"Flat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sliding was with the feet foremost, but there are now various methods employed. Many runners now slide head foremost, throwing themselves flat on the breast and stomach. Some keep to the base-line and slide direct for the base, while others throw the body and legs out of the line and reach for the base with a hand or foot. Among those who always slide feet first and direct ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... the suburb of Allerton the ground is a dead flat, and here the flying lake had covered a space a mile broad, doing frightful damage to property but not much to life, because wherever it expanded it shallowed ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... and came over to wipe out the post. It looked easy at the time, because there was less than two hundred men, but the major in command was a fighting fool and didn't know when he was whipped. The Apaches all gathered up on the top of those high cliffs—it's flat on the upper side—and one night when their signal fires had burned down the soldiers sneaked around behind them. And then, just at dawn, they fired a volley and made a rush for the camp; and before they knowed it about two hundred Indians ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... reached full term and was a well-developed male, stillborn. Its head "exactly resembled a miniature cow's head;" the occipital bone was absent, the parietals only slightly developed, the eyes were placed at the top of the frontal bone, which was quite flat, with each of its superior angles twisted into a rudimentary horn. (J.T. Hislop, Tavistock, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... are scattered over the first nine tables (1-9) in the room. They live on small animals and sea-weed. The varieties include a flat kind, vulgarly called sea-pancakes. The remaining cases of the room are loaded with varieties of the star-fish. The mouth of the star-fish is on its lower side, through which it takes its food. It has ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... some parts of your letter did you very great credit, but that the monomania of the North has fallen upon you, and that you have it, as it seemed to me, in one of its worst forms. Some it makes fierce, others, flat, according as the victim is, naturally, more ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... are not the usual thin, paper-covered volumes of an ordinary Chinese work, but they consist each of several of the original Chinese volumes bound together in cloth or leather, lettered on the back, and standing on the shelves, as our books do, instead of lying flat, as is ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... myself, 25 As among strangers! Not a trace is left Of all my former wishes, former joys. Where has it vanished to? There was a time When even, methought, with such a world as this I was not discontented. Now how flat! 30 How stale! No life, no bloom, no flavour in it! My comrades are intolerable to me. My father—Even to him I can say nothing. My arms, my military duties—O! They are such ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... irresolute or intentionally deliberate; without apology or comment he poured a second glass of liquor even full from the red decanter and drank it in silence. "On the square, Darley," he blazed, "I expected a lot from that last book, banked on it; and it's gone flat, like the others." He resumed his seat and the cigarette flamed. "I worked hard on it, did my level best. I don't believe I can ever do any better—and now it's failed miserably. It knocks my pins clean out ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... attaint. And then he ran upon him more and more, and the other went back for dread of death. So in his withdrawing he fell upright, and Sir Bors drew his helm so strongly that he rent it from his head, and gave him great strokes with the flat of his sword upon the visage, and bad him yield him or he should slay him. Then he cried him mercy and said: Fair knight, for God's love slay me not, and I shall ensure thee never to war against thy lady, but be alway toward ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... bandy, Mrs. Jiniwin," he says of his friend's legs, "we will confine ourselves to bandy. He is gone, my friends, where his legs would never be called in question." They go on to the discussion of his nose, and Mrs. Jiniwin inclines to the view that it is flat. "Aquiline, you hag! Aquiline," cries Mr. Quilp, pushing in his head and striking his nose with his fist. There is nothing better in the whole brutal exuberance of the character than that gesture with which Quilp punches his own face with his ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... income in three years will be a competence to the investor and his family. People do not spend much time now in gaping over abnormal vegetables, or trying to convince themselves that wines of every known variety and flavor can be produced within the limits of one flat and well-watered field. Few now expect to make a fortune by cutting arid land up into twenty-feet lots, but notwithstanding the extravagance of recent speculation, the value of arable land has steadily appreciated, ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... slide off and fling herself flat against the slope. When she tried to climb back to a less dangerous spot the twigs she clutched broke in her hands and the rocks cut her flesh. The adventure which had been fascinating ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... see that wrought-iron plate is not quite flat; it sticks up a little here towards the left, 'cockles,' as we say. How shall we flatten it? Obviously, you reply, by hitting down on the part that is prominent. Well, here is a hammer, and I give the plate a blow ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... relative in the person of an aunt came to spend the month of August with Sara—her father's sister. She was a true, unvarnished Gooch. Booth shuddered at times when she emerged flat-foot from the background and revelled in the Goochiness that would not stay put, no matter how hard she tried to subdue it. She was a good soul,—much too good, in fact,—and her efforts to live up to requirements were not only ludicrous but exasperating. Sara was quite serene ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... 2020 the oceans have long since drained from the surface of the earth, leaving bared to sun and wind the one-time sea floor. Much of it is flat, caked ooze, cracked and hardened, with, here and there, small scum-covered lakes, bordered by slimy rocks. It is hot, down in the depth of the great Lowland areas, and it is chiefly adventurers and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... Mr. Buxton's arguments more and more sank home, for they had touched the very point where Anthony had reckoned that his own strength lay. He had never before heard Nationalism and Catholicism placed in such flat antithesis. In fact, he had never before really heard the statement of the Catholic position; and his fierce contempt gradually melted into respect. Both theories had a concrete air of reality about them; his own imaged itself under the symbols of England's power; the ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... bark camp one summer and were staying on one of the popular lakes of the Saranac region. It would be a very pretty region if it were not so flat, if the margins of the lakes had not been flooded by dams at the outlets, which have killed the trees, and left a rim of ghastly deadwood like the swamps of the under-world pictured by Dore's bizarre pencil,—and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... beauty of form, in giving strength and power to the voice, in improving the complexion and adding to the health, and therefore to the happiness. In taking these exercises, one should either stand erect or lie flat upon the back and draw the air in through the nose, keeping the mouth closed. Draw in gently, allowing the chest to expand at the sides, hold the air for a little time, and then breathe ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... know," said BNE-96 in that curious, flat voice of his that is incapable of inflection. "I do not know, but there are visitors of importance from Earth. It could mean anything, but I have a premonition of disaster. Jon ...
— B-12's Moon Glow • Charles A. Stearns
... soon as born, are ty'd flat on their Backs to a Board; and so may be flung on the Ground, or put to lean against any Thing, or be flung over their Neck in Travelling, or hung upon a Bough, as ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... are particularly fond of fables. Besides Chemnitzer, mentioned above, who is flat and prosy, Ivan Krylof, born 1768, is celebrated in this department. He may be truly called the favourite of the nation. His fables, equally popular among all classes and conditions of life, are the first ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... little patch and corner of darkness to discomfit his pursuer, is not likely to be checked by a line of well-trained soldiers. He paid them the compliment of crawling between a couple, and, running and halting, crouching and dropping flat, worked his way toward the lighted Mess-tent where, close pressed behind the mango-tree, he waited till some chance word should give him a ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... wide, and a bridge stretched from it across the canyon. We decided that the bridge was the one Queza had told the boys about—it led to the cave where the treasure was kept. We laid there for an hour, watching. The buildings were all huddled together—a lot of flat, brown adobe houses. We could see the natives moving down among them, but none of us noticed anything unusual going on ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... The score was old and soiled with much thumbing. At one point, destroyed long since, the sentry sang A sharp: the Portier insisted on A natural. They argued together over three Steins of beer; the waiter, referred to, decided for A flat. It was a serious matter to have one's teeth set, as one may say, for a natural and then to be shocked with an unexpected half-tone up or down! It destroyed the ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the burst of the storm subsided a little. The scene was such as we pray God we may never witness again. A small portion of the roof and upper part of the front of the building stood or rather partly hung over the side-walk. The chamber and lower floor of the front rooms lay flat together. The sides were standing. In the rear all were down. In this building, besides the workmen, there were numerous laborers who had taken shelter under its roof when the storm drove them hurriedly from their ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... and gear. They are perfect savages, without any aptitude for even aboriginal civilization, and are altogether the most degraded of the ill-fated tribes which are dying out before the white races. They were all very diminutive, five feet one inch being, I should think, about the average height, with flat noses, wide mouths, and black hair, cut straight above the eyes and hanging lank and long at the back and sides. The squaws wore their hair thickly plastered with pitch, and a broad band of the same ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... sprang erect, so that his chair fell over flat behind him. He was deathly pale, yet he seemed fired with a hope; ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... earnestness, now, and going into the next room, and opening a large cedar wood chest, returned, bearing in her arms two large snow white blankets, which she deposited flat on the table, just as Aunt Hitty was whisking off the ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... whole neighbourhood. Indeed, some ladies had gone so far as to assert, that the dark gentleman was actually a portrait of the spirted young proprietor; and the great similarity between their head-dresses—both wore very glossy hair, with a narrow walk straight down the middle, and a profusion of flat circular curls on both sides—encouraged the idea. The better informed among the sex, however, made light of this assertion, for however willing they were (and they were very willing) to do full justice ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... stood there, and that was about three-quarters of a mile before you came to East Lynne. It was on the left hand side, a square, ugly, red brick house with a weathercock on the top, standing some little distance from the road. A flat lawn extended before it, and close to the palings, which divided it from the road, was a grove of trees, some yards in depth. The lawn was divided by a narrow middle gravel path, to which you gained ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... drawn up on a small elevation behind the shelter of a grove of pines. Their camp was intersected by the railroad, on which was placed a battery capable of operating against the center and left of the advancing column, while a rifle gun, mounted on a railroad flat, pointed ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... he himself taught, but there is no question that the idea of the world's motion became from an early day a so-called Pythagorean doctrine. While all the other philosophers, so far as we know, still believed that the world was flat, the Pythagoreans out in Italy taught that the world is a sphere and that the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies are really due to the actual motion of the earth itself. They did not, however, vault to the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... down, Umbopa pointed out to us a slight and indistinct hillock on the flat surface of the plain about eight miles away. At the distance it looked like an ant-hill, and as I was dropping off to sleep I fell to wondering what it ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... is much better than walking on the flat. The air is forced harder through the lungs. Windy weather is a help, and rain, for two reasons: it is an advantage to the victim, and keeps rascals away. The writer believes that the cartilages are influenced, or ...
— Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris
... important point to notice, is that these cells are always made at that degree of nearness to each other, that they would have {226} intersected or broken into each other, if the spheres had been completed; but this is never permitted, the bees building perfectly flat walls of wax between the spheres which thus tend to intersect. Hence each cell consists of an outer spherical portion and of two, three, or more perfectly flat surfaces, according as the cell adjoins two, ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... a little gasp, and a heaving of the flat breasts. Then she said icily: 'And what ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... only at the beginning that one is so unwise. One giant Austrian had spread himself across the top of a roof near which I passed, with two sandbags to protect his head, and looked in his blue-black sailors clothes like an enormous fly squashed flat up there by the anger of the gods. Now leaning this way, now that, he flashed off a Mannlicher there towards the Italian Legation, where only one hundred hours ago no one ever dreamed that Chinese desperadoes would have made our normal life such a ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... preachers of the gospel, by governors of states, by "gentlemen of property and standing," and by delicate females moving in the "highest circles of society." We know, full well, the outcry that will be made by multitudes, at these declarations; the multiform cavils, the flat denials, the charges of "exaggeration" and "falsehood" so often bandied, the sneers of affected contempt at the credulity that can believe such things, and the rage and imprecations against those who give them currency. We know, too, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... street in the fair. On one side of her were shooting-galleries making a deafening noise, and on the other were all manner of contrivances for making money. First came machines for the trial of strength, consisting of a flat pasteboard figure of the Shah, or some other distinguished person, holding on his chest a dial-plate, the hand of which indicated the amount of strength possessed by any one who hit a certain part of the ...
— A Peep Behind the Scenes • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... with darting radiance, in thin, unwavering shafts of splintered fire. The moon, coldly brilliant, sharp-edged and flat like a disk of silver paper, touched the twinkling aspens with a pallid glow and stamped a distorted silhouette of the low-roofed ranch-buildings on the hard-packed earth. In the corral the shadow of a restless pony drifted back ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... the troops, at crossing a raging brook called the Girnaig, to keep along a flat of land above the house of Rinrorie, and to form, in order of battle, on the field beyond the garden, and under the hill where the Highlanders were posted; the baggage and camp equipages he at the same time ordered ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... straw, bricks are not to be made. In this later manner we seem to have bid adieu to the inspiration—to the fine old round style of drawing—where the figures "stand out" completely. He adopted a sort of sketchy fashion; his figures became silhouettes and quite flat. There was also a singular carelessness in finish—a mere outline served for a face. The result was a monotony and similarity of treatment, with a certain unreality and grotesqueness which are like nothing ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... The bread must be broken, not cut; and it was eaten with the right hand only, the left lying in the lap as though broken. Belching seemed to be de rigueur as a tribute to the cuisine, so Aaron belched his stomach flat. ...
— Blind Man's Lantern • Allen Kim Lang
... strong points. It represents an old man in a standing posture; the bones, muscles, nerves, veins, and even the wrinkles appear quite life-like; the hair is thin and scanty on the forehead; the brow is broad; the face wizened; the neck thin; the shoulders are bowed; the breast is flat, and the belly hollow. The back too gives the same impression of age, as far as a back view can. The bronze itself, judging by the genuine colour, is old and of great antiquity. In fact, in every respect it is a work calculated to catch the eye of a connoisseur and to delight the eye of ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... stage" Carey repeated, in the flat tone of finality which the foreman of a jury might have employed when repeating the verbal formula: "We, the jury, find the ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... small flat water-jug, tightly stopped, slung over his shoulder. Allan counted on streams being plentiful; but he meant to look out even ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... and though the roof, which was nearly flat, was wet with the falling rain, they walked, still in their stockinged feet, to the farther end of the block. Neither of them wore his uniform, as they remained as they had dressed for the duty they were to do on board of the Teaser. This was a point in their favor in the course they were ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... their acquaintance had commenced the night before. He chatted a little with the old folks, but directed most of his talk to Mary Ellen, that he might have an excuse for looking her full in the face, and drinking in her beauty. I saw him seat himself on the flat stone. I saw him glance admiringly at the pretty white hands, handling so daintily the green pods. I saw him show her how to make a boat of one, putting in sticks for the thwarts. And finally, I saw David come round the ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the woman, "it is this way. I live in a three-family flat. Here is my name and card," and a card came out of a bag. "I subscribe to The Ladies' Home Journal. It is delivered at my house each month by Mr. Bok. Now I have told that man three times over that when he delivers the magazine, he must ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... a boat on a little stream that ran not far from the house. The boat was flat; and George pushed it along with a pole. It ...
— The Nursery, April 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various
... the tall-stemmed succory, setting its pale blue flowers aflame, one after another, sparingly, as the lights are kindled in the candelabra of decaying palaces when the heirs of dethroned monarchs are dying out; the red and white clovers; the broad, flat leaves of the plantain,—"the white man's foot," as the Indians called it,—the wiry, jointed stems of that iron creeping plant which we call "knot-grass" and which loves its life so dearly that it is next to impossible to murder ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... said that the mass, and such trumpery as that, Popery, purgatory, pardons, were flat Against God's word and primitive constitution, Crept in through covetousness and superstition Of late years, through blindness, and men of no knowledge, Even such as have ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... way," said Sarah, turning up her short nose rather scornfully. "Parted, indeed, and brushed down flat over her ears, exactly like that ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... insufficient feed, from the excessive drain upon the udder while bearing the calf, from the use of feed deficient in certain essential elements, like the nitrogenous constituents or albuminoids, from chronic, wasting diseases, from roundworms or tapeworms in the bowels, from flat-worms (flukes, trematodes) in the liver, from worms in the lungs, from dark, damp, unhealthful buildings, etc. In some such cases the nourishment is so deficient that the fetus dies in the womb and is expelled in consequence. Excessive loss of blood, attended as it usually is with shock, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... usual crooked lane that serves as the main thoroughfare for business in a mining town. For Malapi had been a cowtown before the discovery of oil. It lay on the wide prairie and not in a gulch. The street was broad and dusty, flanked by false-front stores, flat-roofed adobes, and corrugated iron buildings imported ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... through the water, as the men bent with regular stroke, and made the tough ash blades of their oars curve ere they rose and scattered the flashing drops, which seemed to brighten the scene where all was flat and monotonous, and the view contracted by a dead silvery haze of heat. Behind them was the low flat shore with a few scattered white houses and factories behind a rough landing-stage. There were palms of different kinds in a straggling ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... frock, with its wide patent-leather belt and flat white collar, the cascade of her hair down over it, Zoe held the center of the vast studio, singing straight into ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... Lincoln Island. The cold was comparable to that experienced in the States of New England, situated at almost the same distance from the equator. In the northern hemisphere, or at any rate in the part occupied by British America and the north of the United States, this phenomenon is explained by the flat conformation of the territories bordering on the pole, and on which there is no intumescence of the soil to oppose any obstacle to the north winds; here, in Lincoln Island, ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... could not credit the intelligence; but when it was confirmed by scouts, whom he sent out, he prepared instantly to retrace his steps, and to fight his first great battle with the Persian king under circumstances which he felt to be favorable beyond anything that he could have hoped. The tract of flat land between the base of the mountains and the sea on the borders of the Gulf of Issus was nowhere broader than about a mile and a half. The range of Amanus on the east rose up with rugged and broken hills, so that on this side the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... daylight, we were close to Bald Island, and in the afternoon took up an anchorage in King George the Third's Sound, between Seal Island and the first sandy beach, at the distance of half a mile to the eastward of a flat rock in seven fathoms, sand ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... moving about as he spoke, showing me all his little belongings. He reminded me for all the world of a man in a Harlem flat, showing a visitor how convenient it all is. Somehow, too, the Cave-man had lost all appearance of size. He looked, in fact, quite little, and when he had pushed his long hair back from his forehead he seemed to wear that same, worried, ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... is best when it is gently sloping rather than absolutely flat, because on a flat farm water cannot run off and so forms swampy places. But it is a disadvantage to have the surface too rolling because that causes the water to collect ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... flat transgression of a school-boy, who, being overjoy'd with finding a bird's nest, shows it his companion, and ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... and so on; the smaller fine leaves for Panetelos and Londres; the dark inferior leaves for Canones. The commonest tobacco goes to form the Milores Communes; the worst is converted into cigars which are generally pressed flat, and known as Prinsados. For the smallest kind of Londres and for Damos, a proportionally small leaf ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... mean a flat refusal to grant redress. He would have us to 'concentrate on the problems of the immediate future!' The immediate future is to compel repentance on the part of the Government on the Punjab matter. Of this there is no sign. ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... Here are two flat spirals of silk-covered copper wire suspended separately, spider-web fashion, in wooden frames marked respectively A and B. The one marked A is so connected that reversals at any desired speed per minute from a battery ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 417 • Various
... thinking of a plan For artificial hens, And automatic dairy-maids, And self-propelling pens." "Such things are stale," I made reply, "They're old, and flat, and thin. Tell me the last thing in your pate, Or I will cave ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 4, 1890 • Various
... back as though he expected the words to be followed by a rain of blows. His back was flat against the wall. If he could only get around to the window he could dart out and down the fire escape. Divining his one and only hope of escape, one of the "bashers" sprang forward, grabbed him by an arm and whirled him into a chair. He cringed as the bruiser ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... gleam'd Strangely in wrath, as though some spirit unclean Within that corporal tenement installed Look'd from its windows, but with temper'd fire Beam'd mildly on the unresisting. Thin His beard and hoary; his flat nostrils crown'd A cicatrised, swart visage,—but withal That questionable shape such glory wore That mortals quail'd ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... repair to a club where as many are assembled in an evening to relax from the toils of the day—it is almost proverbial, that one or two of these persons will perhaps be brilliant, and the rest "weary, stale, flat and unprofitable." ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... way, flat upon the ground, lay poor I, for I believe five or six minutes; and then trying to get up, I sunk down again two or three times; and my left hip and shoulder were very stiff, and full of pain, with bruises; and, besides, my head bled, and ached grievously with the blow I had with ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... from metals or other substances capable of being wrought into various shapes. We know a number of objects made of iron. The material iron embraces the metal contained in them all; but we may say, "The cook made the irons hot," referring to flat-irons; or, "The sailor was put in irons" meaning chains of iron. So also we may speak of a glass to drink from or to look into; a steel to whet a knife on; a rubber for erasing marks; ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... always thought for some reason or other that the bottom of the sea was flat. I found that it was just as irregular and changeful as the surface of the dry land. We climbed over great mountain-ranges, with peaks towering above peaks. We threaded our way through dense forests of tall sea-plants. ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... exposing the surface to the very crest of the crater. So they advanced, clambering over the rough blocks, and drew nearer and nearer to the summit. At length a heavy mass of black smoke came rolling down. It touched them. It enveloped them. It folded itself over them and under them. Each one fell flat on his face at Michael Angelo's warning, and covered his mouth and nostrils with his handkerchief, so as to keep out the sulphurous vapors. It was almost suffocating; breathing was difficult and painful, ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... escaped by a singular chance, St. Regent, or his servant Francois, had stationed himself in the middle of the Rue Nicaise. A grenadier of the escort, supposing he was really what he appeared to be, a water-carrier, gave him a few blows with the flat of his sabre and drove him off. The cart was turned round, and the machine exploded between the carriages of Napoleon and Josephine. The ladies shrieked on hearing the report; the carriage windows ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... Martie walked down town for the last shopping. Martie was aware, under the drumming excitement in her blood, that she was already tired. But to buy bottled cherries for the lemonade, olives for the sandwiches, and flat pink and white mint candies was exhilarating, and Reddy Johnson's cheery "See you to-night, Martie!" made her blue eyes dance with pleasure. After all, a dance was ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... also be awake and active at five. He will look out on the world with anthropomorphic (or rather with paedomorphic) eyes. He will be living on a great flat earth—unless some officious person has tried to muddle his wits by telling him the earth is round; amidst trees, animals, men, houses, engines, utensils, that are all capable of being good or naughty, ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... still languishing, we may date the commencement of ecclesiastical art. It was a new birth, and had to struggle through an infancy of nearly 800 years, ignoring, or unconscious of all rules of drawing, colouring, and design. Outlines filled in with flat surfaces of colours represented again the art of painting, which had returned to archaic types, and in no way differed from the essential properties of the art of "acu pingere" or needlework, which was in the same phase—being, fortunately for it, that to which ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... Chesapeake weighed anchor, stood out of Boston Harbor, and at 1 P.M. rounded the Light-house. The Shannon stood off under easy sail, and at 3.40 Shannon up and reefed top-sails. At 4 P.M. she again bore away with her foresail brailed up, and her main top-sail braced flat and shivering, that the Chesapeake might overtake her. An hour later, Boston Light-house bearing west distant about six leagues, she again hauled up, with her head to the southeast and lay to under top-sails, top-gallant sails, jib, and spanker. Meanwhile, as the breeze freshened the Chesapeake ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... at his mustache, searching his arid mind. An idea came to him. He drew a newspaper from his pocket, opened it out flat and spread it over Mr. Trimm's lap so that it covered the chained wrists. Almost instantly the train was in ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... to it, with the services suspended over my head, I spoke up, an' I says: "Parson," says I, "I reckon ef he was to speak his little heart, he'd say Deuteronomy Jones, Junior." An' with thet what does Sonny do but conterdic' me flat! "No, not Junior! I want to be named Deuteronomy Jones, Senior!" says he, thess so. An' parson, he looked to'ards me, an' I bowed my head an' he pernouneed thess one single name, "Deuteronomy," an' I see he wasn't goin' to say no more an' so I spoke ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... The use of the celt has fairly perplexed all antiquarian research. Its name is derived not, as might be supposed, from the nation to whom this distinctive appellation was given, but from the Latin word celtis, a chisel. It is not known whether these celts, or the round, flat, sharp-edged chisels, were called Lia Miledh, "warriors' stones." In the record of the battle of the Ford of Comar, Westmeath, the use of this instrument is ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... in the moonlight, he told his tale. The moon lighted up his pale face as he told it, and gave rather a wild expression to his eyes, eager to find faith in me.—I have not much of the dramatic in me, I know; and I am rather a flat teller of stories on that account. I shall not, therefore, seeing there is no necessity for it, attempt to give the tale in his own words. But, indeed, when I think of it, they did not differ so much from the form of my own, ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... lucid at times, although for the most part wandering, and was so restless that no covering could be kept upon him. Vomiting was continuous, so that no nourishment could be retained; the bowels acted frequently involuntarily, and little or no urine was passed. Meanwhile, the abdomen became flat, then sunken, an area of induration and tenderness about 6 inches in diameter developing around the wound of entry. Slight variations in the pulse, and from normal to subnormal in the temperature, were noted, and death eventually occurred from ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... are dirty, Flat-headed, large-mouthed, and small; They squat round the fire and, frying Their fishes, they shout and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... to be a cardboard box. Then the box may be cut in various different ways, so that the cardboard may be laid flat on the table. I show four of these ways, and indicate in every case the relative positions of the spider and the fly, and the straightened course which the spider must take without going off the cardboard. These are the four most favourable cases, and it will be found ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... scene been in America, no mortal could have made a landscape of it. It is nothing but a grass bank with some not very pretty trees scattered over it, wholly without grouping. The stream at the bottom is rocky indeed, but its rocks are mean, flat, and of a dull yellow color. The sky is gray and shapeless. There's absolutely nothing to paint anywhere of essential ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin
... from improbability, another series of opposition consists of flat, broad denials of the truth of Maria Monk's "Awful Disclosures." This mode of vanquishing direct charges is even more invalid than the former futile cavilling. It is also remarkable, when we remember who are the persons that deny the statements made by Maria ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... I see him come back?" he said, in a flat, expressionless voice. "I went to the Pagoda, Thakin. I am building a shrine there, and shall thereby acquire much merit. I did not see the Reverend return. Besides, he might not have come by ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... in WERMELSKIRCH'S public house. A flat, whitewashed room with a door leading to the inner rooms of the house on the left. The rear wall of this room is broken, toward its middle. The opening leads to a second, smaller, oblong room. On the ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... you can always distinguish a deeper ground tone and a sweet continuous melody above—and you have an approximate idea of his playing. No wonder that I liked best those of the etudes which he played for me, and I wish to mention specially the first one, in A flat major, a poem rather than an etude. It would be a mistake to imagine that he allowed each of the small notes to be distinctly audible; it was rather a surging of the A flat major chord, occasionally raised to a new billow by the pedal; but amid these harmonies a wondrous melody asserted ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... his last mouthful of coffee, and Susie Sweetapple, the improvised domestic, took away a flat board with which ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... ingenious spirit, unwearied industry, and a bland atmosphere have made a perpetual garden of the Syrian mountains. Their acclivities sparkle with terraces of corn and fruit. Castle and convent crown their nobler heights, and flat-roofed villages nestle amid groves of mulberry trees. Among these mountains we find several human races, several forms of government, and several schemes of religion, yet everywhere liberty: a proud, feudal aristocracy; a conventual establishment, which in its ramifications recalls the middle ages; ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... for the first time. There came into his eyes a look that made Claude Russell tremble. He again approached an empty chair and was again forestalled by young Brown. With a bitter curse he swung his great open palm around and laid his tormenter flat on the floor, stunned and breathless. A silence fell on the group. It was as if a lion had awakened ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... of mountaineers has long been enclosed within that small flat London district of Soho. Swiss watchmakers, Swiss silver-chasers, Swiss jewellers, Swiss importers of Swiss musical boxes and Swiss toys of various kinds, draw close together there. Swiss professors ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... flat-backed man!" he exclaimed, with a ring of relief. "Been drilled, this man. Gad! He's proud!" added the major, as the new-comer passed Joan ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... Pithecanthropus was "a being human in stature, human in gait, human in all its parts, save its brain." The thigh-bone indicates a height of about 5 feet 7 inches, one inch less than the average height of the men of to-day. The skull-cap indicates a low, flat forehead, beetling brows, and a capacity about two-thirds of the modern size. The remains were found by Dubois, in 1894, in Trinil ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... villainous, and Stirling drove rapidly. Their way led between shadowy colonnades of towering firs, and the fragile, two-seated frame bounced and lurched into and out of deep ruts, and over the split trees that had been laid flat-side downward in the quaggy places—like a field gun going into action was the best comparison Weston could think of. The horses, however, kept their feet, and the wheels held fast. Once, when a jolt nearly pitched him from his seat, ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... the good Raphael's folios are like Falstaff in size, if not in wit, and, when once laid flat-long, require levers to set them up on end again,—let us see if he cannot help us to account for more of the "legalisms" that our Lord Chief Justice and our barrister have "smelt out" in Shakespeare's historical plays. Mr. Rushton quotes the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... dark hair with a few threads of grey, all streaked back flat to her head to please papa; or would she have lovely auburn waves done on a frame, with a curl draped over her forehead? Would her complexion be just as nice, comfortable, motherly sort of complexion, of no particular colour; or would it be pink ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Jinn-kind?" He replied, "I am a mortal and of the noblest-born; withal I am a stranger in the land and I wot not whither I should wend." "Of what country art thou?" asked they, and he answered, "I am from Baghdad." "Up with thee," quoth one of the damsels, "to yonder knoll, then down to the flat on the further side, and thou shalt sight a city whose name is 'Oman,[FN269] whereinto do thou enter." The Caliph did her bidding, and no sooner had the people seen him stripped than they said ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... a refreshing shade. Underneath the trees an immense, flat rock, covered with a snowy table-cloth and trimmed with vines and flowers, gave hint of some of the more substantial pleasures to be looked for later. At a distance gleamed the silvery cascades, their rainbow-tinted spray rising in a perpetual cloud of beauty. ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... Yocupicio, drove a Buick to the sandy, deserted wastes near Sonoyta, just south of the American border where one of the two unidentified Americans delivered a carload of cases securely covered with sheet metal. As soon as the cases were transferred into Rebey's car, he turned back on Sonora's flat, dusty roads, passing Caborca, La Cienega, and turning on the sun-dried rutted road to Ures, which lies parched and dry in the ...
— Secret Armies - The New Technique of Nazi Warfare • John L. Spivak
... am Wash," howled Washington Washington, then tripping on a vine, he fell flat on his face. "It kotched me! It kotched me!" he bellowed, springing up ready ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower
... even the Mediterranean, is big enough for more than a just appreciable tide to be generated in it. The Pacific, the Atlantic, and the Southern Oceans are the great tidal reservoirs, and in them the tides of the earth are generated as low flat humps of gigantic area, though only a few feet high, oscillating up and down in the period of approximately twelve hours. The tides we, and other coast-possessing nations, experience are the overflow or back-wash ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... argued till doomsday had not the Lord again intervened. He "opened Balaam's eyes," so that he also "saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way, and his sword drawn in his hand." Then Balaam "bowed his head, and fell flat on his face," and there he and Neddy laid side by ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... Randy were skating as fast as possible in the direction where they had seen the two girls. But now a crowd of cadets and town folks swept in front of them, and the next instant Randy was hurled flat on his back and went spinning ...
— The Rover Boys on Snowshoe Island - or, The Old Lumberman's Treasure Box • Edward Stratemeyer
... certain tombstone in the London Tract "Hardshell" Baptist graveyard, near Newark, Delaware, will give to the ear placed flat upon it the sound of a ticking like a watch. The London Tract Church, as its name implies, was the worshipping place of certain settlers who either came from London, or chose land owned by a London company. It is a quaint edifice of hard stone, with low-bent bevelled roof, and ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... caroller, and no gardener to grow fragrant flowers for ladies, but a forge-worker with muscles of steel.[8] Among us, as usual, the divergence is less sharply marked; but when Browning calls Byron a 'flat fish', and Arnold sees the poet of Prometheus appropriately pinnacled in the 'intense inane', they are expressing a kindred repugnance to a poetry wanting in intellectual substance and in ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... dear Horace, St. Austin's Church was consecrated yesterday,' were to be seen in fair round hand. No more was visible, for the little girl laughingly laid down her rosy cheek, and all her light wavy curls, flat upon the letter, as Anne advanced and made a stealthy attempt to profit by the intelligence she was sending to her brother. Edward was standing by Elizabeth, reading Mrs. Trimmer's Fabulous Histories, for, though five years old, he made very ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... man were fixed on the girl's body and the traveler felt her thrill of terror. The man lay there for a moment, hands flat on the ground under his chest. Then he ...
— The Inhabited • Richard Wilson
... withered away into claws, and her head was covered with a thick and tangled mat of hair, half dark, half grey, which gave her the look almost of the Fuegian savages who come off from the shore in their flat rafts and clamour to you for "rum" in the Straits of Magellan. Her eyes were intensely bright, and shone like hot coals in her dusky, wrinkled face. It was a raw day, and she came in shivering with the cold. It was pathetic to see how she positively ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... apothecary's house; she buys a "joint" twice a week from the butcher, and is particular to have the "knuckle" thrown in for soups; she wears a sky-blue calico gown, and dresses her hair in three little flat quirls on either side of her head, each one pierced through with a ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... crackling laugh, and held the flageolet like a dirk, flat along the inside of his arm and his fingers straining ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... intense sea-light, while the shadow of the smoke-streamers trembled on the familiar floor, the shoes of fellow-passengers, distinctive now, and in some cases irritating, passed and repassed, accompanied, in the air so tremendously "open," that rendered all voices weak and most remarks rather flat, by fragments of opinion on the run of the ship. Vogelstein by this time had finished his little American story and now definitely judged that Pandora Day was not at all like the heroine. She was of quite ...
— Pandora • Henry James
... arched over, and covered with flag stones, in which, at intervals, are open gratings to give light below; the whole length of which space is occupied by water closets, without doors, and under which are open drains communicating with the street sewers. The building is five stories high, and has a flat roof. The only ventilation is by a window, which opens against a dead wall eight feet distant, and to which rises the vapor from the vault below. There is water on each floor, and gas pipes are laid through the building, so that those who desire ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... 'but little to my advantage. I have just heard that my commission is to extend no further than roofing in the wing that you began, and had I known that before, I would have seen the castle fall flat as Jericho before I would have accepted the superintendence. But I know who I have to thank for ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy |
