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Shelving   Listen
noun
Shelving  n.  
1.
The act of fitting up shelves; as, the job of shelving a closet.
2.
The act of laying on a shelf, or on the shelf; putting off or aside; as, the shelving of a claim.
3.
Material for shelves; shelves, collectively.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Shelving" Quotes from Famous Books



... according to any set system, or according to subjects upon the shelves of a library, is not easy, and for many reasons it is not worth attempting. Unless the library is a very large one, say, ten to twenty thousand volumes, with ample and adaptable shelving, it is not to be desired. The main difficulty in shelf classification lies in the fact that books on similar and kindred subjects are issued in all sizes. There are books on Furniture, for instance, in folio, in quarto, and in octavo. When shelf classification is imperative, the ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys

... never saw my companions again. By good fortune I was buoyed by the steering-oar I still grasped, and by great good fortune a fling of sea, at the right instant, at the right spot, threw me far up the gentle slope of the one shelving rock on all that terrible shore. I was not hurt. I was not bruised. And with brain reeling from weakness I was able to crawl and scramble farther up beyond the clutching ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... occupied the round summit of a hill with slopes shelving down in a series of fairly large gardens, which Morestal cultivated with genuine enthusiasm. The property was surrounded by a high wall, the top of which was finished off with an iron trellis bristling with spikes. A spring leapt from place to place and fell ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc

... the natural tracking-path was across the stream; on the other side also was the best camping-spot, a shelving ledge of rock with a low earth bank above. In order to be ready for them, therefore, he stripped and swam across below the rapid, towing his clothes and his pack on an improvised raft, that he broke up immediately on landing. Dressing, he took ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner

... a chance to secure the shanty-boat to some rocks; and as the neighborhood seemed lonely, they chose to go ashore and build a fire on the sandy stretch that ran under the shelving bank. ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne

... As I was hunting through the wild ravines Of Shechenthal, untrod by mortal foot,— There, as I took my solitary way Along a shelving ledge of rocks, where 'twas Impossible to step on either side; For high above rose, like a giant wall, The precipice's side, and far below The Shechen thunder'd o'er its ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

... her eyes fell on the noble mien of the knight, who, with his spear in his hand, and wrapped in his dark mantle of mingled greens, led the way, with a graceful but rapid step, along the shelving declivity. Turning suddenly to the left, he struck into a defile between two prodigious craggy mountains, whose brown cheeks, trickling with ten thousand mountains, whose brown cheeks, trickling with ten thousand rills, seemed to weep over the deep gloom of the valley beneath. ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... shelving our book-hunter can speak from experience, for he has provided proper accommodation for a thousand to three thousand volumes in three temporary abodes.[47] It takes a little time, a fair amount of trouble, and an outlay of three or four pounds; but when ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan

... called Batu Sapor—the Stone Lean-to Hut—in the vernacular, and the name is a descriptive one. It is situated on the banks of the Breseh, a little babbling stream which runs down to the Slim. The banks are high and shelving, but, on the top, they are flat, and it is here that the gigantic overhanging granite boulder stands, which gives the place its name. It is of enormous size, and is probably deeply embedded in the ground, for large trees have taken root and grow upon its upper surface. ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... for five or six miles, we passed the southernmost point of a prominent sandstone range, the nearest portion of which lay about a mile and a half to the westward. At about nine miles we again touched the creek, where it is about three chains broad. The banks are firm and shelving, from ten to twelve feet above the water, and lined with box, acacias, some large gums, gigantic marshmallows, polygonum, etc. In the creek there is abundance of fish, and the ducks and other waterfowl on it are numberless. ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills

... length above the Allier. A more unsightly prospect at this season of the year it would be hard to fancy. Shelving hills rose round it on all sides, here dabbled with wood and fields, there rising to peaks alternately naked and hairy with pines. The colour throughout was black or ashen, and came to a point in the ruins of the castle of Luc, which pricked up impudently ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... slipped off its back, taking care to hold on to its mane, near the crupper, with one hand, while I struck out with the other. Gerald himself, being so much lighter, stuck on, and guiding his horse to a shelving part of the bank, ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston

... this too public moment, I could not tell. His eyes seemed to be upon the horses, and he drove with the same mastering ease that had roped the wild pony yesterday. We passed the ramparts of Medicine Bow,—thick heaps and fringes of tin cans, and shelving mounds of bottles cast out of the saloons. The sun struck these at a hundred glittering points. And in a moment we were in the clean plains, with the prairie-dogs and the pale herds of antelope. The great, still air bathed us, pure as water and strong as wine; the sunlight flooded the world; ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister

... William's Creek. Crossing a creek one party of prospectors was overtaken by a terrific thunderstorm, with rock-shattering flashes of lightning. Shivering in the canyon, but afraid to stand under trees {45} or near rocks, with the gravel shelving down all round them, one of the men exclaimed sardonically, 'Well, boys, this is lightning.' The stream became known as Lightning Creek and proved one of the richest in Cariboo. William's Creek was panning poorer and poorer and ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut

... back and forth to make easier work for the pony, until he was high above the live-oak belt and coming into shale rock and rubble that made hard going for the horse. He dismounted, led the pony to a shelving, rock-made shade, and tied him there. Then, with canteen and food slung over his shoulder, Johnny climbed to the peak and sat down puffing on the shady side of one of ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower

... settled again it was seen that the enemy's redoubt had ceased to exist. In its place, where there had been a crisscross of trenches and sand-bag shelters for their machine-guns and a network of barbed wire, there was now an enormous crater, hollowed deep with shelving sides surrounded by tumbled earth heaps which had blocked up the enemy's trenches on either side of the position, so that they could not rush into the cavern and take possession. It was our men who "rushed" the crater and lay there ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... the island, cropping out with jagged edges of rock down to the sandy beaches of the sea-shore. A deep narrow inlet of blue water lay pure and still near the base of the rocky height, where, too, was a shelving curve of white sand, sprinkled about by a few mat sheds, while on the other side the rocks arose to an elevation of a hundred and fifty feet, forming a precipitous wall to the water. The inlet here took a sharp turn, scooped out in a secluded basin, and then narrowing to less than forty ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise

... thousand, sheets of all kinds included. Supposing three-fourths of these to be volumes, of one size or another, and to require on the average an inch of shelf space, the result will be that in every two years nearly a mile of new shelving will be required to meet the wants of a single library. But, whatever may be the present rate of growth, it is small in comparison with what it is likely to become. The key of the question lies in the hands of the United Kingdom and the United States jointly. In this matter there rests upon these ...
— On Books and the Housing of Them • William Ewart Gladstone

... lay there he never knew; when consciousness returned to him all was still; the moon was shining down clear as the day, the west wind was blowing softly among his hair. He staggered to his feet and leaned against the timber of the upper wall; the shelving, impenetrable darkness sloped below; above were the glories of a summer sky at midnight, around him the hills and woods were bathed in the silver light; he looked, and ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... have happened in this wise. The wreck was abandoned by us some little distance out here, to windward. The schooner's masts, of course, pointed to leeward, and when she drifted in here, they have first touched on a shelving rock, and as they have been shoved up, little by little, they have acted as levers to right the hull, until the cargo has shifted back into its proper berth, which has suddenly set the ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... that make the meadow brooklet murmur Are the keys on which it plays. O'er every shelving rock its touch grows firmer, Resounding notes ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz

... median line according as the body lies on this or that side. The two lungs must, therefore, be alternately affected as to their capacity according as the heart occupies space on either side of the thorax. In expiration, the heart, E, is more uncovered by the shelving edges of the lungs than in inspiration. In pneumothorax of either of the pleural sacs the air compresses the lung, pushes the heart from its normal position, and the space which the air occupies in the pleura yields a clear hollow sound on percussion, whilst, by the ear or stethoscope applied ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise

... women of the world he knows too well; but a pretty little ingenue can twist him round her finger. They rowed on and on, till they drew abreast of Seamew's island. It is a jagged stack or skerry, well out to sea, very wild and precipitous on the landward side, but shelving gently outward; perhaps an acre in extent, with steep gray cliffs, covered at that time with crimson masses of red valerian. Mrs. Granton rowed up close to it. "Oh, what lovely flowers!" she cried, throwing her head back and gazing at them. "I wish I could get some! Let's land here and pick them. ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen

... in oblivion), but has of late years been the property of a German from Petersburg. The village lies on the slope of a barren hill, which is cut in half from top to bottom by a tremendous ravine. It is a yawning chasm, with shelving sides hollowed out by the action of rain and snow, and it winds along the very centre of the village street; it separates the two sides of the unlucky hamlet far more than a river would do, for a river ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev

... scent and the sight of flowers are the source of so much enjoyment to most persons, and the means of keeping them in our houses, as a rule, is such a puzzle, that the "detachable shelving for windows" ought to find favor with everybody, young ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 38, July 29, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... was approaching a shelving beach. Fortunately, from what could be distinguished of its character, it was not ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay

... living, true, reef-polypes make their appearance; and, in different forms, coat the steep seaward face of the reef to a depth of one hundred or even one hundred and fifty feet. Beyond this depth the sounding-lead rests, not upon the wall-like face of the reef, but on the ordinary shelving sea-bottom. And the distance to which a fringing reef extends from the land corresponds with that at which the sea has a depth of twenty or ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... clay-bind, it's not clunch such as you get deeper. Oh, it's easy workin'—you don't have to knock your guts out. There's no need for shots, Miss Huffen—we bring it down—you see here—" And he stooped, pointing to a shallow, shelving excavation which he was making under the coal. The working was low, you must stoop all the time. The roof and the timbered sides of the way seemed to press on you. It was as if she were in her tomb for ever, like the dead and everlasting ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... his eyes flashing through the shrouding mist like burning stars, "how I wish you felt with me! Were it possible to build a home on this shelving rock, I would willingly dwell here forever, surrounded by this veiling mist. With you thus clasped in my arms, I could be happy, in darkness and clouds, in solitude and dreariness, anywhere, everywhere,—with the conviction that you loved me, and that ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... but for once August had no eyes for it: he only watched for his old friend. Then he, a little unnoticeable figure enough, like a score of other boys in Hall, crept, unseen by any of his brothers or sisters, out of the porch and over the shelving uneven square, and followed in the ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)

... unwelcome. There thus remained only the current financial functions which the consuls had hitherto discharged when, as frequently happened, no election of censors had taken place, and which they now took as a part of their ordinary official duties. Compared with the substantial gain that by the shelving of the censorship the magistracy lost its crowning dignity, it was a matter of little moment and was not at all prejudicial to the sole dominion of the supreme governing corporation, that—with a view to satisfy the ambition of the senators ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... and the landing parties got off about 8.30. The landing was very bad—a ledge of rock weathered out of the cliff to our right formed, as it were, a staging along which it was possible to pass on to a steeply shelving talus slope in front of us. The sea being comparatively smooth, everybody was landed dry, with their guns ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... the prevailing gloom. Before them lay a deep gully, the sinuosities of which could be traced from the elevated position where they stood, though its termination was hidden by other projecting ridges. Further on, the sides of the mountain were bare and rugged, and covered with shelving stone. Beyond the defile before mentioned, and over the last mountain ridge, lay a wide valley, bounded on the further side by the hills overlooking Colne, and the mountain defile, now laid open to the travellers, exhibiting in the midst of the dark heathy ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... the after-part of the ship, and help, so far as their collected weight might do so, to raise the bows now sunk in the soft sand. He assured them that there was not the slightest danger; the vessel was uninjured; we were ashore on a yielding and shelving beach; and that, if they would remain perfectly quiet, and obey orders, he had some hope that he might ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various

... Fourah Bay, we remarked in the high background a fine brook, cold, clear, and pure, affording a delicious bath; it is almost dry in the Dries, and swells to a fiumara during the Rains. Its extent was then a diminutive rivulet tumbling some hundreds of feet down a shelving bed into Granville Bay, the break beyond Fourah. On the way we passed several Timni boats, carrying a proportionately immense amount of 'muslin.' Of old the lords of the land, they still come down ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... out to hunt their lost wood. The beach, though flat and shelving at the water's edge, rose in a low bluff farther back, and this offered among its irregular projections many good hiding-places ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells

... is the attempt to beach the vessel. 'They knew not the land,' that is, the part of the coast where they had been driven; but they saw that, while for the most part it was iron-bound, there was a shelving sandy bay at one point on to which it might be possible to run her ashore. The Revised Version gives a much more accurate and seaman-like account than the Authorised Version does. The anchors were not taken on board, but to save time and trouble were 'left in the sea,' the cables being ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... fifty years disused as a mode of ingress to the castle. The situation of this gate also, which we have endeavoured to describe, opening upon a narrow ledge of rock which overhangs a perilous cliff, rendered it at all times, but particularly at night, a dangerous entrance. This shelving platform of rock, which formed the only avenue to the door, was divided, as I have already stated, by a broad chasm, the planks across which had long disappeared by decay or otherwise, so that it seemed at least highly improbable ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... their pointed buds and sharp spines flourishing on martyrs' blood and incense, grown into the close lips and long eyes, the virginal body and thin hands of Mary. From these reliefs we come to the compositions, group inside group, all shelving into portico and forest vista, of the pulpit of Sta. Croce, the perspective bevelling it into concavities, like those of panelling; the heads and projecting shoulders lightly marked as some carved knob or ornament; ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... standing in such an exact circle that it was hard to persuade oneself that they were not planted by the hand of man. This was the crater of the old volcano. Had you stood in it, you would have remarked that one side was a shelving steep bank of short grass, while the other reared up some five hundred feet, a precipice of fire-eaten rock. At one end the lip had broken down, pouring a torrent of lava, now fertile grass-land, over the surrounding country, which little gap gave one a delicious bit of blue ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... a miniature canon rose on either side of the creek, and the light of the wind-blown camp-fire flitted across the face of the shelving rock, or scampered up to the edge of the overhanging cliff, where it flashed fitfully against the sky. The creek splashed and foamed through its rough, boulder-filled channel, knowing that soon it would be free of the dark defile and moving with dignity between shores of corn ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... a succession of high white walls. It glistens and glares, and dazzles you; the sand at your feet is white, the city itself is white, the robes of the people are white. It has no public landing-pier. Your rowboat is run ashore on a white shelving beach, and you face an impenetrable mass of white walls. The blue waters are behind you, the lofty fortress-like facade before you, and a strip of white sand ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis

... judgment had been warped by the highly eccentric environment in which he delighted. The empty store in which he lived, like a rat in a shipping-case, was new and blatant. It thrust its blind, lime-washed window-front out over the sidewalk. Over the lime-wash one could see the new pine shelving along the walls loaded with innumerable rolls of wall-paper. Who was responsible for this moribund stock I could never discover. Perhaps the mad artist imagined them to be priceless Kakemonos of such transcendent and blinding beauty that he did not dare unroll them. They ...
— Aliens • William McFee

... brothers had inflicted were very severe ones. He was only stunned, and fortunately he did not float far enough to be drowned. His body came into a back eddy of the stream and drifted gently on to a shelving bank of white sand. The cold water soon had the effect of bringing him to his senses so far as to enable him to crawl on to the land. It was, however, some hours before he was able to recall the past events. When he remembered ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various

... streams. Generous laws of their own making, gave ample room, and the eager workers toiled on, forgetting the past hardships of the long journey where so many fell by the way, and the rugged hills became endeared to them as they marked out the shaded spots on their shelving sides where their coming dear ones could look down on the busy scene below. But the camp follower with ready knife never finished the wounded brave quicker than did the "land grant" swindler finish Mariposa when her ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood

... abreast of a narrow opening, not twenty feet wide, which led into a land-locked enclosure where the fiercest gusts scarcely flawed the surface. It was the haven gained by the boats of previous days. They landed on a shelving beach, and the two employers lay in collapse in the boat, while Kit and Shorty pitched the tent, built a fire, and ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... hand, and on studying the appearance of the remainder of the stream than on thinking of my own feet just then; after that the water grew shallower rapidly, and I soon had the felicity of landing my mare on the shelving shingle of the opposite bank. So far so good; I beckoned to my companions, who speedily followed, and we all then proceeded down the spit in search of a good crossing place over the next stream. We were soon beside it, and very ugly it looked. It must have been at least a hundred yards ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler

... while viewing this place captain Lewis heard a loud roar above him, and crossing the point of a hill for a few hundred yards, he saw one of the most beautiful objects in nature: the whole Missouri is suddenly stopped by one shelving rock, which without a single niche and with an edge as straight and regular as if formed by art, stretches itself from one side of the river to the other for at least a quarter of a mile. Over this it precipitates itself in an even uninterrupted sheet to the perpendicular ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

... according to the species, have their sides perpendicular to the plane of the water, and their eyes are placed in such a way that there is an eye on each flattened side. But those fishes whose habits place them under the necessity of constantly approaching the shores, and especially the shelving banks or where the slope is slight, have been forced to swim on their flattened faces, so as to be able to approach nearer the edge of the water. In this situation, receiving more light from above than from beneath, and having a special need of being always attentive to what is going on above ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard

... an hour one traverses ridges on which no path exists, having the usual vegetation. The rock is certainly a vast mass, forming a precipice of 700 feet to the westward, on which side it is nearly bare of vegetation, gradually shelving to the east, and covered with tree-jungle, among which huge mosses are to be found. At its foot some fine fir trees occur, one at its very base measured nine feet in circumference, but had no great height. ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... there was with shelving banks around, Whose verdant summit fragrant myrtles crown'd. These shades, unknowing of the fates, she sought, And to the Naiads flowery garlands brought: Her smiling babe (a pleasing charge) she press'd Within her ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope

... amid the cloud of beeches and buttonwood trees, our log cabin lay hid, in a gully made by the little stream that filled our pails with a silver trickle over a staircase of shelving rock, and up there Colin was already busy with his skilled French cookery, preparing our evening meal. The woods still made a pompous show of leaves, but I knew it to be a hollow sham, a mask of foliage soon to be stripped off by equinoctial fury, a precarious stage-setting, ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne

... it, and it was not only the Indian but many of the European members, official as well as unofficial, of the Viceroy's Legislative Council who sympathized with Mr. Mudholkar's protest when he asked with some bitterness what must be the impression produced in India by the shelving of a scheme that was supported by men of local experiences by the head of the Provincial Government, and by the Government of India, because people living 6,000 miles away did not consider ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... warm on the rock. I was very tired. As I lay there, I became only conscious, at length, that my book was slipping out of my hand, and down the shelving side of the rock, and I was too listless to attempt to reclaim it. I heard a little, dull thud on the ground below, and a faint flutter of leaves—and the long, white beach, the ragged cliffs, the laughing children, ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... the shelving sand, and left Emmeline seated in the stern of it, whilst he went in search of the bananas; she would have accompanied him, but the child had ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... near the head of the Lower Fall. The two lowest of the series, together with one of the three tributary cascades, are visible from this standpoint, but in reaching it the last twenty or thirty feet of the descent is rather dangerous in time of high water, the shelving rocks being then slippery on account of spray, but if one should chance to slip when the water is low, only a bump or two and a harmless plash would be the penalty. No part of the gorge, however, is safe ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir

... F.B.I. out of the picture, the local authorities waiting for the discovery of a small body, and the state authorities shelving the case except for the routine punch-card checks, official action died. Brennan's available reward money was not enough to buy a private agency's ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith

... She and I ran, and as we rushed along the path I heard shots. My brother fired—once—twice—and the booming of the gong ceased. There was silence behind us. That neck of land is narrow. Before I heard my brother fire the third shot I saw the shelving shore, and I saw the water again; the mouth of a broad river. We crossed a grassy glade. We ran down to the water. I saw a low hut above the black mud, and a small canoe hauled up. I heard another shot behind me. I thought, 'That is ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad

... a new camp on Port Royal Island, very pleasantly situated, just out of Beaufort. It stretched nearly to the edge of a shelving bluff, fringed with pines and overlooking the river; below the bluff was a hard, narrow beach, where one might gallop a mile and bathe at the farther end. We could look up and down the curving stream, and watch the few vessels that came and went. Our first encampment ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... incidents of her return to X—-, when the sheriff had hurried her from the car? A sickening terror seized her, and along the expanse of pearly mist that united earth and sky, in tke snowy fringe of ripples breaking their teeth on the shelving beach, she seemed to read the doom of her stratagem written in words ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... and, wrapping himself in his cloak, with his knees doubled under him, knelt down upon the shelving bank and bent greedily toward the water. Scarcely had he touched its surface with his lips, when the wound in his throat burst open and the sponge rolled out, a few drops of blood with it; and his lifeless body would have fallen into the river had I not laid ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... There was a shelving beach of warm white sand, bleached soft as velvet. A sounding of gulls filled the dark recesses of the headland; a low chatter of shingle came from where the easy water was breaking; the confused, shell-like murmur of the ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence

... scrambling, half crawling, the children pushed through the shallow water and up on to the shore, dragging the upturned boat with them. The shore just here was shelving and sandy, otherwise it is doubtful if they could have reached it at all. But at last four shivering, dripping children stood on solid ground, ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells

... next day, in the hour before sunset, that Jolly Roger and Peter came out on the edge of a shelving beach where Indian children were playing in the white sand. Among these children, playing and laughing with them, was a woman. She was tall and slim, with a skirt of soft buckskin that came only a little below her knees, and two shining black braids which tossed like velvety ropes when she ran. ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood

... feeling was, how sweet it would be to lay my head on the quiet earth, where the surges would no longer strike my weakened frame, nor the sound of waters ring in my ears—to attain this repose, not to save my life, I made a last effort—the shelving shore suddenly presented a footing for me. I rose, and was again thrown down by the breakers—a point of rock to which I was enabled to cling, gave me a moment's respite; and then, taking advantage of the ebbing of the waves, I ran forwards— ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... shelving shore, small, puny wavelets dashed in impotent fury, and the shingle sang unceasingly its dreary, syncopated monotone. High and dry, a few dingy boats lay canted wearily upon their broad, swelling sides,—a couple of dories, apparently ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... place, though the water that comes from the rocky spring is so wondrously pure and cold that they call the place Caldbec {9} Hill. And there by the side of the spring was a little turf-built hut, hardly to be known from the shelving bank against which it leant, and to that the earl ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler

... very little way to go. Berthe had preceded them with Graillot and a few workmen. Christophe was on the point of entering followed by Olivier. The street had a shelving ridge. The pavement, by the creamery, was five or six steps higher than the roadway. Olivier stopped to take a long breath after his escape from the crowd. He disliked the idea of being in the poisoned air of the restaurant and the clamorous ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... foam tumbling over a long, uneven stair of granite through the midst of a fairy glen. The sound of these rushing waters is long in our ears as we continue to climb the splendid mountain road that leads to the Schlucht, and nowhere else. From a giddy terrace cut in the sides of the shelving forest ridge we now get a prospect of the little lakes of Longuemer and Retournemer, twin gems of superlative loveliness in the wildest environment. Deep down they lie, the two silvery sheets of water with their verdant holms, making a little world of peace and beauty, ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... clapped her hands joyfully and pointed past me. I turned and looked. Directly behind me, not fifty feet from us, was a shelving beach and a stone wharf, and above it a vine-covered cottage, from the chimney of which smoke curled cheerily. Had the yawl, while Lady Moya was taking the oars, not swung in a circle, and had the sun not risen, in three minutes more we would have bumped ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis

... Rock," said Gertrude, stopping where a shelving path slanted down toward a great square mass of stone, which was surrounded on three sides by water. "Would you like to go down and sit on top for a little ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge

... the gorge's length, rushing along therein helter-skelter, and carrying thick rain upon its back. The rain is followed by hailstones which fly through the defile in battalions—rolling, hopping, ricochetting, snapping, clattering down the shelving banks in an undefinable haze of confusion. The earthen sides of the fosse seem to quiver under the drenching onset, though it is practically no more to them than the blows of Thor upon the giant of Jotun-land. It is impossible ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... of the Fiord I could discover shoals and rocks for which the mariner had sought in vain, and for many miles along the shore the shelving land showed, with a faint yellow tinge, the distance it stretched under the water that was otherwise of a deep azure shade. When from the deeply-dyed cerulean water, the valley with its different green colours of tree and grass, and ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... Ernest back to Mr Rawlings and Jasper, who were a few yards behind him, and, without waiting for them to come up, he hastened down the slightly shelving ground towards where the ex-mate seemed to be in some predicament, as he did not stand up, but was half-sitting, half-lying on the ground, resting his head on one arm as he waved the other to ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson

... stopped a moment upon a bit of shelving rock he had with difficulty gained, and looked back with a troubled snort, but the huddled heap in the darkness below him gave forth no sign of life, and after another snort and a half neigh of warning the pony turned and scrambled on, up and ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill

... letter-files and old newspapers, the mummy-case of an Egyptian lady, brought back by the second Sir Ferdinando on his return from the Grand Tour, mouldered in the darkness. From ten yards away and at a first glance, one might almost have mistaken this secret door for a section of shelving filled with genuine books. Coffee-cup in hand, Mr. Scogan was standing in front of the dummy book-shelf. ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... road is an inclined plain, constantly but gradually shelving upwards towards the high plateau of the Wallo country—the end of our journey, as Magdala is on its border. The amba, with a few isolated mountains, all perpendicular and crowned with walls of basalt, seem like miniatures of the large expanses of Dahonte and Wallo—small particles ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc

... After breakfast the party resumed their ascent of the mountain, and in due time arrived at the "Notch"—a literal gate of rock—when they found themselves on the knife-like ridge or backbone of Long's Peak, only a few feet wide, covered with huge boulders, and on the other side shelving in a snow-patched precipice of 3,000 feet to a picturesque hollow, brightened by ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams

... forests on the other, lying between the road and the shore. As he passes on, the road, picturesque and romantic from the beginning becomes gradually wild, solitary, and desolate. It leads him sometimes through tangled thickets, sometimes under shelving rocks, and sometimes it brings him out unexpectedly to the shore of the sea, where he sees the surf rolling in upon the beach at his feet, and far over the water the setting sun going down to his rest beneath the western horizon. At length the ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott

... boat had been lowered and was putting in for land. Billy waded out to the end of the short shelving beach and waited. ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... he observes, sententiously: "Too late." Joseph Conrad's novels he shelves next to Stevenson's, significantly. He has a high regard for Arthur Christopher Benson's essays. "But does the man think I have as much shelving ...
— Old Valentines - A Love Story • Munson Aldrich Havens

... distance up stream. Looking in the opposite direction, the agitation of the water was noticeable before breaking into rapids, similar, though in a less degree, to the rapids above Niagara Falls. The volume still preserved its remarkable purity and clearness, which enabled him to trace the shelving bottom a long way ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis

... endeavor to save the girl. I found that the boarder had so arranged the gang-plank that it was possible, without a very great exercise of agility, to pass from the shore to the boat. When I first saw him, on reaching the shelving deck, he was staggering up the stairs with a dining-room chair and a large framed engraving of Raphael's Dante—an ugly picture, but full of true feeling; at least so Euphemia always declared, though I am not quite sure that I ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton

... Frog finished his task by nightfall. And then, taking his handiwork with him, he left his shop—after locking the door behind him—and hid himself beneath a shelving rock on ...
— The Tale of Kiddie Katydid • Arthur Scott Bailey

... built with so much care and close study of its purposes, and which had stood for so long empty, a pathetic expression of man's hope deferred, was filled to its capacity. A greater part of its shelving was groaning under bales of closely pressed Adresol in hermetically-sealed wrappings, while the floor was piled with vast quantities of the deadly plant awaiting the process that would render it comparatively harmless to those who had yet ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... Ministry once more fighting side by side; though Lord North contented himself with arguing that the affirmation of the right and duty of Parliament was a needless raising of a disputable point, and moving, therefore, that the committee should report progress, as the recognized mode of shelving it. Fox, however, carried away by the heat of debate, returned to the assertion of the doctrine of absolute right, overlooking his subsequent modification of it, and again gave Pitt the advantage, by condescending to impugn ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... and shut off the power. In three minutes more the Sea Lion must have been wrecked on the shelving shore. As it was she stopped within a few ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson

... plain at the foot of the hill of Godesberg and at the distance of an eighth of a mile from the river, a shelving cornfield intervening, stand three large hotels and a ridotto, all striking edifices. To the south of these is situated a large wood. These hotels are always full of company in the summer and autumn: they come here to drink the mineral waters, a species of Seltzer, the spring of which ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... One nest containing young about a week old was found on the surface of shelving rock. It was made of coarse strips of bark, soft decayed leaves, and dry grasses, and lined with a thin layer of black hair. The parents fed their young in the presence of the observer with affectionate attention, and showed no uneasiness, creeping head downward about the trunks of ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [June, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various

... stroke into the shrouding shadows. But practiced ears caught the softened roll in the rollocks, and keen eyes marked the shadowy boat in the deepening gloom. It must be the skilled oar and adroit steering that saves them now, but not far away lie the long shadows of the shelving coast and its black-bearded forest. The swing of the oars became bold, open and exciting, and angry challenges passed. But the burden of the heavy gold fought against them, like the giant's harp calling Master! Master! ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various

... bellowing water in the invisible depths below, steamed up almost incessantly, like smoke, and shot, hissing in clouds out of the mouth of the chasm, on to a huge flat rock, covered with sea-weed, that lay beneath and in front of it. The very sight of this smooth, slippery plane of granite, shelving steeply downward, right into the gaping depths of the hole, made my head swim; the thundering of the water bewildered and deafened me—I moved away while I had the power: away, some thirty or forty yards in a lateral direction, towards the edges of the promontory which looked down on the ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins

... travelled down the fleecy stairway. When they were little more than half way down there came mingled with the music a sound almost as sweet—the sound of waters toying in the still air with pebbles on a shelving beach, and with the sound came the odorous brine of the ocean. And then the children knew that what they thought was a plain in the realms of cloudland was the sleeping sea unstirred by wind or tide, dreaming of the purple clouds and stars of the ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy

... tasteful appearance. But the white and green had given place to a dark, dirty brown, that to my eyes was particularly unattractive. The bar-room had been extended, and now a polished brass rod, or railing, embellished the counter, and sundry ornamental attractions had been given to the shelving behind the bar—such as mirrors, gilding, etc. Pictures, too, were hung upon the walls, or more accurately speaking; coarse colored lithographs, the subjects of which, if not really obscene, were flashing, or vulgar. In the sitting-room, next to the bar, I noticed little change of objects, but ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur

... to the splendour of its wood and water, Bombay is embellished by fragments of dark rock, which force themselves through the soil, roughening the sides of the hills, and giving beauty to the precipitous heights and shelving beach. Though the island is comparatively small, extensively cultivated and thickly inhabited, it possesses its wild and solitary places, its rains deeply seated in thick forests, and its lonely hills covered ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts

... top of it is a wide naked plain, smoking with sulphur in many places; in the midst of which plain stands another high hill, in the shape of a sugar-loaf, on the top of which is a vast mouth or cavity, that goes shelving down on all sides about a hundred yards deep, and about four hundred over; from whence proceeds a continual smoke, and sometimes those astonishing and dreadful eruptions of flame, ashes, and burning matter, that fill the inhabitants around with consternation, and bear down and destroy ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown

... a visit to his friends, took a circuitous route to pass a pool of water, at which he hoped to kill an antelope. The sun had risen to some height when he arrived there, and as he could not perceive any game, he laid his gun down on a low shelving rock, the back part of which was covered with some brushwood. He went down to the pool and had a hearty drink, returned to the rock, and after smoking his pipe, feeling weary, he lay ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat

... green and winding lane, fringed with tall elms, and dim with fragrant shade, and, after proceeding about half a mile, came to a long, low-built lodge, with a thatched and shelving roof, and surrounded by a rustic colonnade covered with honeysuckle. Passing through the gate at hand, he found himself in a road winding through gently-undulating banks of exquisite turf, studded with ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli

... in other parts only fair. From Aguadilla to Aguada, a distance of a league, the road is excellent and level. From thence to Mayaguez, through the village of Rincon and the town of Anasco, the road is generally good, but on the seashore it is sometimes interrupted by shelving rocks. Across the valley of Anasco the road is carried through a boggy tract, with bridges over several deep creeks of fresh water. From thence to the large commercial town of Mayaguez the road is uneven and requires some improvement. But the roads from Mayaguez and ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... foot, it was not long before she called out to her companions to halt, and, left behind, she obliged them both to wait for her. At this moment, a man, concealed in a dry ditch planted with young willow saplings, scrambled quickly up its shelving side, and ran off in the direction of the chateau. The three young girls, on their side, reached the outskirts of the park, every path of which they well knew. The ditches were bordered by high hedges full of flowers, which ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... beach of the island that stretched along the northern edge of the sea. The captain did not fear the coast itself, for it had no rocks. But the lines deepened on his weather-scarred face as he saw, gathering on the shelving beach, the wild, ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews

... He had winded now a scent that roused him; and what is more, he remembered precisely what that twangy, acrid scent betokened. The chalky earth flew from under his great paws faster than two men could have shifted it with mattocks; and, as the shelving crust was thin, it took him no more than one or two minutes to make an opening through which even his great bulk could pass with a ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson

... cliff lies a gently shelving bench of rock, more or less thickly veneered with sand and shingle. At low tide its inner margin is laid bare, but at high tide it is covered wholly, and the sea washes the base of the cliffs. A notch, of which the SEA CLIFF and ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton

... his bushy head like a swimming dog. "Look, the shore is not very far." Thorndyke was saving his wind, and said nothing, but accommodated his stroke to that of his companion, and thus they breasted the gently-rolling billows until finally, completely exhausted, they climbed up the shelving rocks and lay down in ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben

... more numerously manned, and would lose whatever advantage their superior handiness and seaworthiness gave them, through having no room to manoeuvre. He kept his fleet of four hundred triremes sufficiently far from the shore to avoid the shelving shallows that fringe it near the entrance to the straits, and ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale

... a creek, a starveling, wet-weather stream which offered the sole suggestion of sewerage. The village was cut in two by this natural division. It clung to the shelving sides of the shallow ravine; it was scattered like bits of refuse on the numerous railroad embankments, where building was unhandy and streets almost impossible, to be convenient to the mills. Six big factories in ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke

... is equally lofty, but more sloping, which, from that circumstance, affords soil all the way, upon shelving inequalities of the rock, at little distances, for the growth of trees and shrubs, by which it ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke

... along a slant of rock shelving off to a bad tumble, so steep that your pony has to do more or less expert ankle work to keep from slipping off sideways. During the passage of that rock you are apt to sit very light. Now cover it with several inches of ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White

... paces ahead, and saw, a little before them, a fresh afternoon breeze driving the rising tide high on to the side of the rocks, at whose foot their course had lain. The nook in which they had been sporting formed part of a shelving ledge which inclined over their heads, and which it was just barely possible could be climbed by a strong and agile person, but which would be wholly impracticable to a frail, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various



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