"Skeleton" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stepping across a dead body, or clambering a wall out of the road, to avoid some plunging, shrieking horse, or obscene knot of prowling camp followers, who were already stripping and plundering the slain.... At last, in front of a large villa, now a black and smoking skeleton, he leaped a wall, and found himself landed on a heap of corpses.... They were piled up against the garden fence for many yards. The struggle had been fierce there some three ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... laughing and saying, 'poor little chap,' meaning me. He took care of me well, though; and it was only through his kind care that they were able to bring me round again. They told me afterwards that I was in a most pitiable state of emaciation—a skeleton, they said, with only fragments of burnt, blistered skin ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... formula that explained all the mysteries of the maintenance and support of vital power and cure of disease, and that was of practical avail. I now knew that there could be no death from starvation until the body was reduced to the skeleton condition; that therefore for structural integrity, for functional clearness, the brain has no need of food when disease has abolished the desire for it. Is there any other way to explain the power to make wills with whispering lips in the very hour of death, even ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... be, yet he thought he could see The skeleton hanging on high; The gibbet it creaked; and the rusty chains squeaked; And a screech-owl flew ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... expense. There were stuffed animals and creatures of various sorts: a huge crocodile, from the Nile; a vulture, with expanded wings, and talons tearing its prey, at which its bloodshot eyes looked down with an expression of life-like savageness. On one side there was a human skeleton of gigantic proportions, with a club in its hand, in the attitude of striking. Toads and lizards abounded. There were mummy cases, with their lids off, exposing the dried remnants of mortality within. In huge bottles were children, some with two heads, or three arms, and other deformities, hideous ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... with the tooth-row. The palatal dentition is primitive (Romer, 1956:280). The nitosaurids are thought to be related to the later Caseidae, and the most obvious structural similarities are found in the postcranial skeleton (Vaughn, 1958:989). Cranial resemblances between the families are fewer, but nevertheless indicate that ...
— Two New Pelycosaurs from the Lower Permian of Oklahoma • Richard C. Fox
... strength had been drying up for a century, but the personal character of the successive monarchs, and vast foreign acquisitions, had disguised the fact from the world. Philip died in 1598, and in reality left his empire but a skeleton to his son, a youth of feeble mind, but under whose rule a change of policy was effected, not, as has been sometimes supposed, from any deep views on the part of the Count-Duke Lerma, but because it was impossible for Spain ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... side of the track, they occasionally saw the light of a house; at one place there seemed to be a little hamlet, from the number of lights. They were clearly on the wrong bank; they should have crossed over at the station. The only house they came to was the skeleton of one, the walls blackened and charred with fire. There was only that endless line of wire fencing along which they pushed forward painfully, with dragging step; instead of passing any given point, the road seemed to keep on with them, as if they could never ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... came upon human bones, with shreds of clothing lying about, and stood staring at them, his eyes held by the fascination of horror. Finally he forced himself to move on, and after he had tramped through the scorching sand for a long time, he found himself staring again at the bleaching skeleton. Through his heat-dazed brain the thought made way that the fascination of this white, nameless thing had cast a spell upon him and had drawn him back to die here, where his bones might lie beside these that had whitened this desert spot for so many months. Perhaps this poor creature's ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... table. Then let pen and sword Forget their quarrel for supremacy; Since you can buy them both, or starve them both, Or cast them to the wilderness! Such power I offer as would make the pulses beat Even of a skeleton! ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... to a skeleton, sir," she answered; "he was always here nag, nag, nagging night and day. At last my poor ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... rusted to a brick-color in patches and streaks. They were so riveted together that through them could be seen small, regular spots of light. Later on, as Gwendolyn knew, floors and windowed walls and a tin top would be fitted to the framework. And what was now a skeleton would be ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... being eaten in the new dining-room at Cloom—a merry supper enough, for all Annie's skeleton presence at one end of the table—Archelaus walked in. It was the first time he had been over to Cloom since the night of the bush-beating, and it was the first time Ishmael had seen him since that glimpse in the light of ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... persons upstairs suggest improper subjects to the child. He was speaking to me last night about his—about his Bones,' said Mr Dombey, laying an irritated stress upon the word. 'What on earth has anybody to do with the—with the—Bones of my son? He is not a living skeleton, I suppose. ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... he led his master down two long corridors that ended in a chapel. There, lying before the altar, they found a man clad in a filthy priest's robe, a dying man who still had the strength to cry for help or mercy, although in truth he was wasted to a skeleton, since the plague which had taken him was of the most lingering sort. Indeed, little seemed to be left of him save his rolling eyes, prominent nose and high cheekbones covered with yellow parchment that had been skin, and a ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... window-curtains, swelling out with their curves and diving into their folds. The body of Golo himself, being of the same supernatural substance as his steed's, overcame all material obstacles—everything that seemed to bar his way—by taking each as it might be a skeleton and embodying it in himself: the door-handle, for instance, over which, adapting itself at once, would float invincibly his red cloak or his pale face, never losing its nobility or its melancholy, never shewing any sign of trouble ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... trampled him underfoot, a squashed boneless snail. She had loved his weak watery blood drained from her own. Was that then real? The only true thing in life? His mother's prostrate body the fiery Columbanus in holy zeal bestrode. She was no more: the trembling skeleton of a twig burnt in the fire, an odour of rosewood and wetted ashes. She had saved him from being trampled underfoot and had gone, scarcely having been. A poor soul gone to heaven: and on a heath ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Hystricidae Hystrix leucura 403 Dentition of Hare Sub-order Duplicidentata Side view of Grinders of Asiatic Elephant Genus Elephas Grinder of Asiatic Elephant Genus Elephas " of African Elephant Genus Elephas Section of Elephant's Skull Genus Elephas Skeleton of Elephant Genus Elephas Muscles of Elephant's Trunk Genus Elephas Dentition of Horse Family Equidae Equus onager 426 Dentition of Tapir Family Tapiridae Tapirus Malayanus 428 Dentition of Rhinoceros Genus Rhinoceros Rhinoceros Indicus 429 " Indicus 429 " Sondaicus ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... tolerable shaded map of Ireland is that of the Railway Commission, which is on a scale of one inch to four statute miles. Captain Larcom proposes, and the Commission on the Ordnance Memoir recommend, that contour lines should be the skeleton of the shading. If this plan be adopted the publication cannot be for some years; but the shading will have the accuracy of machine-work instead of mere hand skill. Contours are lines representing series of ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... upon a faithful examination, aided by the experience of the said David Scott, did find the skeletons of two bodies in the said coffin identified as that of the said lady, one whereof was that of a woman apparently of middle age, and the other that of a babe, which lay upon the chest of the larger skeleton in such a way or manner as to be retained or held in that position by the arms of the same being laid across it; that having satisfied himself of these facts, the commissioner caused the coffin to be again closed and the grave covered ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... which follows of some of the more prominent characteristics of the Khasi language is based chiefly on Sir Charles Lyall's skeleton Grammar contained in Vol. II. of Dr. Grierson's "Linguistic Survey of India." It does not pretend to be an exhaustive treatise on the language; for this students are referred to the excellent grammar compiled by ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... Dinas Brn. Cefn (Elwy Valley) limestone caves hold the prehistoric hippopotamus, elephant, rhinoceros, lion, hyena, bear, reindeer, &c.; Pls Heaton cave, the glutton; Pont Newydd, felstone tools and a polished stone axe (like that of Rhosdigre); Carnedd Tyddyn Bleiddian, "platycnemic (skeleton) men of Denbighshire" (like those of Perthi Chwareu). Clawdd Coch has traces of the Romans; so also Penygaer and Penbarras. Roman roads ran from Deva (Chester) to Segontium (Carnarvon) and from Deva to Mons Heriri (Tomen y mur). To their ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... recognised just before the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Lamarck first emphasised (1794) the division of the animal kingdom into Vertebrates and Invertebrates. Even thirteen years earlier (1781), when Goethe made a close study of the mammal skeleton in the Anatomical Institute at Jena, he was intensely interested to find that the composition of the skull was the same in man as in the other mammals. His discovery of the os intermaxillare in man (1784), which was contradicted by most of the anatomists of the time, and his ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... these together, in the light of contemporary Pharisaic and Christian conceptions and opinions, we may construct a system from them which will represent his theory; somewhat as the naturalist from a few fragmentary bones describes the entire skeleton to which they belonged. As we proceed to follow this process, we must particularly remember the leading notions in the doctrinal belief of the Jews at that period, and the fact that Paul himself was "brought up ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... "I hope I never believed in Death all the time; and yet for one fearful moment the skeleton seemed to swell and grow till he blotted out the sun and the stars, and was himself all in all, while the life beyond was too shadowy to show behind him. And so Death was victorious, until the thought of your loneliness in the dark valley broke the spell; and for your ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... lying on the sandy bank, and Siddhartha's soul slipped inside the body, was the dead jackal, lay on the banks, got bloated, stank, decayed, was dismembered by hyaenas, was skinned by vultures, turned into a skeleton, turned to dust, was blown across the fields. And Siddhartha's soul returned, had died, had decayed, was scattered as dust, had tasted the gloomy intoxication of the cycle, awaited in new thirst like a hunter in the gap, where he ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... something. You believe it's true. But there must be the third thing, risking something valuable. There's no belief in the heart-meaning without this thing of risking. The trust that risks is the life blood of faith. The rest is only the bony skeleton with tendons and sinews and flesh. There's no life without the blood. There's ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... "Your skeleton will be interesting to science when you are dead, Mr. Solon," hissed the Wondersmith. "But before I have the pleasure of reducing you to an anatomy, which I will assuredly do, I wish to compliment you on your power of penetration, or sources of information; for I know not if ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... True, the invitation sometimes comes so late that the master has long since devoured everything in his basket and is dead of starvation. But that makes not the slightest difference to humanity, which will take no refusal, and props the cynically amused skeleton up at the board next the toastmaster. My point is, however, that humanity is often forehanded enough with its invitations to give the masters a charming time of it before they, too, into the dust descend, sans ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... biography of Bishop Ken to show that he played cricket at Winchester College in 1650, one of his scores, cut on the chapel-cloister wall, being still extant; and the same writer reproduces as a frontispiece to his "opusculum" an old engraving bearing date 1743, in which the wicket appears as a skeleton hurdle about two feet wide by one foot high, while the bat is the Saxon crec or crooked stick, with which the game was originally played, and from which the name cricket ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... days the ground had not been seen. The branches of the cherry trees gleamed—not with flowers, but with icicles—as they leaned against the windows of the bed-chamber under the roof. Sometimes as the winter blast stirred them, they knocked against the panes with a sound the knuckles of a skeleton might have made. There was not the slightest suggestion of the soft-voiced "Ligeia" in that harsh, ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... Professor, his eye resting professionally upon Dan's splendid proportions. What a "subject" to cut up! What a skeleton to articulate! ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... illustrative nature. This was essential to a plan whose aim it was, while scrupulously and rigorously adhering to the truth of facts, to animate them with the life of the past, and, so far as might be, clothe the skeleton with flesh. If, at times, it may seem that range has been allowed to fancy, it is so in appearance only; since the minutest details of narrative or description rest on authentic documents ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... barbarous and grotesque, with dreadful "ongs," and "angs," and "ows," and "ays"; and its manner overbearing, suspicious, and disdainful; and then we could hear its loud, insolent English asides; and though it was tall and straight and not outwardly deformed, it looked such a kill-joy skeleton at a feast, such a portentous carnival mask of solemn emptiness, such a dreary, doleful, unfunny figure of fun, that one felt Waterloo might some day be forgiven, even in Passy; but ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... enough to our version, however, to justify our tracing it directly to any one of them. Both it and the Visayan variant are members of the European cycle of tales represented by Grimm's "Three Feathers" (No. 63). The skeleton outline of this family group Bolte and Polivka construct as follows (2 ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... split from the body of a tree, quartered—but sizable, so as to appear decent—and the insides facing each other as they stand up, lined to a surface to receive the planking. Of course, when the posts are set in the ground, they are to show a square form, or skeleton of what the building is to be when completed. When this is done, square off the top of each post to a level, all round; then frame, or spike on to each line of posts a plate, say six inches wide, and four to six inches ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... the evolution of life on this planet there developed from the very simplest forms of animal organisms two different higher forms of life—on the one hand the vertebrate animals, possessing an internal skeleton, and on the other hand the insects, clams, crustaceans and other creatures that have their skeletons on the outside, as one may say, in the form of shells. The legs of an insect, for instance, are small tubes with the muscles inside. The ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... at the farther end of the vessel, conversed upon stones and strata, in that singular pedantry of science which strips nature to a skeleton, and prowls among the dead bones of the world, unconscious of ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... exchanged glances. One said, "Ah, God! this is bad," and the other, "It is not possible;" and then, when the landlady's back was turned, introduced themselves with a skeleton key into the then vacant bedroom and studio of their fair countrywoman, who was absent sketching. "Thou observest," said Mr. Pedro, refugee, to Miguel, ex-ecclesiastic, "that this Americano is all-powerful, and that this Victor, drunkard as he is, ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... pathway across the road, and the dashing cab pulls up suddenly just in time to save him from being hurled to the ground by the horse. Then he gives it up as a vain attempt, and leans, the model of despair, against the wall, and wrings his skeleton fingers in agony—when just as a compassionate matron is drawing the strings of her purse, stopping for her charitable purpose in a storm of wind and rain, the voice of the policeman is heard over her shoulder: 'What! you are here at it again, old chap? Well, I'm blowed if I think anything ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... can be more irreverent than the cathedral service as it is now performed in this country, neither does it contain a set of weaker men than those who are the slaves of this childish routine. A disgusting skeleton of the former state is still exhibited; but all the solemnity, that interested the imagination, if it did not purify the heart, is stripped off. The performance of high mass on the continent must impress every mind, where a spark of fancy glows, ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... billions of trees, are the backbone of agriculture, the skeleton of lumbering, and the heart of industry. Even now, in spite of their depletion, they are the cream of our natural resources. They furnish wood for the nation, pasture for thousands of cattle and sheep, and water supply for ...
— The School Book of Forestry • Charles Lathrop Pack
... purity of its design, especially suffers from its translation from chromatic harmony to monotone, for although possibly the architectural details are thereby rendered more apparent, yet the exaggeration of what is after all but the skeleton of the building, destroys the effect of the whole as ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... recorded in the external parts of animals necessarily imply corresponding internal variations. When feet and legs vary in size, it is because the bones vary; when the head, body, limbs, and tail change their proportions, the bony skeleton must also change; and even when the wing or tail feathers of birds become longer or more numerous, there is sure to be a corresponding change in the bones which support and the muscles which move them. I will, however, give a few cases of variations ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... the latter replied: "Resolved, that mathematics is more useful to a detective than a flashlight or a skeleton key." ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... to have a real affection for some of the specimens illustrating his lectures, and would handle them in a peculiarly loving manner. When he was lecturing on man, for instance, he would sometimes throw his arm over the shoulder of the skeleton beside him and take its hand, as if its silent companionship were an inspiration. To me, his lectures before his small class at Jermyn Street or South Kensington were almost more impressive than the discourses at the Royal Institution, where, for an ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... for the misinterpretation of his meaning in his decision that his dead body should be given up for the purpose of anatomy and not buried in earth to be of service {281} only to the worms. Many of us have seen the skeleton of Jeremy Bentham clothed in his habit as he lived in a room of that University College which he helped to make ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... you think," said Mr Braine, warmly. "She is a good daughter—a dear girl, whom I love as well as if she were my own child. I shall never forget the way in which she devoted herself to my boy when he came out here, still weak, and a perfect skeleton, and it is my tender affection for the girl that makes me speak ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... give him a passage to Aden. His prayer was answered, and he came on board. He was a Mussulman, born in Cashmere, and had been wandering about the world in the capacity of a fakir; but was now, through hunger and starvation, reduced to a mere skeleton of skin and bones. His stomach was so completely doubled inwards, it was surprising the vital spark remained within him. On being asked to recite his history, he said, "I was born in the 'happy valley' of Cashmere; but reduced circumstances led me to ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... what with bad diet (for the very diet is bad, quality and quantity alike unspeakable), Wilhelmina sees herself "reduced to a skeleton;" no company but her faithful Sonsfeld, no employment but her Books and Music;—struggles, however, still to keep heart. One day, it is in February, 1731, as I compute, they are sitting, her Sonsfeld and she, at their sad mess of so-called dinner, in their ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... to his environment in the same way he has outlined and measured the bonds uniting the various characters; so well that each individual is defined separately as to his personal and his social side, and in the same manner each family is defined. It is the skeleton of these individuals and of these families that is laid bare for your contemplation in these notes of Messieurs Cerfberr and Christophe. But this structure of facts, dependent one upon another by a logic equal to that of life itself, is the smallest effort of Balzac's genius. Does a birth-certificate, ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... compositions, with the great abundance of extraordinary figures and diminishing perspectives. Very beautiful, likewise, are the Maries that he made on the altar-dossal, lamenting the Dead Christ. In the house of one of the Counts Capodilista he wrought the skeleton of a horse in wood, which is still to be seen to-day without the neck; wherein the various parts are joined together with so much method, that, if one considers the manner of this work, one can judge of ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... a vague consciousness that to argue with him, or to seek to influence him, would be to attempt the impossible. Perhaps there was something more than this in her mind—some half-consciousness that there was a shapeless and invertebrate skeleton lurking in the shadowy background of her new life, a dusky and impalpable creature which it would not be well for her to examine or understand. She was a cowardly little woman, and finding herself tolerably happy in the present, she did ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... sixty-six miles long. In every direction I beheld below me a tangled skein of mountain ranges, thousands of feet in height, which the Grand Canon's walls enclosed, as if it were a huge sarcophagus, holding the skeleton of an infant world. It is evident, therefore, that all the other canons of our globe are, in comparison with this, what pygmies are to a giant, and that the name Grand Canon, which is often used to designate some relatively insignificant ravine, should be in truth applied only to the ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... harassed air, La Couteau came in and placed the sleeping child in Madame Menoux's arms, saying as she did so: "Well, your George is a tidy weight, I can tell you. You won't say that I've brought you this one back like a skeleton." ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... then laid aside just like other subjects. What though I wear a wig or a wooden leg, I may still be fairly comfortable among my companions unless I crucify myself by trying to hide my misfortune. It is not the presence of the skeleton that crushes us. Not even that will hurt us much if we let him go about the house as he lists. It is the everlasting effort which the horror makes to peep out of his cupboard that robs us of our ease. At any rate ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... after a life of security. Zachariah, although he was desponding, could now say he had been in the same straits before, and had survived. That is the consolation of all consolations to us. We have actually touched and handled the skeleton, and after all we have ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... that the wretched skeleton who was driving us had power in Turkish days to commandeer the services of Christian labourers, and ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... are seen immense plains, as smooth as if the husbandman had passed over them with his roller. As you approach the mountains, the soil becomes more and more unequal and sterile; the ground is, as it were, pierced in a thousand places by primitive rocks, which appear like the bones of a skeleton whose flesh is partly consumed. The surface of the earth is covered with a granitic sand, and huge irregular masses of stone, among which a few plants force their growth, and give the appearance of a green field covered with the ruins of a vast edifice. These stones and this sand discover, ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... her, the fair, The peerless Dulcinea del Toboso. I knew of her enchantment and her fate, From high-born dame to peasant wench transformed And touched with pity, first I turned the leaves Of countless volumes of my devilish craft, And then, in this grim grisly skeleton Myself encasing, hither have I come To show where lies the fitting remedy To give relief in such a piteous case. O thou, the pride and pink of all ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... expresses a more rigorous necessity. That is why we have only to follow the bent of our mind to become mathematicians. But, on the other hand, this natural mathematics is only the rigid unconscious skeleton beneath our conscious supple habit of linking the same causes to the same effects; and the usual object of this habit is to guide actions inspired by intentions, or, what comes to the same, to direct movements combined with a view to reproducing ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... foregoing pages it has come oftener in our way to illustrate the bland and prepossessing features of General Pierce's character, than the sterner ones which must necessarily form the bones, so to speak, the massive skeleton, of any man who retains an upright attitude amidst the sinister influences of public life. The transaction now alluded to affords a favorable opportunity for indicating ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... enjoyed. But so long as we are spiritually alive, so long we cannot enjoy whole-heartedly even the most fascinating of sins because there is lurking in the background the sense of the transitoriness of our sin and of the imminence of death and judgment. There is the skeleton in every man's closet until he finally makes choice on one side or the other. For we are not ignorant of the spiritual obligations of life. We always know more than we have achieved. When we talk about our ignorance and perplexity, we are ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... the subscription school; and the acknowledged leader of the band, who, belonging to the permanent irreducible staff of the establishment, was never off duty. We used to be very happy, and not altogether irrational, in these little skeleton parties. My new friend was a gentle, tasteful boy, fond of poetry, and a writer of soft, simple verses in the old-fashioned pastoral vein, which he never showed to any one save myself; and we learned to love one another all the more, from ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... vessel's side-port and were descending what seemed a narrow, hundred-foot landing incline. We were outdoors, and it was night. Shafts of colored radiance flashed around us. The ship was poised on a disc-like platform, with skeleton legs. It seemed a hundred feet or more down to the ground level from where the colored lights were darting up. Overhead was a cloudless, purple-red sky of blurred, reddish stars. No doubt the curious atmosphere of Wandl gave the sky and stars ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... stiffly in a photographer's chair, against a background which represented a frightful storm at sea, sat Sandy Kilday. His feet were sadly out of focus, and his head was held at an impossible angle by the iron rest which stood like a half-concealed skeleton behind him. He wore cheap store-clothes, and a turn-down collar which rested upon a ready-made tie of enormous proportions. It was a picture he had had taken in his first new clothes soon after coming to Clayton. Ruth had found it in an old ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... energy of desperate grief I told him how I had fallen at once from bliss to misery; how that for me there was no joy, no hope; that death however bitter would be the welcome seal to all my pangs; death the skeleton was to be beautiful as love. I know not why but I found it sweet to utter these words to human ears; and though I derided all consolation yet I was pleased to see it offered me with gentleness and kindness. I listened quietly, and when he paused would again pour out my ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... forests. Sometimes they construct a few of their dwellings near together, and so form a hamlet. Their huts are either quadrangular, oblong, or circular. The walls consist of strong stems of trees, bound together by twining plants; and the roof is of palm leaves laid over a skeleton of reeds. The entrance, which is on the side opposite to the prevailing wind, is left open, and but seldom protected by a door. At Chanchamayo I saw a very simple kind of hut among the Chunchos. It resembled an open umbrella with the handle stuck in the earth. The single wall, which also formed its ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... plain stone coffer with its lid removed and set on end against it. In the coffer lay a tall man's skeleton, with the chin still bound in linen browned with age. There were other fragments of linen here and there, but the skeleton's bones had been disturbed and had ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... hurried from his office to his home, seized his pistols, mounted his horse and rode out to join Generals Gracie and Ransom who were placing their skeleton brigades to ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... admirable philosophy," said the doctor. "Excellent to keep one contented. Three feet of snow is then as good as May zephyrs! Daisies and dandelions are fair substitutes for geraniums and cacti! And these barren granite fields, where the skeleton rock has hardly covered itself skin deep with soil, are better than flowery prairies of rolling land, ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... he could not see Galen, there was such confusion of shadow and light. High shelves around the walls of a long, shed-like room were crowded with retorts and phials. An enormous, dusty human skeleton, articulated on concealed wire, moved as if annoyed by the intrusion. There were many kinds of skulls of animals and men on brackets fastened to the wall, and there were jars containing dead things soaked in spirit. Some ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... as vibration ran in torturing waves through its metal skeleton and skin. It passed the point of discomfort and became unbearable. Rick rocked his head from side to side, as though to get rid of the shattering howl, but it tore at his head, at his stomach, at ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... constituent of horny material, occurs in hair, nails, hoofs and feathers. It is quite insoluble in water, dilute acids and alkalies. Related to this substance are "neuro-keratin,'' found in the medullary sheath of nerves, and "gorgonin,'' the matrix of the axial skeleton of the coral Gorgonia Cavolinii. Elastin occurs either as thick strands or as membranes; it constitutes the "elastic tissue'' of the anatomist. Its insolubility is much the same as keratin. "Fibroin'' and silk-glue or sericin ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Apartments inferior to his quality were assigned him, and to these he was conducted by a courtier with ill-disguised insolence. The princesses refused him access to their lodgings, and his old enemies openly manifested their derision for the kill-joy and the skeleton who had returned to spoil their festival. Tasso, querulous as he was about his own share in the disagreeables of existence, remained wholly unsympathetic to the trials of his fellow-creatures. Self-engrossment closed him in a magic ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... skeleton was found with the fingers clenched round a quantity of gold. A man of business in the town of Hull, England, when dying, pulled a bag of money from under his pillow, which he held between his clenched fingers with a grasp so firm as scarcely to relax under the ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... what strikes me is the absurdity of trying to get into another life while one has to live this. Fasting and sitting under a tree, and starving out all fleshly desires and impulses until the human body, instead of being handsome and muscular as Nature intended it to be, becomes a withered skeleton, subsisting on a few beans and a cup of water. Why, anybody could see visions and dream dreams, that lived a life like that even for a year! But I want to know what's the good of it? I suppose if we get out of our natural life before our time, our place ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... help you. Meet me at midnight at the prison gate. I'll save you. Skeleton keys and wires will enable you to escape, Find them in the buns. As you value your life and ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... said Monte Cristo, "here, in this very spot" (and he stamped upon the ground), "I had the earth dug up and fresh mould put in, to refresh these old trees; well, my man, digging, found a box, or rather, the iron-work of a box, in the midst of which was the skeleton of a newly born infant." Monte Cristo felt the arm of Madame Danglars stiffen, while that of Villefort trembled. "A newly born infant," repeated ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... (when the ruddy sun, Enlarged and strange, sank low and visibly, Spreading fierce orange o'er the west) a scene Of winter in his milder mood. Green fields, Which no kine cropped, lay damp; and naked trees Threw skeleton shadows. Hedges, thickly grown, Twined into compact firmness, with no leaves, Trembled in jewelled fretwork as the sun To lustre touched the tremulous water-drops. Alone, nor whistling as his fellows do In fabling poem and provincial song, The ploughboy shouted to ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... and, if still on board, whether they were to be preserved for interment ashore, entreating him so to order it; that the negro Babo answered nothing till the fourth day, when at sunrise, the deponent coming on deck, the negro Babo showed him a skeleton, which had been substituted for the ship's proper figure-head—the image of Christopher Colon, the discoverer of the New World; that the negro Babo asked him whose skeleton that was, and whether, from its whiteness, he should not think it a white's; that, upon discovering ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... to-day sent me a goose to look at, belonging to the officers of the Hecla, that had been thus deposited within their reach only eight and forty hours, and from which they had eaten every ounce of meat, leaving only a skeleton most delicately cleaned. Our men had before remarked that their meat suffered unusual loss of substance by soaking, but did not know to what cause to attribute the deficiency. We took advantage, however, of the hunger of these depredators to procure complete skeletons ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... were asked by several hundred children in the upper elementary grades, over a period of a year and a half. They were then sorted and classified according to the scientific principles needed in order to answer them. These principles constitute the skeleton of this course. The questions gave a very fair indication of the parts of science in which children are most interested. Physics, in simple, qualitative form,—not mathematical physics, of course,—comes first; astronomy next; chemistry, geology, and certain forms of physical geography ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... and sport in the sunshine; the burnished lizard darts like a tongue of green flame along the walls; and birds make the hollow quarry overflow with their songs. There is something beautiful and impressive in the contrast between luxuriant life and the rigid skeleton upon ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... people, were most anxious to build us a new habitation entirely themselves. They requested us to give them the dimensions of the various dwellings, and said we should have no further trouble about them. A party accordingly proceeded to the bush to collect materials. They first formed the skeleton of a cottage containing three rooms, with slight sticks, firmly tied together with strips of flax. While this was in progress, another party was collecting rushes (which grow plentifully in the neighbourhood, called ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... But the ghosts of the seventeenth century were positively garrulous. One remarkable specimen indeed behaved, at Valogne, more like a ghost of our time than of his own. {95} But, as a common rule, the ghosts in whom Lady Conway's friends were interested had a purpose: some revealed the spot where a skeleton lay; some urged the payment of a debt, or the performance of a neglected duty. One modern spectre, reported by Mr. Myers, wandered disconsolate till a debt of three shillings and tenpence was defrayed. {96} This is, perhaps, the lowest figure cited as a pretext for appearing. The ghost ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... of this man associated with the remains of one other skeleton, probably a woman, and with the bones of extinct animals, were found in a geological stratum which indicates his age at about 500,000 years. Professor McGregor, after a careful anatomical study, ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... a quick step forward. Sure enough, there upon the floor, bound hand and foot with leather thongs that had been pulled cruelly tight, lay the emaciated figure of what had once been a handsome and healthy boy, but was now little more than a living skeleton. His face still retained its beauty of outline, though these outlines were terribly pinched and sharpened, but the expression of abject terror in the great blue eyes was pitiful to behold, and as Gaston and Raymond bent over the boy, ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... was thrown up bodily from the subterranean depth. He fell back again instantly into the same cavern, and was buried by the returning shower of earth which had spouted from the mine. Forty-five years afterwards, in digging for the foundations of a new wall, his skeleton was found. Clad in complete armor, the helmet and cuirass still sound, with his gold chain around his neck, and his mattock and pickaxe at his feet, the soldier lay unmutilated, seeming almost capable of resuming his part in the same war which—even after his half ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... ruffian, he was like everybody else in that respect. If I had refused the enlistment of all immoral characters in the middle of Africa, I should have had what is now known in England as a "skeleton regiment." I had already punished him severely. In every case of defiance of the government, the people had seen that so small an organized force as 200 regulars, amongst innumerable enemies, and without any communication with head-quarters, had been able to beat down and crush ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... there is no symmetry interiorly. For the centres of life and movement within the body are placed with Oriental inequality. Man is Greek without and Japanese within. But the absolute symmetry of the skeleton and of the beauty and life that cover it is accurately a principle. It controls, but not tyrannously, all the life of human action. Attitude and motion disturb perpetually, with infinite incidents—inequalities of work, war, and pastime, inequalities of sleep—the ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... which he passed during the three years of this stay upon the West Indian station, again produced distressing symptoms in his general health. To use his own words, the activity of the mind was "too much for my puny constitution." "I am worn to a skeleton," he writes to Mr. Suckling in July, 1786; and three months later to Locker, "I have been since June so very ill that I have only a faint recollection of anything which I did. My complaint was in my breast, such a one as I had going out to Jamaica [in 1777]. The Doctor thought I was in a ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... and they started at once. They passed the skeleton of the eland; its very bones were polished, and its head carried into the wood; and looking back they saw vultures busy on the lion. They ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... creation." Some will readily answer, "Of course it means only that at the Divine fiat, any given species—say an elephant—appeared perfect, trunk, tusks, and all the peculiar development of skull and skeleton, where previously no such creature had existed." But what possible reason have they for this conclusion? None whatever. It has simply been carelessly assumed from age to age, because people at first knew no better; and when they began ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... was a sound of growling and fighting outside, but he was so sleepy that it made no impression upon him. They did not awake fully until nearly noon, and when they went forth they found that nothing was left of the great bear but his skeleton. ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... can't do that either, Mr. Malone," the toothy girl said. "All of the executives already left on their vacation. They just left a skeleton force here ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... stress laid, throughout this book, upon the necessity for logical associations, you will readily see that the key-note to note-taking is, Let your notes represent the logical progression of thought in the lecture. Strive above all else to secure the skeleton—the framework upon which the lecture is hung. A lecture is a logical structure, and the form in which it is presented is the outline. This outline, then, is your chief concern. In the case of some lectures it is an ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... work, at first, to reconstruct the life in the cabin. Jud would have had the lower bunk, David the upper. The skeleton of a cot bed in the lean-to would have been Maggie's. But none of ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... now but one alternative for the friends of the prisoner. They must apply the drugs more assiduously, till they made a mere skeleton of their subject; and then try the virtue of the "almighty dollar." This now seemed to be the only thing that would move the hearts of seven-eighths of the police judges, marshals, wardens, and prosecutors. Such were ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... his feet the chief paid scant attention now, though he meant to interrogate them after their hunger was satisfied. His eyes dwelt on Rand, the strange combination of white man, Indian, and jungle demon of whom he had heard so much and on whose tanned skin the red skeleton streaks told the tale of a "mind out of the skull." Jose and Tim stared in frank curiosity at the dead-alive newcomer, whose silent composure remained totally unperturbed. But the seven new girls, though ignored by the chief and his guests, were by no means neglected by the ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... true? Was that the false that was so beautiful? Was it a rosy mist that wrapped it round? Or was love to the eyes as opium, Making all things more beauteous than they were? And can that opium do more than God To waken beauty in a human brain? Is this the real, the cold, undraperied truth— A skeleton admitted as a guest At life's loud feast, wearing a life-like mask? No, no; my heart would die if I believed it. A blighting fog uprises with the days, False, cold, dull, leaden, gray. It clings about The present, far dragging ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... correlative sexual characters, which we have previously spoken of in animals, are well known in man. Man is in the average larger, broader in the shoulders and more robust; his skeleton is more solid but his pelvis narrower. At the age of puberty, from 16 to 20 years, the beard grows on the face, while in the pubic region hair develops in both sexes. At the same time the testicles and external ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... unclouded blue. At this elevation rain is unknown, and vapors only condense into snow or hail. Here and there peaks of porphyry or basalt pierced through the white winding-sheet like the bones of a skeleton; and at intervals fragments of quartz or gneiss, loosened by the action of the air, fell down with a faint, dull sound, which in a denser atmosphere would have ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... skeleton hands that reached out from the clothes closet for me. Often at night I woke, ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... there were found in 1891, in strata early Quaternary or late Pliocene in age, parts of a skeleton of lower grade, if not of greater antiquity, than any human remains now known. Pithecanthropus erectus, as the creature has been named, walked erect, as its thigh bone shows, but the skull and teeth indicate a close affinity with ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... the newspapers, inviting people to come and see the old church which had been buried for fifteen hundred years. In the presence of many visitors, clerical and lay, we removed the stones of the altar, and found the skeleton of St. Piran, which was identified in three ways. The legend said that he was a man seven feet high; the skeleton measured six feet from the shoulder-bones to the heel Again, another legend said that his heart was enshrined in a church ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... cadaverous man of about forty, who was so painfully pinched and emaciated that a sympathetic shiver ran over Lynde as he glanced at him. He was as thin as an exclamation point. It seemed to Lynde that the man must be perishing with cold even in that burning June sunshine. It was not a man, but a skeleton. ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... roofs of some other cities are not to be seen. There is not an element of permanence in the wide, and windy streets. It is an increasing and busy place; it lies for two miles along the shore, and has climbed the hill till it can go no higher; but still houses and people look poor. It has a skeleton aspect too, which is partially due to the number of permanent "clothes-horses" on the roofs. Stones, however, are its prominent feature. Looking down upon it from above you see miles of grey boulders, and realise that every roof in the windy capital is "hodden doun" by a weight ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... that used to adorn waxen gentlemen in hair-dressing windows. His is one of those unhappy moustaches that stick out straight and scanty like a cat's. He has the slit of a letter-box mouth of the Irishman in caricature, and only half a dozen teeth spaced like a skeleton company. Nothing will induce him to procure false ones. It is a matter of principle. Between the wearing of false hair and the wearing of false teeth he makes a distinction of unfathomable subtlety. He is ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... sketch upon which he had been working, and taking one of the lamps in his hand peered out into the darkness. The long skeleton limbs of the bare trees tossed and quivered dimly amid the whirling drift. His sister sat by the fire, her fancy-work in her lap, and looked up at her brothers profile which showed against the brilliant yellow light. It was a handsome face, young and fair ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... worn old woman sitting in the shadow of death, proud of a dry skeleton and a handful of dust under a crape pall. And they had parted in the hey-day of youth, young and ardent, with arms ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... there was a holiday and the school was shut, Heatherley employed the time in mending the skeleton; Butler's picture represents him so engaged in a corner of the studio. In this way he got his model for nothing. Sometimes he hung up a looking-glass near one of his windows and painted his own portrait. Many of these he painted out, but after ...
— Samuel Butler: A Sketch • Henry Festing Jones
... knows we struggled. We did not give in without agony. In our hopeless, staring eyes there was the anguish of the great temptation. We looked in each other's death's-head faces. We clasped skeleton hands round our rickety knees, and swayed as we tried to sit upright. Vermin crawled over us in our weakness. We were half-crazy, and muttered in ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... wooden lattice work, and below which the steam pipes are placed; the object being to prevent the pieces from coming in contact with the steam pipe, and so preventing the production of stains. Above the dye-vat, and towards the back, is the wince, a revolving skeleton wheel, which draws the pieces out of the dye-vat at the front, and delivers them into it again at the back. The construction of this wince is well shown in the drawings. The wince will take the pieces full breadth, but often they are somewhat folded, and so several pieces, four, ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... the temple is converted into a school. Delightedly the scholars show me round. On the outside wall, for him who runs to read, are scored up long addition sums in our Western figures. Inside, the walls are hung with drawings of birds and beasts, of the human skeleton and organs, even of bacteria! There are maps of China and of the world. The children even produce in triumph an English reading-book, though I must confess they do not seem to have profited by it much. Still, they can say ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... it was in pursuance of an order. I had made it a point to shake hands with every soldier that was awake and conscious, but the surgeon hurried through without giving an opportunity to speak to a half-dozen in the whole hospital. One poor skeleton of a man sat bolstered on his cot, eating his dinner, and had on his plate ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... nominal, and without declension. The only advance, in fact, made beyond the purely Chinese standard, would have consisted in a few combinations of personal pronouns with verbal stems, which combinations assumed rapidly a typical character, and led to the formation of a skeleton of conjugation, containing a present, an aorist with an augment, and a reduplicated perfect. Why, during the same period, nominal bases should not have assumed at least some case-terminations, does not appear; and it certainly seems strange that people who ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... first to an enormous dome that bulged high above the ground, and admitted him to the dark interior. They climbed a stairway and came out into a room that held a skeleton frame of steel. "This is the big boy," said Professor Sykes, "the one ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... historical allusion to these underground works is made by Camden, who records that a gigantic skeleton was found in a cave on the Great Doward Hill, now called "King Arthur's Hall," being evidently the entrance to an ancient iron-mine. The next refers to the period of the Great Rebellion, when the terrified inhabitants of the district are said to have fled to them for safety when pursued ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... resplendent in silk and velvet, fashioned for an altar very different from this; but in place of the vessels usually associated with so sacred a piece of furniture, the Altar of the Grove was embellished with a mosaic of skulls and bones surrounding a complete skeleton which held its ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... among the ruins of Pompeii, which was buried by the dust and ashes from an eruption of Vesuvius, A. D. 79, the workmen found the skeleton of a Roman soldier in the sentry-box at one of the city's gates. He might have found safety under sheltering rocks close by; but, in the face of certain death, he had remained at his post, a mute witness to the ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... wrought upon the general system of European policy;—these are matters which must be relinquished to another pen. The history of the peace of Westphalia constitutes a whole, as important as the history of the war itself. A mere abridgment of it, would reduce to a mere skeleton one of the most interesting and characteristic monuments of human policy and passions, and deprive it of every feature calculated to fix the attention of the public, for which I write, and of which I now respectfully take ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... have said, of great length, and the side being removed, I could see the whole outline of the skeleton that lay in it. I say the outline, for the form was wrapped in a woollen or flannel shroud, so that the bones themselves were not visible. The man that lay in it was little short of a giant, measuring, as I guessed, a ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... all precarious engagements, all unhappy Carriages, and presuppose a sweet, lovable woman, contentedly married to a real man—a man who truly loves, even if he has not completely mastered the gentle art of love-making. No skeleton in the closet; no wishing the marriage undone; with no eternal fitnesses of things to make the gods envious; no great joys of having met each other's star-soul; with plenty of little every-day rubs, either ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... had the said whip, and took it in hand, to give it a crack which sounded like a pistol shot, with the result that the horse in the van threw up its head, which had hung down toward the road, and the other skeleton-like creature in the cart threw up its tail with a sharp whisk that disturbed the flies which appeared to have already begun to make a meal upon its body, while the scattered drove of ragged ponies and horses ceased cropping ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... unfinished—a ruin instead of a building. Everything must have a scaffolding first. Look how beautifully it's coming now,' he added, pointing, 'each shadow in its place, and all the lines of grey and black fitting exaccurately together like a skeleton. Have you never noticed ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... to meet a new condition; and, by varying the conditions, a leaf may be converted into any other organ, and any other organ into a leaf. In like manner, in osteology, he assumed that one vertebra of the spine might be considered the unit of the skeleton; the head was only the uppermost vertebra transformed. "The plant goes from knot to knot, closing, at last, with the flower and the seed. So the tape-worm, the caterpillar, goes from knot to knot, and ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the best of our powers what we take to be the definite scheme of events undoubtedly present in our author's mind, but never as a whole expressed by him. It is frequently necessary to infer from what he states, the precise curve of his thought: this skeleton of history is deduced only from ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... the frame was completed; the skeleton of the great barn rose sharp against the sky, its fresh white-oak timber gilded by the sunshine. Mark drove in the last pin, gave a joyous shout, which was answered by an irregular cheer from below, and lightly clambered down ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... gave way, and on October 23, reduced to a living skeleton, he reached Ujiji, after a perilous journey of six hundred miles taken expressly to secure supplies. He was bitterly disappointed to find that the rascal to whom the delivery of the goods had been charged had disposed of the ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... follower in the Muses' train; He toils to starve, and only lives in death; We slight him, till our patronage is vain, Then round his skeleton a garland wreathe, And o'er his bones an empty requiem breathe - Oh! with what tragic horror would he start (Could he be conjured from the grave beneath) To find the stage again a Thespian cart, And elephants and colts ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... At the first glance I was reminded of a museum. The tiled floor was thick with dust, and a remarkable array of miscellaneous objects was shrouded in the same grey covering. Then I perceived, standing strange and gaunt in the centre of the hall, what was clearly the lower part of a huge skeleton. I recognized by the oblique feet that it was some extinct creature after the fashion of the Megatherium. The skull and the upper bones lay beside it in the thick dust, and in one place, where rain-water had dropped ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... to the deep, dark, seldom discussed skeleton in the Orcaczy closet, Tod. You see, my great-great grandmother was quite a wicked lady, to hear tell. Went in for Witches' masses and the like. They say she poisoned her husband, a rather elderly and very childish man, for her ...
— Each Man Kills • Victoria Glad
... enthusiastic. He made a hurried inspection. The Liberty had started out with a skeleton crew of shipyard workers and no stores or arms. The ranks were now filled with volunteers from Deccan and elsewhere, and its storage-rooms fairly bulged with foodstuffs. Bors, however, really relaxed only once. That was when he saw ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the chief races of mankind. The red, black, yellow, or blushing white skin; the straight, the curly, the woolly hair; the scanty or abundant beard; the straight or oblique eyes; the various forms of the pelvis, the cranium, and other parts of the skeleton. ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... to allow that the native soldiers have borne themselves, as a rule, better than the aliens. The Irish Brigade—reduced to a skeleton, now, by the casualties of two years—has performed good service under Meagher, who himself has done much to redeem the ridicule incurred in early days; but the Germans have not been distinguished either for discipline, or daring. The Eleventh Division, whose shameful ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... entreaties, in his own mute language. But Granville was obstinate. He would NOT sit down quietly and be robbed like this of the fruit of his labours. He would not be despoiled. He would not be trampled upon. He would make for the coast, if he staggered in like a skeleton, and would confront the robber with his own vile crime, be it at Angra Pequena, or Cape Town, or ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... a plot from this germ into the completed story, it is often of advantage to make what may be called a "skeleton" or "working plot." This skeleton is produced by thinking through the story as it has been conceived, and setting down on paper in logical order a line for every important idea. These lines will roughly correspond ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... A white almost-skeleton hand stretched toward him from a lower bunk. A bearded face, cadaverously sunken, in which gleamed bright fevered eyes, was ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... and she perceived that on the cemented floor lay great numbers of shrouded forms that at first looked to her like folk asleep. He stepped to one of them and touched it with his foot, whereon the cloth which with it was covered crumbled into dust, revealing beneath a white skeleton. ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... a fait une contre-marche digne d'un bete." Some of the Duke of Wellington's victories over Soult they stoutly denied, and others they ascribed to great superiority of numbers, and to the large drafts of Soult's best troops for the purpose of forming skeleton battalions, to ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... at that time, presented a very dilapidated and deplorable appearance. The fort was crumbling to ruins. The skeleton of an unfinished church deformed the view. The straggling fences were broken down. The streets were narrow and crooked, many of the houses encroaching upon them. The foul enclosures for swine bordered ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... in thy red shoes till thou art pale and cold! Till thy skin shrivels up and thou art a skeleton! Dance shalt thou from door to door, and where proud, vain children dwell, thou shalt knock, that they may hear thee and tremble! ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... pleasant meadows, in its course of some twenty miles from Lake St. Charles away up in the hills to the St. Roch suburb of Quebec. Here it assumes the character of a deep, tortuous dock, incumbered with the debris of many ship-yards, and reflecting the skeleton shapes of big-ribbed merchantmen on the stocks. Here, too, it is generally called the Little River; probably to distinguish it from the great River St. Lawrence, into which it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... unless we devote a whole page to repeating the word "dismal." Devastation always appears to be more complete of a morning I have observed in my years of experience. A plasterer's scaffolding that looks fairly nobby at sunset is a grim, unsightly skeleton at breakfast-time. A couple of joiners' horses, a matrix or two, a pile of shavings and some sawed-off blocks scattered over the floor produce a matutinal conception of chaos that hangs over one like a pall until his aesthetic sense is beaten into subjection by the hammers of a million demons in ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... a circuit of the plain and Ned and Obed followed the matchless tracker, who was able, even in the moonlight, to note any disturbance of the soil. Presently he uttered a little cry and pointed ahead. Both saw the skeleton of a buffalo which evidently had been killed not long and stripped of its meat. A little further on they saw another and then ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of the catastrophe the St. Francis escaped. On the second it fell. In the space of two hours the flames had blotted it out, and by night only the charred skeleton remained. ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... ingenuousness stammered in poor German with fluent plagiarism from the classics of his romantic fatherland. All went well, until after a few years I met him again and noticed that it was not even a puppet but a skeleton that I had arrayed in a hero's armor. I was furious at him as though he had purposely deceived me - but my anger was unmerited. He had in perfect good faith tried his best to live up to the national traditions of ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... constituted the force sent to France at the outbreak of war. The value of General Henderson's work lies in the fact that, in spite of official stinginess and meagre supplies of every kind, he built up a skeleton organisation so elastic and so well thought out that it conformed to war requirements as well as even the German plans fitted in with their aerial needs. On the 4th of August, 1914, the nominal British air strength of the military wing was 179 machines. Of these, 82 machines ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... presented as a representation of the good time coming. It remained there for over a month, when one of those violent storms of wind and rain variegating the humidity of a South-Carolinian winter tore it to pieces, leaving only the skeleton framework on which it had been supported. May not this picture and its ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... examination, proved to be an ancient coffin. It was constructed, except the lid, of one sheet of lead, slit at the corners to allow its being doubled up to form the sides and ends. The coffin was 5ft. 2in. in length, and within were the remains of a skeleton, pronounced by experts to be that of a female. A few days later a second lead coffin was found, similar to the former, except that it was 5ft. 7in. long, and the skeleton was pronounced to be that of a man. Both coffins lay east and west. The present writer was ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... it hindered larger growths of political structure, so long as it remained intact, and furnished a strong social skeleton upon which to frame manners and ideals which are among man's highest achievements, patriarchal society had its own dangers, and has now so nearly succumbed to them, that to see its institutions in working order we have to penetrate into Albania or amongst ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... transforms men into beasts; your thickets are charged with the venom of vipers; your streams carry pestilence in their blue waters. If I could snatch away from that world of nature, which you extol, its kirtle of sunshine and its girdle of greenery, you would see it hideous like a very fury, a skeleton, rotting away with disease ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... this insufficient bodily nourishment, during the years of growth and development, is rachitis, which is extremely common among the children of the working-class. The hardening of the bones is delayed, the development of the skeleton in general is restricted, and deformities of the legs and spinal column are frequent, in addition to the usual rachitic affections. How greatly all these evils are increased by the changes to which the workers ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... E. W. Pfitzenmayer. Thanks to this expedition an excellent specimen of the mammoth was received by the Academy of Sciences,—rather young, with skin, parts of the internal organs, some food and almost the whole skeleton. Unfortunately some of the soft parts of the body, such as the trunk, were not found. The remains of this mammoth made it possible not only to set up the skeleton, but to stuff the animal, which is placed in the position ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... war between the United States and Spain, the 23d Regiment was recruited to its full quota of one hundred men for each of twelve companies. Four new companies had to be formed, which were called, at first, skeleton companies, because they only had a few men transferred to them from ...
— A Soldier in the Philippines • Needom N. Freeman
... in the episcopal Council, which swelled his heart with pride and his money-bag with crowns; he had in the choir of his church behind the mother altar, in a splendid glass-case, laid on a bed of blue velvet ... an old yellow skeleton! The relics of ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... ending with Madame's intimation that "young Pitcher's had a fever," followed up by Squeers's characteristic exclamation, "No! damn that chap, he's always at something of that sort"—when there came the first glimpse of poor Smike, in a skeleton suit, and large boots originally made for tops, too patched and ragged now for a beggar; around his throat "a tattered child's frill only half concealed by a coarse man's neckerchief." Anxiously observing Squeers, as he emptied his overcoat ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... the character of his habits and of his mind. Trouble had prematurely faded the old lady's face, formerly handsome, no doubt; nothing was left but the more prominent features, the outline, in a word, the skeleton of a countenance of which the whole effect indicated great shrewdness with much grace in the play of the eyes, in which could be discerned the expression peculiar to women of the old Court; an expression that ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac
... appeared of prophets and martyrs and Hebrew visionaries. From obscurity and the far East came David Reubeni, journeying to Italy by way of Nubia to obtain firearms to rid Palestine of the Moslem—a dark-faced dwarf, made a skeleton by fasts, riding on his white horse up to the Vatican to demand an interview, and graciously received by Pope Clement. In Portugal—where David Reubeni, heralded by a silken standard worked with the Ten Commandments, had been received by the King with an answering pageantry of banners and processions—a ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... need not be perfect. It is sufficient to take of the flesh, and, afterwards, to dry perfectly, without taking them to pieces. The whole skeleton should be placed in a box with cotton or with very dry and fine sand. If it is too long, it could be separated into two ...
— Movement of the International Literary Exchanges, between France and North America from January 1845 to May, 1846 • Various
... few bronze spear-heads, very green and brittle, and a mass of burnt bones. The doctor said that they were the bones of horses. On the top of all this litter, with his head between his knees, there sat a huge skeleton. The vicar said that when alive the man must have been fully six feet six inches tall, and large in proportion, for the bones were thick and heavy. He had evidently been a king: he wore a soft gold circlet round his head, and three golden bangles on his arms. He had been killed ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... entirely new prospect, and surrounded by an utterly bewildering noise. All about us monstrous wheels were turning slowly; machinery was clanking and groaning in the hoarsest discords; invisible waters were pouring onward with a rushing sound; high above our heads, on skeleton platforms, iron chains clattered fast and fiercely over iron pulleys, and huge steam pumps puffed and gasped, and slowly raised and depressed their heavy black beams of wood. Far beneath the embankment ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... I stood by the bedside of the blind Frenchman. The poor fellow was a skeleton, with the characteristic sunken face and fallen skin with which we are familiar in those living on what we know as "dry diet." He had nothing to say for himself except, "Times has been none too good, Doctor. It is a bad country when ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell |
