"Serpentine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were winged bulls or lions with human heads; others had even more remarkable composite forms. The "dragon of Babylon", for instance, which was portrayed on walls of temples, had a serpent's head, a body covered with scales, the fore legs of a lion, hind legs of an eagle, and a long wriggling serpentine tail. Ea had several monster forms. The following description of one ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... that Fraulein would recognise this at once, she knew that the perfect assurance of her pronunciation would make it seem that she understood every word, but soon these feelings gave way to the sense half grasped of the serpentine path winding and mounting through a wood, of a glimpse of a distant valley, of flocks and villages, and of her unity with Fraulein and Minna seeing and feeling all these things together. She finished the passage—Fraulein quietly ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... passed to | man by this so large a charter from God | must be subject to that use for which God | hath granted it; which is the benefit and | relief of the state and society or man; | for otherwise all manner of knowledge | becometh malign and serpentine, and | therefore as carrying the quality of the | serpent's sting and malice it maketh the | mind of man to swell; as the Scripture | saith excellently, KNOWLEDGE BLOWETH UP, | BUT CHARITY BUILDETH UP{40}. And again the | 40. 1 Corinthians 8, 1 same author doth notably disavow ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... my experience of European deficiencies, I have never found any deficiency of time. Money went like the wind; champagne grew scanty; the trust of tailors ran down to the dregs; the smiles of my fair flirts grew rare as diamonds—every thing became as dry, dull, and stagnant as the Serpentine in summer; but time never failed me. I had a perpetual abundance of a commodity which the philosophers told me was beyond price. I had not merely enough for myself, but enough to give to others; until I discovered the fact, that it was as little a favourite with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 337, October 25, 1828. • Various
... hated his existence, and thought he would try whether the Serpentine would drown him. I said I was agreeable, only he would never achieve it without me. I should have to 'tice away the police while he looked for the right spot. So he has promised to take me into partnership, and it's all ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... assayed: But her with stern regard he thus repelled. Out of my sight, thou Serpent! That name best Befits thee with him leagued, thyself as false And hateful; nothing wants, but that thy shape, Like his, and colour serpentine, may show Thy inward fraud; to warn all creatures from thee Henceforth; lest that too heavenly form, pretended To hellish falshood, snare them! But for thee I had persisted happy; had not thy pride And wandering vanity, when ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... found out two very interesting things," said Mrs. Stanislaw, in her soft and serpentine manner. "The woman whose children Miss Poole is going to governess at the Cape is Cora Janis, one of my most intimate friends. And . . ." she paused dramatically. April's fingers still fluttered the pages, but her heart took a bound and ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... magnesium are known and some of them are important substances. Serpentine, asbestos, talc, and meerschaum are ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson
... the older basic rocks are illustrated by the belt of gabbro, epidiorite and hornblende-schist which stretches southwards from the coast at Portsoy, by Rothiemay to Huntly in Aberdeenshire. Veins and bosses of serpentine are associated with these basic intrusions at Portsoy and near Grange, one of the veins being traceable at intervals from the shore southwards in the direction of Knock Hill. The later intrusions ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... cut in the rocks five centuries ago by the monks of Monte Oliveto. These pious men understood little of engineering, of the art of throwing bridges across ravines. Their road simply followed the course pointed out by nature, winding in serpentine folds through the labyrinth of chasms which begin ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... and he dismissed the equipage. He walked rapidly along Brook Street into Park Lane, and from thence to the park, hardly knowing whither he went in the enthusiasm of the moment. He walked back to the Marble Arch, and thence round by the drive to the Guard House and the bridge over the Serpentine, by the Knightsbridge Barracks to Hyde Park Corner. Though he should give up everything and go and live in her own country with her, he would marry her. His politics, his hunting, his address to the Queen, his horses, his guns, his ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... circular, and upwards of 300 yards across. The lava continued rising till it overflowed a large portion of the hitherto black surface, in some places appearing like a vast sheet of liquid fire, in others running along in serpentine courses. As their time was short, as soon as the party who had gone round the crater arrived, the tents were packed up, and they commenced their descent by ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... ocean—such is the Ortach rock. The Ortach, all of a piece, rises up in a straight line to eighty feet above the angry beating of the waves. Waves and ships break against it. An immovable cube, it plunges its rectilinear planes apeak into the numberless serpentine ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... was the Fair in Hyde Park, which had official leave to exist for two days—but which, in fact, lasted four. The area allotted to it comprised nearly one third of the Park, extending from near the margin of the Serpentine to within a short distance of Grosvenor Gate. The best account I know of this Fair is in The Morning Chronicle of 29 June, ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... obsidian, green and red jasper, and quartz-crystal flakes, arrowheads, cores, and saw-blades. Chert and limestone rough hoe-blades (easily mistaken for palaeolithic implements; they are, however, much flatter); polished serpentine or jasper celts; lentoid (lentil-shaped), amygdaloid (almond-shaped), and discoid beads of cornelian, crystal, obsidian, &c., unpolished; nails of translucent quartz and obsidian (obviously imitations of metal types); hard grey pottery sickles, pottery cones of various sizes, and pottery ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various
... Nomentana, we came to a strange place, situate in an oasis in the wilderness, or rather in what is already the beginning of a new country—the mere mounds of tufo turning into high slopes, and a few trees (it is odd how they immediately give a soul to this soulless desert), leafless at present, serpentine along the greener grass. And there, with the russet of an oakwood behind, rises a square huddle of buildings, a tall brick watch-tower, battlemented and corbelled in the midst, and a great bay-tree at each corner. On the tower, ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... Where wavering masses bulge and gape Mysterious, and shape to shape Dies momently through whorl and hollow, And form and line and solid follow Solid and line and form to dream Fantastic down the eternal stream; An obscure world, a shifting world, Bulbous, or pulled to thin, or curled, Or serpentine, or driving arrows, Or serene slidings, or March narrows. There slipping wave and shore are one, And weed and mud. No ray of sun, But glow to glow fades down the deep (As dream to unknown dream in sleep); Shaken translucency illumes The hyaline of drifting glooms; The strange ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... Mg are magnesite, MgCO3, dolomite, MgCO3 CaCO3, and talc, serpentine, hornblende, and meerschaum. The last four are silicates, and often are unctious to the touch. What proportion of the earth's crust is composed ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... who were drowned in the Serpentine in the presence of a crowd, out of which no one moved for their rescue?" it may be asked. "What about the child which fell into the Regent's Park Canal—also in the presence of a holiday crowd—and was only saved through the presence of mind of a maid who let out a Newfoundland ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... window, set out with objects carved in serpentine, held her for a moment; but remembering how often she had paused here lately, she felt ashamed, and walked on. Presently there moved towards her a lady in a Bath-chair; a lady who had once been beautiful, but now, though ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... last night," he said. "I was a-walkin' with my missus alongside the Serpentine—in London, that is. There was swans sailin' on it, an' we was 'eavin' bits of bread to 'em. 'Fred,' she says, 'you'll 'ave it beautiful for your regatta. You'll win,' she says, 'the Stokers' Cutters, the Vet'rans' Skiff's, the Orficers' Gigs, an' ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... of you rise high ranges of beautifully wooded hills; here and there a cottage peeps out among the trees, the winding path that leads to it being now lost to sight in the thick foliage, now visible again as a thin serpentine line of soft grey. Midway on the slopes appear the gardens of Looe, built up the acclivity on stone terraces one above another; thus displaying the veritable garden architecture of the mountains of Palestine magically transplanted to the side ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... Handel's, or else a solid, tangible object, as a piano or an organ, but always the thing must be linked on to matter by a longer or shorter chain as the case may be. I was thinking of this once while walking by the side of the Serpentine and, looking round, saw some ducks alighting on the water; their feet reminded me of the way the sea-birds used to alight when I was going to New Zealand and I set to work recalling attendant facts. Without help from outside I should ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... particular trunk a growth Of intertwisted fibres, serpentine, Upcoiling, and inveterately convolved— Nor uninformed with Phantasy and looks That ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... on the Lake of Constance, another of the most ancient of the lake-dwellings, hatchets of serpentine and greenstone, and arrow-heads of quartz have been met with. Here also remains of a kind of cloth, supposed to be of flax, not woven but plaited, have been detected. Professor Heer has recognised lumps of carbonised wheat, Triticum vulgare, and grains of another ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... subjects; but I have done what I could to restrain him within the bounds of spiritual politeness. If he disclaims having tempted Eve in the shape of the Serpent, it is only because the book of Genesis has not the most distant allusion to anything of the kind, but merely to the Serpent in his serpentine capacity. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... of the Sanitary and Sewage Commissions, and of the Commission which sat on Westminster Bridge. The last occasions on which he addressed the House were on the Suez Canal and the cleansing of the Serpentine. He pronounced the Suez Canal to be an impracticable scheme. "I have surveyed the line," said he, "I have travelled the whole distance on foot, and I declare there is no fall between the two seas. Honourable members talk about ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... through my glass at the serpentine rocks and white-washed lighthouse above them, all powdered with bronze and gold by the sinking ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... which separated the old parish of Chelsea from the City of Westminster was determined by a brook called the Westbourne, which took its rise near West End in Hampstead. It flowed through Bayswater and into Hyde Park. It supplied the water of the Serpentine, which we owe to the fondness of Queen Caroline for landscape gardening. This well-known piece of water was afterwards supplied from the Chelsea waterworks. The Westbourne stream then crossed Knightsbridge, and from this point formed the eastern boundary of St. Luke's parish, Chelsea. The ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... o'clock the next morning he felt his way blindly to his bed and toppled upon it, falling straightway into a slumber during which he passed through monotonous, maddening wastes of blue and white, over which ran serpentine rows ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... dears, there is no "of course" at all in the matter! Can any of you, for example, see the creatures that float about and fight in a drop of water from the Serpentine River? No, certainly not! except through a microscope. Well, but why not?—you do not know. That I can easily believe! But then you must never again say that "of course" a Giant could see a ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... Common," says the Boston man. "It is as large as St. James's Park," says the Londoner. "As high as the State House," says the Bostonian, or "as tall as Bunker Hill Monument," or "about as big as the Frog Pond," where the Londoner would take St. Paul's, the Nelson Column, the Serpentine, as his standard of comparison. The difference of scale does not stop here; it runs through a great part of the objects of thought and conversation. An average American and an average Englishman are talking ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... serpentine lie invents new forms. At first it usurps divine power. It is supposed to say 541:24 in the first instance, "Ye shall be as gods." Now it repudiates even the human duty of ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... foothold, and guiding the others to do the same. At last, at a sharp turn of one of these rocky eminences, they perceived an enormous cloud of white vapor rising up like smoke from the earth, and twisting itself as it rose, in swaying, serpentine folds, as though some giant spirit-hand were shaking it to and fro like a long flowing veil in the air. Sigurd ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... way home he did so, and ordered the porter up to the house. The magnificent avenue was a serpentine one, and our friends had barely time to get out of sight of the lodge, by a turn in it, when they heard the voices of the pursuers, hallooing for the porter, and thundering at ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... you're good for is catching fish and feeding ducks and planting things in gardens. Why don't you come down and feed the ducks in the Serpentine?" ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... breeze ruffled the broad bosom of the Alster, and the red and green steamboats plowed dark furrows in its brightness, which remained there long after the boats had passed, and faded away finally in many a serpentine curve. Numbers of little rowing and sailing-boats floated upon the slow current, peopled by couples and parties in their Sunday clothes, their talk and merry laughter sounding across the water to the shore. ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... nobleman can keep to himself. The extent of Kensington Gardens, when reckoned together with Hyde Park, from which it is separated only by a fence of iron rods, is very great, comprising miles of greensward and woodland. The large artificial sheet of water, called the Serpentine River, lies chiefly in Hyde Park, but comes partly within the precincts of the gardens. It is entitled to honorable mention among the English lakes, being larger than some that are world-celebrated,—several miles long, and perhaps ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... first change in the sky showed itself only in the shapes of the wood and the single stems growing darker but clearer; and above the gray clump, against a glimpse of growing light, they saw aloft the evil trinity of the trees. In their long lines there seemed to Paynter something faintly serpentine and even spiral. He could almost fancy he saw them slowly revolving as in some cyclic dance, but this, again, was but a last delusion of dreamland, for a few seconds later he was again asleep. ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... either hand;" but, in its stead, we could gaze at the festooned chains of Hammersmith Suspension Bridge in all its simple beauty, and see the Soapworks and the Mall on the hither and further shore. Our course led, not through serpentine canals and past Doges' palaces, gaudy with the lavish adornments of tricky Byzantine architecture; nor could we expect to see "lions" as historical as those which ornament the facade of Saint Mark's. However, as we glided ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... don't know many of the boys who sail boats in the Serpentine: you will have to make their acquaintance yourself. But I know one boy whom I must bring to the house. He is a German-Jew boy, who is going to be another Mendelssohn, his friends say. He is a pretty boy, with ruddy-brown hair, big black eyes and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... that would swing from the road, dip into a sand arroyo, edge slanting up the farther bank, wriggle round a cluster of small hills, shoot out across a mesa, and climb slowly toward those hills to the west, finally to contort itself into serpentine switchbacks as it sought the crest—and once on the crest (which was in reality but the visible edge of another great mesa), there would be grass for a horse and cedar-wood for a fire, and water ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... pocket for a pencil, produced the rump thereof, spread the letter upon his knee, and began writing on the back of it. It was like an internal surgical operation, for his tongue protruded as he wrote, marking his progress by a series of serpentine writhings that suggested ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... and, pulling off my hat, he threw a piece of cloth round my shoulders and we went on. About a quarter of a mile farther towards the hills, through a delightful shade of breadfruit trees, we stopped at the side of a small serpentine river: here I was in view of a house on the other side at about fifty yards distance. From this house the young king was brought out on a man's shoulders, clothed in a piece of fine white cloth, and I was desired by Tinah to salute him by the name of Too Earee Rahie. The ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... may become confluent and produce large, superficial, serpentine ulcers on the membrane of the nostrils, around the lips or eyelids, or on the borders of wounds and in greasy heels; in this case the part becomes swollen, hot, painful, and is covered with a profuse discharge of matter. ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... way thence towards Severn, till Bredon Hill hides the sight both of it and Tewkesbury smoke: just below on either side the Broadway lie the grey houses of the village street ending with a lovely house of the fourteenth century; above the road winds serpentine up the steep hill-side, whose crest looking westward sees the glorious map I have been telling of spread before it, but eastward strains to look on Oxfordshire, and thence all waters run towards Thames: all about lie the sunny slopes, ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... road were empty and still, and my footsteps echoed against the sides of the houses. At the top, near the park gate, I came upon a strange sight—a bus overturned, and the skeleton of a horse picked clean. I puzzled over this for a time, and then went on to the bridge over the Serpentine. The voice grew stronger and stronger, though I could see nothing above the housetops on the north side of the park, save a haze ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... Along the serpentine path which was bordered with masses of brilliant chrysanthemums, Beryl walked rapidly, feeling almost stifled by the pressure of contending emotions. Recollecting that these spice censers of Autumn were her mother's favorite flowers, she stooped and broke several lovely clusters of orange ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... rather than seated on the easy chair; everything from the curves of his smooth limbs to the coils of his silvered hair suggesting the circles of a serpent more than the straight limbs of a man—the unmistakable, splendid serpentine gentleman we had seen walking in North London, his eyes shining ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... Apocalypse, and with its head lifted into the ether, so that it was framed against the heavens. The moon was in its mouth; the moon shaped like an eye, a brilliant, glowing, wondrous orb, more intensely golden for its contrast with the ominous blackness of the serpentine cloud. I felt that I had found the origin of the Oriental fable. Some minutes the illusion held, and then the cloud lowered, and the moon, alone against a pale-blue background, the horizon a mass of scudding draperies of pearly hue, lit the ocean between the ship and the edge of the world in ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... his forehead with the flat of his hand—everything took hold of William so vi'lent. 'I give you my word, Zeke,' says he, 'that them horse-car busters picked hunks of red serpentine, loaded with gold from the Texas Star, out of our white quartz ledges that never see gold since Adam played tag, and believed it was all right—just the same as the gent pulls a rabbit out of your hat at the show, and you're convinced that rabbit ...
— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips
... attention to a dark serpentine line that lay like a dead snake upon the lighted surface of the road. Jules grunted in token of comprehension. Liane Delorme breathlessly demanded: "What ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... internodes, the lower ones bend together at the same rate, but one or two of the terminal ones bend at a slower rate; hence, though at times all the internodes are in the same direction, at other times the shoot is rendered slightly serpentine. The rate of revolution of the whole shoot, if judged by the movement of the extreme tip, is thus at times accelerated or retarded. One other point must be noticed. Authors have observed that the end of the shoot in many twining plants is completely hooked; ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... from serpentine rock contain almost toxic levels of magnesium and should not receive dolomite. Alkaline soils may still benefit from additional calcium and should get gypsum ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... mountains, through which, as the sun began to sink, we saw now and again the white gleam of falling water. One of my companions touched my arm as we swept round the base of a hill and opened up the lofty, snow-covered peak of a mountain, which seemed, as we wound on our serpentine way, to ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... abundance of speckled trout and shining pickerel, to say nothing about the many play hours spent upon its margin; but now the stream is lost beneath the vast reservoir, and has washed away all traces of flowers, strawberries and verdant grass that used to mark its serpentine wanderings, by ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... had been rendered necessary only by the faulty construction of the premises and the dullness of the afternoon—and in an open space I could see far enough for complete safety. Arriving at the top of Sloane Street, I crossed Knightsbridge, and, entering Hyde Park, struck out towards the Serpentine. Passing along the eastern shore, I entered one of the long paths that lead towards the Marble Arch and strode along it at such a pace as would make it necessary for any pursuer to hurry in order to keep me in sight. Half-way across the great stretch of turf, I halted for a few moments and ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... thoroughfare of trade; one grand, unbroken chain of inter-communication, like to a prodigious sarpent, with his head resting upon the shores of Europe, and his lengthened form stretching over the ocean and curling along this great winding stream in serpentine grandeur, proudly flaps his tail at Paducah! . . . SIR, the ball is in motion; it is rolling down in noise of thunder from the mountain heights, and comes booming in its majesty over the wide-spread plain. Yes, Sir, and it will ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... admirably watered by three noble streams—the Buona Ventura, the Calumet, and the Nu eleje sha wako, or River of the Strangers, while twenty rivers of inferior size rush with noise and impetuosity from the mountains, until they enter the prairies, where they glide smoothly in long serpentine courses between banks covered with flowers and shaded by the thick foliage of the western magnolia. The plains, as I have said, are gently undulating, and are covered with excellent natural pastures of mosquito-grass, blue grass, and clover, ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... air. The magnificent groves of trees all round; and far off in the terminus, the towers and pinnacles of the Parliament Houses, and Westminster Abbey towers, rise into the clear sky over the blue waters of the Serpentine. A pretty yacht, with one white wing, slowly moved along. Large, princely lambs grazed on the sunny lawns. I think that thou wouldst have asked no more in the way of a park. We sat down on a felled tree and talked awhile. I would almost give a kingdom ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... horseback. Handsome and graceful still, Leopold Travers when in London is pleased to find himself scarcely less the fashion with the young than he was when himself in youth. He is now riding along the banks of the Serpentine, no one better mounted, better dressed, better looking, or talking with greater fluency on the topics ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... increased height of women is due to the aesthetic movement, which has now spent its force, but has left certain results, especially in the change of the taste in colors. The woman of the aesthetic artist was nearly always tall, usually willowy, not to say undulating and serpentine. These forms of feminine loveliness and commanding height have been for many years before the eyes of the women of England in paintings and drawings, and it is unavoidable that this pattern should not have its effect upon the new and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... taken till these two undermine it, the walls will stand till they fall of themselves. O thou great thunder-darter of Olympus, forget that thou art Jove, the king of gods, and, Mercury, lose all the serpentine craft of thy caduceus, if ye take not that little little less-than-little wit from them that they have! which short-arm'd ignorance itself knows is so abundant scarce, it will not in circumvention deliver a fly from a spider without ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... Salons for their technique only. There are figures in grand repose, as solemn and dignified as the best in early Egyptian sculpture, others show astonishing vigour, and fantastic freedom of movement and of light and shade. They are cut in the rock in situ, hard, blackish serpentine, which is a soft grey colour on the exposed surfaces. In some parts the carving is as modern in style and free in movement and composition as some tourtmente modern French sculpture. But here, as in Europe and Egypt, marvellous talent ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... minutes at a time. It must have been my eloquence, the power of my dramatic art to so vividly portray the hideous Hosley that she became quite as much affected as if she had intimately known the criminal, and had followed his creeping, serpentine ways for bringing the next creature into his power. It rather pleased me to find that I could exercise this wonderful influence—a force so long latent in a superior intellectual equipment, obscured by a disenchanting ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... himself at the head and called out "Forward." Hurstwood moved with the line. Across Fifth Avenue, through Madison Square by the winding paths, east on Twenty-third Street, and down Third Avenue wound the long, serpentine company. Midnight pedestrians and loiterers stopped and stared as the company passed. Chatting policemen, at various corners, stared indifferently or nodded to the leader, whom they had seen before. On Third Avenue they marched, a seemingly ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... another, till, with much travail, she climbed the wall. Now the forest lay within two crossbow shots, and the forest was of thirty leagues this way and that. Therein also were wild beasts, and beasts serpentine, and she feared that if she entered there they would slay her. But anon she deemed that if men found her there they would hale her back into ...
— Aucassin and Nicolete • Andrew Lang
... here is where the same serpentine that we met on Staten Island crops out, and is known as Castle Hill. It is a prominent object in view when on the Hudson River, lying on Castle Point just above the Stevens Institute and about a mile north of the ferry from ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... sailed for Bahia, and touched at the rock of St. Paul. This is a serpentine formation. Is it not the only island in the Atlantic which is not volcanic? We likewise stayed a few hours at Fernando Noronha; a tremendous surf was running so that a boat was swamped, and the Captain ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... serpentine or double curved chute gates, O O, when formed with surfaces tapering or sloping from their centers towards their ends, and so arranged, relative to intermediately situated diaphragms or plates, r r, that one of the tapering ends of said chute gates, O O, shall ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... down the lines of smoking earth. And gradually, as he went, his sense of sight, and through it his brain, became gently mesmerised as the shallow furrows made by the nozzles of the drill drew themselves perpetually just before him. He could see the bright seeds dribbling into the top of the serpentine tubes, but no eye could catch their swift transit into the earth, which closed and tossed over itself in the wake of the nozzles as foam turns and throws itself about in the wake of a screw. Ishmael, his eyes on that ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... which, if they be first espied they leese their life; but if they prevent, they endanger. So that we are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do. For it is not possible to join serpentine wisdom with the columbine innocency, except men know exactly all the conditions of the serpent; his baseness and going upon his belly, his volubility and lubricity, his envy and sting, and the rest—that ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... should not think a bodkin's point The sole resource of virtue; Nor shall I, though your mood endure, Attempt a final Water-cure Except against my wishes; For I respectfully decline To dignify the Serpentine, And make hors-d'oeuvres for fishes; But if you ask me whether I Composedly can go, Without a look, without a sigh, Why, then ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... Ophiuridae are to be met with at Trincomalie, crawling busily about, and insinuating their long serpentine arms into the irregularities and perforations in the rocks. To these they attach themselves with such a firm grasp, especially when they perceive that they have attracted attention, that it is next to impossible to procure unmutilated specimens without previously depriving them of life, or at least ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... who in Moscow toward the Czar With the demurest of footfalls, Over the Kremlin's pavement white With serpentine and syenite, Steps ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... top of steep Bulwaan, like the huge bar of a gigantic horse-shoe magnet. The horse's frog approximately represents a ridge behind which, and facing Bulwaan, but separated from it by broad stretches of meadow, with the Klip River winding a serpentine course through them, between high banks, is Ladysmith town. Between the frog and the horse-shoe lie our various camps, mostly in radiating hollows, open either to the east or west, but sheltered from cross fires by rough kopjes of porphyritic boulders that have ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... the Hudson, the McKenzie, and many others, compared to which the Thames is but a rivulet, may be excused if he cannot view its not very limpid waters with the same extravagant admiration as the Londoner, who calls the Serpentine a river, and dignifies a pond of a few roods in extent with the name of a lake. Yet there is one feature about the Thames, of which he can scarcely be too proud, and which is unparalleled perhaps in the world,—the often-noticed "forest of masts," extending farther than the eye can reach, ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... live in great numbers on the shores of the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Chile. They swim out to sea in shoals and feed exclusively on seaweed which grows on the bottom at some distance from shore. The animal swims with perfect ease and quickness by a serpentine movement of its body and flattened tail, its legs meanwhile being closely pressed to its side and motionless. This is also the method of propulsion of ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... of this mineral so highly esteemed by smokers, comes from Hrubschitz and Oslawan in Austrian Moravia where it is found embedded between thick strata of serpentine rock. It is also found in Spain at Esconshe, Vallecas and Toledo; the best however comes from Asia Minor. The chief places are the celebrated meerschaum mines from six to eight miles southeast of Eskis ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... been hired at a rental of L20 from a Turkish merchant, had been greatly enlarged, and the gardens, with their summer-houses, covered alleys, and serpentine walks, were superior to most English gardens of the same size. Lady Hester's constant outlay in building arose from her idea that people would fly to her for succour and protection during the revolutions that she believed to be impending all over the world; her camels, asses, and mules were kept ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... minerals produce slags only with soda: stilpnosiderite, plombgomme, serpentine, silicate of manganese (from Piedmont), mica from granite, pimelite, pinite, blue dichroite, sphenc, karpholite, pyrochlore, tungstate of lime, green soda ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous
... female figure appeared in the far distance, on the broad avenue that leads direct from the Serpentine. She was young and graceful in form; but she walked with a quick step, with her eyes looking down, like one who regarded neither youth nor grace. Curiously enough, this downcast look gave to her fair face a modest, captivating grace, which is never seen to sit ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... "if I marry six wives, I shall still be in love with my cousin—a little fair girl, with great grey eyes and the prettiest ways and a heart of the purest gold. And now shall we cry here or by The Serpentine?" ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... Eliot has quite surpassed herself, and in all literature there is no delineation of a character surpassing this. One of her critics says there is no character in her novels "more subtly devised or more consistently developed. His serpentine beauty, his winning graciousness, his aesthetic refinement, his masculine energy of intellect, his insinuating affectionateness, with his selfish love of pleasure and his cowardly recoil from pain, his subdulous serenity and treacherous calm, as of a faithless summer sea, make ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... tiger, softly, and went out awestruck, holding her hand, and paddling three steps to each of her serpentine glides. ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... gentleman. He manages to exist at Cambridge on a hundred pounds a year. He has a coat; it was once a very good coat. But the trousers—they're not so good. Well, he goes up to London, gets into good society, owing to an early-morning adventure on the banks of the Serpentine. He is led into telling lies—my idea, you see, is to show the gradual corruption of the soul—calls himself the son of some great landed proprietor in Devonshire. Meanwhile the coat becomes older and older, and he hardly dares to wear the trousers. Can't ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... nearly half a minute. She was reflecting on a singular little fact which made itself clear to her just then. She was certainly not a child; she was not even a very young girl, at twenty-four; she had never been prudish, and she did not affect the pre-Serpentine innocence of Eve before the fall. Yet it was suddenly apparent to her that because she was a singer men treated her as if she were a married woman, and would have done so if she had been even five years younger. Talking to her ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... comparatively level and clear from trees, we had a good view of Inverness and its surroundings. This hill was used as the Cemetery, and many people had been buried, both on the top and along the sides of the serpentine walk leading up to it, their remains resting there peacefully until the resurrection, "when the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible." We considered it an ideal place for the burial of the dead, and quite a number of people were walking ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... was nearly over when a sudden sharp frost set in. Bobby and True were delighted to see the snow fall, and walk out when the pavements and roads were slippery with ice; and, when their father took them to the Serpentine to see the skating on the ice they were enchanted. Then, as the frost continued, he got them each a pair of skates, and gave them their first lessons in the art. He himself was a beautiful skater, as he ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre
... the men's heads down in that part. She is the daintiest thing under a bonnet on this planet. So say the Serpentine Mews, to a man. She lives quietly, sings at concerts, drives out at five every day, and returns at seven sharp for dinner. Seldom goes out at other times, except when she sings. Has only one male visitor, but a good deal of him. He is dark, handsome, and dashing; never calls less than ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... completely explored during that period of municipal regimen—for it was the season of yellow fever, and there was a rigid quarantine. Dr. Dewitt, the health officer, who had known my father, received me very kindly, and my time wore off imperceptibly, while I footed its serpentine vales and ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... foliage below. They might judge of the long curvature of the conformation of the range just here, for on the opposite height was visible at intervals the road they had traveled, winding in and out among the trees, ascending the mountain in serpentine coils; they beheld the Cove beneath from a new angle, and further yet the barren cherty slope on which, despite the distance, the witch-face could still be discerned by eyes practiced in marking its lineaments, trained ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... then in possession of the factory, accompanied me up the Port Logo branch the following morning, taking a number of towns in our way, and visiting the chiefs. The course of this branch of the river is extremely serpentine, and is navigable for light vessels to a little way from the town of Port Logo which is now the residence of Alimami, a Mandingo chief, who assumes the title of emperor. The banks are overgrown with the mangrove tree, interwoven together, so as to form an almost impenetrable ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... solicitor informing me that I have come into 1,000,000 through the will of an Australian gold-digger named Tomkins. On referring to my diary I find that I saved his life two years ago by plunging into the Serpentine. This is very gratifying. Was late at the office as I had to look in at the Palace on the way, in order to get knighted, but managed to get a good deal of work done before I was interrupted by a madman with a razor, who demanded 100. Shot him after a desperate struggle. Tea at ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... to him. He passed beneath that architectural effort and walked into the Park till he got upon the spreading grass. Here he continued to walk; he took his way across the elastic turf and came out by the Serpentine. He watched with a friendly eye the diversions of the London people, he bent a glance almost encouraging on the young ladies paddling their sweethearts about the lake and the guardsmen tickling tenderly with their bearskins ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... glimmers in the barn-yard: the cattle are having their fodder betimes. Scarlet-capped chanticleer gets himself on the nearest rail fence and lifts up his rancorous voice like some irate old cardinal launching the curse of Rome. Something crawls swiftly along the gray of the serpentine turnpike—a cart, with the driver lashing a jaded horse. A quick wind goes shivering by, and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... Prophet, and she fixed upon my face her eyes, brilliant and humid, like the reflection of stars in a well; I have recognized, in the At-Meidan, the famous beauty of that poor Greek woman killed by a cannon ball at the base of the serpentine column; I have been face to face, in the Fanar, with Kara-Abderrahman, the handsome young Turk of the time of Orkhan; I have seen Coswa, the she-camel of the Prophet; I have encountered Kara-bulut, Selim's black steed; I have met the poor poet Fignahi, condemned ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... passive nature or female principle or the emblem of water. The third symbol indicates the destroyer, the reformer or the renewer, (the uniter of the two) and thus the preserver or perpetuator eternally renewing itself. The universality of serpentine worship (or Phallic adoration) is attested by emblematic sculptures or ...
— The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - An Interpretation • Sanger Brown, II
... from want of recent experience at the whip, he should meet with any mishap; but, picturing to himself the awkwardness of three in such circumstances, Bob would not hear of this; and nothing more serious happened to his driving than that the wheel-marks formed two serpentine lines along the road during the first mile or two, before he had got his hand in, and that the horse shied at a milestone, a piece of paper, a sleeping tramp, and a wheelbarrow, just to make use of the opportunity ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... a great piece of water here called the Serpentine, because it curves round like a serpent, and anyone can hire a boat and go for a row, and sometimes the whole of the water is covered with boats. At other times in the winter, when the ice is safe, there are hundreds and hundreds of skaters to be seen. And ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... the free and enlightened must obey; the consequence is, that the inhabitants of New Orleans look forward to the Shell-road ride, or drive, with as much interest and satisfaction as our metropolitan swells do to the Serpentine or the Row. ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... them; and in that the success is limited to the sides of the single entrance door. The flanks and vaults of this porch, indeed, deserve our almost unqualified admiration for their beautiful polychrome masonry. They are built of large masses of green serpentine alternating with red and white marble, and the joints are so delicate and firm that a casual spectator might pass the gate with contempt, thinking the ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... is an extensive plain which appears to extend up both those rivers many miles and back to the mountains. the extreme point to which I can see the S. W. fork bears S. 30 W. distant about 12 miles. this stream passes through a similar country with the other two and is more divided and serpentine in it's course than either of the others; it also possesses abundanly more timber in it's bottoms. the timber here consists of the narrowleafed cottonwood almost entirely. but little box alder or sweet willow the underbrush thick and as heretofore discribed in the ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... when the supply of hot water can be drawn from a separate boiler. When, however, it is necessary to work at the boil, then the vat must be fitted with a steam coil. This is best laid along the bottom in a serpentine form. Above the pipe should be an open lattice-work bottom, which, while it permits the free circulation of boiling water in the vat, prevents the material being dyed from coming in contact with the steam pipe. This is important if uniform shades are to be dyed, for any excessive ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech
... her word, Strong, and dissolve partnership, if I go on. I wish I had three hundred a year, and was away. At a German watering-place you can do devilish well with three hundred a year. But my habits are so d——reckless: I wish I was in the Serpentine. I wish I was dead, by Gad, I wish I was. I wish I had never touched those confounded bones. I had such a run of luck last night, with five for the main, and seven to five all night, until those ruffians wanted to pay me with Altamont's bill upon me. The luck turned from that minute. Never held ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the morning of the 13th to stem the current under sail but, as the course of the river was very serpentine, we found that greater progress could be made by tracking. Steel River presents much beautiful scenery; it winds through a narrow but well wooded valley which at every turn disclosed to us an agreeable variety of prospect, rendered more ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... nose down the first tortuous street into which his irresponsible feet conducted him. At the lower end of it, on the bank of the serpentine stream, he perceived an open gate in a cemented rock wall. Inside he saw camp fires and a row of low wooden sheds built against three sides of the enclosing wall. He entered the enclosure. Under the sheds many horses were ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... Captains Darling and Warren. At the end of fifteen minutes we halted between two hedges and rows of tall trees. The policeman told me the men could sit against the banks of the hedges, so that first rest was good. In ten minutes we were off again. The road seemed to wind in and out in serpentine curves. The land on either side was taken up with truck and ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... dress, sitting in the dining-room with his father and mother; she had brought her knitting so as not to waste a minute; and while they talked of him, her needles clicked rapidly to and fro. Mrs. Wallace was lying in a long chair, coiled up in a serpentine, characteristic attitude; every movement wafted to him the oppressive perfume she wore; the smile on her lips, the caress of her eyes, were maddening. He loved her more even than he had imagined; his love was a fury, blind and destroying. He repeated to himself ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... any city. Grace Church, on Ninth and West streets, is a large Gothic temple, seating nearly eight hundred persons—warmed, frescoed and heavily carpeted inside, and walled externally with brownstone mixed with the delicate pea-green serpentine of Chadd's Ford. The architect was a native Wilmingtonian—Thomas Dixon—now of Baltimore. The windows, including a very brilliant oriel, are finely stained: the font is a delicate piece of carving, the organ is grand, and the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... up the dry river bed, with the Great Wall on the left stretching its serpentine length across the hills, and on the right picturesque cliffs two hundred feet in height. At their bases nestle mud-roofed cottages and Chinese inns, but farther up the river the low hills are all of loess—brown, wind-blown dust, packed hard, which can be cut ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... wonderfully carved ceilings and immense fire-dogs, still in use in 1799. The inn was later the receiving office of the Royal Humane Society, and to it was brought the body of Shelley's wife after she had drowned herself in the Serpentine. ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... mustache, which gave dignity and character to his otherwise almost too delicately feminine features. And he stood on the open moor just a hundred yards outside his own front door at Penmorgan, on the Lizard peninsula, looking westward down a great wedge-shaped gap in the solid serpentine rock to a broad belt of sea beyond without a ship or a sail on it. The view was indeed, as Eustace Le Neve admitted, a somewhat bleak and dreary one. For miles, as far as the eye could reach, on either ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... problems needful to be brought before the notice of the people. Her face was colourless,—the dead gold hair rippling thickly away in loose clusters from the white brows, fell into their accustomed serpentine twisted knot at the nape of her neck; and the scarlet sash she wore, alone relieved the statuesque white folds of her draperies; but as she spoke, something altogether superphysical seemed to exhale from her as heat exhales from fire—a strange essence of overpowering ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... understand he did not trip, he had struck at it with his Service axe—the wolf thing tracking the red stain of the outlaws' trail along the base of the sand bank out across the ash colored silt sands. He watched it pausing, where the wind had eddied the dust in serpentine lines over the tracks, sniffing the air, loping across the break, and on out again at a run, nose down to earth: a blot against the sky; the burned out sulphur sky above an earth of embers and ashes. Was it a mirage; or was he going delirious; or had he fallen asleep ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... sense he will just duck you in the Serpentine and make you apologise. Personally I consider myself anything but a baby, and far superior to any ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... vile deceiver and a rank hypocrite, therefore we must diligently watch her serpentine movements, for she will appear where you least expect her, as she wraps about her the American flag and other symbols of patriotism and goes about as ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... without use, without aim, except its own overflowing and all-sufficing fascination. But when a man dances, it reminds me of that amusing French book called "Le Diable Boiteux," which has been free-thinkingly translated, "The Devil on Two Sticks." A woman's dancing is gliding, swaying, serpentine. A man's is jerks, hops, convulsions, and acute angles. The woman is light, airy, indistinctly defined. Airy movements are in keeping. The man is sombre in hue, grave in tone, distinctly outlined; and nothing is more incongruous, to my thinking, than his dancing. ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... on account of the peace, held in Hyde and St. James's Parks, in the latter of which there was a grand display of fireworks; while, still further to amuse the John and Jenny Gulls of the cities of London and Westminster, there was a sham naval engagement got up on the Serpentine River, representing a battle between the British and American fleets. Of course the British fleet was victorious, and the Americans struck their colours, amidst the huzzas and shouts of the family of the Gulls, who, having for nearly a quarter ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... dread Than he with hundred lidless watching orbs, And slept, and dreamed, and dreaming saw the sea. But in the stormy nights, when all was dark, And the wild tempest swept with slanting wing Against her refuge, and the heavy spray Shot through the doorway serpentine cold arms To seize the fore-doomed morsel of the sea, She slept not, evermore stung to new life By new sea-terrors. Now it was the gull: His clanging pinions darted through the arch, And flapped about her ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... with stern regard he thus repell'd. Out of my sight, thou Serpent, that name best Befits thee with him leagu'd, thy self as false And hateful; nothing wants, but that thy shape, Like his, and colour Serpentine may shew 870 Thy inward fraud, to warn all Creatures from thee Henceforth; least that too heav'nly form, pretended To hellish falshood, snare them. But for thee I had persisted happie, had not thy pride And wandring vanitie, when lest was safe, Rejected my forewarning, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... raised on a basement. (f) Mukhalingas and koshas are still used in worship. (g) There are verandahs resembling those at Angkor Wat. They have sloping stone roofs, sculptures in relief on the inside wall and a series of windows in the outside wall. (h) The doors of the Linga shrines have a serpentine ornamentation and are very like those of the Bayon. (i) A native gentleman told me that he had seen temples with five towers in this neighbourhood, but I have not ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... "The letter is right enough," she answered, after a second reading, "though its guileless simplicity is, perhaps, under the circumstances, just a leetle overdone; but the handwriting—the handwriting is duplicity itself: a cunning, serpentine hand, no openness or honesty in it. Depend upon it, that girl ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... south of Little Hermon is Gilboa, where Saul and his sons were slain; that range of mountains forming the southern wall of Esdraelon is Carmel, where Elijah held his trial with the priests of Baal; here below us, winding in its serpentine course, is the Jordan in its great trough or Ghor; in the center of the picture are the mountains of Samaria, with Ebal and Gerizim; to the south are the mountains of Judea, where lies Jerusalem; and that broad expanse of water beyond all these is the Mediterranean, the 'great ...
— My Three Days in Gilead • Elmer Ulysses Hoenshal
... contemporary, have been seen flying over the Serpentine. Most of the snap was taken out of the performance by the fact that none of them delivered The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... feet long may be called a toy ship, but it is a toy that can teach much to an Admiral, and I should not like to have as my comrade on a voyage the man of forty who can pass the Serpentine without a glance at the little ragged urchin there, who is half in the water himself while he reaches with a twig his tiny lugger after its long voyage across the lake among ducks, and row-boats, and billows ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... nor the last of the men-at-arms hastening to obey the Kaiser's mandate. A string of horse and foot in serpentine knots stretched along the flat land, flashing colours livelier than the spring-meadows bordering their line of passage. Guy, with a nod for all, and a greeting for the best-disposed, pushed on toward the van, till the gathering block compelled him ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and Kieff waited for him, quite motionless, with thin lips drawn back, showing a snarling gleam of teeth. But just as Burke reached him he moved. His right arm shot forth with a serpentine ferocity, and in a flash the muzzle of a ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... mountain, distant at least forty miles. Others had no known type nearer than Connecticut, in the opposite direction, while the gneiss and mica slate of the island of New-York, with their various embedded minerals, the serpentine and many of the magnesian minerals of Hoboken, with sandstone and trap of the Pallisadoc range, were distinctly recognisable. In this great excavation, where a region of a mile square was wholly removed, to a depth, in many places, of thirty feet, no animal remains, as far as can be learnt, were ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... narrow alley Tarzan made his way, turning his giant shoulders sideways that they might enter at all. Behind him trailed his black warriors. At the turn in the cleft the stairs ended, and the path was level; but it wound and twisted in a serpentine fashion, until suddenly at a sharp angle it debouched upon a narrow court, across which loomed an inner wall equally as high as the outer. This inner wall was set with little round towers alternating along its entire summit with pointed ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Prato, pop. 13,100. Hotels: Giardinetto, Contrucci, surrounded by ancient walls, and defended by a castle built by the Ghibelines. The interior and exterior of the Cathedral are faced with white and green marble in bands. The nave has columns of serpentine. The elevated choir has good frescoes by Filippo Lippi, and in a chapel are ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... was now exactly above their heads. The last ascent boldly skirted the shoulder of the mountain, and then doubled upward in a series of serpentine coils. Below them the whole of Lake Garda was spread like a map. Mr. Wilder and the Englishman, having paused at the edge of the declivity, were endeavouring to trace the boundary line of Austria, and they called ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster
... irregular. Copies of two of these tracks (all four being nearly alike) were made on tracing paper placed over the glass-plates after they had been varnished; and they are as exact as possible considering the nature of the margins (Fig. 18). They suffice to show that there was some lateral, almost serpentine movement, and that the tips in their downward course pressed with unequal force on the plates, as [page 29] the tracks varied in breadth. The more perfectly serpentine tracks made by the radicles of Phaseolus multiflorus ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... therefore more artificially restrained and trimmed. Nothing can be more picturesque than an old grapevine, with almost a trunk of its own, clinging fast around its supporting tree. Nor does the picture lack its moral. You might twist it to more than one grave purpose, as you saw how the knotted, serpentine growth imprisoned within its strong embrace the friend that had supported its tender infancy; and how (as seemingly flexible natures are prone to do) it converted the sturdier tree entirely to its own selfish ends, extending its innumerable arms on ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in this region to an extent, perhaps, unsurpassed any where in the world. At the Coppermine River, three hundred miles from the Sault de St. Marie, this metal, in a pure state, nearly covers the face of a serpentine rock, and is also found within the stone in solid masses. Iron is abundant in many parts of Upper Canada; at Charlotteville, eight miles from Lake Erie, the metal produced is of a very fine quality. The Marmora Iron Works, about thirty-two miles north of the Bay of Quinte, on the River Trent, ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... the fishing village. Thither the old man wended his way. The tower, rising high above shrubs and intervening rocks, rendered a guide unnecessary. It was a calm evening. The path, which was narrow and rugged, wound its serpentine course amid grey rocks, luxuriant brambles, grasses, and flowering shrubs. There were no trees. The want of shelter on that exposed spot rendered their growth impossible. The few that had been planted had been cut down by the nor'-west ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... the zest of seeing London from a new standpoint, that of moneyed idleness, he strolled towards Hyde Park. He took the road known as the Ladies' Mile, crossed the Serpentine by the bridge, and came back by the Row. There, near the Albert Gate crossing, a lady had reined in her chestnut hunter and was talking to an old gentleman standing near the rails. Had Royson stared at her, he might have remembered the eyes, and the finely-cut contours ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... going to be very cold. Some people do not mind the cold. There are people bathing in the Serpentine at this moment, I suppose, and apparently nothing can be done about it. They ju-just break the ice and ju-jump in. And yet it is not their ice; it is the KING'S. It seems to me that it ought to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 22, 1920 • Various
... the Duke of Bayswater," ask him, in a quiet tone, where he last met the Duchess. If he says Hyde-Park (meaning the Earl of) is an honest good fellow, enquire whether he prefers Lady Mary or Lady Seraphina Serpentine. This drops him like a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... and its riders had become suddenly detestable to the wanderer; he would not run the risk of seeing that insolently joyous cavalcade come galloping past again. Beyond a narrow stretch of tree-shaded grass lay the placid sunlit water of the Serpentine, and Yeovil made a short cut across the turf to reach its ...
— When William Came • Saki
... readers have been very proud of Henry James, and yet unable to defend him successfully against critics who pulled out handfuls of serpentine sentences from his latest novel, asking, "Do you call this fiction?" It was not fiction, not fiction at least as she used to be written; it was subtle, graceful, cunning analysis of life. Fiction is synthesis— building up, making a Becky Sharp, ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... comparison, the purest ivory alone can give an idea of the dazzling whiteness of her polished satin skin, of a texture so fresh and so firm, that some drops of water, collected and still remaining about the roots of her hair from the bath, rolled in serpentine lines over her shoulders, like pearls, or beads, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... In a dream that loved one's face meets mine, But the house is narrow, the place is bleak Where, outside, rain and wind combine With a furtive ear, if I strive to speak, With a hostile eye at my flushing cheek, With a malice that marks each word, each sign! O enemy sly and serpentine, Uncoil thee from the waking man! Do I hold the Past Thus firm and fast Yet doubt if the Future hold I can? This path so soft to pace shall lead Thro' the magic of May to herself indeed! Or narrow if needs the house must be, Outside are the storms and strangers: we— Oh, close, ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... in the king's garden at Paris, a species of serpentine aloes without prickles, whose large and beautiful flower exhales a strong odour of the vanilla, during the time of its expansion, which is very short. It does not blow till towards the month of July—you then ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... cardinal, and in 1316 was elected Pope at the conclave of Lyons. He at once dropped down the Rhone, and fixed the seat of his pontificate at Avignon. Able, learned though he was, he was not above the superstitions of his age. He had been given a serpentine ring by the Countess of Foix, and had lost it. He believed that it had been stolen from him wherewith to work some magic spell against his health. The Pope pledged all his goods, movable and immovable, for the safe restoration of his ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... the theatre, and I remember with what contempt, in his sweet forgivable way, the old man spoke of much that passes nowadays for criticism. He said Hazlitt was exactly the opposite of Lord Chesterfield, who advised his son, if he could not get at a thing in a straight line, to try the serpentine one. There were no crooked pathways in Hazlitt's intellect. His style is brilliant, but never cloyed with ornamentation. Hazlitt's paper on Gifford was thought by Procter to be as pungent a bit of ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... light of the candles, the face of Jennka became more clearly visible. The lividness had almost gone off it, remaining only here and there on the temples, on the nose, and between the eyes, in party-coloured, uneven, serpentine spots. Between the parted dark lips slightly glimmered the whiteness of the teeth, and the tip of the bitten tongue was still visible. Out of the open collar of the neck, which had taken on the colour of old parchment, showed two stripes: one dark—the mark of the rope; another red—the sign ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... with a torrent of flames; the Acharusian fen is dreadful for its stench and filth: nor does Charon, the ferryman, who wafts souls over, occasion any less horror; Cerberus, the triple-headed dog, stands ready with open mouths to receive them; and the Furies shake at them their serpentine locks. ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... Meccas and Medinas that have fallen, overcome by weariness, at the wayside; or have encountered storms in the great aerial sea, and lost compass and reckoning, and have been lured by false lights to perish miserably at the hands of their cruel enemies. It may be true that gulls are seen on the Serpentine, that woodcocks are flushed in Lincoln's Inn Fields, but the citizen who goes to his office in the morning and returns after the lamps have been lighted, does not see them, and they are nothing in his life. Those who concern themselves to chronicle such incidents might just as well, ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... produce a pressure of nine atmospheres or more by direct heating. The flanges of the tubing are provided with a cut-off of angle iron identical with that of the tube, D. By means of this arrangement the cocks and the flanges, E, permit of communication between the serpentine tubing, R, and the boiler being interrupted; while the heat developed by the fire-place, F, causes an active circulation in both the tubing ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... until he was considered old enough to go with one of the annual school treats. His mother told him that the country in Cornwall was infinitely more beautiful than Kensington Gardens, and that compared with the sea the Serpentine was nothing at all. The sea! He had heard it once in a prickly shell, and it had sounded beautiful. As for the country he had read a story by Mrs. Ewing called Our Field, and if the country was the tiniest part as wonderful as that, well . . . meanwhile ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... last things in Tom's mind, for just then, as Dave resumed the pole, and began sending the boat quickly through the water, the boy was trying to grasp an eel, which had found the meshes one size too small for his well-fed body, and was now in regular serpentine fashion trying to discover a retreat into which he could plunge, and so escape the inevitable frying-pan ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... parks, the ancient manor of Hyde. It was an early resort of fashion, for the Puritans in their time complained of it as the resort of "most shameful powdered-hair men and painted women." It covers about three hundred and ninety acres, and has a pretty sheet of water called the Serpentine. The fashionable drive is on the southern side, and here also is the famous road for equestrians known as Rotten Row, which stretches nearly a mile and a half. On a fine afternoon in the season the display on these roads is grand. In Hyde Park are held the great military reviews and the ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... had informed himself on the matter, thereupon explained that the procession would first of all ascend the serpentine road—constructed at great cost up the hillside—and that it would afterwards pass behind the Basilica, descend by the inclined way on the right hand, and then spread ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... went down in a body to Kew one Saturday, with the idea of hiring a boat there, and pulling to Richmond and back; one of their number, a shock-headed youth, named Joskins, who had once or twice taken out a boat on the Serpentine, told them ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... said Sir Philip. "I'm too hot, damme, to walk with you any more—but I'm your man if you've a mind for a swim—here's the Serpentine river, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... instinctively, comprehended that there was, beneath this outward sign, an inward and mysterious grace: it followed the action of the piece in all its serpentine windings; it listened for four hours, with pious attention (avec recueillement et religion), to the sound of this rolling river of thoughts, which may have appeared to it new and bold, perhaps, but chaste ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the presence of water, either in stream, pond, or lake, far or near, or the absence of water altogether—all these enter immediately into the manner in which the lawn of a house should be laid out, and worked, and planted. But as a rule, all filagree work, such as serpentine paths, and tortuous, unmeaning circles, artificial piles of rock, and a multitude of small ornaments—so esteemed, by some—should never be introduced into the lawn of a farm house. It is unmeaning, in the ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... the work advanced. At first the walls took a beeline track up the hillside, but when they reached the higher ground, where scars of rock and patches of reedy swamp lay in their path, their progress became serpentine. But whether straight or winding, the white walls mounted ever upwards, and Peregrine knew that his doom was sealed. The moors which Ibbotsons had shepherded for two hundred years would soon pass out of his charge; the most ancient ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman |
