"Semicircular" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it will be simply perfect, when you have done a little more cutting,' said Bell. 'Just see our advantages: First, we have that rising knoll opposite the stage, which is exactly the thing for audience seats; then we have a semicircular background of trees and a flat place for the stage, which is perfectly invaluable; last of all, just gaze upon that madrono-tree in the centre, and the oak on the left; why, they are worth a thousand dollars ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Finding that the militia approached in a very careless manner, Butler determined to attack them by surprise. He selected a place well fitted for such an attack. A few miles from the fort there was a deep ravine sweeping toward the east in a semicircular form, and having a northern and southern direction. The bottom of this ravine was marshy, and the road along which the militia were marching crossed it by means of a log causeway. The ground thus partly enclosed by the ravine was elevated and level. Along the road, on ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... afternoon I had started for an aimless and rambling climb among the olive-terraces on the lower slopes of the Tete du Chien. Finding an exquisite coign of vantage amid the roots of a gnarled old trunk springing from a built-up semicircular patch of level ground, I sat me down to rest, and read, and dream. Below me, a little to the right, Monaco jutted out into the purple sea. I could distinguish carriages and pedestrians coming and going on the chaussee between the promontory ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... then appeared in the south-east, and although it was not yet connected with the first, it also seemed to be extending itself laterally, and in a moment the two luminous curtains united, forming a great semicircular band of pale, bluish-white radiance around the heavens, like a celestial equator belting a vast universe of stars. I could form, as yet, no conjecture as to the cause or nature of this strange phenomenon ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... regularly equips its magneto telephones with air-gap arresters of the type shown in Fig. 211. The two line plates are semicircular and of metal. The ground plate is of carbon, circular in form, covering both line plates with a mica separator. This is mounted on the back board of the telephone and permanently wired to the line and ground ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... "White Tower." The Inner Ward is defended by a wall, flanked by thirteen towers, the entrance to it being on the south side under the Bloody Tower. The Outer Ward is defended by a second wall, flanked by six towers on the river face (see Pl. IX, X and XI), and by three semicircular bastions on the north face. A Ditch or "Moat," now dry, encircles the whole, crossed at the south-western angle by a stone bridge, leading to the "Byward Tower" from the "Middle Tower," a gateway which had formerly an outwork, ...
— Authorised Guide to the Tower of London • W. J. Loftie
... highest of several semicircular ridges whose forms may perhaps be better understood by the accompanying plan.* There was a remarkable analogy in the form and position of all these hills; the form being usually that of a curve, concentric ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... dispersed in all directions, with vacant, neglected plots between. At the extreme end of the Calle Real is the Government House, built of wood and stone, of good style and in a fair condition, with quite the appearance of an official residence. Before it is a semicircular garden, and in front of this there is a round fenced-in plot, in the middle of which stands a flag-staff. Just past the Government House there is a bridge crossing the Jaro River, which empties itself into the creek of Yloilo, and this ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... bent on me a frown so portentous, that no one who has witnessed the look can forget it during the whole of his life. The furrows of the brow above the eyes became livid and almost black, and were bent into a semicircular, or rather elliptical form, above the junction of the eyebrows. I had heard such a look described in an old tale of DIABLERIE, which it was my chance to be entertained with not long since; when this deep and gloomy contortion of ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... easy. Tie him to a tree and put this blinder over his eyes." He kicked toward Rob a heavy piece of leather semicircular in form and with a thong tied at the corners. Rob picked it up, and after studying it for a moment dropped the blinder over the claybank's face. To his surprise the horse ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... architraves, from which jets of water flowed into the basin below. The border of the basin was made of ancient marble bas-reliefs, representing panoplies, griffins, etc. On the top of the structure were semicircular bronze ornaments worked "a jour," that is, in open relief, without background, and crowned by the monogram of Christ. This gem of the art of the sixth century was ruthlessly destroyed by Paul V. The eight columns of porphyry, one of which was ornamented with an imperial bust ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... was startled to find the dent of a heel in the earth, half-way up the slope. There had been rain during the night and the earth was still moist and soft. It was the mark of a woman's boot, only to be distinguished from that of a walking-stick by its semicircular form. A little higher, I found the outline of a foot, not so small as to awake an ecstasy, but with a suggestion of lightness, elasticity, and grace. If hands were thrust through holes in a board-fence, ...
— Who Was She? - From "The Atlantic Monthly" for September, 1874 • Bayard Taylor
... our destination, we were set down, and immediately bound with llianos or monkey-rope to the bole of a huge tree. Looking about us, we discovered that we were in a native village of considerable size, built in a semicircular shape, having in its centre a structure of considerable architectural pretensions in a barbaric sort of way, which structure we conjectured— from the presence of a hideous idol in front of it—must be a sort of temple. Looking about us still further, we noticed that the ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... 17th. A semicircular protractor of metal for measuring the inclination of vents, or for ascertaining their deviation ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... stir the little affair had made. Felix, familiar with the appearance of London police courts, noted the efforts that had been made to create resemblance to those models of administration. The justices of the peace, hastily convoked and four in number, sat on the platform, with a semicircular backing of high gray screens and a green baize barrier in front of them, so that their legs and feet were quite invisible. In this way had been preserved the really essential feature of all human justice—at ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... already mentioned, is situated at the extreme end of the town on the main road, already called the Rowdon Road, which is an extension of the High Street. It stands a little way back to allow room for a semicircular drive, at each end of which is a broad gate. The semicircle encloses a smooth-shaven lawn of which I am vastly proud. In the spandrels by the side of the house are laburnums and lilacs and laurels. From gate ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... thronging into the great school-room, took their places according to their respective forms. The masters in their caps and gowns were all seated on a small semicircular bench at the upper end of the room, and in the centre of them, before a small ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... fishing-place; intensely quiet; built on a cliff, whereon—in the centre of a tiny semicircular bay—our house stands; the sea rolling and dashing under the windows. Seven miles out are the Goodwin Sands (you've heard of the Goodwin Sands?) whence floating lights perpetually wink after dark, as if they were carrying on ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... briskly out into the hot afternoon sunshine, down the mean semicircular street, where piccaninnies were kicking up clouds of dust. He hurried through the dusty area, and presently turned off a by-path that led over the hill, through a glade of cedars, to ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... than to ring in?" And the other person comes right back with: "Well, you big hog, I've waited ten minutes, and I'll ring all I want!" And then I say something more, and something is said to me that eats a little semicircular spot out of the edge of my ear. It's mighty lucky neither of us knows who is talking. Suppose Carrie should tell. As I say, Carrie holds us in the hollow ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... but without shoes. On the left was a pavilion for theatrical entertainments, one entire wall being covered with scenic pictures. On the right of this stood the palace of the Prime Minister, displaying a semicircular facade; in the background a range of buildings of considerable extent, comprising the lodgings of his numerous wives. Attached to the largest of these houses was a charming garden of flowers, in the midst of ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... left by the semicircular benches, with wings stretching to the right and left before the scene), a small square platform served as the altar, to which moved the choral dances, still retaining the attributes of their ancient sanctity. The coryphaeus, or leader of the chorus, took part ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... snoozing the mid-day hours happily and unconsciously away. One could easily pocket and walk off with his stock-in-trade, for small is the danger of his awakening. Waking him up, he shuffles mechanically over to hia razor and lathering apparatus, this latter being a soup-plate with a semicircular piece chipped out to fit, after a fashion, the contour of the customers' throats. Pressing this jagged edge of queen's-ware against your windpipe, the artist alternately rubs the water and a cake of soap therein contained about your face with ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... Constantine, at Rome, with the exception of the equestrian figure of his Majesty George IV. on the top. The workmanship of this arch is expected to rival any thing of the sort in the kingdom, and to equal the finest works of antiquity. From each side of the arch a semicircular railing will extend to the wings, executed in the most beautiful style, in cast-iron, and surmounted by tips or ornamental spears of mosaic gold. The area, within, will consist of a grass-plat, in the centre of which will ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 355., Saturday, February 7, 1829 • Various
... littered with loafing cowboys and lumber-jacks, and some of them quite openly ridiculed his riding-breeches and his thin legs. Others merely grinned, but in their grins lay something more insulting than words. "To them I am a poor thing," he admitted; but as he lifted his eyes to the mighty semicircular wall of the Bear Tooth Range, over which the daily storm was playing, he forgot his small worries. What gorgeous pageantry! What life-giving air! "If only civilized men and women possessed this glorious valley, what a place it would be!" he exclaimed, and in the heat of his indignant contempt ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... solemnities. The sole actors in them were the soldiers themselves, of whom the handsomest and most active had previously been selected, and exercised in the various evolutions and dances. The most brilliant of these fetes took place in the barracks of the Rua Barbone. A semicircular and very tasty gallery was erected in the spacious court-yard, and in the middle of the gallery were busts of the imperial couple. This gallery was set apart for the ladies invited, who made their appearance as if dressed ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... semicircular implement of iron, made to be suspended over the fire, on which various things may be prepared; it is much ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... primary rule in Byzantine architecture that all constructive openings are arched. Whatever may be the eventual form of a door or window the opening is first built in brick with a semicircular head, and into this opening the marble jambs and lining are fitted leaving a semicircular lunette above. Doors are square-headed, with heavily moulded architraves and cornice, and the lintel is mitred into the jambs instead of ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... ribs, which, to avoid the same hazard, were in three pieces each, and jointed in two places. The flat side of one of the two pieces was laid over the other, and two holes bored in every joint to receive nails; so that when united, each joint would make an obtuse angle, and approach towards a semicircular figure, as we required. We had, in the formation of an external covering, to avoid hammering and nailing, which would have made such a noise in the cellar as to attract the notice of the Algerines, who are insufferably suspicious about their ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... tipped with a broad band of emerald green, bordered within by a narrow line of buff: These plumes are concealed beneath the wing, but when the bird pleases, can be raised and spread out so as to form an elegant semicircular fan on each shoulder. But another ornament still more extraordinary, and if possible more beautiful, adorns this little bird. The two middle tail feathers are modified into very slender wirelike shafts, nearly six inches long, each ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... two chair backs side by side, and if a larger settee was made either a third chair back of the same design or a different but harmonizing one was used. His dining-tables were made up of two center pieces with wide flaps on each side, and two semicircular tables, and all four pieces could be fastened together into one long table by brass fasteners. The end pieces were used as side tables or sideboards, for the sideboard as we know it did not come until later. He also made oblong sidetables, some with marble tops, ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... broad, which trending to the east protects it from the north and west, is Port Hudson, having its entrance at the extremity of the point on the east side, but little more than one mile broad; from which the harbour extends, in a semicircular form, for about four miles westward, and then trending for about six more, affords excellent shelter and anchorage for vessels in from ten to twenty fathoms, with an even bottom ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... in which the meetings of the tribal council were usually held exists to-day as a semicircular indentation in the cliffs, the rudely arched ceiling of which is still covered with a thick coating of soot. The front wall has crumbled long ago. At the time we speak of it was entire, and the apartment formed ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... Chichen-Itza, has given the name of Chac-Mool. But what filled us with dread was not this impassive stone image. Our alarm came from a much more natural cause, as we beheld, squatted on their haunches in long semicircular rows, facing the great stone idol, more than a hundred Indians. Truly, considering that our rifles were outside the cave and that we had with us only our revolvers, our momentary thrill of terror was ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... in the obscurity, and at length halted and peered with his little blue eyes at a small house (one of twins) on the other side from where he stood. That house, at any rate, was unchanged. It was a two-storeyed house, with a semicircular fanlight over a warped door of grained panelling. The blind of the window to the left of the door was irradiated ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... still in the east, combined with the velocity of his approach to hold his coat-tails in a line steadily horizontal. In his right hand he carried a large slice of his mother's home-made bread, spread with yellow plum jam; a semicircular excision of the crumb made it plain that he had been disturbed in his first mouthful. The crowd parted and he advanced to the door; laid his slice of bread and jam upon the threshold; searched in his fob pocket for the key; produced ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... advance, fighting over a wide semicircular area before Adrianople, upon which city they gradually closed, taking some of the outer forts and making their bombardment felt within ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... of parts of shells so triturated that they scarcely indicate their origin. In some places, however, there are laminae containing shells in a more perfect state, all of a white colour, with the exception of one (which I found on digging a cave) of a semicircular shape, of a red colour, and almost as large as an oyster shell. The whole of the substance of Bermuda can be burnt into good lime; but there is an indurated calcareous stone, often containing many perfect shells, on the island on which the naval yard ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... arched, much broader than high; horns placed before the salient line of the frontal crest; the plane of the occiput forming an obtuse angle with the forehead and semicircular in shape; fourteen or fifteen pairs of ribs; the shoulders rather elevated; the tail shorter; the legs more slender; the tongue blue; the hair ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... semicircular row of whiskers hedging the edge of the jaw and chin. These were dyed a frightful dead-black, such a color as belonged to no natural hair or beard that ever existed. At the roots there was a quarter of an inch of white, giving the whiskers ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... cooled with snow, cheeses big as millstones, chunks of fat in wooden bowls, and behind the tables, slaves with copper platters. On the platters were quarters of red beef, breams swimming in grease, and sunbirds with their plumage on. In the semicircular gallery musicians ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... grand effect, produced by a line of castellated turrets, which mark the site of the sluice gates. There are two lofty crenellated towers, corresponding with the towers over the gateway of a mediaeval baronial castle. The sluices are formed of double cones of hollow iron, in a semicircular form, worked on a radii of rods fixed to a central axis at each side of the sluice-gate. They are slowly raised or let down by the labour of two men, the gates being inflected as they descend in the direction of the bed of that part of the river whose ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... under the direction of Mr. Robinson, had contrived to arch the roof, supporting it on five semicircular iron girders, which were left there visible to the eye, and which were of course painted magenta. On the foremost of these was displayed the name of the firm,—Brown, Jones, and Robinson. On the second, the name of the house,—Magenta House. On the third the number,—Nine times nine is eighty one. ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... save for a rather interesting doorway set in a thickening of the wall near the western corner. In this doorway the innermost arch is of unusual form—a trefoil resting on corbels—and its edges are left square and plain. Over it is a semicircular arch of three orders with three detached shafts in either jamb, and as usual throughout almost all Archbishop Roger's work, the arch has the edge-roll between hollows (here on every order), the shafts are detached, their bases round upon ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... uneasy glances wandered in every direction, into the depths of the bushes and the slightest undulations of the ground. Gerfaut understood this pantomime. He glanced, in his turn, over the place, and soon discovered at some distance a more propitious place for such a conversation as theirs. It was a semicircular recess in one of the thickets in the park. A rustic seat under a large oak seemed to have been placed there expressly for those who came to seek solitude and speak of love. From there, one could see the approach of danger, and, in case of alarm, the ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... family, had given him the habit of thinking of spring and summer, autumn and winter, as so many stages in a prolonged campaign. Although he was still under thirty, this forecasting habit had marked two semicircular lines above his eyebrows, which threatened, at this moment, to crease into their wonted shapes. But instead of settling down to think, he rose, took a small piece of cardboard marked in large letters with the word OUT, and hung it upon the handle ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... approach ever closer; then he circled back again toward the clearing, evidently to the great delight of the Wieroos, who now followed more leisurely, awaiting the moment when they should be beyond the trees and able to use their wings. They had opened into semicircular formation now with the evident intention of cutting the two off from returning into the wood. Each Wieroo advanced with his curved blade ready in his hand, each hideous face ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... offer a vista hardly to be duplicated in the entire world. The lower town has its fine hotels on the water's edge, with a beautiful view over the bay, less enchanting than when seen from above. The Bay of Naples is enclosed in two semicircular arms that extend far out at sea, the southern reaching nearly to Capri, while near ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... of distant water in marble fonts; the large bells of Montsalvat peal louder and louder, and to music of unimaginable stateliness the knights, clad in the blue and red robes of the Grail, enter in solemn procession, and take their seats at two semicircular tables which start like arms to the right and left of the holy shrine. Beneath it lies Titurel entranced, and upon it is presently deposited the sacred treasure of the ...
— Parsifal - Story and Analysis of Wagner's Great Opera • H. R. Haweis
... is carried by the mother almost continuously during the waking hours of its first year of life; it is generally suspended in a sling made of wood or of basket-work, resembling in shape the baby's swing familiar in our nurseries; the child sits on a semicircular piece of board, its legs dependent, its knees and belly against the mother's back, and its own back supported by the two vertical pieces of the cradle (see Pl. 166). The mother nurses the infant ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... still more ancient slippers, also too large. With head aside, and eyes looking upward, he seemed to listen in a mild ecstasy to the notes of his instrument. He had a round face of much simplicity and good-nature, semicircular eyebrows, pursed little mouth with abortive moustache, and short thin beard fringing the chinless lower jaw. Having observed this unimposing person for a minute or two, himself unseen, Goldthorpe surveyed the rear of the building, anxious to ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... durable), a little longer than the width of the pot, about 2-3/4 inches wide and 1 inch thick. In the ends of each of the outer strips a hole is bored to receive the ends of a small branch of pliable wood, which is bent into a regular semicircular curve. These hoops are made of branches of spruce or hemlock, or of hardwood saplings, such as maple, birch, or ash, generally retaining the bark. Three of these similar frames, straight below and curved above, constitute the framework of each pot, one to stand at each ...
— The Lobster Fishery of Maine - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission, Vol. 19, Pages 241-265, 1899 • John N. Cobb
... multitude who showed no other movement than that which proceeded from the pressure of new-comers trying to force their way forward from all the openings: but the front ranks were already close-serried and resisted the pressure. Those ranks were ranged around a semicircular barrier in front of the church, and within this barrier were already assembling the Dominican Brethren ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... compressed her lips and gave her head a hard jerk. A girl who ran a machine next to Abby's came up, munching a large piece of pie, taking clean semicircular bites with her large, ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... again. This time she went as a pupil to Miss W—-, who lived at Roe Head, a cheerful roomy country house, standing a little apart in a field, on the right of the road from Leeds to Huddersfield. Three tiers of old-fashioned semicircular bow windows run from basement to roof; and look down upon a long green slope of pasture-land, ending in the pleasant woods of Kirklees, Sir George Armitage's park. Although Roe Head and Haworth are not twenty miles apart, the aspect of the country is as totally ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... to the cell of the priest, and on his invitation entered it. We passed through a low door, and down a few steps, and found ourselves in a small, semicircular, low, but very white room, with a floor of mason-work, and a small altar in the centre. Around the wall were seats, also of mason-work. In the altar there was an opening as large as a gun-barrel, from which rose a slender flame that lighted the room very clearly. There were other little openings ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... at times, and the windings of the road added to our handicap; but when at last we came down to the semicircular plain on whose edge Palma stands, we thought we ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... remembered it well. It was unlike any other she had ever seen in this country or her own. It was small and semicircular; it was shut in by a high board fence except at the extreme end, where it was met by a swinging bridge topping a forty-foot chasm. That bridge led through a sparsely wooded forest to a road running in a quite different direction from the one by which ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... tears, and he clenched his teeth to prevent the sobs from escaping. Mr. Carey sat down in his arm-chair and began to turn over the pages of a book. Philip stood at the window. The vicarage was set back from the highroad to Tercanbury, and from the dining-room one saw a semicircular strip of lawn and then as far as the horizon green fields. Sheep were grazing in them. The sky was forlorn and gray. Philip ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... in charge of Mr. Flint, Christy and Amblen walked towards the battery, crouching behind such objects as they could find that would conceal them in whole or in part. The earthwork was semicircular in form, and was hardly more than a rifle pit. No sentinel could be discovered, and getting down upon the sand, the two officers crept cautiously towards the heaps of sand which formed ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... differs from the others; instead of a pavilion in the centre, it will have a tower or campanile 160 feet high, flanked by two projections. The ground floor of this tower will show a stately entrance to the halls of Assembly of both branches of the Legislature, accessible through two semicircular inclined planes. ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... mountain where the Marechai de Gie had pitched his tents, the king beheld both his own camp and the enemy's. Both were on the right bank of the Taro, and were at either end of a semicircular chain of hills resembling an amphitheatre; and the space between the two camps, a vast basin filled during the winter floods by the torrent which now only marked its boundary, was nothing but a plain covered with gravel, where all ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... through one of the buttresses of the chancel. Among the noticeable things at Leigh Church is a rude sculpture of the Saviour placed exteriorly over the north door of the nave, in a recess, with semicircular heading and Norman pillars. The rector is ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various
... savage grandeur and soft beauty till we gradually reach the threshold of Gavarnie. This is aptly called "chaos" which we might fancifully suppose the leavings, "the fragments that were left," of the semicircular wall now visible, thrown up by transhuman builders, insurmountable barrier between heaven and earth. No sooner does the awful amphitheatre break upon the view, than we discern the white line of the principal fall, a slender silvery column reaching, so it seems, from star-land and moon-land ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... had of success was to shorten their line by withdrawing to the semicircular mountain ridge which lies south and south-east of Valievo, and even so their prospects were gloomy. Two wars had already depleted Serbia's manhood and her munitions, and her numbers were sadly inferior to the Austrians. But individually her troops were far ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... used for his lectures was low, flat-topped and semicircular, with a high raised desk in the middle. Being isolated, it had escaped the fire; as maybe it had proved too cumbrous ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... building. In the vestibule two grave-faced women in black bonnets handed papers with prayers and hymns to every newcomer. Maggie took hers, a door was opened in front of her, and she went in. The auditorium was a large one, semicircular in shape, with tiers of seats rising circus-fashion to a ceiling decorated with silver stars and pink naked cherubs. The stage had upon it a table, some chairs, and a reading-desk draped in crimson cloth. Below the stage was a small orchestra, ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... faults still remained unremedied, and for the removal of these I had to adopt indirect methods which gave me much trouble. For instance, at these famous concerts the arrangement of the orchestra, the members of which were seated in a long, thin, semicircular row round the chorus of singers, was so inconceivably stupid that it required the explanation given by Reissiger to make me understand such folly. He told me that all these arrangements dated from the time of the late conductor Morlacchi, who, as an Italian composer ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... to a rock above for precaution's sake, he reconnoitred their position. To his left was the black and semicircular cliff, down the centre of which the Downfall stream, now tamed and thinned by the dry spring winds, was trickling. The course of the stream was marked by a vivid orange colour, produced, apparently, in the grit by the action of water; and about halfway down the fall a mass of ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to the glare he distinguished beside each light pillar two bronze doors, some eight feet high and semicircular in shape. These had been evidently pulled back to expose the lights. Then his breath stopped in his throat, for there, standing beside them, was a gleaming group of six or eight of the strangest creatures Nelson could ever have imagined. ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... semicircular trench around the far side of the new possession, and then they took time to see what had happened to the gallant little band. Freyberg had received his fourth wound, and his brave 500 had dwindled to a number a good deal smaller. ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... distinctive features of the building are the thatched roof appendages projecting from the tops of the two gable ends (front and back), the forms of which appendages are somewhat like a hood or the convex fan-shaped semicircular roof of an apse, and in construction are sometimes made as rounded overhanging continuations of the upper part of the roof, and sometimes as independent additions, not continuous with, and not forming parts of, the actual roof. In front of the building, but not at the ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... to take possession of and appropriate one as soon as one enters its never- closed door, which is on the lower verandah. There is a basement, in which there are a good many bedrooms, the bar, and billiard-room. This is entered from the garden, under two semicircular flights of stairs which lead to the front entrance, a wide corridor conducting to the back entrance. This is crossed by another running the whole length, which opens into a very large many-windowed dining-room which occupies the whole width of the hotel. On the same level there is a ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... the centre wagon was drawn a little on one side to leave a kind of gate. Through this opening I saw that a long wall, also semicircular, had been built outside of them, enclosing a space large enough to contain at night all the cattle and horses that were left to the Heer Marais, together with those of his friends, who evidently did not wish to see their oxen ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... day was perfect—in all respects "equal to bespoke." With that most genial of men, Lord Cockburn, for our guide, we wandered far up the Pentland Hills. After a rather toilsome walk we reached a favourite spot. It was a semicircular hollow in the hillside, scooped out by the sheep for shelter. It was carpeted and cushioned with a deep bed of wild thyme, redolent of the very essence of ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... begging consists of two kartals or wooden clappers which are struck against each other; ghungrus or jingling ornaments for the feet, worn when dancing; and a paijna or kind of rattle, consisting of two semicircular iron wires bound at each end to a piece of wood with rings slung on to them; this is simply shaken in the hand and gives out a sound from the movement of the rings against the wires. They worship ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... his head very still. His actions betrayed the fact that he was not used to the messages his semicircular canals were sending his brain when he moved his ...
— Anchorite • Randall Garrett
... a semicircular green plane, levelled among the hills, as it were on purpose, and planted round with a sheltering bulwark of trees—lime, chestnut, oak—rising higher and higher, until at the summit, where the sea-breeze caught them, ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... performer handles an organistrum, a sort of large hurdy-gurdy, sometimes (as apparently in this case) requiring two players, one for the crank and another for the stops. Then comes a man with a pandean pipe, next another with a semicircular harp and then one with a portable organ. Next comes a performer on a round-bodied fiddle (the usual form of the instrument at that time). Next to him is a harper, using a plectrum, and at the right end of the group is a pair of players, man and woman, ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... a nave with aisles; the arches of the main arcade were semicircular, the piers massive and rectangular; there were no mouldings, the orders of the arches, like the piers, having rectangular corners. There were possibly two western towers, which stood, like those of Rouen and Wells, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... on this same Friday evening. The "opera-house" was spacious and admirably ventilated. As I was listening to the merriment of the sooty buffoons, I happened to cast my eyes up to the ceiling, and through an open semicircular window a bright solitary star looked me calmly in the eyes. It was a strange intrusion of the vast eternities beckoning from the infinite spaces. I called the attention of one of my neighbors to it, but "Bones" was irresistibly droll, and Arcturus, or Aldebaran, or whatever ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... before the Great Sacrifice in company with the Twelve Apostles, the two Maries, and the fainting mother of Jesus,—thus expressing the unity of the Church Universal in that great victory of sorrow and glory. The painting was inclosed above by a semicircular bordering composed of medallion heads of the Prophets, and below was a similar medallion border of the principal saints and worthies of the Dominican order. In our day such pictures are visited by tourists with red guide-books in their hands, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... which the citizens sat in the Public Assembly in the Pnyx to hear the orators. In the centre of the semicircular space the tribune stood, a square block of stone, [Greek: Bema], and from this the people ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... a century later. In this church is commonly supposed to be exhibited for the first time, bearing in mind that the date of its consecration was 1144, a complete system of buttresses accompanying the pointed arch of the vaulting, though in conjunction with semicircular vaulting in the ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... external fire box is usually formed into a steam chest, which is sometimes dome shaped, sometimes semicircular, and sometimes of a pyramidical form, and from this steam chest the steam is conducted away by an internal pipe to the cylinders; but in other cases an independent steam chest is set upon the barrel ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... steps, opposite the high altar. The Emperor and Empress were to occupy them during the first part of the ceremony. The grand throne was at the other end of the church, with its back against the great door, which was thus closed. This great throne stood on a large semicircular platform, and was reached by twenty-four steps. It stood under a canopy in the shape of a triumphal arch, upheld by eight columns, and it overlooked the whole church. The Emperor and the Empress were not to ascend this throne ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... articles commanded from Moscow: one, more expensive than all the others, brought in a coffin-like box from France; the transferrence of all his paraphernalia of work into the outer room; and behold the fane of Ivan's new goddess!—a semicircular chamber hung in deep violet; in the centre of the jut a low, circular pedestal, draped in black, and flanked on either side by two high church candlesticks of wrought silver, containing painted candles kept always alight, the windowless room containing, beside these, only one, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... when it is set turn it out. A lemon jelly like this should be turned on to a piece of ornamental paper placed at the bottom of a silver or some other kind of dish. The base of the mould should be ornamented with thin slices of lemon cut in half, the diameter touching the base of the mould and the semicircular piece of peel outside. If a round basin has been used for a mould, place a corner of a lemon on the top in the middle, surrounded with a few imitation green leaves cut out of angelica. This improves the dish in appearance and also shows what ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne
... with several ridges between them and the E. wall. I noted also a cleft, or it may be a narrow valley, running from the foot of the N.W. wall towards the centre. On the floor, abutting on the N.E. border, is a semicircular ridge of considerable height, and beyond the border on the N.E. there is another curved ridge, completing the circle, the wall forming the diameter. This formation is clearly of more ancient date than Messala, ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... continuous bombardment, the battles incident to the siege of Verdun were fought at brief intervals during the next two months, down to the middle of April, and marked the climax of the War. The losses on both sides were enormous and extraordinary, and taken as a whole the struggle on the semicircular front north and east of the great French stronghold fully justified its description as "the most terrible battle ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... distance in the night. The organs of hearing belonging to fish are for this reason much less complicated than of quadrupeds, as the fluid they are immersed in so much better conveys its vibrations. And it is probable that some shell-fish which have twisted shells like the cochlea and semicircular canals of the ears of men and quadrupeds may have no appropriated organ for perceiving the vibrations of the element they live in, but may by their spiral form be in a manner ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... translucent icicle. The other cave, however, we found to be of much greater extent, and of more varied character. It is one of three caves of the old coast line, known as the Doocot or Pigeon Caves, which open upon a piece of rocky beach, overhung by a rudely semicircular range of gloomy precipices. The points of the semicircle project on either side into deep water—into at least water so much deeper than the fall of ordinary neaps, that it is only during the ebb of stream tides that the place is accessible by ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... their wives, the teachers from the Girls' High School and all the pupils were there in full force, besides the citizens of Oakdale and their families. There was really a very large assemblage in the semicircular ampitheater which was hung with bunting and flags in honor of the great occasion, and probably not one in the whole cheerful company but had enjoyed a good Thanksgiving dinner that afternoon, so good humor beamed ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... representing, that, if this opportunity were permitted to pass, Price, after ascertaining our force, would retire, and it would be impossible to catch him again. This evening one hundred and ten officers called upon him in a body. They ranged themselves in semicircular array in front of the house, and one of their number presented an address to the General full of sympathy and respect, and earnestly requesting him to lead them against the enemy. At the close of the interview, the General said, that, under all the circumstances, he felt it to be his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... The semicircular canals are, to a great extent if not entirely, the seat of equilibration in man. Any derangement or disease of these canals interferes with equilibration; this is well shown in Meniere's disease, in which there is always marked disturbance of the ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... North, the Eskimos of Ungava apply a turf—which is stored for the purpose in the short summer season—and mixed with water to the consistency of mud. This is moulded on the runners with the hands in a thick, broad, semicircular shape, and freezes as hard as glass. Then its irregularities are planed smooth, and it slips easily ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... and comfortable. It is a vast hall, around the four sides of which sweeps an immense gallery. The interior is painted white, with a tinge of pink, and the carpets and cushions of the seats are of a rich, warm red. The rows of seats in the body of the church are semicircular, and those in the gallery rise as in an amphitheater, from the front to the wall. At the far end of the church is a raised platform containing merely a chair and a table. The table is a pretty ornament, and is the "Plymouth Pulpit." It is made of wood brought from the Garden of ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... his surprise. He cast about for plausible explanations. But the fact was there before him. Two rows of teeth, cutting through the thin red peel, had left their regular, semicircular bite clearly in the pulp of the fruit. They were clearly marked on the top, while the lower row had melted ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... another department of the works, when its open end is once more brought in a furnace to a red heat. The object of this is to make the metal soft while the shoulder and neck of the vessel are formed. To accomplish this, the heated open end of the cylinder is laid horizontally upon a kind of semicircular cradle, and is held there by tongs handled by two men. Another workman places over the open end a die of the form shown in Fig. 4, and while the cylinder is slowly turned round in its cradle, two sledge hammers are brought down with frequent ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... Smyth, a native of Mayo, looks some thirty-five years old, and belongs to the unadulterated Irish caste—half-curled hair, not abundant, anxious semicircular forehead, keen and fiery eyes, altogether a lively interesting head. He is a Latin and Celtic scholar; and that excuses him for his moderate proficiency in modern languages. He was educated at Maynooth, the eye-sore of Sabbatarians, and therefore believes it incontestable that the authority ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... Some of them seem to have been employed as a kind of decoration in relief upon the brick walls; others, and those the most numerous, appear to have been used in the principal entrances to buildings. Upon one face a semicircular hollow or socket may be noticed, in which the foot of the bronze pivots, or rather the pivot shod and faced with bronze, upon which the heavy timber doors and their casings of metal were hung, had to turn. The marks of the consequent friction are still clearly ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... and ilex, forming a grove for the Nymphs or Pan. Here may you see just such clean stems and lucid foliage as Gian Bellini painted, inch by inch, in his Peter Martyr picture. The place is neglected now; the semicircular seats of white Carrara marble are stained with green mosses, the altars chipped, the fountains choked with bay leaves; and the rose trees, escaped from what were once trim garden alleys, have gone wandering a-riot into country hedges. There is no demarcation between the great man's ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... continually narrowing as he advances; which will indeed be ruinous gaps, if Ferdinand wait to be attacked; but which will coalesce close enough, if he be speedy upon Contades. For Contades's line is also of arc-like or almost semicircular form, behind it Minden as centre; Minden, which is at the intersection of Weser and the Brook; his right flank is on Weser, Broglio VERSUS Wangenheim the extreme right; his left, with infantry and artillery, rests on that black Brook ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Moored in another blue harbor,— a great semicircular basin, bounded by a high billowing of hills all green from the fringe of yellow beach up to their loftiest clouded summit. The land has that up-tossed look which tells a volcanic origin. There are curiously scalloped ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... 958. The SEMICIRCULAR CANALS are three bony passages which communicate with the vestibule, into which two of them open at both extremities, and the third at ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... up the valleys, and covered the country with a thick deposit for many miles, burying villages and their inhabitants. During a subsequent eruption great blocks of basalt were thrown to a distance of seven miles; the result of all being that an enormous semicircular gulf was formed between the summit and the plain, bounded by steep cliffs, and bearing considerable resemblance to the Val del Bove. Other examples of the power of volcanic explosions might be cited; but the ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull
... on mountain-tops and the balmy air would carry a suggestion of a chill at sunset, there were cunningly wrought charcoal braziers set near the gilded couches, grouped around a semicircular low table so as to give each guest an unobstructed view from the pavilion. Pertinax—neither guest nor host, but a god, as it were, who had arrived and permitted the city of Antioch to ennoble itself by ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... bow, curl, recurve, frizzle. rotundity &c 249; convexity &c 250. Adj. curved &c v.; curviform^, curvilineal^, curvilinear; devex^, devious; recurved, recurvous^; crump^; bowed &c v.; vaulted, hooked; falciform^, falcated^; semicircular, crescentic; sinusoid [Geom.], parabolic, paraboloid; luniform^, lunular^; semilunar, conchoidal^; helical, double helical, spiral; kinky; cordiform^, cordated^; cardioid; heart shaped, bell shaped, boat shaped, crescent shaped, lens shaped, moon ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... itself up, rough with inaccessible crags, bristling with old, ragged pines, and dark with glooms of close cedars and hemlocks, above a jutting table of rock that reaches out and makes a huge semicircular base for the mountain, and is in itself a precipice-pedestal eighty feet sheer up from the river-bank; close in against the hill front, on this platform of stone, that holds its foot or two of soil, a ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... different parts of a town in a harmonious whole, centred round the market-place. But there seems to be no evidence for the statement sometimes made, that he had any particular liking for either a circular or a semicircular, ...
— Ancient Town-Planning • F. Haverfield
... as before stated, in A.D. 1083, by Simeon, in the Norman style; the Choir, with its apse or semicircular end—altered however to a square end before it had proceeded far—the central Tower, the great Transept, and part of the Nave were begun by him, but were not finished at his death in 1093; of this work, only the ground-story of the great ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous
... service. The distinguished men met officially in a great room of the Bundespalast; but unofficially they could be seen strolling along the arcaded medieval streets, or feeding the civic bears with carrots at the bear-pit, or reading or smoking or sipping coffee and liqueurs in the fine semicircular hall of the hotel. They were French, or Austrian, or Russian, or German, or English, or Danish, or Dutch, as the case might be. There were also some Americans. The great national types were more or less easy to discern—except the Americans. ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... our watering-place itself has been left somewhat high and dry by the tide of years. Concerned as we are for its honour, we must reluctantly admit that the time when this pretty little semicircular sweep of houses, tapering off at the end of the wooden pier into a point in the sea, was a gay place, and when the lighthouse overlooking it shone at daybreak on company dispersing from public balls, is but dimly traditional now. There is a bleak ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... instinct, that on the approach of a passer-by to a spot which they infest, they may be seen amongst the grass and fallen leaves on the edge of a native path, poised erect, and preparing for their attack on man and horse. On descrying their prey they advance rapidly by semicircular strides, fixing one end firmly and arching the other forwards, till by successive advances they can lay hold of the traveller's foot, when they disengage themselves from the ground and ascend his dress in search of an aperture to enter. In ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... eastern and northern; the furthest south it was seen by the officers of H.M.S. Britomart was latitude 20 degrees. In addition to these, Mr. Bynoe saw the holes of some small burrowing animals, which are doubtless rats. On a sandy spit, close to the bushes or scrub, he saw a native encampment of a semicircular form, enclosing an area of about ten yards. The occupants had but recently left it, as a fire was found burning, and the impression of their feet still fresh in the sand. It appears that at this season of the year, being ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... gunboats, which had meanwhile steamed ahead, were briskly battering the Mahdist riverside forts. These works, like those abandoned to us at Shabluka Cataract and Kerreri, were strong, well-built earthen bastions, with flanking curtains. The central semicircular portion was pierced with three embrasures for ordnance, but so badly made as to admit of but a limited area of fire. Each curtain was loopholed for musketry. There was a deep, wide trench before the works, the parapet of which was about ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... were knocked out by our guns. Although the guns and emplacements were shattered the bombproofs and ammunition chambers remained intact, and, running back, formed a perfect network of trenches and entanglements right around the semicircular valley. The Turks had mounted pompoms on the Cape Helles side and had the usual snipers concealed everywhere. The foreshore and valley also were protected by trenches and wire, rendering the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... (thus named from its inventor, a foreman at the Rhenania works near Aachen) is a mechanically worked fishing-pan, which requires considerably less labour and coal than ordinary boat-pans. It is a long trough, of nearly semicircular section, the whole bottom being exposed to the fire- gases. A horizontal shaft runs length-ways through the trough, and is provided with stirring blades, arranged in such a manner that they constantly ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Sherry E. Fry, carries out the same idea. The graceful figures poised on the corner domes are Torch Bearers. On the pylons at either end of the semicircular arcade of the main entrance are two reclining figures. On the right is Bacchus, with his grapes and wineskin,—a magnificently "pickled" Bacchus! On the left a woman is listening to the strains of festal music. (p. 32.) ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... "I think there is but one king in Sans-souci," he said, "and that is Frederick II. Conduct me to his sitting-room!" and rapidly crossing the semicircular marble hall, he walked toward the side-door which the ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... called a halt—none too soon for the camels—in a semicircular space protected by a low cliff that might have been a quarry-face two thousand years ago; what might have been a pit was all filled in by drifted sand. But he had his own mat spread on the top of the cliff, whence he could keep an eye on the surrounding ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy |
