"Skeleton" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Holingsworth had a brother, who, like himself, was made prisoner. He was a delicate youth, and could ill endure the hardships, much less the barbarous treatment, to which the prisoners were exposed during that memorable march. He became reduced to a skeleton, and worse than that, footsore, so that he could no longer endure the pain of his feet and ankles, worn skinless, and charged with the spines of acacias, cactus, and the numerous thorny plants in which the dry soil of Mexico is so prolific. In ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... the house and grounds, which occupied two hours, for I was anxious to examine everything. But never was I more disappointed, for my notions, I suppose, had been raised to the romantic. I had surmised the possibly easy restoration of this once famous abbey, the mere skeleton of which is now fast crumbling to ruin. Lord Byron's immediate predecessor stripped the whole place of all that was splendid and interesting; and you may judge of what he must have done to the mansion when inform you that he converted ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... over the crisp white road. The hills were showing their barren beauty to the last look of the moon, which was sinking slowly out of sight. Sudden gleams of silver by the wayside betrayed the abiding-place of frozen streams. A tall maple-tree lifted its bare branches to the sky, like skeleton ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... whom he has already seduced from their duty, and lured over with honeyed words and large promises to the body he is raising. The fact is, my Lord, if our men were not so devotedly attached to my son and myself as they are, Hartley's unjustifiable interference would leave the corps a mere skeleton. As it is, he has taken eighteen of our very best men from us; by best, I allude only to youth and physical energy, for I need scarcely say, that all the staunch and loyal fellows remain with us. I am sorry to add that Mr. Hickman, as I predicted he would, is vigorously supporting your opponent; ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... cell of a departed anchoret, His skeleton and flitting ghost are there, Sole tenants— And all the City silent as the Moon That steeps in quiet light the steady vanes Of her ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... kill a few of those pressing to the spot. In a trice the hut was unroofed; and single individuals hung to the beams and rafters, in order to pull them also out of their joinings: nay, many floated above upon the posts which had been already sawn off below; and the whole skeleton, moving backwards and forwards, threatened to fall in. Sensitive persons turned their eyes away, and everybody expected a great calamity; but we did not hear of any mischief: and the whole affair, though impetuous and ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... I thought, as I saw the family assemble in the drawing-room before dinner. 'Here are beauty, youth, wealth, position—all that makes life valuable. What concealed skeleton can there be in this house to frighten away one grace of existence? None—none! They must be happy; and oh! what a contrast to that poor lady I met with to-day; and what a ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... the biography of Bishop Ken to show that he played cricket at Winchester College in 1650, one of his scores, cut on the chapel-cloister wall, being still extant; and the same writer reproduces as a frontispiece to his "opusculum" an old engraving bearing date 1743, in which the wicket appears as a skeleton hurdle about two feet wide by one foot high, while the bat is the Saxon crec or crooked stick, with which the game was originally played, and from which the name ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... with an indifference that was not without a certain sadness, "I'll probably be a skeleton myself before I have another chance to display my erudition. But what the devil are you doing? Why did you put out the torch? You're not going to make me eat and sleep ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... not one to yield easily to despair; and yet despair was now upon him. There was every symptom of a dark night coming down, and it was now near. Inspired either by pity or revenge, he sent a bullet from his roer into the head of the struggling skeleton; and, throwing himself into the saddle, he turned the head of his horse ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... see this book. It contains, Madam, the skeleton of a case. The bones and joints, Ma'am, of a case. I have it here, noted and prepared. There is not a fact in it without a note of the name and address of the witness who can prove it—the ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... orders that a horse was to be shot at sundown, as we are getting rather short of meat, and I hope the change of beef tea made from fresh meat will give me some increase of strength, for I am now reduced to a perfect skeleton, a mere shadow. At sundown had the horse shot; fresh meat to the party is now a great treat. I am denied participating in that pleasure, from the dreadful state in which my mouth still is. I can chew nothing, and all that I have been living on is a ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... Arcot mused, "I've been thinking about that man's strength; an iron skeleton doesn't explain it all. He has to have muscles ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... that of Raphael; but there was no proof of this, and in 1833 some antiquarians received the consent of the Pope to their searching for the bones of Raphael in his grave in the Pantheon. After five days of careful work, and removing the pavement in several places, the skeleton of the great master was found, and with it such proofs of its being his as left no room for doubt. Then a second great funeral service was held; the Pope, Gregory XVI., gave a marble sarcophagus in which the bones were placed, and reverently restored to their first resting-place. ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... because she deludes herself with the idea that he is worthy of love. But if she were to find him out her whole soul would indignantly repulse him. If she knew all I know of him, she would rather embrace the mildewy skeleton of San Carlo Borromeo, with the great jewels glistening in his ghastly eye-sockets, than the well-fed, ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... the water by some thrifty body, who, however, had made no further use of it. Long ago that must have been, for it was dried and bleached till it glimmered through the dusk like an intricate white skeleton. Better fuel no one could desire. Thady made for it at once with knife and matchbox, and in a few minutes crackling flames were crunching up the twigs and gnawing at a log. The red light washed flickering over the wet walls, and was caught ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... Gabor in Hungary. Wallenstein was therefore obliged to abandon his campaign against the Danes and to follow him. Mansfeldt joined the Hungarian army, but so rapid were his marches that his force had dwindled away to a mere skeleton, and the assistance which it would be to the Hungarians was so small that Bethlem Gabor refused to cooperate ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... the goose between them, and turned its skeleton over with an inquisitive glance to make sure that nothing eatable had escaped, the two friends finished their frugal meal with a cup of tea and a fried cake of the simplest elements—flour and water—after ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... squaw, so you have to do all the work. Get down there now behind that rock and make a fire, while we go out and kill a deer. You must build a wigwam, too, by the time we get back. Hear me? I'm a big chief! 'I am Famine—Buckadawin!' and I'll make a living skeleton of you if you ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... all, the stone only differed from the arrow-heads of Lake Superior in its beautiful carving and unprecedented size—and, ah, yes! there was another difference, the mystery of its discovery. No other skeleton among all the buried braves unearthed by scientific research at Crevecoeur had been found with a gem for a heart—a gem that glittered not on the breast, but within a chest hooped with human bone. Mrs. Dalliba had just remarked that she had never ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... of you to take it like that," he said. "After all"—frankly—"you could not have remained with us very long without finding out our particular skeleton in the cupboard. My wife's state of health—or, rather, what she believes to be her state of health—is a great grief to me. I've tried in every way to convince her that she is not really so delicate as she imagines, but I've ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... which he called his jack-boots; wore round his throat a tin collar; over each shoulder he had a large tin thing like a shoulder of mutton; and on his head he displayed a hollow helmet filled with hot water. In the middle of a field into which his windows looked, was a skeleton sort of a machine, his Universal Scratcher; with which every animal from a lamb to a bullock could scratch itself. Then on the Sunday the Immortal was called into use, to travel in state to a church like a barn; about fifty people in it; but the most original idea ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... his head bobbed in surprise. Young-old creases on his face flickered. "Tonight? Oh, you can't really be serious. Why, it's almost two in the morning! We only have a skeleton crew working at night. Tomorrow ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse
... against the Liberal party and their mighty Liberal leader. And what support had Lord Spencer against all these foes—before him, around him—on all sides of him? On the benches immediately behind him there was a small band of men—not forty all told—looking strangely deserted, skeleton-like, even abashed in all their loneliness and isolation. These were the friends—few but faithful—amid all the hundreds, who alone had a word of cheer for Lord Spencer in a long and trying speech he had to address to his irreconcilable foes. But if there ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... and a strange hush fell over the room—a hush only broken by the click of metal against metal, and the deep breathing of the two men bending to their task. Sir Andrew Ffoulkes was working with a file on the padlocks of the oak chest, and Sir Percy Blakeney, with a bunch of skeleton keys, was opening the drawers of the writing- desk. These, when finally opened, revealed nothing of any importance; but when anon Sir Andrew was able to lift the lid of the oak chest, he disclosed an innumerable quantity of papers and documents tied up in neat bundles, docketed ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... sea glints chill. The white sun is shy. And the skeleton weeds and the never-dry, Rough, long grasses keep white with frost At the hilltop by the finger-post; The smoke of the traveller's-joy is puffed Over hawthorn berry ...
— Poems • Edward Thomas
... him, or to seek to influence him, would be to attempt the impossible. Perhaps there was something more than this in her mind—some half-consciousness that there was a shapeless and invertebrate skeleton lurking in the shadowy background of her new life, a dusky and impalpable creature which it would not be well for her to examine or understand. She was a cowardly little woman, and finding herself tolerably happy in the present, she did not care to pierce the veil of the future, or ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... I would, and he was only a baby when I went away. However, all's well that ends well, and I haven't come back to be a skeleton at the feast. We mustn't quarrel. Mother mill be here with a search warrant pretty soon." He swung round and faced her, thrusting his hands into his coat pockets. "Come, you ought to be glad to see me, if you want something to happen. I'm something, even without ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... Under these circumstances the humerus and femur appear to be the bones most likely to break; there is an associate deformity of the head, known as "craniotabes," together with pigeon-breast and various spinal curvature. The accompanying illustration is from a drawing of a skeleton in the Warren Museum in Boston. The subject was an Indian, twenty-one years of age, one of the Six Nations. His mode of locomotion was by a large wooden bowl, in which he sat and moved forward by advancing first ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... they sold a horse for seventy dollars. This seasonable supply was carefully economized; but it had become much reduced when Captain Lyon and Belford both fell ill again. The former rose from his bed, after being confined to it for a week, a skeleton. Under this exigency they met with a remarkable instance of disinterested friendship on the part of a native, Yusuf el Lizari, who, as well as his brother, had previously shown them much kindness. "One night," says Captain ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... gilding—very rich. You could also see the wine-cellars. Many years ago a tun there burst, and a serving man was drowned in the wine. You could also see the bed in which Nabulione, the Emperor of Europe, slept, when he was in this country. Also the ancient kitchen. Many years ago, in a storm, the skeleton of a man fell down the chimney, out upon the hearth. Also what is called the Court of Foxes. Many years ago there was a plague of foxes; and the foxes came down from the forest like a great army, thousands ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... Attache, shut out from the divine Suppers and upper planetary movements, and reduced to look on them from his cold hutch, in a dog-like angry and hungry manner? His flying allusions to Voltaire, "SON (Friedrich's) SQUELETTE D'APOLLON, skeleton of an Apollo," and the like, are ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... of fishes intended for food, but spoiled and thrown away by travellers; that the fossil shells were accidentally dropped by crusaders and pilgrims returning from the Holy Land; and that the fossil bones found between Paris and Etampes were parts of a skeleton belonging to the cabinet of some ancient philosopher. Through chapter after chapter, Voltaire, obeying the supposed necessities of his theology, fought desperately the growing results of the geologic ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... never be able to draw for you the hideous death-mask this man was wearing for a face. Seamed and scarred, shriveled and livid in purple and crimson welts, you would think a nine-thonged whip of fire had scourged out every semblance of comeliness, leaving only the skeleton frame on which to hang this ghastly caricature of a human face. Fearing him not at all, I could scarce forbear a shudder at the sight of this walking death-mask of ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... Academy, and will directly be sent to Rome. But the idea! I know him too well! The other night I heard him criticizing Michael Angelo! and when I gave him an engraving of that delicious Psyche of Theed's to admire, the creature talked as if she were a manikin or a robed skeleton! Is there nothing due to the idea, Acajou? 'The idea!' dear me, why he didn't exactly know what the idea was! So he'll go trolling about the Louvre and the Luxembourg gallery, the Pitti palace and all Rome, and his mind will be as full of elbows and collar bones as the catacombs; ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... John, where are the skeleton keys? If so that we can open the door, we need not break house by the window, ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... there was no reason why the mistress should not sleep in the garret as well as the maid. I got a picklock and several skeleton keys, I put in a tin box several doses of the aroph-that is, some honey mixed with pounded stag's horn to make it thick enough, and the next morning I went to the "Hotel de Bretagne," and immediately tried my picklock. I could have done without it, as the first skeleton ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... and the sloop he was in was arranged like most of the sponging craft, with quarters sufficient for half the crew it carried. The deck of the sponger was piled with the result of the work of the week. The sponge of commerce, the one you buy at the drug store, is the skeleton of the creature; the thing taken from the water is its corpse. Not until this body has rotted away is it pleasant to live with. Day by day the stench, like that of a charnel house, became more unbearable to Dick. ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... a year after the disappearance that a wan living skeleton staggered out of the wilderness in Africa, and blindly groped his way to the coast, as a man might who had lived long in darkness, and found the light too strong for his eyes. He managed to reach a port, and there took ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... the rope spun out into the middle air of the room. It moved and twisted like a live thing, and Mr. Wicker, Chris thought, seemed to be drawing the outline of a boat in the air with the moving line. Even as this thought flickered in his mind, the rope formed in mid-air the skeleton of a dingy, and then, mysteriously, the rope added to itself until the bare struts and sides were filled in and there, rocking lightly from the speed of its creation, a small row-boat hovered in the air, as if it were tied up to ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... saw several antelope, 2 of our men went in persuit, killed a young one; came across a human skeleton, brought the skull bone to the waggon, I think it was an indians skull. We soon came in sight of Independence Rock,[66] it did not look at all like I had formed an idea, & at a distance, it has no very imposing appearance; but ...
— Across the Plains to California in 1852 - Journal of Mrs. Lodisa Frizzell • Lodisa Frizell
... single flagellum and a silicious skeleton resembling those of the Radiolaria. The skeleton consists of two rings of different diameter parallel with one another and connected by silicious bars. From the wider ring half a dozen bars radiate outwards and a similar number of short thorn-like bars point inwards obliquely. ...
— Marine Protozoa from Woods Hole - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission 21:415-468, 1901 • Gary N. Galkins
... ancient garments, gilded armor, fragments of stuffs, machinery. And yet there is something mysteriously grand, like thought, in it; genius and death are there; Diana and Apollo beside a skull or skeleton, beauty and destruction, poesy and reality, colors glowing in the shadows, often a whole drama, motionless and silent. Strange ...
— Vendetta • Honore de Balzac
... virtues) lies the recumbent effigy of Sir Robert Cecil, first Earl of Salisbury, Lord High Treasurer of England (d. 1612). The effigy is in robes, with official staff in hand. Beneath the slab is a skeleton in white marble. Note also in this chapel mezzo-relievo effigy to William Curll, Esq. (d. 1617), with inscription, almost illegible, to the effect that he was a most Christian knight who died in ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... truth of the simplest kind—the definition of a stone, rather than the painting of one—and the lights are in some degree dead and cold—the natural consequence of striking a mixed opaque pigment over a dark ground. It would now be possible to treat this skeleton of a stone, which could only have been knit together by Tintoret's rough temper, with the care of a Fleming; to leave its fiercely-stricken lights emanating from a golden ground, to gradate with the pen its ponderous shadows, and in its completion, to dwell ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... into the wreck of some mighty antediluvian vertebrate; its flying-buttresses arched round like ribs, its piers shaped themselves into limbs, and the sound of the organ-blast changed to the wind whistling through its thousand-jointed skeleton. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... Vice-President's chair was occupied by that intellectual giant of the South, John C. Calhoun. Before him were Van Buren, Forsyth, Hayne, Clayton, the omniverous Benton, the sturdy John Quincy Adams, and, in the seething crowd, was the gaunt skeleton form of John Randolph of Roanoke. Mr. Condit told me that when Webster exclaimed: "The world knows the history of Massachusetts by heart. There is Lexington, and there is Bunker Hill and there they will remain forever,"—the ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... The race is distinguished by certain common characteristics, but more especially by the possession of a common type of language, which is markedly different from the other languages of mankind. Its words are built on what is termed the principle of triliteralism; the skeleton, as it were, of each of them consisting of three consonants, while the vowels, which give flesh and life to the skeleton, vary according to the grammatical signification of the word. The relations of grammar are ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... tungs to that pain and misery wal thair stockings fell down ower thair clog tops; but hasumever th' silence wur brokken by a Haworth Parish chap 'at they call Bob Gimlet, he happen'd to be thare an' he said, na lads, look daan th' valley, for I think I see th' skeleton at ony rate, an' Bob wur reight, for it wur as plain to be seen as an elephant ...
— Th' History o' Haworth Railway - fra' th' beginnin' to th' end, wi' an ackaant o' th' oppnin' serrimony • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... point of concourse of the lines in the diagram of stress corresponds a closed polygon in the skeleton of the frame, the two diagrams are said ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... attached to one of its hind legs. It had evidently dragged both around in the snow for many a mile, during a period of intense cold, and it is, therefore, not surprising that it was a 'walking skeleton' ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... in this country, if we heed either the dictates of reason or experience, maintain in time of peace a skeleton military and naval force, capable of being greatly expanded, in the event of danger, by the addition ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... effectually intimidate by the simple application of the Becky gauge than by the most vehement use of all ten commandments. Thanks to Mr. Thackeray, the world is now provided with an idea, which, if we mistake not, will be the skeleton in the corner of every ball-room and boudoir for a long time to come. Let us leave it intact in its unique fount and freshness—a Becky, and nothing more. We should, therefore, advise our readers to cut out that picture of our heroine's "Second Appearance as Clytemnestra," ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... stage which last night made a world for us full of all the paraphernalia of high romanticism—silver and velvet robes, plumed hats, dim woodland vistas and the echo of a distant high note, youthful beauty, rope-ladders, balconies, daggers, poison, and passionate love-strains. This skeleton framework of the illusion, these well-worn contrivances, tarnished gold lace and mock splendors, disenchant us sadly, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... sight of that specter, half mummy and half fetus; they approached it as the traveler who is shown at Strasburg the daughter of an old count of Sarvenden, embalmed in her bride's dress: that childish skeleton makes one shudder, for her slender and livid hand wears the wedding-ring and her head falls into dust in the midst ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... c. 4000 B.C.—to the final destruction of the Babylonian empire by Cyrus, in the middle of the sixth century B.C., are far from being complete. For entire centuries we are wholly in the dark, and for others only a few skeleton facts are known; and until these gaps shall have been filled, our knowledge of the religion of the Babylonians and Assyrians must necessarily remain incomplete. Not as incomplete, indeed, as their history, for religious rites are not subject to many changes, and the progress of religious ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... of organization. We skeletonize our thoughts behind the scenes, but the skeleton is rather an unsightly specimen to exhibit before a class. The outline should be inherent in the lesson as presented, but it ought not to protrude so that the means will be mistaken for an end. Subsequent chapters will illustrate both the selection ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... troops, several of whom were sick, and lay along the deck helpless. Being an old campaigner, he had his medicine-chest with him, and he was thus enabled to administer to these men the medicines which he supposed their cases required. One huge fellow, attenuated to a skeleton by dysentery, who appears to have been aware of his benefactor's connection with the press, gasped ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... clothing lying about, and stood staring at them, his eyes held by the fascination of horror. Finally he forced himself to move on, and after he had tramped through the scorching sand for a long time, he found himself staring again at the bleaching skeleton. Through his heat-dazed brain the thought made way that the fascination of this white, nameless thing had cast a spell upon him and had drawn him back to die here, where his bones might lie beside these that had whitened this desert spot for so many months. Perhaps ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... do, Davie," the foreman said, "and so they are. And the whole frame, before it's boarded in—before any boards are nailed on—looks like the skeleton of a house, and so it is. They'll have pretty near the whole frame up by the time you eat your supper; or to-morrow morning, at any rate. Then you look and see. It's much the same way that your body's ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... the height of about forty feet from the ground. By command of Ackbau, a file of warriors now began to pull upon this rope, when the victim was drawn up to the branch over his head, where Melannie told me he would be allowed to remain until, in the course of time, the rope rotted away, when the skeleton would fall to the ground. The object of enclosing the vital parts of the victim in a basket was that death might come as slowly as possible. Some would live, so the queen assured me, for many days, during which time of agony their ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... any criticism of the formularies in detail, it is important to draw a distinction between two very different things, namely, the structure of a liturgical office and the contents of it. By structure should be understood the skeleton or frame that makes the groundwork of any given office, by contents the actual liturgical material employed in filling out the office ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... seemed as if the idea of all this had not come to her, some of the value of her sacrifice would be diminished if the family skeleton should be laid bare, I could see she felt, so I ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... gradually they became tougher and more wiry; their diminished hoofs learned to catch more carefully in the rocks of their mountain home; and the mustang and bronco of more recent years are the descendants of the little dawn horse, whose dainty skeleton is found in the rocks over which his later descendants, after a long stretch of perhaps four million years, are ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... inside the building. Inside, the soldiers had already laid out the skeleton on a table. The soldiers stood around it, their young ...
— The Skull • Philip K. Dick
... who having in his own apprehension, received some great injustice from the Earl of Galway,[152] and despairing of revenge, as well as relief, declared to all his friends that he had set apart a hundred guineas to purchase the Earl's carcase from the sexton, whenever it should die; to make a skeleton of the bones, stuff the hide, and shew them for threepence; and thus get vengeance for the injuries he ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... nor years of loneliness had broken his strength or bowed his spirit. His tall, gigantic form had shrunk to a skeleton; his hair had whitened and hung around his hollow face like an ashen veil. Heavy chains clasped his feet and his throat, a broad iron band encircled his waist, which was attached to the wall by a short chain—a thick ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... represented as a figure with an exposed, bony spine, truncated nose and grinning teeth.[10-1] It is plainly to be seen that the head of this god represents a skull and that the spine is that of a skeleton. The pictures of the death-god are so characteristic in the Maya manuscripts that the deity is always easily recognized. He is almost always distinguished by the skeleton face and the bony spine. Several times in the ...
— Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts • Paul Schellhas
... she did; and said that the Marechale d'Estrees was continually asking her, "What are you always doing with that old woman? Why do you not associate with folks who would amuse you more than that old skeleton?" and that she said many other uncivil things of her. Maintenon told me this herself, since the death of the Dauphine, to prove that it was only the Marechale's fault that the Dauphine had been on such bad terms with me. This may be partly true; but it is no ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Southwood Smith," she says. "On visiting him, we saw an object which I have often heard celebrated, and had thought would be revolting, but found, on the contrary, an agreeable sight; this is the skeleton of Jeremy Bentham. It was at Bentham's request, that the skeleton, dressed in the same dress he habitually wore, stuffed out to an exact resemblance of life, and with a portrait-mask in wax,—the best ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... darts like a tongue of green flame along the walls; and birds make the hollow quarry overflow with their songs. There is something beautiful and impressive in the contrast between luxuriant life and the rigid skeleton upon ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... and timid mental position of her mother and grandmother, giving sharp, strict regard to the current literature and art that reached the innocent presence of her long perspective of girls, with the view of hiding every skull and skeleton of life from their dear eyes. She was another illustration of the rule that succeeding generations of women are seldom marked by cumulative progress, their advance as girls being lost in their recession as matrons; so that they move up and down the stream of intellectual development ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... humiliating secret they discover of our means, parentage, or object, provided that each thinks and acts thereupon in isolation. It is the exchange of ideas about us that we dread most; and the possession by a hundred acquaintances, severally insulated, of the knowledge of our skeleton-closet's whereabouts, is not so distressing to the nerves as a chat over it by a party of half-a-dozen—exclusive depositaries ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... dejected that I blushed when I put the halter on it; it had been abandoned on account of lameness, from which it had recovered, and had since been starving. They harnessed it up and it brought in the cart; and that night, being given a good feed of oats, it died from shock. Another skeleton was found in the morning to take its place; but this skeleton grew fat. We used to laugh at these misfortunes, but the poor horses had a cruel time, especially the English ones; no one would have recognised the Horse Artillery, ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... exhibition of his case thus seen and presented from the point of their lives and natures, and not from the dry facts and points of his case; and his argument was all the more perfect, because not exhibited in skeleton nakedness, but incorporated and intertwined with the interior and essential life of persons and events. It was in this way that he effected the acquittal of Tirrell, whom any matter-of-fact lawyer, however able, would have ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... remarkable from the usual gravel-bed being deeply worn into hollows, which are filled up with, as well as the general surface covered by, sandy and reddish earthy matter: in one of the hollows thus filled up, the skeleton of the Macrauchenia Patachonica, as will hereafter be described, was embedded. On the surface and in the upper parts of this earthy mass, there were numerous shells of Mytilus Magellanicus and M. edulis, Patella deaurita, and fragments of other species. This plain is tolerably ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... knew he spoke not the truth. He felt the great brown eyes of the girl penetrate his naked soul; and he knew that in the dark recesses of the inner man they fell upon the grinning skeleton of hypocrisy. Carmen might be, doubtless was, incapable of reasoning. Of logical processes she knew nothing. But by what crass assumption might he, admittedly woefully defeated in his combat with Fate, oppose his feeble shafts of ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... white men have won the battle their end is defeated. For the blazing woods have swept across the homestead of "old man" Jason, for years a landmark in the country, and now it is no more. A mere charred skeleton remains; smoking, smouldering, a witness to the white man's daring in a ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... I shall feel ill with anxiety if I stop here. Nobody left in the house but that Mrs. Closepeg. And she is such a stupid woman. It was only last night that I dreamt I saw our cat quite a skeleton, and the canary stiff on its back at the bottom of the cage. You know, Caudle, I'm never happy when I'm away from home; and yet you will stay here. No, home's my comfort! I never want to stir over ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... native of the forest is in finding his way to any object in it which he has once seen, and may desire to revisit. By following the line, these men soon joined us, when they gave us the additional information that they had also actually found the skeleton of the moose that had given ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... the combat. And since powerless is my sword Thee to wound, I throw me on thee To know who thou art. Declare, Art thou demon, man, or monster? What! no answer? Then I thus Dare myself to solve the problem, [He tears the cloak from the Figure, and finds beneath it a skeleton. And find out . . . . Oh, save me, heaven! God! what's this I see? what horrid Spectacle! What frightful vision! What death-threatening fearful portent! Stiff and stony corse, who art thou? That of dust and ashes formed ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... completely passes my understanding for what possible cause he—or any of the others for the matter of that—could have resolved in cold blood to die in such an awful manner. You know how men babble away each other's characters in London, you may be sure any buried scandal or hidden skeleton would have been brought to light in such a case as this; but nothing of the sort has taken place. As for the theory of mania, that is very well, of course, for the coroner's jury, but everybody knows that it's all nonsense. Suicidal mania ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... misty moonlit nights Comes a skeleton in tights, Walks once more the giddy heights He mistook; And unseen to mortal eyes, Purged of grosser earthly ties, Now at last in ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... regretfully, "I do not know. I know of coral only that is the hard calcareous skeleton of the marine coelenterate polyps; and that this red coral iss called of a sclerobasic group; and other facts of the kind; but I do not know if it iss supposed to resist impact and heat. Possibly," he ended shrewdly, "it is the common imitation which does not resist impact ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... cart, drawn by a miserable old skeleton of a horse, and surrounded by mounted guards, was slowly advancing through the dense throng towards the scaffold. In it were a venerable priest, with a long white beard, who was holding a crucifix to the lips of the ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... passed on his way one of the three or four solitary rocks which rose from the sand, the skeleton remnants of larger masses worn down by wind, wave, and weather, he heard his own name uttered by an unpleasant voice, and followed by ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... Saloon in Corn Street drinking a lager, I suddenly felt a peculiar throbbing sensation run up my left leg into my left hand, and the floor seemed to open up, and I saw deep below me, in a black pit, a skeleton clutching hold of a linen bag, full of coins. I could see the gold quite distinctly—Spanish doubles, none newer than the eighteenth century. I knew then that the Unknown had not forgotten me. 'Look here, boss,' I said to old man Moss—the proprietor, you know—'You're ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... without delay — I think I shall make no contemptible figure in the character of Scrub; and Lismahago will be very great in Captain Gibbet. Wilson undertakes to entertain the country people with Harlequin Skeleton, for which he has got a jacket ready painted ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... Course is not far distant and it might be worth while to see what could be done without radical modifications in the curricula of the departments as they now are. For a working basis I would like to present the following skeleton programme, which seems practicable. In this schedule all preparation except that in subject matter and method is understood to be included in "electives". A major in Zoology is assumed. Each biological science department would have a course of similar plan built about its major ...
— Adequate Preparation for the Teacher of Biological Sciences in Secondary Schools • James Daley McDonald
... of the precious work in the winter of 1542-1543 in Basel, Vesalius prepared for the medical school a skeleton from the body of an executed man, which is probably the earliest preparation of the kind in Europe. How little anatomy had been studied at the period may be judged from that fact that there had been no dissection at Basel ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... eye resting professionally upon Dan's splendid proportions. What a "subject" to cut up! What a skeleton to articulate! ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... could now; regretted our short stay, and assured me he would collect more by the time I returned. Among these is to be a mias pappan, living or dead. I at the same time offered ten dollars for the skeleton belonging to the hand already in my possession, and a less sum for the parts. Being the first Europeans Seriff Sahib had ever met, he was rather puzzled to know what we were like; but we had every reason to be satisfied with ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... spellbound. Was it another move in her perpetual game? Was she on the track of someone's secret? Was her scheming mind now following some new clew that must lead to the discovery of a hidden or forgotten crime—the burial place of some well entombed family skeleton? He shivered. ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... they did not push the art of embalming so far as the Egyptians, they entered upon the same path. The bodies we find in the oldest tombs are imperfect mummies compared with those of Egypt, but the skeleton, at least, is nearly always in an excellent state of preservation; it is only when handled that it tumbles into dust. In the more spacious tombs the body lies upon a mat, with its head upon a cushion. ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... is considerably smaller than the last species. It is truly omnivorous, and will eat even bread; and I was assured that it materially injures the potato-crops in Chiloe, by stocking up the roots when first planted. Of all the carrion-feeders it is generally the last which leaves the skeleton of a dead animal, and may often be seen within the ribs of a cow or horse, like a bird in a cage. Another species is the Polyborus Novae Zelandiae, which is exceedingly common in the Falkland Islands. These birds in many respects resemble in their habits the Carranchas. They live on the ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... digging recently on the borders of the Obi, in Siberia, found one of these animals frozen in a mass of ice, at a depth of sixty feet, so well preserved that it was still covered with hair, as in life. They melted the ice to remove the animal, but the skeleton alone remained complete; the hide was spoiled by contact with the air, and only a few pieces have been kept, one of which is in the Museum at Stuttgart. The hairs upon it are as coarse as fine twine, and nearly a foot long. The entire skeleton ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... fact are those in historical questions, whether in recent or in ancient history. Macaulay's admirable skeleton argument (p. 155) that Philip Francis wrote the Junius Letters, which so grievously incensed the English government about the time of the American Revolution, is an example of an argument of this sort; the part of Lincoln's Cooper Institute Address which deals with the views of ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... specimens to our pre-historic menagerie, including the rare find of a bird that looks uncommonly like the penguin. Mind, by the way, that you do not fall into that round hole in the floor. It is enormously deep; and more than forty cave-bears have left their skeletons at the bottom, amongst which your skeleton would be a ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... rose up in the bunk. It was a woman haggard and dishevelled, whose hair was half gray, and who was as thin as a skeleton, dressed in a ragged and dirty chemise, and with particularly brilliant and staring eyes. She looked past us with her staring eyes, clutched at her jacket with one thin hand, in order to cover her bony breast which was ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... southern winter had come round, and they had to delay further to make more particular inquiry into Doughty's desertion. An ominous and strange spectacle met their eyes as they entered the harbour. In that utterly desolate spot a skeleton was hanging on a gallows, the bones picked clean by the vultures. It was one of Magellan's crew who had been executed there for mutiny fifty years before. The same fate was to befall the unhappy Englishman who ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... with great gusto to divide his property and eat the funeral feast. On the fifth day they blew the conch shell to drive away the ghost, as usual, and lifted the pall to see what had become of Death. But there was no Death there; he had absconded leaving only his skeleton behind. They naturally feared that he had made off with an intention to return to his home underground, which would have been a great calamity; for if there were no Death on earth, how could men die and how could other people inherit their property? The idea was intolerable; ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... Nordman, a reporter of that city, as the best man to equip Mr. Whitlock with the historical details of the exposure. He would thus have immediately a succinct, up-to-date statement of the case for his use as a skeleton. ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... house to look exactly like it; the assimilation going to the most fantastic lengths, such as altering the numbering of houses in the street. I came to America and found an hotel fitted and upholstered throughout for the enactment of my phantasmal fraud. I offer the skeleton of my story with all humility to some of the admirable lady writers of detective stories in America, to Miss Carolyn Wells, or Miss Mary Roberts Rhinehart, or Mrs. A. K. Green of the unforgotten Leavenworth ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... skeleton; sinking fast, but I'll die hard. Make my will. Bequeath Autographs of TALLEYRAND and JOE MILLER to Madame Tussaud's; everything else to be sold for the foundation of an Asylum for Old Jokes. A knock ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 11, 1891 • Various
... to you, but for politeness sake I don't say it," said Newman. "It's singular I should want so much to be your brother-in-law, but I can't give it up. Let me try once more." And he paused a moment. "You have a secret—you have a skeleton in the closet." M. de Bellegarde continued to look at him hard, but Newman could not see whether his eyes betrayed anything; the look of his eyes was always so strange. Newman paused again, and then went on. "You and your ...
— The American • Henry James
... alone, the plastered skeleton thrust its arms forward, and, without giving me time to know what I was about, the creature gave me a horrible kiss, and then one of her hands began to stray ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... continued. By this account, Cuvier endeavored to reconcile the doctrine of supernatural creation and intervention with the obvious facts that organisms have differed at various times in the earth's history. Although he saw that animals of successive periods displayed similar structures, like the skeleton of vertebrates, which testified to some connection, Cuvier could not bring himself to believe that this ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... and other creatures were in a row of jars upon a shelf, together with small skeletons of animals in frames. There was also a perfect human skeleton. Near the centre of the room was a canopied chair, of grotesque Chinese design, upon a dais, a big bronze bell hanging from it; and near to the diwan upon which Stuart was lying stood a large, very finely carved table upon which were some open faded volumes and a litter of scientific implements. ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... elder Pendennis had become the adviser of the Clavering family, and, in his quality of intimate friend of the house, had gone over every room of ii, and even seen that ugly closet which we all of us have, and in which, according to the proverb, the family skeleton is locked up. About the Baronet's pecuniary matters, if the Major did not know, it was because Clavering himself did not know them, and hid them from himself and others in such a hopeless entanglement of lies that it was impossible for adviser or ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... judgment of Seyny John, truly worthy of Solomon? It comes from the Cento Novelle Antiche, rewritten from tales older than Boccaccio, and moreover of an extreme brevity and dryness. They are only the framework, the notes, the skeleton of tales. The subject is often wonderful, but nothing is made of it: it is left unshaped. Rabelais wrote a version of one, the ninth. The scene takes place, not at Paris, but at Alexandria in Egypt among the Saracens, and the cook is called Fabrac. But the surprise at ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... was opened, when, in the innermost of three coffins, his skeleton was found, wrapped in five robes of embroidered silk, some of the fragments of which may still be seen in ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... ancient laborer was expostulating earnestly with much gesturing of skeleton arms, while the administrador listened as one habituated and bored. The feeble peon protested that he could not work that day. He parted the yellow rags over one leg and revealed decaying flesh, sloughing away in the ravages of bone leprosy. He showed it without emotion, ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... blazoned, and richly bound, and presenting it to the young lady as a proof of her admirer's abilities, was perhaps hardly very sagacious. It is quite possible, at least, that Miss Stuart Belches may have regarded this vehement admirer of spectral wedding journeys and skeleton bridals, as unlikely to prepare for her that comfortable, trim, and decorous future which young ladies usually desire. At any rate, the bold stroke failed. The young lady admired the verses, but, as we have seen, declined the translator. Perhaps she regarded ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... Massachusetts by its conversion into a mounted regiment. The 16th New Hampshire, however, had suffered so severely during its six week's confinement in the heart of the pestilential swamp that it was reduced to a mere skeleton, without strength either numerical or physical. It was easy to see that officers and men alike were suffering from some aggravated form of hepatic disorder, due to malarial poison. Many were added to the sick-report every day. Few that went to the regimental or general hospital returned to duty, ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... bridge, for a freshet or something seems to have torn it partially up. Originally built by throwing tree-trunks across from bank to bank, and covering these with planking, what we now see seems little more than a bare skeleton; for nearly all the planking is gone, and only the rough bare logs remain—and of these several are displaced, so that uncomfortable-looking gaps appear. Some feet below the level of this ruined bridge a regular cataract is flowing. ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... the best plans that has been proposed for omnivorous people is that which has been worked out by Dr. J. H. Tilden. Its skeleton is, fruit once a day, starchy food once a day, flesh or other protein with succulent vegetables once a day. I shall make up menus for a few days ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... she saw her, confirmed our opinion by recognising some of the cabin furniture, which had been washed out of her. We now set out to explore the woods. We had not got far when I came upon the body of a man, or rather a skeleton, covered with clothes. A few paces on was another; and not far-off we found a rude hut, with a blackened spot, where a fire had been lit before it. In the hut were two more bodies, and we afterwards found several more, but there was neither food nor water ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... over under the electric lamp. Then I had what I can only regard as an inspiration. As a Pressman, I felt sure from what I had been told that I could never hope to get into touch with this cantankerous Professor. But these recriminations, twice mentioned in his skeleton biography, could only mean that he was a fanatic in science. Was there not an exposed margin there upon which he might ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... skeleton that remained complete. It was that of a huge German soldier—a veritable giant of a man, he must have been. The bones of his feet were still encased in his great boots, their soles heavily studded with nails. Even a few shreds of his uniform remained. But the flesh was ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... words. I have in my arms the still breathing skeleton of a little girl. I found her in a street behind this building within the sound of the ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... to anatomical lecturers and others, especially those engaged in palaeontology. The articulated skeleton of an Irish giant, representing a man who must have stood in his no-stockings eight feet four inches. This, I may add, will be warranted as authentic, in so far that I made him myself out of at least eighteen or twenty big specimens, with a few slight "divergencies" I may call them, such as putting ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... of the tide-cracks had opened widely and, when a blizzard blew on December 13, the thought was a skeleton ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... a burglar nowadays is attended by various compulsory expenses. A successful burglar should be able to purchase skeleton-keys and "jemmies" of the most exquisite and delicate quality. Moreover, he should be able to entertain largely, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... one; nothing so far as could be seen but a steep and shelving bank of shingle, made of loose little pebbles such as children like, but slanting up higher than a house. On the top of the mound, against the sky line, stood up the brown skeleton of some broken fence or breakwater. With the grey and watery dawn crawling up behind it, the fence really seemed to say to our philosophic adventurers that they had come at last to the other end ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... the Italians who have studied these matters most exhaustively, it is mainly to them we must go for information. In a little book on the skeleton and the form of the nose, Dr. Salvator Ottolenghi comes to the somewhat curious result that the bones of the criminal nose offer many anomalies of a pre-human or bestial character; but the nose itself is straight and long, or, in other words, just as highly developed as the noses of ordinary ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... he,—"dance in thy red shoes till thou art pale and cold! Till thy skin shrivels up and thou art a skeleton! Dance shalt thou from door to door, and where proud, vain children dwell, thou shalt knock, that they may hear thee and tremble! ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... among the best of which may be mentioned Longfellow's "Skeleton in Armor" and "Wreck of the Hesperus," Tennyson's "Edward Gray" and "Lady Clare," and Goldsmith's "Hermit." These are all ballads ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... you are there?" he asked of one who seemed to be the strongest of the crew, and looked by his dress like an officer. Once he had evidently been a stout, broad-shouldered, muscular young man, now he was a mere skeleton like the rest. ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... number of seventy regiments was retained, and new corps were now proposed for the East Indies, one for the West Indies, and one for Canada, chiefly to be used for pioneer work and clearance of woods. General Burgoyne and Fox protested against the keeping up of skeleton regiments, the latter adding the caustic comment that the plan was "the least in point of saving and the greatest in point ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... rubbish showed the position of an abandoned mine. Beside it were the crumbling remains of the cottages of the miners, driven away no doubt by the foul reek of the surrounding swamp. In one of these a staple and chain with a quantity of gnawed bones showed where the animal had been confined. A skeleton with a tangle of brown hair adhering to it lay among ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... suffering and heroic endurance. It is given in detail in Fremont's "Memoirs," and Benton's "Thirty Years in the Senate." Deep snows on the mountains, no sign of the Buena Ventura River, Indians refusing to guide such a foolhardy venture; "skeleton men leading skeleton horses;" the descent into the Sacramento Valley at last, and the arrival at Fort Vancouver, November 1843, gives but a glimpse of the heroism of this second expedition. The suffering endured in reaching the coast was as nothing to that of the return through the great ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... on a piece of stump, worn white and smooth like a skeleton before being cast up by the waves; but when the two caught sight of me, the man sprang up and came toward me, holding out his hand, while the girl sauntered off in the other direction, and I saw that ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... once to his room in the hotel after leaving Mrs. Braddock at the ferry. He was startled almost out of his boots by the discovery that Dick Cronk was there ahead of him, calmly occupying the easiest chair and reading the evening paper. A skeleton key had provided the means of admission to the room; a brave heart and cunning ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... ran forward. He searched the sides for support on which to climb to the crevices, but the rotting vines and moss that lined the walls gave at his touch, and he fell back discouraged. Something crumbled under his body, and he discovered to his horror that he had fallen on a skeleton. A man had been here before him, then? But closer examination proved the bones to be those of a packda (ape). Snakes and worms wriggled out of the skeleton, and Piang shrank back in fear. The dread hamadryad ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... raining and the sky had cleared a little when they went to the door half an hour later. To the right, across the road, rose a tall gaunt shape like the skeleton of an elongated pyramid crowned with two big wheels. Lights were blazing round it, for the pit was working night and day getting the ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith |
