"Tapering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all over the South, in the swamps. They are, in fact, a kind of gigantic grass, although the people who are most familiar with them do not dream of the fact. The botanists call them a grass, at any rate, and the botanists know. Each cane is a long, straight rod, tapering very gently, with "joints," as they are called, about eight or ten inches apart. These joints are simply places where the cane, outside, is a little larger than it is between joints, while inside each joint consists of ...
— Captain Sam - The Boy Scouts of 1814 • George Cary Eggleston
... back in his chair and put the tips of his fingers together. Long, tapering fingers they were, sensitive and well shaped, though sadly marred by acid stains. It was in his hands alone that Dr. Bird showed the genius in his make-up, the artistry which inspired him to produce those ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... of this country is of the Gothic character. The mosques are built somewhat like our churches: the body of the mosques are covered with green glazed tiles; the steeples are invariably an exact square, the sides being ten or twelve feet, not tapering as those of Coventry, but the top having the same dimensions as the base. At the top is erected a smaller square, with a flag-staff similar to a gallows, to which is suspended every day at noon, a white flag, the ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... The little dwellings seem to smile as if they had been built under softer skies; the waters sing their song, and patches of moss cover a stream over which hang graceful clusters of foliage. The horizon extends on one side into a tapering perspective of meadows, while on the other it rises abruptly and is enclosed by a wooded valley, the trees of which crowd together and form ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... and, in the midst of the usual assemblage of rhizophoreae, the Avicennia tomentosa, Linn. was observed of remarkable growth, being in many parts from fifty to sixty feet high, three feet in diameter at the base, and of a straight tapering poplar shape. ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... farther out, but neither had they any object in doing so, since the fish-life on which they fed as they journeyed was the more abundant where the sea began to shoal. With their slim, sleek, rounded bodies, thickest at the fore flippers and tapering finely to tail and muzzle, each a lithe and close-knit structure of muscle and nerve-energy, they could swim with astounding speed; and therefore, although there was no hurry whatever, they went along at ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... fellowship. She had noticed the dusky aspect of the ironwood; the volumed cumuli of rich olive-green, crowning the lordly currajong; the darker shade of the wilga's massy foliage-cataract; the clearer tint of the tapering pine; the clean-spotted column of the leopard tree, creamy white on slate, from base to topmost twig. She pitied the unlovely belar, when the wind sighed through its coarse, scanty, grey-green tresses; and she loved ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... Ali, with its tapering minarets overlooking all Cairo, was found to be quite a modern edifice, scarcely more than half a century in age, but it is a very remarkable and beautiful structure, and of great cost. The spacious building is lined throughout ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... a few acres in extent—not more than six, I fancy, and four-fifths of it are walled about with walls that stand knee-deep in sea-grasses. Along, and above it, are thrust the tapering tops of those highly decorative cypresses without which Italy would not be herself at all. There is such a monastery there—an ideal one, with cloister, and sundial, and marble-curbed well, and all that; at least so I am told; ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... captain's merry challenge to find anything so grand as the ocean, she replied, "Yes, these mighty forces in nature do indeed fill me with awe; but this vessel, with deep-buried fires, powerful machinery, spacious decks, and tapering masts, walking the waves like a thing of life, and all the work of man, impresses one still more deeply. Lo! in man's divine creative power is fulfilled the prophecy, 'Ye shall be ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... it different?" she asked, unconsciously keeping the whole company of the ladies' table on their feet. At the gentlemen's table, just forward of them and tapering slenderly away in the long cabin's white-and-gilt perspective, that grosser majority who had come only to feed were mutely and with stooped shoulders feeding like pigeons from a trough, and far down at its ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... blind like us. Your hurt no man designed, And no man claimed the conquest of your land. But gropers both through fields of thought confined We stumble and we do not understand. You only saw your future bigly planned, And we, the tapering paths of our own mind, And in each other's dearest ways we stand, And hiss and hate. And the blind fight ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... was to fall with the rest; and as the broad sails of the gay vessel were spread to the morning breeze, which swelled them, that devoted old Church was seen in its raiment of fire, like some old martyr, hugging the flames which consumed it, and pointing with its tapering steeple ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... made by shaping each portion of dough into small oval rolls quite tapering at each end, allowing them to become light, and baking far enough apart so that one will not ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... chee!" he twittered, and shot through the air on his long, tapering wings. "Out with you, you stupid flowers! Don't you see that ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... together in the middle, and all painted a smooth, glistening, hopeful green. The line that hung from the tip of it was also green, but of a paler, more transparent colour, quite thick and stiff where it left the rod, but tapering down towards the end, as if it were twisted of strands of horse-hair, reduced in number, until, at the hook, there were but two hairs. And the hook—there was no disguise about that—it was an unabashed bait-hook, and well baited, ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... idler's lotus-eating Paradise came a rushing sound. A sharp swerve of the horse was followed by an exasperating crackle, and, lo! the beloved fishing-rod was broken,—yes, broken, and that delicate, quivering, responsive, tapering end lay trailing in the dust which whirled in eddies around a ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... are out in the blinding sunlight, hurrying through the clear, golden day as though life and death depended upon its speed. On, on, past the green meadows, where the hedgerows were filled with woodbines and wild roses, and the clover filled the air with fragrance; past gray old churches whose tapering spires pointed to heaven; past quiet homesteads sleeping in the sunshine; past silent, quaint villages and towns; past broad rivers and dark woods. Yet never once did the silent woman raise her eyes, ...
— Marion Arleigh's Penance - Everyday Life Library No. 5 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... great contrast it presented to the form of Viola, which was so wonderfully ethereal, so divine in colour and design. Every line in it was long and tapering, never coming to a sudden stop, but merging with infinite grace into the next, and the dazzling, immaculate whiteness of it all made it seem like something of heaven. It suggested the vision, the ideal, all that man longs after with his soul, ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... and into the small arena marched twenty stalwarts, ten of whom were armed with enormous bangwans, while the remainder carried heavy, straight-bladed knives, about two feet long, and some six inches wide at the hilt, tapering away from there to a sharp point. These twenty—whom Lomalindela grimly condescended to inform me were the Slayers—halted on the king's left, just clear of the left wing of His Majesty's bodyguard, arranging themselves in pairs—a spearman ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... trees of the forest, and soon his ear caught the sweet strains, as he drew near they became more beautiful; he listened till he learned them and could make the same sweet sound, then he knew that it was a plant with a tall green stem and long tapering leaves. He took his knife and cut the stalk, but ere he had scarcely finished, it healed and was the same as before; he cut it again, and again it healed. Then he knew it would heal diseases, he took it home, dried it by the fire, pulverized ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... "Little, tapering fingers," he said, "spoiled by work. They could be made very white, very soft and beautiful. Have you ever considered what a truly fascinating thing a girl's ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... enormous city heaps its monumental houses along the river like bastions; the red sky is embattled by their coping. They on one hand, the bridge on the other, protect, with a double line, the port where the vessels are crowded together like a flock of gulls; those graceful hulls, those tapering masts, those sails swollen or floating, weave the labyrinth of their movements and forms upon the magnificent purple of the sunset. The sun sinks into the river; the black rigging, the round hulls, stand out against its conflagration, and ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... unoccupied—those that were close to each other. Now, what could two idle hands do, when one belonged to a man deeply in love, the other to a young woman who for some time had ill-treated her lover and exhausted her severity? Before the end of the first part, the long unoccupied, tapering fingers of the treble were imprisoned by those of the bass, without the least disturbance in the musical effect—and the ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... beautiful feature of a Gothic church is the spire, raising its tapering form far above the town or village and forming a prominent landmark, denoting the location of the House of God. Although found occasionally in other styles, the spire is essentially Gothic, and one of the most ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath
... be worked open or tolerably close; but in the latter case it loses something of its distinctive character. Fine lines may be worked in it, but it appears most suited to the working of broadish bands and other more or less even-sided or, it may be, tapering forms, more feathery in effect than fish-bone-like, such as are shown ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... went and sat down in one of the front windows, and made little scollops and eyelets. I remember her long ivory stiletto, with a loop of green ribbon through the head of it, and the sharp, tiny, big-bowed scissors that lay in her lap, and the bright, tapering ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... than thirty inches in circumference, and it was rare to meet with one that small. At first I thought a waist that tapered from the arm pits would be an added beauty, if only these ladies would be taught how to acquire it. But I lived long enough among them to look upon a tapering waist as a disgusting deformity. They considered a large waist a mark of beauty, as it gave a greater capacity of lung power; and they laid the greatest stress upon the size and health of the lungs. One little lady, not above five feet in height, I saw ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... secondaries; and its tail is not formed of normal rectrices, from the middle of which spring two very long feathers, a little curved and arranged like a roof; but it consists of twelve wide plane feathers, regularly tapering, and ornamented with ocellated spots, arranged along the shaft. Its head is not bare, but is adorned behind with a tuft of thread-like feathers; and, finally, its system of coloration and the proportions of the different parts of its body are not the same as in the common argus ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... are now ready to design the shapes. Fig. 75 shows three general types, A being made rectangular in form, with a tapering forward end, so constructed as to ride up ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... constant succession of fresh sights, from the Turkish man-of-war that was of British build, to the low fishing-boat with its long graceful lateen sail, spread out upon its curved and tapering spar. ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... projects would seek to assure work during the coming fiscal year to the individuals now on relief, or until such time as private employment is available. In order to make adjustment to increasing private employment, work should be planned with a view to tapering it off in proportion to the speed with which the emergency workers are offered ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... had climbed until coming to a limb which like the lowest one scraped against the rock not half a dozen feet from the tapering trunk, he had crept out on it and was lying upon a ledge of rock. Wanda hoped that here was the opportunity of a lifetime. She would climb as high as that limb, and find the cub's flight shut off by the sheer wall rising perpendicularly behind him. Then she would ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... the old gentleman is their private tutor. He is white-bearded and shaven-pated, and has rather long finger-nails, as the fashion is in China among those who do not have to work with their hands. Long finger-nails with them are like white hands and tapering fingers among us. ...
— Harper's Young People, May 4, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... fine wire as this. That something is the filing of a long point on the wire to enable the poking of the end of it through the draw plate so that it can be caught by the nippers. Imagine yourself filing a long, tapering point on the end of a wire only one eighteen-hundredths of an inch in diameter, in order to get it through a draw plate that will bring it down to one two-thousandths. My son does that without using a magnifying glass. I cannot say positively ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... there, and settled myself as comfortably as I could, sitting with an arm well round a stay, and one leg twisted in another for safety; but the wood did not feel at all soft, and there was a peculiar rap, rap, rap against the tapering spar which ran up above my head to the round big wooden bun on the top of all, which we ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... of the excavation ran shining steel rails upon which were mounted tapering structures of steel, from which cables crossed the gorge, carrying great buckets of concrete for the work below. Heavy walls were ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... reached the floor, extending elastically, and strangely enlarging in all proportions as they approached the ground, where the feet and buckles were those of a well-shaped, full grown man, and the figure tapering upward until it dwindled to its original fairy dimensions at the top, like an object seen ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... off his kayah from shore. It was a funny sort of boat, according to our notions. It was only nine inches deep, and about a foot and a half wide in the middle, tapering to a point at either end and curving upward. It was about sixteen feet long. Its frame was of very light wood, and this was covered with tanned seal-skin. Sammy's mother was a Greenlander, and she could sew on seal-skin very handily, using sinews for thread; ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... result was that externally the tower resembled the trunk of an oak tree, and appeared to be just about as strong. It offered the minimum of resistance to the waves, which, tumbling upon the ledge, rose and curled around the tapering form without ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... with butterflies, gilded, green, and crimson, the many folds of the skirt flowing to the carpet in a train designed to add to apparent height, and, in front, allowing an enchanting glimpse of a tiny slipper, high in the instep, and tapering prettily toward the toe. In her hair were glints of a curiously-wrought chain, wound under and among the bandeaux; on her wrists, plump and dimpled as a baby's, more chain-work of the like precious metal, ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... a strange-looking object in his hand—a short, dark-colored, tapering stick, with hand-holes and finger-grips cut into the lower end, and with a long groove running toward the small end, which was finished with ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... care to say much about radishes; I do not like them. They are, however, universal favorites. They come round, half- long, long and tapering; white, red, white-tipped, crimson, rose, yellow-brown and black; and from the size of a button to over a foot long by fifteen inches in circumference—the latter being the new Chinese or Celestial. So you can imagine what a revel of varieties the seedsmen may indulge in. I have tried ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... of the stern, sculptured heads of the Roman emperors, and the fragments of gods and goddesses which are the best testimony of the artistic aspirations of Greece. In the entresol of this house was one of his finest treasures—a carved and floriated base bearing a tapering monolith some four feet high, crowned by the head of a peculiarly goatish Pan, by the side of which were the problematic remains of a lovely nude nymph—just the little feet broken off at the ankles. The base on which the feet of the nymph and ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... the lamp had been so placed that as the two men approached its light fell full upon their faces, while that of the prisoner remained in shadow. He was leaning forward with both elbows on the table, his thin, tapering fingers toying with the pen and ink-horn which had been placed close ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... the rays of the signal light, Speeding along through the rain and the dark, Like a ghost in its snow-white sark, The pilot of some phantom bark, Guiding the vessel, in its flight, By a path none other knows aright! Behold, at last, Each tall and tapering mast Is swung into its place; Shrouds and stays Holding it ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the truth, the truth, Have I merited woe at your tapering hands, Have you wilfully burst love's twining strands, And cast to the winds ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... brake leaves in the pie crust. Aunt Hannah now always will cut the leaves all the way of a size, as if any one with half an eye couldn't see that it isn't the way they grow by nature, but broad at the bottom and tapering off like an Injun arrow at the top. Besides, Mary, it's between us, you know, aunt Hannah never does make her thumb-marks even about the edges, but Nathan, now I dare say, don't know the difference between her work, and a leaf ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... about. Tho' thick as midnight stars they beamed, Yet all like living sisters seemed, So close in every point resembling Each other's beauties—from the eyes Lucid as if thro' crystal trembling, Yet soft as if suffused with sighs, To the long, fawn-like mouth, and chin, Lovelily tapering, less and less, Till by this very charm's excess, Like virtue on the verge of sin, It touched the bounds of ugliness. Here lookt as when they lived the shades Of some of Arno's dark-eyed maids— Such maids as should alone live on In dreams thus when their charms are gone: ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... the ethereal in his celestial vision, either in the type of womanhood or in the style of arrangement. In defiance of the law of gravitation, he poses his upper figures so as to form a solid pyramid, wide at the base, and tapering ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... far the most important ancient code hitherto discovered is that of Hammurabi (circa 2250 B.C.). The source for this is a block of black diorite about 2.25 metres high, tapering from 1.90 to 1.65 metres in circumference. It was found by De Morgan at Susa, the ancient Persepolis, in December, 1901, and January, 1902, in fragments, which were easily rejoined. The text was published by the French Ministry of Instruction from "squeezes" by the ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... Benedicte," joyously cried the fiery-eyed veteran. "I had despaired of ever setting eyes again on thy black curls!" Van den Ende's own hair tossed under his wide-brimmed tapering hat as wildly as ever, though it was now as white as his ruff, his blood seemed to beat as boisterously, and a few minutes' conversation sufficed to show Spinoza that the old pedagogue's soul was even more unchanged than his body. The same hilarious atheism, the same dogmatic disbelief, the same ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... In her research courses at the University she had visited court rooms, jails and reformatories. Criminals were not new to her. But these men lacked utterly the markings of the average city criminal. Their eyes lacked the keen alertness, their fingers the slim tapering points of the professional crook. Suddenly, as she pondered, there came to her mind a paragraph from one of ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... on examination, that every twig had on the leeward side a dense row of miniature fronds or fern-leaves executed in snow, with a sharply defined central nerve, or midrib, and perfect ramification, tapering to a point, and varying in length from half an inch to three inches. On every post, every rail, and the corners of every building, the same spectacle was seen; and where the snow had accumulated in deep drifts, it was still made up of the ruins of these fairy structures. The white, enamelled ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... and he stood still to listen; but he could not be sure that it was not the snow sinking and crisping beneath his feet. All around him was still as a world too long frozen: in the heavens alone was there motion. There this entrancing dance of colour and shape went on, wide beneath, and tapering up to the zenith! Truly there was revelry in heaven! One might have thought that a prodigal son had just got home, and that the music and the dancing had begun, of which only the far-off rhythmic shine could reach the human ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... upon one of the piano-notes, and sat expectant. With a sharp click at the end of ten seconds a sliding shutter flew open, and a small tray protruded bearing two long tapering ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... will bud soon," answered Dong-Yung, glancing over her shoulder at the tapering, yellowing twigs of the ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... crevices and irregular surfaces of the block, but it was too large to hide in anything but a huge space. They saw before them its great bulk, bright red skin blotched with black, which rose and fell with the breathing of the reptile. Its long, powerful tail, tapering off from the fat, loathsome body, was curled around the bottom ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... is more erect and taller of growth than C. bignonioides. The flowers too are larger, and of purer white, and with the throat markings of purple and yellow more distinct and not inclined to run into each other. Leaves large, heart-shaped, tapering to a point, of a light pleasing green and soft to the touch. It flowers earlier, and is more hardy ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... The small t is always crossed by a bar thick at the beginning, tapering to a point, with its longest part behind the shank of the ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... Beneath them the Pool slept, a sheet of polished ebony, whispering to itself, lapping with small stealthy gurgles angles of masonry and ancient piles. On the farther bank tall warehouses reared square old-time heads, their uncompromising, rugged profile relieved here and there by tapering mastheads. A few, scattering, feeble lights were visible. Nothing moved save the ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... The use to which this stately grass is put is truly wonderful. The tender shoots are cultivated for food like the asparagus; the roots are carved into fantastic images of men, birds, and monkeys. The tapering culms are used for all purposes that poles can be applied to, in carrying, supporting, propelling, and measuring; by the porter, the carpenter, and the boatman; for the joists of houses and the ribs of sails; the shafts of spears and the wattles of hurdles, the tubes ...
— Arbor Day Leaves • N.H. Egleston
... chance meeting, the advent it might be of some charitably disposed wayfarer. And her impatience was manifest, for while keeping close to the fence like some animal lying in wait, she continually peered through the breach, thrusting out her tapering weasel's head and watching yonder, in the direction of ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... obtain a few more coins to hazard and eventually to lose. As a result of this passion for gambling, the city is full of pawnshops, some streets containing scarcely anything else. At the far end of one of the bazaar streets is the largest idol manufactory in Siam, for the temples whose graceful, tapering towers dot the landscape are filled with images of Buddha, in all sizes and of all materials from wood to gold set with jewels, most of them donated by the devout in order to "make merit" for themselves. As all Buddhists wish to accumulate as much ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... enormous horns, which incline backward. As they grow they bend downward, and in the course of time form a complete curve and project forward. At the root the horns are nearly three inches square, the flat sides opposite; they are marked with closely connected ridges and end in a tapering ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... always kept inviolate at the Double-Crank, until it had come to be looked upon as an inalienable right. The Glorious Fourth had been celebrated, come rain, come shine. Usually the celebration was so generous that it did not stop at midnight; anywhere within a week was considered permissible, a gradual tapering off—not to say sobering up—being the custom with the more ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... estimate of the quantity passing the Hut in a year. Hannam, following the approved design, produced a very satisfactory contrivance. It consisted of a large drift-tight box, fitted on the windward side with a long metal cone, tapering to an aperture three-quarters of an inch in diameter. The drift-laden air entered the aperture, its speed was checked on entering the capacious body of the gauge and consequently the snow fell to the bottom of the box and the air passed out behind through a trap-door. The catch ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... it was as if a large slice had been cut out of the earth's crust, leaving a tapering cavity not unlike the shape of a battleship; fortunately, however, the floor was fairly flat and even. The engineers immediately seized upon the nullah and proceeded to transform it into a gigantic reservoir. Along one side of the nullah was dug a series of large shallow tanks shaped ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... tapering streaks of lilac, In breathless depths afar, Bright as the tear of an angel Glittered ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... with bursts of merry approval. Encouraged by this and full of mischief and malice, I made her watch a man with tapering white side-whiskers and watery eyes who was staring at the bare bust of ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... general outline the island resembles a pear—and suggests to its admiring inhabitants the figure of those pearls which from their elongated form are suspended from the tapering end. When originally upheaved above the ocean its shape was in all probability nearly circular, with a prolongation in the direction of north-east. The mountain zone in the south, covering an area of about 4212 miles[1], may then ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... Under favorable conditions the waxy, thin, white, or occasionally pink, strongly veined petals may exceed two inches; and in Michigan a monstrous form has been found. The broadly rhombic leaves, tapering to a point, and lacking petioles, are seated in the usual whorl of three, at the summit of the stem, which may attain a foot and a half in height; from the centre the decorative flower arises on a ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... branches, nearly flat, and bound together with twining vines. The spacious interior is lined with hair and moss, so minutely woven together as to exclude the wind. The female lays two eggs of a brownish red color, with many dots and spots, the long end of the egg tapering to a point. The parents are affectionate, attend to their young as long as they are helpless and unfledged, and will not forsake them even though the tree on which they rest be enveloped in flames. When the Eaglets are ready to fly, however, the parents push them from the perch and trust them ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography [July 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... dances and feasts in it. For a full account of the rites, etc., see Riggs' "Tahkoo Wahkan", Chapter VI. The Ta-sha-ke—literally, "Deer-hoofs"—is a rattle made by hanging the hard segments of deer-hoofs to a wooden rod a foot long—about an inch in diameter at the handle end, and tapering to a point at the other. The clashing of these horny bits makes a sharp, shrill sound something like distant sleigh-bells. In their incantations over the sick they sometimes ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... story at all.' His eyes were fastened upon her hands, small and tapering, in their tan gauntlets. The point of a patent-leather boot glanced from the edge of her skirt. A short gold watch-chain dangled from her breast, a cluster of ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... became occupied with Kate's beauty. He thought he had never seen her so bewitching or in such good spirits. From his six feet and an inch of vantage his eyes followed her sloping shoulders and tapering arms and rested on her laughing, happy face—rose-colored in the soft light of the candles—a film of lace looped at her elbows, her wonderful hair caught in a coil at the back: not the prevailing fashion but one most becoming to her. What had not this admixture ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... now. She lay, looking at him, drinking in his dark hair, blue eyes, handsome face, the shape of his intelligent head, the slope of his neck and shoulders, the tapering waist, all the masculine grace and beauty. She pressed her closed fist into her mouth. All the beauty she might never see again, feel enfolded around ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... boxlike crystal cells, their gelatinous bodies glowing with pale and ever-changing opalescence. The things were roughly pear-shaped, with the large end upward. Deep within this globular portion glowed a large nucleus spot of red. From the tapering lower part of each slug's body there sprouted scores of long slender tendrils like the gelatinous fringe ...
— The Cavern of the Shining Ones • Hal K. Wells
... partner deftly massaged his long tapering digits in the perfumed water, he leaned over and whispered to Inspector Letstrayed, who sat next to him. Letstrayed's eyes bulged out, and Holmes then arose, pushed his chair back, inserted his left thumb in the left armhole of his vest, expanded his chest, cleared his throat, ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... of the faces which looked into the enclosure, offered ingress. They were similar in size and shape, seven feet and a half in height by four in breadth, and tapering toward the summit like the portals of the temple-builders of Central America. Inside were solid mud floors, strewn with gray dust and showing here and there a gleam of broken pottery, the whole brooded over by obscurity. It was discoverable, however, that ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... almost a sinister personage. Yet the signs of a sombre fanaticism were not more immediately striking in her than before; it was only after a while that her air of incorruptible conformity, her tapering monosyllabic correctness, began to affect me as in themselves a cold thin flame. Certainly, at first, she resembled a woman with as few passions as possible; but if she had a passion at all it would indeed be that of Philistinism. She might have been (for there are guardian-spirits, I suppose, ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... of the honey-bee, and of the same general form and color, and its manner among the flowers is nearly the same. On close inspection, its color proves to be lighter, while the under side of its abdomen is of a rich bronze. The body is also flatter and less tapering, and the curve inclines upward, rather than downward. You perceive it would be the easiest thing in the world for the bee to sting an enemy perched upon its back. One variety, with a bright buff abdomen, is called "sweat-bee" by the laborers ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... The foothills of the Julian Alps descend sharply to a plain near where the Isonzo issued from the gorge which it has cut through the mountains. The line between the plain and the mountains is sharp and clearly marked. There is no gentle tapering off of one into the other. This line between the hills and plain is somewhat irregular in shape and incloses a pocket in which Gorizia is situated. It is not unlike a huge elliptical stadium. At the north end, level with the ground, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... attired with studied elegance. Rich rows of pearls wind through her braided hair, in colour gold, in texture soft as silk. A band of gold forms the girdle of her ruby-coloured velvet robe, which descends to the wrist, and there reveals the small white hand and tapering fingers of patrician beauty. All this may captivate the fastidious noble; but, to men less artificial in their tastes and habits, could such a woman be better than a statue—and could love, the strongest of human passions, be ever more to her than ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... return, he was seated, disconsolate, gluing garnets and carbuncles on to a broad tapering bit of lambskin, when Ucatella came to him and said, ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... cried Peter, springing up in a sitting position, to find it was daylight once more. "Oh, it's you, is it?" he cried, for there was a crackling by the door, and the great, tapering, serpent-like trunk of an elephant was waving to and fro and reaching ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... indeed, even sat quietly down and lighted up their pipes, the better to consider the bonnie ship. Long and low and dark was she, and though a frigate, the poop was not high enough to interfere with her taking lines of beauty. She carried splendid spars, and from their tapering height it was evident she was built either to fight or to chase a flying Frenchman. But her maintop-gallant masts were at present below, for the ship was not quite ready for sea. She seemed impatient enough, however, to get away. The wind blew pretty ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... silent face terrifies rather than consoles us. Even when we firmly plant our feet upon the solid rocks, they seem to tremble like the mists of the sea from which they once slowly emerged. When the eye longs for the light, and the moon rises behind the firs, reflecting their tapering tops against the bright rock opposite, it appears to us like the dead hand of a clock which was once wound up, and will some day cease to strike. There is no retreat for the soul, which feels itself alone and forsaken even among ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... Wilbur Cowan, from his friend, Eddie—Spike—Brennon, 133 lbs. ringside." It was a spirited likeness of the hero, though taken some years before, when he was in the prime of a ring career now, alas, tapering to obscurity. ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... appearance of that hand. It was one of unusual beauty—the sort of hand that Titian or Vandyke loved to draw: long, finely-shaped, full of quiet power, and fuller, perhaps, of a subtle sort of refinement, which seems to express itself in the form of tapering fingers with filbert nails and a well-turned wrist. It was not the hand of a working-man, not even of a skilled artizan, whose hand is often delicately sensitive: it was a gentleman's hand, and as such it piqued Percival's curiosity. But Mackay was ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... are still unfigured and undescribed, and some of which could scarce have belonged to any coniferous tree. In one of these (Fig. 138), the ligneous bracts or scales, narrow and long, and gradually tapering till they assume nearly the awl-shaped form, cluster out thick from the base and middle portions of the cone, and, like the involucral appendages of the hazel-nut, or the sepals of the yet unfolded rose-bud, sweep gracefully upwards to the top, where ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... fixed by the strange contrast between his massive jaw and short neck which spoke the physical strength of an ox, and the slender gracefully tapering fingers of his small hand. The wrist was small, the fingers almost feminine ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... the past, and all the glorious thoughts embodied in that literature. Underneath, in the heart of the pile, he reserved a space for the most inflammable material, which he selected from a special file of a special journal, and round the circumference of the lofty and tapering mound he carefully deposited the two hundred and four war numbers of a certain weekly, so that a ring of flame might lick well up the sides and permeate the more solid matter on which he would be sitting. For two hours he worked in the waning moonlight till he had completed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to where the men were working, by the river's brink, there was a space of level ground, perhaps a hundred feet long, and tapering from half that breadth to a point. And this was simply crimson and purple with a ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... the construction of the ark of Noah was never such a boat as this. It would be impossible to convey in words a true idea of what the craft was like. Perhaps to take an ordinary boat, give it a square stern, a flat bottom without a keel, and straight sides tapering to a point at the bow, would give an approximate idea of what the thing actually was, and also ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... is easiest procurable. But even in that there is the most unjustifiable wastefulness practised. I was among the lumberers once, and saw the way they square the white pine. You know that every tree is of course tapering in the trunk, narrower at the top than at the base; now, to square the log, the best timber of the lower part must be hewn away, to make it of equal dimensions with the upper part. I am not above the mark when I say that ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... the capital on a baggage waggon—in the capital which is like no other city in the world! Before him there lay spread out the whole field of life, like a sort of Arabian Nights—a picture made up of the Nevski Prospect, Gorokhovaia Street, countless tapering spires, and a number of bridges apparently supported on nothing—in fact, a regular second Nineveh. Well, he made shift to hire a lodging, but found everything so wonderfully furnished with blinds and Persian carpets ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... boding petrel of the storm—where could be found, among the winged or finned frequenters of the ocean, a form more appropriate, more fitting, than this specimen of human skill, whose beautiful model and elegant tapering spars were now all that could be discovered to break the meeting lines of the firmament ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... to another in silence, and when she had seen everything he would look into her eyes and say, "Well?" It would be all so like a wonderful story, a day of magic!... Martin Cosgrave sprang from the bench and went to the edge of the platform, staring down the long level road, with its two rails tapering almost together in the distance. Not a sign of a train. Would it never come in? Had anything happened the boat? He walked up and down with energy, holding the lapel of his coat, saying to himself, "I must not be thinking of things like this. It is foolishness. Whatever is to happen ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... there is a magnificent range of peaks without any name whatever. The imagination of the Geological Survey seemed to die after Starvation Ridge; at least, they stopped there. Kintla is a curious lemon-yellow color, a great, flat wall tapering to a point and frequently hidden under ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... us, as we entered the great court, was the peculiar South Russian taste for filling in the line of roof between the numerous domes with curving pediments and tapering turned-wood spirelets surmounted by golden stars and winged seraphs' heads surrounded by rays. The effect of so many points of gold against the white of the walls, combined with the gold of the crosses, the high tints of the external frescoes, and the gold of the cupolas, ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... the small arches intended for the roadways were constructed, each being 15 feet to the springing of the arch, and 9 feet wide. Upon these arches the masonry was carried upwards, in a tapering form, to a height of 53 feet above the level of the road. As these piers were to carry the immense weight of the suspension chains, great pains were taken with their construction, and all the stones, from top to bottom, were firmly ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... wall at Omdurman stood with its narrowest side facing the Nile, and its longest sides ran inland from the river for about a mile. It was twelve feet in height, and even more in places, ten feet in thickness at the base, tapering to six feet at the top. It was a well-made structure, laid in mortar and faced on either side ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... tall and well-thewed lad for his age. His muscle fiber had drawn strength from the ax and the log-pole, but as yet it had not become heavy with decades of hard labor. He still stood slender and gracefully tapering from shoulders to waist and just now there was something trance-like in his earnestness which made wild prophecies seem almost inspired. The hard-headed father eyed ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... was close enough now so that they could discern its shape. Rick saw that it formed a rough crescent, running from north to south. It was about a mile long, perhaps a half mile wide at its greatest width, tapering to the horns of the crescent. He saw also that the color of the water changed gradually from the fathomless blue of the ocean to the green ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... large dead tree upon which the buzzards still roosted patiently, he removed his shoes and stockings and looked up at the gray, tapering trunk. ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... sensitive ears than the doctor's could have detected it. Assured after a few minutes of listening that some kind of a craft was coming up the river, the doctor sank back into his hiding place, an automatic pistol firmly grasped in his long tapering fingers. ...
— Poisoned Air • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... screws. Its inner end expands into a head, in which are placed four steel sockets, at equal distances from each other, which receive the points. Two of the sockets opposite to each other are secured permanently. The two others are movable. A tapering plate or wedge, the sides of which are cylindrical, runs through a slit in the head; an aperture in the inner ends of the movable socket embraces the cylinder, so that when the plate is moved forward or backward, the sockets are projected ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... did not smile; she simply told him to wait. She took the cards hastily once more and shuffled them with her long tapering fingers whose nails were so long and unclean from neglect; she shuffled them well, once, twice, thrice; then she began to lay them out. Camillo's eyes were riveted ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... with the ordinary form of the Italian bell-tower or campanile. From the eighth century to the thirteenth there was little change in that form:[8] four-square, rising high and without tapering into the air, story above story, they stood like giants in the quiet fields beside the piles of the basilica or the Lombardic church, in this form (fig. 9), tiled at the top in a flat gable, with open arches below, ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... relieved merely by a crest, with every strap that could be needed, in its place, and not one buckle or one thong superfluous; the bright steel curbs, with the chains jingling as the horses tossed and pawed impatient for a start; the tapering holly whip; the bear-skins covering the seats; the top-coats spread above them— every thing, in a word, without bordering on the slang, was ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... stately and graceful, growing sometimes to the extraordinary height of eighty feet. From the roots upwards, it has not a single branch or shrubby excrescence, but grows beautifully smooth and straight, tapering towards the top. At its top, an abundance of the richest and most beautiful leaves spread out in graceful symmetry, and bend down on all sides, forming a figure like an umbrella; while the young leaf, still firm and compact in its foliar ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various
... deal of laughter, they dressed themselves in their new garb. Hil had neglected nothing, and had even provided two pairs of specially-made corsets which enabled the waist to appear even with the hips, instead of tapering. Loose flannel shirts, with collars attached, obviated all differences of appearance about the bust. Padded boots, two sizes too large for them, met the difficulty of ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... hardly have gone so far. The first place we visited was Penas Cargadas, the "loaded rocks." Riding through a thick wood of oaks and pines, we came suddenly in view of several sugar-loaf peaks, some three hundred feet high, tapering almost to a point at the top, and each one crowned with a mass of rocks which seem to have been balanced in unstable equilibrium on its point,—looking as though the first puff of wind would bring them down. The pillars were of porphyritic conglomerate, ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... parterres of flowers ... broad terraced gardens laid out between the buildings. Occasionally a great square intervened surrounded by its porticoes of stone and stucco; or a pyramidal temple reared its colossal bulk crowned with its tapering sanctuaries, and altars blazing with unextinguishable fires. But what most impressed the Spaniards was the throngs of people who swarmed through the streets ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... inexhaustible supply of firewood. Besides the trees I have mentioned, there is the xanthorea, or grass-tree, a plant which cannot be intelligibly described to those who have never seen it. The stem consists of a tough pithy substance, round which the leaves are formed. These, long and tapering like the rush, are four-sided, and extremely brittle; the base from which they shoot is broad and flat, about the size of a thumb-nail, and very resinous in substance. As the leaves decay annually, others are put forth above the ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... turned grass; the clouds were riven; His feet were mountains lost in heaven; Through strange new skies he rose alone, The earth fell from him like a stone, And his own limbs beneath him far Seemed tapering down to touch ...
— The Wild Knight and Other Poems • Gilbert Chesterton
... all, with strongly veined white wings, bearing three black spots, two on the upper and one on the lower wing, and dark coloring on the corner of the upper wings. The antennae, as with all butterflies, are clubbed at the extremity—unlike moths', which are tapering—and the large black staring eyes are the optical apparatus, containing, we are told, thousands of lenses, each a perfect, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... of an Indian maid, though the proportions of her person were as light and buoyant as at all comported with the fullness that properly belonged to her years. The limbs, seen below the folds of a short kirtle of bright scarlet cloth, were just and tapering, even to the nicest proportions of classic beauty; and never did foot of higher instep, and softer roundness, grace a feathered moccason. Though the person, from the neck to the knees, was hid by a tightly-fitting vest of calico and the short kirtle named, enough of the shape was visible to betray ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... child. The green-shaded lamp sent a bright, downward gush of light over his legs, its mellowed upper glow shining on his forehead, high and bare to his crown. He had the curious, sexless appearance of elderly Chinamen; might have been, with his tapering hands, flowing coat, and hairless ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... quarters at the expense of the fore, and which has caused a falling off, or flatness, behind the shoulders. The loins are first rate, wide, long and full of flesh, hips round and of moderate width; rumps level and well filled at the bed; tail full near the rump and tapering much at the top. The thighs of the cows are occasionally light, but the bull and ox are full of muscle, with a deep and rich flank. On the whole there is scarcely any breed of cattle so rich and mellow in its touch, so ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... gold so as to produce two tints, red gold and green gold; the latter would be used for wreaths and accessories, while the former, or ordinary gilding, was applied to the general surface. The legs of tables are generally fluted, as noticed above, tapering towards the feet, and are relieved from a stilted appearance by being connected ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... slanting on the water and ran in tapering lustre to our feet. The gilded ripple slipped and murmured below us; the bronzed leaves overhead bent carefully to veil her answer. The bird within the covert uttered an ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... this Journal, page 207, there is some mention of the patented rolling process for tapering bar-iron by machinery. This important invention is not of American origin, as persons unacquainted with the facts might imagine: it was first practised at the Mersey Steel and Iron Company's works at Liverpool, and then patented by Mr William Clay in the United States. The Company mentioned were ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... lower vegetable-feeding mammals. In the marsupial koala it is actually more than thrice as long as the whole body. (46. Owen, 'Anatomy of Vertebrates,' vol. iii. pp. 416, 434, 441.) It is sometimes produced into a long gradually-tapering point, and is sometimes constricted in parts. It appears as if, in consequence of changed diet or habits, the caecum had become much shortened in various animals, the vermiform appendage being left ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... royally with breaks and dashes, like the waters of that royal river, and antique, quaint, and Gothic times, be reflected in it. Alas! this evening my style flows not at all. Flow, then, into this smoke-colored goblet, thou blood of the Rhine! out of thy prison-house,—out of thy long-necked, tapering flask, in shape not unlike a church-spire among thy native hills; and, from the crystal belfry, loud ring the merry tinkling bells, while I drink a health to my hero, in whose heart is sadness, and in whose ears the bells of Andernach ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... except at the cross-trees and truck, which were painted black. The standing and running rigging was in the most perfect order, and the sails white as snow. In short, everything, from the single narrow red stripe on her low, black hull to the trucks on her tapering masts, evinced an amount of care and strict discipline that would have done credit to a ship of the Royal Navy. There was nothing lumbering or unseemly about the vessel, excepting, perhaps, a boat, which lay on the deck with its keel up between the fore and main masts. It seemed disproportionately ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... (and oh Heaven! what a free and wonderful) air comes blowing on your face; you cross a ridge of snow; and lying before you (wholly unseen till then), towering up into the distant sky, is the vast range of Mont Blanc, with attendant mountains diminished by its majestic side into mere dwarfs tapering up into innumerable rude Gothic pinnacles; deserts of ice and snow; forests of firs on mountain sides, of no account at all in the enormous scene; villages down in the hollow, that you can shut out ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... took great pride in being well shod and in having her stockings tightly drawn up without wrinkles. Besides all this she possessed the most beautiful hand that was ever seen, as I believe. The poets once praised Aurora for her fine hands and tapering fingers; but I think our Queen would surpass her in that; and she carefully guarded and maintained this beauty ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... salt-pork or beef, it serves instead of turnips and is as much esteemed. The papaw-tree is about 10 or 12 foot high. The body near the ground may be a foot and a half or 2 foot diameter; and it grows up tapering to the top. It has no branches at all, but only large leaves growing immediately upon stalks from the body. The leaves are of a roundish form and jagged about the edges, having their stalks or stumps longer or shorter as they grow near ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... formed, projecting down from the bottom, this keel being, at its widest part, two feet, and tapering down to merge with the bottom, fore and aft. The cross section (Fig. 4) shows how well he had formed ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... by Husayn Ali, who opposed me no longer, we commenced our descent to the valley of Jid Ali, an expansive flat several miles in breadth, fuller and better wooded in the north than any place I had yet seen, but tapering away to the south and eastwards, until it became lost to sight in the barren plateau. After marching a mile or so, we found the Abban hastening to meet us, in high dudgeon with my men for having advanced contrary to his mandates, before he had time ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... in its proper place; there she smoothed with tapering fingers one or the other of the tidies, products of her own skilful needle, which, in every hue and size, adorned the furniture. She tested the various lamps; opened and shut piano and parlor organ to convince herself ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... of a ragged lad picked off a piratical slaver, with nothing save my bare word and address. 'Twas then I had space to note him more particularly. His skin was the rich colour of a well-seasoned ship's bell, and he was of the middle height, owned a slight, graceful figure, tapering down at the waist like a top, which had set off a silk coat to perfection and soured the beaus with envy. His movements, however, had all the decision of a man of action and of force. But his eye it was took ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... blue veins here and there marking the clear delicate skin. Only look at the arm, without even seeing the face, and you would feel there was nervous energy and power of will; no weak, flabby, undecided action would ever come of it. The wrist was tapering enough, and the hand perfectly shaped, like the arm; not quite so white. The face,—you could not read it at once; possibly not till it had seen a few more years. It was very reposeful this afternoon. Yet the brow and the head bore tokens of the power you would expect; they ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... that my father had just brought into port was a trim barque, with high, tapering masts and a ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... given its high population growth and unequal distribution of income. MACAPAGAL-ARROYO averted a fiscal crisis by pushing for new revenue measures and, until recently, tightening expenditures. Declining fiscal deficits, tapering debt and debt service ratios, as well as recent efforts to increase spending on infrastructure and social services have heightened optimism over Philippine economic prospects. Although the general macroeconomic outlook ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... she was read in this literature—she had no time for reading. But, even when clothed in rough tweeds, Lancelot had for Mary Ann an aristocratic halo; in his dressing-gown he savoured of the grand Turk. His hands were masterful: the fingers tapering, the nails pedantically polished. He had fair hair, with moustache to match; his brow was high and white, and his grey eyes could flash fire. When he drew himself up to his full height, he threatened the gas globes. Never had No. ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... obscure. Many of the moral and physical peculiarities of born criminals and the morally insane may be classed as professional characteristics acquired through the habit of evil-doing, especially the naso-labial and zygomatic wrinkles, cynical expression, tapering fingers, etc. Many anomalies also in the bones, hair, ears, eyes, and the monstrous development of the jaws and teeth, must be explained by arrested development in the fifth or sixth month of ultra-uterine existence, corresponding to the ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... transported to the stigmas of older flowers. Playing each its part in the plan of the universe, flower and insect added its mite to the life and the loveliness of the summer. From the sunshine and the soil-water the long leaves manufactured food for the growth of the plant. Prettily notched, daintily tapering, and arranged in star-like whorls about the stem, they enhanced the beauty of the flowers above them and attracted the observer to the exquisite order governing their growth. When the leaves were arranged in whorls of four, the floral spires were quadruple, like the pinnacles on a church tower; ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... colossal work executed under great difficulties—to look at the surrounding landscape. Those who are interested in engineering may like to know the dimensions of this wall, which is two hundred feet long, thirty-five feet high, and ten feet thick at the base, tapering off to a thickness of five feet at the top, and is built of a fine limestone quarried from the railway cutting a little further out. The view from either of the ridges between which the town is built, is magnificent, mountain, valley, sea, and river contributing to the effect. ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... side rails to 6 by 9 in. Cut one end of each post tapering with a chisel; face and sandpaper the posts and side rails before making the joints. The side rails are attached to the posts with three dowels to each joint. The place for each dowel is located by making a line exactly in the middle lengthwise on each end of each side rail. Three lines are ...
— Mission Furniture - How to Make It, Part I • H. H. Windsor
... endlessly-tossing waves like a sea-gull, carrying her head with a care-free air and dipping to the waves in jaunty fashion. Her lines were very fine, tapering and beautiful, even to the eye of ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien |
