"Serried" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Then the consciousness of the serried ranks of faces below there came with almost overwhelming force upon him, and he dared not look at her again. He felt the blood rushing ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... six hours under the downpour for any sign of an approaching foe, they retired to their camp with soaked powder and loosened bow-strings at the very moment when the clouds dispersed and the sudden sunshine illuminated the serried pikes of the Swiss as they advanced in unexpected numbers over the crest of the hills. Duke Charles had retired to his tent and was surprised at table by a messenger announcing the imminent attack of ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... put up, truss, cram; acervate[obs3]; agglomerate, aggregate; compile; group, aggroup[obs3], concentrate, unite; collect into a focus, bring into a focus; amass, accumulate &c. (store) 636; collect in a dragnet; heap Ossa upon Pelion. Adj. assembled &c. v.; closely packed, dense, serried, crowded to suffocation, teeming, swarming, populous; as thick as hops; all of a heap, fasciculated, cumulative. Phr. the plot thickens; acervatim[Lat]; tibi ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... which the sun looked forth with augmented splendor from his sombrely curtained pavilion; when the naked branches of the deciduous trees, the serried lances of the evergreens, and the broad leaves of the tent-like magnolias—the pride of the Tazewell place—shone as from a bath of molten silver. The battered flowers ventured into later and healthier bloom, and a robin, swinging ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... mail-clad figures of knights. Admirable in all his descriptions, it is in his battle-pieces that Froissart particularly excels. Then the glow of his hurrying sentences redoubles, and the excitement and the bravery of the combat rush out from his pen in a swift and sparkling stream. One sees the serried ranks and the flashing armour, one hears the clash of weapons and the shouting of the captains: 'Montjoie! Saint Denis! Saint George! Giane!'—one feels the sway and the press and the tumult, one laments with the vanquished, one exults with the victors, and, amid the glittering ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... was one of imposing grandeur. The auditorium filled the entire space of the first-four stories. It seated five thousand people within easy reach of the speaker's voice. The line of its ceiling was marked outside by the serried capitals of Greek columns springing from their massive bases on the ground. The grand stairway was of polished marble, its ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... Oriental cavalry. But the life and soul of his party was the indomitable Muza. With a rashness which seemed to the superstitious Spaniards like the safety of a man protected by magic, he spurred his ominous black barb into the very midst of the serried phalanx which Villena endeavoured to form around him, breaking the order by his single charge, and from time to time bringing to the dust some champion of the troop by the noiseless and scarce-seen ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... boldly enough, though with inward fear and trembling. The great space in front of the king's kraal bore a very different appearance from that which it had presented on the previous evening. In place of the grim ranks of serried warriors were company after company of Kukuana girls, not over-dressed, so far as clothing went, but each crowned with a wreath of flowers, and holding a palm leaf in one hand and a white arum lily in the other. In the centre of the open moonlit space sat Twala ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... ear stood erect upon her head, while the other, mangled and torn into a serried red excrescence, formed the termination of a broad, ragged scar which began at the corner of her mouth, giving her face the expression of a fiendish grin that belied the green glare of her ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... the groups of shabbily dressed men and women and children who gathered in the roadway in front of the poulterers' and butchers' shops, gazing at the meat and the serried rows of turkeys and geese decorated with coloured ribbons and rosettes. He knew that to come here and look at these things was the only share many of these poor people would have of them, and he marvelled greatly at their wonderful patience ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... Taken as he was by surprise, Edward showed at once the vigour and rapidity of his temper. His army marched upon Berwick. The town was a rich and well-peopled one, and although a wooden stockade furnished its only rampart the serried ranks of citizens behind it gave little hope of an easy conquest. Their taunts indeed stung the king to the quick. As his engineers threw up rough entrenchments for the besieging army the burghers bade him wait till he won the town ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... by means of steps scarcely large enough for one man at a time. The walls of these cuttings are covered with parallel striae, sometimes horizontal, sometimes slanting to the left, and sometimes to the right, so forming lines of serried chevrons framed, as it were, between grooves an inch, or an inch and a half, in width, by nine or ten feet in length. These are the scars left upon the surface by the tools of the ancient workmen, and they ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... place where there is nothing but singing—an eternal, untiring choir—clearer and more possible to him than it had ever seemed before. Paradise would be quite endurable if he and Violet might stand side by side in the serried ranks of choristers. There was quite a little crowd round the piano, shutting in Violet and Lord Hallow, and Roderick Vawdrey was not in it. He felt himself excluded, and held himself gloomingly apart, talking hunting talk with a man for whom he did not care twopence. Directly his carriage ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... accompaniment of applauding taps from the musicians, the house was nearly full. The four tiers sent forth a sparkle of diamonds, of silk, and of white arms and shoulders which rivalled the glitter of the vast crystal chandelier. The wide floor of serried stalls (those stalls of which one pair at least had gone for six pound ten) added their more sombre brilliance to the show, while far above, stretching away indefinitely to the very furthest roof, was the gallery (where but ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... step aside here awhile. (To audience, pointing to Palaestrio.) Look yonder, please, how he stands with serried brow in anxious contemplation. His fingers smite his breast; I trow, he fain would summon forth his heart. Presto, change! His left hand he rests upon his left thigh. With the fingers of his right he reckons out his scheme. Ha! He whacks ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... from the bank, But sudden turned to bay! When he beheld the serried rank That barred ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... a rule, contrived to assemble and to have actually taken their places several minutes before the time fixed for the Reader's appearance upon the platform. Occasionally it happened, nevertheless, that a stray couple or so would be still drifting in, here and there, among the serried ranks of the stalls, when, book in hand, with a light step, a smile on his face, and a flower in his button-hole, the author had already rapidly advanced and taken his place before his quaintly constructed but graceful little reading-desk. Then it was, perhaps, at ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... order. For the display of my snail-shells I used bits of card-board and plenty of gum-arabic; and I was affluent in "duplicates," my plan being to get a large card and then cover it with specimens of the shell, in serried ranks. I also called literature to my aid, and produced several little books containing labored descriptions of my collection, couched, so far as possible, in the stilted and formal phraseology of the conchological works to which I had access, but with occasional outbursts ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... familiar to us all. Beautiful and costly as they are, they are commonplace as compared with the decoration of the early bookbinders. It must be remembered that these books were never intended to be crowded in serried ranks into shelves from which they should present only their backs to the world. They were precious treasures to be kept by themselves, handled reverently, laid on tables or shelves, often enclosed in bags. The covers, often blazing with jewels, were adorned ...
— Books Before Typography - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #49 • Frederick W. Hamilton
... eagle, in his sweep at morn, To meet the monarch-sun on high, Heard the unwonted warrior's horn Peal faintly up the sky! He saw the foemen, moving slow In serried legions, far below, Against that peasant-band, Who dared to break the tyrant's thrall And by the sword of Austria fall, Or keep the ancient Right of all, Held ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... wall: Muzzle to muzzle—steel to steel—we met, And fought like Romans and like Romans fell. Even as a cyclone, growling thunder, roars Down through a dusky forest, and its path Is strown with broken and uprooted pines Promiscuous piled in broad and broken swaths, So crashed our volleys through their serried ranks, Mowing great swaths of death; yet on and on, Closing the gaps and yelling like the fiends That Dante heard along the gulf of hell, Still came our furious foes. A cloud of smoke— Dense, sulphurous, stifling—covered all our ranks. Our steady, deadly rifles crackled still, ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... to the King was nigh unto the river and there the ranks were serried, but near the dyke were they more scattered, and the men thereof also ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... bony knees, because, as I quite understood, I was the only human being that had ever escaped from Jana. Moreover, on the foremost elephant's skull Hans was perched like a mahout, giving words of command, to their serried ranks and explaining to them that it would be very convenient if they would carry their tusks, for which they had no further use, and pile them in a certain place—I forget where—that must be near a good road to facilitate their subsequent ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... far away to the right the hills climbed by sharper ascents, flecked here and there with dark patches of fir, and broken with jutting ledges of gray limestone, climbed till they reached the great Rockies, majestic in their massive serried ranges that pierced the western sky. And all that lay between, the hills, the hollows, the rolling prairie, was bathed in a multitudinous riot of color that made a scene of loveliness beyond ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... world, and turn up the gas, and light the stove with an explosive plop, and settle himself. And in the first few minutes of reading he would with distinct, conscious pleasure, allow his attention to circle the room, dwelling upon piled and serried volumes, and delighting in orderliness and in convenience. And he would reflect: "This is my life. This is what I shall always live for. This is the best. And why not?" It seemed to him when he was alone in his ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... laid low for ever, And towns that now in ruins lie: As fair and fertile meadows That wav'd with golden grain, Now wrapt in forest shadows And run to waste again. As graves full of the buried, Who fell in the dread hour Of battle in ranks serried, Whose ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt
... their prestige; but in 1848 the Liberty party gave place to the Free-Soil party, which developed unexpected strength in the presidential vote. It rallied anti-slavery elements by its cry of "Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, and Free Men!" and for the first time broke the serried ranks of the older parties. Van Buren, the candidate of the Free-Soilers, received a vote of 15,774, concentrated in the northeastern counties, but reaching formidable proportions in the counties of the northwest and west.[317] Of the older organizations, the Whig party ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... in the sunshine. It was early October in the year 1901—one of those clear bright days which contribute enchantment to that season of spun gold when harvest bounties are garnered on the Canadian prairies. Everywhere was the gleam of new yellow stubble. In serried ranks the wheat stocks stretched, dwindling to mere specks, merging as they lost identity in distance. Here and there stripes of plowed land elongated, the rich black freshly turned earth in sharp contrast to the prevailing gold, while in a tremendous deep blue arch overhead an unclouded ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... Power!" the Roman cried. His prayer was granted. The vast world was chained A captive to the chariot of his pride. The blood of myriad provinces was drained To feed that fierce, insatiable red heart. Invulnerably bulwarked every part With serried legions and with close-meshed Code, Within, the burrowing worm had gnawed its home, A roofless ruin stands where once abode The imperial ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... his appeal. The terrible slaughter which bears the name of the battle of Malplaquet showed a new temper in the French soldiers. Starving as they were, they flung away their rations in their eagerness for the fight, and fell back at its close in serried masses that no efforts of Marlborough could break. They had lost twelve thousand men, but the forcing their lines of entrenchment had cost the allies a loss of double that number. Horror at such a "deluge of blood" increased the general distaste for the war; ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... on a tiny clearing—a grassy ledge on the slope. Through the starlight he could see the hillside break away steeply into a vaporous gorge, while above him the mountain raised a black dome amid the serried points of the sky-line. The dryad-like creature beckoned him forward with her scarf, until suddenly she stopped with the decisive pause of one who has reached her goal. Coming up with her, he saw her unlock the door of a small cabin, which had hitherto not detached ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... Division," "Rupel Pass." Instantly I recalled how a British General, over on the Struma a few days previously, had pointed out to me a steep range of serried snow-capped mountains towering against the skyline to the northwest, and told me that the feat of the Greeks in taking a division over it at a point where even the wary Bulgar had deemed it impossible was one of the finest exploits in the annals of ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... their own, and neither power to advertise nor skill to exploit a business. You will not have long to wait for proof. In a very short time you will see the aristocracy, the court, and public men descend into speculation in serried columns; you will see that their claws are longer, their morality more crooked than ours, while they have not our good points. What a head a man must have if he has to found a business in times when the shareholder is as covetous and keen as the inventor! ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... Serried breast to breast and in complete order, the horsemen of Martino turned to fly; the foot rabble who had come for spoil remained but for slaughter. They endeavoured to imitate their leaders; but how could they all elude the rushing chargers and sharp lances of their ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... spread over M. Plumet's countenance. He stepped off the refuge. I opened the cab-door. But a brougham passed, and the horse pushed me back into the cab with his nose. I opened the door a second time; another brougham came by; then a third; finally two serried lines of traffic cut me off from M. Plumet, who kept shouting something to me which the noise of the wheels and the crowd prevented me from hearing. I signalled my despair to M. Plumet. He rose on tiptoe. I could ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... outings must come to an end. And so when the marsh grass on the lowlands lay in serried waves of dappled satin, and the corn on the uplands was waist high and the roses a mob of beauty, Kate threw her arms around Peggy and kissed her over and over again, her whole heart flowing through her lips; and then the judge got his good-by on his wrinkled cheek, and the ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the overwhelming power of Napoleon's magnificent cavalry. Raw recruits some of them, against the veterans of Jena and of Wagram! But they have been ordered to hold the place to the last man, and in close and serried squares they have held their ground ever since half-past eleven this morning, while one after another the flower of Napoleon's world-famed cavalry had been ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... O you little baby boy A-dancing on my knee— Will it be a belted charger Or a heaving deck to sea? Is't to be the serried pennants Or the rolling blue Na-vee? Or is't ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... John, a certain day Back in the times of long ago— A stuffy old estaminet Under the great peaks fledged with snow; The Spring that set our hearts rejoicing As up the serried mountains' bar We climbed our tortuous way Rolls-Roycing From ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various
... in the stillness, sourly smiling, his face still wet from his exertions; while the Tailless Tyke at his side fronted defiantly the serried ring of onlookers, a white fence of teeth faintly visible ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... stretch themselves out full length on the ground, drawing their scanty garments well over their heads and leaving their legs and feet exposed, or, if the air is chilly and they possess a blanket, rolling themselves up in it tightly like so many shrouded corpses in long and serried rows, till the shriek of an incoming train arouses them. Then, whether it be their train or not, there is a din of yelling voices, a frenzied rush up and down the platform, and, even before those who want to get out have had time to alight, a headlong scramble for ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... Capitalism. Decent reverence for learning, keen appreciation of scientific power, warm liberality of thought and sentiment within appreciable limits, enthusiasm for economic, civic, national ideals,—such attributes were abundantly discoverable in each serried row. From the expanse of countenances beamed a boundless self-satisfaction. To be connected in any way with Whitelaw formed a subject of pride, seeing that here was the sturdy outcome of the most modern educational endeavour, a noteworthy instance of what Englishmen ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... direction. A desolate waste, full of life, movement and colour, extending to the bleak horizon and like a vast ploughed field cut up into long and high liquid ridges, all scurrying in one direction in serried ranks and with incredible speed as if pursued by a fearful and unseen enemy. Serenely yet boisterously, gracefully yet resistlessly, the endless waves passed on—some small, others monstrous, with fleecy white combs rushing down their ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... showed the pinnacle of an iceberg piercing a polar winter sky: a muster of northern lights reared their dim lances, close serried, along the horizon. Throwing these into distance, rose, in the foreground, a head,—a colossal head, inclined towards the iceberg, and resting against it. Two thin hands, joined under the forehead, and supporting ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... the old method is abandoned, not only in Brussels, but everywhere that the high-warp looms are set up. The "art nouveau" of that day influenced every brush and pencil. The great crowding of serried hosts on a single field disappeared, and fewer but perfect figures played their parts on the woven surface. Wherever architectural details, such as porticoes or columns, were introduced, these dropped the old designs of "pointed" style or battlements, and ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... But not straight,—zigzagging, always keeping the ridges between us and the town, and to the watching inhabitants it seemed as if thousands were coming to crush them. Night fell, the colors were furled and the saplings dropped, and we pressed into serried ranks and marched straight over hill and dale for the lights that were beginning ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... performers, but to those who had to content themselves with the penny pit. Standing in front and by the sides of the projecting stage, they could often only catch glimpses of the actors through chinks in serried ranks ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... a dash, an ease, that shows long and varied experience. Charley Abbott is a finished ladies' man. It almost discourages me when I contemplate the serried ranks of women that must have contributed to his ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... the mountain's rocky base we formed in serried lines, While lightning with its jagged edge played on us from the pines; The mission ours to storm the pits 'neath Lookout's crest that lay; We stormed the very "gates of hell" with ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... city fought, He marched around it with his banner high, His troops in serried order following nigh, But not a sword was drawn, no shaft outsprang, Only the trumpets the shrill onset rang. At the first blast, smiled scornfully the king, And at the second sneered, half wondering: ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... vast but unprofitable tract of marshes in the eastern part of New-York, but now covered by serried blocks, and among the most densely populated portions of the city. Forty years ago, these marshes were favorite skating-fields in winter, and here a lad was at that time actually drowned by the breaking ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of whispering leaves, the land appeared to rise in long, level bluffs, still thronged with serried trees; a great arm of the sea, a mile or two in breadth, extended east of north, and thither, the mariner dreamed, might lie the long-sought pathway to the Indies. A tongue of land, broadening as it receded, and swelling in low undulations, divided ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... flight, being completely surrounded by the water and their enemies. So they spend no more time in talk, but arm and equip themselves and make a sally by an old postern gate [220] toward the north-west, that being the side where they thought the camp would least expect attack. In serried ranks they sallied forth, and divided their force into five companies, each consisting of two thousand well armed foot, in addition to a thousand knights. That night neither star nor moon had shed a ray across the sky. But before they reached the tents, the moon began to show ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... meeting of smaller coombs; houses, which seem dropped rather than built, crowd the valley and its rocky ledges; a rapid rivulet dances in and out among the dwellings, till its voice is lost in the waters of a tidal haven, thronged with fishing boats and guarded by its Peak of serried rock." ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... hell, Now thrills upon our startled ears. By heaven! the traitors come! We see their gleaming banners, we hear the throbbing drum. In solid ranks, their countless hordes from the dense woods emerge, And roll upon our serried lines like ocean's angry surge. Our ranks are silent—on each face the light of battle glows: 'Ready!' At once our polished tubes are levelled on our foes. Now leaps a livid lightning up—from rank to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Sometimes the serried ranks would open, and the blinded horsemen, so intent upon their prey, amidst the cloud of dust, were wedged and hemmed in among the crowding beasts, over whose backs they were obliged to leap for security, leaving their horses to the ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... of aesthetic enjoyment, without once, except in a chance moment of idleness, feeling the least inclination to fall back upon, the treasures of European art which it undoubtedly contains. I have even ignored the marvels of nature. I passed within twenty miles of Niagara; I saw the serried icefloes sweeping down from Lake Erie to the cataract; and I did not go to see them plunge over. In the first place, I had been there before; in the second place, I should have had to sacrifice six hours ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... "the best," "the leaders" of local society. Sitting there in the stuffy box, which was a poor place for seeing or hearing, Bessie felt the satisfaction of being in the right company. She had discovered in one of the serried rows of the first balcony Kitty Sanders, whom she had known as a girl in Kansas City, where Bessie had once lived in the peregrinations of the Bissell family. Kitty had married a prosperous dentist and ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... Soon, however, the undaunted band was entirely surrounded by their powerful adversaries. The Prince of Conde, with but about two hundred and fifty men, with indomitable determination sustained himself against the serried ranks of five thousand men closing up around him on every side. This was the last earthly conflict of the Prince of Conde. With his leg broken and his arm nearly severed from his body, his horse fell dead beneath him, and the prince, deluged with blood, was precipitated into the ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... person emerged from the cuddy. He looked about to see if any one were out yet, but only a party of red-capped tars were visible, swabbing the forward deck with their pendulum-like brooms, and working their way aft in a regular, serried rank. The phalanx moved with an even stroke, and each bare foot advanced just so many inches at every third sweep of the broom, while the yellow-haired Norse 'prentice played the hose in front of them. Mr. Barker perceived that they would overtake him before long, and he determined ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... shoulder the students ranged themselves against the walls of the houses in serried ranks, drawing back as much as possible, so as to leave a broad space in the middle. There was a pause, and a deep silence for several minutes. Then the trumpets and horns flared out the grand old hymn of student life, the 'Gaudeamus igitur, ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... the bank,—what black thing moves towards him across the water? The crocodile! coming with tears in his eyes, and a long grin of serried teeth. Coming!—the ugly scaly head is always nearer and nearer. The boy screams; but who should hear him? He feels whether the talisman be yet round his neck. He screams again, calling, in half-delirium, ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... knees, and resigned himself to disappointment. Among the naked roots of the oak-tree under which I was sitting. I could see countless ants swarming over the parched grey earth and winding among the acorns, withered oak-leaves, dry twigs, russet moss, and slender, scanty blades of grass. In serried files they kept pressing forward on the level track they had made for themselves—some carrying burdens, some not. I took a piece of twig and barred their way. Instantly it was curious to see how they made light of the obstacle. Some got past it by creeping underneath, ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... in a sort of order, in squadrons of fifty each, but not in serried ranks, for they had not the skill to keep in line, though they rode well and boldly. And before each squadron rode a lady who for her beauty or her rank, or for both, was captain, and wore upon her steel cap a gilded crest. Each squadron had a ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... windows the recesses were filled out with crowded shelves; the door of a closet, left ajar, showed that the place was packed with books, roughly or cheaply clad, and pamphlets. At the bottom of the cases, books stretched in serried files along the floor. Some had crept up upon the library-steps, as if, impatient to rejoin their companions, they were mounting to the shelves of their own accord. They invaded all accessible nooks and crannies of the room; big folios were ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... from the bell-throated giant of the hallway to the chirping dressing-table toy; tall clocks of mahogany and brass with cathedral chimes; clocks of bronze, glass, porcelain, of every possible size, voice and configuration; and between their serried ranks, along the polished floor of the aisles, moved the languid forms of other gentlemanly floor-walkers, waiting for ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... of the house—it was afternoon—he sought relief in the open air and garden-like freshness of Notre Dame Street, a thoroughfare up to which the serried buildings of the "Lower Town"—for Montreal also had a Lower and Upper Town, even within its contracted width—had not yet crept, and which, situated on the top of the long, low ridge of the city, commanded free views of the river, the town, and all the prominent ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... two hours. Each tribe took a turn before us, only to give way to the next. We had leisure to notice minutiae, such as the ingenious tail one of the "lions" had constructed from a sweater. As time went on, the men worked themselves to a frenzy. From the serried ranks every once in a while one would break forth with a shriek to rush headlong into the fire, to beat the earth about him with his club, to rush over to shake one of us violently by the hand, or even to ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... bitter wrong, spake little, and that little below their breath; here were country folk from village and farmstead near and far, a motley company that talked amain, loud-voiced and eager, as they pushed and strove to see where, in the midst of the square beyond the serried ranks of pike-men, a post had been set up; a massy post, grim and solitary, whose heavy chains and iron girdle gleamed ominous and red in the last rays of sunset. Near by, upon a dais, they had set up a chair fairly gilded, wherein Sir Gui was wont ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... nonsense," said Theurdank; "chivalry is in the heart, not in the weapon. A youth beforehand enough with the world to be building bridges should know that, when all our troops are provided with such an arm, then will their platoons in serried ranks be as a solid wall breathing fire, and as impregnable as the lines of English archers with long bows, or the phalanx of Macedon. And, when each man bears a pistol instead of the misericorde, his life will be far more ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... back through serried ranges, Vivid as his own phalanges, Every captain might espy Equal host ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... this was that early one morning they set out once more on the gold trail. When they made their first camp at sunset in a grove of towering pines they held a council. It was almost dark amidst the serried rows of tremendous trunks, but the light of the snapping fire fell upon their faces, which were all a trifle grave. In the case of two of the party, at least, their faces were stamped with a certain quiet resolution and a hint ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... Champlain forms the margin of the most varied and altogether delightful wilderness to be found anywhere upon this continent east of the Rocky Mountains. The serried peaks to the westward are in plain view from its shores, their foot-hills ending in lofty and often abrupt ridges where they meet the lake. Three impetuous rivers, the Saranac, the Salmon and the Ausable, flow down from the cool, ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... latter weapon, they were often known, during their long and heroic struggle for independence, to leap their horses over the Muscovite bayonets, stab the soldiers, and break up and put to flight their serried battalions. When surrounded in their forts or villages, and shut out from all hope of escape, they frequently sacrificed their wives and children—like the Jews in the last agonies of their war with Rome—set fire to their dwellings, and perished heroically in the flames. ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... colors wave again High above this tented plain, Stream and flaunt, and blaze and shine, O'er the banner-painted brine, Float and flow! And the brazen trumpets blow While upon her serried lines, Full the light of Freedom shines In a broad, effulgent glow. And here this day I see The fairest dream that ever yet ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... the sun had gone, a mighty cloud curtain of purple was draped, fold on fold, all laced and looped with silver and edged with scarlet flame. Above the curtain, far flung across the wide sky, banners of rose and crimson and gold flashed and gleamed; while, marching in serried ranks, following the pathway of the sun, went innumerable thousands of cloud soldiers in their uniforms of light. Slowly the procession passed—the gleaming banners vanished—the marching armies disappeared—the curtain in the west was drawn close. The woman ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... walked to their work. No cultivated flower bloomed beside the unpainted tenement, though the fields were starred in early spring with poppies and daisies; the humblest garden plant or herb had no place in that prolific soil. The serried ranks of wheat pressed closely round the straggling sheds and barns and hid the lower windows. But the sheds were fitted with the latest agricultural machinery; a telegraphic wire connected the nearest town with an office in the wing of one of the buildings, ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... serried bayonets squared the base of the hill, and made a compact, bristling hedge to hold back the common people. Through it marched the doomed Imperialists, each with his confessor and a platoon of guards, and so toiled on up the slope. The archduke looked about him. There were many ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... simple prairie folk, I thought. How should my friend George Stairs hold that multitude? Two plain men from Western Canada, accustomed to minister to farmers and miners, what could they say to engage and hold these serried thousands of Londoners, the most blase people in England? I had never heard either of the preachers speak in public, but—I looked out over that assemblage, and I was horribly afraid for my friends. A ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... our lines, and forced a path for themselves up to the principal legion of the reserve, which was stationed in the centre, in a position called the praetorian camp; and there the soldiery, being in closer array, and in densely serried ranks, stood firm as so many towers, and renewed the battle with increased spirit. And intent upon parrying the blows of the enemy, and covering themselves with their shields as the Mirmillos[68] do, with their drawn swords wounded their antagonists in the sides, which ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... have shown a courage worthy of their foes. Armed—like the one drawn in our heading—with spear and shield—for but a few of them owned rifles and fired them unskilfully—they rushed again and again right up to the serried ranks of the British soldiers. These Arabs have several vices, but no one has denied them ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... present the only analogy in the present day to that claim of internal jurisdiction for which the Church struggled so gallantly in the middle ages. No one who sees the serried ranks with which she encounters all investigation from without would imagine the severity with which she administers justice within. Like the Westphalian Vehm-gericht, the mystery of feminine courts is only equalled by their terrible sentences. Mrs. Grundy on the seat of justice is a Rhadamanthus ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... their thighs Swords of Vienna steel; bright are their shields; Their lances from Valence; their banners white And blue and crimson. Mules and sumpter-beasts Are left behind. They mount their battle steeds, And forward press in closely serried lines. Clear was the day, and brilliant was the sun; No armor but reflected back the light. A thousand clarions sound their cheering blasts So loud, the French can hear—. Says Olivier: "Rolland, companion, hearken! Soon, methinks, We shall have battle with the Saracens!" To which Rolland: ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier
... the Brigade Commander: Company retire slowly!" A man at the end of our serried line near the roadside has called the order to me. The order travels by word of mouth along our line. It is a long time before it reaches the riflemen furthest left. And as soon as the slightest ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... fringe of weed and driftwood stretches a serried line along the sands, and now and then—too often on the flat shores of one of our northern estuaries, whence can be seen the white teeth of the sea biting at the shoals flanking the fairway—are mingled with the flotsam sodden relics of life aboard ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... her draperies. As this group in the procession moved slowly along, the city took on a curiously antique aspect. In every lattice window a head was framed. The lines of the townspeople pressed closer and closer; they made a serried mass of blouses and caps, of shiny coats and bared heads. The very houses seemed to recognize that a part of their own youth was passing them by; these were the figures they had looked out upon, time after time, in the old fourteenth and ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... is this that remembers The words that she sang on that morning of glory;— O love, set a word in my mouth for our meeting; Cast thy sweet arms about me to stay my hearts beating! Ah, thy silence, thy silence! nought shines on the darkness! —O close-serried throng of the days that I see not! ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... in the parlor, where the chocolate creams were partially cleared away. They were in a serried mass on two sides of the room, meeting near the centre, with the underground passage, through which Ben had worked his way to Carrie's dress. Mrs. Fraser had organized a band to fill pasteboard boxes, which she had obtained from the village, and she and her friends ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... give me the place of honor, despite my protests, and soon I found myself lying between my host and his wife, while the other members of the household lay in serried rank beyond her on the mats that filled the hollow between the palm-trunks. All slept with the backs of their heads upon one timber, and the backs of their knees over the other, but I found comfort on the soft pile between them. My companions ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... bivouacked on the battlefield, amidst serried ranks of the dead. Says one who saw the terrifying scene: "Anon, the watchfires of the Prussians blazed round about; and worn out by incredible exertions at last Bismarck fell asleep, among the living and the dead. He was now to have evidence of the result of his life-long ambition; he had plunged ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... form an impenetrable canopy. Foliage, flowers and fruit of colossal luxuriance, strange birds, beasts, griffins and chimeras in endless multitudes, the rank vegetation and the fantastic zoology of a fresher or fabulous world, seemed to decorate and to animate the serried trunks and pendant branches, while the shattering symphonies or dying murmurs of the organ suggested the rushing of the wind through the forest, now the full diapason of the storm and now the gentle cadence of the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... distorted, and the flame be blown by corrupting influences abroad and at home, in the hopes—let them be vain hopes—that we the people will be diverted from the great cause we have most at heart into side issues and sectional distrust. And why? Because more powerful than serried hosts and open warfare is the poison of sedition and conspiracy that is thrown into the cup of domestic peace and confidence—more fatal than the ravages of the battle field is that of the worm that creeps slowly and surely—weakening, as it works, the foundations of the edifice ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... was going down on the Black Spur Range. The red light it had kindled there was still eating its way along the serried crest, showing through gaps in the ranks of pines, etching out the interstices of broken boughs, fading away and then flashing suddenly out again like sparks in burnt-up paper. Then the night wind swept down the whole mountain side, ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... bad way with the Nation. The Nation would be the better for this fight. Certain, it was, the better side would win. Would it be the few like the sugar pine towering over its fellows; or the many like the lodge pole pine and englemann spruce standing in serried ranks of equal valor ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... he saw. He thought of something he had heard or read—he had forgotten where: "Immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales." That, apparently, was the process, while the spiritual presences ranged themselves slowly within his vision—row upon row, peak upon peak, dome upon dome, serried, ghostly—white against a white sky, ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... in a rough man's shirt and in a ragged flannel petticoat that had once been red. But it was her face, wrinkled, withered and weather- beaten, surrounded by an aureole of unkempt and straggling wisps of greyish hair, that caught and held me. Neither drifted hair nor serried wrinkles could hide the splendid dome of a forehead, high and broad without verging in the ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... age of four, Scott Brenton's favourite pastime had been what he termed "playing Grandpa Wheeler." The game accomplished itself by means of a chair by way of pulpit, and a serried phalanx of other chairs by way of congregation, whom the young preacher harangued by the hour together. The harangues were punctuated by occasional bursts of song, not always of a churchly nature, and emphasized ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... books by myself. The windows were open to the garden; the sunny stillness, the mild light of the English summer, filled the room without quite chasing away the rich dusky tone that was a part of its charm and that abode in the serried shelves where old morocco exhaled the fragrance of curious learning, as well as in the brighter intervals where prints and medals and miniatures were suspended on a surface of faded stuff. The place had both colour and quiet; I thought ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... knowledge of their natural history, it was with feelings of no ordinary interest that our young hunters turned their faces towards that vast serried rampart that separates the land of the Gaul from the country ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... throngs of donkey-boys and dragomans go down in haste to meet them. Servants run to and fro on errands from the many dahabiyehs. Bathers leap into the brown waters. The native craft pass by with their enormous sails outspread to catch the wind, bearing serried mobs of men, and black-robed women, and laughing, singing children. The boatmen of the hotels sing monotonously as they lounge in the big, white boats waiting for travellers to Medinet-Abu, to the Ramesseum, to Kurna, and the tombs. And just ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... knew that of all this rushing of urgent sound That I so clearly heard, The green young forest of saplings clustered round Was heeding not one word: Their heads were bowed in a still serried patience Such as an angel's breath could never ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... row-lock and the rower's forced-back chin; on the ship's starboard deck, in the long stretch of space between the two masts, the blue-jackets had evidently been piped up, for they lay there in a sort of serried disorder, to the number of two hundred and seventy-five. Nothing could be of suggestion more tragic than the wasted and helpless power of this poor wandering vessel, around whose stolid mass myriads of wavelets, ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... brilliantly lighted with torches and with gas, a great crowd of people had gathered. Not only passers-by who had stopped to look on, but more especially workmen, loafers, poor women, and ladies of questionable appearance, stood in serried ranks on both sides of the row of carriages. Humorous remarks and coarse witticisms in the vulgarest Parisian dialect hailed down upon the passing carriages ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... to a shelf above the serried volumes of Sam Carr's library, lifted the cover of a tin tobacco box and took out a letter. This she gave to Thompson. Then she sat down cross-legged on the wolfskin beside her youngster, looking up at her visitor impassively, her moon face void of expression, ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... wherever the instability of the chalk rendered this requisite. After a lengthened promenade through them we come to the ancient vaults extending immediately under the grounds of the chteau, where every particle of available space is utilised, and some difficulty is found in passing between the serried piles of bottles of vin brut—mostly the fine wine of 1874—which rise continuously ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... horse, lose his presence of mind, but when assaulted thrusts his head well down between its fore-legs and kicks violently until the enemy is thrown or driven off. Pigs, when in large herds, also safely defy the puma, massing themselves together for defence in their well-known manner, and presenting a serried line of tusks to the aggressor. During my stay in Patagonia a puma met its fate in a manner so singular that the incident caused considerable sensation among the settlers on the Rio Negro at the time. A man named Linares, the chief of the tame Indians settled in the ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... upon his spirit and oppress him. Then, at last, a shrill yelp, far off and faint, but sinister, would come from the pine-top; and the eagle, launching himself on open wings from his perch, would either wheel upward into the blue, or flap away over the serried fir-tops to some ravine in the cliffs that ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... him; in that fair array Forth they rode, nor did they tarry till they came to Croghan[FN48] Ay. Scarcely could the men of Connaught bear to see that sight, amazed At the dignity and splendour of the host on which they gazed; For that troop was great; in serried ranks the fifty riders rode, Splendid with the state recounted; pride on all their faces glowed. "Name the man who comes!" said Ailill; "Easy answer!" all replied, Eocho Bee, in Clew who ruleth, hither to thy court would ride": Court and royal house were opened; in with welcome came they all; ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... same din, the same clouds of acrid powder smoke, which now is lifted by a breeze, showing the solid ranks awaiting them. As Rodney fires he is conscious that he has shot an Indian, an Indian with blue eyes! What was an Indian doing in those serried ranks, why wasn't he skulking on the outskirts as Indians should? The enemy yield, and are driven back on to a rise of land in their rear, where they make a stand and again hurl ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... storm-clouds were rising fast to the assault and conquest of the upper sky, which still above the hills shone blue and tranquil. But the north-west wind and the sea were leagued against it. They sent out threatening fingers and long spinning veils of cloud across it—skirmishers that foretold the black and serried lines, the torn and monstrous masses behind. Below these wild tempest shapes, again,—in long spaces resting on the sea—the heaven was at peace, shining in delicate greens and yellows, infinitely translucent and serene, above the ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... delivered, would tend to dispirit the bravest and most honest of witnesses. The presence of a judge is always, as I have said, oppressive. The presence of three is trebly so. Yet not a score of them serried along the bench could have outdone in oppressiveness Sir Charles Russell. He alone, among the counsel I have seen, was an exception to the rule that by a judge every one in court is levelled. On the ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... who struggling through rough briers hath trodden a snake on the ground unwarned, and suddenly shrinks fluttering back as it rises in anger and puffs its green throat out; even thus Androgeus drew away, startled at the sight. We rush in and encircle them with serried arms, and cut them down dispersedly in their ignorance of the ground and seizure of panic. Fortune speeds our first labour. And here Coroebus, flushed with success and spirit, cries: "O comrades, follow me where fortune points before ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... Colonel Canning, P.H. Creagh and Fawcus sitting on the yellow, dusty ground beneath a tarpaulin. It was thrilling once again to walk among our Manchester men, now very thin and sunburnt, in shirt-sleeves and shorts, making the best of life in narrow trenches, and watching day after day the serried Turkish lines and broad, brown mass of Achi Baba. Next day (1st August), in mid-afternoon, we moved into the most advanced fire trenches, and I became O.C. of our Battalion's firing line, with a small dug-out ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... causing ease; ease from thoughts—thoughts—thoughts, which never cease to make one's head ache till they are fixed on paper; ease from dreams by night and reveries by day, (thronging up in crowds behind, like Deucalion's children, or a serried host in front, like Jason's instant army,) harassing the brain, and struggling for birth, a separate existence, a definite life; ease, in a cessation of that continuous internal hum of aerial forget-me-nots, clamouring to be recorded. O, happy unimaginable vacancy of mind, to whistle ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... France performed prodigies of valor, each for himself, but they did not act together and could not hold their ground against the deadly shower of arrows poured into their midst from the long bows of the English archers. The flower of French chivalry was routed with terrible slaughter by the serried ranks of the humble English foot soldiers.[180] It was at Crcy that Edward's son, the Black Prince,—so named from ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... the hill-top, two hundred yards from the fort, the artillery within the fort belches forth from the embrasures, and the effect of its canister can be plainly seen in the heaps of dead and dying that strew the ground. But the check is only momentary. As the next line advances they move forward in serried ranks, and soon the fort is canopied in smoke. We can see the artillery as it fires in rapid succession, and the small arms pop and crack in a ceaseless rattle. The conflict elsewhere ceases, and both sides are silent ...
— Lee's Last Campaign • John C. Gorman
... sympathy. Right behind Cranston rides his second sergeant commanding the second platoon, the streaming guidon, lowered still, a little to his left and rear. Already the men are opening out a trifle, for this is to be no charge upon serried masses of disciplined troops, no crash of cavalry upon cavalry, where the line which rides with the greater impetus, the closer touch, the more accurate alignment, hurls the greater shock and weight upon the foe. Here no naked sabre flames in air,—a ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... as King Rupert, taking off his crown, held it up in his left hand, and, holding his great handjar high in his right, cried in a voice so strong that it came ringing over that serried mass like ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... their crag; the said families were always willing to accept invitations to dinners and dances; but as to admitting the strangers to their own houses, they were inexorable. Ready to scoff and disparage, jealous and niggardly, marrying only among themselves, the families formed a serried phalanx to keep out intruders. Of modern luxury they had no notion; and as for sending a boy to Paris, it was sending him, they thought to certain ruin. Such sagacity will give a sufficient idea of the ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... contending hosts, and was lurid with the fire of their artillery. Then the north-western army was beaten back in disorder, but, rallying again, formed into solid column, and once more advanced towards the south-eastern army, which was formed into a closely-serried square, with spears and muskets. Once more the fight raged, and the sounds were heard as distinctly as before; the struggle was but short, the lances of the south-eastern army snapped like hemp-sticks, ...
— The Lily of Leyden • W.H.G. Kingston
... be called, became positively chaotic. Virginia, still professing neutrality, prepared to seize the arsenal at Harper's Ferry and the navy-yard at Norfolk; she would prevent the passage of the United States' forces "with a serried phalanx of her gallant sons," two regiments of whom stood looking on while a file of marines took seven wounded men in an engine-house for them; she would do everything but her duty,—the gallant Ancient Pistol of a commonwealth. She "resumed ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... next morning, L'Isle marched his regiment out of Elvas. Setting his face sternly northward, he never once looked back on the serried ranks which followed him, until the embattled heights of La Lippe had hidden Elvas and its surroundings. Turning his back upon the past, he strove to look but to the future; but at the very moment of this resolve, memory cheated him, and he caught himself repeating ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... come over him with their talk. But that is enough of prattling. If my nephew finds it worth his while, and so long as they write for the son of the Other (broum! broum!)——after all, there is no harm in that. Ah! by the way, subscribers don't seem to me to be advancing in serried columns; I shall ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... their feuds in the interest of the racing. So the Resident seized the opportunity to summon every one to the conference hall once more. This time we settled down comfortably enough and with great decorum, the chiefs all in one group at one side of a central space, and the common people in serried ranks all round about it. In the centre was a huge, gaily painted effigy of a hornbill, one of the birds sacred to all the tribes, and on it were hung thousands of cigarettes of home-grown tobacco wrapped in dried banana leaf. Three enormous pigs were ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... at once the animals turned, for something happened which brought them tearing back through the water as rapidly as they had tried to escape; and now, as they came swimming back, it was without any diving, but with serried front, eyes flashing, and tusks gleaming, in a grand charge upon the boats, and with a force sufficient to tear them into matchwood and drown their ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... forget it, and will pray that their children may never witness anything like it. For two days this formidable host marched the long stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue, starting from the shadow of the dome of the Capitol, and filling that wide thoroughfare to Georgetown with a serried mass, moving with the easy yet rapid pace of veterans in cadence step. As a mere spectacle this march of the mightiest host the continent has ever seen gathered together was grand and imposing; but it was not as a spectacle ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... published personal history. Yes, it described him to say that, in addition to all the rest of him, and of his personal history, and of his family, and of theirs, in addition to their social posture, as that of a serried phalanx, and to their notoriously enormous wealth and crushing respectability, she might have been ever so much less lovely for him if she had been only—well, a little prepared to answer questions. And it ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... A serried rank of range upon range of hills, reaching north and south as far as the eye could see from the masthead, was rising above our horizon behind a very surfeit of islands, bewildering the minds of men accustomed to our English and North ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... way in among the twisted trunks, planted closely together in serried ranks, and I followed sharp at his heels. The moment we were out of sight he turned and put down his gun against the roots of a big tree, ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... bristling spears on every side. Upon this solid mass of men the Swiss could make no impression. In vain they charged with the fiery courage which had so often gained them the victory; they could find no vulnerable point in the serried columns, and it seemed that the brave mountaineers must all perish, and leave their homes again to the mercy of the Austrian soldiers. But, when almost in despair, the tide of battle was turned by the acts of a single Swiss soldier, Arnold Winkelried, of Unterwalden. He communicated his plan ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... the opposite direction and, swept along with the crowd, Warble found herself in one of a serried series of gilt chairs, facing a platform as ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... we were advancing toward its devouring jaws with such conduct as became an excursion of pleasure. The only arms we then possessed were two-edged daggers made of rasps in blacksmith shops, and with these we were going to hew our way to victory through the serried ranks of the invading army! Ah, well! we knew better what war was after we had become the seasoned ...
— Reminiscences of a Rebel • Wayland Fuller Dunaway
... deep, the banks are steep, the island-shore lies wide; Nor man nor horse could stem its force, or reach the further side. See there! amidst the willow-boughs the serried bayonets gleam; They've flung their bridge,—they've won the isle; the foe have cross'd the stream! Their volley flashes sharp and strong,—by all the saints! I trow There never yet was soldier born could force that ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... connection of the royal house with the South seems to have finally ceased. The governmental centre of gravity was finally transferred to Memphis, and the kings were thenceforth for several centuries buried in the great pyramids which still stand in serried order along the western desert border of Egypt, from the Delta to the province of the Fayyum. With the latest discoveries in this Memphite pyramid-field we shall ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... heavy-armed and light-armed spear-men, archers, and stingers, each standing and moving as mere chance may determine. It is even certain that they had advanced beyond the second period, when the phalanx order of battle is adopted, the confused mass being replaced by a single serried body presenting its best armed troops to the enemy, and keeping in the rear, to add their weight to the charge, the weaker and more imperfectly protected. It was not really left for Cyaxares the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... modern industry of book-making, wherein types are assembled, impressed upon sheets of paper, and these bound into volumes— points, lines, planes, solids. The book in turn becomes the unit of another dimensional order, in the library whose serried shelves form lines, which, combined into planes, define the ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... green-blue ice-cliffs glistening in intensest light. Pitz Palu shoots aloft like sculptured marble, delicately veined with soft aerial shadows of translucent blue. At the summit of the pass all Italy seems to burst upon the eyes in those steep serried ranges, with their craggy crests, violet-hued in noonday sunshine, as though a bloom of plum or grape had been shed over them, enamelling ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... use of artillery. Against a rapidly moving enemy, who systematically forebore exposing himself in mass, and in a country where no roads existed, only the fire-arm was effective. But already, at Palo Alto and Resaca, against the serried lines and thronging cavalry of the Mexicans, light field-guns had done extraordinary execution. The heavy artillery, hitherto the more favoured service, saw itself eclipsed. The First Regiment, however, had already ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... Davenant, and especially Master Rattlin;" the said Master Rattlin having very officiously wriggled himself into the first rank. Such is the sanctity of established authority, that we actually gave back, with serried files however, as our opponents advanced. All had now been lost, even our honour, had it not been for the gallant conduct of young Henry Saint Albans, a natural son of the Duke of Y—-, who was destined for the army, and, at that time, studying fortification, and to some ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... of God! We come! We come! Beware of the shock of the serried rank! Beware of the brand of the fiery Frank! By the splendor of God! We come! We come! Sword in hand, by the Grace of God, We fight till death for Old England's crown, Till Harold, or We, with our crowns, go down, Sword in hand, by the Grace ...
— Soldier Songs and Love Songs • A.H. Laidlaw
... mayonnaise, cakes, pastry—they have just been arranged in their defenceless nakedness under the eye of heaven, when the rain begins. And, when it begins, it begins to some purpose. It deceives us with no false hopes—with no breakings in the serried clouds—with no flying glimpses of blue sky. Down it comes, straight, straight down, on the lamb, on the mayonnaise, splash into the bitter. Each of us seizes the viand dearest to his or her heart, and tries to shelter it beneath his or her umbrella. But in vain! The ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... near that close-serried ring of steadfast Saxon strength were cut down, and the piles of dead Normans round them were becoming ramparts, when twenty knights bound themselves by an oath that the standard should be taken, spurred their horses against the ranks, ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... title-deed of creation, forfeited, is reclaimed. The king has come to his own again. Earth and sea and sky pour out their largess of love. All the past crowds down to lay its treasures at your feet. Patriotism stands once more in the breach at Thermopylae,—bears down the serried hosts of Bannockburn,—lays its calm hand in the fire, still, as if it felt the pressure of a mother's lips,—gathers to its heart the points of opposing spears, to make a way for the avenging feet behind. All that the ages have of greatness and glory your hand may pluck, and every year ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... there was no waiting on the part of the defenders, who began firing as soon as the advance commenced, with the result that several Indians dropped, to encumber the way and unsettle the serried band of plunging steeds, while the rest, on breasting the rocks, recoiled, and in a state of panic turned, regardless of yells and blows, to gallop back after the fashion of their kind, crowding together till they reached their fellows once ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... of Inniskillings cast itself at headlong speed on the Russians than their deep-serried ranks began to relax. Many an eye was watching the gallant leader of the charge, who, fighting his way round to the right, with a portion of his troopers, at length emerged on the left flank of the Russians, shortly afterwards followed by the colonel of one of the regiments; who ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... with desperate and deadly determination, making a rampart around them with the slain. More Christian troops arrived and hemmed them in, but still they fought, without asking for quarter. As their number decreased they serried their circle still closer, defending their banner from assault, and the last Moor died at his post grasping the standard of the Prophet. This standard was displayed from the walls, and the turbaned heads of the Moors were ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... shadows upon a delightful purple lawn lying smooth and free in the light like a lake. This is a glacier meadow. It is about a mile and a half long by a quarter of a mile wide. The trees come pressing forward all around in close serried ranks, planting their feet exactly on its margin, and holding themselves erect, strict and orderly like soldiers on parade; thus bounding the meadow with exquisite precision, yet with free curving lines such as Nature ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... serried Russian ranks the Tartars poured in that impetuous assault which had so often carried their hosts to victory. The Russians defended themselves with fiery valor, assault after assault was repulsed, and so fiercely was the field contested that ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... glazed apples serried on her stand. Australians they must be this time of year. Shiny peels: polishes them up with a rag ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... upon this point as the terminus of his ride, and began to coast down the long slope, leaving a trail of grey dust to mark his flight. There was a peculiar exhilaration in the dry heat of the October afternoon. Flocks of crows passed over his head with raucous cries. The cornstalks were stacked in serried array, like Indian wigwams, and heaps of apples, red and yellow and russet brown, lay ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... Border with a great army of perhaps 40,000 men, met the spearmen of Wallace in their serried phalanxes at Falkirk, broke the "schiltrom" or clump of spears by the arrows of his archers; slaughtered the archers of Ettrick Forest; scattered the mounted nobles, and avenged the rout of Stirling (July 22, 1298). The country remained unsubdued, but ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... times require No play of art, nor dalliance with the lyre, No weak essay with Fancy's chloroform To calm the hot, mad pulses of the storm, But the stern war-blast rather, such as sets The battle's teeth of serried bayonets, And pictures grim as Vernet's. Yet with these Some softer tints may blend, and milder keys Believe the storm-stunned ear. Let us keep sweet, If so we may, our hearts, even while we eat The bitter harvest of our own device And half a century's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... was observed. On the line of march Metellus was everywhere, now in the van, now with The rearguard, now with the central column. His eye criticised every disposition and detected every departure from the rules; he saw that each soldier kept his line, that he filled his due place in the serried ranks that gathered round a standard, that he bore the appropriate burden of his food and weapons. Metellus preferred the removal of the opportunities for vice to the vindictive chastisement of the vicious; his wise and temperate measures produced a healthy state of mind ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... of those plumed shafts. As the sun went down one of them pierced Harold's right eye. When they saw him fall the Normans rushed like a torrent forward, and a desperate conflict ensued over the fallen king. The Saxon standard still waved over the serried English ranks. Robert Fitz Ernest, a Norman knight, fought his way to the staff. His outstretched hand had nearly grasped it when an English battle-axe laid him low. Twenty knights, grouped in mass, followed him through the English ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... tombstones had been temporarily removed, engaged, not with mattock and death's head, but with spirit-level and measuring-cord. They were levelling a stretch of newly-turned and smoothed ground, and they pointed with pride to the portion of the work already accomplished, serried rows of spick-and-span headstones, all "plumb," as they explained, and freshly scraped—not a sign of caressing moss or a tendril of vine to be seen. A neat job, if there ever was one. We should have seen the yard before they had taken it in hand! There wasn't a stone that was straight, and the weeds ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... made this concave path by trundling boulders to that point like a funnel where the miners' houses now formed a cul-de-sac. On the other side of the crag was a valley also; but it was lonely and untenanted; and at one flank of The Stone were serried legions of trees. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... platform were all fully armed; and for an unarmed man to force a passage through that hedge of deadly spears, ten deep, was a simple impossibility. Then he threw a glance along the lane which he and Dick were to traverse, and which was hedged in on either side by serried ranks of Indians, each armed with a heavy club about three feet long. The Indians were by no means powerfully built, and, individually, looked by no means formidable; and the thought came to him that if he and Dick, instead of starting to race ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... heralds and thy vassals all The silver-belted planets and the sun. Where'er the radiance of thy coming fall, Shall dawn for thee her saffron footcloths spread, Sunset her purple canopies and red, In serried splendour, and the night unfold Her velvet darkness wrought with starry gold For kingly raiment, soft as cygnet-down. My hair shall braid thy temples like a crown Of sapphires, and my kiss upon thy brows Like cithar-music lull thee to repose, Till the sun yield thee ...
— The Golden Threshold • Sarojini Naidu
... defeat was "wholly owing to the inferiority of their equipment and training." Without proper shields, with little defensive armor, wielding only short swords and lances that were scarcely more than javelins, they dashed themselves upon the serried ranks of the Spartans, seizing the huge spear-shafts of these latter with their hands, striving to break them, and to force a way in. No conduct could have been braver than this, which the modern historian well compares with brilliant actions of the Romans and the Swiss. The Persians thoroughly ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... likewise strengthened by two guns, Major Ryely placed the Hardscrabble Guards, the Sheet Iron Riflemen, the Mudhollow Invincibles, the Dandelion Fireeaters, and the Scrufftown Sharpshooters. A thousand bright eyes, from the commanding eminences, looked down on the serried ranks of bayonets, the brazen-throated artillery, the panoplied plough horses, the plumed commanders, the rustling banners, and all the "pomp, pride, and circumstance of ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... ocean-haunting sharks, whose murderous forms we could see darting to and fro just outside the shallow bar, charging into and devouring the helpless, compact masses of salmon, whose very numbers prevented them from escaping; for serried legion after legion from the sea swam swiftly in to the narrow passage and pressed upon those which were seeking to force their way up to the shallow, muddy waters five miles beyond—where alone lay safety from the tigers of ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... Lake Champlain, and all the summer afternoon sail down through phantom fleets, under the frowning ramparts of phantom forts, past grim rows of deathful-throated cannon, through serried hosts of warriors, with bright swords gleaming and strong arms lifted and stern lips parted; but from lips of man or throat of cannon comes no sound. A thousand oars strike through the leaping waves, but not a plash breaks on the ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton |
