"Background" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been looking on at this little pantomime with great satisfaction for some time, when, to our unspeakable astonishment, we perceived that the whole of the characters, including a numerous corps de ballet of boots and shoes in the background, into which we had been hastily thrusting as many feet as we could press into the service, were arranging themselves in order for dancing; and some music striking up at the moment, to it they went without delay. It was perfectly delightful to witness the agility of the market-gardener. ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... great pace; lizards and goannas scampered out of the way in dozens, and, clambering trees, eyed us unblinkingly as we passed. Did we see a person or vehicle a tiny speck ahead of us—in a short time they were as far away in the background. ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... more they passed into the river Geromerino, and made their way through a world of beautiful aquatic plants which covered the tranquil waters in every direction. The river banks are flat, and fringed with underwood and young trees; the background is formed by ranges ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... river had risen two feet during the night, and the stump of the tree to which I had moored my boat was submerged. The river was wide and the banks covered with heavy forests, with clearings here and there, which afforded attractive vistas of prairies in the background. I passed a bold, stratified crag, covered with a little growth of cedars. These adventurous trees, growing out of the crevices of the rock, formed a picturesque covering for its rough surface. A cavern, about thirty feet in width, penetrated a short distance into the ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... sixteen when the wonder and beauty of the old Greek life began to dawn upon me. Suddenly I seemed to see the white figures throwing purple shadows on the sun-baked palaestra; 'bands of nude youths and maidens'—you remember Gautier's words—'moving across a background of deep blue as on the frieze of the Parthenon.' I began to read Greek eagerly for love of it all, and the more I read the more I ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... As Nieuwenhuis has pointed out [9, p. 451], the tatu of these tribes is distinctive, inasmuch as most of the designs are left in the natural colour of the skin against a background of tatu; that is to say in the phraseology of the photographer, whilst the tatu designs of Kayans, Kenyahs, etc., are POSITIVES, those of the Bakatans are NEGATIVES. The men were formerly most extensively tatued, and we figure the principal ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... no longer of any consequence to the community at large. In the mysterious purposes of that third volume which we seem to be living in Ireland, Francesca's beauty and mine, her hats and frocks as well as mine, are all reduced to the background; but Salemina's toilet had cost us some thought. When she first issued from the discreet and decorous fastnesses of Salem society, she had never donned any dinner dress that was not as high at the ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of the newspapers seem to be of opinion that until the Republic has been officially recognised, it is not consistent with her dignity to take part in any European Conference. The diplomatists, who have been a little thrown in the background of late, by wars and generals, must be delighted to find their old friend, the "Eastern Question," cropping up. The settlement of the Schleswig-Holstein question was a heavy blow to them; but for many a year they ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... cheerfulness on days serene, her resignation on stormy ones,—all those variations of expression by which character is displayed depend, like the effects in the sky, on unexpected and fugitive circumstances, which have no connection with each other except the background against which they rest, though all are necessarily mingled with the events of this history,—truly a household epic, as great to the eyes of a wise man as a tragedy to the eyes of the crowd, an epic in which you will feel an interest, not only for ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... period of valedictory may we be permitted a concluding reflection, projected in clear outline on the background of those thrilling days now forever over. That reflection, in silhouette, is this—the great crises of life—whether decisive of weal or of woe, are, to the soul of normal man, God impelling! In direct ratio as danger and death impended ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... Chinchero is a village near Cuzco, on the heights overlooking the lovely valley of Yucay, with magnificent mountains in the background. The remains of the Inca palace are still standing, not unlike those on the Colcampata ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... not consent to be kept long in the background on such a day as this when the sun shone its brightest and the birds sang their hardest and the very wind seemed to be whispering of happier ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... comet, and he observed it carefully before he aroused Nadia, who hurried into the control room. Looming large in the shortened range of the plate, their objective hurtled onward in its eternal course, its enormous velocity betrayed only by the rapidity with which it sped past the incredibly brilliant background of infinitely distant stars. Apparently it was a wild jumble of separate fragments; a conglomerate, heterogeneous aggregation of rough and jagged masses varying in size from grains of sand up to enormous chunks, which upon Earth would have weighed millions of ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... was rudely awakened by the fate which had dragged her into the depths of slavery. In the chambers of her imagery were pictures of noble deeds; of high, heroic men, knightly, tender, true, and brave. In Dr. Gresham she saw the ideal of her soul exemplified. But in her lonely condition, with all its background of terrible sorrow and deep abasement, she had never for a moment thought of giving or receiving love from one of that race who had been so lately associated in her mind with horror, aversion, and disgust. His kindness to her had been a new experience. His companionship ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... reign of Charles I. is one full of involved details, yet the broader aspects of it, the great events which chiseled into shape the future of England stand out in bold relief in front of a background of interminable bickerings. There was constant quarreling between the factions within the English church, and between the Protestants and the Catholics, complicated by the discontent of the people and at times the nobles because of the autocratic, ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... gardener? You say nothing about that shadowy and sinister figure, the gardener. You are keeping him in the background, Murch. Out with him!" ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... breast as though asleep, his horse plodding after the others—along the slight trail they had made across the desert. So far as eye could reach nothing moved, nothing apparently existed. Fronting again to the north he looked upon the same grim barrenness, only that far off, against the lighter background of distant sky, there was visible a faint blur, a bluish haze, which he believed to be the distant sand dunes bordering the Arkansas. The intense dreariness of it all left a feeling of depression. His eyes turned and regarded the girl riding silently beside him. The same ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... The sudden change from the pleasant green gloom of the forest to the harsh glare of the brilliant sunshine was startling. As they crossed the open Dermot looked up at the giant rampart of the mountains and saw against the dark background of their steep slopes the grey wall of Fort and bungalows in the little outpost of Ranga Duar high ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... say, and he regrets it. He, regrets it, because Time, according to certain solemn philosophers, is the canvas background against which we embroider the follies of our existence, and truly it is little scientific not to be able to indicate at precisely which moment the canvas of this book begins. But the author does not know; all he can say is, that at that moment ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... of that pale ghost, with great black hollow eyes, who sat in Crowland, with thin bare feet, and sackcloth on her tender limbs, watching, praying, longing, loving, uncomplaining. That ghost had been for many a month the background of all his thoughts and dreams. It was so clear before his mind's eye now, that, unawares to himself, he shouted "Torfrida!" as he struck, and struck the harder at the sound of ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... background, the necessity of a personal acquaintance with the Lord Jesus Christ stands out in startling relief. Though God comes to a soul in a marked way during Adolescence, nurture is taking a dangerous and often fatal risk in allowing life, as far as human effort can go, to enter its crisis ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... because in their day instantaneous photography was unknown, and in addition there were certain crudities of construction that seriously interfered with the illumination of the pictures, rendering it necessary to make them practically as silhouettes on a very conspicuous background. Hence it will be obvious that these toys produced merely an ILLUSION ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... age when he ascended the throne on June 15, 1888, he may be said to have been at that time still but a raw youth, continually kept in the background, and treated more or less like a child, without any consequence or weight. It is, therefore, not remarkable that the first years of his reign should have been signalized by many errors of judgment; for it is not with impunity that one suddenly releases a person, locked ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... eye sparkles, and has not the dulness usual to such. That Envy is here meant, you readily conjecture. Some diminutive females, frauds and deceits, attend her as companions, whose office is to encourage and instruct, and studiously to adorn their mistress. In the background, Repentance, sadly arrayed in a mournful, worn-out, and ragged garment, who, with averted head, with tears and shame, acknowledges and prepares to receive Truth, approaching from ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... it; the oddly assorted teams, mules, donkeys and Mongolian ponies, went unclipped and ungroomed; the drivers went unwashed. Loathsome beggars sat in the gilded doorways of the fur-shops, the incongruity of their rags against the background of barbaric splendour evidently appealing to none of the passers-by who hurried about their business in ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... is somewhat at the left of the centre of the canvas, and the picture would seem one-sided were it not for the details of the background at the right. Here the painter has represented a parapet supporting a marble pillar, at the base of which a large macaw perches. Beyond is seen a beautiful landscape. This spot of color brings the composition into perfect ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... message, the spirit of that which they are professing to interpret. If that which we read is worth while, if it has anything vital in it, the effect will be stronger if the skill and personality of the speaker are kept in the background, and the audience is brought face to face with the spirit of that which has been embodied in the lines. As some readers go through their lines they seem to be saying, Listen to my voice, observe my ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... objective, her political attitude toward attaining it, and her militant spirit were revived in suffrage history in 1913 when Alice Paul, also of Quaker background, entered the national field as leader of the new ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... caused by the rapid spread of the plague, the feldshers were unceremoniously relegated to the background. Their surgery was practically useless and their drugs proved powerless to stay the disease. The snakharkas, on the other hand, prospered greatly. Superstition flourished; prayers, sacrifices, ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... resigned way; and certainly when the good old nobleman did reach his final bob, his merry, jovial face looked particularly promising for the extra week. And now the Doctor advances to the table with the prize list in his hand. The prize boys are marshalled in the background, in the order in which their names appear, and Bramble tries hard to look as if nothing but his duty to his grandmother would have kept him from forming one ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... faint as he was, rose on his elbow, watching. Charge after charge, wild and impetuous, break the slowly retreating battalions. In vain I heard Carter's stern oaths (may the angel of tears forgive him!), and Charlie Marsh's boyish calls. The men are facing us. The enemy, cheering, and in the background huge torches flaming with pitch, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... bunted him with a head like a cannon-ball; he twisted little wiry legs under the hollows of 'Lisha's knees. The two came down together with a great thud. The teacher and the scholars came rushing to the door. Elmira wailed and sobbed in the background. The slight boy was holding great 'Lisha on the ground with a strength that ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... saw how dangerous was our position, and how difficult escape would be should any fierce beast steal upon us unawares; we therefore hastened to make our way to the open seashore. Here the scene which presented itself was indeed delightful. A background of hills, the green, waving grass, the pleasant groups of trees stretching here and there to the water's edge, formed a lovely prospect. On the smooth sand we searched carefully for any trace of our hapless companions, but not a mark of a ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... background chosen by Goethe for his tragedy. With many changes in detail, the dramatist has still preserved a picture of a historical situation of absorbing interest, and has painted a group of admirable portraits. The drama has long been a favorite ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... of ordered growth and measured progress. This excited a vivid hopefulness of interest, which insensibly but most effectually pressed the sterile propositions of dogmatic theology into a dim and squalid background. Nor was this all. The Preliminary Discourse and the host of articles marshalled behind it, showed that the triumphs of knowledge and true opinion had all been gained on two conditions. The first of these conditions was a firm disregard of authority; ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... and was completed in June or July. It was finished with little or no glazing. The Roman widow is a lady still youthful, in a grey fawn-tinted drapery, with a musical instrument in each hand; she is in the sepulchral chamber of her husband, whose stone urn appears in the background. I possess the antique urn which my brother procured, and which he used for the painting. For graceful simplicity, and for depth of earnest but not strained sentiment, he never, I think, exceeded ‘The Roman Widow.’ The two instruments seem to repeat the two mottoes on the urn, ‘Ave ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... important fact that the social order serves to sift out individuals of marked mnemonic powers and bring them into prominence, while those who are relatively deficient are relegated to the background. The educated class is necessarily composed of those who have good powers of memory. All others fail and are rejected. We see and admire those who succeed; of those who fail we know nothing and we even forget that there ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... than he seems in the light of later reflection. Probably we all have a period of admiring Carlyle almost exclusively. College essays, when the essayist cares for his work, are generally based on one or the other. Then they recede into the background. As for their thought, we cannot for ever remain disciples. We begin to see how much that looks like thought is really the expression of temperament, and how individual a thing temperament is, how each of us must construct his world for himself, or be content to wait for an answer and a synthesis ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... antithesis pictures in somber background that doomed spy hurried to his fate, and another swinging, strangling shape expiating through hangman's device the ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... I am being happy!" he said to himself, and he turned this consciousness over in his mind as he would have turned a sweet in his mouth. Ever afterwards the memory of that moment's realisation was connected for him with a twisted line of hedge and a background of pale greenish sky. He stared at the distorted hedgerow that stood out so clearly, and to him this moment was so vividly the present that he did not see how it could ever leave off.... "This is now ..." he thought; "how ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... suburban streets of that city—I mean Verona—the eye never seeks to rest on that external scenery, however gorgeous; it does not look for the gaps between the houses, as you do here; it may for a few moments follow the broken line of the great Alpine battlements; but it is only where they form a background for other battlements, built by the hand of man. There is no necessity felt to dwell on the blue river or the burning hills. The heart and eye have enough to do in the streets of the city itself; they are contented ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... Majesty. Especially in handling disturbances. I have complete confidence in him. He's also investigating the background of the affair. I'll give Your Majesty what he's learned, to date. It seems that the head of the physics department, a Professor Nelse Dandrik, had been conducting an experiment, assisted by a Professor Klenn Faress, to establish more accurately the velocity of subnucleonic particles, ...
— Ministry of Disturbance • Henry Beam Piper
... road that skirted the field, and against a pretty background of half-grown pines, motley forms and groups were moving to and fro, some seeking the "buyers" with full trays, others returning to their stations in the field with a new supply of empty baskets. Some of the pickers were drifting away to other fields, ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... which, I believe, Jack London is mainly responsible. In A Year of Their Lives the same "animal" method is transfered to the treatment of primitive human life, and the shadow of Knut Hamsun is plainly discernible in the background. Death, The Heirs, and The Belokonsky Estate are first class exercises in the manner of Bunin, and only A Thousand Years and The Crossways herald in, to a certain extent, Pilniak's own manner of ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... put into the sextette was entitled to consideration, even though it couldn't be banked on. There were three mediums and three big girls in the sextette. (Olga Larson was one of the mediums and so needn't fear replacement by Rose, who was a big girl.) Besides appearing in two numbers as a background to one of the principals, they had one all to themselves, a fact which constituted them a sort of super-chorus. Galbraith used to keep them for endless drills after the general ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... of Hildebrand; I lean out of the window, partly mooning and partly watching for him as if he were a sweetheart, for I crave a clean shirt—if you could only be here for a moment, and if you too could now see the dull silver of the Danube, the dark hills on a pale-red background, and the lights that shine up from below in Pesth, Vienna would go down a good way in your estimation as compared with "Buda-Pesth," as the Hungarians call it. You see that I too can go into raptures over nature. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... murderous attack by the senior priest. His wounds were photographed; and the pictures were circulated with a view to exciting the mob. Gentry and populace held meetings for the purpose of screwing their courage up to the required pitch—governor and mandarins kept carefully in the background—and on the fifth day the mission buildings were destroyed and the priests killed. An English missionary, his wife and daughter, living not far away, were set upon and slain, not because they were not known to belong to another ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... from the bladder and the intestine. Stanley Hall,[64] to whom Havelock Ellis refers, is of opinion that "micturitional obscenities, which our returns show to be so common before adolescence, culminate at ten or twelve, and seem to retreat into the background as sex-phenomena appear." He distinguishes between two classes of cases: "fouling persons or things, secretly from adults, but openly with each other," and, less often, "ceremonial acts, connected with the act or the product, that almost suggest the skatological rites of savages." I can myself, ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... Duchess of Aerschot, the dark-eyed Cornelia Annoni of Milan, the devout Dolores Gonzaga, with her large, calm, enthusiastic eyes, and again and again, crowding all the others into the background, the timid Johanna van der Gheynst, who under her delicate frame concealed a volcano of ardent passion. She had given him a daughter whose head was now adorned by a crown. In spite of the brief duration of their love ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... liberalization, privatization, and deregulation of the economy and introduced some tax reforms to that end. Unemployment fell steadily under the AZNAR administration but remains high at 8.7%. Growth averaging 3% annually during 2003-06 was satisfactory given the background of a faltering European economy. The Socialist president, RODRIGUEZ ZAPATERO, has made mixed progress in carrying out key structural reforms, which need to be accelerated and deepened to sustain Spain's ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... always played a significant part in her life. They marked what she called her "blessings." Without doubt the rare bright spots in her life shone like blessings for the dark of their background. Years ago, when her Danny had had his accident and her world had seemed to turn upside down until it rested, full-weight, upon her poor shoulders, her "blessing" had been Miss Lewis at the settlement. Miss Lewis had given her work so that she could earn money to feed her family; Miss ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... women in the church service there. I found myself time and again turning to look at their faces as I was speaking. There was a sweet light that transfigured their worn faces, and gave them a real beauty. It was the more striking against the background of the faces one sees in ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... growing understanding of all kinds of people with their varying experiences. We send our young people to Europe that they may lose their provincialism and be able to judge their fellows by a more universal test, as we send them to college that they may attain the cultural background and a larger outlook; all of these it is possible to acquire in other ways, as this member of the woman's club had discovered ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... seed for my squirrel's feed next winter. Then, too, I think sunflowers make a pretty nice background ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... though Gray and the great Gray rose diamond and the three Charities had all become a bit of background for Nance Olden ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... to notice that Balzac's thoughts now turned to those faithful friends of his youth, who had in late years passed rather into the background of his life. He wrote a long letter to Madame Delannoy, who had been a mother to him in the struggling days of his half-starved youth. He had paid off the debt he owed her, but he said he would never be able to thank her adequately for her tenderness ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... no other word spoken. Soon the dawn, moving across the great waste of waters, pierced the dark background behind the steamer's light. The long trail of white, curdling foam in her track gleamed like a silver cleft in a dark gulf. The dim shape of her sails stole slowly into sight, and they could see that she was carrying a great weight of canvas. Then ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sight, and the Irish question again became prominent. Ireland had now gained an able leader, Charles Stewart Parnell, founder of the Irish Land League, a trade union of Irish farmers, and its affairs could no longer be consigned to the background. ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... lashed itself to a livid fury against the sturdy Ffraddle turrets and mullions, whilst outside beyond the keep and raised drawbridge the beacons and camp fires stained the frost-laden air with vivid streaks of red and yellow—colours which formed the background of the Ffraddle coat of arms, thus presenting an omen to the startled inhabitants which history relates they were not slow ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... century. The exclusive application of the measure of mechanics to processes which are of chemical and organic nature and by which, it is true, the laws of mechanics are also manifested, but are pushed into the background by other higher laws, this application is the cause of the peculiar, but, considering the times, unavoidable, ...
— Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy • Frederick Engels
... obvious facts. It isn't a matter of what you think or what I think, or of speculation at all. I happen to know that Van Buren is going to propose to you. He'll probably do it at Henley or at Sandown, or in the Park. He's certain to want it to be on a typically English background; but you can take it from me, for a dead cert, ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... the wheel over to Williams and took the latter's place at the periscope. Directly he was able to make out the coast line, and even at this distance he felt certain that he could make out a long row of buildings in the background. The submarine was, of course, still too far away for possible vessels, which would lie low on the water, to be within ...
— The Boy Allies with Uncle Sams Cruisers • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... motion, amid the eclipsed blue of the day; small boats with red and yellow flags fluttered quickly, trailing the sea with colour; a pleasure steamer coming from Cowes swung her soft stout way among the fleeting ships; high in the background were men-of-war, a long line, each one threading tiny triangles of flags through a ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... and neck-band pinned tight at one side. Obviously, he had been digging, for a small pile of fresh dirt was heaped at his right. Now, however, he was motionless, the blue eyes beneath the long lashes observing the new-comer inquiringly. That was all, save that to the picture was added the background of the unbroken silence ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... a daring move, and it had not been accomplished without courage. Lady Harriet in the background stiffened with displeasure, nearer to actual anger than she had ever before permitted herself to be with any one so contemptible as the surgeon's wife. Even Major Ralston himself, most phlegmatic of men, looked momentarily ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... apartment, with a window open and looking into a garden. Lalage, in deep mourning, reading at a table on which lie some books and a hand mirror. In the background Jacinta (a servant maid) leans carelessly ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the old way is to deny Wagner the astonishing sense of dramatic effect he had from the beginning; to play it as Seidl played it is to prove that the conductor appreciates the perfection of artistic sense that led, compelled, Wagner to set the miraculous vision of Lohengrin against a background made up of such stormy scenes. Had Seidl kept his vigour for the stormy scenes, and given us a finer tenderness in the prelude, the love-music, and Lohengrin's account of himself, his rendering would have been ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... in a bayonet charge and killed. In his own job he was worth a battalion but in a charge of no more value than any other man. The snipers and observers make effective use of camouflage, and have uniforms and rifle-covers to blend with their background—spotted for work among trees with foliage, a la Mr. Leopard—striped when in long grass or crops like Stripes of the jungle. We have suits resembling the bark of a tree, and some earth-colored for ploughed ground, also one made from sand-bags for ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... pieces of chiaroscuro implied in the treatment of the pig. It is assumed that his curly tail would be light against the background—dark against his own rump. This little piece of heraldic quartering is absolutely necessary to solidify him. He would have been a white ghost of a pig, flat on the background, but for that alternative tail, and the bits of dark behind the ears. Secondly: Where the shade is necessary to suggest ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... and give him leisure. But as time goes on and the Lady wearies of much giving, Erasmus' tone grows sharper and more insistent; until at last he scolds and upbraids his patient correspondent for not extorting more, and even bids him put his own needs in the background until Erasmus' are satisfied. Batt's name deserves to be remembered as chief amongst faithful friends, for putting up with such scant gratitude after his inexhaustible devotion; and we must needs think more highly of Erasmus, if his friend could accept such treatment at his hand and not be ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... Radisson and Groseillers suddenly wakened to find themselves famous. Groseillers seems to have kept in the background, but Radisson, the younger man, enjoyed the full blaze of glory, was seen in the King's box at the theater, and was presently paying furious court to Mistress Mary Kirke, daughter of Sir John Kirke, whose ancestors had captured Quebec. What with war and the plague, it was 1668 ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... search for old plants and old plant lore. We agree with Mrs. Foster that the most perfect herbaceous border is one that has an old wall behind it. Blue larkspurs and white lilies, roses, phloxes, and evening primroses never look so well as when they are seen against a background of wall, mellowed with age and clothed with its beautiful garment of wall-growing seedlings. . . . Mrs. Foster's book, too, is most useful in its lists of flowers that bloomed in the days of Chaucer and Shakespeare. She also devotes ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... the earliest chapels, and is dated by Fassola as from 1490 to 1500. There is no record of any contemporary fresco background. Bordiga says that these figures were originally in the chapel now occupied by the Salutation of Mary by Elizabeth, but that having been long objects of popular veneration they were preserved at the ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... can hardly be understood, Deerfoot stood in the background and watched the antics of the warrior who had wrapped the bear-skin about his shoulders and body. He could not avoid a feeling of admiration for the cleverness with which the front was arranged, so as to resemble that of the beast, but he felt not the slightest fear that the trick would succeed. ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... of the country, and if elected they will have conferred a favor upon me for which I shall be unremitting in my labors to compensate. But if the good people in their wisdom shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have been too familiar with disappointments to ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... think that you understand how it is that the burden, after all, is easier for me. A man may forget his troubles here, for all the while there is this eternal background ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... learned that war had been declared. Ways and means were discussed, but our great tennis tournament on Monday, and a dance in the evening, left us with a mere background of warlike endeavour. It was vaguely determined that when my "viva" was over we should go and see people of ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... side, is Arlington, the seat of Mr. Custis, who is the grandson of General Washington's wife. It is a noble looking place, having a portico of stately white columns, which, as the mansion stands high, with a background of dark woods, forms a beautiful object in the landscape. At George Town is a nunnery, where many young ladies are educated, and at a little distance from it, a college of Jesuits for the education of young men, where, as their advertisements state, "the ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... The stage represents a small vale with the cave in the background. The cave is large and deep, opening in the direction of the spectator. Water has been coursing down the vale and has frozen to knolls of ice here and there. A part of the cave-mouth is hidden by icicles formed by the water trickling ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... round, and did not at first see our Italian. At last I discovered he had taken a back seat, through modesty perhaps, or to be out of observation—how was I to know? He sat in the shadow by a door, that, in fact, which leads into this room. He was thus in the background, rather out of the way, but I could see his eyes glittering in that far-off corner, and they were turned in our direction, always fixed upon the lady, you understand. She was next me, ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths
... Leo XIII, now again motionless on his throne. With the papal cap on his head and the red cape edged with ermine about his shoulders, he retained in his long white cassock the rigid, sacerdotal attitude of an idol venerated by two hundred and fifty millions of Christians. Against the purple background of the hangings of the baldacchino, between the wing-like drapery on either side, enclosing, as it were, a brasier of glory, he assumed real majesty of aspect. He was no longer the feeble old man with the slow, jerky walk and the slender, scraggy neck of a poor ailing bird. The simious ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... herself a bachelor girl, but hadn't the touch of the Bohemian that phrase usually seems to imply. She was too plastic, too finished. He admired her social dexterity, her perfect harmony with the charming background she had so well arranged for herself. Yet, he thought, for such a young girl, only twenty-two, she was too complex, too civilised. Mrs Raymond, for instance, seemed much more downright and careless. ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... the whole horizon; and what a position has its architect secured! In the midst of hills on a bit of table-land, apparently made such by smoothing down the summit of one of them, with a greensward in front, and set off behind by a mountain background, stands this eternal monument of the noblest of arts amidst the finest dispositions of nature. There is another antiquity of the place also to be visited at Segeste—its theatre; but we are too immediately below it to know any thing about it at ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... mentally ill, which had always, as long as I could remember, lain a silent pressure, a foreboding of unhappiness, in the background of my mind—although dissipated in the brighter summer-time of my companionship with Susanna—was therefore no sin, no burden of crime, no dark mysterious exception in me from every other natural order of things, but only a disease, actually ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... the reason for his uneasiness in the general's presence? No. MacMaine could accept the reason for that attitude; the general's background was different from that of an Earthman, and therefore he could not be judged by Terrestrial standards. Besides, MacMaine could acknowledge to himself that Tallis was superior to the norm—not only the norm of Keroth, ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett
... the Somali shore, and must confess I was much disappointed. All that was visible, besides the village mentioned, was a sandy tract of ground, the maritime plain, which extended in breadth from the sea-shore to some brown-looking hills in the background, from a few hundred yards to one or two miles distant; and hills and plains—for I could, by my close approximation to them, only see the brown folds of the hills near the base—were alike almost destitute of any vegetation; whilst not one animal or any ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... wish you to observe how our great fellow townsman keeps his subject to the fore and himself in the background. ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... had kept himself in the background. But now he had an idea inspired by confidence in his costume. Introducing himself to the gumashta, he asked him to give out that the party was in command of a Firangi in the service of the Nawab, and was conveying part of the Nawab's private equipage in advance to Baraset, a few miles north ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... state, and, since all the windows were shuttered, every room lay moribund in a ghostly twilight. Only the clocks remained alive, probably thinking themselves immortal. The breakfast things were washed up and stored away. The last two servants had already gone. Behind Audrey, forming a hilly background, were trunks and boxes, a large bunch of flowers encased in paper, and a case of umbrellas and parasols; the whole strikingly new, and every single item except the flowers labelled "Paris via Charing ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... entire business spread out like an immense funnel and could have been seen for miles out at sea. Occasionally, as some drug house or place stored with chemicals was reached, most fantastic effects were produced by the colored flames and smoke which rolled out against the darker background. ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... occupations of the mind it would seem that the heart with all its claims had to remain in the background. The smiling boy Cupid, with his gracious raillery and his smarting griefs, seemed to make no impression on that pale, grave, and taciturn artillery lieutenant, and not to dare shoot an arrow toward that bosom which had mailed itself ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... tribesmen, who evidently recognized Sikaso from their greetings. The boys stood grouped in the background— Billy Barnes and Lathrop even viewing with some alarm the ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... in the distance against her background of chalk cliffs. People come on deck in strangely conventional clothes and with demure citified airs. Passengers of whose existence you were unaware suddenly make their appearance. Two friends meet near me for the first time. “Hallo, ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... distinct in the firelight and outlined against the black background of the night, she seemed some modern half-military ideal of Diana, with her two gaunt hounds beside her, the rest of the pack vaguely glimpsed at her heels outside, the perfect outline and chiselling of her features, her fine, strong, supple figure, the ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... struggle itself was maintained largely by his efforts, by the military and political power of great nobles, Guises, Montmorencys and others. But when the struggle closes, both religion, its cause, and the great noble its supporter, sink somewhat into the background, while the king, the kingly power, fills the eye. And {14} the new divine right monarchy, triumphant over the feudal soldier and gladly accepted as the restorer of order by the middle class, sets to work to consolidate this ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... been here ever can." She had risen, and they were walking down toward the shore. Her fatigue, or her mood, gave her an unusual gentleness of manner. As Stephen Archdale walked beside her he tried to imagine Katie as Elizabeth was now, with a background of suffering, with trial and daring, perhaps death before, and failed. He looked at Elizabeth, dimly seen under the starlight, now suddenly brought sharply into view by the flare of cannon, weary, glad of the General's thoughtfulness, ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... the wind being easterly, we left the bay. On passing Red Point, twenty or thirty natives came to the extreme point of the cliff, shouting and hallooing and making violent gestures; a large group of women and children appeared in the background, timidly concealing themselves behind the trees and bushes; another party was quietly seated round small fires on the rocks near the sea-beach, apparently engaged in cooking their fish; and at a little ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... funnier? Whatever it was Jews have to bear witness to, these people had been bearing witness to so effectually that a daily visitor never heard a word of the evidence during four years. And this family is not an exception; it is a type. Abroad the English Jew keeps his Judaism in the background, at home in the back kitchen. When he travels, his Judaism is not packed up among his impedimenta. He never obtrudes his creed, and even his Jewish newspaper is sent to him in a wrapper labelled something else. How's that for witnesses? ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... absent for a minute or two, but had now returned, and stepped forward from a bay window, as if he had been out of sight only, not out of the apartment. "Not so, sir; I stood but in the background out of respect. Noble General, I hope all is well with the Estate, that your Excellency makes us so late a visit? Would not your ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... it was known to someone else. But that person took care to keep in the background. When once I had been suggested as the culprit a quantity of evidence was forthcoming to clinch the matter, so to speak. I was never particularly popular here, and people were quite ready to believe me capable of the deed." She smiled ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... the winter and its effects on other fruit plants in the vicinity of Geneva will serve as a background for the data on filberts. The first severe cold occurred on December 29 when the temperature dropped to -21 deg. F. This equalled the previous low record established in February, 1896. On February 9 the minimum temperature recorded was -31 deg. F. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... very important part of the hat and may be adjusted in any becoming way. It may form part of the covering of the hat, and is then arranged in becoming folds toward the back and allowed to fall to any desired length. It makes a becoming background for the face. Mourning millinery is not used as much as formerly, but those who desire to adhere to the custom will find ...
— Make Your Own Hats • Gene Allen Martin
... grey and silver cloudland, with a background of those frost-bitten and wind-tortured trees, the little Londoner told me a tale which, true or false, was as ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... my years, though my hair, still thick and full of vigour, is prematurely white—so often the case with men whose brains are continually on the stretch. The little home, far from grandiose, which forms the background to this most interesting personality is embowered in trees. Cats have made their mark on its lawns, and its owner's love of animals was sharply illustrated by the sheep-dog which lay on his feet clad in Turkish slippers. Get ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... glance sought first of all the farthest background of the place. What he saw was like and yet unlike what he had seen there. Then, it had been the figure of a young man, holding out his arms over a group of children; now, it was the figure of an old woman, worn with sickness—but with the same great ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... approached academically. Yet most of the approach to the problems of labor is academic. Men in sanctuaries forever far removed from the endless hum and buzz and roar of machinery, with an intellectual background and individual ambitions forever far removed from the interests and desires of those who labor in factory and mill, theorize—and another volume is added ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... in the world, indeed, another personality rarely or never absent from Alice Puttenham's consciousness. One face, one problem, more or less acutely realized, haunted her life continuously. But this afternoon they had, for the moment, receded into the background. Hester had been, surely, more reasonable, more affectionate lately. Philip Meryon had now left Sandford; a statement to that effect had appeared in the Post; and Hester had even shown some kindness to poor Stephen. She had at last declared her willingness ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... run away with the idea that The Nursery (HEINEMANN) presents us with Mr. EDEN PHILLPOTTS' views on baby culture. The background of his story, the scenes of which are laid in and around Colchester a year or so ago, is composed of gardens and oyster-beds. On these he gives a lot of information, and, as he could not be pedantic even if he tried to be, I browsed pleasantly upon the ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... a reel in place and it contains background information on a problem in Cultural Engineering all set out the way we are taught to do it in Class. The Problem concerns developments on a planet got settled by two groups during the Exodus and been isolated ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell
... mysteries, no philosophy ever did or ever can empty of their strangeness, or bring down to the level of the commonplace 'certainties' of daily life or of science, which are no more than shadows after all, that seem certainties because of the background of mystery on which they ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... vivid sketch of the Egypt of his day. Peace and plenty seemed to prevail in the country. This happy state of things was entirely due to the wise measures taken by Saladin, who, however, kept himself so studiously in the background, that not even his name is mentioned in the Itinerary. The deposition of the Fatimite Caliph on Friday, September 10, 1171, and his subsequent death, caused little stir. Saladin continued to govern Egypt as Nureddin's lieutenant. In due course he made himself master of Barca and Tripoli; then ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela
... diamond-like lustre. Beneath the bank of clouds, yet far enough in the foreground of this picture to partly emerge from obscurity, stood, on an eminence, a white marble building, with columns of porticos, like a Grecian temple. Projected against the dark background were its classic outlines, looking more like a vision of the days of Pericles ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... heart of every merely positivistic, agnostic, or naturalistic scheme of philosophy. Let sanguine healthy-mindedness do its best with its strange power of living in the moment and ignoring and forgetting, still the evil background is really there to be thought of, and the skull will grin in at the banquet. In the practical life of the individual, we know how his whole gloom or glee about any present fact depends on the remoter schemes and hopes with which it stands related. Its significance and framing give it the chief ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... males, I noticed two Italian ladies treading delicately over the rough ballast of the railway-track. They had naturally brought with them in their flight the most valuable of their possessions, which were of a kind to be most conveniently carried on their persons. Against this gray background of mud and rubbish and a disbanded army their two figures glittered with a brilliance that would have been conspicuous in the rue de la Paix. Heavy sable furs and muffs almost bowed their shoulders; each finger ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... Bertie has never yet given me the chance to act the high-minded heroine." And then she fell to wondering why he had not said something really definite, he seemed near it so often. And yet he was his own master; no stern father loomed in the background—that Bluebell would have considered a possible obstacle,—for had she not seen such malign influence destroy more than one promising love affair among her companions. Of course there was no solution to such an inscrutable mystery, though ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... worthier man than any of her interested suitors may have a sincere respect and affection for her, but be kept in the background by the overzealous attention of his rivals. Still, if she has sufficient self-command to patiently and calmly investigate their general private character, she may find reason to decline their suit, and may discover that the more modest and retiring youth ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... light be employed (e.g. white light) all these images are formed; and since they are ail ultimately intercepted by a plane (the retina of the eye, a focussing screen of a camera, &c.), they cause a confusion, named chromatic aberration; for instance, instead of a white margin on a dark background, there is perceived a coloured margin, or narrow spectrum. The absence of this error is termed achromatism, and an optical system so corrected is termed achromatic. A system is said to be "chromatically under-corrected'' when it shows the same kind of chromatic error as a thin positive lens, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... had been listening to him with keen interest. Each showed it in his own way. To all of them the glamorous background was irresistibly appealing. But Jimmy Hale, the newspaper man, sensed something that did not appear on the ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... has the modern revival of gardening, which has brought back the old herbaceous border, added to the charm of college gardens. It has been said with truth that the secret of a garden's beauty lies mainly in its background. How true this is! Flowers may blaze with colour in an open field—and who has not marvelled as he passes in the train the seed-ground of some great horticulturist?—but seen thus they have but little charm. In a college garden a border filled with delphiniums and ...
— Oxford • Frederick Douglas How
... must be said about it. But then he did not believe, if she had given him time to say the words he wished to say, that she would have come to such a decision; and as he called up her lovely face and figure, as it stood framed in the open doorway, with a background of the sunlit arbor and fields, the gorgeous distant foliage, with the blue sky and its white clouds and circling birds, he thought of the rapture and ecstasy which would have come to him, if she had listened to his words, ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... the name of "The Giant's Causeway," the upper ends of the columns forming a tolerably level surface, gently sloping seawards, and having very much the aspect of an artificial tesselated pavement on a huge scale. A portion of the Causeway, with the cliff in the background, is shown in the figure (Fig. 31). The columns are remarkable for their symmetry, being generally hexagonal, though occasionally they are pentagons, and each column is horizontally traversed by joints ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull
... which bounded his steps and invited him to repose. It was a circle, so formed artificially by slight trellises, to which clung parasite roses heavy with leaves and flowers. In the midst played a tiny fountain with a silvery murmuring sound; at the background, dominating the place, rose the crests of stately trees, on which the sunlight shimmered, but which rampired out all horizon beyond. Even as in life do the great dominant passions—love, ambition, desire of ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... men in the long fight with fortune are the cheerful men, or those, certainly, who find the fair background of faith and hope. Columbus, but for this, had never ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... trees. Of the faces which came out fresh and vivid as though painted in yellow and red, the most prominent was a girl's face. By a trick of the firelight she seemed to have no body. The oval of the face and hair hung beside the fire with a dark vacuum for background. As if dazed by the glare, her green-blue eyes stared at the flames. Every muscle of her face was taut. There was something tragic in her thus staring—her age ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... followed by a peal on the bell; and Mr. Cottrell emerged from the dining-room just in time to see Jim open the hall door to Laura Chipchase, attired in hat and habit, with Miss Sylla mounted and holding her cousin's horse in the background. ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... set upon the state carriage, greatly damaging it; and when George later on proceeded in his private carriage to Buckingham House, he again ploughed his way through a din of curses. Pitt kept discreetly in the background, or he ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... down). He had so grown into our lives. I can't think of him as having gone out of them. He, with his sufferings and his loneliness, was like a cloudy background to our sunlit happiness. Well, perhaps it is best so. For him, anyway. (Standing still.) And perhaps for us too, Nora. We two are thrown quite upon each other now. (Puts his arms round her.) My darling ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... satisfactory. We would fain have had a picture of that circle of which Dickens was one of the most prominent figures; but though his own personality is revealed in the fullest light, the group in the background is left indistinct, most of its members being barely visible, and none of them ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... his attacks is that the ideal with which he would illuminate his background is shifty, uncertain, ill-realised; being undetermined, the function that is allotted to the human ideal is actually left to chance, to accidental impulse rather than to conscious will—to human frailty rather than to human strength. Hence it is that he declares the rights of sex where its claims ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... had gone Marguerite went to the sick girl's room with a cup of gruel. Amada lay back on the pillow, her face gray with pallor against the background of her shining black hair. She kissed and ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... used in wigwagging. A white flag with a red square in the center is used against a dark background; a red flag with a white square in the center is used against the sky or against a mixed background. But of course in emergency anything must be tried, and for a short distance the Scout can use his hat ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... glistened in the glorious day. The very earth and heavens welcomed the Island Queen. Amidst all the loveliness on which she looked, the fairest spot was that which was washed by the waters of Killany Bay, where the soft sweet vale of Shanganah, with its silver strand, its green bosom, and noble background, stretched away between Bray Head and Kingstown. They were scenes amidst which one of queenly taste might love to linger, and were well calculated to impress her majesty and family with the beauty of the fair but sorrowful land upon which she was about ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... red men and women have the flavor of actuality, with all the wonder and strangeness that children demand. The background of the Western plains when Injun babies lived in tepees made of buffalo skins is a new one for children's stories; the adventures of the little Indians with animals and their simple life of every day make the collection a unique one for young ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... men—men?—men? In describing color what can one say of men? Well, it's not their fault that they can't wear pretty clothes. They make a nice grey background for the women and a very desirable audience and that's the best I ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... the dawn-time of Christianity. It has its love story and its chapters of excitement worked in with such historic background as to give a running commentary on those fateful and ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... the two rooms. On the library side of this door Mr. Stilton laid down a platform, slightly raised and covered with green baize cloth, and behind the platform a frame-work was raised and hung with green baize to serve as a proper background for the pictures. A flower stand was brought in from the greenhouse and placed at one side, out of sight from the drawing-room; for the purpose, as Preston informed Daisy, of holding the lights. All these details were under his management, and ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... produced his favourite dirty Charles the First pipe, the diminutive bowl of which he filled continually with what smokers call "dottles." He was then apparently perfectly happy, as indeed he always looked when puffing away at his antique clay. Years afterwards, when sketching a background for a Punch drawing in the East End, I noticed some labourers returning from working at excavations, laughing over something they had found in the ground; it was a splendid specimen of the Charles clay pipe, longer than any I have seen. I bought ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... of martial music flying on invisible wings, in thousand forms, throughout every corridor. As this second summons for the masterpiece to be set in motion died away in turn, two bands of men detached themselves from the distant throng massed in the farthest background, and came slowly forward with bowed heads and deferential tread. At the same instant a hundred brilliant officers of the household stepped out of the corridors behind the King with drawn swords, and other hundreds crowded behind them ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... the sheep being all collected in a crowd within these two enclosures; and in one angle a catching-pen was formed, in which three or four sheep were continuously kept ready for the shearers to seize without loss of time. In the background, mellowed by tawny shade, were the three women, Maryann Money, and Temperance and Soberness Miller, gathering up the fleeces and twisting ropes of wool with a wimble for tying them round. They were indifferently well assisted by the old maltster, who, when the malting season from October to April ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... light, his fame would have gone down to posterity as one of the greatest of Nature's interpreters. But it was reserved for him to accomplish other discoveries, which have pushed even his analysis of the sunbeam into the background; it is he who has expounded the system of the universe by the discovery of ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... had been designed as a setting for Natalie, although every color-scheme, almost every chair, had been bought with a view to forming a background for her, it was too big, too massive. It dwarfed her. Out-of-doors, Audrey lost that feeling. In the formal garden Natalie was charmingly framed. It was like her, beautifully exact, carefully planned, already with ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... far as the projected peace at large takes effect, international interests will necessarily fall somewhat into the background, as being no longer a matter of precarious equilibration, with heavy penalties in the balance; and diplomacy will consequently become even more of a make-believe than today—something after the fashion ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... for this would I turn against Pompeii at the last moment, as it were, though my second visit had not aesthetically enriched me beyond my first. I keep the vision of it under that gray January sky, with Vesuvius smokeless in the background, and the plan of the dead city, opener to the eye than ever it could have been in life, inscribed upon the broadly opened area of the gentle slopes within its gates. Whether one had not better known it dead than alive, one might not wish perhaps to say; but the place itself is curiously ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... more than a man, or only man because he was mortal. Then he thought that to kill Monsoreau would be the best way to end the combat, and sought him with his eyes among his assailants, but he stood in the background, loading the pistols for his men. However, Bussy rushed forward, and found himself face to face with him. He, who held a loaded pistol, fired, and the ball, striking Bussy's sword, broke it off six ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... was the change. Nanny's home was as a clock that had been run out, and is set going again. Already the old woman was unpacking her box, to increase the distance between herself and the poorhouse. But Gavin only saw her in the background, for the Egyptian, singing at her work, had become the heart of the house. She had flung her shawl over Nanny's shoulders, and was at the fireplace breaking peats with the leg of a stool. She turned merrily to the minister to ask him to chop up his staff for firewood, and he would ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... "comic cuts" as the most conscientious of painters could be in his canvas; and drawing invariably from the model—even if that model were simply an old shoe—he would often journey into the country for a background of, say, a turnip-field, or in search of any ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... "you are being straight with me. I don't know exactly what you are driving at, uncle, but I gather that it is something rather unpleasant, and that somewhere in the background there is hovering an accusation against me. From the fact that you have mentioned Mr. Rex Holland or the gang which went by that name, I suppose that you are suggesting that I am an ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... material world about us, any narrative will probably have occasion to include some description. It may be necessary merely as an aid to our understanding of some of the details upon which the plot turns, it may help us to realize the personalities of the characters, and it is often useful in creating background and atmosphere, giving us some of the feelings of those with whom the story deals as they look upon the beauty, or the gray dullness, of the changing panorama of their lives. Stevenson's description of the "old sea-dog" in "Treasure ...
— The Writing of the Short Story • Lewis Worthington Smith
... ways in which the pieces move find a parallel in the topography of the theatre of war, in that the various battle-fields are more or less easy of access. But it is quite unjustifiable to assign to the Knights the functions of scouts, and to say that Rooks should stay in the background, as heavy artillery, and so on. Such pronouncements would not have the slightest practical value. What we take from the science of warfare is merely the definition. In each game the strategy of chess should set us the tasks which must be accomplished (in order to mate the opponent's ...
— Chess Strategy • Edward Lasker
... gathering seeds and chanting their monotonous trills. While I first found these sparrows near Peabody, they were also fairly common, a few days later, in northeastern Kansas, about a mile back from the Missouri River, where their low alto strains formed a kind of gray background for the high-pitched trills of the Harris sparrows and the loud pipings of the cardinals. Quaint as our little contralto's solos are, they have a distinct fascination for me, and now that I no longer live in the Sunflower state, ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... Mrs. Wade at her ease. Mrs. Wade lit the lamp; apologizing for the darkness of the firelit room. The deep pink shade flooded the room with rosy light. There was a tea-table set in the background. Lady O'Gara had a passing wonder as to whether the table had been set daily in ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... any regrets or sadnesses in the background of memory, the painfullest of all times are these anniversaries. One is forced round face to face with the past and the unalterable, to gaze on it, perchance, through blinding tears. The days return—unchanged: but, oh, to what ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... imaginations of men, through the waste and gloom of future ages, after it shall have gone quite to decay and ruin: the brilliant, though scarcely distinct gleam of a statelier dome than ever was seen, shining on the background of the night of Time. This simile looked prettier in my fancy than I have made it ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Dampier turned his broad back and looked out of the window. There was a moment's silence. They could hear the tinkling of bells, the whistling of the sea, the voices of the men calling to each other in the port, the sunshine streamed in; Elly was standing in it, and seemed gilt with a golden background. She ought to have held a palm in her hand, poor little martyr!" There is sweet wisdom in this book, wisdom that is eternal, being simple; near may not come the ugliness of positivism, nor the horror of pessimism, nor the profound greyness of Hegelism, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... a fondness for the little inlet, with its background of tall firs, where she had first met little Lottie Drugg, and she often walked down there. So she became pretty well acquainted with "Mr. Selectman" Cross Moore. But as yet she did not get as far out on the Middletown Lower Road as the house where the Hammett ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... wanted, purely and simply, a man of genius,—talent she cared little for; just as a lawyer is of no account to a girl who aims for an ambassador. Her only desire for wealth was to cast it at the feet of her idol. Indeed, the golden background of these visions was far less rich than the treasury of her own heart, filled with womanly delicacy; for its dominant desire was to make some Tasso, some Milton, a Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... not yet invaded by modern industrialism and still innocent of socialism; next the youth's struggles in Copenhagen against employers and authorities; and last the man's final victory in laying the foundation of a garden-city for the benefit of his fellow-workers. The background everywhere is the rapid growth of the labor movement; but social problems are never obtruded, except, again, in the last part, and the purely human interest is always kept well before the reader's eye through variety of ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo |
