"Speck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seeming to forget for the moment where he was, as a small speck which represented the approaching airship disclosed itself. "This time in the upper right-hand corner of the picture. See! I am on board, and I am driving her at one hundred and ten miles." And he followed with his pointer the swift course ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... live-oaks, beneath whose broad, time-bowed heads thousands of cattle stamped away the noons of summer. Around the old mission, whose bells have rung o'er the valley for a century, a few houses were grouped; but beyond this there was scarcely a sign of man's work except the far-off speck of a herdsman looming in the mirage, or the white walls of the old Spanish ranch-house glimmering afar through the hazy sunshine in which the ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... I learn my own extreme meanness, I would also discover the abject littleness of all terrestrial things. What is the earth, with all her ostentatious scenes, compared with this astonishingly grand furniture of the skies? What, but a dim speck hardly perceptible in the map of the universe? It is observed by a very judicious writer, that if the sun himself, which enlightens this part of the creation, were extinguished, and all the host of planetary worlds which move about him were annihilated, they would ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... bowl of milk, and set off to explore the neighbourhood of Bouchet. It was perishing cold, a grey, windy, wintry morning; misty clouds flew fast and low; the wind piped over the naked platform; and the only speck of colour was away behind Mount Mezenc and the eastern hills, where the sky still wore the orange ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... follow the example of Joe, the Italian who puts out our ashes," laughed Evelyn. "Just grin when they try to argue and shrug our shoulders. 'Me no speck Ang-lish.'" ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... and departed. An hour later the Bozra ran out on the light wind around the point of Calauria and into the sparkling sea to eastward. Democrates stood gazing after her until she was a dark speck on the horizon. ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... century to find very common among seamen's narratives; but the remarkable thing in the present case is that there are so few such features. One fabulous creature is mentioned. Thorfinn and his men saw from their vessel a glittering speck upon the shore at an opening in the woods. They hailed it, whereupon the creature proceeded to perform the quite human act of shooting an arrow, which killed the man at the helm. The narrator calls it a "uniped," or some sort of one-footed goblin,[232] but ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... he kept his deck, And peered through darkness. Ah, that night Of all dark nights! And then a speck— A light! A light! A light! A light! It grew, a starlit flag unfurled! It grew to be Time's burst of dawn. He gained a world; he gave that world Its grandest ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... the stranger hears one of the most authentic, best-remembered, most popular of the many traditions of the bad old times "before General Bonaparte," as Giraudier, who has no sympathy with any later designation of le grand homme, calls the Emperor, whose statue one can perceive—a speck in the distance—from the threshold ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... briefly as possible what happened after I was left behind in that horrible place. By the light of the moon I saw them go—from the ridge I saw them put out to sea. I watched them until the boat was a mere speck on the luminous waters, and finally vanished from sight. I was left alone, a desperately wounded man, on an arid sulphurous island, without food ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... mark the change! A cloud, which floated in the atmosphere, An inconsiderable and feathery speck Of no proportions, now augmented, wears A threatening aspect, ominously dark; Enveloping the heaven's canopy In lowering shadow and portentous gloom; In pall of ambient obscurity. The fork-ed lightnings ramify and play Upon a background of sepulchral black; The growling thunders rumble a reply ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... operating with the appropriate means and gestures. Thus to make a man hang himself all that the sorcerer has to do is to get a scrap of his victim's soul—and the smallest scrap is quite enough for his purpose, it may be a mere shred or speck of soul adhering to a hair of the man's head, to a drop of his sweat, or to a crumb of his food,—I say that the sorcerer need only obtain a tiny little bit of his victim's soul, clap it in a tube, set the tube dangling at the end of a string, and go through a pantomime of gurgling, goggling ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... but a ball will reach the bottom of one that is steepest near the top in less time than on any other, because the maximum acceleration is at the start. We are all tired of being stuck to this cosmical speck, with its monotonous ocean, leaden sky, and single moon that is useless more than half the time, while its size is so microscopic compared with the universe that we can traverse its great circle in four days. Its possibilities are exhausted; and just as Greece became too small ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... speck of time, Fairfax, the keeper and his scoundrels who had been dogging them came up. There were four of them: two before and two behind. The undaunted Henley severally knocked down the two fellows in front, and in an instant would undoubtedly have been far enough out of all reach; but, ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... Speck von Sternberg was the German Ambassador to Washington. He was in Paris. I went there to see him and ascertain, if I could, why my exequatur was withheld. The Government at Washington could get no information on the subject. The whole ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... waved his hand towards the wide unspeakable landscape, and looking steadily on it repeated his sentence, "War is that. It is that everywhere. What are we, we chaps, and what's all this here? Nothing at all. All we can see is only a speck. You've got to remember that this morning there's three thousand kilometers of equal evils, ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... life in every age. Kingly art thou, with glory on thy brow as a diadem. And joy is upon thee for evermore. Over all this land, over all the little cloud of years that now from thine infinite horizon moves back as a speck, thou art lifted up as high as the star is above the clouds that hide us, but never reach it. In the goodly company of Mount Zion thou shalt find that rest which thou hast sorrowing sought in vain; and thy name, ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... murmured Sam, who had been standing at the rail watching the last speck of land as it disappeared. "What a big trip this ...
— The Rover Boys in the Jungle • Arthur M. Winfield
... grasp that which may not exist in accordance with the conditions which obtain about us upon the outside of the insignificant grain of dust which wends its tiny way among the bowlders of the universe—the speck of moist dirt we so proudly ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... their feet flung back hollowly from the walls. They rounded curves, looking eagerly for some sign of habitation, only to be met by the same stretch of deserted track leading off into nebulous gloom. Or perhaps they would see a dim white speck ahead or the black outlines of a rocky spur where the track disappeared and they would comfort themselves with the thought that around that particular curve or beyond that mile-post they would see buildings. But when they had ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... meaning. It was the forerunner of the calamity under which his heart now grieved so bitterly. Aphiz Adegah's life had been a bold one, he knew no fear. The air of his native hills was not freer than his own spirit and as he looked off once more at the tiny white speck in the distance that marked the spot where Komel was, his resolution was instantly made, and he swore ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... shuddering sigh of ecstasy; sits down on the stool and presses his hands to his eyes to shut out reality and dream a little; takes his hands down and shakes his head with a little smile of rebuke for his folly; catches sight of a speck of dust on his shoes and hastily and carefully brushes it off with his handkerchief; rises and takes the hand mirror from the table to make sure of his tie with the gravest anxiety; and is looking at his watch again when She comes in, ...
— How He Lied to Her Husband • George Bernard Shaw
... the shed near the street a speck of pink light showed in the darkness and as he walked towards it he became aware of a faint aromatic odour. Two boys were standing in the shelter of a doorway, smoking, and before he reached them he had recognised ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... etc.) What are ye doing, coming in this room again after I having it settled so nice? I'll allow no one in the place again, only carriage company that will have no speck of dust upon ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... happy wonder, the swelling film of soapy water into whose iridescent globe he has blown the speck from the bowl of the pipe. But this amazing development around us is not of airy and vanishing films. It is solidly constructed, in marble and brick, in stone and iron, while the proportions to which it has swelled surpass precedent, and rebuke the timidity of the boldest prediction. But that ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... dollars per week. The light, airy bakery is always kept spotless. Adjacent to it is a commodious room with lockers for each man and two shower baths make it easy to keep clean. Down on the first floor the retail bakery is so immaculately clean that you would be willing to defy anyone to find one speck of dust in the place. Every article of food is under shining glass. The floor is white tiled. But the food is what attracts one. The pies swell out as if about to burst. To look at the bread and rolls makes one hungry and to smell them hungrier still. This, you are ...
— Consumers' Cooperative Societies in New York State • The Consumers' League of New York
... controversy. Theologians—forgetting the commonest facts of our individual development—spoke with the most profound disdain of the theory that a Luther or a Goethe could be the outcome of development from a tiny speck of protoplasm. The work, one of the most distinguished of them said, was "a fleck of shame on the escutcheon of Germany." To-day its conclusion is accepted by influential clerics, such as the Dean of Westminster, and by almost every biologist ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... belonged tuh George Thompson. After mah ma died ah stayed wid de Wommacks, a while. Aftuh dat mah pa taken me home. Pa's name wuz Jesse Flueur. Ah worked lak er slave. Ah cut wood, sawed logs, picked 400 pounds uv cotton evah day. Ah speck ah married de first time ah wuz about fo'teen years ole. Ah been mahrid three times. All mah husband's is daid. Ole man England and ole man Cullens run business places and ole man Wooley. His name wuz reason Wooley. De Woolies got cemetery uv dey own right dar near ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... Robert, "with, haw! the help of my glass I see, haw! a speck of rust on one of your buttons, haw! as big as the ...
— Sugar and Spice • James Johnson
... thin line of gum was on the back of the flap, in the darkness there glowed the same sort of brightness that we had seen in a speck here and there on Blanche Blaisdell's lips and in her mouth. The truth flashed over me. Some one had placed the stuff, whatever it was, on the flap of the envelope, knowing that she must touch her lips to it to seal it She had done so, and the deadly poison ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... She promised candy and oranges and even wedding-cake, for she forgot she hadn't a speck of ...
— Lill's Travels in Santa Claus Land and other Stories • Ellis Towne, Sophie May and Ella Farman
... thing I had seen met them a little farther on, they would be cornered, as the cutting narrowed very much, leaving not more than twenty yards, and that was a generous estimate. At last, after what seemed an eternity, I reached the summit of the slope; the tiger was a mere speck along the line. I rushed after it as fast as I could go, stumbling, half falling, pulling myself together, and tearing on, and the faster I went the quicker moved the great white figure. A feeling of despair seized me; all my fondness for my wife ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... became smaller and smaller, and less distinct; and now her hull was entirely hid from view, and we could see only the white canvas above the ocean. At length that began to descend in the horizon, and a small white speck alone was visible, gradually decreasing in size till it disappeared altogether. I could not help regretting that we were not all on board, but those who knew better than I do decided it otherwise, and so I do my best to silence my regrets. ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... earth. And Katerina, she too felt as if her existence was a blank; and as the vessel sailed from the port, she breathed short; and when not even her white and lofty topgallant sail could be discovered as a speck, she threw herself on her couch and wept. And M'Clise as he sailed away, remained for hours leaning his cheek on his hand, thinking of, over and over again, every lineament and feature of the ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... away I sat lonely, thinking. As I thought, the world around me seemed to be illimitably great. The only little spot in which I was interested seemed like a tiny speck in the midst of a wilderness. Without and around it were darkness and unknown danger, pressing in from every side. And the central figure in our little oasis was one of sweetness and beauty. A figure one could love; could work for; ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... ducks, women, and sportsmen, were stowed away in summer houses, waiting for the spring-time when they could be wound up and rival their owners in animation; and the shining tiled roofs, mosaic courtyards, and polished house trimmings flashed up a silent homage to the sky, where never a speck of ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... flourish, rank and wild, no longer cared for by pious and loving hands. From the rough road that climbs the mountains to Assunto, the convent is invisible, a gnarled and ragged olive grove intervening, and a spur of cliffs as well, while from Palermo one sees only the speck of white, flashing in the sun, indistinguishable from the many similar gleams of desert monastery or ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... on his doorstep from Amanda Dalton's sink window, was but a speck, to be sure, but he was her nearest neighbor; if a person whose threshold you never cross, and who never crosses yours, can be called a neighbor. There were seldom or never meetings or greetings between the two, yet each unconsciously was very much alive to the existence ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... chaps? And what's all this here? Nothing at all. All we can see is only a speck. When one speaks of the whole war, it's as if you said nothing at all—the words are strangled. We're here, and we look at it ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... thought as he slowly rowed homeward, and so did his thoughts work upon him that half way across the bay to Harpswell he slackened his oar without knowing it, and the boat lay drifting on the purple and gold-tinted mirror, like a speck between two eternities. Under such circumstances, even heads that have worn the clerical wig for years at times get a little dizzy and dreamy. Perhaps it was because of the impression made upon him by the sudden apparition of those great dark eyes and sable curls, ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... quite unable to decide whether it were better to laugh or storm. He was saved from all further perplexity on this point, however, by the sudden appearance of a horseman on the distant plain, who seemed to be approaching the valley in which they were encamped. At first he looked like a black speck or a crow on the horizon, and, in the uncertain light of the rapidly closing day, it would have been difficult for any unaccustomed eye to make ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... quite, Save when she wheels direct from shade to light: The flutt'ring songstress a mere speck became, Like fancy's floating bubbles in a dream; He sees her yet, but yielding to repose, Unwittingly his jaded eyelids close. Delicious sleep! From sleep who could forbear, With no more guilt than Giles, and no more care? Peace o'er his slumbers waves her guardian wing, Nor ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... horse, not a gun, nor even a trench was to be seen. There were only flashes, and smoke, and noise. Above, against the blue sky, several round, white clouds were hanging. The only two visible human souls were represented by a glistening speck in the air. On high also were to be heard more or less gentle reports of the ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... till nearly noon, the company caught sight of a scarcely-perceptible object on the water, in the direction of the great inlet. And, although for some time it appeared like a speck, as seen against the low, green fringe of the opposite and far-distant shore, yet it at length so enlarged on the vision that the form of a canoe and the gleam of flashing oars became distinctly discernible. Soon a little variation ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... engines of thirty-five horse power each. Three immense Hoe presses are kept running constantly from midnight until seven in the morning, printing the daily edition. The rooms and machinery are kept in the most perfect order. Nothing is allowed to be out of place, and the slightest speck of dirt visible in any part, calls forth a sharp rebuke from Mr. Bennett, who makes frequent visits to every department of the paper. On the street floor, the main room is the public office of the journal. Its entrances are on Broadway ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... cliff; I hear the sound Of dashing waves; I gaze intent around; I mark the gray cope, and the hollowness Of heaven, and the great sun, that comes to bless The isles again; but my long-straining eye, No speck, no shadow can, far off, descry, That I might weep tears of delight, and say, It is the bark that bore my child away! Sun, that returnest bright, beneath whose eye The worlds unknown, and out-stretched waters lie, 10 Dost thou ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... steamers, left in her wake a rolling, foaming track of waves, which the Monitor, as she passed over it, seemed to smooth out like an immense flat-iron. In the course of the afternoon, we saw the Passaic in tow of the State of Georgia, like a white speck, far in advance ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... Treherne answered, "I hear, see, and understand many things that escape others. Jasper, allow me to advise you to smooth the hair which your sleep has disarranged. Mrs. Snowdon, permit me. This rich velvet catches the least speck." And with his handkerchief he delicately brushed away several streaks of white dust which ...
— The Abbot's Ghost, Or Maurice Treherne's Temptation • A. M. Barnard
... said the Puma, nodding toward a hole high up like a speck on the five-hundred-foot cliff, close up under the great ceremonial Cave which was painted with the sign of the Morning and the Evening Star, and the round, bright House of the Sun Father. "But at first I slept in the kiva with Tse-tse-yote. Speaking of devils—there was no one who had ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... toward the far slopes next the mountains, a black speck rolled into view, the nucleus of a little dust cloud. Her face brightened a little; she turned abruptly and sought easy footing down that ridge, and climbed hurriedly the longer rise beyond. Once or twice, when she was on high ground, she glanced ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... the northeast. There, that tiny speck against the sky," she cried rapturously as one returning home from a long sojourn abroad. "That is my castle. Do you see it, Your Majesty?" she asked, as she turned appealingly to him. "Schallberg, your capital, ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... like one long leap, went by the runabout and dwindled almost instantaneously in perspective, with a lace handkerchief in a black-gloved hand fluttering sweet derision as it was swept onward into minuteness—a mere white speck—and then out ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... her, and I watched her with my wild-beast eyes. If I had seen one paltering with duty—if I had witnessed one flickering shadow of untruth in word or action—if, more than all things, my woman's instinct had ever been conscious of the faintest speck of impurity in thought, or word, or look, my old hate would have flamed out with the flame of hell! my contempt would have turned to loathing disgust, instead of my being full of pity, and the stirrings of new-awakened love, ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... commanded a wide view ahead and to our left in the direction in which the tracks led. We had only been in our new position half an hour when Nikolai, my head hunter, gripped my arm and pointed high up on the mountain in the direction in which we had been watching. There I made out a small black speck, which to the naked eye appeared but a bit of dark rock protruding through the snow. Taking the glasses I made out a large bear slowly floundering ahead, and evidently coming downward. His coat seemed very dark against the white background, and he was unquestionably ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... breeze and presently we were bowling along at a rate of quite eight miles the hour. The shore grew dim behind us, but for a long while above the clinging mists I could see the flag that we had planted on the mound. By degrees it dwindled till it became a mere speck and vanished. As it grew smaller my spirits sank, and when it was quite gone, I felt very ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... Sylvanus Snow Abraham Soft Raymond Sogue Assia Sole Nathan Solley Ebenezer Solomon Thomas Solomon James Sooper Christian Soudower Moses Soul Nathaniel Southam William Southard Henry Space Enoch Spalding Joshua Spaner Charles Sparefoot James Sparrows John Speake Martin Speakl James Spear Eliphaz Speck Elchie Spellman William Spellman James Spencer Joseph Spencer Nicholas Spencer Thomas Spencer Solomon Spenser Henry Spice John Spicer (2) Lancaster Spicewood John Spier (2) Richard Spigeman John Spinks ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... which provincials could not imitate. Even the superior gentleman who introduced them to him had a slightly dimmed and tarnished appearance as he sat beside his friends. There was an immaculate finish and newness about all their appointments—not a speck upon their linen, nor a grain of dust upon their broadcloth and polished boots. If the theory be true that character is shown in dress, these men, outwardly so spotless, must be worthy of the confidence with which they had inspired their new acquaintance. They suggested two bright coins ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... such a little while he would be done with it, the random business at an end, the prodigal son come home. A very bright planet shone before him and drew a trenchant wake along the water. He took that for his line and followed it. That was the last earthly thing that he should look upon; that radiant speck, which he had soon magnified into a City of Laputa, along whose terraces there walked men and women of awful and benignant features, who viewed him with distant commiseration. These imaginary spectators consoled him; he ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... or hear, or feel, or love, or hate, or will, or desire,' would suffice for his entire refutation, he found such an idea produced. He knew too well also to what enormous errors of thought minute errors of expression may lead, to disregard any speck of inaccuracy in any one of his definitions. The apparently slight oversight committed by him on this occasion will, indeed, be presently seen to have sensibly contributed to lead him subsequently into a mistake of no small ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... tall French window to a terrace, and from the terrace to the ground. There was a dull muttering in the sky to the east, and a speck appeared, drew nearer swiftly, grew larger, and became a small army biplane. It descended steeply to earth behind a tall planting of trees. Bell lighted a cigarette and moved purposelessly down an elaborately ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... from one to the other of us, she replaced her pearl-box in her bosom and hurried away. Standing at the window, I watched her walking briskly down the street, until the gray turban and white feather were but a speck in the ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Island was isolated, volcanic and coral in formation. Furthermore, it was uninhabited. A survey ship, in 1887, had visited the place and reported the existence of several springs and of a good harbour that was very dangerous of approach. And that was all that was known of the tiny speck of land that was soon to have focussed on it the ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... there to another taking him direct to the course. At the Bridge he was thrust into a motley crowd, eager, expectant, full of joyous anticipation of assured good luck. He was but a tiny unit of this many-voiced throng; he drifted a speck on the bosom of the flood that poured into the waiting race train. He was tossed into a seat by the swirling tide, and as the train moved he looked at his fellow-passengers. There was a pleasant air of opulence ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... in his room and everything he wanted in hers. Their small belongings had to be packed in boxes, and all the boxes emptied out to find them. Clean clothes—still unironed, of course—had to be hung up, and they could not be covered well enough so flies and moth-millers did not speck them. ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means
... sitting down before the blaze, pointed proudly to this heap of ashes, and the doctor said, "I brought Alice to this house a year ago, on the day of our wedding, and we kindled a fire here, on the bare hearth. Since then not a speck of ashes has been removed, except little bits from the front when the carpet was invaded. That pile of ashes is the witness to our ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... morning, after a good deal of handshaking, and Taffy looked after them wistfully as they turned to wave their caps and trudged away over the rise towards the cross-roads. Away to the left in the wintry sunshine a speck of scarlet caught his eye against the blue-grey of the towans. He watched it as it came slowly towards him, and his heart leapt—yet not quite as he had ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... said than the intensely red speck of fire was glowing within the pipe-bowl; and the scarecrow, without waiting for the witch's bidding, applied the tube to his lips and drew in a few short, convulsive whiffs, which soon, however, became ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the kite, first a mere speck against the sky, then larger till plain for all to see came the missing one, slithering and sliding, with his golden coat, and the little silver wings tied to his ankles, and handfuls of flowers which he threw into his mother's face as he came. "Oh! cruel ...
— The Blue Moon • Laurence Housman
... giving me much information, and I thought to myself that my friend the skipper did not seem so much inclined for a chat as usual. I turned to look at the sea in search of more pieces of wreck, when I discovered in the distance a dark speck rising out of the water. I pointed it out to the skipper at once, who took his glass out of his pocket, and after looking through it for ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... know what the meaning of the earth is," the poet said. "It is but a little speck, but it is the centre of all. Let her walk with us, and we will go home, and you will tell her, Ama, for I love to hear ...
— A Little Pilgrim • Mrs. Oliphant
... peace they might live and love together. No sooner did Evenos realise that his daughter was gone, than, in furious anger against her and her lover, he gave chase. One has watched a hawk in pursuit of a pigeon or a bird of the moors and seen it, a little dark speck at first, gradually growing larger and more large until at length it dominated and conquered its prey, swooping down from above, like an arrow from a bow, to bring with it ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... in the weather shrouds before the skipper gave me this order, and in another minute I was on the top beside the boatswain, who pointed out silently to me a little black speck in the distance apparently dancing about amid the waves, which were beginning to curl before an approaching breeze that was evidently springing up from the westwards. Fortunately, I had a pair of binoculars in my jacket pocket, and I ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... a speck of fluff from her black dress—she was all in black, with only a stole of pure white about her shoulders. "But tell me," she added, presently—"for it's one of the reasons why I'm here now—what happened at the inquest to-day? The evening papers are not out, and you were there, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of this fourteen years' experience as a public advocate of the cause of my enslaved brothers and sisters? The time is but as a speck, yet large enough to justify a pause for retrospection—and a pause ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... we not think of it? I tell you, Margaret, YOU MUST THINK OF IT! Brother Stevens soon will be a preacher, and a fine speck he will be. There'll be no parson like him in all west Kentucky. As for John Cross, I reckon he won't be able to hold a candle to him. Brother Stevens is something to try for. You must play your cards nicely, Margaret. Don't let him see too ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... And beat the salt spray from his eyes. He breasts the waves, he spurns their blows; Then, like a rocket, up he goes, Up, up to where the gusty wind With all its wrath is left behind; Still up he soars and high and high A speck of light that dots the sky. Then watch him as he slowly droops Where the great sea-birds wheel their troops. Three broad-winged gulls, himself their lord, He hitches to a silken cord, Bits them and bridles ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... resisted—tells A tale of love that words are poor to tell. And when she goes how lonely seems her way Through groves, through fields, through busy haunts of men; And as he climbs the hill and often stops To watch her lessening train until at length Her elephant seems but a moving speck, Proud Kantaka, pawing and neighing, asks As plain as men could ever ask in, words: "What makes my master choose ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... to repent of his yesterdays, let him contemplate them all over during his waking hours in the morning. Then, indeed, is his time. He becomes ashamed before the monotonous rose-bushes that speck the wall, and as his wandering orbs scan the picture-nails and the cobwebs in search of distraction, he will realize the necessity of amendment more fully than the eloquence of a multitude could ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... winter there are some doves." No wild beast haunt the environs; they cannot get at the water. The people keep a few sheep, goats, and fowls. There are also a dozen or so of camels. It is remarkable that the soil of this speck of vegetable existence is entirely sandy, and all the water comes out of the sand. But in places, indeed, on the coast of Barbary, the finest and most vigorous vegetation often bursts forth out of a purely sandy soil. By the time all the ghafalah had taken their supply of water, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... during which his lordship rubbed the glasses of his spectacles, and looked through them, as if intent that no speck should remain; while he did this very slowly, his mind ran rapidly from the idea of the Marchioness of Twickenham to John Falconer, and thence to all the causes of distrust and discontent which he felt ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... thoughts of Christ and His apostles; yet there is little of me in these flitting remembrances. My stage life does not interest me any longer, but the Prioress does not see it as I do, far away, a tiny speck. My art was once very real to me, and I am surprised, and a little disappointed sometimes, that it should seem so little now. But what I would not have, if I could change it, is the persistency with which I remember my lovers; not that I desire them, oh, no; ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... don't believe they are on the tracks." "Well," he said, "I can't see any, I will call them back." He called out "Sambo!" which was the name of the Corporal, "Where track?" Sambo pointed to a blade of spinifex. I asked "Where?" He answered, "There." So I got off my horse, and there was a tiny speck of blood which had dropped on the root, and had not been washed off by the rain. It turned out the Myalls had been carrying the flesh of my horses, and the blood ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... viewpoint he could not give any direct proof regarding this idea of a pre-existence of the soul, still he could not deny it entirely when he said: "The shaping forces which have made our bodies and our minds what they are may always have been psychical forces—from the first living slime-speck to the complex intelligences of to-day." "The old transmigrationist's view would thus possess a share of truth and the actual man would be the resultant not only of intermingling heredities on father's and mother's ...
— Reincarnation • Swami Abhedananda
... a little thing, her white wake following her afar across the green waters, the call of the bugle floating softly back. And now she is a speck. And now a little smoky stain against the eastern blue is all,—and now she is ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... on this roadless waste! In a quarter of an hour we raised her masts and funnel, and then we perceived it was not the Dunottar. Our course was altered two points, and the three of us stood up there in the wind and sun watching the growing speck. Down below they had just seen her, and glasses were levelled by the hundred. In a little while we could see a red cross on her bow, and we made her out to be a hospital ship carrying home wounded—Buller's wounded, we ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... She let no morsel from her lippes fall, Nor wet her fingers in her sauce deep. Well could she carry a morsel, and well keep, That no droppe ne fell upon her breast. In courtesy was set full much her lest*. *pleasure Her over-lippe wiped she so clean, That in her cup there was no farthing* seen *speck Of grease, when she drunken had her draught; Full seemely after her meat she raught*: *reached out her hand And *sickerly she was of great disport*, *surely she was of a lively And full pleasant, and amiable of port, disposition* And *pained her to counterfeite cheer *took pains to assume ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... night," said Sam, as he helped one of the girls to some sweet hash. "Indeed," cried half-a-dozen voices. "Yes," continued he; "Aunt Winny teld me I is to hab de prettiest yaller gal in town, and dat I is to be free." All eyes were immediately turned toward Sally Johnson, who was seated near Sarn. "I speck I see somebody blush at dat remark," said Alfred. "Pass dem pancakes and molasses up dis way, Mr. Alf, and none of your insinawaysion here," rejoined Sam. "Dat reminds me," said Currer, "dat Doreas Simpson is gwine to ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... 'We will not live.' Is not life a burden that we long to lay down? Why hesitate when it is merely a question of a little sooner or a little later? Matter is indestructible, and the physicists, we are told, grind to infinity the smallest speck of dust without being able to annihilate it. If matter is the property of chance, what harm can it do to change its form since it can not cease to be matter? Why should God care what form I have received and with what livery I invest my grief? Suffering lives in ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... did not seem long now before the silvery radiance of the moon began to grow pale before the soft opalescence in the east, and the far-spreading desert sands took a less mystic tint. Then all at once far on high there was a soft, roseate speck, which grew orange and then golden as if it were the advance guard of the gathering array of dazzling hues which now rapidly advanced till the east blazed with a ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... all the house was gone to rest, I would lock the door of the room, and sit with a candle burning on the table, and turn the diamond over in my hands. It was, as I have said, as big as a pigeon's egg or walnut, delicately cut and faceted all over, perfect and flawless, without speck or stain, and yet, for all it was so clear and colourless, there flew out from the depth of it such flashes and sparkles of red, blue, and green, as made one wonder whence these tints could come. Thus while I sat and watched it I would tell Elzevir stories from the ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... some indelible contamination. Indeed, the spot remained for all her rubbing, and back she sank with the shudder and the clutch of the arm I had come to expect. Something impelled me to take my glove and rub my window. There, too, was a little speck on the glass. For all my rubbing it remained. And then the spasm went through me; I crooked my arm and plucked at the middle of my back. My skin, too, felt like the damp chicken's skin in the poulterer's shop-window; one spot between the shoulders itched ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... the oars, and pulling with a long, steady, resolute stroke, the little boat darted away as lightly and swiftly as a skimming swallow out on the shimmering water, he stood gazing after it till it became a distant speck sparkling like a diamond in the light of sky and wave, and when he could no more watch it with unassisted eyes, he took up his field glass and followed its course attentively. He saw it cutting along as straightly as an arrow, then suddenly it dipped round to the westward, apparently making straight ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... neck was enhanced in its cream-pink whiteness by an inch-wide necklet of black jet cut in many faceted black squares. Her complexion, naturally high in tone because of the pink of health, was enhanced by the tiniest speck of black court-plaster laid upon her cheekbone; and her hair, heightened in its reddish-gold by her dress, was fluffed loosely and adroitly about her eyes. The main mass of this treasure was done in two ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... sky, and, after searching for a while, saw a tiny white speck moving slowly across the blue at an immense height. Then, at some distance from it, a small white puff, like a little ball of cotton-wool, appeared. A few seconds passed and we heard a faint pop. More puffs appeared around the moving speck, each one followed by a pop. All at once, behind us, ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... what a speck thou art in comparison with the Universe?—-That is, with respect to the body; since with respect to Reason, thou art not inferior to the Gods, nor less than they. For the greatness of Reason is not measured by length or height, but by the resolves of the mind. Place then thy happiness ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... brig, increased after he reached Paris, and he finally determined to take the course and reach the high position which the selfish hopes of his would-be mother-in-law pointed out to him. His cousin counted for no more than a speck in this brilliant perspective; but he went to see Annette. True woman of the world, Annette advised her old friend to make the marriage, and promised him her support in all his ambitious projects. In her heart she was enchanted to fasten an ugly and uninteresting ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... been using a small but powerful telescope, uttered an exclamation, and focussed the instrument on a speck that seemed moving along on the ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton
... to bite me," urged Tubby, holding up one finger of his right hand, and on which a tiny speck of blood was visible. ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... howl of a wolf," muttered the Spaniard, who recognized the long-drawn cry. But it made him shiver a little, nevertheless. He alone was awake, except the sentinels, and he felt like a tiny, lost speck in all the vast wilderness. A second time came the cry of the wolf, and then it was repeated a third and a fourth time. After ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... cell is a microscopic speck of living matter. Its dendrites are short tree-like branches, while its axon is often several inches or even feet in length. The axon is the "slender thread", just spoken of as analogous to the single telephone wire. A nerve is composed of axons. [Footnote: The axon is always protected or insulated ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... safe enough here—'s long as the wind's blowin' as 'tis now, an' I guess it allers does blow that way, round this speck of an island. It must be all o' five mile to that land either side, an' in their rickety canoes the Feweegins never venture fur out in anythin' o' a rough sea. I calculate, Captain, we needn't trouble ourselves much about ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... was going down slowly but surely. In a few minutes it was but a mere speck on the surface, ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... the eye, lit up by the blaze from the fire, while overhead we see a glorious canopy of ruddy-glowing steam. The speed is great, and the flames in the fire-box boil up and form eddies like water at the doors of an opening lock. Far ahead we see a white speck, which increases in size till the fierce light from the fire pales, and we are once more in open day. The weather has lifted, the sky is gray, but there is no longer any appearance of mist. The hills on the horizon stand out sharply, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... bay we puffed and buffeted for about forty minutes before we arrived at the little speck of an island that is Quarantine. Long before we were there we sighted the great La Montaigne near the group of buildings on the island, where she had been waiting since early morning for the tide and the customs officials. The tug steamed alongside, and quickly up the ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... at the ranch-house the day before the visitors were expected. Mrs. Brewster and Polly were in the midst of a light house- cleaning as the strangers must not find a speck of ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... will know thee for a son of Adam and will fear thee and flee. He dreadeth none in the sea as he dreadeth a son of Adam; for that an he eateth a man he dieth forthright, because human fat is a deadly poison to this kind of creature; nor do we collect its liver-speck save by means of a man, when he falleth into the sea and is drowned; for that his semblance becometh changed and ofttimes his flesh is torn; so the Dandan eateth him, deeming him the same of the denizens of the deep, and dieth. Then we light upon our enemy dead and take the speck of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... Turk. "Wilt thou be beaten then, and by an Israelite? Shall this lovely maid be given to a perverter of the Scriptures, to an inheritor of the fire, to one of a race that would not bestow on their fellow-men so much as the speck out of a date-stone? It were a shame upon ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... go upstairs by himself, and he and his friend therefore walked into the front room together. It was in complete order, although it was so early in the morning. Everything was dusted; even the lower fire-bar had not a speck of ashes on it, and on the hob already was a saucepan in which Mrs. Coleman proposed to cook the one o'clock dinner. On the walls were portraits of Sir Francis Burdett, Major Cartwright, and the mezzotint engraving of Sadler's Bunyan. Two black ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... shining white petals. And, striking against the windows of the old black and white checkered farm (a ghastly skeleton in this light), it made them not flare, nay, not redden in the faintest degree, but reflect a brilliant speck of white light. Everything was unsubstantial, yet not as in a mist, nay, rather substantial, but flat, as if cut out of paper and pasted on the black branches and green leaves, the livid, glaring houses, ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... dressed, could not gratify the innate vanity of womanhood but by a luxury of cleanliness which became them wonderfully, and made them harmonize with the polished counters and the shining shelves, on which the old man-servant never left a speck of dust, and with the old-world simplicity of all they saw about them. As their style of living compelled them to find the elements of happiness in persistent work, Augustine and Virginie had hitherto always satisfied their mother, ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... a heart, which Maria had cut out and fixed for her, and when it was done the letters "SI" were to be marked on it with pins, and it was to be put on mother's dressing-table on Sunday-night. There was more than one small speck of blood on it, where Susan had pricked her hot little fingers in a too earnest effort to take very small stitches, which was a pity; perhaps, however, as it was pink silk they would not show much, and mother would not notice. ...
— Susan - A Story for Children • Amy Walton
... back sack lick beck stock take slake pike Luke smoke tack slack pick luck smock rake stake peak duke croak rack stack peck duck crock lake dike speak coke cloak lack Dick speck ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett
... necessary to defeat them; and several who were concerned in the scheme confessed the share which they were to have had in the execution of it. Mr. King had hitherto, from the peculiarity of his situation—secluded from society, and confined to a small speck in the vast ocean, with but a handful of people—drawn them round him, and treated them with the kind attentions which a good family meets with at the hands of a humane master; but he now saw them in their true colours, and one of his first steps, when peace was restored, ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... a while in silence, perhaps for five or six minutes, among the most disagreeable, I think, that I ever passed. Then far down in the brightness below appeared a black speck that seemed to grow in size ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... off, dearie. Your own natural skin is no more color-fast. I handled Elaine Doremus in 'The Snowdrop' for three seasons. Never so much as a speck or a spot on her. My ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... de Nemours, surnamed the Thunderbolt of Italy, died at the age of twenty-three after the victory of Ravenna, the French transalpine conquests were endangered. The bullet which struck Turenne at Saltzbach also menaced the work of Louis XIV. But Guynemer had nothing but his airplane, a speck in the immense spaces filled by the war. This young captain, though without an equal in the sky, conducted no battle on land. Why, then, did he alone have the power, like a great military chief, of leaving ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... thyself, go into the bath, or were it into the limpid pool and running brook, and there wash and be clean; thou wilt step out again a purer and a better man. This consciousness of perfect outer pureness, that to thy skin there now adheres no foreign speck of imperfection, how it radiates in on thee, with cunning symbolic influences, to thy very soul! Thou hast an increase of tendency towards all good things whatsoever. The oldest Eastern Sages, with joy and holy gratitude, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... leader. "At 10 a.m. on the 2nd January," says Burton, "all the villagers assembled, and recited the Fatihah, consoling us with the information that we were dead men." The little company, carrying their lives in their hands, then set forward, and presently came in sight of Harar, "a dark speck upon a tawny sheet of stubble." Arrived at the gate of the town, they accosted the warder, sent their salaams to the Amir, and requested the honour ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... I saw a tiny speck of a boat way out on the horizon. Captain Dan said it was Shorty's boat with Adams. I suggested that, as we had to wait for wind to fly the kite, we run in and attract Shorty's attention. I certainly wanted some one else to see those magnificent schools of tuna. Forthwith we ran ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... his handkerchief carefully, wiped the last speck of Dry Lake dust from his shiny toes. "Yuh won't crawfish on me, if I tell yuh?" he inquired anxiously, standing up and adjusting ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... as soon as his head appeared above the water, and he began to swim as tranquilly as if he had been bathing in the lake of the old castle. Happily the moon was rising. Yvon saw, at a little distance, a black speck among the silvery waves—it was land. He approached it, not without difficulty, and finally succeeded in gaining a foothold. Dripping wet, exhausted with fatigue, and out of breath, he dragged himself on the sand, then, without more anxiety, ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... stow them bags away. I'll take two an' leave them three others. Goodbye. I must be gittin' home to Ripley. He'll want his supper on time." And off up the road the indomitable little figure trudged, head held down to the cutting blast. Little snow fly, a speck on a measureless expanse, crawling along with painful breathing and slipping, sliding steps- "Gittin' home ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... yet a little further, he could see the tower of West Endelstow Church, beneath which he was to meet his Elfride that night. And at the same time he noticed, coming over the hill from the cliffs, a white speck in motion. It seemed first to be a sea-gull flying low, but ultimately proved to be a human figure, running with great rapidity. The form flitted on, heedless of the rain which had caused Stephen's halt ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... sunshine to cheer him on the way, was more than Helen could bear. Blinded by tears she stood kissing her hand to the familiar figure now only faintly discernible on the fast receding steamship, and she stood there long after every one else had left the dock watching until the Mauretania was only a speck in ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... Mouse often had sat watching Skimmer the Swallow sailing around up in the blue, blue sky. He had watched Ol' Mistah Buzzard go up, up, up, until he was nothing but a tiny speck, and Danny had wondered how it would seem to be way up above the Green Meadows and the Green Forest and look down. It had seemed to him that it must be very wonderful and beautiful. Sometimes he had wished that he had wings and could go up in the air and look ...
— The Adventures of Danny Meadow Mouse • Thornton W. Burgess
... be plenty to do in a short while, but meanwhile he enjoyed the sensation of being on a tiny world in space with only a handful of Planeteers for company. He smiled. "King Foster," he said to himself. "Monarch of a thorium space speck." It was a rather nice feeling, even though he laughed at himself for thinking it. Since he was in command of the detachment, he could in all truth say this was his own personal planet. It would be a good bit of space humor to spring on the ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... businesses, he and I also did buy some apples and pork; by the same token the butcher commended it as the best in England for cloath and colour. And for his beef, says he, "Look how fat it is; the lean appears only here and there a speck, like beauty-spots." Having done at Woolwich, we to Deptford (it being very cold upon the water), and there did also a little more business, and so home, I reading all the why to make end of the "Bondman" (which the oftener I read the ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... distant seeming like faint clouds floating in the horizon. They had enjoyed for some time, from this rocky post, the breeze which in that elevated position came cool and refreshing, when the quick eye of little Mila discerned a white sail, a mere speck, upon the blue sea. It skimmed rapidly along, and approached the island. They watched the vessel ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... deeper, and the chill that had begun during the past days to creep about her heart tightened and grew cold, as if it were changing to an icy band, which would freeze her pulses in its tightening clasp. She looked out through the sunshine, watching the light boat till it became a mere speck in the distance, and finally disappeared among the windings of the long curve of land which ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens |
