagon shape; crimson tapestry curtains edged with tarnished gilt fringe hung at the eight narrow windows, and a rug of faded crimson velvet half covered the painted floor. A heavy walnut table and a revolving bookcase graced the centre of the room, and an old fashioned wooden ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... poured back the gold from the palm of his hand. Then he searched for a moment in all his pockets, and produced a most peculiar chunk of gold metal. It was nearly as thick as it was wide, shaped roughly into an octagon, and stamped with initials. ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... (Rifat) still remained at Lefkosia, as he was responsible for the transfer of various movable property to Constantinople. The interesting Venetian cannon of bronze that were utterly valueless as modern weapons had been conveyed away both from Lefkosia and Famagousta. One of these was a double octagon, or sixteen-sided, and would have been a valuable specimen in the collection at the Tower of London. Many of the curious old Venetian cannon had recently been burst into fragments with dynamite, to save the trouble of moving the ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... demoniacally and endeavoured to fix the arrow in his bow. Booth rose up in the wagon, and grasping hold of one of its bows with his left hand, seized the revolver by the muzzle, and with all the force he could muster hurled it at the impudent brute. It was a Remington, its barrel octagon-shaped, with sharp corners, and when it was thrown, it turned in the air, and striking the Indian muzzle-first on the ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... inn, across the station Platz, so that they could conveniently dine there and be near at hand for the express. Then they started for the cathedral which, with its eleven centuries, loomed under a lofty octagon from ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... Restormel Castle, whose ivied ruins up the valley are fine and Raglandish: while the rest were bolting a coach dinner, I betook me to ye church, and was charmed with a curious antique font, and the tower, an octagon gothic lantern with extinguisher atop, like this: as far as memory serves me. Onward again, through St. Blazey, and a mining district, not ill-wooded, nor unpicturesque, to the fair town of St. Austle, which the piety of ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... pupils and performed in the orchestra at public concerts, always in a very quiet and modest fashion. He also lived for part of the time with a Mr. Bulman at Leeds, for whom he afterwards generously provided a place as clerk to the Octagon Chapel at Bath. Indeed, it is a very pleasing trait in William Herschel's character that to the end he was constantly engaged in finding places for his early friends, as well as for the less energetic or less fortunate members of ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... reached its final form. It has been suggested that the Doric column originated in the wooden post of the earliest temples, such as are supposed to have existed in the Heraion at Olympia. The square post would have its angles taken off, and become an octagon, and the further elimination of the angles would gradually produce a form nearly circular in plan, in which the arrises of the chamfered angles would remain, and this might easily suggest to artists so sensitive as the Greeks, their further refinement and ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... intertwined pillars, from top to bottom. Up these stairs the military boots, or perchance the gouty shoes, of many a governor have trodden, as the wearers mounted to the cupola, which afforded them so wide a view over their metropolis and the surrounding country. The cupola is an octagon, with several windows, and a door opening upon the roof. From this station, as I pleased myself with imagining, Gage may have beheld his disastrous victory on Bunker Hill (unless one of the tri-mountains intervened), ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... their welding of the bricks alone that these craftsmen showed their science. They were wont to enrich the surface with marble, sparingly but effectively employed—as in those slender detached columns, which add such beauty to the octagon of S. Gottardo, or in the string-courses of strange beasts and reptiles that adorn the church fronts of Pavia. They called to their aid the mandorlato of Verona, supporting their porch pillars on the backs of couchant lions, inserting ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... finishing. All of his line had a hand in it down to Philip IV., who completed it and gathered in the poor relics of royal mortality from many graves. The key of the vault is the stone where the priest stands when he elevates the Host in the temple above. The vault is a graceful octagon about forty feet high, with nearly the same diameter; the flickering light of your torches shows twenty-six sarcophagi, some occupied and some empty, filling the niches of the polished marble. On the ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... me the little octagon beside your own:"—the smallest and simplest, but to my taste the prettiest, room in the house. "I should like to be near you still, if I may; but, believe me, I shall not be frozen (hurt) because you think another hand better ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... V. was opened so late as 1871, during the visit of the Emperor of Brazil, when the face of the corpse was found to be entire,—eyebrows, hair, and all, though black and shriveled. The last burial here was that of Ferdinand VII. This octagon vault is called the Pantheon of the Escurial; but it is nothing more than a theatrical show room: nothing could be more inappropriate. While we were in Madrid, ex-queen Isabella visited the vault,—her own last resting-place being already designated herein,—and caused mass to be performed ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... jewels, but Vasari with greater probability, by setting precious stones for the goldsmiths, who were his friends. "Nor did he rest," says Vasari, "until he had drawn every description of fabric—temples, round, square, or octagon; basilicas, aqueducts, baths, arches, the Colosseum, amphitheatres, and every church built of bricks, of which he examined all the modes of binding and clamping, as well as the turning of the vaults and arches; he took ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... of this humble dwelling, that which overlooked the palace gardens, stood a young man, intently gazing through its small octagon panes. Two or three times he turned away with a heavy sigh, as if wearied with long and vain watching, and as often returned again to his previous occupation. At length the opening of the door of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... on Moliere's nights, whose pieces they are quite weary of. Gray and I have been at the Avare to-night: I cannot at all commend their performance of it. Last night I was in the Place de Louis le Grand (a regular octagon, uniform, and the houses handsome, though not so large as Golden Square), to see what they reckoned one of the finest burials that ever was in France. It was the Duke de Tresmes, governor of Paris and marshal of France. It began on ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... Own. When she passed out of life I was called to sing in the same church where she had become a member, and one year after, when we had her monument placed over her grave, I stood on the platform in the Octagon schoolroom, where I could look out of the window and see the monument, and sang the memorial song by G.A. Scott, There is a pale bright star in the heavens tonight. After this memorial I never went back ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... pleasant house on the Gloria hill, and we agreed to go in the afternoon to see the ceremony. The church is situated on a platform, rather more than half way up a steep eminence overlooking the bay. The body is an octagon of thirty-two feet diameter; and the choir, of the same shape, is twenty-one feet in diameter. We entered among a great crowd of persons, and placed ourselves within the choir; and shortly afterwards the Imperial party entered, and I was not disagreeably surprised ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... country was now level, with burr-oak openings. Near sundown I came to a small prairie of about 500 acres surrounded by scattering burr-oak timber, with not a hill in sight, and it seemed to me to be the most beautiful spot on earth. This I found to belong to a man named Meachem, who had an octagon concrete house built on one side of the opening. The house had a hollow column in the center, and the roof was so constructed that all the rain water went down this central column into a cistern below for house use. The stairs wound around this central ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... side of it, is seen the passage way leading to the Poet's Corner, where Mr. George and Rollo came in. On the side which was upon their right hand as they came in you see the ground plan of the great buttresses which stand here against the wall of the church. On their left hand is the octagon-shaped building, called the Chapter House. This building was originally designed for the meetings of the body of ecclesiastics connected with the cathedral.[C] In the corner between the Chapter House and the church you can see the door opening into ...
— Rollo in London • Jacob Abbott
... a square building, windowed on three sides and on one seemingly attached to another building, an auditorium occupying five sides of an octagon, on the floor of which are shown the benches of a pit, or the steps, five in number, on which they could be set. These are curiously arranged at an angle of forty-five degrees on either side of a central aisle, so that the spectators occupying ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... farther from where he started. I am not so young as I was once, and I don't believe I shall ever be, if I live to the age of Samson, which, Heaven knows as well as I do, I don't want to, for I wouldn't be a centurion or an octagon, and survive my factories, and become idiomatic, by any means. But then there is no knowing how a thing will turn out till it takes place; and we shall come to an end some day, though we may never ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... boat-folk. The houses which grew up around the monastery became Botolph's Town, or Boston. "Botolph" is itself but another form of boat-help, and the famous tower of this English parish church, finer than many cathedrals, is crowned by an octagon lantern, nearly three hundred feet above the ground. It serves as a beacon-light, being visible forty miles distant, and, as of old, is the boat-help of Saint Botolph's Town. This ecclesiastical lighthouse is familiarly called "Boston Stump," and overlooks ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... gasolene and some steam autos going out to the new track, which was considered a remarkable piece of engineering. It was in the shape of an octagon, and the turns were considered very safe. It was a five mile track, and to complete the race it would be necessary ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout - or, The Speediest Car on the Road • Victor Appleton
... and instructed the band of the Durham Militia. From Leeds he went to Halifax, and was appointed organist there; on the expiration of twelve months he removed to Bath, and was elected to a similar post at the Octagon Chapel in that city. Here, fortune smiled upon him, and he became a busy and prosperous man. Besides attending to his numerous private engagements, he organised concerts, oratorios, and other public musical entertainments, which gained him much popularity ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... Sergius, Constantinople, and San Vitale, Ravenna, churches of the central type, the space under the dome was enlarged by having apsidal additions made to the octagon. Finally, at St Sophia (6th century) a combination was made which is perhaps the most remarkable piece of planning ever contrived. A central space of 100 ft. square is increased to 200 ft. in length by ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... circular, having its proper decorative mouldings, not here considered; Yb is octagonal, but filled up into a square by certain curious groups of figures representing the trades of Venice. The three courses below are octagonal, with their sides set across the angles of the innermost octagon, Yb. The shafts are 15 feet in circumference, and the lowest octagons of the base 56 (7 ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... bag is then beaten and pressed as much as they can, laying upon it a flat piece of wood loaded with a heavy weight, to get out as much of the mercury as they can. The paste is then put into a mould of wooden planks bound together, generally in the form of an octagon pyramid cut short, its bottoms being a plate of copper, full of small holes, into which the paste is stirred and pressed down, in order to fasten it. When they design to make many pinnas, or spongy lumps of various weights, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... small, dark room which opened from his study. A pressure of the finger upon the blinds caused them to spring open, and the broad daylight streamed through the high windows. The walls, which were hung with brown velvet, formed an octagon, and opposite the broad windows were two pictures in gold frames. The vicomte's look rested on these pictures. They were the features of his parents which had been placed upon the canvas by the hand of an artist. ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... from the beams, announced that there was no fear of a famine before the gastronomic massacres of Middlemas. Opposite the window, a large, polished oak dresser displayed an array of large flowered plates and little octagon-shaped glasses. A huge kitchen kettle and some wooden chairs completed the furniture ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... outside is a magnificent gateway, at the top of a noble flight of steps twenty-four feet high. The whole gateway is one hundred and twenty feet in height, and the same in breadth, and presents beyond the wall five sides of an octagon, of which the front face is eighty feet wide. The arch in the centre of this space is sixty feet high by forty wide.[11] This gateway is no doubt extremely grand and beautiful; but what strikes one most is ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... arms, was one of the first privileges which every Teutonic trading town desired to wring from its feudal lord. This brick tower, the pledge of municipal rights, was begun in 1291, to replace an earlier one of wood, and finished about a hundred years later; the octagon, in stone at the summit, which holds the bell, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... that understanding. To this he readily assented, and thenceforth we found him to be a well-informed and entertaining companion, on the two days in the week that he was invited to dine with us. The doctor was reduced in circumstances, and was living within the rules. It was he who built the octagon chapel at Bath, of which he was the proprietor, and where he preached for many years. He was a man of letters, and, when sober, a perfect gentleman; but, when ever so little elevated, he betrayed, even to us comparative strangers, that he was a complete free thinker. Many of my readers ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... altimetry[obs3]; clinometer, graphometer[obs3], goniometer; theodolite; sextant, quadrant; dichotomy. triangle, trigon[obs3], wedge; rectangle, square, lozenge, diamond; rhomb, rhombus; quadrangle, quadrilateral; parallelogram; quadrature; polygon, pentagon, hexagon, heptagon, octagon, oxygon[obs3], decagon. pyramid, cone. Platonic bodies; cube, rhomboid; tetrahedron, pentahedron, hexahedron, octahedron, dodecahedron, icosahedron, eicosahedron; prism, pyramid; parallelopiped; curb roof, gambrel roof, mansard roof. V. bend, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... octagonal lanterns 54 feet high, above which are to soar magnificent spires to a further elevation of 138 feet. The towers and spires are to be adorned with buttresses, niches filled with statues, and pinnacles, which will have the effect of concealing the change from the square to the octagon. The cost of the church is estimated at ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... I have not yet been able so exactly to describe it, as that a Scheme can be drawn, but to the best of my Skill, take it as follows. 'Tis a hollow Vessel, large enough to hold the biggest Clergy-Man in the Nation; it is generally an Octagon in Figure, open before, from the Wast upward, but whole at the Back, with a Flat extended over it for Reverberation, or doubling the Sound; doubling and redoubling, being frequently thought necessary to be made use of on these occasions; 'tis very Mathematically contriv'd, erected on a Pedestal ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... after they had lunched in an octagon room of which each panel had been painted by Van Loo, and which opened on a garden where the green glades and high trees looked as if they must be far from a great city, there suddenly glided in ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... the tongue, with the dividers, take the number of spaces in the scale to correspond with the number of inches the piece of wood is square, and lay this distance off from the center point, on each edge of the board. Connect the points thus obtained, diagonally across the corners, and a nearly exact octagon will be had. E.g., on a board 12" square, Fig. 195, find A.B.C.D., the centers of each edge. Now with the dividers take 12 spaces from the 8-square scale. Lay off this distance on each side as A' A" from A, B' B" from B, etc. ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... Lady Moira at Moira House in 1775, "and was surprised to observe, though not a more grand, a far more elegant room than he had ever seen in England. It was an octagon, about twenty feet square, and fifteen or sixteen high, having one window (the sides of it inlaid throughout with mother-of-pearl) reaching from the top of the room to the bottom: the ceiling, sides and furniture of the room were ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... was now, however, so vexed with my father for saying she preferred the Dean's preaching to his,—although I doubt very much whether it wasn't true,—that she actually walked out of the octagon room where they were, and left him to meditate on his unkindness. Vexed with herself the next moment, she returned as if nothing had happened. I am only telling what my mother told me; for to her grown ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... shaped, painted blue. The geology blocks are diamond shaped, painted brown. The chemistry blocks are hexagonal in shape, painted red. The geography blocks are globular in shape, painted gray. The blocks representing physics, are octagon shaped, painted yellow. The botany blocks are oblong, painted green. The physiology blocks are triangular in shape, painted pink. The history blocks are square, painted black. A large number of the key-words of the sciences, are painted on blocks, which, in size, shape and color, are counterparts ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... each ten inches square, well bolted and braced, for $430,—I to put in the foundation. This consisted of eight concrete piers, each five feet deep in the clay, three feet square, and capped at the level of the ground with a limestone two feet square and eight inches thick. These piers were set in octagon form around the well, with their centres seven feet from the middle of the bore, making the spread of the framework fourteen feet at the ground and ten at the platform. The foundation cost $32. A Rider eight-inch, ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... main arches are octagonal in shape and unusually slender. They are made up of shafts of different sizes, the larger ones placed at the corners of the octagon, the smaller ones between them. The grouping of these shafts should be compared with that of the Early English piers in the transepts. There the central mass of masonry is surrounded with shafts of Purbeck marble almost detached. Here the different shafts are closely connected together and ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock
... The little octagon marine case which is seen almost every where, was originated and first made by me. I think it is the cheapest and best looking thing of the kind in the market, and all the work on the case of that clock ...
— History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, - and Life of Chauncey Jerome • Chauncey Jerome
... circumstances that in 1760 he was engaged in training the regimental band of the Durham Militia, and that in 1765 he was appointed organist at Halifax. In the following year he removed to Bath as oboist in Linley's orchestra, and in October 1767 was promoted to the post of organist in the Octagon Chapel. The tide of prosperity now began to flow for him. The most brilliant and modish society in England was at that time to be met at Bath, and the young Hanoverian quickly found himself a favourite and the fashion in it. Engagements multiplied upon him. ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... each side of the castle, Pl. LXXXII. No. 2 there are drawings of details, to the left "Camino" a chimney, to the right the central lantern, sketched in red "8 lati" i.e. an octagon.] ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... Whatever opinion may have been attributed to Dr. Parr concerning Dr. Taylor, this I know, that on revisiting Norwich he desired my father (the Dr.'s grandson) to show him the house inhabited by him while he was the minister of the Octagon Chapel. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various
... the point! Now, I propose that when supper's on there shall be a special supper served at one table for ten in my little octagon room, and with the menu a subject for conversation with each item! It will, of course, not bore people, because, from the programme, they will see there is an ordinary supper-room too, and ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... modern care and thought bestowed upon it. It glows with new stained-glass windows, splendid marbles, exquisite sculptures, and bronze work. Its western tower, 266 feet in height, turreted spires, central octagon tower, flying buttresses, unequaled length of 517 feet, and its vast, irregular bulk soaring above the insignificant little town at its foot, make it a most commanding object seen ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... higgledy-piggledy on the floor when they arrived. I helped to carry some of them from the train to the rough eight-wheeled springless arabas in which they were borne to hospital. In these wretched vehicles the wheel was not a cycle but an octagon, and the wounded, who were jolted along the street, filled the air with cries of agony. I made an immediate dash to the scene of conflict and there I encountered seventeen officers who, with the exception of the wounded I had seen already, were the sole survivors of Raouf's army of seventeen ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... three bays are in the Decorated style, about the same date as the Octagon (1337-1361). The Norman bays which they replaced were injured by the fall of the central Tower in 1322. The six eastern bays (the Presbytery) are in the Early English Style, and were built ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous
... original design. Nor are they even like to each other. Both of them are square at their bases, and preserve this form to a sufficient height to admit of two tiers of narrow windows, separated from each other by little more than a simple string-course. Above these windows both become octagon, and continue so to the top; but in a very different manner. The northern one has obtuse angles, imperfectly defined; the southern has four projecting buttresses and four windows, alternating with each other. The form of the windows and their arrangement, afford farther marks of distinction. ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... principal work consists of an octagon and circle, the former measuring nine hundred and fifty feet, the latter ten hundred and fifty feet in diameter.... The walls of the octagon are very bold, and, where they have been least subject to cultivation, are now between eleven and twelve feet in height by about fifty feet base. The ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... common—friends, children, literature, and life. Their moral tone cheers and braces me. I ought to be made permanently happy by contemplating a mind like yours; which seems more exclusively to derive its gratifications from its duties than almost any other.' It was in the Norwich Octagon that these Taylors worshipped. Their Unitarianism seemed to have affected them more favourably than it did Harriet Martineau, whose family also attended there. I remember Edward Taylor, who was the Gresham Professor of Music. But theologically, I presume, the palm of excellence in connection ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... tower of Ely had fallen; and its fate may have warned the monks of Peterborough to see that the disaster was not repeated here. This alteration must have been made, judging by the details of the architecture, in the second quarter of the century. Above the lantern was a wooden octagon. The views that are given of this hardly warrant the admiration that has been sometimes expressed, or the regrets that have been uttered at its removal. It may have been designed to carry a wooden spire, such as was afterwards erected on the bell-tower. But most will agree with the criticism that ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... on the ground floor opening into the encircling aisle, and three upper arches opening into the gallery above the aisle. On the east side of the central space this arrangement is broken, and one tall arch opens into the chancel, which ends in a projecting apse, semi-circular inside, but a half octagon outside. The aisle with the gallery above thus occupies seven sides of the outer octagon, the eighth side being occupied by the western part ...
— The Ground Plan of the English Parish Church • A. Hamilton Thompson
... large stone, forming the architrave, over which the cornice is still visible, very little adorned with sculpture. The roof has fallen in. On the N.W. side, between two of the columns, is an insulated niche, of calcareous stone, projecting somewhat beyond the circumference of the octagon, and rising to about two feet below the roof. The granite of the columns is particularly beautiful, the feldspath and quartz being mixed with the hornblende in large masses. The red feldspath predominates. One ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... "on which occasion, she was pleased to express her satisfaction." It was made from the morning's milking of 737 cows, prepared by the labour of 50 dairy women, at West Pennard, Somersetshire, and it weighed 11 cwt. It was octagon in shape, and its upper surface was decorated with the Royal Arms, surmounted with a wreath of roses, thistles and shamrocks. Unfortunately, although it had been made over two years, it was not considered to be fit to ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... century? There is probably no richer quadrangle in Europe: there is certainly no other ruin so vast, so impressive, so ornamented with carving, except the Alhambra. And from here we pass out upon the broad terrace of masonry, with a splendid flanking octagon tower, its base hidden in trees, a rich facade for a background, and below the town the river, and beyond the plain and floods of golden sunlight. What shall we do? Sit and dream in the Rent Tower under the lindens that grow in its top? The day passes while one is deciding ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... different levels by steps on the flying buttresses. A winding staircase in a turret of open tracery next carried me to the Octagon, where I found myself surrounded by a new zone of statues. Here I again made a long halt, admiring the landscape as seen under this new elevation, and doing my best to scrape acquaintance with my new companions. I now prepared for my final ascent. Entering ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... the P'hra-mene is a lofty octagon; and directly under the great spire is a gorgeous eight-sided pyramid, diminishing by right-angled gradations to a truncated top, its base being fifty or sixty feet in circumference, and higher by twenty feet than the surrounding buildings. On ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... upon a projecting rock that looked down upon the Bosphorus and the city, and had evidently, from the extended views it presented, been selected as the spot to build upon. The building itself was a small octagon, open on every side, and presenting a series of prospects, land and seaward, of the most varied ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... long and 14 feet in height, which overlooks the whole works, and has been styled "the Observatory". To the east is a true circle 2,880 feet in circumference, the wall being 6 feet in height. To the north of this is an avenue leading from the circle to an octagon of fifty acres, in the wall of which are eight gateways, which, however, are covered by mounds five feet in height. From this strange eight-sided figure run three parallel walls. Those to the south are about two miles in length, and those running towards the east are each about ...
— Mound-Builders • William J. Smyth
... the tower. In glancing at the house from outside, I had fancied that the square, squat wall must be that of a studio, as there were no windows, but a high, domed skylight on top. Now I saw that though the outer building was square, the room within was octagon in shape. It was, perhaps, a studio, as I had fancied, but there was something of the free-and-easy negligence of an ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... will not endure the thaws, rain, and sunshine of spring." * This city was divided into twenty-two wards, each presided over by a Bishop. The principal buildings were the Council House, thirty-two by twenty-four feet, and Dr. Richard's house, called the Octagon, and described as resembling the heap of earth piled up over potatoes to shield them from frost. In this Octagon the High Council held most of their meetings. A great necessity was a flouring mill, ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... and externally, for a moderate expence. These baths are paved with marble, and supplied with water each by a large brass cock, which you can turn at pleasure. At one end of this edifice, there is an octagon, open at top, having a bason, with a stone pillar in the middle, which discharges water from the same source, all round, by eight small brass cocks; and hither people of all ranks come of a morning, with their glasses, to drink the water, or wash their sores, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... an octagon room, with windows on each side of the fire-place, in which a fire of Ohio coal was leaping and crackling with a cheerful and unctuous noisiness. Out of one window yon could see a pretty garden of five or six acres behind the house, and out ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... an octagon or circle would be better still, which is absurd. No; her feminine logic is no worse than yours, and no better. The amount of room a house contains depends neither upon its size nor its shape. Her analogy, too, is at fault when she implies that the outside of a house bears the same relation ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... on the bosom of the placid waters, he observed, as it were, a fallen star, mirrored therein, but rousing his dreamy senses, he found it was a small, shining object, floating near them. He drew it from the water; it was a block of wood, in the form of an octagon, highly polished, inlaid with bits of pearl, forming grotesque figures, and thickly studded with some bright mineral, representing stars, which gave it a ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... his first view of the great dome of the Taj. It looks like about three-fourths of a globe, capped with a slender spire. From this point, through the trees, may be seen a forest of minarets, cupolas, towers, and inferior domes. The mausoleum is in the form of an irregular octagon, the longest side being one hundred and twenty feet in length. Each facade has a lofty Saracenic arch, ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... records a restoration in 1738. The baptistery was originally a Roman building, square externally and octagonal within, with four niches, one of which is partially preserved. Remains of the others have been found outside the octagon. There was an hexagonal font in the centre, and in the angles of the walls are the springings of vaults; there are also six pillar-stumps of different thicknesses. Most of the present building is modern, ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... to the crest of a hill, on which stands the Prince of Wales's Pillar. From this point, the view is inexpressibly beautiful, in which may be seen an octagon seat sacred to the memory of Thomson, and erected on the brow of a verdant steep, his favourite spot. In the foreground is a gently winding valley; on the rising hill beyond is a noble wood, whilst to the right the open country fades in the distance; on the left ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... with a domed roof of heavy cement. The entrance was by the door in the church to the right of the main entrance. The room is octagonal, with the altar in a recess, over which is a dome of brick, with a small lantern. At each point of the octagon there is an engaged column, built of circular-fronted brick which run to a point at the rear and are thus built into the wall. A three-membered cornice crowns each column, which supports arches that reach from one column to another. There are two windows, one to the southeast, the other northwest. ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... Germany, on the Plan of Mrs. Markham's Histories, published by Murray, where, on the 188th page, he will find a very neat woodcut of this building, which we are told was destroyed in 1807, and rebuilt after the original model in 1843. It is of an octagon form, supported by pillars, with seven stone seats round the sides for the electors, and one in the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 59, December 14, 1850 • Various
... not more regular than a hexagon or an octagon, is more beautiful than either: for what reason, but that a square is more simple, and the attention is less divided?"—Kames, El. of Crit., ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the building was a parallelogram, contained the offices, and were overshadowed, or nearly altogether concealed, by trees of a most luxuriant growth. In the east front stood a magnificent circular tower, in fine proportion with it; whilst an octagon one, of proportions somewhat inferior, terminated the northern angle. The front, again, on the north, extending from the last mentioned tower, was connected with a fine Gothic chapel, remarkable for the beauty of its stained windows, ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... the Great Fire. It was rebuilt by Wren in 1676. The parish was then united with that of St. Margaret, New Fish Street Hill; and at a later period St. Michael's, Crooked Lane, has also been annexed. On the top of the square tower, which is terminated with an open parapet, Wren has introduced an octagon lantern of very simple and pleasing design, crowned by a cupola and short spire. We must here, once for all, remark on the fertility of invention displayed by Wren in varying constantly the form ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... refute this cautious statement, the gondola quietly glided out again upon the Grand Canal, in full face of a great white dome, rising superbly from a sculptured marble octagon against a radiant sky. Sky and dome and sculptured figure, each cast its image deep down in the tranquil waters at its base, where, as it chanced, no passing barge or steamboat ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... which Tom was confined was not what people in the country call an "upright chamber." The sides of the room were about four feet in height; and a section of the apartment would have formed one half of an irregular octagon. In each side of the chamber there was a small door, opening into the space near the eaves of the house, which was used to store old trunks, old boxes, the disused spinning-wheel, and other lumber of this description. Tom had been in the attic before, and he remembered these ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... ahead, a brilliant octagon flared red. That meant "STOP!" in any language. Cloud eased up his accelerator, eased down his mighty brakes. He pulled up at the control station and a trimly-uniformed officer made ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith
... have never seen till now, we were made to observe in the octagon gallery which crowns this pretty structure, where in every compartment there are channels cut in the stone to guide the eye or rest the telescope, that so a spectator need not be fruitlessly teized, as one almost always is, by those who shew one a prospect, ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... perchance the gouty shoes, of many a governor have trodden as the wearers mounted to the cupola which afforded them so wide a view over their metropolis and the surrounding country. The cupola is an octagon with several windows, and a door opening upon the roof. From this station, as I pleased myself with imagining, Gage may have beheld his disastrous victory on Bunker Hill (unless one of the tri-mountains intervened), and Howe have marked the approaches of Washington's besieging army, ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of those shrewd, easy-going, stern but good-natured, lawyers that one meets away off in the country. He was altogether removed from that obnoxious thing, the small town lawyer. Up in the edge of his gray hair rested a pair of spectacles, with octagon shaped lenses, almost completely camouflaged by his grizzled locks. These spectacles were seldom where they belonged, on ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... In a large octagon-shaped apartment that had been fitted up as a library, the most pleasing feature of which was its Southern aspect, were seated tete a tete two personages, who figured somewhat conspicuously in the early part of our story, these were Mrs. Fraudhurst and Sir Ralph ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... advised that a timber framework to carry the bells should be built up within the tower from the ground and that the tower arch should be bricked up. All this has been changed since 1885, the bells now hang (but are not pealed) in the octagon, the chimes and clock are in the chamber below, the arch is opened ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Churches of Coventry - A Short History of the City and Its Medieval Remains • Frederic W. Woodhouse
... of one shape repeated or several. If only one, it is limited to a few geometrical figures, such as the square, hexagon, or shell shape; if more than one, there can be greater variety of pattern. Fig. 98 is an example in which four shapes are made use of, a large and small circle, an octagon, and an S-like twist. Four of these twists together make the figure that interlaces over the surface. Embroidery stitching can be added to patchwork; for instance, this example might have a neat border ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie |
