"Bird's-eye" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... work in the offices and shops, and give these canned-culture boys jobs in the glue and fertilizer factories until a little of their floss and foolishness had worn off. For it looks to an old fellow, who's taking a bird's-eye view from the top of a packing house, as if some of the colleges were still running their plants with machinery that would have been sent to the scrap-heap, in any other business, a hundred years ago. They turn out a pretty fair ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... greatly change in form, scope, and order; this is just a bird's-eye glance. Thank you for BURT, which came, and for your Union notes. I have read one-half (about 900 pages) of Wodrow's CORRESPONDENCE, with some improvement, but great fatigue. The doctor thinks well of my recovery, which puts me in good hope for the future. ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lively appreciation of the new woods of the new country, and made free use of the abundant wild cherry for the furniture called for by the growing prosperity of the settlements, its close grain and warm color giving it the preference over other native woods, excepting always the curly and bird's-eye maple, which were novelties to the ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... fellow were in some scheme with another to get him interested. As he drew closer, he saw radiations of some twelve inches, all over the face of the coal, star-shaped, and he almost gasped. It was not only cannel coal—it was "bird's-eye" cannel. Heavens, what a find! Instantly he was the cautious man of business, alert, ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... forgotten. A milky whiteness spread more and more over the whole heavens though they were still darkened here and there by wreaths of smoke. Little by little, bright clusters of houses became plainly visible; a bird's-eye view was obtained of the whole city, intersected by streets and squares, which with their shadowy depths described the framework of ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... how vastly more interesting and fascinating it is for a man to have a yacht in which he can fly to Europe in one day, and with which the exploration of tropical Africa or the regions about the poles is mere child's play, while giving him so magnificent a bird's-eye view! Many seemingly insoluble problems are solved by the advent of these birds. Having as their halo the enforcement of peace, they have in truth taken us a long step towards heaven, and to the co-operation ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... the successful General, whose name was in everybody's mouth. In spite of his unlucky accident, he was full of life and spirits, and we had quite a long conversation. I have since often told him how interesting was his appearance, and he, in reply, has assured me how much he was impressed by a blue bird's-eye cotton dress I was wearing, the like of which he had not seen since he left England, many months before. His train soon rumbled on, and then we had a snug little dinner in the ladies' waiting-room ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... of us being seen," he said, planting his transit in the sand, but making no effort to adjust it to a level. "That ridge there overlooks the claim. I'll climb up alone and take a bird's-eye view." ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... the necessary allowances. After examining her well, when she was within a league of the cliffs, he came to the opinion that the ship was a vessel of about six hundred tons, and that she was both armed and strongly manned. So far as he could judge, by the bird's-eye view he got, he fancied she was even frigate-built, and had a regular gundeck. In that age such craft were very common, sloops of war having that construction quite as often as that of the more modern deep-waisted vessel. As for the brigs, they were much smaller than their ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... rule that the foreground should be placed sharply in profile and often so deep in shadow that it contrasted like a silhouette with the more distant grounds. On the other hand, it is a favorite whim of the genuine pigtail age to draw bird's-eye landscapes and views of cities, in which every elevation of the earth seems flattened out as much as possible, every distinct division of the separate grounds ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... But this does not prove (as the reactionary sceptics always argue) that a motor really is just as necessary as a roof. It only proves that a man can get used to an artificial life: it does not prove that there is no natural life for him to get used to. In the broad bird's-eye view of common sense there abides a huge disproportion between the need for a roof and the need for an aeroplane; and no rush of inventions can ever alter it. The only difference is that things are now judged by the abnormal needs, when they might ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... a cab to drive back in, and he almost carried her up to their bedroom. It was on the same floor as the other room, with the same marvelous bird's-eye view of the starlit sky and the lamplit town. He had got her to himself at last—here, high above the world, half-way to heaven. There seemed to him something poetical, almost sublime in their situation: they two alone, isolated, millions of people surrounding them and no living creature ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... friend, content I jog Along, amidst life's hurry-skurry, And smoke my bird's-eye, sip my grog, Without a care ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 10, 1891 • Various
... accurate view of the blood in disease. It is for this reason that we welcome the present work in its English garb. Professor Ehrlich by his careful and extended observations on the blood has qualified himself to give a bird's-eye view of the subject, such as few if any are capable of offering; and his book now so well translated by Mr. Myers must remain one of the classical works on blood in disease and on blood diseases, and in introducing it to English readers Mr. Myers makes an important contribution to the accurate ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... an essentially calcareous group, the various limestones of which it is composed being known as the "Bird's-eye," "Black River," and "Trenton" Limestones, of which the last is the thickest and most important. The thickness of this group is variable, and the bands of limestone in it are often separated by beds ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... and then at the end of four minutes' deliberation he had to move, he blundered desperately. He opened fire on Blue's exposed centre and killed eight men. (Their bodies litter the ground in figure 7, which gives a complete bird's-eye view of the battle.) He then sent forward and isolated six or seven men in a wild attempt to recapture his lost gun, massed his other men behind the inadequate cover of his central gun, and sent the detachment of infantry that had hitherto lurked uselessly behind the ...
— Little Wars; a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books • H. G. Wells
... gentleman—tall, distinguished-looking, handsome, with a face full of character, the strong lines and features of which were further accentuated by his silvery hair. He was a smart old gentleman, too, well and scrupulously attired and groomed, and his blue bird's-eye necktie, worn at a rakish angle, gave him the air of something of a sporting man rather than of a follower of Thespis. His fellow members of the Oliver company seemed to pay him great attention, and at various points of the ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... commencement of a chapter of accidents. I went down the pass, and there, sure enough, I had a fine bird's-eye view of the carriage down a precipice on the road side. One horse was so injured that it was necessary to destroy him; the other died a few days after. Perkes had been intoxicated; and, while driving at a full gallop round a corner, over went the ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... toward the fire again, for he feared that she would add, "The poor creatures have been out upon the plains all day: Heaven knows what we shall do when the berries are gone." But Mrs. Graffam said nothing more. She set out the pine table, and going to an old chest brought a white cloth; it was of bird's-eye diaper. Graffam remembered well who wove it; and a pleasant vision came along with that white table-cloth. He saw his mother, as in olden times, weaving; while he stood by her side, wondering at the skill with which she sent the shuttle through its wiry arch, ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... largely underground, and the windows, which ran around all sides on a level with the ground at intervals of about six feet, were high above the great boilers. In fact, as Max gazed down he had a bird's-eye view of the interior, and could see workmen flitting to and fro, stoking the great furnaces in blissful ignorance of the fact that a bolt which might destroy them with their engines was on the point ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... descending to the harbor,—by flights of old mossy stone steps,—that looking down them to the azure water you have the sensation of gazing from a cliff. From certain openings in the main street—the Rue Victor Hugo—you can get something like a bird's-eye view of the harbor with its shipping. The roofs of the street below are under your feet, and other streets are rising behind you to meet the mountain roads. They climb at a very steep angle, occasionally breaking into stairs of lava rock, all ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... the ground, while mine are some five feet ten. Three feet do not count for much when we are considering astronomical distances, but they make a great difference in the way things seem. There is a difference in the horizon line, and the realm of mystery begins much nearer. There is no disenchanting bird's-eye view of the counter with all things thereon. There are ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... . Wonderfully condensed . . ." "It reads like a romance." "Can be finished in less than an hour, yet gives a full bird's-eye view of a country and people. The author's style is charming." "Accidentally running across your cute little History of Spain, I was so taken with it as an epitome of the sort that I have long believed there ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 23, June 9, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... superbly carved oak, part of the woodwork of the demolished church of St.-Gery. Of historical interest, too, is a large Van der Meulen, representing the defeat of Turenne before Valenciennes in 1656, by the Spanish army under Conde. From a bird's-eye view of Valenciennes in the background of this large canvas, we may see how much the city has lost by the gradual destruction of its ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... in his time is probably true, but still even now, under all the drawbacks of a late and wintry season, his description is perfectly accurate. If any one had gone round the fields on old May-day, the 13th, his May-day, they might have found the deep blue bird's-eye veronica, anemones, star-like stitchworts, cowslips, buttercups, lesser celandine, daisies, white blackthorn, and gorse in bloom—in short, a list enough to make a page bright with colour, though the wind ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... was surprised to hear that Robinson had found the horses in a small but extra dense bunch of scrub not twenty yards from the spot where he had tied his horses up. While I was away he had gone on top of the little stony eminence close by, and from its summit had obtained a bird's-eye view of the ground below, and thus perceived the two animals, which had never been absent at all. It seemed strange to me that I could not find their tracks, but the reason was there were no tracks to find. I took it for granted ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... seemed to me that the happy strangers mounted on the tiers of seats that rise from front to back on the motor-chariots for seeing New York and looking down, even from the lowest place, on the life of our streets had a peculiar, almost a bird's-eye view of it which I might well find the means of a fresh impression. But I never had the courage, for reasons which I have not the courage to give, though the reader can perhaps imagine them. In Rome I did not feel that the like reasons held; ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... connected with any country. It is assuredly impossible to form a clear or indeed any correct idea in regard to a nation unless we know something of the manners and customs, the daily life, the amusements, the vices of its people. Unless we can, as it were, take a bird's-eye view of the people at work and at play, at their daily avocations in their homes, see them as they come into the world, as they go through life's pilgrimage, and, finally, as they pay the debt of nature and are carried to their last resting-place in accordance with the national customs, ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... shop to shop she goes Allurements With sharp bird's-eye, enquiring nose, Prying and peering, entering some, Oblivious of the thought of home. The town brimmed up with deep-blue haze, But still she stayed to flit and gaze, Her eyes ablur with rapturous sights, Her small soul full of small delights, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... this half-century, conscientious research has so actively been prosecuted that we can now gain at least a bird's-eye view of the whole course of our literature. Some stretches still lie in shadow, and it is not astonishing that eminent scholars continue to maintain that "there is no such thing as an organic history, a logical ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... From a bird's-eye view, these three burgs, the City, the Town, and the University, each presented to the eye an inextricable skein of eccentrically tangled streets. Nevertheless, at first sight, one recognized the fact that these three fragments formed but one body. One immediately perceived three long parallel ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... that ancient building there remain only the Tour de Brancion, the Salle des Gardes, the kitchens and vaulted rooms on the ground-floor, and the Tour de la Terrasse, 152 feet high, ascended by 323 steps, and commanding a bird's-eye view of the whole town. The rest is modern, and is occupied by the Htel de Ville, the Post Office, the cole des Beaux Arts, the Museums, and the Protestant church. The museum is on the right side of the great court, and is open to the public on Sundays. Other days a fee of 1fr. is expected. ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... sacred regard to the principles of justice forms the basis of every transaction, and regulates the conduct of the upright man of business. The following statements afford a bird's-eye view, as it were, of his habits, practice, and ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... accompanying cuts, (figs. 12, 13, and 14), are given an elevation of Gysser's machine, together with a bird's-eye view and vertical section of ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson
... years earlier—for King's drawing, issued in 1656, shows the north-west tower already partly destroyed; so it is necessary to conclude that the drawing for the "Monasticon" was done before 1656, but after 1610, when Speed's map, or bird's-eye view, of the city was ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Chichester (1901) - A Short History & Description Of Its Fabric With An Account Of The - Diocese And See • Hubert C. Corlette
... anything, that could deliver. Not the smallest effort did it make; not a trace of self-will did it display, while it shot upwards through the hatchway nearly to the yard-arm, whence it obtained its first bird's-eye view of Capetown docks. For one moment it hung, while it was being swung over the quay, whither it was lowered, and its feet once more came in contact with mother-earth. Then, but not till then, did the disease of its limbs depart, and the spirit of its ears and heels return. With a bound it sprang ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... the old capital of the Uighur, Kara Balgasun, on the left bank of the Orkhon, north of Erdeni Tso, and the Ho-lin or Karakorum of the Mongols, would be 70 li (about 30 miles), and such is the space between Erdeni Tso and Kara Balgasun. M. Marcel Monnier (Itineraires, p. 107) estimates the bird's-eye distance from Erdeni Tso to Kara Balgasun at 33 kilom. (about 20-1/2 miles). "When the brilliant epoch of the power of the Chinghizkhanides," says Professor Axel Heikel, "was at an end, the city of Karakorum fell into oblivion, and towards the year 1590 was founded, in the centre ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Moreover, a bird's-eye view or a map of a region shows the significant fact that the valleys of a system unite with one another in a branch work, as twigs meet their stems and the branches of a tree its trunk. Each valley, from that of the smallest rivulet to ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... about the size of a walnut; the whole to be well stirred and boiled. Brush over while hot, and immediately rub off with soft shavings or a sponge. For the antique hues of old wainscot mix equal parts of burnt umber and brown ochre. For new oak, bird's-eye maple, birch, satin-wood, or any similar light yellowish woods, whiting or white-lead, tinted with orange chrome, or by yellow ochre and a little size. For walnut, brown umber, glue size, and water; or by burnt umber ...
— French Polishing and Enamelling - A Practical Work of Instruction • Richard Bitmead
... Littlefork did it for occupation. I expostulated with him in public and in private; Mr. Pepper cut his society; Mr. Tomlinson read him an essay on Real Greatness of Soul: all was in vain. He was pumped by the mob for the theft of a bird's-eye wipe. The fault I had borne with,—the detection was unpardonable; I expelled him. Who's here so base as would be a fogle-hunter? If any, speak; for him have I offended! Who's here so rude as would not be a gentleman? If any, speak; for him have I offended! ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Two or three miles below them nestled one of the most famous pleasure resorts of the entire region. Three or four times as distant lay the nearest town of any importance. Over the plain and through the clear atmosphere it looked like a bird's-eye-view map rather than an actual town. Far away to the left, gorgeous in coloring and grotesque in outline, could be seen the odd figures of many ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... further in our delightful journey, we must pause a moment, and turning square round, with our faces towards the long-ago years of the past, take a bird's-eye view of the early history of our country, that we may know exactly where we are when we come to find ourselves in the outskirts of that long and bloody struggle between the two great nations of England and France, commonly called the Seven Years' War, and sometimes the Old French War. ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... tower one gets a bird's-eye view of the whole city of Rotterdam with its steep little red roofs, its wide canals, its ships standing out against the houses, and all around the city a boundless plain of vivid green traversed by canals, fringed with trees, dotted with windmills and villages hidden in masses of verdure and showing ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... is, in some ways, crucial. I have spoken with Jesuits and Plymouth Brethren, mathematicians and poets, dogmatic republicans and dear old gentlemen in bird's-eye neckcloths; and each understood the word 'facts' in an occult sense of his own. Try as I might, I could get no nearer the principle of their division. What was essential to them, seemed to me trivial or untrue. We could come to ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I'd had a bird's-eye view of the real country," said Sophy to her friend. "Those great calm seas of green rice, bounded by dark woods, with a white pagoda peeping through here and there; the fierce strong rivers flowing through ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... enshrouding mist. At the tea-table, large, mild, reposeful, clothed in wealth of black silk and black lace, was Mrs. Cathcart. Lord Fallowfeild, his handsome, infantile countenance beaming with good-nature and good-health above his blue-and-white, bird's-eye stock and scarlet hunting-coat, sat by her discoursing with great affability and at great length. Mary Ormiston stood near them, an expression of kindly diversion upon her face. Her figure had grown somewhat matronly in these days, and there were lines in her forehead and ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... the view which opens on the other side becomes strikingly fine, and extensive. The shores of the bay of Napoule, beautifully wooded and interspersed with white villas, lie under foot in a complete bird's-eye view, backed by the sweeping mountains of the neighbourhood of Grasse, and terminated by the cape where Antibes stands. Farther still the back-ground is surmounted by the colossal groups of the Maritime Alps. The descent from this hill to level ground is about seven ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... madam, that box-seat was a queer box for me. I felt as though I was sitting on the eaves of a roof with a herd of horses cavoorting under my feet. I never had a bird's-eye view of horses before. Looking down on their squirming bodies, with the coachman almost standing on his tiptoes driving them, was so different from Jone's buggy and our tall gray horse, which in general we ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... touch with parties that could furnish this." This was a large photographic bird's-eye map of a country which looked very much like Arizona, or the wild places anywhere next the Mexican borderline. "Where I got it I am not at liberty to say. It's a practice map—done for the training in aerial photography that is essential nowadays in warfare. The government is going ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... may, one thing is certain, that no solid plot of earth between its walls or hedges allows us such intricate and unexpected bird's-eye views of streets and squares, of the bustling or resting city; none gives us such a vault of heaven, pure and sunny, or creeping with clouds, or serenely starlit, as do these hanging gardens ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... while the other two slept; this Hastings undertook to do, as he was not inclined to sleep. At daylight he woke Romer and me, and we made our breakfast. From the place we were concealed in, we had a bird's-eye view of the farmhouse, and ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the north of Lewis Island is Malus Island, the north east end of which is formed by a high bluff point, named Courtenay Head; whose summit, from its elevation and position, appeared to offer so good an opportunity of obtaining a bird's-eye view of a great part of the Archipelago, that the cutter was anchored in a bay under its west side; and as soon as the vessel was secured, we landed and climbed the Head, and were repaid for the trouble by a very extensive view, and a ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... hungry, but later went to St. John's Cathedral to vespers.... After dinner we were glad to lay ourselves away. We have a pleasant room, with windows opening upon a broad court and lovely garden and fountain. Monday we drove around the city for bird's-eye views from famous points. Such ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... (bird's-eye cotton), two to three shirts (wool), four flannel skirts, two white skirts (nainsook), two to four night dresses (outing flannel), six day dresses, two wrappers, six pairs of socks, four to six flannel bands, two flannel sacks, two shawls or ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... of a few large, airy, low-pitched rooms, of which the stone balconies overlooked the Tuileries gardens, while from a corner window of his sitting-room Vanderlyn could obtain what was in very truth a bird's-eye view of the vast Place ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... certain facts—certain rights-of-all-men-to-know, into the hands of some disinterested and powerful statesman of publicity—some great organizer of the attention of a world. He would have to be a practical passionate psychologist, a man gifted with a bird's-eye view of publics—a discoverer of geniuses and crowds, a natural diviner or reader of the hearts of men. He shall search out and employ twenty men to write as many books addressed to as many classes and types of employers and workers. He shall arrange pamphlets ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... Narrow winding staircases in the interior lead to the top, upon which a small platform, with a balustrade a foot high, is erected. It is fortunate for those who are not subject to dizziness. They can venture out, and take a bird's-eye view of the endless sea of houses, and the innumerable Hindoo temples; the Ganges also, with its step quays, miles long, lies exposed below. I was told that on very clear, fine days, a distant chain of mountains was perceivable— ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... the summer at Saratoga and Newport. The following letter from Celia Burleigh gives a bird's-eye view of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... might have made his well-fitting cord breeches, Hoby might have made those black top-boots, and Chifney might have worn them before royalty, and not been shamed. It is too hot for coat or waistcoat; so he wears his snow-white shirt, topped by a blue "bird's-eye-handkerchief," and keeps his coat in his valise, to be used as occasion shall require. His costume is completed with a cabbage-tree hat, neither too new nor too old; light, shady, well ventilated, and three pounds ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... he brought out his Roderick Random, which at once made a "hit". The subsequent events of his life may be presented, chronologically, in a bird's-eye view:— ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... village the road wound down to a forest that had formed a dark blur in our bird's-eye view of the plain. We passed into the forest and halted on the edge of a colony of queer exotic huts. On all sides they peeped through the branches, themselves so branched and sodded and leafy that they seemed like some transition ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... of the World is so extensive that one could not visit all its parts during the course of a life-time, but there is a place called the Magic Observatory whence an observer can have a bird's-eye view of all the principal scholastic ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... top of the Monument I took a bird's-eye view of the largest of all earthly cities, or at least I looked as far as the smoky atmosphere would permit, and then returned to my stopping place at Twynholm. As I rode back on the top of an omnibus, the ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes
... almost anything and everything could be omitted if they greatly desired it. But they have forced young people to study in much the same way as they themselves visit European countries, straining to get a bird's-eye view of everything, and settling on nothing long enough to know it intimately and to enjoy it deeply. They justify Herbert Spencer's remark to the effect that he would have known no more than a great many other persons, if he had read as ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... inverted umbrella, imprinted upon a favorite tea-plate, we often sallied forth in fancy to explore the Chinese world as portrayed in blue or pink upon earthen table-ware of the olden time. And what a world! How artfully adapted to childish notions, how convenient for bird's-eye views, this arrangement of lofty mountain peaks, deep gorges, and rocks of fantastic forms, tangled up with examples of nature subdued by Chinese art in landscape gardening and ornate architecture. In the ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... expatiate upon their individual expediency, or to argue for their particular adoption. And, sir, when we observe the progress of the human mind, when we take into consideration the quick march of intellect, and the wide expansion of enlightened views and liberal principles; when we take a bird's-eye view of the history of man from the earliest ages to the present moment, I feel that it would be folly in me to conceive for an instant that the measures developed and recommended in that paper will not finally receive the approbation ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... crest of Winton's Hill, from which the road slopes down to beautiful Windywild through parked forests, but from which the rambling white villa, with its barns and garage can be seen in striking bird's-eye view, ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... Styles' building stood, and early that evening a man approached it and hailed the cabmen and the waterman. Any one would have known the new-comer at once for a cabman taking a holiday. The brim of the hat, the bird's-eye neckerchief, the immense coat-buttons, and, more than all, the rolling walk and the wrinkled trousers, marked him ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... lay in this, or in exactly the opposite direction. It has no unit of structure, but is a vast aggregation of streets and houses, or in fact of towns and cities, which have to be mastered in detail. I tried the third or fourth day to get a bird's-eye view from the top of St. Paul's, but saw through the rifts in the smoke only a waste,—literally a waste of red tiles and chimney pots. The ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... Our party, swelled by fresh additions, all well armed, that made us look like a large body of Haiducks going on a marauding expedition, now issued by a gate in the castle, opposite to that by which I entered, and began to toil up the hill that overlooks Ushitza, in order to have a bird's-eye view of the whole town and valley. On our way up, the Natchalnik told me, that although long resident here, he had never seen the interior of the castle, and that I was the first Christian to whom its gates had been ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... is to get an elevation from which you may see in every direction. If you could come up to Heaven, we should be saved any further trouble; you would then have a good bird's-eye view of everything. But it would be sacrilege for one so conversant with phantoms to set foot in the courts of Zeus. Let us lose no time, therefore, in looking out a ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... we have just entered is about twenty feet square. It is lined over the top with white cotton cloth, the breadths of which, being sewed together only in spots, stretch gracefully apart in many places, giving one a bird's-eye view of the shingles above. The sides are hung with a gaudy chintz, which I consider a perfect marvel of calico-printing. The artist seems to have exhausted himself on roses. From the largest cabbage down to the tiniest ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... surpassingly beautiful and yacht-like ships that now ply between the two hemispheres in such numbers, and which in luxury and the fitting conveniences seem to vie with each other for the mastery. The cabins were lined with satin-wood and bird's-eye maple; small marble columns separated the glittering panels of polished wood, and rich carpets covered the floors. The main cabin had the great table, as a fixture, in the centre, but that of Eve, somewhat shorter, but of equal width, was free from all encumbrance of the sort. It ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... seafaring Nordic race. Never mind the confusing lists of tribes and kings on either side—the Jutes and Anglo-Saxons, the Danes and Normans, on one side, and the Celts of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, on the other; nor yet the different dates and places; but simply take a single bird's-eye view of all the Seven Seas as one sea, of all the British Norsemen as one Anglo-Norman folk, and of all the centuries from the fifth to the twentieth as a single age; and then you can quite easily understand how the empire of the ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... of her unhappy childhood within its walls, and Anne Boleyn's merry laugh had rung out there. The situation of the Castle was magnificent. It stood on the summit of a wooded cliff which ran sheer into the river, and commanded a splendid prospect of the country round, and a bird's-eye view of the little town that clustered at ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... that none of us had a bird's-eye view of that same water. No man of force will listen when his mind is made up, and perhaps it is just as well. For in that way things are accomplished. Clark would not listen to Monsieur Vigo, and hence the financier had, perforce, to listen to Clark. There were several miracles before we ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... be of great value as giving a bird's-eye view of the fascinating struggle of the Church with heathenism ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... leaned upon the parapet of the terrace, whence they had a bird's-eye view of the big square immediately below, and the picturesquely irregular buildings, above whose gabled red roofs grim watch-towers and quaint spires or cupolas rose here and there. Down in the square swarms ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... pierced window-screen of the faintest tinge of green. To Mollenhauer went the furniture and decorations of the entry-hall and reception-room of Henry Cowperwood's house, and to Edward Strobik two of Cowperwood's bird's-eye maple bedroom suites for the most modest of prices. Adam Davis was present and secured the secretaire of buhl which the elder Cowperwood prized so highly. To Fletcher Norton went the four Greek vases—a kylix, a water-jar, and two amphorae—which ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... hisself he'll hate ye worse'n ever, f'r he'll think ye'll be afther crimpin' his bird's-eye game. Take advice, Bill, an' kape on th' good side av um av ye can. He'll t'row ut into ye wid all manner av dhirty thricks, but howld ye're timper, an' maybe ye'll winter ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... trudging on, covered the last mile in such quick time that Leonard declared it reminded him of a paper-chase. It was rather a steep pull to gain the highest point, yet they were well rewarded when they reached it by the bird's-eye view of the landscape around them, farms, churches, and distant village looking like so many toys, and the fields like ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... fleeting, bird's-eye view of the stirring times in which his days were spent, his travels, his army life, his periods of professorship, we can not help but wonder at the amount of writing Mickiewicz did. And his life was not ...
— Sonnets from the Crimea • Adam Mickiewicz
... This, roughly, is a bird's-eye glimpse of the southeastern stretch of Florida, a region of glory and glow and fortunes and mystery. (Which is perhaps a momentary digression from our story, but will serve. for all that to fix its setting more vividly in the ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... feelings. Mine don't count. My baby. Get well, Lilly. Mamma's been cross at times, but never again. We'll do everything to make you happy. You can read your eyes out and mamma won't turn out the light on you. Mamma will buy you books and a box of paints and a little bird's-eye-maple room all your own. Lilly, mamma's baby. We're going housekeeping—your own piano—your own room. Aren't we, Ben? ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... a pinch of their hundred miles in a day. He handled them well over the rough corduroys and swamp roads. From jam to rear and back again he travelled, pausing on the river banks to converse earnestly with one of the foremen, surveying the situation with the bird's-eye view of the general. At times he remained at one camp for several days watching the trend of the work. The improvements made during the preceding summer gave him the greatest satisfaction, especially the apron at ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... Africa into the Congo region on the Western side, returning afterward to the East for a bird's-eye view of the Abyssinians, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... was outside. Quong carried in a couple of pails full of boiling water; we laid out shaving tackle, an old suit of grey flannel, a pair of brown shoes, and the necessary under-linen. A blue bird's-eye tie, I remember, was the last touch. Then Ajax shrugged his shoulders and said significantly, ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... lacking in personal ambition,—does not seem to care whether he is heard of or not,—has a sort of contempt for the little neighborhood notorieties which give most men pleasure. It is as if he were taking a bird's-eye view of himself, and every one else, and they all looked so small that the trifling variations in prominence ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... sunset, as if they were crusted with jewels of different colours. Its dominance over all that surrounded it, all that was smaller and less powerful and impressive than itself, was astonishingly evident from this bird's-eye point of view; but brightly as the jewels gleamed, they had lost their allurement for these two. With Vanno's arms around her, Mary wondered how she could ever have felt that the Casino was a vast magnet compelling her to come to it in spite of herself, drawing her thoughts and ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... difficult, for there is no lack of long grass. No sooner do any strangers appear at the spot, than the women may be seen emerging from their villages bearing baskets of manioc-meal, roots, ground-nuts, yams, bird's-eye pepper, and garlic for sale. Calico, of which we had brought some from Cassange, is the chief medium of exchange. We found them all civil, and it was evident, from the amount of talking and laughing in bargaining, that the ladies enjoyed their occupation. They must cultivate largely, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... camp had been pitched told him nothing, and it was only after he had climbed a high hill a mile and a half away from the river that he began to have any indication of his whereabouts. Then with the country lying before him in a bird's-eye view he was able to learn his position. There was more than one river in view, and a chain of small lakes lay between one of them and the river where he had been left by his captors. From the last of those lakes a long portage, such as had been made on the last day but one of the journey, ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... two after this, he hesitated, but there above him rose the cone with its crest of smoke, and apparently nothing to hinder him from climbing steadily to the top, and from thence getting a bird's-eye view ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... soon after breakfast by means of a clever little piece of diplomacy. John is really amused at the manner in which she manages this affair, and allows himself to be carried off to enjoy a bird's-eye view of the harbor which she has discovered at the end of the piazza, and which he must pass an ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... submitting to any conditions they can get, and the sovereignty of the world is left to the birds. However much all this resembles a mere farcical fairy tale, it may be said, however, to have a philosophical signification, in thus taking a sort of bird's-eye view of all things, seeing that most of our ideas are only true in ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... of the patterns founded on the lotus, as we can almost from this distance of time take a bird's-eye view of its rise in naturalism, its spread, dispersion, and its crystallization into conventional forms; also we can trace how the lotus patterns of Indian art have resulted, when accepted in Europe, in nothing ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... and Whitechapel bars. Afterwards there was a house of timber erected across the street, with a narrow gateway and an entry on the south side of it under the house." This structure is to be seen in the bird's-eye view of London, 1601 (Elizabeth), and in Hollar's seven-sheet map of London ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... "To-morrow you must get the bed moved into the little one, and I'll get the big room fixed up for a study. He'll be tickled to pieces. There's beautiful furniture in the room now. I suppose he'll think it's beautiful. It's terrible old-fashioned. I'd rather have a nice new set of bird's-eye maple to my taste, and a brass bedstead, but I know he'll like this better. It's solid ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... salt in soft water, float your engraving on the surface—picture side uppermost—and let it remain about an hour. The screen, box or table on which you wish to transfer the design should be of bird's-eye maple or other light-colored hardwood, varnished with the best copal ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... an element of the grotesque in a bird's-eye view of a lady making shots at her mouth with a spoon and trying to smile and look ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... favorable, and everybody was in motion. I, with several of my relations and friends, had been provided with a good place in one of the upper stories of the Romer itself, where we might completely survey the whole. We betook ourselves to the spot very early in the morning, and from above, as in a bird's-eye view, contemplated the arrangements which we had inspected more closely the day before. There was the newly-erected fountain, with two large tubs on the left and right, into which the double-eagle on the post was to pour from its two beaks white wine on this side and red wine ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... upon which any secret society holds a caveat. Wisdom can not be corraled with gibberish and fettered in jargon. Knowledge is one thing—palaver another. The Greek-letter societies of our callow days still survive in bird's-eye, and next to these come the Elks, who take theirs with seltzer and a smile, as a rare good joke, save that brotherhood and good-fellowship are actually a saving salt which excuses much that would ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... Balkan States, all of whom were in the Federation; another was in a swift torpedo-boat, with a roving commission to cruise round the harbour as desired; another took his place on the top of the great mountain which overlooks Plazac, and so had a bird's-eye view of the whole scene of operations; two others were on the forts to right and left of the Blue Mouth; another was posted at the entrance to the Great Tunnel which runs from the water level right ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... story and its associations, its motley company of memories and spectres both good and bad, its imperishably adventurous savour of the past, imprisoned in the dry prose of registries and records. Let us just take a glance, a bird's-eye view as it were, of that region which we now know as Washington Square, as it was when the city of New York bought it for a ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... elements which made the cruise of the Woermann unusual. Mr. Boyce and his party of six were on board and were on their way to photograph East Africa. They took moving pictures of the various deck sports, also a bird's-eye picture of the ship, taken from a camera suspended by a number of box kites, and also gave two ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... by Gabriele D'Annunzio; translated by G. Mantellini, with an Introduction by Joseph Hergesheimer (Doubleday, Page & Company). This anthology drawn from various volumes of Signor D'Annunzio's stories gives the American a fair bird's-eye view of the various aspects of his work. These twelve portraits by the Turner of corruption have a severe logic of their own which may pass for being classical. As diploma pieces they are incomparable, but as renderings of life they carry no sense of conviction. Mr. Hergesheimer's introduction ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... bed early that night, the two girls snuggled in Billie's pretty bird's-eye maple bed in Billie's pretty bird's-eye ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... degree. Their complexities, indeed, are so tortuous and so multitudinous that they baffle description within the limits of the present book. Yet, since nothing can be understood without some reference to its antecedents, we must take at least a bird's-eye view of the growing entanglement which finally resulted in ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... within sight of the German lines. From a wooded spur of the hills he looked down upon the enemy's left flank and beyond to the British lines. His position gave him a bird's-eye view of the field of battle, and his keen eyesight picked out many details that would not have been apparent to a man whose every sense was not trained to the highest point of perfection as were the ape-man's. He noted ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... thanked that made us friends; Men prate of wealth in empty words, I Sit here content as '90 ends. And sip my grog, and smoke my bird's-eye. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., January 3, 1891. • Various
... and with my wife to church, it being Whitsunday; my wife very fine in a new yellow bird's-eye hood, as the fashion is now. We had a most sorry sermon; so home to dinner, my mother having her new suit brought home, which makes her very fine. After dinner my wife and she and Mercer to Thomas Pepys's wife's christening of his first child, and I took a coach, and to Wanstead, the ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... importance, which is quite the same. In either case our own life is dwelt upon first. Then there is the immediate family, after that our own especial friends,—all assuming a gigantic size which puts quite out of the question an occasional bird's-eye view of the world in general. Even objects which might be in the middle distance of a less extended view are quite screened by the exaggerated size of those which seem to ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call
... thought was of the great adventure of letters in which he proposed to engage, and his first glance round his "bed-sitting-room" showed him that there was no piece of furniture suitable for his purpose. The table, like the rest of the suite, was of bird's-eye maple; but the maker seemed to have penetrated the druidic secret of the rocking-stone, the thing was in a state of unstable equilibrium perpetually. For some days he wandered through the streets, inspecting the second-hand furniture shops, and at last, in a forlorn ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... the immense harvest of overblown blue roses which climbed luxuriantly up the walls, intensified this effect. The mantelpiece was crammed with brass ornaments, and there were two complete sets of brass fire-irons in the brass fender. Above the mantelpiece a looking-glass, in a wan frame of bird's-eye maple, with rounded ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... way." Mrs. Bates led her through a narrow side-door, and Jane found herself in a small room where another young woman sat before a trim bird's-eye-maple desk, whose drawers and pigeonholes were stuffed with cards and letters and papers. "This is my office. Miss Marshall, Miss Peters," she said, in the ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... knows the breakin' strain o' them green logs? Maybe it's art, but it ain't architecture. I ain't so sure about the art, neither. It's to be lined with red pine. Ther' ain't no art to red pine. Now maple—bird's-eye maple, an' we got forests of it. Ther's art in bird's-eye maple. It's mighty pleasing to the eye. It 'ud make the folks feel good. Red pine? Red?" He shook his head ominously. "Not in this city. You see, red's a shoutin' color. Sets folk gropin' fer trouble. But white's different. ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... together in November of 1642,[19] our Parliamentary eloquence has now, within four years, travelled through a period of two centuries. A most admirable subject for an essay, or a Magazine article, as it strikes me, would be a bird's-eye view—or rather a bird's-wing flight—pursuing rapidly the revolutions of that memorable oracle (for such it really was to the rest of civilised Europe), which, through so long a course of years, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey |
