"Serpentine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... guarded their domain. Other frames lay face downward, as though the broken teeth had bitten the dust in battle. Slender forms lay prone, their arms encircling cooking utensils, beautiful in form and colour. Great bowls and urns, toy canoes, mortars and pestles, of serpentine, sandstone, and steatite, wrought with a lost art,—if, indeed, the art had ever been known beyond this island,—and baked to richest dyes, were placed at the head and feet of skeletons more lofty in stature than ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... seventy-two miles across Ph[oe]nicia, Lebanon, C[oe]lo-Syria, and Anti-Lebanon, brings us, by French diligence, to Damascus. Abana and Pharpar break through a sublime gorge, about 100 yards wide, down the middle of which the French road winds its serpentine course, the rivers on either side being fringed with silver poplar and scented walnut. As we look eastward from the brow of the hill, the great plain of Damascus, encircled by a framework of desert, lies before us. The ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... silvery grass; Night ambrosial circles me round; in the coolness so fragrant Greets me a beauteous roof, formed by the beeches' sweet shade. In the depths of the wood the landscape suddenly leaves me And a serpentine path guides up my footsteps on high. Only by stealth can the light through the leafy trellis of branches Sparingly pierce, and the blue smilingly peeps through the boughs, But in a moment the veil ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... a time, broke the silence of Frank's solitary ride, as he made his way along the serpentine road rising still higher and higher, and every now and then emerging upon broader and broader views of the plains and ocean beyond them, while the interlocking hills beneath his feet had dwindled down into a row of hillocks like funeral mounts in some Titanic graveyard. And now, as he paused in ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... pass a terribly rocky and stony road. We were obliged to scramble up and down the mountainous side of a valley, as the valley itself was completely occupied by the irregular course of the river Badin, which wound in a serpentine direction from side to side. Pomegranates and oleanders grew in the valley, wild vines twined themselves round the shrubs and trees, and larches covered the slopes of ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... blocks of porphyry—I believe there are three—in Cornwall, lying one on serpentine, one, I think, on slate, which—so I was always informed as a boy—were the stones which St. Kevern threw after St. Just when the latter stole his host's chalice and paten, and ran away with them to the Land's End. Why not? ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... longed for a trail—a faint, meandering trail that would swing from the road, dip into a sand arroyo, edge slanting up the farther bank, wriggle round a cluster of small hills, shoot out across a mesa, and climb slowly toward those hills to the west, finally to contort itself into serpentine switchbacks as it sought the crest—and once on the crest (which was in reality but the visible edge of another great mesa), there would be grass for a horse and cedar-wood for a fire, and water with which ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... palace and a prison on either hand;" but, in its stead, we could gaze at the festooned chains of Hammersmith Suspension Bridge in all its simple beauty, and see the Soapworks and the Mall on the hither and further shore. Our course led, not through serpentine canals and past Doges' palaces, gaudy with the lavish adornments of tricky Byzantine architecture; nor could we expect to see "lions" as historical as those which ornament the facade of Saint Mark's. However, as we glided up against the tide, in slow but steady progress, by willowy banks and osiered ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... about sixteen miles to the northward of Pontiana, and the second port belonging to the sultan. The river is shallow, narrow, extremely serpentine, and constantly running down with great rapidity. The country around is a paradise in comparison with Pontiana. It is upon an elevated site, and, wherever the eye reaches, it is clear of jungle, and of fine rich mold, susceptible of the highest culture. There ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... about her, the mountain walls iridescent with snow in sunshine, the river gleaming with its curious, rapid, serpentine life, in all the peaceful death of winter; everything was as it always had been. Her mind refused to accept the possibility of her living under other conditions with as irresistible and final a certainty as if she had been called upon to believe she could ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... don't need practice and I'd like to preserve the beautiful illusion that maybe I could crack your shield if I wanted to. I'll work on Miss Snake-Hips here, the serpentine charmer—but say, I'll bet there's a bone in it. You can block ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... night of the 22nd of February a very singular spectacle was got up on the Serpentine. Late in the evening a fine "brass band," attended by near a thousand torchbearers, suddenly marched on to the ice on the ornamental water in Kensington Gardens, and struck up popular airs; as by a signal, large fires were lighted on the ice, tents were erected, and barrels of beer were broached. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the Idle Lake. I would fain have loitered an hour more in this enchanted bower, had not the gardener, whose patience was quite exhausted, and who had never heard of the Red-Cross Knight and his achievements, dragged me away to a sunburnt, contemptible hillock, commanding the view of a serpentine ditch, and decorated with the title of Jardin Anglois. Some object like decayed limekilns and mouldering ovens, is disposed in an amphitheatrical form, on the declivity of this tremendous eminence: and ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... film which sometimes sheathes the sky in diffused light for very many hours before a brilliant aurora. Suddenly, a swift shadow, like the fabulous flying-dragon, writhed through the air before her, and she felt herself instantly seized and borne aloft. It was that wild beast—the most savage and serpentine and subtle and fearless of our latitudes—known by hunters as the Indian Devil, and he held her in his clutches on the broad floor of a swinging fir-bough. His long sharp claws were caught in her clothing, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... outlying farm a lantern glimmers in the barn-yard: the cattle are having their fodder betimes. Scarlet-capped chanticleer gets himself on the nearest rail fence and lifts up his rancorous voice like some irate old cardinal launching the curse of Rome. Something crawls swiftly along the gray of the serpentine turnpike—a cart, with the driver lashing a jaded horse. A quick wind goes shivering by, and is lost in ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... houses. The clatter of hoofs, And the music of wandering bands, up the walls Of the steep hanging hill, at remote intervals Reached them, cross'd by the sound of the clacking of whips, And here and there, faintly, through serpentine slips Of verdant rose-gardens deep-sheltered with screens Of airy acacias and dark evergreens, They could mark the white dresses and catch the light songs Of the lovely Parisians that wander'd in throngs, Led by Laughter and Love through the old eventide Down the dream-haunted ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... never even beheld the enchantress since that never-to-be-forgotten morning when he had seen her pass at the head of the serpentine procession of pupils, slowly winding across the Market Square. But he knew she was still in Gueldersdorp. He felt her, for one thing. We know that in his case Love's clairvoyant instinct had got its nightcap on. We saw Greta depart on the train bound North and ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... languidly on their mistress's lap, and abroad take their view of life through a muff much bigger than themselves; if he could see the big obedient dogs who walk solemnly through the Park carrying their master's stick, never pausing in their impressive march unless it be to plunge into the Serpentine and rescue a drowning child, he would know what I mean. He would admit that a dog who cannot answer to his own name and pays but little more attention to "Down, idiot," and "Come here, fool," is not every place's ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... separated the old parish of Chelsea from the City of Westminster was determined by a brook called the Westbourne, which took its rise near West End in Hampstead. It flowed through Bayswater and into Hyde Park. It supplied the water of the Serpentine, which we owe to the fondness of Queen Caroline for landscape gardening. This well-known piece of water was afterwards supplied from the Chelsea waterworks. The Westbourne stream then crossed Knightsbridge, ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... there was a "whip" of the party to which he belonged. He was a member of the Sanitary and Sewage Commissions, and of the Commission which sat on Westminster Bridge. The last occasions on which he addressed the House were on the Suez Canal and the cleansing of the Serpentine. He pronounced the Suez Canal to be an impracticable scheme. "I have surveyed the line," said he, "I have travelled the whole distance on foot, and I declare there is no fall between the two seas. Honourable members talk about a canal. A canal is ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... human heads; others had even more remarkable composite forms. The "dragon of Babylon", for instance, which was portrayed on walls of temples, had a serpent's head, a body covered with scales, the fore legs of a lion, hind legs of an eagle, and a long wriggling serpentine tail. Ea had several monster forms. The following description of one of these is ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... Wooden war-club of hard oak with serpentine line and arrow point (as on pipe, Fig. ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of the Collections Obtained from the Indians of New Mexico in 1880 • James Stevenson
... the water may fall into various vases of granite, porphyryand serpentine, within semi-circular recesses; and the water may overflow from these. And round this portico towards the North there should be a lake with a little island in the midst of which should be a thick and shady wood; the waters at the top of the pilasters should pour into vases ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... its irregular serpentine outline, and to the desolate majesty of the hills which environ it, Lough Veagh, though not a large sheet of water, may well be what it is reputed to be, a rival of the finest lochs in Scotland. No traces are now discernible on its shores of the too celebrated evictions of Glen ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... tiger, softly, and went out awestruck, holding her hand, and paddling three steps to each of her serpentine glides. ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... landing, and Kenneth Gordon was released from his cramped posture in that plebeian craft, he felt so averse to his mission, such a frivolous, reluctant distaste that he marvelled how he was to go through with it at all, as he took his way along the serpentine curves of the "dirt road," preceded by his guide, still with eyes averted and sullen mien, silently ...
— The Phantom Of Bogue Holauba - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... fashion, for the Puritans in their time complained of it as the resort of "most shameful powdered-hair men and painted women." It covers about three hundred and ninety acres, and has a pretty sheet of water called the Serpentine. The fashionable drive is on the southern side, and here also is the famous road for equestrians known as Rotten Row, which stretches nearly a mile and a half. On a fine afternoon in the season the display on ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... twist, coil, roll; wrinkle, curl, crisp, twill; frizzle; crimp, crape, indent, scollop[obs3], scallop, wring, intort[obs3]; contort; wreathe &c. (cross) 219. Adj. convoluted; winding, twisted &c. v.; tortile[obs3], tortive|; wavy; undated, undulatory; circling, snaky, snake-like, serpentine; serpent, anguill[obs3], vermiform; vermicular; mazy, tortuous, sinuous, flexuous, anfractuous[obs3], reclivate[obs3], rivulose[obs3], scolecoid[obs3]; sigmoid, sigmoidal[Geom]; spiriferous[obs3], spiroid[obs3]; involved, intricate, complicated, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... and cylindrical and ordinary seals. Unfortunately, their identification generally presents more or less difficulty, on account of the absence of indications of their identity. On a small cylinder-seal in the possession of the Rev. Dr. W. Hayes Ward, Merodach is shown striding along the serpentine body of Tiawath, who turns her head to attack him, whilst the god threatens her with a pointed weapon which he carries. Another, published by the same scholar, shows a deity, whom he regards as being Merodach, driven ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Theophilus G. Pinches
... of several internodes, the lower ones bend together at the same rate, but one or two of the terminal ones bend at a slower rate; hence, though at times all the internodes are in the same direction, at other times the shoot is rendered slightly serpentine. The rate of revolution of the whole shoot, if judged by the movement of the extreme tip, is thus at times accelerated or retarded. One other point must be noticed. Authors have observed that the end of the shoot in many twining plants is completely hooked; this is ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... keeper let him in, declaring, however, that there was nobody within the precincts. Although it was not late, the autumnal darkness had now become intense; and he found some difficulty in keeping to the serpentine path which led to the quarter where, as the man had told him, the one or two interments for the day had taken place. He stepped upon the grass, and, stumbling over some pegs, stooped now and then to discern if possible ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... do not consider how much we have wound about. We have taken such a very serpentine course, and the wood itself must be half a mile long in a straight line, for we have never seen the end of it yet since we ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... straight line had asserted its power, and fashion felt its sway. Such was the feeling that produced the coffee-pot of 1692, the straight lines of which continued in vogue until the middle of the following century, when a reaction in favour of bulbous bodies and serpentine spouts ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... had bare spots here and there, and patches of creamy—fur? Or was it hair which hung in strips, as if the creatures had been partially plucked in a careless fashion? The necks were long and moved about in a serpentine motion, as though their spines were as limber as reptiles'. On the end of those long and twisting necks were heads which also appeared more suitable to another species—broad, rather flat, with ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... than seated on the easy chair; everything from the curves of his smooth limbs to the coils of his silvered hair suggesting the circles of a serpent more than the straight limbs of a man—the unmistakable, splendid serpentine gentleman we had seen walking in North London, his eyes shining with ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... and Kieff waited for him, quite motionless, with thin lips drawn back, showing a snarling gleam of teeth. But just as Burke reached him he moved. His right arm shot forth with a serpentine ferocity, and in a flash the muzzle of a revolver gleamed ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... he did so, and ordered the porter up to the house. The magnificent avenue was a serpentine one, and our friends had barely time to get out of sight of the lodge, by a turn in it, when they heard the voices of the pursuers, hallooing for the porter, ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Styrian-Carinthian highway through the valley of the Drau does not know what one of the good old Austrian imperial highroads in the good old days might undertake. Hop-up-and-down is its behavior, with snake-like humps, like a jumping polecat. Serpentine windings? Don't exist there. Straight as an arrow it heedlessly goes over mountain after mountain, down to the Drau and up again to airy heights, and any motorist who is slightly in a hurry will make a miniature descent into hell of some 250 feet, say beyond Voelkermarkt, approaching Lavamuend; ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... France, when they are lined with rock crystals, arise most frequently from the union of several contemporaneous veins of quartz,* (* Gleichzeitige Trummer. To these stone veins which appear to be of the same age as the rock, belong the veins of talc and asbestos in serpentine, and those of quartz traversing schist (Thonschiefer). Jameson on Contemporaneous Veins, in the Mem. of the Wernerian Soc.) of feldspar, or of fine-grained granite. The gneiss presents, though more seldom, the same phenomenon; ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... refracted images, of the grey stones at the bottom of the sea for twenty yards out and more. The sea had no power, it splashed in weak and hopeless waves, sucked itself away inward, came back again with a little run, and feebly toppled over. The high-water line was shown by a serpentine strip of jetsam winding along the whole of the shore. There was no yellow in the sands; clouds and sunshine struggled overhead, but beneath them all was grey. The wind rustled in the giant grasses like the sound of men on horseback, so that I was continually looking ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... any sense he will just duck you in the Serpentine and make you apologise. Personally I consider myself anything but a baby, and far superior to any ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... horseback. Handsome and graceful still, Leopold Travers when in London is pleased to find himself scarcely less the fashion with the young than he was when himself in youth. He is now riding along the banks of the Serpentine, no one better mounted, better dressed, better looking, or talking with greater fluency on the ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... speckled trout and shining pickerel, to say nothing about the many play hours spent upon its margin; but now the stream is lost beneath the vast reservoir, and has washed away all traces of flowers, strawberries and verdant grass that used to mark its serpentine wanderings, by assuming ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... with both hands. The sound of a dull blow was heard, and next second the head of the Queen's faithful servant rolled across the polished floor, while from the decapitated trunk the blood gushed forth and ran in an ugly serpentine stream over the ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... serpentine wisdom in these words, for their very vagueness attracted German liberals. Wilson did not demand a republic; he did not insist upon the Kaiser's abdication, for which Germany was not then prepared; all that he asked was a government responsible to the people, and more and more the Germans were ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... dears, there is no "of course" at all in the matter! Can any of you, for example, see the creatures that float about and fight in a drop of water from the Serpentine River? No, certainly not! except through a microscope. Well, but why not?—you do not know. That I can easily believe! But then you must never again say that "of course" a Giant could ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... sure foothold, and guiding the others to do the same. At last, at a sharp turn of one of these rocky eminences, they perceived an enormous cloud of white vapor rising up like smoke from the earth, and twisting itself as it rose, in swaying, serpentine folds, as though some giant spirit-hand were shaking it to and fro like a long flowing veil in the air. Sigurd paused and ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... destination, was now exactly above their heads. The last ascent boldly skirted the shoulder of the mountain, and then doubled upward in a series of serpentine coils. Below them the whole of Lake Garda was spread like a map. Mr. Wilder and the Englishman, having paused at the edge of the declivity, were endeavouring to trace the boundary line of Austria, and they called upon the officers for help. The two relinquished ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster
... of magicians. None can withstand him, and nobody can pass the terrible serpentine designs which Miramon has set to guard the gray scarps of Vraidex, unless one carries the more terrible sword Flamberge, which I have ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... dieth—so is it with deceits and evil arts, which, if they be first espied they leese their life; but if they prevent, they endanger. So that we are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do. For it is not possible to join serpentine wisdom with the columbine innocency, except men know exactly all the conditions of the serpent; his baseness and going upon his belly, his volubility and lubricity, his envy and sting, and the rest—that is, all forms and natures of evil. For without ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... be. The house, which stands on the south-east corner, is an imposing cube of red brick, patched here and there with ivy, and as square and formal as the ornamental water and the park below it is formal and serpentine. Leoni built it, and Rysbrach designed two ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... night, Her eyes fixed on the entrance of the cave, Through which a pale light shimmered from the sea, Until she slept, and saw the sea in dreams. Except in stormy nights, when all was dark, And the wild tempest swept with slanting wing Against her refuge; and the heavy spray Shot through the doorway serpentine cold arms To seize the fore-doomed morsel of the sea: Then she slept never; and she would have died, But that she evermore was stung to life By new sea-terrors. Sometimes the sea-gull With clanging pinions ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... other encumbrances—but the variety of such tenants never fails to excite curiosity. That which is illustrated accommodated another oyster of delicate texture, a thorny clam (which has the reputation of being poisonous), a mass of seaweed, a serpentine mollusc, two species of coral—the red organ-pipe and a mushroom—three burrowing crabs, besides a number of smaller animals, fixed and mobile, in addition to the congregation of less obvious life critical examination would ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... children, and the ladies and gentlemen in waiting, her Majesty managing, as before, to hear her little daughter repeat her lessons. Lizard Point and Land's End were reached. At Penzance Prince Albert landed to inspect the copper and serpentine-stone works, while the Queen sketched from the deck of the Fairy. As the Cornish boats clustered round the yacht, and the Prince of Wales looked down with surprise on the half- outlandish boatmen, a loyal shout arose, "Three cheers for ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... had quite uncoiled his serpentine arms from her, and while she was looking fiery indignation at him, the door was pushed open, and the ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... to 1781. His work must have shown considerable power to be hung beside the canvases of Reynolds, Romney, and Hoppner; but at the later date of 1784 his exhibited drawings—"Vauxhall Gardens," "The Serpentine," and "An Italian Family"—show already a tendency to the lighter side of art, and between the above date and 1787 the direction of his art has changed in ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... his teeth were set chattering; but he thought of Annadoah and the grim need of food, and he gripped the upstander of his sled more determinedly. When the moon again unclosed its pearly sheen over the ice, the serpentine chasms moved their tortuous backs and writhed about them, the icy hummocks billowed, and the glittering ice-peaked horizon swam in a dizzy circle ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... meanders and labyrinths, whereof the devil and spirits have no exact ephemerides: and that is a more particular and obscure method of his providence; directing the opera- tions of individual and single essences: this we call fortune; that serpentine and crooked line, whereby he draws those actions his wisdom intends in a more un- known and secret way; this cryptic and involved method of his providence have I ever admired; nor can I relate the history of my life, the occurrences of my days, ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... haughty temper made him the most unpopular man in England, except in Devonshire, where everybody doted on him. He was "a man of desperate fortunes," and he did not shrink from violent methods. In studying his life we are amused, we are almost scandalised, at his snake-like quality. He moves with serpentine undulations, and the beautiful hard head is lifted from ambush to strike the unsuspecting enemy at sight. With his protestations, his volubility, his torrent of excuses, his evasive pertinacity, Sir Walter Raleigh ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... much upon the Yellow. Now, though perhaps somewhat of this diluting of Vermilion by overmuch grinding may be attributed to the Grindstone, or muller, for that some of their parts may be worn off and mixt with the colour, yet there seems not very much, for I have done it on a Serpentine-stone with a muller made of a Pebble, and yet ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... soft material. Beneath her open cloak her dress was of the ordinary German Reform-Kleid type, and her figure had the rather jelloid appearance of those who affect this style. Her regulation witch's hat was by now, probably, in the Serpentine, and her round head was therefore disclosed, with two stout sand-coloured plaits pursuing each ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... attention to a dark serpentine line that lay like a dead snake upon the lighted surface of the road. Jules grunted in token of comprehension. Liane Delorme ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... that I committed an economy in placing in my original title-page, that the question between him and me, was whether "Dr. Newman teaches that Truth is no virtue." It was a "wisdom of the serpentine type," since I did not add, "for its own sake." Now observe: First, as to the matter of fact, in the course of my Letters, which bore that title-page, I printed the words "for its own sake," five times over. Next, pray, what ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... little to notice on the continent beyond the groups of railways included under the above four systems. The Dutch have given a curious serpentine line of railway, about 150 miles in length, from Rotterdam through Schiedam, Delft, The Hague, Leyden, Haarlem, Amsterdam, and Utrecht, to Arnhem—an economical mode of linking most of the chief towns together. Holstein, the recent field of struggle between ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... strange pilastered precipices near Fort William. Copper[155] abounds in this region to an extent, perhaps, unsurpassed any where in the world. At the Coppermine River, three hundred miles from the Sault de St. Marie, this metal, in a pure state, nearly covers the face of a serpentine rock, and is also found within the stone in solid masses. Iron is abundant in many parts of Upper Canada; at Charlotteville, eight miles from Lake Erie, the metal produced is of a very fine quality. ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... my glass at the serpentine rocks and white-washed lighthouse above them, all powdered with bronze and gold by the ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... agate, chalcedony, serpentine, nephrite, steatite, quartz, crystal, glass, jade (white and green), and chrysoprase. Mention is also made of rakan, but the meaning of the term is obscure. Probably it was a variety ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... first flicker of the acetylene through a maze of hurrying figures, but as his eyes grew accustomed to the light, the plot would thicken: books orderly and disorderly, on bracketed shelves, cameras great and small in motley confusion, guns and a gramophone-horn, serpentine yards of gas-tubing, sewing machines, a microscope, rows of pint-mugs, until—thud! he has obstructed a wild-eyed messman staggering into the kitchen ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... been seen flying over the Serpentine. Most of the snap was taken out of the performance by the fact that none of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... serpentine sheet of water to the north which he was inclined to think was the continuation of the elusive Macquarie. He had pushed on past it, but had been checked by another body of reed beds. It was decided to shift camp to this lagoon and launch the boat once more; but without result, for the boat was ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... hear one of the cottage women telling her children to let the ants alone and not tease them, for 'thaay be God's creeturs.' Or possibly the pastor himself may be overheard discoursing to a bullet-headed woman, with one finger on the palm of his other hand, 'That's their serpentine way; that's their subtlety; that's their casuistry; which arguments you may imagine to refer, as your fancy pleases, to the village curate, or the tonsured priest of the monastery over the hill. For the tonsured priest, ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... Panama, South America, Egypt and other parts of Africa, India, China and Japan are the fields of operation of these atrocious men and serpentine women. ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... Representing in terms of weight the mineralogical changes in the katamorphism of serpentine rocks to iron ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... chest," says Juvenal, "is the credit given to his oath." Verily, reader, these days at the end of the nineteenth century are greatly similar to those last days of Rome. Yvette Gilbert, the songstress of the vile, the recitationist of the vulgar, and Le Loie Fuller, the dancer of the serpentine, live off the fat of the land every day. The songstress and the kickeress get their thousands of dollars per week, while "the poor devil of a workingman" must be satisfied with a dollar a day cash and barrels of unlimited confidence. Caligula's ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... attractive. It lay forlorn and dismal at the foot of the slope, its forty or more buildings dingy, unpainted, ugly, scattered along the one street as though waiting for the encompassing desolation to engulf them. Two serpentine lines of steel, glistening in the sunlight, came from some mysterious distance across the dead level of alkali, touched the edge of town where rose a little red wooden station and a water tank of the same color, and then bent away toward some ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... for me was tumbled forth. Then I turned to the fantastic figures carousing around the other camp fire. One form, in particular, I seemed to distinguish from the others. He was gathering the Indians in line for some native dance and had an easy, rakish sort of grace, quite different from the serpentine motions of the redskins. By a sudden turn, his profile was thrown against the fire and I saw that he wore a pointed beard. He was no Indian; and like a flash came one of those strange, reasonless intuitions, which precede, or proceed from, the slow motions of the ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... fountain, and, by its margin, seated on a delicate Persian carpet, a venerable Turk. Some slaves were near him, one of whom, at a little distance, was playing on a rude lyre; in the master's left hand was a volume of Arabian poetry, and he held in his right the serpentine tube of his narghileh, or Syrian pipe. When he beheld me, he saluted me with all the dignity of the Orient, pressing his hand to his heart, but not rising. I apologised for my intrusion; but he ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... them from top to bottom, and leaping from trunk to trunk formed the letters W and M and hung in form of festoons, portieres, and whole curtains. Caoutchouc lianas just strangled the trees with thousands of serpentine tendrils and transformed them into pyramids, buried with white flowers like snow. About the greater lianas the smaller entwined and the medley became so thick that it formed a wall through which neither man nor animal could penetrate. Only ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... structure, and when this is pronounced the sheen has a certain resemblance to that of cat's-eye. Masses sufficiently large for cutting are found in the norite of the Kupferberg in the Fichtelgebirge, and in the serpentine of Kraubat near Leoben in Styria. In this connexion mention may be made of an altered form of enstatite or bronzite known as bastite or schiller-spar. Here, in addition to schillerization, the original enstatite has been altered by hydration ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... traceable shows where the Avon wends its way thence towards Severn, till Bredon Hill hides the sight both of it and Tewkesbury smoke: just below on either side the Broadway lie the grey houses of the village street ending with a lovely house of the fourteenth century; above the road winds serpentine up the steep hill-side, whose crest looking westward sees the glorious map I have been telling of spread before it, but eastward strains to look on Oxfordshire, and thence all waters run towards Thames: all about lie the ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... utters, with bared head, some growl of rugged prayer, far from orthodox at times, but much in earnest: that lifting of his hat for prayer, is his last signal on such occasions. He is very cunning as required, withal; not disdaining the serpentine method when no other will do. With Friedrich Wilhelm, who is his second-cousin (Mother's grand-nephew, if the reader can count that), he is from of old on the best footing, and contrives to be his Mentor in many things besides War. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... two hedges and rows of tall trees. The policeman told me the men could sit against the banks of the hedges, so that first rest was good. In ten minutes we were off again. The road seemed to wind in and out in serpentine curves. The land on either side was taken up with ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... to his bodily situation during this mental leap, and only got back to it by a rough recalling. A few yards below the brow of the hill on which he paused a team of horses made its appearance, having reached the place by dint of half an hour's serpentine progress from the bottom of the immense declivity. They had a load of coals behind them—a fuel that could only be got into the upland by this particular route. They were accompanied by a carter, a second ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... produce slags only with soda: stilpnosiderite, plombgomme, serpentine, silicate of manganese (from Piedmont), mica from granite, pimelite, pinite, blue dichroite, sphenc, karpholite, pyrochlore, tungstate of lime, green soda tourmaline, lazulite, heavy ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous
... five years. It was in the day prior to large- salaried football coaches, when individual play meant much; but he hammered team-work and the sacrifice of the individual into his team, so that on Thanksgiving Day, over a vastly more brilliant eleven, the Blue and Gold was able to serpentine its triumph down Market Street ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... two stockaded villages: the smaller one being situated on a small hill on the Endaw Kioung, which comes from near the serpentine mines, and falls into the Mogaung river here; this has about twelve houses: the one below about twenty, the inhabitants are Shans chiefly, and appear numerous and healthy. ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... on a singular little fact which made itself clear to her just then. She was certainly not a child; she was not even a very young girl, at twenty-four; she had never been prudish, and she did not affect the pre-Serpentine innocence of Eve before the fall. Yet it was suddenly apparent to her that because she was a singer men treated her as if she were a married woman, and would have done so if she had been even five years younger. Talking to her as Margaret ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... lives how that life must necessarily end, and trot with a quiet, contented, and unaltered pace down their long, straight, and shaded avenue; while we, with anxious solicitude, and restless hurry, watch the quick turnings of our serpentine walk; which still presents, either to sight or expectation, some changes of variety in the ever-shifting prospect, till the unthought-of, unexpected end comes suddenly upon us, and finishes at once the fluctuating scene. Reflections must now give way to facts for a moment, though ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... bald old man with a cough and tinted glasses), "the Religion of Physical Pride and Rapture, and my...." "Methuselahite!" I shall cry again, and I shall slap him boisterously on the back, and he will fall down. Then a pale young poet with serpentine hair will come and say to me (as one did only the other day): "Moods and impressions are the only realities, and these are constantly and wholly changing. I could hardly therefore define my religion...." "I can," I should say, somewhat sternly. "Your religion is to ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... now call lantern stairs, whereof the steps were part of porphyry, which is a dark red marble spotted with white, part of Numidian stone, which is a kind of yellowishly-streaked marble upon various colours, and part of serpentine marble, with light spots on a dark green ground, each of those steps being two-and-twenty foot in length and three fingers thick, and the just number of twelve betwixt every rest, or, as we now term it, landing-place. In every resting-place were two fair antique arches where the light came ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... out a thousand serpentine heads or knots of water, which wriggle down deliberately through the air and expend themselves in mist before half the descent is over. Then a new set burst from the body and sides of the fall, with the same fortune on the remaining ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Caroline especially showed her regard for the spot by exercising her taste in beautifying it according to the notions of the period. It was she who caused the string of ponds to be united so as to form the Serpentine; and he modified the Dutch style of the gardens, abolishing the clipped monsters in yew and box, and introducing wildernesses and groves to relieve the stiffness and monotony of straight walks and hedges. The shades of her beautiful maids of honour, "sweet Molly ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... dairy is neat, and the milkmaid not ugly, who has her little villa, as well as the miller. There is also a tea-house, a billiard-room, an eating-room, and some other little buildings, all externally in the English village stile, which give the lawn, and serpentine walks that surround them, a very pastoral appearance. The eating-room is particularly well fancied, being covered within, and so painted as to produce a good idea of a close arbor; the several windows, which are pierced through the sides, have such forms, as the fantastic ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... about those men who were drowned in the Serpentine in the presence of a crowd, out of which no one moved for their rescue?" it may be asked. "What about the child which fell into the Regent's Park Canal—also in the presence of a holiday crowd—and was only saved through the presence of mind of a maid who let out a Newfoundland ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... when a sudden sharp frost set in. Bobby and True were delighted to see the snow fall, and walk out when the pavements and roads were slippery with ice; and, when their father took them to the Serpentine to see the skating on the ice they were enchanted. Then, as the frost continued, he got them each a pair of skates, and gave them their first lessons in the art. He himself was a beautiful skater, as he had done a great deal of such sport in America; and then one Saturday he announced ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre
... stooping behind their triangular shields and fetching sweeping blows with two-handled swords; or that of Lucca—its fantastic columns clasped by writhing snakes and winged dragons, their marble scales spotted with inlaid serpentine, every available space alive with troops of dwarfish riders, with spur on heel and hawk in hood, sounding huge trumpets of chase, like those of the Swiss Urus-horn, and cheering herds of gaping dogs ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the Granite Gorge winds its serpentine way, two thousand feet deep, dark with shadows, shining in places where the river ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... inscriptions and remarkable figures on that elegant and extraordinary structure; ascended to the top, and there enjoyed one of the most magnificent views I ever beheld, embracing all Paris and its environs for many miles, the day being cloudless; the serpentine Seine, the richly cultivated country, its parks, its gardens, its arcades of trees, its villas, churches, colleges, hospitals, palaces, squares, and monuments, together with the elegant Tuileries, the noble Louvre, the magnificent Champs Elysees, the playing fountains, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... finish of life; there were others when they gave a sharper edge to the meagreness of her own opportunities. This was one of the moments when the sense of contrast was uppermost, and she turned away impatiently as Mrs. George Dorset, glittering in serpentine spangles, drew Percy Gryce in her wake to a confidential nook beneath ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... not drawing against his superior. He was hacking at something ropy and writhing that squirmed on the ground as the lieutenant's blade bit into it. Within seconds, the serpentine thing gave a ...
— Despoilers of the Golden Empire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... girt the horizon, while to the east a long range of mountains rose against the sky. It was the Pacific on the west, and the Wahsatch mountains on the east, with the broad valleys basking in a summer sun between them, through which rivers wound their dark serpentine lines, while away to the north-east the great desert lay, with its white sands glittering beneath the rays that ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... between the Little Salmon and the Nordenskiold, maintains a width of from two to three hundred yards, with an occasional expansion where there are islands. It is serpentine in its course most of the way, and where the Nordenskiold joins it is very crooked, running several times under a hill, named by Schwatka Tantalus Butte, and in other places leaving it, for a distance of ...
— Klondyke Nuggets - A Brief Description of the Great Gold Regions in the Northwest • Joseph Ladue
... it opened and shut behind the undulating shape in the aperture. Then a low throaty ejaculation—the black's call of warning. And now with a quickness incredible, the wriggling movement of two blanket-shrouded serpentine shapes round the hide-house—in and out among the grass tussocks and the low herbage, now hidden for a moment by friendly gum shadows in the dimness, now dark moving blurrs upon the lesser darkness, ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... note Are those fraternal Four of Borrowdale, Joined in one solemn and capacious grove; Huge trunks!—and each particular trunk a growth Of intertwisted fibres serpentine Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved; Not uninformed with phantasy, and looks That threaten the profane;—a pillared shade, Upon whose grassless floor of red-brown hue, By sheddings from the pinal umbrage tinged Perennially—beneath whose sable ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... and calico-printing; and its value is so great, the proprietor of a serpentine tract in Shetland, where chromate of iron was found by Professor Jameson, cleared, in a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 362, Saturday, March 21, 1829 • Various
... south aisle of the Choir. A little further southward is a monument erected over the grave of Dr. Mill, Canon of Ely, and Regius Professor of Hebrew in the University of Cambridge, who died in 1853. It is an altar tomb of serpentine and alabaster, ornamented with marble mosaic and polished stones, bearing a recumbent effigy of Dr. Mill in his robes; at the feet are two kneeling figures, one an oriental character, and the other a student; the figure is in copper and was formed by the electrotype process. It was designed by ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous
... a vile deceiver and a rank hypocrite, therefore we must diligently watch her serpentine movements, for she will appear where you least expect her, as she wraps about her the American flag and other symbols of patriotism and goes about as a lamb in ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... with a majestic motion flowed like water over the edge of the precipice on either side, and fell with a thudding sound into the unmeasured depths beneath. And this was but a little thing, a mere forerunner, for after it, with a slow, serpentine movement, rolled the body ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... eating-room at Strawberry Hill. Except one scene, which is indeed noble, I cannot much commend the without-doors. This scene consists of a beautiful lake entirely shut in with wood: the head falls into a fine cascade, and that into a serpentine river, over which is a little Gothic seat like a round temple, lifted up by a shaggy mount. On an eminence in the park is an obelisk erected to the honour and at the expense of "optimus" and 1, munificentissimus" the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... balls which were enlivening the polite world. Our gracious Sovereign was holding levees and drawing-rooms at St. James's: the bow-windows of the clubs were crowded with the heads of respectable red-faced newspaper-reading gentlemen: along the Serpentine trailed thousands of carriages: squadrons of dandy horsemen trampled over Rotten Row, everybody was in town, in a word; and of course Major Arthur Pendennis, who ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Kerry experienced an unfamiliar chill as his uncompromising stare met the cold hatred which blazed out of the black eyes, narrowed, now, and serpentine, of ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... was the Fair in Hyde Park, which had official leave to exist for two days—but which, in fact, lasted four. The area allotted to it comprised nearly one third of the Park, extending from near the margin of the Serpentine to within a short distance of Grosvenor Gate. The best account I know of this Fair is in The Morning Chronicle of 29 June, and I ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... last. omstrl|a (-ade, -at), to surround with light. omjlig, impossible. ond, evil, angry, bad. ondig, unnecessary. opp, upp, up. ord (-et, —), word. orm (-en, -ar), serpent. ormsling|a (-an, -or), serpentine ring or figure. orolig, disturbed. ort (-en, -er), place, locality. orknelig, innumerable. ortt, wrong. ortt (-en), injustice, wrong. osedd, unseen. oskadd, uninjured. oskapelig, unshapely. oskuld ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... easily understanding her friend's motives, crept in a serpentine fashion to the hillock, where she soon found Whitewing— to the intense but unexpressed joy ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... already mentioned as the bass of the obsolete zinken or wooden cornets, straight or curved, with cupped mouthpiece. It gained its serpentine form from the facility given thereby to the player to cover the six holes with his fingers. In course of time keys were added to it, and when changed into a bassoon shape its name changed to the Russian bass horn or basson Russe. A Parisian instrument maker, ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... and unctuous duty! no wonder that in old times this sperm was such a favorite cosmetic. Such a clearer! such a sweetener! such a softener! such a delicious mollifier! After having my hands in it for only a few minutes, my fingers felt like eels, and began, as it were, to serpentine and spiralize. As I sat there at my ease, cross-legged on the deck; after the bitter exertion at the windlass; under a blue tranquil sky; the ship under indolent sail, and gliding so serenely along; ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... with Baxter. The latter was swinging his arms and body in a snakey, serpentine one-step, as he glided down the floor, pushing other couples out of the way. Lorna, like the other girls, lost no opportunity to admire her ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... various sorts, with spears and swords. These swivel guns are called lelahs, and are generally of brass. The klewang is a sort of hanger, or short sword. Their most formidable and favourite weapon is the kriss—a short dagger of a serpentine form. Each vessel had a square red flag at its foremast head, and a long pennant aft. The Illanon pirates wear a large sword, with a handle to be grasped by two hands. They dress, when going into battle, with chain, and sometimes plate armour, which gives them a very romantic ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... winter. Christmas is close at hand, and promises to be a bitterly cold one. The ice has formed smooth and black across the Serpentine, and a number of people are walking along by its banks, looking forward to some grand skating if the frost does but hold two days longer. The sky is blue, and the sun shining brightly; the wind is fresh and keen; it is just the day when people well-clad, well-fed, ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... an irregular mass or mountain, as Mr Cronstedt has properly observed; but he has also said, that this is not the case in general. His words are: "It is oftener found in form of veins in mountains of another kind, running commonly in a serpentine manner, contrary or across to the direction ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... done at twenty-six; but now her knowledge of the world was small, her enthusiasm great—and evidently she believed in Harriet's faithlessness—so that love added to the impatience of youth, which could not foresee the dreadful future. Without doubt, could they both have imagined the scene by the Serpentine three years later, they would have shrunk from the action which was a strong link in the ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... at first that she was reading like a cultured person and that Fraulein would recognise this at once, she knew that the perfect assurance of her pronunciation would make it seem that she understood every word, but soon these feelings gave way to the sense half grasped of the serpentine path winding and mounting through a wood, of a glimpse of a distant valley, of flocks and villages, and of her unity with Fraulein and Minna seeing and feeling all these things together. She finished the passage—Fraulein ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... nothing of the devious and serpentine paths by which love finds the way to its ends. It had not occurred to him to approach her with those secret tones and stolen looks which speak for themselves. She answered with the straightforward directness of which he had ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... palaces along the canal were hung with Indian and Persian carpets. The rich colours of Oriental stuffs relieved the dazzling whiteness of Istrian stone, and festoons of fresh leaves and flowers were twisted round their columns of porphyry and serpentine. From each carved balcony and painted window fair Venetian ladies looked down in their sumptuous robes, glittering with gold and gems, and the air rang with the Vivas of the crowds who filled the ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... good for is catching fish and feeding ducks and planting things in gardens. Why don't you come down and feed the ducks in the Serpentine?" ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... would not let him go into the country until he was considered old enough to go with one of the annual school treats. His mother told him that the country in Cornwall was infinitely more beautiful than Kensington Gardens, and that compared with the sea the Serpentine was nothing at all. The sea! He had heard it once in a prickly shell, and it had sounded beautiful. As for the country he had read a story by Mrs. Ewing called Our Field, and if the country was the tiniest part as wonderful as that, well . . . meanwhile Dora brought him back from the greengrocer's ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... was sixteen. Then he and eight other gentlemen of about the same age went down in a body to Kew one Saturday, with the idea of hiring a boat there, and pulling to Richmond and back; one of their number, a shock-headed youth, named Joskins, who had once or twice taken out a boat on the Serpentine, told them it was ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... rare and deeply crimsoned snapdragons, in another patches of aromatic thyme and wild strawberries keep up the charm of the place. As we draw nearer to the Tower the ground is laid out in a wilder and more picturesque manner, the walks are more serpentine. We turned a corner, and Mr. Beckford stood before us, attended by an aged servant, whose hairs have whitened in his employment, and whose skill has laid out these grounds in this beautiful manner. Mr. Beckford ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... engagements who were Artistic Whistling Soloists, Magicians, Leading Men, Leading Heavies, Singing and Dancing Comedians, and there were both ladies and gentlemen who were now Starring in this play or that, but were open to offers later. A teacher of stage dancing promised instruction in skirt and serpentine dancing, as well as high kicking, front and back, the backward bend, side practice, toe-practice, and all novelties. Dramatic authors had their cards among the rest, and one poor fellow, as if he had not the heart to name himself, ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... surrounding country, though poor and desolate, is by no means sterile. No tracts of black bog, no impassable morasses, no miles of rocks and boulders, but a fairly good grazing country, with here and there, at long intervals, a white cottage. The engine slows at one point, where the rails are twisted into serpentine convolutions by yesterday's tropical heat. Both sides are considerably displaced, but they still bear the right relation to each other, and the faithful machine, sniffing and picking her way carefully, glides safely over the contorted path. A short tunnel, with sides of solid masonry and ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... women at intervals, for some months, and at such times the wail is renewed, and their bodies lacerated as at the interment. At Boga Lake, I saw a grave with a very neat hut of reeds made over it, surmounted by netting, and having a long curious serpentine double trench, of a few inches deep, surrounding it; possibly it might have been the burial place of the native mentioned by Major Mitchell, as having been shot by his ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... free stride and unlifted arms—but Dick had no earthly desire to go to the Parks. Once and only once since Maisie had shut her door he had gone there under Alf's charge. Alf forgot him and fished for minnows in the Serpentine with some companions. After half an hour's waiting Dick, almost weeping with rage and wrath, caught a passer-by, who introduced him to a friendly policeman, who led him to a four-wheeler opposite the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... eyes and a thick black mustache, which gave dignity and character to his otherwise almost too delicately feminine features. And he stood on the open moor just a hundred yards outside his own front door at Penmorgan, on the Lizard peninsula, looking westward down a great wedge-shaped gap in the solid serpentine rock to a broad belt of sea beyond without a ship or a sail on it. The view was indeed, as Eustace Le Neve admitted, a somewhat bleak and dreary one. For miles, as far as the eye could reach, on either side, nothing ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... window, set out with objects carved in serpentine, held her for a moment; but remembering how often she had paused here lately, she felt ashamed, and walked on. Presently there moved towards her a lady in a Bath-chair; a lady who had once been beautiful, ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... words are so strongly chosen that they are a great element in his great plays. And a translation at best is something of a parody, especially a translation from a northern tongue, with its force and backbone, so to speak, into a southern, serpentine, gliding language. You have heard the absurd rendering of that passage from Macbeth where the witches salute him with 'Hail to thee, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor!' into such French as 'Comment vous portez vous, ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... to be found in any part of the country. Lest any needy folk be of a mind to fare to Brittany to try their luck in this respect it is only right to warn them that in all probability they will find the treasure formula in ogham characters or serpentine markings, and that as the first has long ago been deciphered and the second is pure symbolism they will waste their time ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... is a great river called Pulisangan[2], which empties itself into the ocean, and by which many vessels ascend with merchandize to a certain handsome bridge, all built of serpentine stone, curiously wrought. This bridge is 300 paces in length, and eight paces broad, so that ten men may ride abreast. It is secured on each side with a wall of marble, ornamented with a row of pillars. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... alone has, instinctively, comprehended that there was, beneath this outward sign, an inward and mysterious grace: it followed the action of the piece in all its serpentine windings; it listened for four hours, with pious attention (avec recueillement et religion), to the sound of this rolling river of thoughts, which may have appeared to it new and bold, perhaps, but chaste and grave; and it retired, with its head on its breast, like a man who had ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... days ago, had looked out upon life a marvellous panorama of life and colour and things beautiful, that death after all was the one thing to be desired. Yet he carried himself bravely through those evil days. Every morning he stripped and swam in the Serpentine, stiff enough often after a night spent out of doors, but ever with that vigorous desire for personal cleanliness which never left him even at the worst. As soon as his clothes fell into rags about him ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... pleasant dreams. "They are both asleep," whispers Mr. BUMSTEAD to himself. He goes back to his own bed, accompanied unconsciously by a chair caught in his coat-tail; puts on his hat, opens an umbrella over his head, and lies down to dread serpentine visions. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 13, June 25, 1870 • Various
... yellow, trembling light of the candles, the face of Jennka became more clearly visible. The lividness had almost gone off it, remaining only here and there on the temples, on the nose, and between the eyes, in party-coloured, uneven, serpentine spots. Between the parted dark lips slightly glimmered the whiteness of the teeth, and the tip of the bitten tongue was still visible. Out of the open collar of the neck, which had taken on the colour of old parchment, showed two stripes: one dark—the mark of the rope; another red—the ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... being one of the rods which its owner had formerly lent to the Egyptian magi. Of this fact, however, Goodman Brown could not take cognizance. He had cast up his eyes in astonishment, and, looking down again, beheld neither Goody Cloyse nor the serpentine staff, but his fellow-traveller alone, who waited for him as calmly as ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Giudetto ornamented the delightful Church of St. Michele at Lucca. This work, or at least the best of it, is a procession of various little partly heraldic and partly grotesque animals, inlaid with white marble on a ground of green serpentine. They are full of the best expression of mediaeval art. The Lion of Florence, the Hare of Pisa, the Stork of Perugia, the Dragon of Pistoja, are all to be seen in these simple mosaics, if one chooses ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... beauty seated upon a stool and mending her linen. He drew near her, said gallant things to her, and soon began to take liberties. The damsel, frolicsome and forward, instead of awakening her father, who slept in the neighboring room, rushed to the door, darted out and gained upon a run the serpentine path which ran along the edge of the ravine. A hundred times more active than Fritz, she kept in advance of him; then halted, called him, and the moment when he thought he was going to seize her, she escaped and ran on faster. She continued this game until becoming ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... little farther on. The valley is the valley of the Aar. That is the name of the stream which flows through it. It is one of the most remarkable valleys in Switzerland. I have been studying it in the guide book and on the map. It is about fifty miles long, and it winds in a serpentine manner between two lofty ranges of mountains, so steep and high that it is not possible to make ...
— Rollo in Switzerland • Jacob Abbott
... with the greenest sward rarely trodden. It ran through the midst of a wilderness of tall hazels. They stood up on both sides of it, straight and trim as walls, high above our heads as we sat on our horses; and the lane was so serpentine that we could never see further than a few yards ahead; while, towards the end, it kept turning so much in one direction that we seemed to be following the circumference of a little circle. It ceased at length at a small double-leaved gate of iron, to which ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... a trice—Jack becomes Harlequin; Rosebud, Columbine; Gaffer, Pantaloon; the Squire, the Lover; and the Priest, the Clown. Mirth, revelry, fun, frolic, and joviality are now the order of the day, and the scene changes to a view of Hyde Park and the Serpentine River on a frosty morning in January: in which is represented, with admirable effect, a display of patent skating. An oil cloth is spread upon the stage, a group comprised of various laughable characters are assembled on it, and skate about with as much ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... whom the fair Imperia established in her hotel, for she was flying from Rome as from a pernicious place, where children were begotten, and where she had nearly spoiled her beautiful figure, her celebrated perfections, lines of the body, curves of the back, delicious breasts, and Serpentine charms which placed her as much above the other women of Christendom as the Holy Father was above all other Christians. But all her lovers knew that with the assistance of eleven doctors of Padua, seven master surgeons of Pavia, and five ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... said. All peered around. None saw anything but the upstanding roots, the forest jumble, the misty serpentine lianas. None heard any sound but their own hoarse breathing, the solemn drip of water, the insect hum, and the occasional melancholy notes of birds. The place seemed bare of life. Yet upon McKay came again that feeling ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... more by direct heating. The flanges of the tubing are provided with a cut-off of angle iron identical with that of the tube, D. By means of this arrangement the cocks and the flanges, E, permit of communication between the serpentine tubing, R, and the boiler being interrupted; while the heat developed by the fire-place, F, causes an active circulation in both the tubing ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... is the Ortach rock. The Ortach, all of a piece, rises up in a straight line to eighty feet above the angry beating of the waves. Waves and ships break against it. An immovable cube, it plunges its rectilinear planes apeak into the numberless serpentine curves of ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... hated his existence, and thought he would try whether the Serpentine would drown him. I said I was agreeable, only he would never achieve it without me. I should have to 'tice away the police while he looked for the right spot. So he has promised to take me into partnership, and it's ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... wound in serpentine fashion along the valley, growing wilder and grander as they ascended. There were masses of piled-up ice, and crevasses into whose blue depths they peered as they listened to the hollow echoing sounds of running water. Some of these were stepped over in an ordinary ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... stare was like looking into a deep well, and I was totally unprepared for her change of tactics. Instead of trying to tear my hands apart, she flung herself upon my breast and with a downward, undulating, serpentine motion, a quick sliding dive, she got away from me smoothly. It was all very swift; I saw her pick up the tail of her wrapper and run for the door at the end of the verandah not very gracefully. She appeared to be limping a little—and then she vanished; the ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... advanced hills, and the ridge we were upon, was a large valley, through which ran a serpentine river. On the banks of this were several plantations, and some villages, whose inhabitants we had met on the road, and found more on the top of the hill gazing at the ship, as might be supposed. The plain, or flat of land, which lies along the shore we were upon, appeared from the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... held in Hyde and St. James's Parks, in the latter of which there was a grand display of fireworks; while, still further to amuse the John and Jenny Gulls of the cities of London and Westminster, there was a sham naval engagement got up on the Serpentine River, representing a battle between the British and American fleets. Of course the British fleet was victorious, and the Americans struck their colours, amidst the huzzas and shouts of the family of the Gulls, who, having for nearly a quarter of a century been gulled out of their ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... you are bored to desperation by any of these heavy swells. When he talks of "my friend, the Duke of Bayswater," ask him, in a quiet tone, where he last met the Duchess. If he says Hyde-Park (meaning the Earl of) is an honest good fellow, enquire whether he prefers Lady Mary or Lady Seraphina Serpentine. This drops him like a shot—he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... serpents on her ivory shoulders; the waves that die at her feet, toss upon her stars of foam that make her skin tremble with the caress from her amber neck down to her rosy feet. The wet sand, polished and bright as a mirror, reproduces the sovereign nakedness, inverted and confused in serpentine lines that take on the shimmer of the rainbow as they disappear. And the pilgrims, on their knees, in the ecstasy of worship, stretch out their arms toward the mortal goddess, believing that Beauty and eternal Health have come ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Chinese platters and tea-pots; but here I found the similarity complete; for I was told that these gardens were modeled upon Van Bramm's description of those of Yuen min Yuen, in China. Here were serpentine walks, with trellised borders; winding canals, with fanciful Chinese bridges; flower-beds resembling huge baskets, with the flower of "love lies bleeding" falling over to the ground. But mostly had the fancy of Mynheer Broekker been displayed about a stagnant little lake, on which a corpulent ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... waved his pipe in the direction of the serpentine family-party. A thunderbolt falling in their midst could not have been more effectual. The whole living mass looked stunned for a moment, and then rapidly disappeared among the reeds with ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... a Cheapside shop-keeper does about the beauties of his box on the Camberwell road. Mr. Hunt is altogether unacquainted with the face of nature in her magnificent scenes; he has never seen any mountain higher than Highgate-hill, nor reclined by any stream more pastoral than the Serpentine River. But he is determined to be a poet eminently rural, and he rings the changes—till one is sick of him, on the beauties of the different "high views" which he has taken of God and nature, in the course of some Sunday dinner parties, at which he has assisted in the neighbourhood ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... bowed and deposited the buckler on the pinewood floor of the dining room. It oscillated and wavered, revealing the serpentine head of a tortoise which, suddenly terrified, ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... dramatis personae all the states and all the statesmen of Europe. From the Crimean War to the cession of Venetia to Italy through France, there is not an event that is not a connecting link in a long serpentine chain. At the moment this may have escaped the eye, but, once fixed in its one perspective of distance, the chain shows unbroken and all is far less than has been supposed,—occasioned by any arts, manoeuvres, or intrigues of the chief actors; the vulgar notions of Prince ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... torrents, tangled trailers and wild plants, and infinite variety of tints and shades (i., 23-29). He denounces the improvements of Capability Brown (see "Romanticism," vol. i., p. 124): especially the clump, the belt and regular serpentine walks with smooth turf edges, the made water with uniformly sloping banks—all as insipidly formal, in their way, as the old Italian gardens ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... yet full, were slightly mocking and somewhat sensuous; the waist, which was supple and yet not fragile, had no terrors for maternity, like those of girls who seek beauty by the fatal pressure of a corset. Steel and dimity and lacings defined but did not create the serpentine lines of the elegant figure, graceful as that of a young poplar swaying ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... but I suspected that an animal or a reptile of some kind was at the bottom of the mystery at a prior period. That is why I wanted the flour. Look! Do you see where I sifted it over this spot near the Patagonian plant? And do you see those serpentine tracks through the middle of it? The Mynga Worm is there in that box, at the roots ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... of June the doctor was returning to Cleveland Square from his early ride in the Park. He was alone. The lively bay horse he rode—an animal that seemed almost as full of nervous vitality as he was—had had a good gallop by the Serpentine, and now trotted gently towards Buckingham Palace, snuffing in the languid air through its sensitive nostrils. The day was going to be hot. This fact inclined the Doctor to idleness, made him suddenly realise the bondage of work. In a few minutes he would ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens |
