"Smoothness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Thomas Little was the name under which Moore's early poems were published, 'The Poetical Works of the late Thomas Little, Esq.' (1801). "Twelves" refers to the "duodecimo." Sheets, after printing, are pressed between cold or hot rollers, to impart smoothness of "surface." Hot rolling is ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... upon a lens of surprising magnitude, polished to such a smoothness that the eye could scarcely meet its reflections. Here was a crystal in whose depths were to be seen more wonders than had been revealed by the ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... an opposite name. Such are the causes which we assign to these phenomena. As to the smooth and the rough, any one who sees them can explain the reason of them to another. For roughness is hardness mingled with irregularity, and smoothness is produced by the joint effect of ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... to Saxon with a chill pang that she was surely older than Billy. She stole glances at the smoothness of his face, and the essential boyishness of him, so much desired, shocked her. Of course he would marry some girl years younger than himself, than herself. How old was he? Could it be that he was too young for her? ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... evincing on every topic the fruits of extensive reading and reflection. He was readily moved by the pathetic; at the most joyous hour, a melancholy incident would move him into tears. The tenderness of his heart was frequently imparted to his verses, which are uniformly distinguished for smoothness ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... his own ground, saw that his work was properly done, and waited until the man courted his own punishment. In the meantime, the men mistook his forbearance, his quietness, his smoothness of tones and manner for weakness, and Marley, a bully by nature, and quite incapable of understanding his employer, grew elated ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... Sumatra, prevails without the mixture of any other in the inland country of Menangkabau and its immediate dependencies, and is understood in almost every part of the island. It has been much celebrated, and justly, for the smoothness and sweetness of its sound, which have gained it the appellation of the Italian of the East. This is owing to the prevalence of vowels and liquids in the words (with many nasals which may be thought an objection) and the infrequency of any harsh combination of mute consonants. These qualities ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... adorn them gracefully with various turns, and do not as those who plaster their faces with gum and make the faces seem as if they were of glass. This is a human folly which is always on the increase, and the mariners do not satisfy it who bring arabic gums from the East, so as to prevent the smoothness of the hair from being ruffled by the wind,—but they pursue their investigations still further ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... make-up was unexceptionable, his smile exquisite. Then he had dark moustaches, which he would gracefully finger into such an exact curve; and he had his small whiskers so neatly combed, and every hair on his head lay in unexceptional smoothness. The legation was not a little proud of Bolt, and on drawing-room days, when he blazed out in his gold lace and sword, would delight in watching the many dark, languishing eyes that would ogle him over the down of gorgeous ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... although Donatello, who afterwards made the ornament of the other organ, which is opposite to the first, made his with much more judgment and mastery than Luca had shown, as will be told in the proper place; for Donatello executed that work almost wholly with bold studies and with no smoothness of finish, to the end that it might show up much better from a distance, as it does, than that of Luca, which, although it is wrought with good design and diligence, is nevertheless so smooth and highly finished that the eye, by ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... welcome each rebuff That turns earth's smoothness rough, Each sting, that bids nor sit nor stand, but go! Be our joys three parts pain! Strive, and hold cheap the strain; Learn, nor account the pang; ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... blemish more to be feared than sameness of numbers, and every art is useful by which it may be avoided. A line, rough in itself, has yet its recommendations; it saves the ear the pain of an irksome monotony, and seems even to add greater smoothness to others. Milton, whose ear and taste were exquisite, has exemplified in his Paradise Lost the effect of this ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... the anchor and haul up the sails, which filled immediately to a slight breeze that had just sprung up from the west. Leaving a still peaceful, if somewhat mutilated, Canvey Island behind us, we started off down the river, gliding along with an agreeable smoothness that fitted in very nicely with my state ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... scattered sea-shells and numerous small fragments of coarse red earthenware, more abundant at certain spots than at others. At first I was inclined to believe that this superficial bed, from its wide extent and smoothness, must have been deposited beneath the sea; but I afterwards found in one spot, that it lay on an artificial floor of round stones. It seems, therefore, most probable that at a period when the land ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... and we are in the midst of the eddying, rushing, foaming rapids. We seem to have been plunged from a lake of halcyon smoothness into a storm-lashed sea. Around us the waves rise with menacing force; now our little boat is flooded and tossed like a leaf on the turbulent waters; every moment it seems that in spite of our brave boatman we must be dashed against the rocks ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... twenty-five miles. Though apparently motionless as the mountains, it flows on forever, the speed varying in every part with the seasons, but mostly with the depth of the current, and the declivity, smoothness and directness of the different portions of the basin. The flow of the central cascading portion near the front, as determined by Professor Reid, is at the rate of from two and a half to five inches an hour, or from five to ten feet a day. A strip of the main trunk ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... blend into each other. In a fresh condition, the colours of this species, and of L. anserifera and L. Hillii are surprisingly alike, though in L. anatifera alone, the uppermost part of the peduncle is dark. As far as I have seen, the smoothness of the valves, together with the presence of a tooth beneath the umbo, on the right-hand scutum, and its entire absence on the left side, (in other species it is smaller on this, than on the right-hand side,) is an unfailing diagnostic mark. I believe this ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... come by practice. He pulls a strong oar, but there is a roughness and lack of smoothness about his work. Still, he gets over the ...
