"Plain" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... middle of February. The roofs of Hampstead Garden Suburb lay in a tremulous haze. It was too hot to walk. A dog barked, barked, barked down in the hollow. The liquid shadows went over the plain. ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... arrived, and that he seemed much excited over it. He would have said more, but Dorinda had pounced on him and sent him out to shut up the chickens, which gave him the excuse to play truant and take his evening's trip to the post-office. It was plain that the Coltons HAD arrived. Very likely the stout man with the yachting cap was the mighty "Big Jim" himself. Well, I didn't envy him in his present situation. He had my ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... irritably. "Clear the room, Crampton. You know that I hate to have a parcel of women round me.—There is no need for you to go, madam"—with an attempt at civility as Olivia was about to withdraw at this plain speaking. "Give the lady a ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... like Habakkuk's gospel message—"The just shall live by his faith"—be written large and plain so that even a cursory glance may take it in. Let no one ascribe to George Muller such a miraculous gift of faith as lifted him above common believers and out of the reach of the temptations and infirmities to which all fallible souls are exposed. He was constantly liable ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... Kybird catching his eye, walked over and inspected the contents of the window. Sheath-knives, belts, tobacco-boxes, and watches were displayed alluringly behind the glass, sheltered from the sun by a row of cheap clothing dangling from short poles over the shop front. All the goods were marked in plain figures in reduced circumstances, Mr. Kybird giving a soaring imagination play in the first marking, and a good business faculty ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... imitate them, and out-herod Herod, but we are never like them. We send to Paris for our clothes, and borrow their newest words—for they are ever inventing some cant phrase to startle dulness—and we make our language a foreign farrago. Why, here is even plain John Evelyn, that most pious of pedants, pleading for the enlistment of a troop of Gallic substantives and adjectives to ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... and strategical advantages of its position. The river Jumna, which washes the walls of its fort, was the natural highway for the traffic of the rich delta of Bengal to the heart of India, and it formed, moreover, from very ancient times, the frontier defence of the Aryan stock settled in the plain between the Ganges and the Jumna against their western neighbours, hereditary freebooters who occupied the highlands of Central India. No place was better fitted for both an emporium and a frontier ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... location in the coastal plain -2 m highest point: Natural resources: timber, hydropower, fish, kaolin, shrimp, bauxite, gold, and small amounts of nickel, copper, ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... moon upon the sandy ocean, where the strong simoom had rippled the surface into waves and ever-varying undulations. He lived in the Eastern day; he worshiped its marvelous glory. He rejoiced in the grandeur of the storms when they rolled across the vast plain, and tossed the sand upward till it looked like a dry red fog or a solid death-dealing vapor; and as the night came on he welcomed it with ecstasy, grateful for the blessed coolness of the light of the stars. His ears listened to the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... as civilly as I generally speak to people older than myself, "your boat has gone, that is plain enough. I suppose, when your family came from the light-house, they thought you had gone home, and so ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... account for nature's forming him so ugly. "Nature was not to blame," said he; "for when I was two months old, I was considered the handsomest child in the neighborhood, but my nurse one day swapped me away for another boy just to please a friend, whose child was rather plain looking." ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... mountain had gradually emerged from the depths of the Pacific, through the action of the subterranean fires, but for ages back the volcano had been a peaceful mountain, and the filled-up crater, an island rising out of the liquid plain. Then soil formed. The vegetable kingdom took possession of this new land. Several whalers landed domestic animals there in passing; goats and pigs, which multiplied and ran wild, and the three kingdoms of nature were now displayed on this island, ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... old-fashioned Dutch figures stood on the mantelpiece on each side of a cheap little clock that seemed to tick at him almost resentfully. The walls were tinted green and bore no pictures or decoration of any sort. There was a plain white tablecloth on the table, and in the middle stood a handleless jug filled with pink and white wild roses, freshly gathered. There was no carpet. The floor was ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... of your Lordship's cathedral you will fill the first time, according to the apostolic privilege which your Lordship holds, and then the king begins to present. I am very plain in this, for all I wish is to know what and how many have been filled by you and how many remain to be filled, in order that we may agree on this, as well as on provision for the beneficed curacies and the administration of religious instruction, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume VIII (of 55), 1591-1593 • Emma Helen Blair
... might pass under the yoke as well as our foreign enemies. Young is driven out of all patience by the sight of 'fern, ling, and other trumpery' usurping the place of possible arable fields.[68] He groans in spirit upon Salisbury Plain, which might be made to produce all the corn we import.[69] Enfield Chase, he declares, is a 'real nuisance to the public.'[70] We may be glad that the zeal for enclosure was not successful in all its aims; but ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... know he did—and he overtook her in the pony-carriage—the vicar saw them from across the valley—and he brought her back from your house, and then he kept William up till nearly twelve talking of her. And now he wants a picnic. Oh, it's as plain as a pike-staff. And, my dears, nothing to be said against him. Fifteen hundred a year if he's a penny. A nice living, only his mother to look after, and as good a young fellow ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is," and for some reason the boy added, "miss," after a momentary pause, which made Patty realise his different attitude toward her, now that she wore a more elaborate costume, than when he had seen her in a purposely plain little suit. ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... in easy reach and let him alone. He's in there now, drunk as a biled owl—the lazy old devil. I had to get supper and breakfast too—and looks like I'd have to cook dinner. Poison—hell! I betche he never had nothing but a plain old belly-ache!" ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... well might I dread a disclosure which has brought on a scene so humbling to us both. Let it not continue; you have heard from me nothing but plain and holy truth; I have nothing to say in my defence. Had I acted differently, you yourself would despise and ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... to accept and what the authorities thought she ought to get. That experiment in municipal control of prices lasted about a month. Then the absurdity of the thing became too obvious. The French are much saner than the English in this. They do not go on pretending to do things once it becomes quite plain that the ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... having this gift of grace, it was not strange that the neighbours often called on her for some service of making beautiful. At a wedding or a merrymaking of any kind she would be sent for, and the neighbours, who were plain people, thought her gift more than natural. People still speak of her in all that part of the country, though she has been dead sixty odd years, little Mother Marie. She would have liked to make the ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... the ponies, and followed by the other three, and apparently leading a charmed life, careless too of the threatening spears, Dunn Brown swooped at full speed into and round the kraal, and then away again out of the opening towards the plain to join the advancing line of dust-clothed helmeted men who, raising the genuine old English cheer, were led on by a couple of mounted officers, and the next minute every stone and hillock of the ruins was being occupied; a bugle ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... "It's plain these yar red varmints are makin' a run fer it, kinder thinkin' they might be follered. It's liable ter be several days afore ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... say, though my mind was charged to ask fifty other questions. But although I looked away, it was plain that I had asked enough. I felt that the wise woman gazed at me in wrath as well as sorrow; and then I grew angry that any one should seem to ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... household, who were loitering around, formed on either side the steps, and, bending nearly double, remained so while the sultan passed down to his caique. Abdul Assiz is quite stout and rather short, with a pleasant face and closely-cut beard. He was dressed in a plain black uniform, his breast covered with orders. The sultan's caique was a magnificent barge—white, profusely ornamented with gilt, and rowed by twenty-four oarsmen dressed in white, who rose to their feet with each stroke, bowed low, and settled back in their seats as the stroke ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... from the cares of this work-a-day world. The long luxuriant dark brown hair, which once, as now with Henrietta, had clustered in thick glossy ringlets over her comb and round her face, was in thick braids beneath the delicate lace cap which suited with her plain black silk dress. Her figure was slender, so tall that neither her well-grown son nor daughter had yet reached her height, and, as Frederick said, with something queenlike in its ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... European or New-England Seed, for the People are negligent and unskilful, and don't take care to provide Seed of their own. The Colly-Flower we have not yet had an Opportunity to make Tryal of, nor has the Artichoke ever appear'd amongst us, that I can learn. Coleworts plain and curl'd, Savoys; besides the Water-Melons of several Sorts, very good, which should have gone amongst the Fruits. Of Musk-Melons we have very large and good, and several Sorts, as the Golden, Green, Guinea, and Orange. Cucumbers long, short, and prickly, all these from the Natural ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... consolidated the village, so that, when the French came up, he had handed it over to them as a victor. A French general had pinned the cross on his breast on a day of wind and rain and bursting shell, on a vast plain of unutterable devastation. The upholding of it before the mob of Marseilles had been a profanation. In these moments of anguished amazement he had suffered as he had never suffered in his life before. And he had been helpless. Before he realized what was being done, Elodie, ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... these became cracked and burnt with the heat of the great fire, it was decided to put down new tiles, which had to be selected from four different patterns (the Cross, the Fleur-de-lys, the Lion, and the Star); but plain tiles were also available. The Abbot proposed that they should be laid as shown in our sketch, without any plain tiles at all; but ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... personal loveliness—you've not THAT vulgar beauty, my dear, at all," Mrs. Beale explained. "He's just talking of plain dull charm ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... Bill"—long ago compounded by merry child-comrades from "William" and "Sylvanus"—was not to his taste, especially in public, where he preferred to be addressed simply and manfully as "Baxter." Any direct expression of resentment, however, was difficult, since it was plain that Johnnie Watson intended no offense whatever and but ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... an entirely personal narrative of a strictly personal set of circumstances. It is not a temperance lecture, or a temperance tract, or a chunk of advice, or a shuddering recital of the woes of a horrible example, or a warning, or an admonition—or anything at all but a plain tale of an adventure that started out rather vaguely ...
— Cutting It out - How to get on the waterwagon and stay there • Samuel G. Blythe
... colloquialisms employed by Mozart, as well as understanding of his careless, contradictory and sprawling epistolary style. Some of the intimacy of that style the new translation seeks to preserve, but the purpose has chiefly been to make the meaning plain. ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... outgrown them all. The woman certainly had what is called the remains of a fine woman about her, but her face had so many marks of care, of evil passions, and of irregular living, that it was perhaps more repulsive than if it had been absolutely plain in features; her dress was slatternly and ill-fitting, her gray hair untidily gathered under a dingy black cap, with bright, though soiled yellow flowers stuck in it; her eyes, which had still some brightness, had a fierce, hungry expression; and the very hands, ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... the stranger, as to the desirableness of making conversation an art. Some thought the more natural and spontaneous it was, the better; some confounded art with artifice, and hoped their countrymen would never leave their own plain, honest way of talking, to become adepts in hypocrisy and affectation. At last one, a little wiser than the rest, explained the difference between art and artifice; asked the cavilers if they had never heard of the art of writing, or the art of thinking? and said ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... affords for the profitable investment of money, there is not one equally inviting as this single channel of enterprize offered by the colony. The proof of this assertion I shall rest on a calculation so plain and intelligible, as I hope to be within the scope of the comprehension of all. Before we proceed, however, it is necessary to settle a few points, as the data on which this calculation is to be founded; viz. the value of wool, the weight of the fleece, and the number of sheep to be kept ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... How plain and height With dewdrops are bright! How pearls have crown'd The plants all around! How sighs the breeze Thro' thicket and trees! How loudly in the sun's clear rays The sweet birds ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... hears a rumor that it is to be stormed and taken by the hosts of legislative piety, yet on it goes, upon its gilded way—a place, it should be said, of orderly, spectacular distinction. The Beach Club occupies a plain white house, low-spreading and unpretentious, but fitted most agreeably within, and boasting a superb cuisine. Not every one is admitted. Members have cards, and must be vouched for, formally, by persons known to those who operate the ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... week or so in the bush. They went by train as far as the railway could carry them, and were met at the station by a wagon which enabled them to finish their journey. They arrived at the station late in the afternoon, after a delightful drive through the gum-tree forest and across a small plain. It was not strictly a plain, however, as the ground was undulating, and in the hollows between the ridges there was generally a growth of trees from a quarter to a half a mile in width which broke the monotony of ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... arraigned this document as containing groundless complaints, couched in language not called for by the occasion, and offering for consideration means of redress offensive to the dignity of France. I shall endeavor by a plain exposition of facts to repel those charges. I shall examine them with the freedom the occasion requires, but, suppressing the feelings which some parts of your excellency's letter naturally excite, will, as far as possible, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... second pip, but he's quite a decent old stick taking him all round. He gets drunk every evening, so that he's generally too far gone to trouble about lights out. He doesn't make a fuss over our letters either—I believe he can only read a very plain hand and has to skip the longer words. A good job, too, for that's one thing I absolutely cannot stick, the way all our ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... the Burgstead Men and the Men of the Dale, wherein they shall take counsel concerning matters late befallen, that press hard upon them. Let no man break the peace of the Holy Thing, lest he become a man accursed in holy places from the plain up to the mountain, and from the mountain down to the plain; a man not to be cherished of any man of good will, not be holpen with victuals or edge-tool or draught-beast; a man to be sheltered under no roof-tree, and warmed at no hearth of man: so help us the Warrior and the God of ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... while at this camp, I was mustering my bullocks on the plain between the scrubs, when they stampeded. I looked, I could see nothing, but I knew that blacks must be the cause. On returning to the waggons, I was informed that three troopers, who had run away from Cape York, had ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... disappeared he heard a prodigious shout of laughter break forth. He saw that their plain purpose had been to insult him. He ascended to the flat roof, hoping to be able to cool down his spirit there and get back his tranquility. He found the young tinner up there, alone and brooding, and entered into ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Each sect prefers some portion of Christian doctrine to the whole, and urges its favourite tenet to an undue extreme. Unskilful interpreters separate texts from their contexts, or they found doctrines on obscure passages, explaining away those plain ones by which the more difficult should be expounded, and overlooking those cautions by which the Holy Spirit guards against exaggeration. By such men a rhetorical illustration, a poetical figure, a local or temporary instruction, are made to form points of faith or positive rules of practice. ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... this paper first." The inspection is over, all except the "glass" and the "'bacco," which continue to flow and fume. The skippers of these boats are rough enough; but I always found them very civil, plain spoken, and ready to give all the information in their power; and many of them have confessed to me that the inspection was but too often conducted in ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... with Chinese, and the actors were performing on a raised platform. Our entrance caused a great sensation, and for a short time the performance was unnoticed by the audience. Our beaver hats quite puzzled them, for we were in plain clothes; even the actors indulged in a stare, and for a short time we were "better than a play." The Chinese acting has been often described: all I can say is, that so far it was like real life that all the actors were speaking at one time, and it was impossible to hear what they said, ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... what I have written on that point, and repeat that if in Glen Roy, where circumstances have been so favourable for the preservation or formation of the terraces, a terrace could be formed quite plain for three-quarters of a mile with hardly a trace elsewhere, we cannot argue, from the non-existence of shelves, that water did not stand at the same levels in other valleys. Feeling absolutely convinced that ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... often succeeded in holding intercourse, by means of their invention and application of principles in what may be called the voiceless mother utterance, with white deaf-mutes, who surely have no semiotic code more nearly connected with that attributed to the plain-roamers than is derived from their common humanity. They showed the greatest pleasure in meeting deaf-mutes, precisely as travelers in a foreign country are rejoiced to meet persons speaking their language, with whom they can hold direct communication ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... this much is certain: from the day the "Atlantic" sailed for the Old World with Miss Toothaker on board his zeal flagged, and soon gave out altogether. His love for souls settled down upon one Annette Jones, the plain daughter of a plain farmer, whom he married, and lived happily enough with upon a small, rocky farm in the State of Vermont. In times of "revival," he became an "exhorter," and very fervent in prayer. Upon one occasion he soared to such a ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... Beaton says, make it plain," he said shortly. "The less attention we attract the less talk there will be, and this is too damn serious an affair to ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... its sequestered valleys, its towns and fortresses perched on inaccessible rocks, all rendered it easy for the inhabitants to carry on a successful petty warfare against the enemy. The inhabitants of Xanthos, although very inferior in numbers, issued down into the plain and disputed the victory with the invaders for a considerable time; at length their defeat and the capitulation of their town induced the remainder of the Lycians to lay down arms, and brought about the final pacification of the peninsula. It was parcelled out into several governorships, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... plain with you, Randal, she does at present seem to find it more difficult than I ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... regiment had gone out to drill for some time; and here we continued through the month, generally occupying the large plain which lies between the Arlington House and the Potomac, and in full view of Washington. On this field Kilpatrick, Davies, Duffie, and others, began to develop their soldierly qualities, infusing them into ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... to make a motion," I said, "that this man Gorky be deported—" (loud applause)—"but before doing so I would like some one to explain in as plain words as the nature of the subject will permit, just what he has been guilty of." Dead silence broken by a voice saying: "He's ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... he said, 'the Master must come first, and it does happen very often that when He is put in His right place we have to give up a great deal. He knew we should have to do it, and He spoke some very plain words about it: "He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me, and he that loveth son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me." You would like to be ...
— Christie, the King's Servant • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... 24th, I bought them back at about twenty per cent of what I'd sold them for, after he'd lost his shirt." That, he knew, would have an effect on T. Barnwell Powell. "And in December, 1944, I was just plain nuts, selling all my munition shares and investing in a company that manufactured baby-food. Stephen thought that Rundstedt's Ardennes counter-offensive would put off the end of the war for another year ...
— Dearest • Henry Beam Piper
... "The road is plain, and the people honest," returned the countryman, who cared not if it were midnight, provided he could be the bearer of tidings of some dreadful sea robbery to the ears of those whom he well knew would throng around him, at his return, to hear the tidings ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... of conditions. We may therefore surmise that the windmill of the future, as constructed for the purposes of storing power, will have a long barrel upon which will be set numerous very short blades or sails. Reducing this again to its most convenient form, it is plain that a spiral of sheet-metal wound round the barrel will offer the most convenient type of structure for stability and cheapness combined. At the end of this long barrel will be fixed the dynamo, the armature ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... sure you will." Then for the first time in my life I was glad that I was small and plain rather than tall and fascinating like so many of my friends, for he said: "If you had been a triumphant beauty, depending on your charms as a woman to win people to your will, we should never have listened to your proposition or risked our reputation in your hands. It is your wit, your earnestness ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... in keeping with the meagre legal attainments of those who frequented them. Rude frame, or log houses served the purposes of bench and bar. The judge sat usually upon a platform with a plain table, or pine board, for a desk. A larger table below accommodated the attorneys who followed the judge in his circuit from county to county. "The relations between the Bench and the Bar were free and easy, and flashes of wit and humor and personal ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... couldn't speak plain. They lisp. They talk fast. Sound so funny. Mama and auntie speak well. Plain as I do now. They was up wid Mars White's childern more. Mars White sent his childern to pay school. It was a log house and they had a lady teacher. They had a accordion. Mars Marion's ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... and several members of his staff were up early the following morning to bid their visitor good-by. In spite of their efforts to make the parting cheerful it was plain that they had little hope of ever again seeing ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... activities of eloquence on that subject. There is still another arena left, in the science of the Law, where the same illumination of truth has not yet penetrated, and where Oratory will still continue to work her perplexing spells, till Common Sense and the plain principles of Utility shall find their way there also to weaken them.] Burke, we know, was, even for his own time, too much addicted to what falconers would call raking, or flying wide of his game; but there was hardly, perhaps, one among his great contemporaries, who, if beginning his ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... says the Master. That is plain enough, but do not let us push it too far. If the Church is meant for the purifying of the world, and the Church itself needs purifying, is there any power in the world that will do it? If the army joins the rebels, is there any force that will ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... filibuster called William the Conqueror, or from any of his band of robbers, who transmitted titles of nobility to their posterity. That is the way I have learned to read history, my young friend, in the plain sunlight of truth, unchanged by looking at it through the deceptive colored glasses of conventional prejudice. Only yesterday you would have felt honored to claim my highly accomplished and noble-minded wife as a near relative. She is as highly ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... It is plain that the mind of this POLITICAL preacher was at the time big with some extraordinary design; and it is very probable that the thoughts of his audience, who understood him better than I do, did all along run before him in ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... past the terrace of Shepheard's, where East and West meet and mingle more sensationally than anywhere in Egypt. Nobody save ourselves had dared suggest breakfast; but travellers were pouring into the hotel, and pouring out. Pretty women and plain women were sitting at the little wicker tables to read letters, or discuss plans for the day with each other or their dragomans. Officers in khaki came and talked to them about golf and gymkhanas. Down on the pavement, close under the balustrade, ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... painful even to be remembered, we re-entered the valley of Navajoa. The other captives, along with the great caballada, had arrived before us; and we saw the plundered cattle scattered over the plain. ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... delicately-formed but upright little figure, which looked all the straighter and more like the stalk of a flower, because it was never adorned with any flounces or furbelows. Lilac was considered in the village to be very old-fashioned in her dress; she wore cotton frocks, plain in the skirt with gathers all round the waist, long pinafores or aprons, and sunbonnets. This attire was always spotless and freshly clean, but garments of such a shape and cut were lamentably wanting in fashion to the general eye, and were the subject of constant ridicule. ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... drab after the plateau and the plain, the rift had its points of interest. Along the walls, everywhere, as high as a tall man might reach, the moss had been torn or scraped from the surface. There was no ...
— The Marooner • Charles A. Stearns
... roused the applause of all the better-minded section, whose cheers were not wholly unmingled with self-reproach. Bloomfield himself, it was plain, felt its force, and as to the more vehement members of Parrett's, it considerably damped ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... blanch them, being cold lard them, or roast them plain without lard, baste them with butter, and ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... of this fable was plain. The people readily applied it to the patricians and themselves, and their leaders proposed terms of agreement to the patrician messengers. They required that the debtors who could not pay should have their debts cancelled, and that ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... natural again. That a theory so generally received and so consciously adopted by the leaders of the new movement must have in it a considerable amount of truth, is not to be disputed. But it is sometimes not easy to interpret it into very plain language. The method of explaining great intellectual and social movements by the phrase 'reaction' is a very tempting one, for the simple reason that it enables us to effect a great saving of thought. The change is made to explain itself. History becomes a record of oscillations; we ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... private, without pomp or parade. Some one inquiring how he felt, he said "Calmer and calmer;" simple but memorable words, expressive of the mild heroism of the man. About six he sank into a deep sleep; once for a moment he looked up with a lively air, and said, "Many things were growing plain and clear to him!" Again he closed his eyes; and his sleep deepened and deepened, till it changed into the sleep from which there is no awakening; and all that remained of Schiller was a lifeless form, soon to be mingled with the clods ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... largest town they had yet seen, surrounded with a double wall, and containing at least twenty thousand people. This place appears to stand at the northwestern termination of the granite range, the outer wall extending from some rugged hills on the S.E., to a great distance in the plain. Here the same favourable impression respecting the whites was found to prevail as at Chaki. The walls were crowded with people, and the caboceer, with his wives and head men, came forth to welcome the strangers. He was glad, he said, to see white men coming to his country, and ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... a very plain one on thin yellow paper, not in the least what she had looked for from a great publishing-house; but the amount inscribed in the upper left-hand corner of the modest slip of paper seemed to her worthy the proudest traditions ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... is the highest of all. From that, lower and lower ridges succeed one another again, till having covered, in the whole, a breadth of two hundred miles from southeast to northwest, they subside into a plain, fertile country, extending four hundred miles to the Mississippi, and probably much further on the other side, towards the heads of the western waters. When this country shall become cultivated, it will, for the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... the house, it is a plain one; indeed, very like the house a child draws on a slate, and therefore pleasing even externally to me, who prefer the classical to any Gothic style of architecture. Why so many strangers mistake it with its modest dimensions for a hotel, I cannot ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... lean dog, a cripple, a leper—his eyes filled with tears. At times he would stand on the brink of the green gulf and gaze seawards long and yearningly, and sometimes he would lie for hours upon the sudden plain that stretched ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... few plain cakes were sold, but nothing more substantial. Evidently the beer was the great attraction. Ben could not help observing, with some surprise, that, though everybody was drinking, there was not the slightest disturbance, or want of decorum, or drunkenness. The music, ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... with other members of the bar, from Natchez, a limping youth in plain garb, but in whose bearing there was a manly, indeed almost a haughty, mien; in whose cheek a rich glow, telling the influence of more northern climes; in whose eye a keen but meditative expression; and in whose voice and conversation a vivacity and originality that attracted ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... do we have to make hotbeds just like those for tomatoes, or if just a plain seed-bed will do? Is it necessary to ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... Tyrrel of Penmorgan Manor. I'm a landed proprietor, with a good estate in Cornwall. And I'm prepared to risk—well, a large part of my property in the business I propose to you, without any corresponding risk on your part. In plain words, I'm prepared to pay you money down, if you will accede to my wish, on ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... has said "Women's characters are writ large on their faces and God writes a perfectly plain hand." Because women are more emotional than men and because they often indulge themselves in emotions, the signs are frequently very evident. If we study these signs when we meet others we may "size them up," and almost know what is passing through their minds. ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... would be conducive to the best interests of the country, the South especially. To these appeals, therefore, he turned a deaf ear. But it was not long before he was obliged to yield to the pressure. The fact was soon made plain to him that, if he allowed his name to remain on that ticket, the probabilities were that he would be financially ruined. He would soon find that his boat would be without either passengers or freight; his oil mill would probably be obliged ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch
... Christina was by no means a beautiful child. To confess the truth, she was remarkably plain. The queen, her mother, did not love her so much as she ought; partly, perhaps, on account of Christina's want of beauty, and also, because both the king and queen had wished for a son, who might have gained as great renown in battle as his ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... valleys, and coastal swamps. With the exception of a strip of the south-central coast, the island, as a whole, stands well above the sea, is thoroughly drained, and presents a rugged aspect when viewed from the sea. About one-fourth of the total area is mountainous, three-fifths are rolling plain, valleys, and gentle arable slopes, and the remainder ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... whole tribe arrived in the valley, and pitched their deerskin tents on the plain opposite to the camp of the white men. Their numbers far exceeded Cameron's expectation, and it was with some anxiety that he proceeded to strengthen his fortifications as much as circumstances and the nature of the ground ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... By-Laws and declaration of principles. It was passed upon, section by section. You will find it printed elsewhere in this volume, and you must read it if you would get a true view of the principles underlying the Legion. It is as plain as a lesson in a school reader. Any comment on it from me would be editorial tautology, so I don't want to say anything more than that its framing was one of the cleverest and most comprehensive bits of work done since the ...
— The Story of The American Legion • George Seay Wheat
... John ordered his room to be changed; and in the face of much opposition from his mother, who declared that he would never be able to sleep there, and would lose his health, he selected a narrow room at the end of the passage. He would have no carpet. He placed a small iron bed against the wall; two plain chairs, a screen to keep off the draught from the door, a small basin-stand, such as you might find in a ship's cabin, and a prie-dieu were all ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... plain enough," murmured Ethel. "He wishes to prevent you from speaking about a painful subject, or at least a distasteful one. He keeps you off at a distance by an excess of formality. He will give you no opportunity whatever to introduce ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... Eileen—as plain as possible—with a high, black dress, drooped lids, stiffly brushed hair, even eyeglasses perhaps, with a deportment redolent of bread-and-butter and five-finger exercises, could perhaps disenchant him sufficiently to make him ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... more than a year the broad-faced Bavarians (who have borne the brunt of every war in Central Europe) had been peaceably quartered in the town. Half a dozen different tongues were daily heard in this city of the plain, and no man knew who might be his friend and who his enemy. For some who were allies to-day were commanded by their kings ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... forth, and fault-scarped cliffs run across the landscape and that then, for a while, the forces of elevation cease their work. Little by little, the mountains will be worn down to a surface of less and less relief, approaching a plain as a hyperbola approaches its asymptote—a surface which W. M. Davis ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... that this speech of mine was very well received. It appeared to jar somewhat on the nerves of the American Annex. There was a smile on the lips of the other Annex,—the English girl,—which she tried to keep quiet, but it was too plain that she ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... an enemy machine gun opened fire upon them at about one hundred yards distance. Dilboy did not throw himself on the ground to escape the bullets. No, he raised his rifle to his shoulder and standing in plain sight of the German gunners, began to fire at them. As they were partially hidden he was not sure of his aim. So he ran down the embankment and across a wheat field towards them. The machine gun was immediately turned upon him and before he reached it, he fell with one leg nearly ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... believed, myself; though frightful glimpses of the contrary have often beset me; but now the truth is too plain, in that fading visage and those fallen features, to be misunderstood. Poverty and misfortune divided us. I suppose ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... them and the stars burst out, but there was no sign of habitation. They kept on for an hour longer, hoping for a welcome twinkle below; but not even a coyote crossed their path. As far as they could see in the starlight they were on a plain of illimitable reach, bare but for low shrubs whose kind they could not determine, although once Adan's coat caught on a prickly surface. The atmosphere was warm ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... "far-reaching." I believe it to be a fact that, in general, the powers of trance manifest themselves more particularly with regard to space, as distinct from time: the spirit roams in the present—it travels over a plain—it does not usually attract the interest of observers by great ascents, or by great descents. I fancy that is so. But Miss Wilson's gift was special to this extent, that she travelled in every direction, and easily in all but one, north and south, up ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... of famine, In wind, and cold, and rain, Christ, the great Lord of the Army, Lies dead upon the plain. ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... of Utica, who in Africa killed himself after the great victory that Julius Caesar had. St. Austine well declareth in his work De civitate Dei that there was no strength nor magnanimity in his destruction of himself, but plain pusillanimity and impotency of stomach. For he was forced to do it because his heart was too feeble to bear the beholding of another man's glory or the suffering of other worldly calamities that he feared should fall on himself. So that, as St. ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... schools were equally well represented, so that the audience was a large one. Olga Hunter, who was a pretty girl with chestnut hair, looked charming in a white dress, and large ribbon knots of pink and light blue—the Rodenhurst colours—pinned beside her badge. Gwen, in plain serge skirt and low-necked muslin blouse looked prepared for business, if not so ornamental as her companion. Winnie had made her a little bouquet of roses and forget-me-nots to match her colours, and Beatrice had lent her a pale-blue belt ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... Worcester, Mass., "Some Records of the Thoughts and Reasonings of Children" (194), and President Hall has written about "Children's Lies" (252a), but we are still without a correspondingly accurate and extensive compilation of "The Thoughts and Reasonings of Parents," and a plain, unbiassed register of the "white lies" and equivoques, the fictions and epigrammatic myths, with which parents are wont to answer, or attempt to answer, the manifold questions of their tender offspring. From time immemorial the communication ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... of plain emulsion plates, plates stained with eosine, and plates stained with the blue-myrtle chlorophyl, I exposed one of each kind through the same yellow screen, giving each five minutes exposure, on the same piece of copy, which was the chromo-lithograph already described. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... to a Boer's house, the etiquette is to wait until some member of the family asks you to off-saddle, and then you must go in and shake hands with every one, a most disagreeable custom. None of the women—who are very plain—rise to meet one, they just hold out their hands. This house was a fair specimen of the sort of habitation indulged in by the ordinary Boer. The main room was about eighteen feet square, with that kind of door which allows the upper half to open whilst the lower remains shut, such as is used in ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... great lock of his iron-grey hair throwing shadows across his face. Now and then he put some query about the grass, or my brother's injury, or the condition of the road, and then turned about on his heel. His fine open face wore traces of annoyance. It was plain that there had been here some business not very pleasing to this honourable man. When I told him we had come for the cattle, the muscles of his jaw seemed to tighten. He stopped and looked ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... go to the Palace for two or three days, but spent his time in trying to train Violet. "She must soon take lessons in writing," he thought, and he wrote several writing copies for her. Among these was one in plain characters on violet-colored paper, with the title, "Musashi-no" (The field of Musashi is known for its violets). She took it up, and in handwriting plain and clear though small, she ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... and would remain at the —— Hotel during three days." One of the artists preceded the other by a few hours, engaged rooms, and attended to sundry preliminaries. "Mr. Howard" donned a white choker, put his hair behind his ears, and mounted a pair of plain glass spectacles; and such was his profoundly spiritual appearance on entering his apartments at the hotel, that he had to lock the door and give his partner opportunity to explode, and absolutely roll about ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... fellow—but, by the way, we have no misters here; we all call each other by our surname plain and simple. Even Peters, who has welcomed you in our name and who is a full-fledged master's mate, does not claim to be addressed as mister, though he will probably do so before long, for the wound of Lieutenant ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... present. The lawyer had suffered considerable annoyance, before the arrival of the two first-named gentlemen, from reiterated assertions made by Eustace that he would take no further trouble whatsoever about the jewels. Mr. Camperdown had in vain pointed out to him that a plain duty lay upon him as executor and guardian to protect the property on behalf of his nephew; but Eustace had asserted that, though he himself was comparatively a poor man, he would sooner replace the necklace out ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... Fathom Harbor, in her matronly cap, is smiling over the little garden gate at her lord, who is pursuing his Daphnes, and catching, and kissing, and hugging, first one and then the other, to his heart's content. Notwithstanding their screams, and slaps, and robust struggles, it is very plain to be seen that the skipper's attentions are not very unwelcome. Leaving his fair friends, he catches Pony by the bridle and stops us with a hospitable—"Come in—you must come in; just a glass of ale, you'll want it;" and sure enough, we found when we came to taste the ale, that we did want it, ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... my cooking—like you said—which proves him a man of some discernment. No way to get around that. Now a man with his judgment wouldn't suspect for one living second that he could play it low-down on you with me roosting close at hand. Putting two plain facts together it works out right natural and simple that he's on the square. As easy as that," he finished triumphantly. "So don't you fret. And in case he acts up I'll clamp down on him real sudden," he added by way of ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... fair to look on an' allurin', but a' out o' perspective; an' Wayland, the painted woman is always a bit lonely in the bottom o' her soul spite o' harsh laugh. So is the Desert wi' its harsh silence. Those as like to be shrivelled up wi' thirst, may have it! A'm a plain man!" ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... money to live on." (Isabelle suspected that Larry's last years had eaten into the little that had been left of Margaret's fortune). "The children will go to school here. It would be useless to educate them above their future, which must be very plain." ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... by extension of Ethiopian north-south trending highlands, descending on the east to a coastal desert plain, on the northwest to hilly terrain and on the southwest to ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... and did not reply. Two hours before, the question would have stung him into some evasion or bravado. But the revelation contained in the question, as well as the tone of York's voice, was to him now, in his pitiable condition, a relief. It was plain, even to his confused brain, that York had lied when he had indorsed his story in the bar-room; it was clear to him now that he had not been home, that he was not, as he had begun to fear, going mad. It was such a relief, that, with characteristic weakness, ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... here we are at Cousin Margaret's doing funny little stunts in the way of cooking and catering. We can't afford the kind of housekeeping which requires servants, so it is a case of plain living and high thinking. Uncle Rod hates to eat anything that has been killed, and makes all sorts of excuses not to. He won't call himself a vegetarian, for he thinks that people who label themselves are apt to be cranks. So he ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... the biggest girl Elliott had ever seen, tall and fat and shapeless and very plain. She was all in white, which made her look bigger, and her skirt was at least three years old. There was a faint trickle of brown spots down the front of it, too, of which the ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... dress, I could write a seven volume treatise on that. It sounds prosy, I know, and very stupid, but let me tell you that it is the wise girl who buys for comfort, utility and wear, instead of style and elaborateness. A plain little fedora, if well brushed, makes a trimmer, neater appearance than a cheap velvet hat ornamented with feathers that have straightened out and flowers that have long since lost their glory in the rains and storms of autumn time. It is the same way with shoes and gloves. If one can possibly ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... again, closely brushing the fringe of willows and sycamores and maples on low-lying shores. Thus did we for the most part paddle in placid water, while above us the wind whistled in the tree-tops, rustled the blooming elders and the tall grasses of the plain, and, out in the open river, caused white-caps ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... about it. It stood upon the eastern border of the town, surely the most squalid capital of any empire since the world began. Not a flower bloomed in a single corner. There was no grass nor the green shade of any tree. A brown and stony plain, burnt by the sun, and, built upon it a straggling narrow city of hovels crawling with ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... since the advent of the pilot, made an early toilet and climbed to the bridge, whence she had a magnificent view of the sunrise over the beautiful city that stands on the Conca d'Oro, or Golden Shell—the smiling and luxuriant plain that seems to be provided by Nature for man's habitation. It lies beyond a lovely bay, and is enclosed on three sides ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... shaking her head and smiling without expression, "everything is over. I would rather have written it to you. I could have made it plain. But I didn't ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... permitted to go no further. But as he strives to cleanse himself and be obedient to the Lord, he will be helped. There shall be nothing there to hinder him, because Satan's influence will be restrained. (Revelation 20:1-4) The way shall be so plain and clear that any and all may see it. The Lord, therefore, has graciously provided a way for the oppressed and sin-sick to be led back over the highway of holiness into a condition of ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... that I heard Nothing at first quite plain, as I sat down; Until from this man's gibe and that keen word, Another's chilly smile or peevish frown, I caught their talk—but added none of mine. They said how she still fumbled with her fate, How she ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... have visited the station-houses repeatedly. There are few large retail shops that I have not entered many times, and I have conversed with both the employers and employes. It is a shameful fact that, in the face of a plain statute forbidding the barbarous regulation, saleswomen are still compelled to stand continuously in many of the stores. On the intensely hot day when our murdered President was brought from Washington ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... significant nod, or a melancholy mysterious look, set the imagination of the company at work; or, if this did not succeed, a whisper in plain terms pronounced Mr. Bolingbroke "a sad sort of husband, a very odd-tempered man, and, in short, a terrible tyrant; though nobody would guess it, who only saw him in company: but men ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... like she is—prim and demure, like a caricature by Cham. In that case she will be safe from me, for I could never bear an ugly woman. By the way, I wonder if ugly women think themselves pretty; their mirrors must lie most obligingly if they do. There was Adele, she was decidedly plain, not to say ugly, and yet so brilliant in her talk. I was sorry she died; yes, even though she was the cause of my exile to New Caledonia. Bah! it is always a woman one has to thank for one's misfortunes—curse them; though why I should I don't know, for they have always been good friends to me. ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... don't do it again. Latin was all very well for that old padre—good old chap! Bless his bald head! Regular trump he was! And parlyvooing was all very well for Mr Contrabando; but plain English for Bob Punchard, sivvy play, ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... the edge of a narrow and deep canyon, filled with trees, and I was glad, indeed, not to be driven at this point by the dashing Foss. Kelmar, with his unvarying smile, jogging to the motion of the trap, drove for all the world like a good, plain, country clergyman at home; and I profess I blessed ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... make the plays seem any less immoral. However, that's what people go abroad to get, so I guess we can't complain. The night before last who was sitting in the orchestra but your husband with that queer Miss Berber? I saw them as plain as daylight, but they couldn't see me away up in the circle. When I was looking for a bus at the end I saw them getting into an elegant electric. I must say she looked cute, all in old rose color with a pearl ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... straps and posts, intercell connectors, and cell terminals. Moulds for making such parts are on the market, and it is really worth while to invest in a set. The posts made in such moulds are of the plain tapered type, and posts which have special sealing and locking devices, such as the Exide, Philadelphia, and Titan cannot be made ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... dealings are with me For out of thee is nothing, or can be, And all things are to draw us home to thee. What matter that the knowers scoffing say, "This is old folly, plain to the new day"?— If thou be such as thou, and they as they, Unto thy Let there be, ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... friends and acquaintances to greet, noted people to speak to, or to hear and see others speak to, the lawyers to congratulate and the judges to bow to—and last but not least, there was the prisoner to mark enter, with the marshal, a plain coach and drive away to the house opposite the Swan, to which he had been removed from his rooms in ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... have I lived it. For buttered phrases I have no taste. Call me libertine, or call me man of fashion; 'tis all one. My evil nature—C'est plus fort que moi. At least I have not played the hypocrite. No canting sighs! No lapses to morality and prayers! No vices smugly hidden! The plain straight road to hell taken at a gallop!" So, with chin in hand and dark eyes lit by the flickering flame, this roue ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... that song, Mag, although I can see her and hear it as plain as though I'd listened and watched her all my life. But there's no fun in it for me. I hate the very bars the orchestra plays before she begins to sing. I can't bear even to think of the words. The whole of it is full of ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... was a plain vineyard when it came into my hands not two years ago, and it is, with a small expense, turned into a garden that (apart from the advantage of the climate) I like better than that of Kensington. The Italian vineyards ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... century, and by the change in dress. Gentlemen were leaving off the picturesque costumes of the past,—the cocked hats, elaborate wigs, silk stockings, ruffles, velvet coats, and swords,—and gradually putting on the plain democratic garb, sober in cut and color, by which we ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... his remarks on the manufacture, and perhaps willing to curry favor with the commander of a regiment just going into the field, the superintendent of the sword-factory had presented the officer with a splendid plain light-cavalry sabre with its brazen hilt and heavy steel scabbard—a most deadly and effective weapon, upon which one could depend in battle almost as well as upon the best blade forged in Damascus. That ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... and miserably clad; but she has always the same open and straightforward look—the same mouth, smiling at every word, as if to court your sympathy—the same voice, somewhat timid, yet expressing fondness. Paulette is not pretty—she is even thought plain; as for me, I think her charming. Perhaps that is not on her account, but on my own. Paulette appears to me as one of my ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... the stage much as the ancient Athenian playwrights exploited the Eumenides; but there is no trace in his plays of any faith in or knowledge of Creative Evolution as a modern scientific fact. True, the poetic aspiration is plain enough in his Emperor or Galilean; but it is one of Ibsen's distinctions that nothing was valid for him but science; and he left that vision of the future which his Roman seer calls 'the third Empire' behind him ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... ennobling is such knowledge that it affords us greater delight than any other which is accessible to us." Hence, too, S. Gregory says: "The contemplative life has its most desirable sweetness which uplifts the soul above itself, opens the way to heavenly things, and makes spiritual things plain to the eyes ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... a world that has no well, Darkly bright in forest-dell; As a world without the gleam Of the downward-going stream; As a world without the glance Of the ocean's fair expanse; As a world where never rain Glittered on the sunny plain; Such, my heart, thy world would be, If no love ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... austerity for the eye corresponding to a sense of healthfulness given by steady, intense heat, purged of all damp, pure like the scents of dry leaves, of warm, cypress resin and of burnt thyme and myrrh of the stony ravines and stubbly fields. On such August days the plain and the more distant mountains will sometimes be obliterated, leaving only the inexpressible suavity of the hills on the same side as the sun, made of the texture of the sky, lying against it like transparent and still luminous shadows. All pictures of such effects ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... it was borne upon immense rods of force toward the Area of Experiment, which was soon reached. Covered as the Area was with fantastic equipment, there was no doubt as to their destination, for in plain sight, dominating all the lesser instruments, there rose a stupendous telescopic mounting, with an enormous hollow tube of metallic lattice-work which could be intended for nothing else than their projector. Approaching it carefully, Seaton deftly guided the projector lengthwise into that ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... Boomville valley, and were entering a narrow arroyo bordered with dusky willows which effectually excluded the view on either side. It was the bed of a mountain torrent that in winter descended the hillside over the trail by which they had just come, but was now sunk into the thirsty plain between banks that varied from two to five feet in height. The muleteer had advanced into the narrow channel when he suddenly cast a hurried glance behind him, uttered a "Madre de Dios!" and backed his mule ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... plot; for there is an abundance of the right dramatic material in his subject, and in his best moments he displays wonderful mastery in the moulding of hard facts to his use. Nothing could be more perfectly done than the sublimation of the contents of three plain verses (Chapter xi. 2-4) to the delicate poetry of his famous opening scene. Unfortunately the method adopted is that of the chronicle history-plays or of the nearly forgotten Miracles, to which class of drama David and Bethsabe, as a late survival, may be said to belong. It has other marks ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... half of her wages of seven dollars to her mother and little sister, ill with tuberculosis, at home. The mother owned the little house in which she lived, but except for the vegetables she raised in her own garden and an occasional payment for plain sewing, she and her younger daughter were dependent upon the hard-working girl in Chicago. The girl's heart grew heavier week by week as the mother's letters reported that the sister was daily growing weaker. One hot day ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... been without religious training; on the contrary, more than average pains had been bestowed upon my religious instruction from my earliest childhood. My father, a good, plain, country clergyman, had worked hard to make me as good as himself; and had succeeded, at least, in training me in godly habits. He died, however, when I was but twelve years of age; and fate had long before deprived me of the gentle care of a mother. A boarding-school, ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... leash in his hand, that he might let him loose between the two armies, to see to which side the sense of the hound would turn. And the hound joined himself with the men of Ulster, and he rushed on the defeated Connaughtmen, for these were in flight. And it is told that in the plain of Ailbe, the hound seized hold of the poles of the chariot in which Ailill and Maev rode: and there Fer-loga, charioteer to Ailill and Maev, fell upon him, so that he cast his body to one side, and his head was left upon the poles of the chariot. And they say that ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... now I have found you again, Natalushka. I thank God for his goodness to me. I said to myself, 'If my child turns away from me, I will die!' and I thought that if you had any portrait of me, it would be taken when I was young, and you would not care for an old woman grown haggard and plain—" ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... most certain as a moralist. Thus the great facts of theism, immortality and the autonomy or freedom of the will, he professes himself unable to know save as revelations of the moral order. His mind, or pure reason, can know nothing of them; it is his will or practical reason which discerns them as plain deductions from the overwhelming fact of the moral law. This fact has led some critics to describe Kant as a sceptic. Nothing could be farther from the truth. We might almost quote of him what ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... mean, and even I never had but half a chance. You make a mistake, I tell you. There's lots of good folks in this town, lots of 'em. Cap'n Elisha Warren's one of 'em and there's plenty more. They're countrymen, same as I am, but they're good, plain, sensible folks, and they'd like to like you if they had a chance. You belong to the Town Improvement Society, but you never go to a meeting. You ought to ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... composite structure which lie upon the very face of the narrative will now come under our notice. It is plain that the whole of this literature could not have been written by any one man without some kind of assistance. All the books, except the first, are indeed a record of events which occurred mainly during the lifetime of Moses, and of most of which ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... down, in opposition to plain-song, where the descant rested with the will of the singer." Chappell's Popular Music, &c., ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... of increase in the production of cereals in the United States during the last half century has taken place since 1870. This increase is coincident with three other facts of the utmost importance: (a) The development of the central West, a treeless plain—prior to this period much of the farm land in the United States had been hewn out of the forest, tree by tree; (b) the consolidation of the steam railways into transcontinental lines; and (c) the introduction of the self-binding harvester. Formerly it took at least five ...
— The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know • Thomas Forsyth Hunt |
