"Perpendicular" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all its harmonies in one delicious fugue. No common closet with a vulgar door on hinges, openable all at once, and leaving nothing to be disclosed by degrees, this rare closet had a lock in mid-air, where two perpendicular slides met; the one falling down, and the other pushing up. The upper slide, on being pulled down (leaving the lower a double mystery), revealed deep shelves of pickle-jars, jam- pots, tin canisters, ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... theirs to St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist, who were two eminent patrons of Masonry; and since their time there is represented in every regular and well govern lodge a certain point within a circle embordered by two perpendicular parallel lines, representing St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist; and upon the top rests the Holy Scriptures. The point represents the individual brother; the circle, the boundary-line of his duty beyond which he is never to suffer his passions, interests or prejudices ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... a perfectly straight-stemmed cocoa-palm; they all have an inclination from the perpendicular more or less; perhaps that is why a cyclone has more effect on ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... full of Norway pine seeds sown by my father in 1844, the very year he came to Illinois, a testimony perhaps that the most vigorous pioneers gave at least an occasional thought to beauty. The banks of the mill stream rose into high bluffs too perpendicular to be climbed without skill, and containing caves of which one at least was so black that it could not be explored without the aid of a candle; and there was a deserted limekiln which became associated ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... very clear to me that the insensibility which came upon Glaisher, and in a lesser degree upon Coxwell, when, in 1862, they ascended in a balloon to the height of thirty thousand feet, was due to the extreme speed with which a perpendicular ascent is made. Doing it at an easy gradient and accustoming oneself to the lessened barometric pressure by slow degrees, there are no such dreadful symptoms. At the same great height I found that even ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... lower apartments are consequently extremely gloomy. The upper rooms are the most suitable to dwell in, but visitors frequently find it exceedingly fatiguing to toil up and down the stairs; and some of the stone-paved passages, miscalled streets, are almost perpendicular. Altogether, one needs extraordinary strength in this city of precipices. It is thus very unsuitable to invalids, apart from its variable climate. It is subject to very rapid changes of temperature, warm winds from the south alternating constantly with dry cold winds from the north, ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... and other burrowers began at once to undermine his rocky fortress, while the climbers undertook to scale its perpendicular walls. ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... rises only, a human body would measure in three lengths; and as far as my eye could stretch its wings, now on the left and now on the right side, such did this cornice seem to me. Thereon our feet had not yet moved when I perceived that bank round about, which, being perpendicular, allowed no ascent, to be of white marble and adorned with such carvings, that not Polycletus merely but Nature would be put to ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri
... his felt-hat, his coat, and his vest, and wiping the perspiration from his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt, to indicate his sanguine and ardent temperament, he would thrust his hands deep in the pockets of his trousers, and, standing near me in an attitude of perpendicular solidity, begin a monologue ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... a long lane which has no turning, and at last we got to a small corner shop, below which were two clothes props, one being very much out of the perpendicular, an open piece of ground, numerous bricks in a heap, and a railed round edifice rising calmly, sedately, and diminutively. This was St. Luke's—the shrine we had been looking for, the Mecca we had been in search of. Plenty of breathing space has the church now: on three of ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... various heights, rising to the top of the tower. Each of these stories or galleries has four windows, facing directly to the points of the compass, and rising of course regularly above each other. These four perpendicular ranges of windows admitted air, and, the fire being kindled, heat, or smoke at least, to each of the galleries. The access from gallery to gallery is equally primitive. A path, on the principle of an inclined plane, turns round and round the building like a screw, and gives ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... footprints of the two men were here very clearly impressed in the thin but soft soil, and they all took care not to trample on the tracks. They followed the prints closely, and found that they led straight to the edge of a cliff forming a sheer precipice, almost perpendicular, at the foot of which the sea, some two hundred feet below, ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... and curving into a bay, lie Algeciras, and the little Spanish town of Saint Roque, where the Spanish lines were planted during the siege.[485] From Europa Point the eastern frontier of Gibraltar runs pretty close to the sea, and arises in a perpendicular face, and it is called the back of the rock. No thought could be entertained of attacking it, although every means were used to make the assault as general as possible. The efforts sustained by such extraordinary means as the floating batteries ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... down a perpendicular procession on the page he every now and then mentally returned the salute of the one little musketeer of the same height as the steamboat's chimneys, whether the Attention he challenged was that of the Continentals, the Louisiana Grays, Orleans Cadets, Crescent Blues or some other body of ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... placing the magnet perpendicular to the plane of the loop, it may be placed parallel to its plane. Fig. 14d shows the magnet ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... The inspector pulled off the mattresses, and out from under each there leapt a dozen rats, which, if I may be believed, made for the walls and ran straight up them, disappearing in the rafter-holes at the top. The sight of countless rats hurrying up perpendicular walls may be familiar to some people, but I venture to call it an amazing spectacle, worthy of record. Then came the opening of one or two travelling-trunks. The inspector ran his hand through the clothes which lay therein, and out jumped ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... moment, his legs were attempting to go under the ice. Adopting, therefore, his old plan and keeping his hands on the edge of the ice, he first of all paddled backwards with his legs until he got himself into a quite perpendicular position, so that when he should make the spring there would be no fear of retarding his action by scraping against the ice with his chest. While in this position he let himself sink to the very lips—nay, even lower—and then, acting with arms and legs at the same moment, he shot himself ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... narrow banks confining the river. Presently the sun, red as a glowing coal, dipped behind a jagged mountain peak, and all the life and light deserted the face of nature. Straightway there came upon the valley something dark and threatening—sullen, terrible, full of spectral weapons. The perpendicular cliffs of the barren western mountains seemed like the teeth of a monster lurking to snatch a victim and drag him down into the maw of the deep valley, black with its moaning forests. The pine trees were rows of knife-blades whispering: "Fall upon us!" ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... grass and cabbages. A steep slope leads up to the little church, which stands back, and a tiny avenue of limes leads up to it from the lichgate. The tower is battlemented, and the church must have been partly rebuilt, for parts of it are early English and the rest late Perpendicular. Within are slender clustered columns, supporting wide arches, and different designs are sculptured on the sides of ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... the definitions, as we say, in geometry, could say nothing intelligible to the finite understanding. The speeches were as "incoherent" as the New York World proved the platform to be. They all contained doctrines, however, in perpendicular antagonism to the financial doctrines of the St. Louis convention. When the inflationists learn what money is—what its office, its function is—they may be able to resume the discussion of finance with their opponents ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... snow, very much as they coast at the garden Beaujon, from top to bottom of the Montagnes Russes, and I followed their example. This they called "sledding." The general-in-chief also descended in this manner an almost perpendicular glacier. His guide was a young countryman, active and courageous, to whom the First Consul promised a sufficiency for the rest of his days. Some young soldiers who had wandered off into the snow were found, almost ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... a long neck has the neck of the bonnet descending, the neck of the dress rising, and filling more or less of the intermediate space. One having a short neck has the whole bonnet short and close in the perpendicular direction, and the neck of the dress ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... a guttural exclamation he arose and moved toward it, followed by his two companions. They had taken scarcely a step, when they saw the boat slide swiftly forward several feet, and then suddenly rising to the perpendicular position, whisk off through the bush at a still more rapid rate. Two twinkling moccasins, that looked as if they were its support, as they doubled over each other, fully explained to the Shawnees the cause of this ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... north and south, its breadth at the bottom does not apparently exceed one hundred or two hundred feet, whilst the separation of the outer edges is from two to three miles. I am certain that in perpendicular depth it exceeds three thousand feet. The slopes from the edges were so steep and covered with loose stones that any attempt to descend even on foot was impracticable. From either side of this abyss, smaller ravines of similar character diverged, the distance between which seldom ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... he slid aside, and I stepped out on deck. I was still weak from my prolonged immersion. A puff of wind caught me,—and I staggered across the moving deck to a corner of the cabin, to which I clung for support. The schooner, heeled over far out from the perpendicular, was bowing and plunging into the long Pacific roll. If she were heading south-west as Johnson had said, the wind, then, I calculated, was blowing nearly from the south. The fog was gone, and in its place the sun sparkled crisply ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... whole of this wing of the building. It must be equally clear that it looks out on a trim mown lawn, through three quadrangular windows with stone mullions, each window divided into a larger portion at the bottom, and a smaller portion at the top, and each portion again divided into five by perpendicular stone supporters. There may be windows which give a better light than such as these, and it may be, as my utilitarian friend observes, that the giving of light is the desired object of a window. I will not argue the point with him. Indeed I cannot. But I shall not the less ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... stood up like little rows of mushrooms, and the lid was raised. I saw the light, of which I thought I had seen my last, once more; but the axis of vision remained fixed. As I was reduced to the cataleptic state in a position nearly perpendicular, I continued looking straight before me, and thus my gaze was now fixed upon the ceiling. I saw the face of Carmaignac leaning over me with a curious frown. It seemed to me that there was no recognition in his eyes. Oh, Heaven! that I could have uttered were it but one cry! I ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... position than it was knocked (p. 057) out again almost immediately. One morning, after a wild night of shelling by the enemy, on going to ascertain the damage, we found one gun with its barrel buried deep in the ground, the trail standing perpendicular pointing towards the sky; another completely turned over on its back pointing in the opposite direction, while a third had been blown right out of the shell hole in which it had been placed, and hurled a considerable distance ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... Ngakura's to the surface at intervals sufficiently near together to keep the breath in them. But the air was mostly water, what with flying spray and sheeted rain that poured along at right angles to the perpendicular. ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... this method of etheric telegraphy, due to Marconi himself, is the suspension of a perpendicular wire at each terminus, its length twenty feet for stations a mile apart, forty feet for four miles, and so on, the telegraphic distance increasing as the square of the length of suspended wire. In the Kingstown regatta, July, 1898, Marconi sent from a yacht under full steam a report ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... sun, already declining towards the west, looks the cathedral almost full in the face. Its rays, growing more and more horizontal, withdraw slowly from the pavement of the square, and mount up the perpendicular facade, whose thousand bosses in high relief they cause to start out from the shadows, while the great central rose window flames like the eye of a cyclops, inflamed with the reflections ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... rocky roof were not as fine as we expected; but Miss N. pronounced the water "the prettiest blue that ever was," and she is an authority upon color. While at Capri we ascended to the villa of Tiberius, on the edge of a perpendicular cliff nearly two thousand feet high. It was from this rock that ruler was wont to throw his victims into the sea. He found they never troubled him again. And now I write amid the orange groves of Sorrento, where we have been ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... fine figure, swarthy, and stern in aspect; and he showed in profile a facial angle so slightly inclined as to be almost perpendicular. He wore a short jacket of brown corduroy, newer than the remainder of his suit, which was a fustian waistcoat with white horn buttons, breeches of the same, tanned leggings, and a straw hat overlaid with black glazed canvas. At his back ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... took good care to turn his eyes another way; and, as he wore the helmet of invisibility, the Gorgons knew not in what direction to follow him; nor did he fail to make the best use of the winged slippers, by soaring upward a perpendicular mile or so. At that height, when the screams of those abominable creatures sounded faintly beneath him, he made a straight course for the island of Seriphus, in order to carry ...
— The Gorgon's Head - (From: "A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... descending, the other rising, the valley narrows to a gorge. In its depths, a hundred and fifty feet or more below, the torrent is noisily roaring, and at the other side, half way up, the carriage-road is built out from the almost perpendicular wall of the Gourzy. We draw nearer, and at length I cross, high above the stream, by a rude wooden bridge, and rejoin the main road. The slope I have quitted steepens now into a precipice, and the two sides of ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... travelled on my nom de guerre enough to hurt. Such was the reminiscence I was moved to contribute, Mr. Chairman. In my enthusiasm I may have exaggerated the details a little, but you will easily forgive me that fault, since I believe it is the first time I have ever deflected from perpendicular fact on ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... stayed at school at least during that first day of his trousered life. For when the Maestro, later in the forenoon paid a visit to the annex, he found the Assistant in charge standing disconcerted before the urchin who, with eyes indignant and hair perpendicular upon the top of his head, was evidently holding to his side of the argument ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... words the body of the Chaldean, which had been bent backward, returned to a perpendicular position. On his face appeared a slight flush, and his upraised hands dropped. He sighed, rubbed his eyes like a man roused from sleep, looked at the priests, and said after a ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... is the largest structure of any kind ever erected by the hand of man. Its original dimensions at the base were 764 feet square, and its perpendicular height in the highest point 488 feet; it covers four acres, one rood and twenty-two perches of ground and has been estimated by an eminent English architect to have cost not less than 30,000,000 pounds, which in United ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... thinking that what he had spoken in jest would afterward prove true. At a late hour the company began to disperse, Miss Warner keeping a watchful eye upon her pupils, lest some lawless collegiate should relieve her from the trouble of seeing them safely home. This perpendicular maiden had lived forty years on this mundane sphere without ever having had an offer, and she had come to think of gentlemen as a race of intruding bipeds which the world would be much better without. However, if there were any of the species which she could ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... Branthwaite, the wit and sage of Wythburn, once a weaver, but living now on the husbandings of earlier life. He was tall and slight, and somewhat bent with age. He was dressed in a long brown sack coat, belted at the waist, below which were pockets cut perpendicular at the side. Ribbed worsted stockings and heavy shoes made up, with the greater garment, the sum of his visible attire. Old Matthew had a vast reputation for wise saws and proverbs; his speech seemed to be made of little ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... represent the premises, and at the angles formed with them by the slanting or by the perpendicular lines the middle term occurs. The schema of Figure IV. resembles Z, the last letter of the alphabet: this helps one to remember it in contrast with Figure I., which is thereby also remembered. Figures II. and III. seem ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... during the fine weather it makes a collection of honey intended to be absorbed by its own larvae, if it had not the misfortune to be watched by one of these intriguing Coleoptera. Wherever in Provence there is a perpendicular wall, natural or artificial, a little cliff, a sloping ditch, or the wall of one of those caves which the people of the country use for putting their tools in, the Anthophora hollows out galleries, at the bottom of which ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... valley below deceives even more strangely. It looks as if you could drive a golf ball straight from the hill on to the green; you may speculate as to the beauty of the arc curved in the sunlight, and the deadness with which the ball would lie after an absolutely perpendicular drop—to the extreme danger of those disinterested in the experiment. But the hill is not really steep enough. The contours crowd on the map, but they show that you would have to drive nearly a quarter ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... over the perpendicular floor of the carriage, and seeing the tiger positively dead he sprang out with great facility, and appeared to have received no other injury than certain indications of culinary luxuries which besprinkled his habit so plentifully as to give his tailor ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... a pent-up earthquake, boom out of them across the glassy swell. Look at those blasts of delicate vapour that shoot up from hidden rifts, and hang a moment, and vanish; and those green columns of wave which rush mast-high up the perpendicular walls, and then fall back and outward in a waterfall of foam, lacing the black rocks with a thousand snowy streams. There they fall, and leap, and fall again. And so they did yesterday, and the day before; and so they did centuries ago, ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... my anxiety to reach a place which promised us plenty and repose, before I should be reduced to a state which would render me altogether unable to perform the journey. Accordingly we now commenced it by descending the almost perpendicular side of a steep and narrow gorge, bristling with a thick growth of reeds. Here there was but one mode for us to adopt. We seated ourselves upon the ground, and guided our descent by catching at the canes in our path. This velocity with which we thus slid down the side of the ravine soon brought ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... square base 110 fathoms; the fronts are equilateral triangles, and therefore the superficies of the base is 12100 square fathoms; the perpendicular height, 77-3/4 fathoms; the solid contents, 313590 cubical fathoms. A hundred thousand men were constantly employed about this work, and were relieved every three months by the same number. Ten complete years were spent ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... several occasions when his services had been required, he had accompanied one of the under-viewers on his visits through the mines. He thus traversed the main gallery, the side walks, and the old, or abandoned works. In the latter the roof was propped up by perpendicular posts and horizontal beams. In many places the beams were so bent by the weight of the superincumbent earth, that it appeared they must before long give way. In many places they had to creep on hands and knees ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston
... requisite admission of air, or to submit to sitting with a window or door partly open. Any imperfect action of the chimney, or descending current, is announced by the escape of smoke into the room, and is frequently caused by the flue being too large, or not sufficiently perpendicular and regular in its construction. When there is no fire, the chimneys also generally act as ventilators; and in summer there is often a very powerful current up them, in consequence of the roof and chimney-pots being heated by the sun, and thus accelerating the ascent of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... bulls had taken their fill, as the condition of the neighbouring bushes showed, but the wounded one had eaten nothing. He had spent the night leaning against a good-sized tree, which his weight had pushed out of the perpendicular. They had not long left this place, and could not be very far ahead, especially as the wounded bull was now again so stiff after his night's rest that for the first few miles the other two had been obliged to support him. But elephants go very quick, even when they seem to be travelling ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... the ground not three feet off to his right, and tickling himself with the thought, with the lucky chance thus offered of giving his work the finishing touch in tip-top style, he eagerly reached out to gather it up; but before he could do so and regain his perpendicular, the wary savage, snatching at his opportunity, gave in his turn a Titanic flounce, which sent the already uplifted weapon with a side-long fling into the air, and brought his foe the second time to the earth. ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... too, of all that poor girl's hopes in this world. When you stretch yourself on the edge of those cliffs and look down over the abyss on the sea below it seems as though the rocks were so absolutely perpendicular, that a stone dropped with an extended hand would fall amidst the waves. But in such measurement the eye deceives itself, for the rocks in truth slant down; and the young man, as he fell, struck them again and again; and at last it was a broken ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... the arms, and taking no notice of the angry movement that I cannot restrain, bundle me down the hatchway. The hatchway stair in reality, I remark, is a perpendicular iron ladder, at the bottom of which, to right and left, are some cabins, and forward, the ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... Face, then, was a work of Nature in her mood of majestic playfulness, formed on the perpendicular side of a mountain by some immense rocks, which had been thrown together in such a position as, when viewed at a proper distance, precisely to resemble the features of the human countenance. It seemed as if an enormous giant, or a Titan, had sculptured ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... first, the Box Canyon, and, several miles below, the White Horse. The Box Canyon was adequately named. It was a box, a trap. Once in it, the only way out was through. On either side arose perpendicular walls of rock. The river narrowed to a fraction of its width and roared through this gloomy passage in a madness of motion that heaped the water in the center into a ridge fully eight feet higher than ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... chin had weakly receded, as it often does in this type, Sir Isaac would have had a face like a spear-head, like a ram of which the sharp point was the top of his nose; but Sir Isaac's chin was square, and the wall of it perpendicular. ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... hundred feet lower than those at the head-waters of the Missouri, are not reached by the heated Wind River, and are impassable in winter. Even Cadotte's Pass, through which Governor Stevens located the line of the proposed road, is outside of the heat stream, so sharp and perpendicular ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... was closed then and there. My, but that night didn't we make the sand fly from the boat! By morning we could begin to see the end of the job. Then, while busy hands began to cut a landing on the perpendicular sandy bank of the Iowa side, others were preparing sweeps. All ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... is not agreeable. The neck, long and twisted, suggests an heroic ostrich in a Roman breastplate. The attitude, too, is ungraceful. The hero sits with his knees projecting beyond the perpendicular, so that his legs seem to be doubling under him, a position ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... of these belts, an India rubber one, 120 feet long, connects a fifth story press on Nassau street with the main shafting on Spruce street, across the intervening yards, and another of leather, on Beekman street, 140 feet, perfectly perpendicular, connects the sub-cellar and the attic. Some of the shafting passes under and across the streets. Over fifty newspapers and literary papers, besides magazines and books innumerable, are ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... visibly in the form of a cross, though with its arms clipped down to the trunk, with a separate chancel, with a large square short tower, and with a bell-shaped spire, covered with lead and irregular in its proportions. Who does not know the low porch, the perpendicular Gothic window, the flat-roofed aisles, and the noble old grey tower of such a church as this? As regards its interior, it was dusty; it was blocked up with high-backed ugly pews; the gallery in which the children sat at the end of the church, and in which two ancient musicians blew their ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... Vetzlar Eye-pieces, as exhibited at the Academy of Sciences in Paris. The Lenses of these Eye-pieces are so constructed that the rays of light fall nearly perpendicular to the surface of various lenses, by which the aberration is completely removed; and a telescope so fitted gives one-third more magnifying power and light than could be obtained by the old Eye-pieces. Prices of the various sizes ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853 • Various
... a young Englishman describe him as "looking like a wooden man just coming into life," so that he was enabled to recognize him now. He did look something like a wooden man, in that the long, lean face, of the tone of parchment, was marked by the few, deep, almost perpendicular folds that give all the expression there is to a Swiss or German medieval statue of a saint or warrior in painted oak. One could see it was a face that rarely smiled, though there was plenty of life in the deep-set, ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... top. Tom arrived just in time to see his hounds on the rails, with poor Reynard dead in their midst and the express train from Southampton speeding up the hill at fifty miles an hour. He crammed his horse over the great post and rails, down the almost perpendicular side of the cutting, whipped the hounds off, and, as the train rushed screaming by, rode out from under the very wheels of the engine and up the farther bank with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... interest except the University. Between the wall and the sea runs the magnificent Marina, a more beautiful promenade than even the Villa Reale of Naples, having on the right the low but picturesque headland of Bagaria, while on the left rise the all but perpendicular rocks of Monte Pellegrino, once the impregnable mountain-throne of Hamilcar Barcas, and later the spot where in a rude cavern, now sheeted with marble and jasper, "from all the youth of Sicily, Saint Rosalie ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... perpendiculars to the same straight line are parallel." The evidence given is: "If they are not parallel, they will, if sufficiently produced, meet at some point, which is impossible, because from a given point without a straight line but one perpendicular can be drawn." Is this evidence sufficient to constitute proof? Does it convince you? ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon
... apparently he intended it only as a passage-way for the river, the cut being the exact width of the river as it flows through. The greater part of the two walls stand two hundred and fifty feet high, above the river level, perpendicular to the earth's plane, facing each other, the river between them at the base. Many names had been cut in the surface of the rock, by ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... the circumstances. He wore a short grey jacket and a grey cap. In the light of the dawn, growing more limpid rather than brighter, Powell noticed the slightly sunken cheeks under the trimmed beard, the perpendicular fold on the forehead, something hard and set ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... of the most strenuous days I ever had in the islands, as the road—and what a road!—constantly led up and down the steepest slopes. It seemed to me we were climbing perpendicular mountains all day long, and I had many an opportunity of admiring the agility of my companions. I am a fair walker myself, but I had to crawl on my hands and knees in many spots where they jumped from a stone to a ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... ground. It was at this time dark, brown, and ugly, but had originally been formed of blooming olive and laurel branches, brought from beyond the mountains. The house was situated in a narrow gorge, whose rocky walls rose to a perpendicular height, naked and black, while round their summits clouds often hung, looking like white living figures. Not a singing bird was ever heard there, neither did men dance to the sound of the pipe. The spot was one sacred to olden times; even its name recalled a memory of the days when it was called ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... as he unfolded his long angles to a perpendicular right line—"I got good hopes o' goin' to a place where there's no admittance for swearers. Ain't ashamed to say I repented eight or ten months ago. Guarantee you fellers ain't heard no language out o' my mouth since I set down here. Nor 'on't—never again. Well, take care ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... arranged that Rectus was to go first. This did not look very brave on my part, but I felt that I wanted to be under him, while he was climbing, so that I could break his fall if he should slip down. It would not be exactly a perpendicular fall, for the wall slanted a little, but it would be bad enough. However, I had climbed up worse places than that, and Rectus was very nimble; so I felt there was no ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... the Sierra Nevada chain of mountains. For seven miles of the main valley, which varies in width from three quarters of a mile to a mile and a half, the walls on either side are from two thousand to nearly five thousand feet above the road, and are nearly perpendicular. From these walls, rocky splinters a thousand feet in height start up, and every winter drop a few hundred tons of granite, to adorn the base of the rampart with ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... another island while the earth was in its throes, green as a shattered emerald by day, flaming with the long torches of gigantic fireflies by night; St. Vincent with its smoking volcanoes and rich plantations; Martinique, that bit of old France, with its almost perpendicular flights of street-steps cut in the rock, lined with ancient houses; beautiful honey-coloured women always passing up and down with tall jars or baskets on their stately heads; Dominica, with its rugged mountains, ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... scream would do it; but in that event when Cutty arrived there would be no Kitty Conover. Something that would sound unusual to Cutty and accidental to Karlov. She hit upon it. She seized a plank from her barricade, raised it to a perpendicular position, then flung it down violently. Would Cutty hear and comprehend that she was warning him? As a matter of fact, Cutty never heard the crash, for at that particular minute he was standing up to get the kinks out of ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... the bowels of the mountain, and was wide and roomy. Sea-birds in great numbers hovered around its entrance, finding it, no doubt, an ideal nesting-place. It appeared quite inaccessible, for even with a perfect calm the swell dashed against the perpendicular face of the cliff beneath with a force that would have instantly destroyed any vessel unfortunate enough to get ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... cuts into beautiful red and green marble; and which also carries a very rich soil because it is full of magnesia. If you go up those hills, you get a glorious view—the mountains sweeping round you where you stand, up to the top of Lochnagar, with its bleak walls a thousand feet perpendicular, and gullies into which the sun never shines, and round to the dark fir forests of the Ballochbuie. That is the arc of the bow; and the cord of the bow is the silver Dee, more than a thousand feet below you; and in the centre of the cord, where the arrow would be fitted in, stands Balmoral, ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... fill of this the guide takes you and leads you—you still stepping lightly to avoid starting anything—to a spot from which he points out to you, riven into the face of a vast perpendicular chasm above a cave like a monstrous door, a tremendous and perfect figure seven—the house number of the Almighty Himself. By this I mean no irreverence. If ever Jehovah chose an earthly abiding-place, surely ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... presently brought out a ladder, which he carried down to the riverside, and left there. Then he returned to the tool-house, and came back bearing an armful of planks, each perhaps a foot wide by five or six feet long. Now he raised his ladder to the perpendicular, and let it descend before him, so that, one extremity resting upon the nearer bank, one attained the further, and it spanned the flood. Finally he laid a plank lengthwise upon the hithermost rungs, and advanced to the end of ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... equator; a second, which stood crosswise on the first, in a north and south plane, the Father took for a meridian; but it could be turned round on its axis; a third stood in the meridian plane with its axis perpendicular, and seemed to stand for a vertical circle; but this also could be turned round so as to show any vertical whatever. Moreover all these were graduated, and the degrees marked by prominent studs of iron, so that in the night the graduation could be read by the touch without ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... thought myself victorious, the enemy attacked my rear, and having got a reasonably good mouthful out of it, was fully prepared to take another before I was rescued. Egad, I thought for a time the beast had devoured my entire centre of gravity, and that I should never go on a steady perpendicular again." "Upon my word," said Sir Jonah Barrington, to whom Curran related this story, "the mastiff may have left you your centre, but he could not have left much gravity behind him, among ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... and son are shown by a perpendicular line. The king's name in italics signifies that he died ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... over the South Magnetic Pole—at least, as closely as that often elusive spot could be pinpointed for any length of time. It is cheaper in the long run if an interstellar vessel moves parallel with, not perpendicular to, the magnetic "lines of force" of a planet's gravitational field. Taking off "across the grain" can be done, but the power consumption is much greater. Taking off "with the grain" is ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... volume might be written on the symbolic import of the primary relations and dimensions of space—long, broad, deep, or depth; surface; upper, under, above and below, right, left, horizontal, perpendicular, oblique:—and then the order of causation, or that which gives intelligibility, and the reverse order of effects, or that which gives the conditions of actual existence! Without the higher the lower would want its intelligibility: without the lower the higher could not have existed. ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... dropped the match, and trod it out. Then he put the candle away from him on the table, so that he could see me, and sat with his arms folded on the table and looked at me. I made out that I was fastened to a stout perpendicular ladder a few inches from the wall,—a fixture there,—the means of ascent to the ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... shrubs grow in the richest way down to the water's edge. The trees are numerous, and luxuriant rather than large; oaks predominate; we should say few of them are a hundred years old. Ivy and honeysuckle grow in profusion; for several miles along the coast, near Largs, there is a perpendicular wall of rock from fifty to one hundred feet in height, which follows the windings of the shore at a distance of one hundred and fifty yards from the water, enclosing between itself and the sea a long ribbon of fine soil, on which shrubs, flowers, and fruit grow luxuriantly; ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... broad. It is paved with great lozenge-shaped slabs of marble, stained in delicate pinks and greys with lichens; and a marble balustrade borders it, overgrown, the columns half uprooted and twisted from the perpendicular, by an aged wistaria-vine, with a trunk as stout as a tree's. Seated there, one can look off over miles of richly-timbered country, dotted with white-walled villages, and traversed by the Nive and the Adour, to the wry masses of the ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... degrees 54 minutes West.) the Variation of the Compass 15 degrees 30 minutes West, decreasing as he says, which I much doubt;* (* Cook was right: the variation was increasing.) neither does this Variation agree with our own Observations. The Tides flow full, and Change North and South, and rise Perpendicular 7 feet at Spring Tides and 4 feet at Niep tides. We found the North point of the Diping Needle, belonging to the Royal Society, to Dip 77 degrees 18 minutes. The Refreshments for Shipping to be got at this place are Wine, Water, Fruit of Several Sorts, ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... Many Eyes, standing against the perpendicular back ledge of the Council Rock, and with her heart full of love for the girls who could get so much fun out of a kite, wished success to their cause with all her soul. Then she stood up in the center of the rock and sent forth the clear call, the summons for ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... stick across the top of the other so as to form a rough T, and was now busy in fitting a smaller stick into the angle between them, by manipulating which, the cross one could be either cocked up or depressed to any extent. He had cut notches, too, in the perpendicular stick, so that, by the aid of the small prop, the cross one could be kept in any position for an ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... the door was partly opened, and a preoccupied face, with perpendicular lines between the keen gray eyes, was thrust out impatiently, ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... condition, at an expense of two hundred pounds. "More than that sum," observes the Rev. Mr. Nightingale, "I should conceive would now be required to repair this venerable part of St. Saviour's Church in such a manner as is absolutely necessary. The pillars have in a great degree lost their perpendicular position: the mouldings and mullions of the windows are distorted in the most shameful manner; the walls are rapidly hastening to their final decay; and the whole place appears to be destined to become once more the resort of hogs and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... the same, and his Sonne in Law Mortimer, and old Northumberland, and the sprightly Scot of Scots, Dowglas, that runnes a Horse-backe vp a Hill perpendicular ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... not only the possibility, but the certainty of their existence in every imaginable form, in all instruments, must be contemplated. Human hands or machines never formed a circle, drew a straight line, or executed a perpendicular, nor ever placed an instrument in perfect adjustment, unless accidentally, and then only ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... across them with the ease of a chamois, till he came to a point where there was a declivity running sheer down to invisible depths, from whence came the rumbling echo of falling water. In this almost perpendicular wall of rock were a few ledges, like the precarious rungs of a broken ladder, and down these he prepared to go. Clinging at first to the topmost edge of the precipice, he let himself down warily inch by inch till his figure entirely disappeared, sunken, as it were in darkness. As he vanished there ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... paper as this. Those on the Boyne, such as Trim, for strong building and extent, excel in many ways. Carlingford, Carrickfergus, and Dunluce have by their size and picturesque situations ever appealed to visitors. They are each built on rocks jutting into the sea, Dunluce on a great perpendicular height, the Atlantic dashing below. Dunamace, near Maryborough, in the O'More country, appears like Cashel, but is entirely military. The famed walled cities of Kells, in Kilkenny, and Fore, in Westmeath, are remarkable. Each has an abbey, many towers, gates, and stout bastions. ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... remember the entrance to the valley of Cluse, from the plain of Bonneville, on the road from Geneva to Chamouni. They remember that immediately after entering it they find a great precipice on their left, not less than two thousand feet in perpendicular height. That precipice is formed by beds of limestone bent like a rainbow, as in Fig. 10. Their edges constitute the cliff; the flat arch which they form with their backs is covered with pine forests and meadows, extending for three or four ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... English ship had hovered off the coast, refusing communication with the shore. Bothwell, again, now desperate, may have lately been nearer home than was known; finally, Fastcastle, the isolated eyrie on its perpendicular rock above the Northern Sea, may have been at Gowrie's disposal. I am disinclined to conjecture, being only certain that a young man with Gowrie's past—'Italianate,' and of dubious religion—was more apt to form a wild and daring plot than was his canny senior, the King of Scots. But that a ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... there are certain points to be noted as each of them takes his place at the bat. First, his position and manner of holding his bat should be observed. If he carries it over his shoulder and in an almost perpendicular position, the chances are that he is naturally a high ball hitter and is looking for that kind of a pitch, because that is the position of the bat from which a high ball is most easily hit. If, on the contrary, he carries his bat in a more nearly horizontal ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... present cathedral is attributed to Bishop Clement, originally a monk, who received the tonsure from St. Dominic himself. The cathedral which he has left has since his day been extended both to east and westward; and what he built he joined on to the more ancient square and perpendicular tower. The cathedral consists of an aisled, eight-bayed nave (130 by 58 feet, and 50 feet high), an aisleless choir (80 by 30 feet), with a chapter-house, sacristy, or lady chapel, to the north. The nave is almost ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... The head must be thrown well back while the body is kept perfectly still. Then take a deep inhalation, bringing the head well forward, as if to look at the feet. Simultaneously with this movement draw hands toward the head. These combined movements will cause the body to sink, and thus assume a perpendicular ...
— Swimming Scientifically Taught - A Practical Manual for Young and Old • Frank Eugen Dalton and Louis C. Dalton
... which you catch glimpses as the road winds, fishermen no larger than sea-mews in their boats, lying at anchor, which look like nests. Then the road descends, follows a rapid downward slope along the base of cliffs and headlands almost perpendicular. The cool breeze from the water reaches you there, blends with the thousand little bells on the harnesses, while at the right, on the mountain-side, the pines and green oaks rise tier above tier, with gnarled roots ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... Take my word for it, my worthy Macedonian, you will die any death but a horizontal one—it's veracity I'm telling you. Yet there is some comfort for you too—some comfort, I say again; for you who never lived one upright hour will die an upright death. A certain official will erect a perpendicular with you; but for that touck of Mathematics you must go to the hangman, at whose hands you will have to receive the rites of your church, you monstrous bog-trotting Gorgon. Mine a trade! Shades of Academus, ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... different articles of furniture in the most artistic manner, but everything would be clean, and there would be nothing left crooked. If a chair was to be placed, it would be parallel to something; she was exceedingly sensitive to a line out of the perpendicular, and could detect the slightest deviation from that rule. She had also a sensitive eye in the matter of color, and felt any lack of harmony in the colors worn ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... look tolerably well from the sea, especially if situated actually upon the margin of the water. The town represented a front of about a mile, less than five feet above the level of the sea, bordered by a masonry quay perpendicular to the surface, from which several wooden jetties of inferior and very recent ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... shone more brilliantly. The huge chasms seemed bottomless and blacker than midnight. Gradually separate mountains appeared. What seemed like expanses of snow and immense glaciers streaming down their sides sparkled with great brilliancy in the perpendicular rays of the sun. Our motion had now assumed the aspect of falling. We seemed to be dropping from an immeasurable height and with an inconceivable velocity, straight down upon those ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... for our animals, we should find clear cool springs, instead of the warm water of the Platte. On our arrival, we found the bed of a stream fifty to one hundred feet wide, sunk some thirty feet below the level of the prairie, with perpendicular banks, bordered by a fringe of green cottonwood, but not a drop of water. There were several small forks to the stream, all in the same condition. With the exception of the Platte bottom, the country seemed to be of a clay formation, dry, and ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... island of ice, which we were steering directly for, till we were less than a mile from it. I judged it to be about 50 feet high, and half a mile in circuit. It was flat at top, and its sides rose in a perpendicular direction, against which the sea broke exceedingly high. Captain Furneaux at first took this ice for land, and hauled off from it, until called back by signal. As the weather was foggy, it was necessary to proceed with ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... would give a white man the cholera. They ought to pay his passage, as we do with such critters, tell him his place is taken in the mail coach, and if he is found here after twenty-four hours, they'd make a carpenter's plumb-bob of him, and hang him outside the church steeple, to try if it was perpendicular. He almost always gives judgment for plaintiff, and if the poor defendant has an offset, he makes him sue it, so that it grinds a grist both ways for him, like the upper ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... they halted, is one of the highest points in the range, and hangs over the mud houses of the town; this point stands at the south extremity of the recess, which the hills here form, and is about four hundred feet high; the sides are nearly perpendicular, and it is detached from the other hills by a chasm. On the approach of the Tuaricks, the whole population flock to the top of these heights, with all their property, and make the best defence they can. The interior of some of the houses is neat and tidy; the men are generally ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish |
