"Plain" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... edge of the sun stood now above the western mountains, and the purple shadows were long across the plain. In the east the sky was darkest blue and the stars already twinkled brightly. A rosy light lingered at the zenith, while above the western mountains the sky was ruddy bright with the afterglow as the sun slipped farther and farther ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... A pale, plain-favored face, the smile where-of Is beautiful; the eyes gray, changeful, bright, Low-lidded now, and luminous as love, Anon soul-searching, ominous as night, Seer-like, inscrutable, revealing deeps Where-in a mighty ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... morning," she says, "enticed by the aspect of the beautiful green prairies of Tairene. My horse bounded over their surface, and giving him the reins I allowed myself to traverse the plain in a furious gallop, lulled by the dull sound of his hoofs, which a thick carpet of grasses deadened, paying no heed to anything around me, and lost in a profound reverie. Suddenly I heard inarticulate cries ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... very plain brick building, with something like a pigeon-house for a belfry. And the pulpit is over the reading-desk, and the reading-desk over the clerk, so that papa, when he preaches, is nearly up to the ceiling. And the whole place is divided ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... say myself that my name is Pluck, or whether I shall ask my friend Pyke (who being now regularly introduced, is competent to the office) to state for me, Mrs Nickleby, that my name is Pluck; whether I shall claim your acquaintance on the plain ground of the strong interest I take in your welfare, or whether I shall make myself known to you as the friend of Sir Mulberry Hawk—these, Mrs Nickleby, are considerations which I ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... horse; and, as the heat was excessive, we accepted their offer. The distance from the mouth of the Rio Guaurabo to Trinidad is nearly four miles in a north-west direction. The road runs across a plain which seems as if it had been levelled by a long sojourn of the waters. It is covered with vegetation, to which the miraguama, a palm-tree with silvered leaves (which we saw here for the first time), gives a peculiar character.* ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... camping places; we had brought a little water in our kegs, made some coffe[e], & just as we were done supper, the sun was declining in the west, making thing[s] appear very distinctly on the horizon, when there was an animal discovered, feeding on the plain, not far distant. 2 of our men went in persuit, and after some time, returned with a quarter of fresh meat, which they said was antelope; but asking them why they did not bring more, & they making rather a vague reply, and not being anyways anxious to have any of it cooked, ...
— Across the Plains to California in 1852 - Journal of Mrs. Lodisa Frizzell • Lodisa Frizell
... ever hear I wrote my love a letter? And altho' he cannot read, I thought 'twas all the better. For why should be he puzzled With spellin' in the matter, When the manin' was so plain I loved him faithfully, And he knows it—oh, he knows it— Without ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... of a subterranean stair down to the sea; at least there were nearly two hundred steps tunnelled through the solid rock; then an iron gate, and another eighty steps in the open air; and last of all a cave fit for pirates, a-penny-plain-and-two-pence-colored. This cave gave upon the sweetest little thing in coves, all deep blue water and honest rocks; and here I looked after the vineyard shipping, a pot-bellied tub with a brown sail, and a sort ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... the foreman of the gang on the wall wheeled his men about, running them out seaward toward the scene of the latest explosion. That much was plain from the twinkling of the ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... elephantine, among the roystering babes. Then Iglesias checked himself sternly. To humble themselves, remembering their own great unworthiness, to come down from the Mount of Transfiguration to the dwellers in the plain, and be gentle and human towards them—this surely is the primary duty of those who have assisted at the Divine Sacrament? And so Iglesias went forward and hailed his old school-fellow in all tenderness ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... It was plain to Morosine that she was very much concerned with this intelligence. She simply sat there, staring at Chevenix, shaking, moving her white lips. She was as white as chalk and her eyes burned black in her face. What on earth—who on earth—? He couldn't for ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... It was plain the sufferer would have preferred to decline help. It would soon pass. It was nothing. He had had such attacks before. He spoke brokenly, adding, "I thank you," in ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... hill-side. Sometimes the trees met in majestic darkness above her head, and the path was a glimmering mystery before her. Sometimes the ground broke away on her left—abruptly—in great chasms, torn from the hill-side, stripped of trees, and open to the stars. Down rushed the steep slopes to the plain, clad in the decaying leaf and mast of former years, and at the edges of these precipitous glades, or scattered at long intervals across them, great single trees emerged, the types and masters of the forest, their trunks, incomparably tall, and all their ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... pray thee, sweet my Lord, that thou Give her to feel thy fire, and shew her plain How grievous my disease. This service deign to render; for that now Thou seest me waste for love, and in the pain Dissolve me by degrees: And then the apt moment seize My cause to plead with her, as is but due From thee to me, who fain with ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain. And he charged them that they should tell no man: but the more he charged them, so much the more a great deal they published it; and were beyond ...
— Jesus of Nazareth - A Biography • John Mark
... one formed by the cubic-yards of his sperm magazine. Lying in strange folds, courses, and convolutions, to their apprehensions, it seems more in keeping with the idea of his general might to regard that mystic part of him as the seat of his intelligence. It is plain, then, that phrenologically the head of this Leviathan, in the creature's living intact state, is an entire delusion. As for his true brain, you can then see no indications of it, nor feel any. The whale, like all things that are mighty, wears a ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... fail to nurse their children, if they are provided with the ordinary comforts of life. But women who live at the higher tension of city life are frequently unsuccessful, because they are more inclined to be nervous or because they disregard, among other things, the need of fresh air, plain food, or regular habits. It is wrong to suppose that elaborate rules of conduct are necessary for nursing mothers; the instruction they require is simple and scarcely different from that to be given anyone who desires good health. If ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... Simon Fuge was indeed a great painter is now admitted by most dilettantes, though denied by a few. But to the great public he was not one of the few great names. To the great public he was just a medium name. Ten to one that in speaking of him to a plain person you would feel compelled to add: 'The painter, you know,' and the plain person would respond: 'Oh yes,' falsely pretending that he was perfectly familiar with the name. Simon Fuge had many friends on the press, and it ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... (Deccan Plateau) in south, flat to rolling plain along the Ganges, deserts in west, Himalayas ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... located astride some of oldest and most significant land routes in Europe; Moravian Gate is a traditional military corridor between the North European Plain and the Danube in ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... had one force with us which was not often active on our side. The Bishop of Waterford was strong for the war; the leading parish priest of the town took the chair and spoke straight and plain, while one of the Regulars, a Carmelite friar, made a speech which was among the most eloquent that ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... Well, gentlemen, in the first place, it's plain that Titterton was too fly to risk being ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... Jotham went up on foot to see how his other cattle were faring. The flood had now largely subsided; but it was plain that during the storm the water had flowed back round the camp to a depth of several feet. The oxen were nowhere to be seen, nor could he discern their tracks round the camp or in the woods that surrounded it. He tried to track them with a dog, but ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... of her own children;—not unnatural, perhaps, that she should be so anxious as to have a feeling at her heart amounting almost to a wish that "chance" should remove the obstacle. Chance, as Mr. Cumming was aware, could in such a case mean only—death. Mr. Cumming, when he put this in plain terms to himself, felt it to be very horrid; but there might be a doubt whether such a feeling would be criminal, if backed up by no deed and expressed by no word. But here it seemed that words had been spoken. Mr. Greenwood had probably invented that particular ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... the heat, G. W. reached the summit, only to sink down at once in the tangle of bushes and pant and puff. But after a while he revived; and then peering through the undergrowth he gazed down upon the plain below that ...
— A Little Dusky Hero • Harriet T. Comstock
... figured that the story of Joe the injured brakeman must be false. If he had an eighty-five-dollar watch he could borrow forty on it. Why should his "friend" have sold it outright for twenty-five? The fakery of it was plain to any one who stopped to think. Who then would be fool enough to pay twenty-five dollars for a fake watch at a side auction? Not I. I was too wise. "How easy it is," I said to myself, "to solve ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... true pitch. On the contrary, emphasis sharps the tone. If, however, these peculiarities are imitated to him, the Indian immediately detects, and declares them to be wrong, thus betraying his unconsciousness of his own inaccuracies in endeavouring to strike a plain diatonic interval. ...
— Indian Story and Song - from North America • Alice C. Fletcher
... Clifton, where are very pretty lodging-houses, overlooking all the woody hills, and steep cliffs and very green valleys within half a mile of the Wells, where in the summer it must be delicious walking and riding, for the plain extends, one way, many miles: particularly, there is a tower that stands close at the edge of the highest rock, and sees the stream turn quite round it; and all the banks, one way, are wooded in a gentle slope for near a mile high, quite green; the other bank ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... of the convent at Cortona, which dominates one of the finest views in Italy, the young monk admired the beautiful horizon, and enjoyed the splendour of the verdant plain, and the blue mountains, "enwrapt in mists of purple and gold", as he had often at sunrise and sunset, enjoyed from his Fiesole convent the gentle fields and dales "peopled with houses and olives"; but, after ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... entered the Acherusian plain, and there found the demigods, men and women both, and the common dead, dwelling in their nations and tribes, some of them ancient and moldering "strengthless heads," as Homer has it, others fresh, with substance ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... rich, but what I have I like to have ornamental, though not loud. Only the other day the question of glass-cloths for the kitchen turned up, and though those with the red border were threepence a dozen dearer than the plain, I ordered them without hesitation. Eliza changed them next day, contrary to my wishes, and we had a few words about it, but that is not the point. The real point is that if your taste comes out in a matter of glass-cloths for the kitchen, it ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain
... village in a plain. High mountains screened it from the rain And stormy wind; and nigh at hand A bubbling streamlet flowed, o'er sand Pebbly and fine, and sent life up Green succous ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... pro quo permits us to acquire. I've found her gambols such from first to last, And judge the future by experience past. Fair Cloris and myself felt mutual flame; And, when a year had run, the sprightly dame Prepared to grant me, if I may be plain, Some slight concessions that would ease my pain. This was her aim; but whatsoe'er in view, 'Tis opportunity we should pursue; The lover, who's discreet, will moments seize; And ev'ry effort then will tend ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... be dressed in a multiplicity of ways, but are seldom more relished in any form than in a well-made and expeditiously served omelette. This may be plain, or seasoned with minced herbs and a very little shalot, when the last is liked, and is then called Omelettes aux fines herbes; or it may be mixed with minced ham or grated cheese: in any case it should be light, thick, full-tasted, and fried only on one side; if turned in the ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... of the line in the French army covered the plain; and the Emperor, occupying a post of observation on a height whence he could overlook the whole field of battle, was seated in an armchair near a mill, surrounded by his staff. I never saw him in a gayer mood, as he conversed with the generals who awaited ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... becomes imaginary and undefined. This peculiarity has been noticed by Professor Herford in some very suggestive remarks prefixed to his edition of the Shepherd's Calender. 'The profiles of the Sicilian uplands,' he writes, 'waver uncertainly amid traits drawn from the Mantuan plain. In this confusion lay, perhaps, the germ of those debates between highland and lowland shepherds which reverberate through the later pastoral, and are still loud in Spenser.' The gulf that separated Vergil from his predecessor, in so far as their treatment of shepherd-life is ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... and gifts, and urges His weak skiff over the wind-vext plain, Till the gray of the sky in the gray sea merges, And nights reel round, and waver, and wane. He sits once more in his own domain. No more the remote sea-walls immure.— But ah, for the love he shall clasp not again In the ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... played the business man, and was rough and plain and blunt—a man of no genius and with loads of common sense. He made a specialty of unpalatable truths and discarded sentiment. Indeed, he was so good a business man that he got possession of a rotund interest in ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... born near Selma, Alabama, but I was raised in Mississippi. My grandpa was sold from South Carolina to Moster Alexander Piggy. He didn't talk plain but my papa didn't nother. Moster Piggy bought a gang of black folks in South Carolina and brought em into the state of Alabama. My papa was mighty near full-blood African, I'll tell you. Now ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... been made in any kindred degree in the prevailing theology. Most of the harsh, unreasonable tenets of the elaborately morbid and distorted mediaval theologyare still retained in the creeds of the great majority of Christendom. The causes of this difference are plain. The establishment of newly discovered truths in material science being less intimately connected with the prerogatives of the ruling classes, less clearly hostile to the permanence of their power, they have not offered so pertinacious an opposition to progress in this province: they ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... hope and glory: Of a truth, thou little lad, and peasant's bantling! In thieving thou art skill'd and giving answers; For thy answers and thy thieving I'll reward thee With a house upon the windy plain constructed Of two pillars high, surmounted by ...
— The Talisman • George Borrow
... one way in which it is pretty plain that they are not related. You cannot learn what ought to be—what is beautiful or morally good—merely by first finding out what has been or what is likely to be. This simple consideration of ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... time the two OEsir, Thor, the Thunder god, and his brother Lopt, attended by a servant, determined to go eastward to Jotunheim, the land of the giants, in search of adventures. Crossing over a great water, they came to a desolate plain, at whose further end, tossing and waving in the wind, rose the tree tops of a great forest. After journeying for many hours along its dusty labyrinths, they began to be anxious about a resting-place for the night. "At last, Lopt perceived a very spacious ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... news, says miss: It constitutes my highest bliss To hear of weddings plenty; For in a time of general rain None suffer from a drought, 'tis plain,— At least, ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... we can spin it out. We may fall in with islands, perhaps, but I know of none in these seas—there are none put down on the charts—and we may get hold of a fish now and then, but we must not count on these chances. Now it must be plain to all of you that our only chance of getting on well together in circumstances that will try our tempers, no doubt, and rouse our selfishness, is to resolve firmly before starting—each man for himself—that we will lay ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... coarse, and impertinent satire, which had nearly killed her father. True, there was not a thought in it which had not at some time or other crossed her own mind; but that made her dislike all the more to see those thoughts put into plain English. That very intense tenderness and excitability which made her toil herself among the poor, and had called out both her admiration of Tregarva and her extravagant passion at his danger, made her also shrink with disgust from anything which thrust on her a painful reality, which ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... in hard luck and waiting for "something to turn up." Sprinkled over the place, talking, laughing, joking and striving to induce them to buy drinks, are a number of the waiter girls. The floor is plentifully and generously covered with plain sawdust, which answers the double purpose of effectually hiding the large cracks, and of absorbing the expectorations and spilled beer. The time is yet early and business is not very brisk, so we chat with the prettiest and youngest of the girls for a second only, when we are again importuned ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... now began again, for after the girl had slept for twelve hours on a stretch, she was very gentle and sweet for a week. She wore a plain gown and a simple hat and declared she would like to work at home. She rose early and took a seat at her table by five o'clock the first morning and tried to roll her violet stems, but her fingers had lost their cunning in the six months in which ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... capacity Neal was most useful. All the available sources of pillage for a wide circuit of country he knew by heart, and it was plain, from the accurate character of his information, varying, as it did, from the chattels of the rich landed proprietor to the cocks and hens of the cottier, that he had taken great pains to master his subject. At his suggestion ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... no where been so fully treated: he builds nothing on a thing so uncertain as tradition, which differs in most countries; and of which, in all countries, the bulk of mankind are incapable of judging; but thinks he has laid down such plain and evident rules, as may enable men of the meanest capacity, to distinguish between religion and superstition; and has represented the former in every part so beautiful, so amiable, and so strongly affecting, that they, who in the least reflect, must be highly in love with it; and ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... Temple would be complete without some mention of its many curious sundials. Each garden possesses a plain pillar-dial. There is one in Temple Lane with the motto, "Pereunt et imputantur," and "Vestigia nulla retrorsum" appears on another in Essex Court. In Pump Court, high up on the front of a house is a large, rectangular dial, with gilt figures and stile, bearing the inscription, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... the schoolmen, which split upon hairs the brains of Lombard and Frank; in my busy and stirring manhood entangle me not in the meshes which confuse all my reason, and sicken my waking thoughts into dreams of awe. Mine be the straight path and the plain goal!" ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Something glittered in the nearest red pool before him. Gold, surely! But, wonderful to relate, not an irregular, shapeless fragment of crude ore, fresh from Nature's crucible, but a bit of jeweler's handicraft in the form of a plain gold ring. Looking at it more attentively, he saw that it bore the inscription, "May ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... pleasure, but I a little shamed because the ladies so brave, Mrs Hamling very Rich in an embroidered suit, and Mrs Pegg Penn in flowered sattin, which God knows she do not become, and heads set out with the new French frizzle. I very plain in my olde black silk new-laced all over with black silk gimp, Sam'l declaring I am very pretty in this, but I trust him not herein, he willing to save his Purse. One passage of Sam'l kissing the little black beauty, Mrs Deakin, ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... is not in good taste, if I am a judge—to put such ugly names upon the graceful fancies with which I decorate the plain, rude facts of everyday life. What are we without Imagination, that glorious gift which causes the desert to rejoice and blossom like your little flower-bed in the back yard at home? You know, Clarice, ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... Of silver frost, until it filled and whitened A room where two small children waited, frightened At the pale ghost of light that hour by hour Stared at them till though fear slept not they slept. And when that white ghost from the window crept, And day came and they woke and saw all plain Though still the frost-flower blinded the window pane, And touched their mother and touched her hand in vain, And wondered why she woke not when they woke; And wondered what it was their sleep that broke When hand in hand they stared and stared, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... Dr. Spring, "is more plain to my mind than that the word of God recognizes the relation between master and slave as one of the established institutions of the age; and, that while it addresses slaves as Christian men, and Christian men as slaveholders, it so modifies the whole system of slavery as to give a death-blow ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... day, highly interested in the court of justice being held over a dispute between two villages. The little plain on which lay the commissioner's station was not cultivated, but it lay in the central part of his district, and was eminently suited for ostrich farming, which ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney
... gave a new direction to the science of geology by accumulating evidence to prove the certainty of a natural and continuous development in the formation of the crust of the earth, thus opposing the catastrophic idea which had previously prevailed. One outcome of his researches was to make it plain that the history of this development must have extended over enormous ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... Scale and clean the fish well, dry and lay them before the fire, dust them with flour, and fry them in dripping or hog's lard. Serve with crisped parsley, and plain butter. Perch, trout, and grayling may be ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... the paper, mortified and wrathful. The city jail seemed the very Pit itself to her. And the lurid publicity, the lifted eyebrows of her friends, maddened her in prospect. Plain street brawling, such as one might expect from a cabman or a taxi mahout, not from a man like her husband. She involuntarily assigned the blame to him. Not for the cause—the cause was of no importance whatever to her—but for the act itself. Their best friends! She could hardly realize ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the newcomer made a raid on the dutch ovens and pails. Having filled his plate, he squatted on his heels and fell to his belated meal. He was a tall, slab-sided individual, with a lean, leathery face, a sweeping white moustache, and a grave and sardonic eye. His leather chaps were plain and worn, and his hat had been fashioned by time and wear into much individuality. I was not surprised to hear him ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... came," she said—"whether with a vague idea of giving you the chance to speak, and so seizing the opportunity to warn you that your soliloquies were audible to me—whether to tempt you to speak and make it plain to you that I am not one of the thousand shop-girls you have ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... On the plain he had left he saw his friends' camp-fire, while on the other side of his elevation was a valley in which the insects chirped sharply, and through which ran a stream. Feeling a desire for solitude and to be as far removed as possible, ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... head rested on his legs. Ah, me! one does not take such liberties with new friends in England. It was a place which led one on to some special thoughts. The mountains of Moab were before us, very plain in ...
— A Ride Across Palestine • Anthony Trollope
... that it matters more where I am than what I am? The house of Publius Valerius shall not stand in the way of your liberty, Quirites; the Velian Mount shall be secure to you. I will not only bring down my house into the plain, but will build it beneath the hill, that you may dwell above me, the suspected citizen. Let those build on the Velian Mount, to whom liberty can be more safely intrusted than to Publius Valerius." Immediately all the materials were brought down to the foot of the Velian Mount, and the house ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... might commence a new endeavour, no more on the slippery slope of descent, but with the firm ground of the Valley of Humiliation under their feet. Long they could not go on as now, and he was ready to do whatever was required of him, only he wished God would make it plain. The part of discipline he liked least—a part of which doubtless we do not yet at all understand the good or necessity—was uncertainty of duty, the uncertainty of what it was God's will he should do. But on the other hand, perhaps the cause of that uncertainty was the lack of perfect ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... master fumbled his woolly wristbands, thrust his hands deep into pockets of coat and breeches, and peered searchingly about the little stand where, it was plain to see, was nothing but the songbook which he had dropped in his confusion. At last his trembling hand sought the sparse foretop. There, bless you, rested the lost spectacles. He yanked them to the bridge of his nose, and then, ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... that?" asked Elephant; "because none of 'em had a uniform on; and what good are the police in plain clothes?" ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... family affections, and not forget that in such as these the strength of a country lies. Crabbe is often spoken of as our first great realist in the poetry and fiction of the last century, and the word is often used as if it meant chiefly plain-speaking as to the sordid aspects of life. But he is the truest realist who does not suppress any side of that which may be seen, if looked for. Although Murillo threw into fullest relief the grimy feet of his beggar-boys ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... really did appear as if he and his sister, although they had long vigorously denied it, really were the son and daughter of the two who had been petty bakers in Brooklyn, laying up a little competence of their own. I never knew who "dug" them up, but the reason why was plain enough. The sister was laying claim to the property as the next of kin. If this could be offset, even though X—— were insane, the property would at once be thrown into the hands of the various creditors and sold under a forced sale, of course—in other words, for a ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... view matters at the very worst, and suppose that my all must go to supply the deficiencies of Constable. I fear it must be so. His connections with Hurst and Robinson have been so intimate that they must be largely involved. This is the worst of the concern; our own is comparatively plain sailing. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... I could perhaps point out the most exceptionable places; but at present I am in the country, and have not his book at hand. It is plain he meant to speak well of Scotland; and he has in my apprehension done us great honour in the most capital article, the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... the similarity of the markings of those rings!" he said confidently. "To my mind the whole thing's as plain as a pikestaff— the young fellow was hard up—he confessed he hadn't a penny on him!—he went in there, found the shop empty, saw those rings, grabbed a couple, was interrupted by the old man—and finished him ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... can't understand your reason fro trying to make yourself a plain-looking woman when nature intended you for ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero
... travels, appended to Childe Harold, we find the sites and scenery of the different places he visited far more fondly dwelt upon than their classic or historical associations. To the valley of Zitza he reverts, both in prose and verse, with a much warmer recollection than to Delphi or the Troad; and the plain of Athens itself is chiefly praised by him as "a more glorious prospect than even Cintra or Istambol." Where, indeed, could Nature assert such claims to his worship as in scenes like these, where he beheld her blooming, in indestructible ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... speaks of embroideries "on the stamp or stump," as being so named "when the figures are high and prominent, supported by cotton, wool, or hair;" also in "low and plain embroideries, without enrichment between." He speaks of work "cut and laid on the cloth, laid down with gold, enriched with tinsel and ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... schoolhouse has disappeared, but the cemetery is still there—only distinguishable from the surrounding terrain by some oblong elevations, having the well-known configuration of graves. There are in all about a score of them; some having a plain head-board—a piece of painted plank, with letters rudely limned, recording the name and age of him ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... involved in a cloud of sulphurous smoke. 'Lord have mercy upon us!' I heard a voice say, and methought I heard the plunging and struggling of horses. I had stopped short on hearing the crash, for I was half stunned; but I now hurried forward, and in a moment stood upon the plain. Here I was instantly aware of the cause of the crash and the smoke. One of those balls, generally called fireballs, had fallen from the clouds, and was burning on the plain at a short distance; and the voice which I had heard, and the plunging, were as easily accounted ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... journey would end—it depended so much on the temper of the man who was now reading the evidence against her—the proof absolute that she was the Federal agent sought for vainly by the Confederate authorities. She had told him nothing of the motive prompting her to the work—it had been merely a plain statement of work accomplished. ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... above the principal rafters, is put in the copy below them, the result will be a work constructed on false principles. Neither did the ancients approve of or employ mutules or dentils in pediments, but only plain coronae, for the reason that neither principal nor common rafters tail into the fronts of pediments, nor can they overhang them, but they are laid with a slope towards the eaves. Hence the ancients held that what could not happen in the original would have no valid reason for existence ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... "drop in any time. Take pot luck. We're plain people, Mr. Duncan, but allus glad to see our friends. Drop ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... scores of miles to the right and left; upon this serried face he will see zone after zone of yellow and red and gray rock arranged with mathematical precision and level in the same order as on the steep slopes beneath him. Plain common sense tells him that the great sheets of rock stretched continuously at one time between the now separate walls, and that the various strata of sandstone and limestone were deposited in successive ages from below upwards in the order of their exposure. When now he extends his explorations ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... betrothed, The law would call him madman, and the care Of him and of his goods would pass elsewhere. You offer up your daughter for a lamb; And are you rational? Don't say, I am. No; when a man's a fool, he's then insane: The man that's guilty, he's a maniac plain: The dupe of bubble glory, war's grim queen Has dinned away ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... bloom, his feet pressing through fragrant red clover, and the apple blossom petals floating down gently, caressing his face and hands, the sky a robin egg blue and the air elixir of heaven—and then, he was suddenly recalled to the plain, dusty, weed-bordered road he was actually travelling, he, Felix Bauer, German, poor, homely, with a dishonoured family history, with no prospects worth considering and no future worth dreaming over. And the road became very dusty, and ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... Greek knows too well what he's about to interfere with you when it comes to doctoring a hinjured man—a man as was hurt too all along of his own pride and obstinacy. And as to that other matter—the flogging, you know, sir—axing your pardon for speaking about it so plain, sir—don't you trouble yourself about that. He sha'n't lay a hand upon you while me and my mates can ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... out over the surging tide, he drove the sounding pole forward and down, but it floated back free. They were not yet on the bar. The ketch heeled until the black plain of water rose above his knees, driving at him with a deceitful force, sinking back slowly as the yacht straightened buoyantly. He again sounded; the pole ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... time he was six months old; she never fed him out of his regular hours when he was a baby, no matter how much he cried; she never let him talk baby-talk, or have any baby-talk talked to him, but was very careful to make him speak all his words plain from the very first; she never encouraged him to express his love by kisses or caresses, but taught him that the only proof of love was exact obedience. I remember John's telling me of his running to her once and hugging her round the neck, when he had come in without ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... large, athletic man, then in his seventy-first year, with thick, bushy, black hair, retaining his sight so completely as to read aloud rapidly the smallest type of a newspaper. He was dressed in very plain, brown clothes, but of good quality, with large flaps to his waistcoat, grey woollen stockings, and large buckles. In his under-lip he had a prodigious large quid of tobacco, and he leaned on a very thick oaken cudgel, which, I ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various
... too far; Waterland not far enough. Every schismatic is not necessarily a heretic; but every heretic is virtually a schismatic. As to the meaning of [Greek: autokatakritos], Waterland surely makes too much of a very plain matter. What was the sentence passed on a heretic? A public declaration that he was no longer a member of—that is, of one faith with—the Church. This the man himself, after two public notices, admits and involves in the very act of persisting. However confident as to the truth ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... girl of whatsoever type she might, some facet of the note could not fail to lure her hither. If a loyal Webster, family obligation would be the bait; if conscientious, plain duty stared her in the face; if mercenary, dreams of an inherited fortune would tempt ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... black and white mosaic of the pavement; they showed like fire flickering in the sombre green of the cypresses. Beyond and below the garden, the olive and ilex woods, and the steep red roofs of Settignano, lay Florence, a city of the plain, and wreathed in a delicate mist. There was the great dome of Santa Maria dei Fiori; the tortuous silver streak that was Arno, spanned by her bridges; there was Giotto's tower, golden-white and rose golden, there the campanile of the Badia, the grim old Bargello, and the battlemented walls ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... again for dinner, and now and then dropped in of an evening. Always against his will, he told himself; but the attraction was strong enough to draw him there. It was plain, too, that Myra's eyes brightened when he entered, but he felt that it was only to see her ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... bamboo. My wife in extreme weakness tottered down the pass, supporting herself upon my shoulder, and stopping to rest every twenty paces. After a toilsome descent of about two hours, weak with years of fever, but for the moment strengthened by success, we gained the level plain below the cliff. A walk of about a mile through flat sandy meadows of fine turf interspersed with trees and bushes brought us to the water's edge. The waves were rolling upon a white pebbly beach; I ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... wonderful boy, it's like I can never get used to the wonder of having you! The greatest one of them all should be mine—a plain woman's ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... be your rule, to keep your army undivided, and to make no motion but towards the enemies; fight them with the utmost expedition before they can fortify themselves, or receive reinforcements from the continent. By the observation of this plain method of operation, continued he, I will engage, without any other force than the regiments generally stationed about the capital, to put a stop to any troops that shall be landed on ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... answered Elizabeth, shortly; "an agreeable manner may set off handsome features, but can never alter plain ones. However, at any rate, as I have a great deal more at stake on this point than anybody else can have, I think it rather unnecessary in ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... attentive of the congregation. His sermon assuredly was well put together and there was nothing to object to in his doctrine; but the elderly people thought his language rather too Englified, which I thought likewise; for I never could abide that the plain auld Kirk of Scotland, with her sober presbyterian simplicity, should borrow, either in word or in deed, from the language of the prelatic hierarchy of England. Nevertheless, the younger part of the congregation were loud ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... sympathies than does the euthanasia of Socrates. Yet on the whole the reverse is the case. The difference in the respective styles of the two narratives does not give the whole explanation. It is true that the Phaedo is a work of fine art while the gospel story is a plain statement of fact. The reason, however, for the difference in appeal goes deeper than literary style. The reader of the Phaedo puts himself into the place of Socrates and suffers with him. As we ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce
... sight of the Sanusian world was from the front of a large building. The former architect was not able to inspect it minutely; but she afterwards said that it impressed her as being entirely plain, and almost a perfect cube. Its walls were white and quite without ornament; there was only one entrance, an extremely low and broad, flat archway, extending across one whole side. The structure was about a hundred yards each way. In front was a ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... stern with sudden anger and alarm, stepped down and stood beside his daughter. "Rosa, you may get down and go into the house to your own room. I will talk with you later," he said. And then to the young man, "You, sir, will step into my office. I wish to have a plain talk with you." ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... Roland performed the office of carver and attendant as usual. But, notwithstanding what the Queen had said, the meal was silent and unsocial; and every effort which Mary made to excite some conversation, died away under the solemn and chill replies of the Lady of Lochleven. At length it became plain that the Queen, who had considered these advances as a condescension on her part, and who piqued herself justly on her powers of pleasing, became offended at the repulsive conduct of her hostess. After looking with a significant glance at Lady Fleming and Catherine, she slightly shrugged her shoulders, ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... laughed Alvina. "Not at all. I can't stand him. I never could. And I won't try. There! Isn't that plain?" And she went off into her hurried laugh, partly at herself, partly at Arthur, partly at Albert, ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... which is then called pasheco. After the long abstinence, this was a sumptuous treat; and we returned the kindness of the people by a few small presents, and then went on in company with one of the chiefs to a second village, in the same plain at a distance of two miles. Here the party was treated with great kindness and passed the night." [Footnote: Travels, etc., ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... Annie that he loved her. He spoke without any circumlocution, merely taking her hand one evening, when they happened to be alone together, and telling her so in plain words. ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... through the heavy roads of Virginia, as sticky as glue, and give battle again. But he got stuck in the mud and the plan was given up, the only casualty, being the death of a large number of mules that were killed trying to draw wagons through the bottomless mud. After this one battle, it was plain that Burnside was not the ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... defence and general welfare of the United States, has given them thereby a power to do whatever they may think, or pretend, would promote the general welfare, which construction would make that, of itself, a complete government, without limitation of powers; but that the plain sense and obvious meaning were, that they might levy the taxes necessary to provide for the general welfare, by the various acts of power therein specified and delegated to them, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... places, but somewhat sparingly in Scotland. It belongs to the scrofula-curing order of plants, having a thick stalk, from eighteen inches to four feet high, with large woolly mucilaginous leaves, and with a long flower-spike bearing plain yellow flowers, which are nearly sessile on the stem. The name "Molayne" is derived from ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... and July, which were the only pleasant months, and the only months wherein gardens and land could be improved, were spent in the most unwholsome and unpleasant town of Scotland [Edinburgh].' Sir C. Campbell tried to revive the question in plain Parliament, but the Commissioner ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... went down in a steamboat together,—two little Bowdoin girls, younger than Mercedes, a boy, Harley, and a cousin, who was Dorothea Dowse. At first Mercedes did not think much of the Bowdoin children; they wore plain dresses, alike in color, while our heroine had on every ribbon that was hers. They went down under care of Jamie McMurtagh, dismissed at the wharf by Mr. James Bowdoin, who had a stick of candy for each. Business was ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... sentinel or somebody on the watch could see the door. And whatever else he ate or drank, he ate or drank alone. Sometimes, when the marines or sailors had any special jollification, they were permitted to invite "Plain-Buttons," as they called him. Then Nolan was sent with some officer, and the men were forbidden to speak of home while he was there. I believe the theory was that the sight of his punishment did them good. They called him "Plain-Buttons," because, ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... just about to ask if she might see Sister Ruth, when behind the maid in the dark of the low passage-way appeared the tall, slim figure of a silver woman. Truly a silver woman! The first flash of Stephen's thought was correct. White-haired, white- faced, white-capped, white-kerchiefed; in a plain-cut dress of light-grey silk, without adornment of any kind. The whole ensemble was as a piece of old silver. The lines of her face were very dignified, very sweet, very beautiful. Stephen felt at once that she was in the presence of no ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... is wanted it can be found in the phraseology of the Constitution. When men are framing a supreme law and chart of government, to secure blessings and prosperity to untold generations yet to come, they use language as short and direct and plain as can be found, to express their meaning In all matters but this of slavery the framers of the Constitution used the very clearest, shortest, and most direct language. But the Constitution alludes to slavery three times without mentioning it ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... that no truths, either in morality or theology, are of any importance which are not adapted to the level of the meanest capacity; and that all that it is necessary for man to know concerning either God or himself is so plain, that he that runs may read. In answer to such like cant, for it is nothing more,—a cant produced by the most profound ignorance, and frequently attended with the most deplorable envy, I ask, is then the Delphic precept, KNOW THYSELF, a trivial mandate? Can this be accomplished by every man? ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... they one day entered a plain of great extent, planted at convenient distances with tall trees, forming an agreeable shade. The day being unusually hot, the prince thought it best to encamp there, and proposed it to Badoura, who, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... "you have some rights. We've been good friends all these years, and you've been all right out here. You said some nice things about me just now, and I liked it, even if it was as if you'd learned it out of a book. I've got no po'try in me; I'm plain homespun. I'm a sapling, I'm not any prairie-flower, but I like when I like, and I like a lot when I like. I'm a bit of hickory, ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... the paths of laudable pursuits for all; to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life. Yielding to partial and temporary departures, from necessity, this is the leading object of the Government for whose existence we contend. I am most happy to believe that the plain people understand and appreciate this. It is worthy of note that while, in this the Government's hour of trial, large numbers of those in the army and navy who have been favored with the offices have resigned and proved false ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... five-pointed stars in a horizontal line centered in the white band; former flag of the United Arab Republic where the two stars represented the constituent states of Syria and Egypt; similar to the flag of Yemen, which has a plain white band, Iraq, which has three green stars (plus an Arabic inscription) in a horizontal line centered in the white band, and that of Egypt, which has a gold Eagle of Saladin centered in the white band; the ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... its southern wall of purple cliffs; then at the dim Isle of Lundy far away at sea; then at the cliffs and downs of Morte and Braunton, right in front of him; then at the vast yellow sheet of rolling sand-hill, and green alluvial plain dotted with red cattle, at his feet, through which the silver estuary winds onward toward the sea. Beneath him, on his right, the Torridge, like a land-locked lake, sleeps broad and bright between the old park of Tapeley and ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... a sapphire or two, sparkled and gleamed on her fingers as she wrote; but except for her rings and a small, plain brooch, she had no jewellery which was meant to show. Under the black chiffon of her blouse, however, there was a glimmer of pearls which she wore night and ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... creature—I suspect (from her colour) a quarter white—widow of a white man, ugly, capable, a really good laundress; Java—yes, that is the name—they spell it Siava, but pronounce it, and explain it Java—her assistant, a creature I adore from her plain, wholesome, bread-and-butter beauty. An honest, almost ugly, bright, good-natured face; the rest (to my sense) merely exquisite. She comes steering into my room of a morning, like Mrs. Nickleby, with elaborate precaution; unlike her, noiseless. If I look up from my work, she ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... form. If we can't do that, let us rather not have it at all. [Looking at his watch] I love my mother, I love her devotedly, but I think she leads a stupid life. She always has this man of letters of hers on her mind, and the newspapers are always frightening her to death, and I am tired of it. Plain, human egoism sometimes speaks in my heart, and I regret that my mother is a famous actress. If she were an ordinary woman I think I should be a happier man. What could be more intolerable and foolish than my position, ...
— The Sea-Gull • Anton Checkov
... been written, some of which are interesting and some, perhaps, true. All, however, have been written by civilized people, and have thus of necessity been misleading. The reason for this is plain. The white person who gives his idea of a story of Indian life inevitably looks at things from the civilized point of view, and assigns to the Indian such motives and feelings as govern the civilized man. But often ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... the knave of hearts. And it must be remembered that the knave of spades may have a brother very like himself, and yet a hundred times handsomer. There are such things as handsome likenesses of very plain people. Some folks pronounced Hartley Coleridge too Jewish. But to be a Jew is to be an Arab. And our own feeling was, when we met Hartley at times in solitary or desolate places of Westmoreland and Cumberland, that here was a son of Ishmael ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... received your letter and have read it with attention. I observe that you admit that you told Mr. Augustus Scarborough a deliberate untruth. This is what the plain-speaking world, when it wishes to be understood as using the unadorned English language, which is always the language which I prefer myself, calls a lie—A LIE! I do not choose that this humble property shall fall at my death ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... hated to be conspicuous. Very retiring and gentlemanly he was. Even his voice was gentle. He'd had the quinsy and swollen glands when he was young, he told me, and it had left him with a weak throat, and a hesitating, whispering fashion of speech. He was always well dressed, very neat and plain, but his eyes were weak, just as mine are, and he wore ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... he kept it quiet, and I don't know what pleased him. It would have pleased me then to see him dead, I was that savage for the people in the house. One spot on a mean little island, and they'd squatted on it! Yet it was plain enough, for the inlet led up to the three trees, which seemed to invite a man to do there whatever he had planned ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... kind of desperate calmness, 'I must tell you plainly that I cannot do with this. I like your company, because I am alone here, and your conversation pleases me more than that of any other person; but if you cannot be content to regard me as a friend—a plain, cold, motherly, or sisterly friend—I must beg you to leave me now, and let me alone hereafter: in fact, we must ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... extreme case, but, nevertheless, it is plain that, what with the great influx of a low class of navvies during the height of our public works, and the vicious and degenerate people, of whom so many were introduced at this time, the average of our population ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews
... She said nothing about the news, and Harley inferred from her silence on the point that she knew it to be discouraging. But he saw her give her husband a glance of pride and devotion that said as plain as print, "Even if you are beaten, you are the man who should have been elected." She reported that the younger of the children had dropped off to sleep, but the others ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... The plain truth was gradually borne in upon him—the prizes of fame and wealth that for the sake of his sweet bride he coveted more earnestly than ever before, were not to be found, by him, in Richmond, or as an employe of Mr. White. But the hues of the bow of promise with which hope spanned ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... Barlow road, and saw the handful of old soldiers marching by. Nobody thought of them as familiar men and neighbors alone,—they were a part of that army which had saved its country. They had taken their lives in their hands and gone out to fight for their country, plain John Stover and Jesse Dean and the rest. No matter if every other day in the year they counted for little or much, whether they were lame-footed and lagging, whether their farms were of poor ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... the overall supply and to satisfy the whole demand of any number of outlying communities. Though locally available quantities are limited and pumping costs rather high, such wells will undoubtedly be highly useful for future extensions of the metropolis, especially into the Coastal Plain. ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... stop the horse, for our straight road broke off abruptly and ran down a steep incline overgrown with bushes. We were standing on the hillside and beneath us at the bottom lay a huge hole full of twilight, of fantastic shapes, and of space. At the bottom of this hole, in a wide plain guarded by the poplars and caressed by the gleaming river, nestled a village. It was now sleeping.... Its huts, its church with the belfry, its trees, stood out against the gray twilight and were reflected darkly in the smooth surface ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the Gironde, of the stern jurassic desert, gashed and seamed with lovely valleys, and deep gorges full of the poet's 'religious awe,' where I had spent the greater part of three long summers. And now, on the outskirts of the broad plain or gradual slope of undulating land that leads on from the darker and rockier Perigord, through the greenness of the lusty vine—led captive from the New World and rejoicing in the ancient soil of France—or the yellow splendour of the sunlit cornfields, towards the sea that rolls against ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... crisis in the midst of which we are living. The moral and social dissolution in progress about us, and the enormous peril of sailing blindfold and haphazard, without rudder or compass or chart, have always been fully visible to him, and it is no fault of his if they have not become equally plain to his contemporaries. The policy of drifting has had no countenance from him. That a society should be likely to last with hollow and scanty faith, with no government, with a number of institutions hardly one of them real, with a horrible mass of ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... "You are plain spoken; but you need not be alarmed about our safety. I have not lived among these Red Skins for eight years or more, without knowing their habits and tricks," answered Mr McDonald. "However, by all means, take your wife and children ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston
... Murwidgee then, Murwidgee Waterhole, where all the stock stopped and watered; but from the slab hut, which was the only dwelling for miles, no waterhole was visible; the creek was simply a huge crack in the earth, and at the bottom, twenty feet below the level of the plain, was the water-hole. One waterhole in summer, and in winter a whole chain of them, but the creek seldom if ever flowed, except in a very wet season. It was a permanent waterhole—Murwidgee, fed by springs, and the white cockatoos and screaming corellas came there and bathed in its waters, and the ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... that word "purpose" too sensitively, because it is so naturally associated in the mind with all that is clumsy and didactic in fiction. The "novel with a purpose," as the dreadful phrase has it, is a horrible thing, and none of this five could be so misdescribed. Nevertheless it is very plain that Mr Wells has deliberately selected his stories and his characters to illustrate certain points of view. The characters are consistent, and the story growing out of their influences and reactions is never distorted in order to score a point for the maintainer ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... you never would believe, Betty, that twenty year ago there was just such a fashion. I had a white beaver—what possessed me to get it I don't know. Everything was awful high. I had an idea that white would be rather plain, but when it had that great bow on top, and strings a full finger wide—well, I didn't even dare show it to your uncle! So I packed it away with white wax and in a linen towel, and when she'd gone ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas |
