"Pebble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cry like that," went on Father Charles, "a living voice would be lost among them as the splash of a pebble is lost in the roaring sea. A hundred times that night I fancied that I heard human voices; and a dozen times I went to my door, drew back the bolt, and listened, with the snow and the ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... the breast. The linen gaiters, white on parade, black for the march, came well above the knee, and a superfluous number of garters impeded the step. It was a tedious matter to put these things on; and if a pebble got in through a button-hole, the soldier was tempted to leave it in his shoe, until it had made his foot sore. Uniforms were seldom renewed. The coat was expected to last three years, the hat two, the breeches ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... looking, during a few walks, at excrement of small birds. I have found six kinds of seeds, which is more than I expected. Lastly, I have had a partridge with twenty-two grains of dry earth on one foot, and to my surprise a pebble as big as a tare seed; and I now understand how this is possible, for the bird scratches itself, [and the] little plumous feathers make a sort of very tenacious plaister. Think of the millions of migratory quails (332/2. See "Origin," Edition I., page 363, where the millions of migrating quails ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... comradeship of a polished and enlightened mind, would combine to enrich her days and form her character; and it was only in the rare moments when Mr. Leath's symmetrical blond mask bent over hers, and his kiss dropped on her like a cold smooth pebble, that she questioned the completeness ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... ingeniously sorted as regards age and size, and are never mixed. The larvae period generally extends through a month, although often much longer, and in most species when the larvae pass into pupae they spin a cocoon of white or straw color, looking much like a shining pebble. Other larvae do not spin a cocoon, but spend the pupal state naked. When they mature they are carefully assisted from their shells by the workers, which also assist in unfolding and smoothing out the legs. The whole life of the formicary ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... deadening influences that are brought to bear upon him, and to follow for himself the path of inwardness and life. To blame the average teacher for being unable to resist the pressure to which he is unceasingly exposed would be almost as unfair as to blame a pebble on the seashore for being unable to resist the grinding action of the waves, and would ill become one who has special reason to remember how the Department, in its misguided zeal for efficiency, strove for thirty years or more to grind the teachers of England ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... quantities on the three-hundred fathom level, forty miles to the west-south-west of North Aran Island, and can be procured for you by the same man that gets the weeds for Hamar and Curtis. It is a blood-red pebble, covered with peculiarly vivid green spots, and cannot be mistaken. Sit with it pressed against your forehead for an hour every morning, and concentrate hard on amalgamating yourself with it—i.e. passing into it, and its properties will gradually be imparted to you. Do this regularly, for a week, ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... when I came up, and I believe he had caught the scare. Boys will do that. The captain tried to keep me from going in again, but I knew it was all nonsense to be frightened. I was going to bring up something from the bottom, if it was only a pebble. ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... rising moon in front—one fading, and the other brightening—as I quitted the park, and climbed the stony by-road branching off to Mr. Heathcliff's dwelling. Before I arrived in sight of it, all that remained of day was a beamless amber light along the west: but I could see every pebble on the path, and every blade of grass, by that splendid moon. I had neither to climb the gate nor to knock—it yielded to my hand. That is an improvement, I thought. And I noticed another, by the aid of my nostrils; a fragrance of stocks and wallflowers wafted on the ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... take your rounded pebble; arrange it in any light and shade you like; outline it very loosely with the pencil. Put on a wash of color, prepared very pale, quite flat over all of it, except the highest light, leaving the edge of your color quite sharp. Then another wash, extending only ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... heathens," and he flipped a pebble with his fingers at a passing German who had just come out of the mediaeval castle with a tray of beer mugs on his head. The stone struck him on the ear. He set his tray down on a table and came over to the ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... ground in various ungraceful, though comfortable positions, the boys lazily watched the hurrying little brook, throwing a pebble into it now and then and talking of the thing that almost always filled their minds these days—their ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... the stage, looked sternly at the people, and addressed them as "Fellow Citizens." He belaboured the small table; he rose on tiptoe and fell upon his heels; often he seemed to fling his words with a rapid jerk of his right arm as one hurls a pebble. It was all in praise of his "young friend," the teacher, and the high talent of ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... anything it's always nonsense. Other men can take their wives half over the world; but you think it quite enough to bring me down here to this hole of a place, where I know every pebble on the beach like an old acquaintance—where there's nothing to be seen but the same machines—the same jetty—the same donkeys— the same everything. But then, I'd forgot; Margate has an attraction for you—Miss Prettyman's here. No; I'm not censorious, and I wouldn't backbite ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... a minute instance, it is best to look first to the main tendencies of Nature. A particular flower may not be dead in early winter, but the flowers are dying; a particular pebble may never be wetted with the tide, but the tide is coming in. To the scientific eye all human history is a series of collective movements, destructions or migrations, like the massacre of flies in winter or the return of birds in spring. Now the root fact in all history is Race. Race produces religion; ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... again in the night. I was cold. A semi-darkness was about me and over me many stars twinkled. I sat upon the shingle roof of the bowling alley. It was not a far leap to the ground below. But the pebble stones of the seminary garden pricked my bare feet. Moreover, when I wanted to get into the house, I found the gate closed. My God! how had I then come out? Somewhere I found an open window and climbed into the ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... that island beneath you," replied the voice. "A pebble, dropped from your hand, would strike in the ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... has been made for Clovelly; but though some features in the novelist's description may be applied equally to both, there are other points that can only be attributed to Mevagissey. Kingsley, who wrote the book fifty years since, says: "Between two ridges of high pebble bank some twenty yards apart, comes Alva River rushing to the sea. On the opposite ridge, a low white house, with three or four white canvas-covered boats and a flagstaff with sloping crossyard, betokens the coastguard ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... press-money which the devil uses for enlisting his regiment of witches; and if they take but so much as a bean from him, they become his bond-slaves for life—Ay, you look at the gew-gaw, but to-morrow you will find a lead ring, and a common pebble in its stead." ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... the woman brought were in the same condition, and she picked up a good-sized pebble and tapped it against the depression, showing that the injury must have been done ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... decided upon, the mode of constructing them will depend upon the kind of stone at hand. In some localities, round pebble-stones are found scattered over the surface, or piled in heaps upon our farms; in others, flat, slaty stones abound, and in others, broken stones from quarries may be more convenient. Of these, probably, the least reliable is the drain filled with pebble-stones, or broken ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... on the sea-shore, is the Temple of Carnac, called in Breton 'Ti Goriquet' (House of the Gories), one of the most remarkable Celtic monuments extant. It is composed of more than four thousand large stones, standing erect in an arid plain, where neither tree nor shrub is to be seen, and not even a pebble is to be found in the soil on which they stand. If the inhabitants are asked concerning this wonderful monument, they say it is an old camp of Caesar's, an army turned into stone, or that it is the work of the Crions or Gories. These they ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson
... you would rob us, for if you were of the tribe of thieves, surely you would be richer, and less hungry than you seem. I only thought that you were almost blind, Father Kepher, and therefore could not know the difference between a pearl and a pebble." ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... use in being serious any longer; so I tossed a pebble into the water, glanced up into Mabel's face and ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... hereafter, if only she goes on, as she goes now, in humility and in patience; doing the duty which lies nearest her; lured along the upward road, not by ambition, vanity, or greed, but by reverent curiosity for every new pebble, and flower, and child, ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... kind my father had been seeking, a smooth dark sandy loam, which made it possible for a lad to do the work of a man. Often the share would go the entire "round" without striking a root or a pebble as big as a walnut, the steel running steadily with a crisp craunching ripping sound which I rather liked to hear. In truth work would have been quite tolerable had it not been so long drawn out. Ten hours of it even on a fine day made about twice ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... notched, and touched the priming in the pan. The friction produced the sparks. It was from this use that the sulphuret of iron derived the name of pyrites, or fire-stone. Afterwards a flint or any common hard pebble was used. The complicated nature of this lock, and its uncertainty, prevented its general adoption. The next improvement was due to the Dutch. About the year 1600 there was in Holland a band of marauders known as snaphausen, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... lb.; and Bonny Jean, in receipt of 10 lb., was unplaced. A 7 lb. penalty seemed to put him completely out of the Dewhurst Plate; but he must then have been out of form, as, on the following day, it took him all his time to defeat Pebble by a neck in the Troy Stakes. This season he has only run twice. His fourth in the Two Thousand was by no means a bad performance, considering that he was palpably backward; and his victory of last week is too recent ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... of Xerxes had spread, like the ripple from a pebble splashing in a pool, over the face of every nobleman in hearing. Now their ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... girl," said Dick, throwing a pebble into the chasm. "I didn't expect you'd really go down there and fetch him. Girls ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... manipulating keep up a constant drumming with sticks on their paddles which lie before them, singing an incantation to attract good fortune." Powers describes another form into which the game developed among the Indians of central California. It is "played with a bit of wood or a pebble which is shaken in the hand, and then the hand closed upon it. The opponent guesses which finger (a thumb is a finger with them) it is under and scores one if he hits, or the other scores if he misses. They keep tally with eight counters." [Footnote: ...
— Indian Games • Andrew McFarland Davis
... good enough fur the stakes, 'n' I writes Miss Goodloe to see if I can use the fourteen hundred he's won to make the first payments. She's game as a pebble, 'n' says to stake him the limit. So I enters him from New ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... his hands to do. He had swept the barn floor until it was as clean as a broom could make it; the wood in the shed had been piled methodically; a goodly supply of kindlings were prepared, and not so much as a pebble was to be seen on the ...
— Aunt Hannah and Seth • James Otis
... myself like a child," observed he, "playing on the sea-shore, and picking up here and there a curious shell or a pretty pebble, while the boundless ocean of Truth ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... frog peeped out of the water to get a breath of air or to look at the two giants, whiz! flew a pebble right toward it, and it never cared to ...
— Fifty Fabulous Fables • Lida Brown McMurry
... had thrown over the wall, weighted with a pebble tucked loosely under the flap of the improvised envelope, in such a manner that it would drop but when the letter struck the ground beyond. And each following day he had gone with high hopes to the appointed place under the cedar-tree to pick figs of thistles, ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... Lord Harold answered scornfully, "Spanish! Say no such word to me! The English hate the Spanish!" Fiercely he caught up a pebble and sent it whirling out across the water. "Even now their robber king plans his huge armada to take our queen and rule our land, but that, by the holy virgin herself, shall never be! Sooner will every drop of blood in bonny England be spilt. ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr
... creeping fly upon its vast shoulder, she! Little cared the old mountain that she was a Royal Princess, and that the Emperor who ruled the land of which it was part, had the intention of marrying her. It would thwart that imperial intention without a qualm, nor turn a pebble if the poor little Princess toppled over its cruel shoulder and fell in a small, crushed heap, without ever having looked upon the face of ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... the relative values, as penances, of a piece of haircloth worn next the skin, and a pebble in the shoe, she dismissed them both. The haircloth could not be found, and the pebble would attract the notice of the Argus-eyed aunt, besides being a foolish bar to the activity of a person who had to do housework and walk a mile and a ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... instituted a census of the people, the first time when he set out against Nahash, the Ammonite, and the second time when he set out in war upon Amalek. It is significant of the enormous turn in the prosperity of the Jews during Saul's reign, that at the first census every man put down a pebble, so that the pebbles might be counted, but at the second census the people were so prosperous that instead of putting down a pebble, every man brought a lamb. There was a census in the reign of David, which, however, not having ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... world, And not stupendiously rather rise The tapers unto these solemnities? Can the chords move in tune, when thou dost dye, At once their universal harmony? But where Apollo's harp (with murmur) laid, Had to the stones a melody convey'd, They by some pebble summon'd would reply In loud results to every battery; Thus do we come unto thy marble room, To eccho from the musick of thy tombe. May we dare speak thee dead, that wouldest be In thy remove only not such ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... been constructed—could have established an active circulation of social life in that sequestered nook where human existence stagnated like dead water. Forgotten, therefore, Lourdes remained slumbering, happy and sluggish amidst its old-time peacefulness, with its narrow, pebble-paved streets and its bleak houses with dressings of marble. The old roofs were still all massed on the eastern side of the castle; the Rue de la Grotte, then called the Rue du Bois, was but a deserted and often impassable road; no houses stretched down to the Gave as now, and the scum-laden ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... that to me, in the course of the discussion., which he complains of others having done to him; in other words, he has, in the language of a right honourable friend of his and mine, thrown a large paving-stone instead of throwing a small pebble. I say, that if he accuses me of acting with secrecy on this question, he does not deal with me altogether fairly. He knows as well as I do how the cabinet was constructed on this question; and I ask him, had I any right to say a single word to any man whatsoever upon this measure, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... that the term scoon was a colloquialism used when skipping stones. When a pebble glanced along the top of the water it was said to scoon," answered his father, with a smile. "After the War of 1812 was over and our American vessels were safe from possible attack, and after the country itself had recovered ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... example, a white pebble, or a white dinner plate, into the blackest Atlantic water; as it sinks it becomes greener and greener, and, before it disappears, it reaches a vivid blue green. Break such a pebble, or plate, into fragments, these will behave like the unbroken ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... change the pebble which his kingly foot First presses into some more costly stone Than ever blinded eye. I'll have one mark it And bring it me. I'll have it burnish'd firelike; I'll set it round with gold, with pearl, with diamond. Let the great angel of the church come with him; Stand on the deck and ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... island; she is like the evening star when above his cottage it slowly pierces the soft blue sky with its white brilliancy; she is purer than the water in the well, and sweeter than the malmsey wine, and whiter than the miller's flour; but her heart is as hard as a pebble, and she loves driving to distraction a whole lot of youths who dangle behind her, captives of those heart-thievish eyes of hers. But she is also a most excellent housewife, can stand any amount of hard field labour, and makes lots of money ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... true I am not one of the order of hunters, Shyayak, but I may become so soon." He stopped, as if a sudden thought had struck him, and then exclaimed: "Now I know why luck has failed me this morning! When I left our houses I should have scattered meal, and placed a pebble on the heap beside the trail, and offered a plume to our Mother Above. All this I neglected. Now I am punished for it by the birds concealing themselves. For had ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... might as well hunt the fleeting rainbow. The gold was thrown up from the bed of the ocean with the rocks and sands in which it is found; and still bears, where it has escaped the action of the element, vivid traces of volcanic fire. It often encases a crystal of quartz, in which the pebble lies as if it had slumbered there from eternity; its beautiful repose sets human artifice at defiance. How strange that this ore should have lain here, scattered about in all directions, peeping everywhere out of the ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... hooting when George III left Buckingham House in the state carriage to proceed to Westminster for the opening of Parliament. The tumult reached its climax as the procession approached the Ordnance Office, when a small pebble, or marble, or shot from an air-gun, pierced the carriage window. The King immediately said to Westmorland, who sat opposite, "That's a shot," and, with the courage of his family, coolly leaned forward to examine the round hole ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... of philosophic belief. In India both may be found separately but frequently they are combined in startling juxtaposition. The same person who worships Vishnu as identical with the universe also worships him in the form of a pebble or plant.[402] The average Hindu, who cannot live permanently in the altitudes of pantheistic thought, regards his gods as great natural forces, akin to the mighty rivers which he also worships, irresistible and often beneficent but also capricious and destructive. ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... said Mrs. Wake, skipping, as it were, another pebble, "if one fills one's place in life and ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Goliath—by the pebble and the sling," answered Almamen, carelessly. "Now, then, spur forward, if thou art eager to ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in the moving caverns of weed that formed their refuge from predatory enemies. So slowly was the frigate moving, and so clear was the water, that sometimes as she sailed over a valley of glistening sand the smallest coloured pebble or fragment of broken coral could be as clearly discerned upon the snowy floor as if it lay embedded in a sheet of flawless crystal; and then again the quivering walls of weed and sponge would seem to rise ahead as if to bar her way, then slowly sink astern in the frigate's ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... tinsel on a rock once said to a pebble, "You see how bright I am! I am by birth related ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... Erskine was awakened at the unusual hour of five a.m. by having her window broken by a large pebble. 'I tried small ones first, but it was not a bit of good,' said Peter ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... this morning. Perhaps, for one thing, the day before, they had rather over-done and possibly had over-eaten. They were on the verge of doing something that the Bunker children seldom did—quarreling. Fortunately something suddenly attracted Laddie's attention and he stopped kicking the pebble and pointed down the yard in front ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Mammy June's • Laura Lee Hope
... end of the corridor towers a superb form. I see that it is the figure of a youth. His left hand holds a sling drawn across his shoulder; his right arm hangs by his side, his hand grasping a pebble close to his thigh; calm and confident, his head erect, his strength held in leash waiting to be loosed, he fronts the oncoming of the foe. The statue is the presentation of noble form, and it wakens in me an accordant rhythm; ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... up serenely with something, but still unable to say whether it be pearl or pebble. Mrs. Blythe is not the grand personage I pictured her to be, for there was no liveried footman to meet me at the station, no carriage in waiting. Nor is she an author. Mrs. Crum, the landlady of this caravansary, told me that. I rattled up in a 'bus to the number of the house given in Mrs. ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... stands close to the cliff, with only a narrow street between its doorstep and the edge of the precipice. The night is falling, and the scene is like Fairy Land. We look from our windows straight down upon the sands, a dizzy distance below (but to which it were easy to toss a pebble), and out over the glassy waters, where small craft float silently, with the gray old stone pier and the dark ivy-hung ruin on Castle Hill, the one reflected in the waves, the other outlined against the sky—a lovely ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... try as she might, she could not reach it with her beak, and it seemed as though she would die of thirst within sight of the remedy. At last she hit upon a clever plan. She began dropping pebbles into the Pitcher, and with each pebble the water rose a little higher until at last it reached the brim, and the knowing bird was ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... sake thou nam'st, not for Ferdinand. There liv'd a Knight exceld his petty fame As far as costly Pearle the coursest Pebble,— An English Knight cald Pembroke: were his bones Interred heere, I would confesse of him Much more than thou requir'st, and be content To hang both shield ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... if you cast a pebble into the ocean, at the mouth of our harbor, the vibration made in the water passes gradually on till it strikes the icy barriers of the deep at the south pole. The spread of Cooper's reputation is ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... such herself? And she opened Abamnon's famous letter to Porphyry, and read earnestly over, for the twentieth time, his subtle justification of magic, and felt it to be unanswerable. Magic? What was not magical? The whole universe, from the planets over her head to the meanest pebble at her feet, was utterly mysterious, ineffable, miraculous, influencing and influenced by affinities and repulsions as unexpected, as unfathomable, as those which, as Abamnon said, drew the gods towards those sounds, those objects, which, either in form, or colour, or chemical properties, were ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... of goodness and riches of grace with him (Rom 2:4; Eph 1:7). Things may be great in quantity, and little of value; but the mercy of God is not so. We use to prize small things when great worth is in them; even a diamond as little as a pea, is preferred before a pebble, though as big as a camel. Why, here is rich mercy, sinner; here is mercy that is rich and full of virtue! a drop of it will cure a kingdom. 'Ah! but how much is there of it?' says the sinner. O, abundance, abundance! for so saith the text—'Let us fall now into the hand of the Lord, for his' rich ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... had never for a moment lost sight of his darling desire for a sea-life; and when he could not wander on the quay and stare at the shipping, or go down to the pebble-ridge at Northam, and there sit, devouring, with hungry eyes, the great expanse of ocean, which seemed to woo him outward into boundless space, he used to console himself, in school-hours, by drawing ships and ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... her bars. "Mamma, what different beings different meridians make!" she exclaimed, dropping her music. "Is he so sweet and lofty and fiery because he has lived in the shadow of old temples,—because, if he stumbled over a pebble in the street, it was the marble fragment of a goddess,—because the clay of which he is made has so many times ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... temptation or suggestion. The "Wiswasi" is a man with scruples (scrupulus, a pebble in the shoe), e.g. one who fears that ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... mahogany chairs and sofas, with ottomans and divans; the large parlor graced with a fine piano, for Fanny and her sweet daughters, when they shall come home; and his lovely acres are made more lovely by a profusion of trees, circles and lines of white pebble walk, pink-beds and tulips; and flourish not long without a deer-park and duck-pond, as symbols ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... kept the stones flying faster and faster, but he just blinked and played possum without wincing either at our best shots or at the noise we made. I happened to strike him pretty hard with a good-sized pebble, but he still blinked and sat still as if without feeling. "He must be mortally wounded," I said, "and now we must kill him to put him out of pain," the savage in us rapidly growing with indulgence. All took heartily to this sort of cat mercy ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... Well, the matter is, sir, that you can't take a girl up like that as if you were picking up a pebble on the beach. ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... earlier, and had pressed him to repay the former: Hans Floriszoon had paid his debts without even letting him know it. Yet he had lent many a gold piece to Tom Rookwood, while the memory of that base, cruel blow given to Hans made his cheek burn with shame. Had he not been treasuring the pebble, and flinging ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... of the woods there was a considerable stretch of bare pebbly ground before we came to the rear lawn, and I stumbled over a fair-sized pebble, which ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... except as so many counters, which they lent one another by handfuls without telling. Sometimes one soldier had won the whole, then another; but if they had been heaps of the rarest jewels they had been of less worth than pebble-stones. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... double love of the prisoner for herself and for the black tulip, "I have done things on a large scale; I have prepared a bed as you described it to me, on a clear spot, far from trees and walls, in a soil slightly mixed with sand, rather moist than dry without a fragment of stone or pebble." ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... high-post bedstead. Perhaps the one element of tragedy lay in the fact that Della was no mechanician, and she had not foreseen that, having one flat side, her balls might decline to roll. But that dismay was brief. A weaker soul would have flinched; to Della it was a futile check, a pebble under the wave. She laid her balls calmly aside. Some day she would whittle them into shape; for there were always coming to Della days full of roomy leisure and large content. Meanwhile apples would serve her turn,—good ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... St. John's Night. When the flames have died down, the whole assembly kneels round about the bonfire and an old man prays aloud. Then they all rise and march thrice round the fire; at the third turn they stop and every one picks up a pebble and throws it on the burning pile. After that they disperse.[455] In Finistere the bonfires of St. John's Day are kindled by preference in an open space near a chapel of St. John; but if there is no such chapel, they are lighted in the square facing the parish church and in some districts ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... to the ground. Hands fumbled, his face was cleared of the cloak, and a handkerchief with a round pebble in it was stuffed into his mouth so that he could not speak. Then he was dragged behind a hedge and held there, while two voices whispered above him. The cloak was over his head again now, and he could see nothing, ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... pleasant successes, needed much resolution. Literary employments are so vexed with uncertainties at best, and it was not until the voice of conscience sounded louder in my ears than the sea on the nearest pebble beach that I said unkind words of withdrawal to Mrs. Todd. She only became more wistfully affectionate than ever in her expressions, and looked as disappointed as I expected when I frankly told her that I could no longer enjoy the pleasure of what we called "seein' ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... huge groves of olives, sycamores, and palms, or buried in orchards and gardens, bright with pomegranates and orange-trees. The more inland region is of marvellous fertility. Its soil is a rich loam, containing scarcely a pebble, which yields year after year prodigious crops of grain—chiefly wheat—without manure or irrigation, or other cultivation than a light ploughing. Philistia was the granary of Syria, and was important doubly, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... rest. One by one the minutes succeeded each other uneventfully in the deep tranquillity of the night. It was almost a relief when the silence was disturbed once more by another sound outside the house. A pebble was thrown up at the window, and a voice called out cautiously, ...
— Miss or Mrs.? • Wilkie Collins
... he turned to beat a retreat, his foot rolled upon a pebble; he fell against the wall with an ejaculation, and his sword rang loudly on the stones. Two or three voices demanded who went there—some in French, some in English; but Denis made no reply, and ran the faster down the lane. Once upon ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... might require them all to be shown. But there are no final statements in this world, least of all in Art. There are many things besides pines in the valley, and more important, and they can be drawn meanwhile. Besides, if all the pines, why not every pebble and blade ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... she cried aloud, as she skipped, "I won't go back, I won't go back," keeping time with her feet until she was out of breath and almost intoxicated, delirious, casting herself down, her heart beating wildly, on a bank of ferns, burying her face in them. She had really stopped because a pebble had got into her shoe, and as she took it out she looked at her bare heel and remarked ruefully:—"Those twenty-five cent stockings aren't ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... "tie yourself to that big bow gun. It's the modern sling of David, only its pebble is big as a rock. Learn how to handle it, and you may take a fling at the ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... writes [553] that in Rajputana the washermen's wells dug at the sides of streams are deemed the most impure of all receptacles. And one of the most binding oaths is that a man as he swears should drop a pebble into one of these wells, saying, "If I break this oath may all the good deeds of my forefathers fall into the washerman's well like this pebble." Nevertheless the Dhobi refuses to wash the clothes of some of the lowest castes as the Mang, Mahar and Chamar. Like the Teli the Dhobi is ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... in jets. Press very hard above the wound. Tie a strong bandage (handkerchief, belt, suspenders, rope, strip of clothing) around the wounded member, and between the wound and the heart. Under it and directly over the artery place a smooth pebble, piece of stick, or other hard lump. Then thrust a stout stick under the bandage and twist until the wound stops bleeding. A tourniquet should not remain ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... mezozoic and palaeozoic strata which form the ribs of the Andes. Above it, covering the whole basin from New Granada to the Argentine Republic,[160] are the following formations: first, a stratified accumulation of sand; second, a series of laminated clays, of divers colors, without a pebble; third, a fine, compact sandstone; fourth, a coarse, porous sandstone, so ferruginous as to resemble bog iron-ore. This last was, originally, a thousand feet in thickness, but was worn down, perhaps, ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... to one whose associations with that word have been formed in States east of the Rocky Mountains. Imagine an extensive inclosure on the side of a mountain, with its barren-looking soil strewn with rocks of all sizes, from a pebble to a bowlder, cut across by an irrigating ditch or a mountain brook, dotted here and there by sage bushes, and patches of oak-brush, and wild roses, and one has a picture of a Salt Lake pasture. Closely examined, ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... driving. Milt was, with a hatchet from his camping-kit, cutting down a large scrub pine. He dragged it to the Gomez and hitched it to the back axle. The knuckles of the branches would dig into the earth, the foliage catch at every pebble. ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... 'Taylor was a very sensible acute man, and had a strong mind[404]; that he had great activity in some respects, and yet such a sort of indolence, that if you should put a pebble upon his chimney-piece, you would find it there, in the ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... remember that if He chooses a man for what he is, it is because He knows that the work needs just this very man. Many tools will be called into service before the brown pebble hidden away in the blue clay beneath the South African veldt becomes the glorious star of a monarch's crown. One will tear it from its age-long concealment; another will test and prove its value; others will grind; others polish, and by others will it be ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... a piece of rock-work, picked up a great pebble, and trotted to the side of the garden, whence a piteous, long-drawn howl had just arisen—a dismal mournful cry, ending in a piercing whine, such as would be given by a half-starved tied-up dog left ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... or, more accurately, the statutes called for no state election in Indiana. For every one knows that there is no hour of the day in any year when politics wholly cease from agitating the waters of the Wabash: somewhere some one is always dropping in a pebble to see how far the ripple will widen. In the torrid first days of September the malfeasance of the treasurer of an Ohio River county afforded the Republican press an opportunity to gloat, the official in question being, of course, a Democrat, and ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... Friday, exactly at half-past four, Came the Ogs with triumphant glee. And the first of their stones hit poor Mister Ghones, The captain of industry. Then a pebble of Podge took the Knight, Sir Stodge, In the curve of his convex vest. He gurgled "Un-Gluggish!" His heart growing sluggish, He solemnly sank to rest. 'Tis inconceivable, Scarcely believable, Yet, he ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... Coliseum. What the execution of that drawing is you may judge by looking with a magnifying glass at the ivy and battlements in this, when, also, his cue is masonry. What then can he mean by not so much as indicating one pebble or joint in ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin
... not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary whilst the great ocean of truth lay all the time ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... their camp, warned the French they would be attacked. The next day the Jats, to the number of 20,000, attacked them on the march. The fight lasted the whole day, and the French fired 6000 musket shots and 800 cannon. The cannon-balls were made of clay moulded round a pebble, and were found sufficiently effective in the ...
— Three Frenchmen in Bengal - The Commercial Ruin of the French Settlements in 1757 • S.C. Hill
... to flight when he saw Ham-nibbler, and fled, plunging into the lake and throwing away his shield. Then blameless Pot-visitor killed Brewer and Water-larked killed the lord Ham-nibbler, striking him on the head with a pebble, so that his brains flowed out at his nostrils and the earth was bespattered with blood. Faultless Muck-coucher sprang upon Lick-platter and killed him with his spear and brought darkness upon his eyes: and Leeky saw it, and dragged Lick-platter ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... reflection. Not one atom in creation, for example, exists by itself or for itself alone, but, directly or indirectly, influences and is influenced by every other atom. The movements of the tiniest wave which rises slowly over the dry pebble on the beach, marking the progress of the advancing tide in the inland bay, is determined by the majestic movements of the great ocean, with all its tides which sweep and circulate from pole to pole. The rain-drop which falls ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... all over him. He could not have told just what it was, but all the same it frightened him. He sat up in bed and pulled one of his revolvers from under his pillow. He listened intently, and in a few seconds the sound was repeated. Then he knew that it was made by a pebble which some one in the yard below had tossed against his window. It was a signal of some sort, but who made it, and why should the visitor, whoever he might be, seek to arouse him ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... long since denuded of forests, were great markets of timber, whither shipbuilders and architects came from all parts of the world to gather the utensils for their craft. There, too, where scarcely a pebble had been deposited in the course of the geological transformations of our planet, were great artificial quarries of granite, and marble, and basalt. Wheat was almost as rare a product of the soil as cinnamon, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... ornamental chap and would make a husband for a woman to be proud of. Besides, Milly has got nought but herself to offer. She's dependent on Jane for the clothes on her back, so Bewes would be a lot higher than she might ever have hoped to rise. She ain't the only pebble on the beach even as ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... his failure, de Spain held his ground as long as he dared. When daybreak threatened, he withdrew. The following night he was in the Gap earlier, and with renewed determination. He tossed a pebble into Nan's open window and renewed his soft call. Soon, a light flickered for an instant within the room and died out. In the darkness following this, de Spain thought he discerned a figure outlined at the casement. Some minutes later a door opened and closed. He repeated the cry of the ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... a pig! Here 's his nose, and here 's his curly tail, and here are his little fat legs." She clapped her hands with admiration. "Now I shall do something else," she announced as she finished the pig with a round red pebble stuck in for the eye. "Let me see. What shall I draw? Oh, I know! A picture of Gran'ther Wattles! Look, Dan." She made a careful stroke. "Here 's his nose, and here 's his chin. They are monstrous near together because he has nothing but gums between! And here ...
— The Puritan Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... Researches' page 193; and 'Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle: Mammalia' page 92.) Within recent times the sealers have stocked some of the small outlying islets in the Falkland group with rabbits; and on Pebble Islet, as I hear from Admiral Sulivan, a large proportion are hare-coloured, whereas on Rabbit Islet a large proportion are of a bluish colour, which is not elsewhere seen. How the rabbits were coloured which were turned out of these islets ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... surfaces and varnish them; every one is dressed as though just out of a band-box, washed, soaped, scraped, shaved, combed, waked, smoothed, rubbed, brushed, cleaned on the outside, irreproachable, polished as a pebble, discreet, neat, and at the same time, death of my life, in the depths of their consciences they have dung-heaps and cesspools that are enough to make a cow-herd who blows his nose in his fingers, recoil. I grant to this age the device: 'Dirty Cleanliness.' ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... right," agreed Zeke, "but he isn't going to be the only pebble any longer. Your father and mother will be the whole ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... clod of clay, Trodden with the cattle's feet, But a pebble of the brook Warbled out ...
— Poems of William Blake • William Blake
... the little box arrived it was filled less with these than with pathos and tears. It held merely a few much-faded articles, one or two Bibles, a hymn-book (the gift of some twin-mother at home), an old-fashioned scent-bottle, a pebble brooch, hair bracelet, two old lockets, and her mother's ring— all these were evidently relics of the early days—a ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... trifler. The shores of Cromarty are strewed over with water-rolled fragments of the primary rocks, derived chiefly from the west during the ages of the boulder clay; and I soon learned to take a deep interest in sauntering over the various pebble-beds when shaken up by recent storms, and in learning to distinguish their numerous components. But I was sadly in want of a vocabulary; and as, according to Cowper, "the growth of what is excellent is slow," ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... old sneak,' whispered Toole vehemently, 'he's always in the way; the last man in the town I'd have—but no matter:' and up went a pebble, better directed, for this time it went right through Loftus's window, and a pleasant little shower of broken glass ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... threw a pebble down the slope, watching it bound and skip to the bottom, where it rolled away and hid ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... off the unevennesses of our character, provided we can keep ourselves from impatience and resentment. In going along the course of a brook or a river, you sometimes come upon a bend, where you find a heap of smooth and nicely rounded pebble stones thrown up. Did you ever ask yourselves how these pebbles came to be so round and smooth? When broken off from their respective rocks, they were as irregular in form, they had as sharp corners, and as rough, and ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... soul abideth, but you know that it tortures only to heal; it is recuperative, not destructive, and you will rise from it to newness of life. But when little ones see a ripple in the current of their joy, they do not know, they cannot tell, that it is only a pebble breaking softly in upon the summer flow to toss a cool spray up into the white bosom of the lilies, or to bathe the bending violets upon the green and grateful bank. It seems to them as if the whole strong tide is thrust fiercely and violently back, and hurled into a new ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... with which these toilsome peasants will laboriously lay out their bit of garden with fruits or vegetables, making every line almost mathematically regular, planting every pea at a measured distance, or putting a smooth flat pebble under every strawberry on the evenly ridged-up vines. It is only in the very last resort that the peasant proprietor will consent to let one of his daughters go out to service, or send one of his sons adrift to seek his fortune as an artisan in the big, unknown, ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen |
