"Prismatic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... AND VEGETABLE KINGDOMS," says Hogg, in his Natural History of the Vegetable Kingdom, "may be aptly compared to the primary colours of the prismatic spectrum, which are so gradually and intimately blended, that we fail to discover where the one terminates and where the other begins. If we had to deal with yellow and blue only, the eye would easily distinguish the one from the other; but when the ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... For the choicest piece in urban gardens, where Catharine-wheels on festival nights spurt sidereal spray, and rockets shot into gold-riddled skies fall back in prismatic showers, ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... laid open my first-found ammonite. It was a beautiful specimen, graceful in its curves as those of the Ionic volute, and greatly more delicate in its sculpturing; and its bright cream-coloured tint, dimly burnished by the prismatic hues of the original pearl, contrasted exquisitely with the dark grey of the matrix which enclosed it. I broke open many a similar nodule during our stay at this delightful quarry, and there were few of them in which I did not detect some organism of the ancient world—scales of fishes, groups ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... mineral species consisting of a basic copper sulphate Cu4(OH)6SO4, crystallizing in the orthorhombic system. The crystals are usually small and are prismatic or acicular in habit; they have a perfect cleavage parallel to the face lettered a in the adjoining figure. They are transparent to translucent, with a vitreous lustre, and are of an emerald-green to blackish-green colour. Specific gravity 3.907; hardness 31/2-4. The mineral was first found ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... friend should meet his own, concealment would be no longer possible; yet, for the sake of that promise he had sworn in the past night, it must be maintained at every hazard, every cost. Vacantly he sat and watched the play of the sunshine in the prismatic water of the courtyard fountain, and the splashing, and the pluming, and the murmuring of the doves and pigeons on its edge. He felt meshed in a net from which there was no escape—none—unless, on his homeward passage, a thrust of Arab ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... more surprising because, from the first, Paulina had never made the least attempt to change her tone or subdue her colours. In the gray Trant atmosphere she flashed with prismatic fires. She smoked, she talked subversively, she did as she liked and went where she chose, and danced over the Trant prejudices and the Trant principles as if they'd been a ball-room floor; and all without apparent offence to her solemn husband and his cloud of cousins. I believe ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... which they have assumed in working out their theories has been proved false. They can not believe that "fire control" of infantry, as taught in the school of fire, has no place in modern trench warfare. It will break the hearts of some of them to learn that the ability to read a map and use a prismatic compass is of far more value than knowledge of the "mil-scale" or "fire-control rule." They will probably be scandalized by the statement, which I make seriously and with full knowledge whereof I speak, that one common ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... rolled proboscis, produced by an elongation of the jaws, upon the sides of which are found the rudiments of mandibles and downy palpi; the inferior wings retained to the superior by a stiff hair; antennae in the form of an elongated club, prismatic; abdomen pointed, The Death's—headed Sphinx has occasioned much terror among the vulgar, at times, by the melancholy kind of cry which it utters, and the insignia of death which it wears upon ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... cites it as an example of what she felicitously calls "an ambiguity, not hazy, but prismatic, and therefore not really perplexing." She gives us accordingly our choice of two interpretations, "'each cries out on account of the second death which he is suffering,' and 'each cries out for death to come a second time and ease him of his sufferings.'"[194] Buti says: "Here ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... excursionists is our love of the trolley-line. This, by its admirable equipment, and by the terror it inspires in horses, has well-nigh abolished driving; and following the old country roads, as it does, with an occasional short-cut though the deep, green- lighted woods or across the prismatic salt meadows, it is of a picturesque variety entirely satisfying. After a year of fervent opposition and protest, the whole community—whether of summer or of winter folks—now gladly accepts the trolley, and the grandest cottager and the lowliest hotel dweller ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the tiny white object up and held it at several angles, to see how the glow of the fire seemed to reflect in faint prismatic ...
— In Camp on the Big Sunflower • Lawrence J. Leslie
... after exhibiting the solar ray, divided into its seven primary colors, violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red, said, "If you will form a mnemonic word of the first letters of each of these words, you will be able, without further effort, to remember the order of the prismatic colors the rest of your lives," and he accordingly wrote upon the board and pronounced the uncouth and almost unpronounceable word, Vibgyor, which probably not one of us has ever forgotten. An ingenious Frenchman some years ago ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... Babylon, then, prismatic and learned, was the most respectable place on earth. For ten thousand years man had there consulted the stars. But though respectable, it was also equivocal. During a period equally long—or brief—the girls of the city had loosed their girdles for Ishtar ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... fieriest hair, had figged himself out, more majorum, in the full Highland costume. I never saw Rob Roy on the stage look half so dignified or ferocious. He glittered from head to foot with dirk, pistol, and skean-dhu; and at least a hundredweight of cairngorms cast a prismatic glory around his person. I felt quite ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... wealth and would swell the revenues of the King and Queen of Spain. A brief survey of this first island was all he could afford time for; and after the first exquisite impression of the white beach, and the blue curve of the bay sparkling in the sunshine, and the soft prismatic colours of the acanthus beneath the green wall of the woods had been savoured and enjoyed, he was anxious to push on to the rich lands of the Orient of which he believed this island ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... the rule, it was only right and proper that there should be prizes for the best costumes; and since the lady who shed her beneficence over this prismatic throng does nothing by halves, she had called in the assistance of two artists to adjudicate. I will not make public their names; that would be to overstep the boundaries of decorum and turn this book into sheer ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... Alphabet. Their number and nature is governed by the Mechanical Law of their organic production in the mouth. And the number can only be increased by interposing minor shades of sound, as we produce minor shades of color by blending the Seven (7) Prismatic Colors. The new Sound will then belong, in predominance and as a mere variety, to one of these ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... books are, the bloom of my life is in them; no morbidity, or discontent, or ill health, or angry passion, has gone to their making. The iridescence of a bird's plumage, we are told, is not something extraneous; it is a prismatic effect. So the color in my books is not paint; it is health. It is probably nothing to brag of; much greater books have been the work of confirmed invalids. All I can say is that the minds of these inspired invalids have not ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... walls of the sharp, irregular declivity reflected many cold, prismatic lights, and down, far down where the eye could no longer distinguish shapes and outlines, there lay a shadow like steam from some vast, subterranean cauldron, blue, dense, impenetrable. It fascinated Pearl and she stood ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... you could see the beautiful prismatic tints I have knocked into this ice, you would laugh out of the other side of your bill. The splendour of your tail is ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... great fruit-pigeons are, like the "bald-pates" of Jamaica, all favourite birds with sportsmen, and some of the birds are far more brightly coloured than ours. It is, however, noticeable that even the gayest Queensland species, with wings shot with every prismatic hue, are dull-looking birds seen from above, and the late Dr. A. R. Wallace regarded this as affording protection against keen-eyed hawks on the forage. His ingenious theory receives support from ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... admiration to which he was by no means prone. "You do, what I always wanted, hoped to do, and only seem likely now to do for the first time. You speak out, you,—I only make men and women speak—give you truth broken into prismatic hues, and fear the pure white light, even if it is in me, but I am going to try." Thus the first contact with the "Lyric Love" of after days set vibrating the chords of all that was lyric and ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... stood round, now occupied by the young people who ate and drank and chattered, the majority quite unmindful of their journey's object—Old Sol, in his departing splendor, glorifying the clouds with prismatic color, ere he sank ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... crow's-nest on the evening of the 15th, watching for signs of land to the westward, and he reported an interesting phenomenon. The sun set amid a glow of prismatic colours on a line of clouds just above the horizon. A minute later Worsley saw a golden glow, which expanded as he watched it, and presently the sun appeared again and rose a semi-diameter clear above the western horizon. He hailed Crean, who from a position on ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... then. There is the huge, high entrance to the outer caves where we are standing, with a massive lintel of rocks overhead, all black but for a few purple and gray tints scattered across the blackness. Behind us the sea is glistening, and prismatic colors play upon the cliffs. Shadows fall from rocks we cannot see. Olivia stands before me, pale and terrified, the water running from her heavy dress, which clings about her slender figure. She shrinks away from me a pace ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... xc.—On the Power of penetrating into Space by Telescopes, with a comparative Determination of the Extent of that Power in Natural Vision, and in Telescopes of various Sizes and Constructions; illustrated by select Observations.—Investigation of the Powers of the Prismatic Colours to heat and illuminate Objects; with Remarks that prove the different Refrangibility of radiant Heat; to which is added an Inquiry into the Method of viewing the Sun advantageously with Telescopes of large Apertures and high magnifying Powers.—Experiments on the Refrangibility ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... to you how many subjects for the highest order of poetry lie unnoticed all about us? Take that chandelier, for example, the prismatic drops of which are dull in the shade, but sparkle with all the colors of the rainbow in the gaslight. Might not those hidden splendors be compared to that genius whose brilliancy is alone evoked ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... much like a rocket as anything else; and "La Dame Blanche," a triptych of rhythmical flow, spreads a dainty, silky, sheen of white, whispering, glistening, softly falling water over a slightly shelving width of rock, touched here and there with prismatic ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... follow, I went with Jemmy in advance to look for water, which we found in a rough stream-bed, and brought the party to it. This afternoon went with Jemmy to the summit of Yeadie, and took a round of angles. The local attraction was so great on this hill that the prismatic compass was useless; luckily I had my pocket sextant with me, by which I obtained the included angles. From the summit of Yeadie the view was very extensive. The great lake that we had already followed for forty miles ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... trappings of the handsome cavaliers, (there was war at that time between the glorious empire of Fairydom and the weak and infatuated republic of Elfland on its southern borders, and the epaulette and spurs were the only pass to the hearts of the fair,) imbuing them with an infinitude of prismatic hues, all softened into a kind of timed starlight, exquisite as the dying voice of music. In this gorgeous saloon, at the head of which sat, well pleased, the benevolent old King Paterflor and his modest and still lovely queen Sweetbine, all were noble and accomplished and beautiful and gay; ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... and liked exercising it on the subject of himself, had been telling Archie a few anecdotes about his professional past. From these the latter had conceived a picture of Roscoe Sherriff's life as a prismatic thing of energy and adventure and well-paid withal—just the sort of life, in fact, which he would have enjoyed leading himself. He wished that he, too, like the Press-agent, could go about the place "slipping things over" and "putting things across." Daniel Brewster, he felt, would ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... What prismatic effect, brighter than the outdoor desert sunshine is hard to imagine, but a large shining object close at hand would be pretty terrifying. It seems strange that Ezekiel would not throw himself upon the ground, after withstanding all he had ...
— The Four-Faced Visitors of Ezekiel • Arthur W. Orton
... islands, enchanted islands, half-transparent with the prismatic lights of precious stones, of amethysts and emeralds. Odours of bewildering fragrance rose from the rounded shores; some of these islands showered on us a rain of roses and valley lilies; from others birds darted up, with long wings ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... the Russian, vast and disquieting, I refuse to leave all, including the blankets and the pillow, to follow him into the gelid tranquillity of the upper air, where even the colours are prismatic spicules of ice, to brood upon the erratic orbit of the poor mud-ball below called earth. I know it is my world also; but I cannot help that. It is too late, after a busy day, and at that hour, to begin overtime on fashioning a new and better planet out of cosmic dust. By breakfast-time, ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... top and see you can straddle across it. Well, the Staubbach is just like everything in this life. Keep your distance, and how well the creature looks!—all veiled in its spray, and all bright with its prismatic colours, so deep, and so vast, and so very impressive. But just go up to the top, scale the crags of its character, and measure the height of its aspirations, and fathom the torrent of its passions, and sift how much is the foam of speech, and how little is the well-spring of thought. Well, my ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... the new moon shone, and in their case there can be no doubt the tint was contrast merely. One night, some hours after sunset, and long after the last trace of it had disappeared, the moon was sailing through light white clouds, which only partly concealed her, and was surrounded by the ordinary prismatic halo. But outside this halo there was a green circle, a broad green band, very distinct—a pale emerald green. Beautiful and interesting as these sunsets have been, I cannot subscribe to the opinion that they surpass all that have been observed; for I distinctly remember sunsets equally ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... out of bed in a twinkling. Life was too full and rich now to waste it in sleep. Yesterday morning it had seemed drab and commonplace. To-day it sparkled with prismatic hues. He was a new man in ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... slowly and becoming lighter in body. A rush of power that I have no way of describing to you filled me. I seemed to be a tremendous dynamo in the air several inches above the ground and still ascending. When I noticed everything around me becoming prismatic and more or less translucent, I could have walked on water without sinking, and I had distinct understanding that matters seemed to be disintegrating and dissolving around me. I was frightened ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... and five inches broad and weighed 22 ounces. It contained a piece of gunbarrel four inches long, a mother-screw steel, a screw-driver, a saw of steel for cutting wood four inches long, another saw for cutting metal, a boring syringe, a prismatic file, a half-franc piece and four one-franc pieces tied together with thread, a piece of thread, and a piece of tallow, the latter presumably for greasing the instruments. On investigation it was found that these conic cases were of common use, and were always thrust up the rectum base ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... more poetically Le Pain de Sucre, or sugar-loaf. On a bright day in January, when the white light of the sun plays caressingly on this pyramid of crystal, illuminating its veins of emerald and sending a refracted ray into its circular air-holes, the prismatic effect is enchanting. Thousands of persons visit Montmorenci every winter for no other object than that of enjoying this sight. It is needless to add that the youthful generation visit the Cone for the more prosaic purpose of toboganning or sledding from its summit away down ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... deepest amethyst dropped around the mountain's mighty shoulders. And then from every snow and glacier-crowned peak, from minaret and pinnacle and towering turret, leaped forth a confusion of soft peacock flames, a host of irised prismatic gleamings, ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... unpromising things of earth! And just as the bow that spans the mantling cloud reminds us of all beautiful things that glow around its antitype that spans the emerald throne on high, so, as we gaze upon the prismatic tints that are reflected from the oily surface, we dream of all that is beautiful in color and gorgeous in tinted radiance, as being hidden amid the elements ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... north-west and the familiar landmarks of his childhood came into sight, flooded with the June sunshine—the ruined mine-shafts staring up so starkly, the glory of white cattle in the golden light, the first glimpse of the pale roofs of Cloom itself, prismatic as a wood-pigeon's plumage, all these things struck at his heart with a keener shock than did anything personal, and made thought of his mother sink away from him. Behind the cluster of grey buildings he saw the parti-coloured fields stretching ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... I may say my education was a complete failure. For this I had only my own smattering and desultory habit of mind to blame and also a vivid troublesome sense of the beauty of it all. The charm of the prismatic fringe round the edges made juggling with the lens too tempting, and a clear persistent focus was never attained. Considered (oddly enough) by my mates as the pattern of a diligent scholar, I was in reality as idle as the idlest of them, which is saying much; though ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... advance. The lava was more glassy and transparent-looking, as if it had been fused at a higher temperature than usual; and the crystals of sulphur, alum, and other minerals, with which it abounded, reflected the light in bright prismatic colours. In places it was quite transparent, and we could see beneath it the long streaks of a stringy kind of lava, like brown spun glass, called ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... attention strayed to the corner where Margaret sat, the light from the painted window reached her, staining her white gown with patches of prismatic color—a bordering of crimson and blue and violet—and giving a golden tinge to her dead-brown hair; and as Hugh looks at her he tells himself again that he has never seen any one to compare with her—his pearl ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... were going on steadily.—I was consulted about an Observatory at Oxford, where I supported the introduction of the Heliometer.—The stipend of the Bakerian Lecture was paid to me for my explanation of Brewster's new prismatic fringes.—The business of the Cape Observatory and Survey occupied much of my time.—In 1838 the Rev. H. J. Rose (Editor of the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana) had proposed my writing a Paper on Tides, &c.; In Oct. 1840 I gave him notice that I must connect Tides with Waves, ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... sense—that its essence consists in a partial and incomplete view of whatever it touches. It throws a single ray, separated from the rest,—red, yellow, blue, or any intermediate shade,—upon an object; never white light; that is the province of wisdom. We get beautiful effects from wit,—all the prismatic colors,—but never the object as it is in fair daylight. A pun, which is a kind if wit, is a different and much shallower trick in mental optics throwing the SHADOWS of two objects so that one overlies the other. Poetry uses the rainbow tints for ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... bottomless and yet held the colors of the rainbow in their depths. Above this figure, which beckoned him on, and after which the raft drifted faster and faster, was a halo of sparkling hair, which caught and broke up the light into prismatic colors. ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... that they escaped the attention of all men until 1865 A.D. The answer came from the diagonal joints themselves, on discovering that the stone between them was opposite to the butt end of the portcullis of the first ascending passage, or to the hole whence the prismatic stone of concealment through 3000 years had dropped out almost before Al Mamoun's eyes. Here, therefore, was a secret sign in the pavement of the entrance-passage, appreciable only to a careful eye and a measurement ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... stage, when nearly all the prismatic colours are blended on its surface, is often converted by the natives into a superb and striking head-dress. The principal fibre traversing its length being split open a convenient distance, and the elastic sides of ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... different from it. In the South African form the cells are shorter, narrower, and more cylindrical, and the branches are terminated by two lanceolate tags, which are not present in the Australian species, in which latter the cells also are wider, longer, and prismatic, or subhexagonal, with ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... dragged a chair to the sidewalk. He was coatless, and he leaned back against the wall and smoked, while he stroked his beard. Surprise came into his pale blue eyes when he caught sight of Smith in his unusual and prismatic clothes. ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... not refrain from laughter to find that they were really afloat in it, and pointed with surprise at the waves, which could be seen through the boat, rippling against its sides. With the aid of the boat, with prismatic compass and sextant, I was able to secure an excellent map of the lake; and we almost succeeded in catching a deer, which was driven into the lake by a strange hound. The dog lost the trail at the water, and desiring to put him on the track, we ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... of singular prismatic tints, flush after flush suffusing our horizon, does the Era of Hope dawn on towards fulfilment. Questionable! As indeed, with an Era of Hope that rests on mere universal Benevolence, victorious Analysis, Vice cured of ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... of the low Gothic door and to enter the rich and sumptuous interior, where the light came, as in cathedral aisles, only through the jewels of fourteenth-century glass; to close the door; to sit beneath the prismatic shower, ensconced in a nest of old tapestried cushions, and to let the eye wander over the wealth of carvings, of ceramics, of Spanish and Normandy trousseaux chests, on the collection of antique chairs, ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... for a moment; then kisses her hand. She presses his and turns away with her eyes so wet that she sees Drinkwater, coming in through the arch just then, with a prismatic halo round him. Even when she sees him clearly, she hardly recognizes him; for he is ludicrously clean and smoothly brushed; and his hair, formerly mud color, is now a ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... in his midday course, mountain and dell, glazed rock and frosted tree, glowed and sparkled with surpassing lustre. The tall pines seemed sprinkled with a silver dust, and the willows, studded with minute icicles reflecting the prismatic rays, brought to mind the fairy trees conjured up by the caliph's story-teller to adorn his ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... trees flitted the shining fragments,—a diamond dust swept by the freshening breeze. The torrent rolled on toward them; along its length a vapor rose, tinted by the sun with every color of his light; the decomposing rays flashing prismatic fires along the many-tinted scarf of waters. The rugged ledge on which they stood was carpeted by several kinds of lichen, forming a noble mat variegated by moisture and lustrous like the sheen of a silken ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... lady visitor. Not one, but twenty-five thousand Robert Bruces inspired the Scottish spider to that homely instance of perseverance, which served for an example for a king. As he hangs his drapery from one cornice to another, the prismatic scenes that come before him serve to lengthen that life which might seem to be cut off before its time. It is not one, but twenty-five thousand brooms which advance to destroy his airy home; to invade his household ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... probably be the goldfish. It was also considered a luxury to have them alive, it being an amusing sight to see them die, for, when dying, they change color three or four times, and like the rainbow when it disappears, pass through all the prismatic shades, after which they were sent to the kitchen. Their agony formed part of their merit—if they were not seen alive, they were ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... vast circle of glaciers, belting the planet along the line between perpetual day and night, and that where the sunbeams touched these icy deposits near the edge of the light hemisphere a marvelous spectacle of prismatic hills of crystal ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... icebergs' pinnacles reflect them in sparkling points! White luminous fogs, like curtains of gauze, too thin to dim the general brightness, yet dense enough to invest the whole scene with a silver robe of mystery, and to refract the light and compel it to shine in great circles of prismatic colours! And everything—from the nature of the materials of which the gay scenery is composed—either white or blue, varying in all gradations from the fairest snow to the deepest azure, save where the rainbow's delicate hues are allowed to intermingle enough of pink, yellow, purple, ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... absolutely necessary. They included the Mummery tent with pegs and poles, the mountain-mercurial barometer, the two Watkins aneroids, the hypsometer, a pair of Zeiss glasses, two 3A kodaks, six films, a sling psychrometer, a prismatic compass and clinometer, a Stanley pocket level, an eighty-foot red-strand mountain rope, three ice axes, a seven-foot flagpole, an American flag and a Yale flag. In order to avoid disaster in case ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... a colorist—he is, in fact, the introducer of color as a distinct element in French painting after the pale and bleak reaction from the Louis Quinze decorativeness. His color, too, is not merely the prismatic coloration of what had theretofore been mere chiaro-oscuro; it is original and personal to such a degree that it has never been successfully imitated since his day. Withal, it is apparently simplicity itself. Its hues are apparently ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... capable of giving out any variety, and yet all equally true; hence it is that the skies, for example, of Claude, Salvator Rosa, and Gaspar Poussin are universally subordinate to the general effect of the picture. These men, living in Italy, were quite aware of the various prismatic effects observable in sunset, but were also convinced of the necessity of making the sky subservient, at least conducive to, the breadth and harmony of the picture. It may be said that Titian and Tintoret embodied the deep and intense blues of the Venetian ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... Rathe and Louise were handsome women handsomely dressed; he was seated in a nest of soft tulle and ruffled embroidery, of pliant swaying bodies. Their satin-shod feet had high sharp insteps in films of black lace and their fingers glittered with prismatic stones. Bernard was in front with the chauffeur, and Frederick Rathe occupied a small seat at the knees of the three others. He had not made his money, as had August and Bernard, but inherited it with a huge brewery. ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... great spool under your wheels were winding it up. The house rushes on with it; grows nearer; details emerge. You see the great square chimney; the tiny window-panes, six to a sash, some of them turned by time, not into the purple of Beacon Hill but into a kind of prismatic sheen like oil on water; the bit of classic egg-and-dart border on the door-cap; the aged texture of the weathered clapboard; the graceful arch of the wide woodshed entrance, on the kitchen side; the giant elm rising far above the roof. You rush on so near to the ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... prismatic colors like a huge curtain, gorgeously illuminated in its ample folds by the rays of ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... the charge so fixed in its containing case that the centre of gravity cannot shift. The difficulty of ensuring this with a large torpedo charge built up from a number of discs and segments is well known. Even with plain cylindrical or prismatic charges a marked saving in the process of production is effected by this new system. The charges being in one block they are more easily handled for the usual periodical examination, and they do not break or chafe at the edges, as in the case of ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... they were in any wise exempt from sorrow and pain; the poet, least of all, would choose to be translated, even if he might, to some enchanted region remote from all the mingled experiences of humanity; it is the common lot of destiny, with its prismatic blending of failure and success, of purpose and achievement, of hope and defeat, of love and sorrow, out of which the poet draws his song. He ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... I am a worshipper of hard facts and however hideous they may be I prefer them to the prismatic colours ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... He halted, looking up at the tree-tops. Twig, branch, and trunk glowed with the fire of diamonds through a lacy necking of hoar frost. Every tree had put on a jacket of ice and become as a fountain of prismatic hues. Here and there a dead pine rose like a spire of crystal; domes of deep-coloured glass and towers of jasper were as the landmarks of a city. Allen climbed the shore, walking slowly. He could see no track of sleigh or dog or any living thing. ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... the snow everywhere were illumined with the prismatic rays in proper order. The tree branches caught them, the corners of the houses, the window hoods, the straggling bushes, the fences. Everywhere the sublime beauty was repeated until everything quivered with ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... fabricated to estimate the rapidity of thought. If the succession of our thoughts should be more rapid than they can be distinctly apprehended, confusion must ensue, and their rapidity would render them useless. Our perceptions are regulated by the same law. If the prismatic colours be painted on a surface which is revolved with great rapidity, the individual colours will not be apparent. The succession of sounds to a definite number, may be severally distinguished, in a certain interval: but ...
— On the Nature of Thought - or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence • John Haslam
... of prismatic light and shade, of gay and joyous life. Here Tiberius had his summer palace, and it was from these shores that he sent the historic letter which revolutionized the life of Sejanus. The letter—verbosa et grandis epistola—is still vivid in the historic associations of Rome. ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... shade and tint—now a rich green, then a deep blue and again a dirty gray as the sun hid for a moment behind a cloud, and as a gust of wind caught the top of the combers decapitating them at one mad rush, the spray was dashed high in the air, flashing out all the prismatic colours. Here and yonder, the white caps rose, disappeared and came again, and the waves grew and then diminished in size. Then others rose, towering, became larger, majestic, terrible; the milk-like comb rose proudly, soared a brief moment, then fell ignominiously, and the wave ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... insult; your key clicks cheerfully in your pocket against its gutta-percha number, and you walk up and down the gorgeously carpeted, single-columned, two-story cabin, amid a multitude of plush sofas and chairs, a glitter of glass, and a tinkle of prismatic chandeliers overhead, unawed even by the aristocratic gloom of the yellow waiters. Your own stateroom, as you enter it from time to time, is an ever new surprize of splendors, a magnificent effect of amplitude, of mahogany bedstead, of lace ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... crystalline, rose to the height of twenty feet, and, returning in a shower of prismatic globules, stole away through a bed of water-lilies and other aquatic plants, losing itself in a grove of lofty plantain-trees. These, growing from the cool watery bed, flung out their broad glistening leaves to the ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... five minutes without stopping; apparently with the view of ascertaining if he were quite correctly put together, while Gluck stood contemplating him in speechless amazement. He was dressed in a stashed doublet of spun gold, so fine in its texture, that the prismatic colours gleamed over it, as if on a surface of mother-of-pearl; and, over this brilliant doublet, his hair and beard fell full halfway to the ground, in waving curls, so exquisitely delicate that Gluck ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... glance the sphere seemed all in one piece, with the central objects cast inside like a toy ship in a sealed bottle. Then a mathematically precise ring of prismatic reflections showed me that the top third of the ball was a separate piece, fitting conically down like the tapered glass stopper of a monstrous perfume bottle. The handle on the top was for the purpose of lifting this giant's ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... from this function, I found work had stopped; no more South Seas in my belly. Well, Henry had cleared a great deal of our bush on a contract, and it ought to be measured. I set myself to the task with a tape-line; it seemed a dreary business; then I borrowed a prismatic compass, and tackled the task afresh. I have no books; I had not touched an instrument nor given a thought to the business since the year of grace 1871; you can imagine with what interest I sat down yesterday afternoon to reduce my observations; five triangles I had taken; all five came right, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the sea, and blurred the architecture of the cliffs. On the sea's edge lay a long grey cloud, a long, low, soft cloud, flat, like a band of soft grey velvet. The cloud was grey indeed; but (as if prismatic fires were smouldering there) its grey held in solution all the colours of the spectrum, so that you could discern elusive rose-tints, fugitive greens, translucent reflections of amethyst ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... a humming-bird moving about in an aerial dance among the flowers—a living prismatic gem that changes its colour with every change of position—how in turning it catches the sunshine on its burnished neck and gorges plumes—green and gold and flame-coloured, the beams changing to visible flakes ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... length with twice the ordinary speed of a locomotive. So rapid is its descent that it leaves a trail of smoke behind it, and sometimes kindles a fire among the slivers along its way. Ah! it strikes the water! In an instant there is an inverted Niagara in the air, resplendent with prismatic and ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... attached to the walls furnished the light, wavering but brilliant. There were tables and rude seats, fashioned from the same prismatic stones which covered the column in the lake, and from their surfaces a thousand points of ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... six systems enumerated above, the tetragonal—or the quadratic, square prismatic, dimetric, or pyramidal—system has three axes like the cubic, but, in this case, though they are all at right angles, two only of them are equal, the third, consequently, unequal. The vertical or principal axis is often much longer or shorter in this group, but the ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin
... Newton's head into my picture—"a fellow," said he, "who believed nothing unless it was as clear as the three sides of a triangle." And then he and Keats agreed he had destroyed all the poetry of the rainbow by reducing it to the prismatic colours. It was impossible to resist him, and we all drank "Newton's health, and confusion to mathematics." It was delightful to see the good-humour of Wordsworth in giving in to all our frolics without affectation, and laughing as heartily ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... was deliciously familiar to him; crimson-curtained, green carpeted, shining with heavy gilt picture frames and prismatic chandeliers. Often with posies and candies and theater-tickets he had strutted across that erstwhile magic threshold and fairly lolled in the big deep-upholstered chairs while waiting for the silk-rustling advent of the ladies. But now, with his suitcase clutched in his hand, no Armenian peddler ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... cousins drew rein, watching the fall of the water in silence, for the sound of the cascade precluded them from conversation. The sun shone through the tree tops giving a varied hue to the rich greenness of the foliage, and tinging with prismatic hues the sparkling water. So intent were they upon the downpour of the waterfall that they did not notice the dark forms which stole out from the underbrush, and stealthily formed a cordon about them. By the heads of the horses two forms arose suddenly like gnomes from the ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... Malesherbes, and lastly, to approach a most amiable queen and a most upright king, without believing ourselves about to enter upon a kind of golden era of which preceding centuries afforded no idea. . . . We were bewildered by the prismatic hues of fresh ideas and doctrines, radiant with hopes, ardently aglow for every sort of reputation, enthusiastic for all talents and beguiled by every seductive dream of a philosophy that was about to secure the happiness of the human species. Far from foreseeing misfortune, excess, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... hazy blue sky. The centre of this area was occupied by a small segment of a rainbow, the concave side of which was turned from the true sun, while on its convex edge, in contact with it at its most prominent part, was stretched a broad straight band of prismatic colours, similar to the rainbow in all but curvature. Across the space, within the circle of light, there was a broad stream of dusky cloud, formed of three distinct streaks, and reaching from one of the most ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various
... a farmer's criticism,—a Crispin feeling the bunions on some Phidian statue. And do I think the less of Goldsmith, because he wantoned with the literalism of the country, and laid on his prismatic colors of romance where only white light lay? Not one whit. It only shows how Genius may discard utter faithfulness to detail, if only its song is charged with a general simplicity and truthfulness that fill ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... the river. Bright crimson carpet usually covered the floor of the long, tunnel-like cabin. Down the center were ranged the tables, about which, thrice a day, the hungry passengers gathered to be fed, while from the ceiling depended chandeliers, from which hung prismatic pendants, tinkling pleasantly as the boat vibrated with the throb of her engines. At one end of the main saloon was the ladies' cabin, discreetly cut off by crimson curtains; at the other, the bar, which, in a period when copious libations of alcoholic drinks were at least ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... an arrangement with blocks. The jar V, is provided with a cover of copper, E, screwing into the glass. This cover carries two vertical plates of sheet-iron, A, A', against which are fixed the prismatic blocks, B, B, by means of India rubber bands. The terminal, C, carried by the cover constitutes the positive pole. The zinc is formed of a single pencil, D, passing into a tube fixed to the center of the cover. The India rubber, G, is folded back ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... because it is to be divided into two,—the smallest party will go back into Catholicism; the other will go forward into Rationalism. And then, after a succession of eventful years, a political revolution will hurl the Catholic superstructure to the earth, and the prismatic bow of promise will span the heavens. The children of earth will then be comparatively free and happy! for the millennial epoch will have arrived; and there will be something like a realization of peace on earth, and good will toward ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... sometimes reaches to a length of fourteen feet, being the largest known poisonous snake. It is equally remarkable for the glowing radiance of its fearful beauty, displaying as it does, when gliding amid the sunshine, all the prismatic colours. Though generally remaining on the ground, it mounts trees with perfect ease in search of its prey—birds or their eggs; while from the overhanging bough it can dart ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the effects and uses of the prismatic colors, we shall be enabled the better to understand both the ancient and modern popular ideas as to colors as representatives and correspondences. Colors have a mental, moral, and physical significance—a good and a bad import. The one to which ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... amid the revolving columns of mist that soar from the foaming chasm, and shroud the broad front of the gigantic flood. Both arches of the bow are seldom entirely elicited, but the interior segment is perfect, and its prismatic hues are extremely glowing and vivid. The fragments of a plurality of rainbows are sometimes to be seen in various parts of ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... beauteous scenes above; surely there will be developments and variety in light, colour, music, harmony, and the rest of those "pleasures for evermore," which are everywhere emanations from the direct love of "Him who first loved us,"—His gifts, who even here bestows prismatic hues upon icebergs in the arctic circle, and a rosy flush to the peaks of Jebel Sanneen ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... chowder, and so on; but I—I may as well confess—wanted the excitement, the fishes, the opportunity of displaying my piscatory prowess. I enjoyed in anticipation the masculine admiration and feminine chagrin that would accompany the beautiful, fat, shining, speckled, prismatic trout into my basket, while other rods waited in vain for a "nibble." I resolved to be magnanimous. Modesty should lend to genius a heightened charm. I would win hearts by my humility, as well as laurels by my dexterity. I would disclaim superior skill, attribute ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... had called upon her friend to speak as poet in his own person and to speak out, he assured her that whereas hitherto he had only made men and women utter themselves on his behalf and had given the truth not as pure white light but broken into prismatic hues, now he would try to declare directly that which was in him. In place of his men and women he would have her to be a companion in his work, and yet, he adds, "I don't think I shall let you hear, after all, the savage things about Popes and ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... only winds would answer. Delirium was in his brain, and wild fancies chased each other; he heard the crowing of cocks and saw his sister; his father would come to him, and he would stretch out his hand and grasp the shadowy nothing. There was a halo of beauty all about him; prismatic hues trembled in the light, and the tones of sweet music floated upon the breeze. He saw angels swimming in the golden light; the blue ether opened, and they came through to greet him and to welcome him to heaven. Then all was darkness, the crisis ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... gestures, with a face glowing with enthusiasm, the young orator enumerated the beautiful phases of nature. He painted the starry sky, the sunset clouds, and the purple hills in words of prismatic hue and his rapturous eloquence held us rigid. "We have been taught," he said in effect, "that beauty is a snare of the evil one; that it is a lure to destroy, but I assert that God desires loveliness and hates ugliness. He loves ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... side to side in endless repetition. The inside of this chilly abode was divided into several compartments of every fantastic shape; in some the glittering icicles hung like curtains from the roof; in others the vault was smooth as glass. Beautifully brilliant were the prismatic colours reflected from the varied surface of the ice, when the torches flashed suddenly upon them as we passed from cave to cave. Around, above, beneath, every thing was of solid ice, and being unable to stand ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... fallen from Arctic skies, living, changeful, evanescent, athwart sea, plain, and mountain. Here is sore temptation for the colorist; more, perhaps, than by the wealth and combination of tints, he is affected by their celestial quality. All is prismatic, or like those hues produced by the interference of rays of light as seen in the colors of stars. Gorgeous as are these phenomena, they are also as transitory; and although the scene is repeated, it is with such subtile and such great changes as to remove it from the grasp of the painter who ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... glasses stood upon the salver, casting prismatic radiance over the silver, as the sunbeams smote their slender fluted sides, and a pair of ruby tinted finger-bowls completed ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... violet, and rose, with the tints of beryl and topaz, sapphire and almandine and amethyst, each in due order and at proper distances. The fabled dolphin in its death could not have showed a more brilliant succession of splendours waning into splendours through the whole chord of prismatic colours. This sensitiveness of the Attic limestone to every modification of the sky's light gives a peculiar spirituality to the landscape. The hills remain in form and outline unchanged; but the beauty breathed upon them lives or dies with the emotions of the air from whence it emanates: ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... which reminded Lisa of the bottle of liqueurs in front of Monsieur Lebigre's mirror. She came back by this side, which seemed to be warmed by the glow of light, and took a passing interest in the reliquaries, altar ornaments, and paintings steeped in prismatic reflections. The church was empty, quivering with the silence that fell from its vaulted roofing. Here and there a woman's dress showed like a dark splotch amidst the vague yellow of the chairs; and a low buzzing came from the ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... lords of the creation, the poet's eyes consequently became "blue," and his hair "auburn." Colors, however, vary with the prejudice or partiality of the spectator; and, moreover, people do not agree even upon the most palpable prismatic tint. A writing-master whom we had at Enfield was an artist of more than ordinary merit; but he had one dominant defect: he could not distinguish between true blue and true green. So that, upon one occasion, when he was ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... much of a student of nature after all, or he would not have called worms "nasty things," but have taken more notice of them as they were turned out of their damp bed, and seen that they were clothed with a skin whose surface reflected colours of prismatic hue, as bright and perfect as those seen upon some pearly shells. He would have seen how wonderfully the worms were constructed for the fulfilment of their apportioned position in the animal kingdom; how, without legs, or the peculiar twist ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... in the fellow's simile. When an idea gets hold of us in Troy, we puff at it, we blow it out and distend it to a globe, pausing and calling on one another to mark the prismatic tints, the fugitive images, symbols, meanings of the wide world glassed upon our pretty toy. We launch it. We follow it with our eyes as it floats from us—an irrecoverable delight. We watch until the microcosm goes pop! Then ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 1) a delectable episode. Over a murmurous accompanying figure given out by violas, 'cellos, harp, and horn, a clarinet sings a variant of the Melisande theme. The harmonic changes are kaleidoscopic, the orchestral color of prismatic variety. The ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... gloomy grace of the library into which it opened. This room was fitted up in the Gothic style, the door and large sash windows of that form—the latter of painted glass, shedding a dim religious light. Candles were seldom admitted into this apartment. The ingenious friends had invented a kind of prismatic lantern, which occupied the whole elliptic arch of the Gothic door. This lantern was of cut glass, variously colored, inclosing two lamps with their reflectors. The light it imparted resembled that of a volcano—sanguine and solemn. It was assisted by two glowworm lamps, that, in little marble ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... calcium carbonate. Others composed of calcium phosphate, calcium sulphate and silica are sometimes found. These crystals may occur singly or in clusters of greater or less size. In shape they are prismatic or needle-like. ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... changes, Like a prismatic glass, It takes the light and ranges Through all the moods that pass; Dissects the common carnival Of passions and regrets, And gives the world a glimpse of all The ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... true that changes do come over the Village like the waves of the sea, even as my friend said. But they are colourful waves, prismatic waves, fresh, invigourating and energetic waves, carrying on their crests iridescent seaweed and glittering shells and now and then a pearl. The Village has its treasure, have no doubt of that; never a phase touches it but leaves it the ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... without stopping, apparently with the view of ascertaining if he were quite correctly put together, while Gluck stood contemplating him in speechless amazement. He was dressed in a slashed doublet of spun gold, so fine in its texture that the prismatic colors gleamed over it, as if on a surface of mother of pearl; and over this brilliant doublet his hair and beard fell full halfway to the ground in waving curls, so exquisitely delicate, that Gluck could hardly tell where they ended; they seemed to melt into air. The features of the face, however, ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... Orestes's bubble swelled, and grew, and glittered every day with fresh prismatic radiance; while Hypatia sat at home, with a heavy heart, writing her ode to Venus Urania, and submitting ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... by the sun shone a tiny segment of rainbow. This Mr. Heatherbloom watched with a kind of childish interest; then stretched himself more luxuriously on the hard bunk. It was very fine having nothing more important and arduous to do than watching prismatic hues; his thoughts floated back to long forgotten wonder-days when he had possessed that master-marvel of toys, a kaleidoscope, and on occasion had importantly permitted the golden-haired child in the big house on the top of ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... along the arch of the sky, describing an arc of 30 deg. or 40 deg. in a few seconds. Luminous trains marked their path, which remained in view for a number of minutes, and in some cases for half an hour or more. The trains were commonly white, but the various prismatic colors occasionally appeared, vividly and beautifully displayed. Some of these fire-balls, or shooting-stars, were of enormous size. Dr. Smith of North Carolina observed one which appeared larger than the full moon at the horizon. "I was startled," he remarks, "by ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... lamination is that parallel to the orthopinacoid; another, less distinct, is parallel to the basal plane, and a third parallel to the plane of symmetry; these planes of secondary parting are in addition to the ordinary prismatic cleavage of all pyroxenes. Frequently the material is interlaminated with a rhombic pyroxene (bronzite) or with an amphibole (smaragdite or uralite), the latter being an alteration product of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... In all the varied view! Before me all is burnish'd gold, Behind the twilight's hue. The mists which on old Night await, Far to the west they hold their state, They shun the clear blue face of Morn; Along the fine cerulean sky The fleecy clouds successive fly, While bright prismatic beams their shadowy ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... exactly level with the top of the column. It was read, some half-hour after it was set up, at 13.617 inches. The alcohol minimum thermometer stood at 7 deg. F. all the while we were on top. Meanwhile, Tatum had been reading a round of angles with the prismatic compass. He could not handle it with sufficient exactness with his mitts on, and he froze ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... foolish child,' said he. 'Prismatic you mean. I am glad you remember what I tell you, however; I think I might teach you some science in time. You are right in saying that blue, red, and yellow are the prismatic colours. Now do you know ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is so dense that the objects are seen, like Captain Scoresby's ship, snatched up into the regions of the air, thirty or forty feet above the level of the sea; and in cloudy weather, nearer to the surface, bordered with vivid prismatic colours. Sometimes colonades of temples and churches, with cross-crowned spires, are all represented as floating on the sea, and by a sudden change of representation, the pillars are curved into arcades, and the crosses are bent into crescents, and all the edifices ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... the matin hour, may not, in their picturesque variety, be the most attractive. The palm, perhaps, would be given to the fish-mongers, with their exuberant exhibitions, grouped with skill, startling often with strange forms, dazzling with prismatic tints, and breathing the ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... stiff and hard, exhibiting the exaggeration of form and attitude which makes early art look grotesque: he was fond of stern drawing, and generally painted a firm black outline to his figures, which has a very harsh effect. His colouring is equally positive, and his saints are generally arrayed in prismatic tints, relieved by the gold backgrounds which prevailed so constantly in early art. His portrait painted by Duerer at a later period of his life, is characteristic of the man. It is now in the Pinacothek at Munich, and has been well described by Dr. Kuegler, as delineating "a strangely sharp, ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... light from behind fell upon them. A maid was lighting the gas in the drawing-room. Mostyn saw the cut-glass pendants of the crystal chandelier blaze in prismatic splendor. His mind was far from the lined countenance before him. He was heavy with indecision. His sister's confident derision clung to him like a menace from ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... of brain, the nucleus has been dropped into it, the pearl begins to grow, and to assume prismatic hues. So he is happy, and even the frozen-out angler might be happy if he could write a novel in the absence of salmon. Unluckily, my brain is not capable of this aesthetic malady, and to save my life, or to "milk a fine warm cow rain," as the Zulus say, I could not ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... bearing a blanket, waterproof sheet, three days' rations of biscuits and preserved meat, together with an emergency ration in a sealed tin, and (for those with rifles) 200 rounds of ammunition. Officers carried revolvers, field glasses, prismatic compass, and various other extras. They were also allowed to place their valises on the train but, according to rumour, it was doubtful if they would ever reach ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... so still in the distance, where an intensely bright double rainbow is relieved against the departing thunder-cloud. The freshly wet grass is all radiant through and through with the new sunshine; full noon at its purest, the very donkeys bathed in the rain-dew, and prismatic with it under their rough breasts as they graze; the weeds at the girl's side as bright as a Byzantine enamel, and inlaid with blue veronica; her upturned face all aglow with the light that seeks its way through her wet eyelashes (wet only with the rain). Very quiet ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... pause is to be for ever, turns all the sweeter meditations into a whirl of confusion and anxiety and shame. A mother is so near that the reflection of her child's sentiments gets into her mind, but very often with such prismatic changes, and oblique catchings of the light, that even sympathy goes wrong. Mrs. Warrender thus caught from Chatty the representation of an agitated soul in which there was all the sensitive shame of a love that is given unsought, ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... calcite are extremely varied in form, but, as a rule, they may be referred to four distinct habits, namely: rhombohedral, prismatic, scalenohedral and tabular. The primitive rhombohedron, r {100} (fig. 1), is comparatively rare except in combination with other forms. A flatter rhombohedron, e {110}, is shown in fig. 2, and a more acute one, f {11-1}, in fig. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... PRISMATIC COLOURS, the seven colours a ray of pure white light is resolved into when refracted through a prism, applied figuratively by Carlyle to the pure light refracted through the soul of a ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... attachment to the piano and he can adjust it to get the air of his choice without having to ask any one to play for him. In the drawing-room an electric fountain may be playing, its jets reflecting the prismatic colors of the rainbow as the waters fall in iridescent sparkle among the lights. Such a fountain is composed of a small electric motor and a centrifugal pump, the latter being placed in the interior of a basin and connected directly to the motor shaft. The pump receives the water ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... and his face fell into boyish, almost childish, contours. He plucked another glossy leaf with his hard, veinous old hands. His hands would not change to suit his mood, but his limbs relaxed like those of a boy. He stared at the brook gurgling past in brown ripples, shot with dim prismatic lights, showing here clear green water lines, here inky depths, and he thought of the possibility of trout. He ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... more glassy and transparent-looking, as if it had been fused at a higher temperature than usual; and the crystals of sulphur, alum, and other minerals, with which it abounded, reflected the light in bright prismatic colors. In places it was quite transparent, and we could see beneath it the long streaks of a stringy kind of lava, like brown spun glass, called ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... 1st September, heavy clouds were flying fastly over us, and a few drops of rain fell at intervals. About ten o'clock p.m. I observed a lunar rainbow in the northern horizon; its diameter was only about fifteen degrees. There were no prismatic colours visible about it. To-day was clear, fine, but rather windy. We travelled up the creek, skirting its banks, but cutting off the bends. We had low ridges on our right. The creek came for some distance from the south-west, ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... fixtures, which had cost a king's ransom, or represented the one night's losings of a Klondike millionaire, shone rich, dark, and enticing, while the cut glass sparkled with iridescent hues, reflecting, in a measure, the prismatic moods, the dancing spirits of the crowd that crushed past, halting at the gambling games, or patronizing the theatre in the rear. The old bar furniture, brought down by dog team from "Up River," was established at the rear extremity of the long building, ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... each having its own distinctive character; then, after a short interval, the search-lights were suddenly flashed on to the city of Sirapion; the beautiful buildings with their domes, towers, and minarets looking exquisitely ethereal as they were bathed in the beams of the glowing and ever-changing prismatic light. The beams were next directed downwards upon the assembly, and we gained a truer appreciation of the immense ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... blue-purple shadows, the silhouette only showing in places beneath heavy masses of cloud, in which some of the summits were hidden. Falling showers here and there softened and veiled the strong light and shade, relieved by the prismatic hues of a rainbow. As the sun sank lower the mountains and clouds gradually became a pallid grey, while the sky to westward passed through many gradations of colour and tone as the clouds slowly dispersed and night fell. Far away over the darkening ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... milky, also in quartz of nearly every colour and appearance, saccharoidal, crystalline, nay, even in clear glass-like six-sided prismatic crystals, and associated with silver, copper, lead, arsenic, iron as sulphide, oxide, carbonate, and tungstate, antimony, bismuth, nickel, zinc, lead, and other metals in one form or another; in ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... dazzling scene. Words cannot describe the intense glitter that characterized everything. Every point seemed a diamond, every edge sent forth a gleam of light, and many of the masses reflected the rich prismatic colours of the rainbow. It seemed as if the sun himself had been multiplied in order to add to the excessive brilliancy, for he was surrounded by parhelia, or sun-dogs, as the men called them. This peculiarity in the ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... wide chasm, in which the water of the sea palpitated with the beating of the great heart of Ocean from which it flowed. Trees were still erect, clasped by the salt waves, but quite dead; and all around their base were hung fringes of marine growth, touched with prismatic tints when seen through the glittering water, but brown and hideous when gathered, as the trophy remaining in the hand which has dared to seize old Proteus by the locks. All around this avenue, into which the sea sometimes rushed like an invading host of armed men, the laurels and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... below, and, being on a level with the sea, with the spray dashing over us occasionally, amused ourselves with noting its shifting hues and forms, from the deep green of the first long roll to the foam-crest and prismatic ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... do not suffice the eager illustrator. The passing word seizes his fancy. Herod describes the jewels which he promises to give to Salome so she relieve him of his oath, and the music of the orchestra glints and glistens with a hundred prismatic tints. Salome wheedles the young Syrian to bring forth the prophet, and her cry, "Thou wilt do this thing for me," is carried to his love-mad brain by a voluptuous glissando of the harp which is as irresistible as her glance and smile. But the voluptuous ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... was of a filmy and prismatic beauty that was sufficient evidence of her Cohltar origin—our mother, of course, was a Cohltar. I never thought her mind the equal of my own. Indeed, at the moment of going to press I have not yet met the mind that I thought the equal of ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... increasing, till it is succeeded by a flood of light, at first striking, then dazzling, and we pass out of the dense cloud to where the clouds open out in bold and fantastic shapes, showing us light and shadow, and spectral scenes, with prismatic embellishments, disporting themselves around us in wild grandeur, till at length we break out into brilliant sunshine, and the clouds roll away in a perfect sea of vapour, obscuring the earth entirely; so that now in ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne
... yellow, green, blue, and violet in the centre! Moreover, the very steam arising from it (reflecting as it did the varied tints beneath) was exquisitely colored, and vanished into air like a dissolving rainbow. All these prismatic pools are clasped by beautifully decorated curbs of silica, and seem to be set in rings of gold, with mineral colors running through them like enamel. So delicate are the touches of the magic water, as the persistent heart-beats of old Mother Earth ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... clarified wax sparkled like stars in chandeliers of crystal. These in turn, catching the illumination, glittered in prismatic fragments with all the varied colors of the rainbow, so that a mellow yet brilliant radiance filled the entire apartment. Polished mirrors of a spotless clearness, framed in golden frames and built into the walls, reflected the waxed floors, the rich Oriental carpets, and the ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... changes to velvet black; ruby reds and luminous scarlets; dull bronze that brightens and burns like polished brass, and pale neutral tints that kindle to rose and lilac-coloured flame. And to the glory of prismatic colouring are added feather decorations, such as the racket-plumes and downy muffs of Spathura, the crest and frills of Lophornis, the sapphire gorget burning on the snow-white breast of Oreotrochilus, the fiery tail of Cometes, and, amongst grotesque forms, ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... Florence, God knows what impossible pictures, in which she was the principal figure, presented themselves to his mind. Equally vague and uncertain, though not so sanguine, were her own thoughts of the life before her; and even as her tears made prismatic colours in the light she gazed at, so, through her new and heavy grief, she already saw a rainbow faintly shining in the far-off sky. A wandering princess and a good monster in a storybook might have sat by the fireside, and talked as Captain Cuttle and poor Florence ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... solid and liquid bodies when raised to a white heat give a continuous spectrum, one like the prismatic band already described, and one not interrupted by any dark lines or bands. The rays emitted from the white-hot substance of the sun have to pass, before reaching our earth, through the sun's atmosphere, and since the ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith
... they seemed to emulate. The pupil is a fine black, and above each eye is a semilunar mark of the richest garnet. The body, nearly transparent, or of a pellucid green, is glossed with all the variety of prismatic tints, and thickly dotted with brown. At almost every effort of respiration, the little creature tossed its arms in apparent agony, and clung more firmly to the finger; while the dark-brown spots upon the body alternately faded and revived, diminishing in size till they were ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 495, June 25, 1831 • Various
... hunted and hunted; but after three or four hours I began to notice that three of my sailors were shrivelling up, and Conrad began to act as if he were daft. Hawkins burst right before my eyes. Then Abeuchapeta got prismatic around the eyes and began to fade, and I noticed a slight iridescence about myself; and as for Morgan, he had the misfortune to lie down to take a nap in the sun, and when he waked up, his whole right side had evaporated. ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... the song and the country become as one, I see it as music, I hear it as light; Prismatic and shimmering, trembling to tone, The land of desire, my soul's delight. And always it beats in my listening ears With the gentle thud of a horse's stride, With the swift-falling steps of many dogs, Following, following at my side. O Roads that journey to fairyland! Radiant highways whose vistas ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... beauty outside; if you looked at the trees as the sun struck them, with your back toward the sun, they were covered with jewels. If you looked toward the sun it was all crystal whiteness, a perfect fairy-land. Then the nights were moonlight, and that was a great beauty, the moon giving us the same prismatic effect. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the sky. He had watched with delirious amusement the dead men rise to bury each other. And he had spent hours in wondering what would happen to the last of them. His head felt oddly light, as if it were full of air, a bubble of prismatic colours that might burst into nothingness at any moment. But his body felt as if it were fettered with a thousand chains. He could hear them clanking ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... a normal fashion. Samples of the fog were being analyzed. It was probably akin to the Belgian fogs which on several occasions had caused much loss of life. The mist was especially interesting because in sunlight it displayed prismatic colorings. State troopers were warning the inhabitants ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... The fibers were first viewed under plain transmitted light, secondly, polarized light and selenite plate. Since silk and cotton are polarizing bodies, "cottonized silk," if such could be made as described, would give, in this case, the prismatic colors of both fibers, and the complementary colors would differ greatly because of the great disparity of their respective ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... man-directed hell was making sportive chaos in the village which it hid with its steaming breath cut by columns of black smoke from the H.E.'s and crowned with flashes of shrapnel; and under the sun's rays the gases from the powder made prismatic splendor in flurries and billows shot with the ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... I find that there is a slight difference in the form of the grinders which, in the fossil, have the antero-posterior diameter greater in proportion than the transverse; the first grinder also is relatively larger, and of a more prismatic form; the upper incisors are less compressed and more prismatic; this difference is so well marked that, once appreciated, anyone might recognise the fossil by an incisor alone. There is a similar difference in the shape of the lower incisor. The fossil is also a little larger than ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... played over the pits, like the thin, colored flames at the edge of a driftwood fire. Soft, opalescent gleams were blent with prismatic blues, greens, crimsons. Melting violets were stabbed through by hard yellows and penetrant purples. And here an orange flash vied with a delicate old rose; there a rich carnation sparkled beside a misty ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... above the general level of the neighbouring fields. The stone itself consists of a massive unhewn block of the secondary greenstone-trap of the district, many large boulders of which lie in the bed of the neighbouring river. In form it is somewhat prismatic, or irregularly triangular, with its angles very rounded. This large monolith is nearly twelve feet in circumference, about four feet five inches in width, and three feet three inches in thickness. Its height above ground is about four feet and ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... from my new coign of vantage; for, as she dived her head and parted the waves with her bows, the water dashed up on either side in a column of spray like a fountain. The sunlight falling on this refracted the most beautiful prismatic colours, a perfect rainbow being formed to leeward which was ever being broken up and then arching itself anew into a sort of emerald and orange halo in front of the ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... called on Rumanika I gave him a Vautier's binocular and prismatic compass; on which he politely remarked he was afraid he was robbing me of everything. More compliments went round, and then he asked if it was true we could open a man's skull, look at his brains, and close it up again; also if it was true ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke |
