"Span" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The total length from Riviere du Loup to Halifax is 561 miles. There is a spur running down to St. John, in the Bay of Fundy, eighty-nine miles long, another branch fifty-two miles long to Pictou, a great coal district opposite the southern end of Prince Edward Island; while a third span of eleven miles, branching off at Monckton and finishing at Point du Char, meets the steamers for Prince Edward Island, making a total length of 713 miles. The rails are steel, and the road is, mile for mile, as well made as any in England. The carriages are on the American principle—the ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... and has given us, in addition, a native gooseberry span-worm, the larva of a small moth. These several worms, unchecked, would soon render the culture of the currant and gooseberry impossible in the regions where they abounded; and, at first, horticulturists were almost in despair, for the ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... the maidens tripped lightly down the span of the arch until near the very end, leaning over to observe the group below. She was exquisitely fair, dainty as a lily and graceful as a bough swaying in the breeze. "Why, it's Polychrome!" exclaimed Button-Bright in a voice of mingled ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... sacrifice not completed with Dakshina, (instead of producing merit) brings about the destruction of one's children, animals, and heaven. Such a sacrifice destroys also the senses, the fame, the achievements and the very span of life, that one has. Those Brahmanas that lie with women in their season, or who never perform sacrifices, or whose families have no members conversant with the Vedas, are regarded as Sudras in ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... sweep! Up all this dirt and dust, For Mamma is busy today and help her I surely must. Everything now is spick and span; away to my play I will run. It will be such a 'sprise to Mamma to find ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... morning, with no snow in sight save that on the mountain-tops, and found Major Pitcher and Captain Chittenden at the head of a squad of soldiers, with a fine saddle-horse for the President, and an ambulance drawn by two span of mules for me, I confess that I experienced just a slight shade of mortification. I thought they might have given me the option of the saddle or the ambulance. Yet I entered the vehicle as if it was just what I ...
— Camping with President Roosevelt • John Burroughs
... an important part in her life might be the least depressing factor in this new existence. She could not view the rough and ready standards of the woods with much equanimity—not as she had that day seen them set forth. These things were bound to be a part of her daily life, and all the brief span of her years had gone to forming habits of speech and thought and manner diametrically opposed to what she ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... well, Sir, that lads in general have but a kind of ugly and odd conception of Learning; and look upon it as such a starving thing, and unnecessary perfection, especially as it is usually dispensed out unto them, that Nine-pins or Span-counter are judged much more heavenly employments! And therefore what pleasure, do we think, can such a one take in being bound to get against breakfast, two or three hundred Rumblers out of HOMER, in commendation of ACHILLES's toes, or the Grecians' boots; or to have measured out to ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... were to live a few years longer than the number commonly granted as the span of human life, I, for my part, have no manner of doubt that they would have something to add to the accounts of the past previously written by them, for the reason that, even as it is not possible for a single man, be he ever so diligent, to learn the exact truth in a flash, or ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... text, 'You know at present that Vaisvnara Self, tell us that,' &c., and further on, 'But he who meditates on the Vaisvnara Self as a span long,' &c. (Ch. Up. V, 11, 6; 18, 1). The doubt here arises whether that Vaisvnara Self can be made out to be the highest Self or not. The Prvapakshin maintains the latter alternative. For, he says, the word Vaisvnara is used in the sacred texts in four different ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... thousand blows come from the Archbishop's hand, The dozen peers are nothing short of that, With one accord join battle all the Franks. Pagans are slain by hundred, by thousand, Who flies not then, from death has no warrant, Will he or nill, foregoes the allotted span. The Franks have lost the foremost of their band, They'll see no more their fathers nor their clans, Nor Charlemagne, where in the pass he stands. Torment arose, right marvellous, in France, Tempest there was, of wind and ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... she would not altogether mind if he remained at sea for a time. He could save, and she could get on; and then they would both be happy, with a house somewhere, and a maid, and everything spick and span. No babies. Sally had taken that to heart, and she appreciated the value of old Perce's advice. A girl who wanted to get on did not need babies to drag her ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... to find it more Desirable than ever it was before. How right it seemed that he should reach the span Of comfortable years ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... interview with Eve, Loder retired to the study and spent the remaining hours of the day and the whole span of the evening in work. At one o'clock, still feeling fresh in mind and body, he dismissed Greening and passed into Chilcote's bedroom. The interview with Eve, though widely different from the one he had anticipated, had left him stimulated and alert. In the hours ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... sovereignty which criticises intellect, art, talent, fame, virtue, absurdity, and even truth; whoever has occupied that tribune erected by his own hands, fulfilled the functions of that magistracy to which he is self-appointed,—in short, whosoever has been, for however brief a span, that proxy of public opinion, looks upon himself when remanded to private life as an exile, and the moment a chance is offered to him puts out an eager hand ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... from sunlight," Geck said sadly. "Us have very long life-span, but underground work make us wither-die fast. Idea often discussed among we to discontinue race, because soon all ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... Cedar; while it stood That was the onely glory of the wood; Great Charles, thou earthly God, celestial man, Whose life, like others, though it were a span; Yet in that span, was comprehended more Than earth hath waters, or the ocean shore; Thy heavenly virtues, angels should rehearse, It is a theam too high for humane verse: Hee that would know thee right, then let him look Upon thy rare-incomparable book, And read it or'e; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 480, Saturday, March 12, 1831 • Various
... to the bank of the river. Here there was a primitive "bridge" which crossed the roaring rapids at its narrowest part, where the stream was forced to flow between two great boulders. The bridge was made of half a dozen very slender logs, some of which were not long enough to span the distance between the boulders. They had been spliced and lashed together with vines. Arteaga and Carrasco took off their shoes and crept gingerly across, using their somewhat prehensile toes to keep from slipping. It ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... The remaining span of Berlioz' life was outwardly more peaceful and happy. He continued to travel and compose. Everywhere he went ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... knew, weren't alive yet. They imitated the accents and concerns, caught at the gestures, of maturity; but, even in the grip of beginning instincts, they were hardly more sentient than the figures of a puppet show. Or, perhaps, their world was so far from his that they couldn't be said to span from one to the other. Gregory, in mind, was no more like him than a slip was like a tree bearing fruit—no matter how bitter. Helena more nearly resembled her mother; that had ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... and beacon a considerable time after the tide had begun to flow, the artificers were occupied in removing the forge from the top of the building, to which the gangway or wooden bridge gave great facility; and, although it stretched or had a span of forty-two feet, its construction was extremely simple, while the road-way was perfectly firm and steady. In returning from this visit to the rock every one was pretty well soused in spray before reaching the ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... You know Brown puts that magnificent span of his in the hearse on account of their handsome action. I'm sure Mrs. Gaylard would have been frightened to death if she could only have seen the way they pranced at her funeral last fall. I was determined then that they should never draw me;" and Aunt Pen shivered for herself beforehand. ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... otherwise. Many vehicles came dashing down Tinplate Street: carriages, public and private, of every variety, from the rattletrap cab hired off the stand, or the decent coach from the livery stable, to the smart spick-and-span brougham, with its well-appointed horses and servants in neat livery. They all set down at the same door, and took up from it at any hour between midnight and dawn, waiting patiently in file in the wide street round the corner, till the summons came ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... not stop to question the probability of a span thus afflicted being driven on so long a journey; but asked ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... maiden in her heart, "I know with certainty that I shall set my brothers free," and went and sought a high tree and seated herself in it and span, and neither spoke nor laughed. Now it so happened that a king was hunting in the forest, who had a great greyhound which ran to the tree on which the maiden was sitting, and sprang about it, whining, and barking at her. Then the King came by and saw the beautiful King's daughter ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... to rights—"spick and span," Mrs. MacCall said—and Saturday was given up to preparing for the coming school term. It was the last day of the ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... a century before the conquest, an injunction that the one measure, which was kept at Winchester, should be observed throughout the realm. Most nations have regulated the standard of measures of length by comparison with the parts of the human body; as the palm, the hand, the span, the foot, the cubit, the ell, (ulna, or arm) the pace, and the fathom. But, as these are of different dimensions in men of different proportions, our antient historians[r] inform us, that a new standard of longitudinal ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... horse, and spurred toward home. Often did he look back, but without seeing any cause for increased alarm. As yet, however, the road had been level and winding, and therefore could not allow him to span much of it at a glance. After noon it ascended a high and lengthened hill surrounded by wastes of bog. As he gained the summit of this hill, and again looked back, a horseman appeared, sweeping to its foot. Shamus ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... watched long before a cloud of sparks flew into the darkness, and one span of the doomed bridge fell into the water. The other ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... 4 feet in span and 21 inches high. Carved in relief in the centre of the stone is a cross, on one side of which is an animal—very probably intended for the Agnus Dei; while, on the same side, a little below the Agnus Dei, there are three figures with helmets on their heads and swords ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... unseen through the moss; and yet for the sake of auld lang syne, and the figure of a certain GENIUS LOCI, I am condemned to linger awhile in fancy by its shores; and if the nymph (who cannot be above a span in stature) will but inspire my pen, I would gladly carry ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... felt uncomfortable in our smart civilian clothing. We looked too soft, too clean, too spick-and-span. We did not feel that we belonged there. But in a whispered conversation we comforted ourselves with the assurance that if ever America took her rightful stand with the Allies, in six months after the event, hundreds of thousands of American boys ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... or gadfly, would baffle the utmost structural skill of the greatest philosopher! Into the fathomless depths of our own globe we have also essayed to penetrate. Poor beings! of three score and ten, whose utmost historical span extends only to some thousands of years, have sought to trammel up the terrene vicissitudes of millions of ages anterior to their own existence! Does not this savour of a vain research, or of a laudable ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... and a thick pea-jacket are a proper span for a roving trip. Don't forget that a couple of good blankets also go a long way toward a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... deuce for wheeled transport. All is fair in "love and war." This being a creed very staunchly adhered to by the private soldier when campaigning, the mess-servants of the staff of the Cavalry Brigade saw fit in the early morning to steal a span[26] of mules which had strayed from the protection of their rightful owners. Now the Brigade state fourgon with a span of four mules was a big enterprise, and if treated gently might have ministered to the comfort of the staff for many months. But no; the brigadier's ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... of a single span—a single arch—of cut stone, without a support, and paved on top with flags of lava and ornamental pebblework. Everywhere are walls, walls, walls, and all of them tasteful and handsome—and eternally substantial; and everywhere are those marvelous pavements, so neat, so smooth, and so indestructible. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of agony I lived, hours contained within the span of seconds, the beloved head resting against my shoulder, whilst I searched for signs of life and dreaded to find ghastly wounds.... At first I could not credit the miracle; I could not receive ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... medicine which exist are for the most part only fitted for the intellectual digestion of Dryasdust and his congeners. Of the men who made the discoveries which have saved incalculable numbers of human lives, and which have lengthened the span of human existence, there is often no record at all accessible to the general reader. Yet the story of these men's lives, of their struggles and of their triumphs, is not only interesting, but in the highest degree stimulating and educative. Many of them could have said with literal truth what ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... The bridge had a span of sixty feet, and was constructed on the system of the "jhula," or rope bridge, of Cashmere, out of telegraph wire. The roadway, to admit of one person at a time, was made of two lengths of twisted wire, each ten strands thick. These being stretched ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
... in Harper's Monthly for April, 1909, were from the pen of the author of Animal Experimentation—a work which is reviewed in the Appendix to the present edition. To his advanced age—now far beyond the allotted span—we may ascribe the inaccuracies which, at an earlier period of his career, would doubtless ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... from man himself to the place he occupies in the universe, how are they overwhelmed by a sense of his littleness and insignificance! They see the earth which he inhabits dwindle to a speck in the unimaginable infinities of space, and the brief span of his existence shrink into a moment in the inconceivable infinities of time. And they ask, Shall a creature so puny and frail claim to live for ever, to outlast not only the present starry system but every other that, when earth and sun and stars have crumbled into dust, ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... of the numerous low bridges that span the canal, the spars, rigging, and smoke-stack belonging to the complete equipment of the "Marguerite" would have made her journey on that artificial waterway absolutely impossible; therefore it was necessary to replace these parts in ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... when the daughters of Eve span, the bride provided all the household linen, most of which had taken shape under her own fair fingers. Now the intending bridegroom furnishes the house throughout. If the bride's father were wealthy and generous enough to make them a present of the lining for the ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... ev'ning, a poor old man, Whose tattered cloak had once seen better days, (That now were dwindled to the shortest span:) Whose rimless, crownless hat provoked the gaze Of saucy urchins and of grown-up boys: Whose hoary locks should e'er protect from scorn, One who had ceased to court earth's fading joys,— Knock'd at a door, thus lonely ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... thy brother-dog, began To flag, and feel his narrowing span. And cold, besides, his blue blood ran, Since, 'gainst the classes, 40 He heard, of late, the Grand Old Man ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... of activity were crossed by sickness and sorrow. For the first time in a long life, which had already extended almost a decade beyond the allotted span, I became seriously ill. To be thus laid low by sickness was a deep affliction to one of my active temperament; but, if sickness brings trouble, it often brings joy in the tender care and appreciation of hosts of friends, and this joy I realized to the fullest ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... simplest, and probably the earliest, measures of length are those based on various parts of the body. Some of our Indian tribes, for instance, employed the double arm's length, the single arm's length, the hand width, and the finger width. Old English standards, such as the span, the ell, and the hand, go back to this very obvious method of measuring ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... waited ... dusty and derelict, in the spick-and-span office, where hung the old-fashioned steel engravings on the wall, of Civil War battles, of generals and officers seated about tables ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... a span, That is quickly fleeting; Cruel death comes on apace And removes us from the ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various
... strong fatherly feeling or principle of right in that respect, he should be irritated by the little life so constantly interfering with his pleasure and so surely undermining Katy's health. For Katy did not improve, as Wilford hoped she might; and with his two hands he could almost span her slender waist, while the beautiful neck and shoulders, once his chiefest pride, were no longer worn uncovered, for Katy would not display her bones, whatever the fashion might be. In this dilemma Wilford sought his mother, and the result of that consultation brought a more ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... wistaria comes the tree-peony, and then the iris, with its trefoil flowers broader than a man may span, and at all colors under the sky. To one who has seen the great Japanese fleur-de-lis, France looks ludicrously infelicitous in ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... And their zeal, industry and ingenuity were rewarded by substantial results, which have left an abiding mark on Italian politics and entered for a great deal into the attitude of the nation towards the two groups of belligerents. In a relatively short span of time foreign competition in Italian markets was checked, German products ousted those of their rivals, and at last the very sources of Italy's economic life were in the hands of the Teuton, whose continued goodwill became almost a vital necessity ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... wheels, in charge of the great showman himself, aided by that experienced nurse, Mrs. Gamp, in somewhat dilapidated attire, followed. The babies, from a span long to an indefinite length, of all shapes and sizes, black, white, and snuff-colored, twins, triplets, quartettes, and quincunxes, in calico and sackcloth, and in a state of nature, filled the vehicle, and were hung about it by the leg or neck or ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... reaches earth and heaven Through heart and soul of man, It lives beyond the present— Eternity doth span. ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... interpreted your chatter. Who else felt interest in such pitter-patter? Or, weary, joined in all your games with zest, And managed with a minimum of rest? Now, is it not your turn To bridge the gulf, to span the gap be- tween you? To-day, before Death's angel over-lean you, Before your chance is gone? ...
— The Verse-Book Of A Homely Woman • Elizabeth Rebecca Ward, AKA Fay Inchfawn
... line does the incisive initial figure persist a little longer in the new accompaniment than in the original solo, but on the last page it reappears and pervades the whole orchestra, even the drums thundering out its rhythm at the climax where the holding-notes of the trumpet span the torrent of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... and see The far horizon's beckoning span! Faith in your God-known destiny! We are a part of some ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... harvest of memories which other men reap in their span of years, the unexpected events, sweet or tragic loves, adventurous journeys, all the occurrences of a free existence, all these things had ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... of American democratic life than the fact that within a span of forty years Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt were Presidents of the United States. Two men more unlike in origin, in training, and in ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... loco-boiler next an' thirty knots an hour! Thirty an' more. What I ha' seen since ocean-steam began Leaves me no doot for the machine: but what about the man? The man that counts, wi' all his runs, one million mile o' sea: Four time the span from earth to moon.... How far, O Lord, from Thee? That wast beside him night an' day. Ye mind my first typhoon? It scoughed the skipper on his way to jock wi' the saloon. Three feet were on the stokehold floor—just slappin' to an' fro— An' cast me on a furnace-door. I have the marks ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... the earth thou art come, Back to thy home; The ivory hilt of thy blade With gold is embossed and inlaid; Since for Babylon's host a great deed Thou didst work in their need, Slaying a warrior, an athlete of might, Royal, whose height Lacked of five cubits one span— A ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... not only incapable of a high thought himself, but was an unbeliever in the possibility of high thoughts or noble principles in the world he lived in. He measured the universe by that narrow scrap of tape which was the span of his own littleness. To him Caesar was an imperial brigand, Cicero a hypocritical agitator. To him all great warriors were greedy time-servers like John Churchill; all statesmen plausible placemen; all reformers self-seeking pretenders. Nor did Captain Paget wish that it should ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... the winding canal, cloud-capped at their lofty summit from the bank of vapor that hovers along the entire range, rock-ribbed, precipitous, magnificent in silent, stubborn strength, the towering heights of Maryland span the scene from east to west, and stand superb, the background to the picture. All as yet is sombre in tone, black, dark green, and brown and gray. The mist hangs heavy over everything, and the twinkle of an occasional camp-fire is but the sodden glow of ember whose ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... determined to surround the hill and the river bank near it with a wall, so that it might never be possible for an enemy to destroy the mills, and crossing the river, to carry on operations with ease against the circuit-wall of the city. So they decided to span the river at this point with a bridge, and to attach it to the wall; and by building many houses in the district across the river they caused the stream of the Tiber to be in the middle of the city. So ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... reflections on the old theory, recently developed before the Hellenic Society by Mr. JAY HAMBRIDGE, that certain formulae of proportions found in nature—notably in the normal ratio between a man's height and the span of his outstretched arms (2: [**square root] 5)—constituted the basis of symmetry in the art of the Greeks and, earlier, of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... growing larger than provinces, factories growing larger than cities; they meant the empire of the slum. They meant a degree of detailed repetition and dehumanised division of labour, to which no man born would surrender his brief span in the sunshine, if he could hope to beat his ploughshare into a sword. The nations of the earth were not to surrender to the Kaiser; they were to surrender to Krupp, his master and theirs; the French, the British, the Russians were to surrender ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... to the center of the room. He is faultlessly clad in a black suit, spick and span from top to toe). Here ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... Polar Span. In a dynamo or motor the angle subtended by the portion of a pole piece facing the armature, such angle being referred to the centre of the cross-section of the ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... stock go fast, if not far. If luxuries were beyond our reach, at least the lighted streets were ours, and it was with a delightful sense of freedom from ship discipline that we sauntered from 'sailor-town' to 'China-town,' or through the giant thoroughfares that span the heart of the City itself. Everything was new, and fine, and strange. The simple street happenings, the busy life and movements, the glare and gaudery of the lights, were as curious to us as if we had ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... span settled down as quiet as lambs and swung into a gait which whirled the surrey along the picturesque, woodland road at a rate not to be despised, while Peggy drove with the master- hand of experience. Indeed she seemed to guide more by words than reins, ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... disorderly houses in the old and new Tenderloin. They have almost forgotten the dark tragedies hidden just a fathom underground in their burial lot in Washington Cemetery—the poor murdered women, the infants one span long." ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... alone a God proclaim! Blot revelation from the mind of man! Yea, let him not e'en Nature's features scan; There is within him a low voice, the same Throughout the varied scenes of being's span, That whispers, God. And doth not conscience speak Though sin its wildest force upon it wreak! Born with us—never dying—ever preaching Of right and wrong, with reference aye to Him— And doth not Hope, on toward the future reaching— The aspirations struggling ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... lack of imagination that such an event looms so immense in our thoughts. Most of us do not make the ordinance of death in itself an accusation against the Most High; we are not specially shocked or outraged by the thought that the whole population of the globe dies out within quite a moderate span of time, nor even by the reflection that several hundred thousand persons die every year in the United Kingdom alone. We know quite well that every one of those who perished in Messina must have paid ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... herself in a country unfamiliar, which, for all she knew, might be an hour's or a week's journey from High March, where Prosper was. Prosper! She knew that every mincing step of the donkey took her further from him, but she was powerless to protest or to pray; life scarce whispered in her yet. And what span of miles or hours, after all, could set her wider from him than discovery, the shame, the yelling of her foes, had ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... like the snaw-drift, Her throat is like the swan, She's jimp about the middle, Her waist ye weel micht span.' ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... It depends on your believing;— If it ends with this short span, Then is man no better than The beasts that perish. But a Loftier Hope we cherish. "Life out of Death" is written wide Across Life's page on every side. We cannot think as ended, our ...
— 'All's Well!' • John Oxenham
... ended abruptly in a level sandy road running among birch trees. At a wayside tea-house a man was sitting on a low table. He wore white trousers, a coat of cornflower shade and a Panama hat—all very spick and span. ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... had said so, that maiden of superior complexion, Pramadvara, endued with a moiety of Ruru's life, rose as from her slumber. This bestowal by Ruru of a moiety of his own span of life to resuscitate his bride afterwards led, as it would be seen, to a ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... never come to me in ten years, seemed now perfectly natural. I would return at once to that far off village where, for a brief hour, I had dwelt in a "Fool's Paradise," through which my way had lain but a brief span, and where I had passed, like the fabled bird, that "floats ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... had cleared the table and washed the dishes, and had left the toy kitchen spick and span, the ten million lights in New York were lighted and casting their glow above the city. Tembarom sat down on the Adams chair before the window and took Little Ann on his knee. She was of the build which settles comfortably and ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... many a glorious sight, To leave so many lands unvisited, To leave so many books unread, Unrealized so many visions bright;— Oh! wretched yet inevitable spite Of our short span, and we must yield our breath, And wrap us in the unfeeling coil of death, So much remaining of unproved delight, But hush, my soul, and vain regrets be still'd; Find rest in Him Who is the complement Of whatsoe'er transcends ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... if it's a small one. A shop or a barn has saved many a man's life and reason Cephas, for it's ag'in' a woman's nature to have you underfoot in the house without hectorin' you. Choose a girl same's you would a horse that you want to hitch up into a span; 't ain't every two that'll stan' together without kickin'. When you get the right girl, keep out of her way consid'able an' there'll ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... I can transport thee, O, to a paradise To which this Canaan is a darksome span. Beings shall welcome, serve thee, lovely as angels; The elemental powers shall stoop, the sea Disclose her wonders, and receive thy feet Into her sapphire chambers; orbed clouds Shall chariot thee from zone to zone, while earth, A dwindled, islet, floats beneath thee. Every Season and ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... Bacchus!" he added to himself, as the professor was going down the stairs. "He is a span higher than I am, that just occurs ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... a most anomalous conjunction of words; old Arthur Gride and dark eyes and eyelashes, and lips that to look at is to long to kiss, and clustering hair that he wants to play with, and waists that he wants to span, and little feet that don't tread upon anything—old Arthur Gride and such things as these is more monstrous still; but old Arthur Gride marrying the daughter of a ruined "dashing man" in the Rules of the Bench, is the most monstrous and incredible of all. Plainly, friend Arthur ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... to the oak, As well-heads to the river's height, As to the chicken the moist yolk, As to high noon the day's first white— Such is the baby to the man. There, straddling one red arm and leg, Lay my last work, in length a span, Half hatched, and conscious of the egg. A creditable child, I hoped; And half a score of joys to be Through sunny lengths of prospect sloped Smooth to the bland futurity. O, fate surpassing other dooms, O, hope above all wrecks of time! O, light that fills all vanquished glooms, O, silent ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... information that by their means a death-blow was given to the plots to place Charles Edward upon the English throne; and when he was once more about, it was to join his little vessel, with his lieutenant's grade endorsed, and in a span new uniform, of which he was ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... country, and of every province, and of their sagamores, and their number of men and strength. The wind beginning to rise a little, we cast a horseman's coat about him; for he was stark naked, only a leather about his waist, with a fringe about a span long or little more. He had a bow and two arrows, the one headed, and the other unheaded. He was a tall, straight man, the hair of his head black, long behind, only short before, none on his face ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... of the Corporation workmen should be increased to the standard recognized by the Trades Unions. (Loud laughter.) It had been proved that the notoriously short lives of the working people—whose average span of life was about twenty years less than that of the well-to-do classes—their increasingly inferior physique, and the high rate of mortality amongst their children was caused by the wretched remuneration they received for hard and tiring work, the excessive number of ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... a day or an hour will bring forth. For many years one may be permitted to move on "the even tenor of his way," without anything of momentous import occurring to mark the passage of his little span of time as it sweeps him onward to eternity. At another period of life, events, it may be of the most startling and abidingly impressive nature, are crowded into a few months or weeks, or even days. So it was now with our travellers on the African river. When ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... best of his life, maimed and marred as it was by his own folly. He was still in the prime of his age, thirty years younger than Mr. Clifford, whose intellect was as keen and clear as ever; there was a long span of time stretching before him, ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... around me that golden circle which one only of earth's inhabitants could enter. Oftentimes in my sleep also I fancied it—and sometimes in the intermediate state—in that serenity which breathes about the transported soul, enjoying its pure and perfect rest, a span below the feet ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... horses, mules, birds, trees, houses, etc. The use of the word couple is not only limited to two, but to two that may be coupled or yoked together. A man and wife are spoken of as a couple. We speak of a span of horses, a yoke of oxen, a brace of ducks, a pair of ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... should this Desert bee, for it is vnpeopled? Noe: Tonges Ile hang on euerie tree, that shall ciuill sayings shoe. Some, how briefe the Life of man runs his erring pilgrimage, That the stretching of a span, buckles in his summe of age. Some of violated vowes, twixt the soules of friend, and friend: But vpon the fairest bowes, or at euerie sentence end; Will I Rosalinda write, teaching all that reade, to know The quintessence of euerie sprite, heauen would in little ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... followed was to Cicily the most strenuous and the most exciting that she had ever experienced in the brief span of her years. She steadfastly maintained her pose as a woman who had renounced her husband; yet, she remained in that husband's house, with a sublime disregard for the inconsistency of her conduct. She studiously ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... We are smothered, at least, in respectable mud, Where the divers of Bathos lie drowned in a heap, And Southey's last Pan has pillowed his sleep; That Felo de se who, half drunk with his Malmsey, Walked out of his depth and was lost in a calm sea, 10 Singing "Glory to God" in a spick and span stanza, The like (since Tom Sternhold ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... attributed to her sex Vividly unreal, as a toy village comes painted from the shop We must believe, if we believe at all, without authority We are always trying to get away from ourselves We never can foresee how we may change We have no control over our affections When our brief span of usefulness is done Who had learned the lesson of mothers,—how to wait Whole conception of charity is a crime against civilization You and your religion are as far apart as ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Anunnaki, according to a Babylonian hymn, 'bathe their countenance'; and when to this notice it be added that another hymn praises them as the 'shining chiefs' of the ancient city of Eridu, it will be apparent that the conceptions attached to this group span the ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... compared, described, and criticised by the children. This constitutes a valuable mental exercise, and if the tests are simple at first and made gradually more difficult will be most valuable in increasing the memory-span as well as in ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... gave she all Who therein might be found; Fell adown the old timbers, Reeked all treasure-houses; There the shield-mays were burnt, Their lives' span brought to naught; In the fierce fire sank down All the stead ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous
... absolutely forced this fact upon them. If the earth, whose globe they knew to be minute compared with her distance from the sun, is really circling around the sun in a mighty orbit many millions of miles in diameter, it follows of necessity that the fixed stars must lie so far away that even the span of the earth's orbit is reduced to nothing by comparison with the vast depths beyond which lie even the nearest of those suns. This was Tycho Brahe's famous and perfectly sound argument against the Copernican theory. ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... originated had been forgotten. It was one of Diarmaid's geasa not to hunt the boar of Ben Gulban, and this was probably totemic in origin. But legend told how his father killed a child, the corpse being changed into a boar by the child's father, who said its span of life would be the same as Diarmaid's, and that he would be slain by it. Oengus put geasa on Diarmaid not to hunt it, but at Fionn's desire he broke these, and was killed.[882] Other geasa—those of Cuchulainn not to eat dog's ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... stood out upon his temples from the force of his exertions—a strand parted, another and another, and one hand was free. Then from the jungle came a low guttural, and the ape-man became suddenly a silent, rigid statue, with ears and nostrils straining to span the black void where ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... under his true name. George Ives was a Wisconsin boy from near Racine. Both he and Plummer were twenty-seven years of age when killed, but they had compressed much evil into so short a span. Plummer himself was a master of men, a brave and cool spirit, an expert with weapons, and in all not a bad specimen of the bad man at his worst. He was a murderer, but after all was not enough a murderer. No outlaw of later years so closely resembled the great ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... Jest! Man delved, and built, and span; Then wandered South and West The peoples Aryan, I journeyed in their van; The Semites, too, confessed,— From Beersheba to Dan,— ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... river flowing from God's sea Through devious ways. He mapped my course for me; I cannot change it; mine alone the toil To keep the waters free from grime and soil. The winding river ends where it began; And when my life has compassed its brief span I must return to that mysterious source. So let me gather daily on my course The perfume from the blossoms as I pass, Balm from the pines, and healing from the grass, And carry down my current as I go Not common stones but precious gems to ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... next two worlds,[318] brought with it various incongruities and indefensible assertions, among them the blasphemous and terrible idea of the eternal torture of the human soul for sins committed during the brief span of one life spent on earth. In order to escape from this nightmare, theologians posited a forgiveness which should release the sinner from this dread imprisonment in an eternal hell. It did not, and was never supposed to, set him free in this world from the natural consequences of his ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... nineteenth year. In stature he measured exactly six feet three, and he gave every promise of filling up in proportion. Dirck was none of your roundly-turned, Apollo-built fellows, but he had shoulders that his little, short, solid, but dumpy-looking mother, who was of the true stock, could scarcely span, when she pulled his head down to give him a kiss; which she did regularly, as Dirck told me himself, twice each year; that is to say, Christmas and New-Year. His complexion was fair, his limbs large and well proportioned, his hair light, his eyes blue, and his face would have been thought ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... woman she was done, and she took her spinning to the door to spin, and as she span ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... Carrasco, "to impress upon the author of the history that, if he prints it again, he must not forget what worthy Sancho has said, for it will raise it a good span higher." ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... rainbow span, O'er dim Crane-neck was bended; One bright foot touched the eastern hills, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Round span the wheel with mad velocity, now uncontrolled, jamming poor Davy's leg between the rudder beam and the wheel post, while Johnny lay sprawling on the deck, holding on like grim death to a stray end of the mizzen-halliard ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... at this hanging was Levi Kelley of Cooperstown, who, in order to witness the spectacle, had covered a distance of 75 miles, drawn by his favorite team of black horses, a noble span, of which he was very proud. Kelley was much depressed in spirit by the dreadful scene at the gallows, and to a friend who accompanied him on the homeward journey remarked that no one who had ever witnessed such a melancholy spectacle could ever be guilty of the crime ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... of a poor old man, Whose trembling limbs have borne him to your door, Whose days are dwindled to the shortest span; Oh give relief, and Heaven ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... many respects, has non-lifting tail, as should all modern machines. Rudder and elevator a good deal like the Nieuport. One passenger. Roomy cockpit and enclosed fuselage. Bleriot control. Nearer streamline than any American plane yet. Span, 33.6 ft., length 24, chord of wing at fuselage 6' 5''. Chauviere propeller, 6' 6'', pitch 4' 5''. Dandy new Gnome engine, 70 h.p., should ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... nutmegs, cloves, and some of the very best Maccaboy snuff. Oh, let me see! I want a new foot-stove. Our old one is all banged up, and I am ashamed to be seen filling it at noon in winter in Deacon Stonegood's kitchen, with all the women looking on, and theirs spick and span new." ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... in worldly goods must be those to whom the discarded refuse of an abandoned Indian camp seems wealth. Yet such was the case with us, two representatives of the higher civilization, thus removed from that civilization by no more than a few days' span. As soon as I was able to stand we removed our little encampment to the ground lately occupied by the ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... don't believe you could drag them away from Gretchen with nine span of horses. But if you want to see them, put on your hat and come along; they're out somewhere trapseing ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... stage of thought the ultimate causes of things are conceived to be personal beings, many in number and often discordant in character, who partake of the nature and even of the frailty of man, though their might is greater than his, and their life far exceeds the span of his ephemeral existence. Their sharply-marked individualities, their clear-cut outlines have not yet begun, under the powerful solvent of philosophy, to melt and coalesce into that single unknown substratum of phenomena which, according to the qualities with which our imagination invests it, goes ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... felt it very acutely, very sincerely—sincerely?...like a moth caught in a gauze curtain! Well, would that preclude sincerity? Sincerity seems to convey an idea of depth, and she was not very deep, that is quite certain. I never could understand her;—a little brain that span rapidly and hummed a pretty humming tune. But no, there was something more in her than that. She often said things that I thought clever, things that I did not forget, things that I should like to put into books. But it was ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... more about mules. Five hundred dollars a span for mules looked good until you remembered that you needed 'em worse than the other party did. She had to keep her twenty span of old reliables because, what with the sailors and section hands you got ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... wings and becomes a flying instead of a creeping thing, which generates in turn and produces a little worm, one day to be a fly. Living with man, sharing his food and his table, it tastes everything except his oil, to drink which is death to it. In any case it soon perishes, having but a short span of life allotted to it, but while it lives it loves the light, and is active only under its influence; at night it rests, neither flying nor buzzing, but ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... foregoing, one chief aim in the building of my house beautiful will be to have a house that will require the minimum of trouble and work to keep clean and orderly. It will be no spick and span and polished house, with an immaculateness that testifies to the tragedy of drudge. I live in California where the days are warm. I'd prefer that the servants had three hours to go swimming (or hammocking) than be compelled to spend those three ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... I so tall to reach the pole, Or grasp the ocean with my span, I must be measured by my soul: The mind 's the ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... slightest hesitation in their direction, though there were indeed, frequent pauses during which the Indian's keen hearing was strained for an expected sound. After each such halt Pedro would resume his path, climbing over rocks which looked insurmountable and skirting others by ledges less than a span's width. Over this part of the canyon wall none of the Sobrante ranchmen had ever come; though below it, along a smoother portion, ran the flume that watered the ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... preparations at the limits of the annularity; failed entirely from very bad weather."—In this year Airy contributed a Paper to the Institution of Civil Engineers 'On the use of the Suspension Bridge with stiffened roadway for Railway and other Bridges of Great Span,' for which a Telford Medal was awarded to him by the Council of the Institution. And he communicated several Papers to the Royal Society and the Royal ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... scared. The light of the lantern, striking among all these trunks and forked branches and twisted rope-ends of lianas, made the whole place, or all that you could see of it, a kind of a puzzle of turning shadows. They came to meet you, solid and quick like giants, and then span off and vanished; they hove up over your head like clubs, and flew away into the night like birds. The floor of the bush glimmered with dead wood, the way the match-box used to shine after you had struck a lucifer. Big, ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Chicago & North-Western and Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul railways, by interurban electric lines and by lake and river steamboat lines, it being the head of lake navigation on the Fox river. Two bridges here span the Fox, which is from {1/3}m. to m. in width. It is a shipping and transfer point and has paper mills, machine shops, flour mills, sash, door and blind factories, a launch and pleasure-boat factory, and knitting works, cheese factories and dairies, brick yards and grain elevators. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... of Hovig after this span of time to be particularly offensive. The generator lay in a lower corner, half buried under other molded and unrecognizable debris. Dasinger uncovered it, feeling as if he were drowning in the invisible torrent pouring out from it, knelt down and placed the light against ...
— The Star Hyacinths • James H. Schmitz |