— Andy Grant's Pluck • Horatio Alger
... to himself his first sensation was delight in the softness and smoothness of the turf on which he lay. Then the strange colour of the grass commended itself to his notice, and presently he perceived that the thing under his head was a pillow, and that he was in bed. He was supported in this conclusion by the opinion of the young man who sat watching him a little way ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... sudden scramble to reach the floor of the throne-room, nor was Ko-tan far behind his warriors, though he managed to maintain a certain majestic dignity as he descended the broad stairs that countless naked feet had polished to a gleaming smoothness through the ages. "And now," said Tarzan as the king stood before him, "you can have no doubt that I am not of the same race as you. Your priests have told you that Jad-ben-Otho is tailless. Tailless, therefore, must be the race of gods that spring from his loins. But enough of such ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... That's why, one why, he was so glad to get me the burro. He hopes it will stop me some. But in a home a body must remember it isn't his home nor her home, but the home of everybody that belongs. If I should be naughty, it would throw things all out of—of smoothness, don't you know. I can't be naughty all by myself. If I could—no, I wouldn't like it either. When I'm selfish or bad, I always feel as if I had on a dirty apron, and I do just ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... counted too securely upon the ascendancy of his sentiments, when imperiously pronounced, to think it necessary to take precautions against a sinister event. For myself, I drew a favourable omen as to the final result of my project, from the smoothness of success that attended ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... if to inspect her work. Perhaps there was a slight lack of smoothness over the temple; she touched the spot with ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... became incapacitated for a month. Sir W. Robertson thereupon called me in to act as locum tenens. From many points of view this proved to be a particularly edifying and instructive experience. One could not fail to be impressed with the smoothness with which the military side of the War Office was working under the system which Sir William had introduced, and one furthermore found oneself behind the scenes in respect to the progress of the war and to numbers of matters only known ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... perceiving his young friend, scoured at full gallop the intervening space, and pounced upon him with an impetuous mirth that precipitated the child almost into the middle of the beck; but, happily, the stones preserved him from any serious wetting, while their smoothness prevented his being too much hurt to laugh at ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... relate all that he said." "You must not expect to always find people agreeable." Whether we shall place the adverb before the verb or after it must often be determined by considerations of emphasis and smoothness as well as of clearness and correctness. In the foregoing sentences it is better to place accurately after the verb, and always ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... for a few miles the boatmen came to a difficult part of the voyage. Here the river was divided by an island. The dark waters moved with great swiftness, and with the smoothness of oil, over the concealed rocks, breaking into foam at the foot of the rapids. Now for the first time the Indians had hard work. For quite half an hour they paddled as if in despair, and the canoe moved upward inch by inch. It was not only hard work, but it was work that did not allow of a moment's ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... was hardly more than a boy in years, though more than a man in physical development. In every respect he seemed to be especially adapted to the rigours of northern life. The broad arch of his chest, the plump smoothness of his muscles, above all, the full roundness of his throat indicated that warmth-giving blood, and plenty of it, would be pumped generously to every part of his body. His face from any point of view but one ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... has dominion over himself; whom neither poverty, nor death, nor chains affright; brave in the checking of his appetites, and in contemning honors; and, perfect in himself, polished and round as a globe, so that nothing from without can retard, in consequence of its smoothness; against whom misfortune ever advances ineffectually. Can you, out of these, recognize any thing applicable to yourself? A woman demands five talents of you, plagues you, and after you are turned out of doors, bedews you with cold water: she calls ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... days that had fled Deveny had said certain things to her that she had not repeated to her father; he had looked at her with a significance that no man could have understood; and there had been a gleam in his eyes at these times which had convinced her that behind the bland smoothness of him—back of the suave politeness of his manner—was a primitive animalism. His suave politeness was a velvet veil of character behind which he masked the slavering fangs of the beast he ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... "Norwegian Life" is the product of many, each inspired with feeling and admiration for the one or two subjects on which he has written better than on any others. Liberty has been taken to make a few verbal changes in order to give to the story the unity and smoothness desired, and a key-letter at the end of each chapter refers the reader to a page at the close where ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... all the changes on the vowel a—every sound of it used to give the impression—and then, in a moment, the verse runs into breadth, smoothness and vastness: for Bedivere comes to the shore ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... working a violin from the beginning, straight off the stocks, without being drawn away to some other work. Consequent upon this your work has not so much distinctive character, much effort at mere smoothness being apparent and in excess of good style. These old Italians were designing and making new violins day after day for their livelihood. Repairing, when they could make equally good, fresh instruments, was to them of secondary importance, and so we find restorations in the ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... of Liszt?— infinite nuance and the mingling of silvery bells,—these are a few of the least exuberant notices. Was it not Heine who called "Thalberg a king, Liszt a prophet, Chopin a poet, Herz an advocate, Kalkbrenner a minstrel, Madame Pleyel a sibyl, and Doehler—a pianist"? The limpidity, the smoothness and ease of Chopin's playing were, after all, on the physical plane. It was the poetic melancholy, the grandeur, above all the imaginative lift, that were more in evidence than mere sensuous sweetness. Chopin had, ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... them Hannah, the pious mother of Samuel. Do not think it is absolutely impossible that your children may come up iniquitous. Out of just such fair brows and bright eyes, and soft hands, and innocent hearts, crime gets its victims—extirpating purity from the heart, and rubbing out the smoothness from the brow, and quenching the lustre of the eye, and shriveling up and poisoning and putrefying and scathing and scalding and blasting and ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... filled with a brilliant crowd. Within the large circle of armchairs were Madame de Wesson, about whom people told frightful stories, and who kept, after twenty years of half-smothered scandal, the eyes of a child and cheeks of virginal smoothness; old Madame de Morlaine, who shouted her witty phrases in piercing cries; Madame Raymond, the wife of the Academician; Madame Garain, the wife of the exminister; three other ladies; and, standing easily ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... best works cannot always be imputed to negligence. However they may appear to superficial observers, painters know very well that a steady attention to the general effect takes up more time and is much more laborious to the mind than any mode of high finishing or smoothness without such attention. His handling, the manner of leaving the colours, or, in other words, the methods he used for producing the effect, had very much the appearance of the work of an artist who had never learnt from others ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... and mystery. Shells, pink and pearly, brown and lilac, scarlet and cobalt, strew the flower-decked floor with infinite variety, concave and spiral, ribbed and fluted, fretted and jagged—the satin smoothness of convoluted forms lying amid rugged shapes bristling with spines and needles. We gaze almost with awe at the lovely vision of a dainty Nautilus, sailing his fairy boat down a blue channel fringed with purple and salmon-coloured ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... years of age; but five of those years had been passed in camps and battles; and the labours, passions, and privations of his profession had antedated the period of manhood. A frame tall and athletic, a countenance which, although retaining the smoothness and freshness of youth, was yet marked with the manly gravity and decision of mature life, added, in appearance, at least six years to his age. He wore a hunting-frock of the plainest green colour, with cap ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... them into its deepening embrace. The ripples of the lake had gradually widened and faded into a silken smoothness, and high above the mountains the moon was turning from gold to white in a sky powdered with vanishing stars. Across the lake the lights of a little town went out, one after another, and the distant shore became a floating blackness. A breeze that rose and sank ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... rhododendron; then there was the prickly, polished, dark-green holly, which I had never seen before, but which is, certainly, one of the most perfect of shrubs. The turf was of that soft, dazzling green, and had that peculiar velvet-like smoothness, which seem characteristic of England. We stopped at last before the door of a cottage, whose porch was overgrown with ivy. From that moment I ceased to feel myself a stranger in England. I cannot tell you how delightful ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... very obvious, that the first and principal objection to the antiquity of these poems is the smoothness of the versification. Aseries of more than three thousand lines, however disfigured by old spelling, flowing for the most part as smoothly as any of Pope's— is a difficult matter to be got over. Accordingly the learned Mythologist, Mr. Bryant, has laboured hard to prove, either, that ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone
... description nor figure is definitive. Even Bulliard fails us here, and is differently interpreted by different authors. Persoon's description is none too good, but is reenforced by Fries and Rostafinski. The capillitium is variable both in the degree of smoothness presented, and the number of free ends, and the amount of branching. The spores in all specimens we have examined are remarkably constant in size and surface. In typical specimens free ends are easily ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... said to her, as she entered the room. "I have this hour at least. Nothing else matters." Then, by aid of the sunset, the warm breeze in his face, the flowers on the table, the fragrance of her perfume and the smoothness of her hand, he tried to drown himself in a sea of sensation, like one who listens, in a glamour of stained glass and a cloud of incense, to the protracted sweetness of an organ ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... ruffled the surface waters in the Pit, quieted again to glassy smoothness. The eternal stars shone calmly. The geologic Dakota hills, which might have seen the dinosaurs, still bulked along the highway. Time, the Brother of Death, and the Father ...
— The Eternal Wall • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... the situation did not change. The steersman returned on deck, and the captain, descending, watched the movement of the engines. Even when our speed increased, these engines continued working without noise, and with remarkable smoothness There was never one of those inevitable breaks, with which in most motors the pistons sometimes miss a stroke. I concluded that the "Terror," in each of its transformations must be worked by rotary engines. But I could not ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... table lies an idea of its use, and he discovers that that is made up of elements which are partly memory reproductions of earlier impressions, partly sensations of movement impulses; he also finds that the table feels smooth, and he discovers by his analysis that this impression of smoothness results from a special combination of tactual sensations and movement sensations; and again those movement sensations he analyzes further into sensations of muscle contraction and sensations of pressure ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... in what one may naturally enough term the condensation of thoughts. I think no other English poet ever brought so much sense into the same number of lines with equal smoothness, ease, and poetical beauty. Let him who doubts of this peruse his Essay on Man with attention.' Shenstone's Essays on Men and Manners. [Works, 4th edit. ii. 159.] 'He [Gray] approved an observation of Shenstone, that "Pope had the art of condensing a thought."' Nicholls' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... and never to alight from the fairy steed. And then he shook the golden reins and the horse threw its head aloft and snorted and bore him away in a pace like that of flowing water for speed and smoothness. Anon they came to the margin of the blue sea, and still the white steed galloped on, brushing the crests of the waves into glittering spray. The sun glared upon the sea and Oisin's head swam with the heat and motion, and ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... is recorded in the history of this journey:—Little Mozart one day, on a visit to the empress, was led into her presence by the two princesses, one of whom was afterwards the unfortunate Queen of France, Marie Antoinette. Being unaccustomed to the smoothness of the floor, his foot slipped and he fell. One of the princesses took no notice of the accident, but the other Marie Antoinette, lifted him up and consoled him. Upon which he said to her, "you are very good, I will ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various
... maybe," groaned Two Arrows, as he dodged around the hopeless side he came to. Away around, and the same mocking smoothness made his heart sink, while the fierce growl of the huge wild beast behind him thrilled ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... sky-line of a table-land, showing perfectly straight parallel strata of rock extending all along its face, but slightly undulated near the summit of the range. Otherwise its grassy slopes were quite undisturbed in their virgin smoothness. ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... countenance of Juniper Graves while this brief conversation was being carried on. Rage, malice, fear, hatred—all were mingled in his mean and cunning features. But he controlled himself; and at last spoke with an assumed smoothness, which, however, could not quite hide the passion that ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... Regular Artillery, and those at New Orleans by the 1st and 2d Louisiana Regulars. But after the necessary garrison had been left in the most exposed points, every available man was ordered to Virginia. Here the work of organization went on with a smoothness and regularity scarcely to have been looked for. Occasionally a hitch occurred that threatened to get the threads of preparation into an ugly knot; but it was ever unraveled ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... had never before met such an attractive woman. He could not get the sound of her voice out of his ears; the very folds of her dress seemed to hang upon her differently from all the rest—more gracefully and amply—and her movements were distinguished by a peculiar smoothness and naturalness. ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... loitered about gazing aloft at the monster windows all aglow with brilliantly colored scenes in the lives of the Saviour and his followers. Some of these pictures are mosaics, and so artistically are their thousand particles of tinted glass or stone put together that the work has all the smoothness and finish of a painting. We counted sixty panes of glass in one window, and each pane was adorned with one of these master ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... smoothness, though almost every mind was ruffled; and the music which Sir Thomas called for from his daughters helped to conceal the want of real harmony. Maria was in a good deal of agitation. It was of the utmost consequence to her that Crawford ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... and are ground down into shapes so fantastic, that they seem but the wasted skeletons of their former selves; and we find almost every natural fissure in the solid rock hollowed into an immense cavern, whose very ceiling, though the head turns as we look up to it, owes evidently its comparative smoothness to the action of the waves. One of the most remarkable of these recesses occupies what we may term the apex of a lofty promontory. The entrance, unlike that of most of the others, is narrow and rugged, though of great height; but ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... woman, pale as a dying nun, irritated him. Blue glasses concealed her eyes, and an ugly costume concealed her figure; she came out of an obscure corner behind the nun, and fell back into it noiselessly, but her voice and manner had the smoothness of velvet. He looked at her hands patting his own, and found them very soft, white, untouched by age, and a curious contrast to her gray hair. Interest touching him faintly he responded to her warmth, and looked closely into the blue glasses ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... States there are thin forests, called pine-barrens, through which one can travel for miles on horseback. The white pine is easily distinguished by its leaves being in fives, by its very long cones, composed of loosely-arranged scales, and when young by the smoothness and delicate light-green color of the bark. It is known throughout New England by the name 'white pine,' which is given it on account of the whiteness of the wood. In England it ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... in a deplorable condition. The sensation, whilst in a gig, of rattling over the uneven stone blocks was as if the whole vehicle might at any moment be shattered into a hundred fragments. The improvement has come at last, and these streets are now almost of a billiard-table smoothness. The General Post Office has been removed from the congested thoroughfare of the Escolta to a more commodious site. Electric tramcars, in supersession of horse-traction, run through the city and suburbs since April 10, 1905. Electric lighting, initiated in Spanish times, is now in general ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... walls, owing to the solid foundation given by thorough working with polishing instruments, and the smoothness of it, due to the hard and dazzling white marble, will bring out in brilliant splendour the colours which are laid on at the same time ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... clearing station there was no excitement, the doctors and orderlies "carrying on" as usual, receiving the wounded, dressing their wounds, sending them down with the smoothness and ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... sun, and at the edges of her the fine outer hairs, gleaming transparent, made her seem outlined in flame—she was a glorified, a transfigured cow, a cow for the gods. In a newly-turned field beyond a man and a boy were planting young broccoli; they worked with the swiftness and smoothness of a machine, the man making a succession of holes with his spud as he walked along, the boy dropping in the plants on the instant. From where Ishmael sat the boy and his basket were hidden behind the ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... All Isabella's smoothness and policy had dropped away from her, and the real woman stood there, plotting and unscrupulous, ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Mr. McQuiggan was running over some proofs which he had brought with him, Dr. Surtaine walked into the office. There was about him a formidable smoothness, as of polished metal. He greeted his old friend with a nod and a cool "Back again, ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... y'understand, let me know; that's all." As he passed out of the door he laid the cigar on a side table and its bright red band immediately caught the eye of Uncle Mosha. He pounced on it and was about to hurl it after his departing visitor when something about the smoothness of the wrapper made him pause. Five minutes later he lolled back in a horsehair-covered rocker and puffed contentedly at Morris's cigar. "After all," he said, "I might get a good price ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... that Heine declared translation was betrayal,—the rhyme and smoothness have in every case been sacrificed when necessary to preserve the exact rhythm, and as far as possible the vigour and colour, as well as thought of the original; a task entirely beyond me save for the co-operation of an accomplished Russian linguist who has kindly assisted in the ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... nondescript room, sometimes vaguely called the safe-room, between the shop and what had once been the kitchen. It was a considerable safe, and it had the room practically to itself. As Edwin unlocked it, and the prodigious door swung with silent smoothness to his pull, he was aware of a very romantic feeling of exploration. He had seen the inside of the safe before; he had even opened the safe, and taken something from it, under his father's orders. But he had never had leisure, nor licence, ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... matters of prime consideration, no less important is it to pay attention to the feet. A stable with a damp and smooth floor will spoil the best hoof which nature can give. (7) To prevent the floor being damp, it should be sloped with channels; and to avoid smoothness, paved with cobble stones sunk side by side in the ground and similar in size to the horse's hoofs. (8) A stable floor of this sort is calculated to strengthen the horse's feet by the mere pressure on the part in standing. In the next place it will be the groom's business to lead out the horse ...
— On Horsemanship • Xenophon
... Greater smoothness of diction and a saving of time might have been secured by the employment of a person accustomed to compilation; but my journals having been kept for my own private purposes, no one else could have made use of them, or have entered with ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... armaments now advanced, each in full view of the other, the sea was somewhat high, and the wind, blowing freshly from the east, was in the teeth of the Christians. But in the course of the morning the waves of the gulf fell to a glassy smoothness, and the breeze shifted to the west, a change fortunate for the sailors of the League, which their spiritual teachers did not fail to declare a special interposition of God in behalf of the fleet which carried the flag of his vicar ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... "Avance done!" gallantly slushed his way into the water alongside, in his Sunday trousers, lifted the gunwale and started her afloat, amidst a shower of final "Au revoirs," and the rose chaloupe moved with noiseless smoothness down the current. ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... the bottom of a cliff for ages, and imperceptibly wears its rugged projections to smoothness; but an earthquake overthrows it in an instant. The mind of Evellin, which for a period of seven years had contended with hope and fear, sometimes almost suspecting, and at other times rejecting distrust, was by this proof of ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... youth I dreamed in hues volcanic. I saw each day open Like a curtain of flame. Black slaves attended My waking moments; Three ebony slaves Washed sleep from my white body. Three ebony slaves Around my ivory smoothness Folded heavy robes Of crimson and white. And as I issued forth Into the blue vault of the daylight A grey ape pranced before me ...
— Spectra - A Book of Poetic Experiments • Arthur Ficke
... not answer. He merely chirruped at the horses. The willing beasts increased their pace and the sleigh sped along with that intoxicating smoothness only to be felt when travelling with double "bobs" ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... a pin's head; our church and everybody in it appeared about the bigness of a cup, etc. These strange sensations terminate invariably with one still more singular and particularly pleasant. I can not describe it—it is a sense of smoothness and a little of dizziness. If you never had such feelings this will be all nonsense to you, but if you have and can explain them to me, why I shall be indeed thankful. I have been subject to them ever since I can remember. I never met with a physician yet who seemed to know what is the matter ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... welcome each rebuff That turns earth's smoothness rough, each sting that bids nor ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... AEsop's Fables, published by John Murray in 1848, was already a brilliant expert. The accomplished young draughtsman soon took keen delight in the smooth face of a block, and at once began—and ever continued—to demand a degree of smoothness that was the despair of Swain to procure. Tenniel, indeed, always drew with a specially-manufactured six-H pencil—which appears more impressive with its proper style of "H H H H H H"—and so delicate was the drawing that, firm and solid ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... down to the required size. Then over this corset was placed the steel apparatus shown in the illustration on next page. This corset-cover reached from the hip to the throat, and produced a rigid figure over which the dress would fit with perfect smoothness. ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... fro willingly, gladly, from the highest to the lowest. To pick up our daily life and duties, our obligations to a physical world, in all humility, sweet reasonableness, and submission. He teaches us to willingly accept incessant interruptions, and with smiling face and perfect inward smoothness to descend from a high contemplation of God (and only those who know high contemplation can judge of the immensity of what I say) to listen and attend to some most trivial want of a fellow-creature! Reader, it is the hardest thing of all. No ...
— The Golden Fountain - or, The Soul's Love for God. Being some Thoughts and - Confessions of One of His Lovers • Lilian Staveley
... other—though dull and heavy as all which seemed to inspire them—they had a kind of force. Each man seemed to have the faculty of getting, after some rude fashion, at the sense and feeling that was in him; and without glibness, without smoothness, without form or comeliness, still the object with which each one rose to speak was accomplished,—and what was more remarkable, it seemed to be accomplished without the speaker's having any particular plan for doing it. He was surprised, too, to observe how loyally every man ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... beautiful wild flowers from the ruined tombs that border the highways of antiquity, to make a garland for a living forehead;—in a word, we have been treating of nature as a teacher of truth through joy and through gladness, and as a creatress of the faculties by a process of smoothness and delight. We have made no mention of fear, shame, sorrow, nor of ungovernable and vexing thoughts; because, although these have been and have done mighty service, they are overlooked in that stage of life when youth is passing into ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... northward of Cape York, and, when close in, were completely becalmed. The boats of each ship were ordered ahead to tow; and thus we slowly progressed along one of the most picturesque scenes it has ever been my fortune to witness in the arctic regions. The water was of glassy smoothness, the sky of brightest blue, and the atmosphere of perfect transparency; while around floated numberless icebergs of the most beautiful forms, and of dazzling hues, while all around was glancing and glittering beneath a ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... brief upon the table, and hurried to his side. A few words passed between them, inaudible to the court; but they had the unexpected effect of apparently restoring the sufferer to complete tranquillity. He again stood erect; his brow, and it was a noble one, resumed its marble smoothness; his features grew calm, and his whole aspect returned to the stern and moveless melancholy of an ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... Father Baby; but, like a skittish girl, the friar hopped across the room, shook off his wooden shoes, picked up the skirt of his habit, and began to dance. The exhilarating drink, the ruddiness of the fire, the discomfort outside, the smoothness of the oak boards,—these were conditions of happiness for Father Baby. This was perhaps the crowning instant of his experience. He was a butterfly man. He saw his lodger, Dr. Dunlap, appear at the door as haggard as the dead. The ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... "I hate smoothness. It always means treachery and danger. I feel sure that there will be a great blow up before long. I smell it in the air. Don't you ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... handed his Majesty the piece of linen as simply as if it were but becoming that he should serve as lackey a royalty so important—and with such repose of natural dignity that 'twas he who seemed majestic, and not the man he waited on. Since then all goes with comparative smoothness. If a Queen's favoured counsellor and greatest general so serves him, the little potentate feels ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... every passing weakness that assails it. To know that other eyes looked out from a narrower sphere upon my individual portion, and found it rich in advantages over many others: to feel that in spite of all my harassing little cares, my life could assume an exterior aspect of smoothness and happiness, was a short-lived, though powerful stimulant, even to my childish heart; and I could not forfeit the small pleasure I took in the consciousness, that at least my sufferings were hidden, though ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... France should Hawkesworthify him. He did not object to being carefully edited, but he did not want to be decorated. He wrote excellent French narrative prose, and his work may be read with delight. Its qualities of clarity, picturesqueness and smoothness, are quite in accord with the fine traditions of the language. But, as it was likely that part of the history of his voyage might be published before his return, he did not want it to be handed over to anybody who would trick it out in ...
— Laperouse • Ernest Scott
... his coat off, but wearing a waistcoat to which were attached flannel sleeves, was busily engaged in his agreeable task of administering to their necessities. Such was his smoothness of manner, and the singular control which a long life of hypocrisy had given him over his feelings, that it was impossible to draw any correct distinction between that which he only assumed, and that which ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... charming, though twenty years later we call it ugly, and speak no more than truth. Beneath this straw hat very beautiful and plenteous brown hair escaped in defiance of authority, and frolicked into curls and wavelets, disporting itself on a forehead of creamy tone and smoothness, and just touching the eyebrows, which were of a slightly darker brown, faintly arched on the lower outline, and more prominently arched on the upper. Below the brows brown eyes, as honest as the day, and with a frank smile always ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... cause a thicker cuticle to grow over some of the finer qualities of our nature, as on the face and hands, or as severe manual labor robs the hands of some of their delicacy of touch. So staying in the house, on the other hand, may produce a softness and smoothness, not to say thinness of skin, accompanied by an increased sensibility to certain impressions. Perhaps we should be more susceptible to some influences important to our intellectual and moral growth, if the sun had shone and the wind blown on us a little less; and no doubt it is a nice matter ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... wick without opening the apparatus; this is accomplished by means of the rod 31, 32, 33, 34, which passes through a leather-box, and is connected with the support of the wick; and that the motion of this rod, and consequently of the wick, may be regulated with the utmost smoothness and facility; it is moved at pleasure by a pinnion which plays in a toothed rack. The rod, with its appendages, are represented Pl. XII. Fig. 3. It appeared to me, that the combustion would be assisted by surrounding the flame of the lamp with a small glass jar open at both ends, as represented ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... shaft of the spear is a sumpit or blow-pipe. This is a small wooden tube about eight feet long. The smoothness and straightness of the bore is remarkable. The hole is drilled with an iron rod, one end of which is chisel-pointed, through a log of hard wood, which is afterwards pared down and rounded till it is ...
— Children of Borneo • Edwin Herbert Gomes
... liking, trying the drop to see that the boards had not warped, and trying the rope for possible flaws in its fabric or weave, and proving to his own satisfaction that the mechanism of the wooden lever which operated to spring the trap worked with an instantaneous smoothness. To every detail he gave a painstaking supervision, guarding against all possible contingencies. Regarding the trustworthiness of the rope he was especially careful. When this particular hanging was concluded, the scaffold would be taken apart and stored away for subsequent use, but ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... debaters follow is to memorize portions of their argument and to extemporize the rest. This is open to two great objections: first, it is difficult to join together gracefully the memorized passages and the extemporized; and the second, the very smoothness with which the memorized passages are delivered betrays the crudeness and awkwardness of the ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... the full pride of her blossom-time—being as a young woman whose girdle is new loosed to the will of her lord—and in her arms was a naked child, finely wrought to the size of life. On either side of her a beautiful youth (in whom I must needs admire the smoothness of their chins and the bravery of their vesture shining in the clear light) did reverence to the Goddess and the child: and there were beings, winged like birds, with the faces of strong boys, but no bodies at all that I could see, who flew ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... clear of the door, moving with extended hands across its creaking parquet till he touched the cold smoothness of the tiled stove, and freezing to immobility as he heard the kitchen door open. Quick footsteps advanced along the passage; to him, checking, his breath in the dark, listening with every nerve taut, it was as though he saw her, the serene poise ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... made towards a river, across which Nature, the first of bridge-builders, many a generation ago afforded an easy, dry passage by throwing down a huge tree. It spans from bank to bank, and the wood is worn to slippery smoothness by the passing of shoeless feet. Thence it leads through forest and jungle and mangrove belts to another river, and ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... round smoothness for a short moment, but cleared again before the Duke dropped back with a groan into ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... shall not mind that. I want it to be rough. I'm tired to death of the smug smoothness of my life so far. Oh, if you only knew how I have hated Fern Hill, these last three years, especially since I graduated. Just the same petty little lives lived in the same petty little way, day in and ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... it is the eyes, again the mouth and chin, or the turn of the throat; there is never any ensemble of features and adornments. And as for Hillard, he really had nothing definite to recall, unless it was the striking color of her hair or the mellow smoothness of her voice. And could he really remember these? He often wished that she had sung under any ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... the girl who had washed her mother's hair, however, was slight compared with M. Joseph's dexterity. The comb flashed in his white narrow hands; in no time at all every knot was urged out into a shining smoothness. "Just the front?" he inquired. Not waiting for Mrs. Condon's reply, he detached a strand from the mass over her brow, impaled it on a hairpin, while he picked up what might have been a thick steel knitting-needle with one end fastened in the middle of a ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... that one rectifies the mistakes of the eyes; one judges thus of smoothness and solidity. Let me kiss these two fair sources of life. I prefer them to the hundred breasts of Cybele, and I am ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... of consonants certain points claim special attention. And first among these is the sounding of the doubled consonants. Whoever has heard Italian spoken recognizes one of its greatest beauties to be the distinctness, yet smoothness, with which its ll and rr and cc—in short, all its doubled consonants—are pronounced. No feature of the language is more charming. And one who attempts the same in Latin and perseveres, with whatever ...
— The Roman Pronunciation of Latin • Frances E. Lord
... and benevolence; eccentric he certainly was, as most bachelors usually are. Man is but a rough pebble without the attrition received from contact with the gentler sex; it is wonderful how the ladies pumice a man down to a smoothness which occasions him to roll over and over with the rest of his species, jostling but not wounding his neighbours, as the waves of circumstances bring ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... the smoothness of his way in those days, before her advent, when that group of canny pirates sat about the Beaubien's table and laid their devious snares. It was only the summer before she came that this same jolly company had merged their sacred trust assets to draw the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... could she be melancholy, and Antonio so near? The pines might be silvery and lofty, but the proud stature of majestic man, eclipsed in her eyes all their beauties. Not so Charles. He early began to lavish his abuse on the sterile grounds they passed, and gave any thing but encomiums on the smoothness of the road they were travelling. In the latter particular, even the quiet spirit of Miss Emmerson joined him, and Julia herself was occasionally made sensible that she was not reposing ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... questions, but stared about him. Everywhere he saw evidences of the taste and one-time tenancies of the two senior engineers. Heavy bear rugs lay on the board floor; the log walls, hewn almost to polished smoothness, were hung with half a dozen pictures; in one corner was a bookcase still filled with books, in another a lounge covered with furs, and in this side of the room was a door which Howland supposed must open into the sleeping ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... to be all that he could desire. Some sheets of India-rubber made by this process drew a medal at the fair of the American Institute in 1835, and were much commended in the newspapers. Nothing could exceed the smoothness and firmness of the surface of these sheets; nor have they to this day been surpassed in these particulars. He obtained a patent for the process, manufactured a considerable quantity, sold his ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... distance we walked along sands of the most perfect smoothness, and then had to make our way over slimy rocks and treacherous masses of seaweed, before we reached the fairy-like forest under the sea, where all the branches of the marvellous ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Commons. Of this fact the recent history of electoral legislation on the Continent and in the Colonies furnishes incontrovertible proofs. Proportional representation has been embodied in the laws of several countries, and these laws work with perfect smoothness. ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... rhetoric, his antitheses, his nettete, his command of every conventional and favourite artifice. Without Chapman's conceits, Homer's poems would hardly have been what the Elizabethans took for poetry; without Pope's smoothness, and Pope's points, the Iliad and Odyssey would have seemed rude, and harsh in the age of Anne. These great translations must always live as English poems. As transcripts of Homer they are like pictures drawn from a lost point of view. Chaque siecle depuis le xvi a ue de ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... of manner which consciousness produces; and acquired at once an easy and natural manner—careless, indeed, in the extreme, from its originating in a stern defiance of opinion, which I had convinced myself must be ever against me; rough and awkward, for smoothness and grace are quite out of my way, and, of course, tutorially pedantic; but unconscious, and therefore giving expression to that goodwill towards men which I really feel; and these, I believe, are ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... found in all literature than some of those we come across in Mrs. Browning's poems. But her ruggedness was never the result of carelessness. It was deliberate, as her letters to Mr. Horne show very clearly. She refused to sandpaper her muse. She disliked facile smoothness and artificial polish. In her very rejection of art she was an artist. She intended to produce a certain effect by certain means, and she succeeded; and her indifference to complete assonance in rhyme often gives a splendid richness ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... was a fox of the first quality. He lied with the smoothness of silk. He could show a dozen colors in as many moments. Come to the windward of Joe Rix? It was a delicate business! But since there was nothing else to do, she fixed her mind upon it, working out this puzzle. Joe Rix wished to destroy Donnegan for reasons ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... Laurence Stanninghame got out a hat and an umbrella, and set to work to brush the former and furl the latter prior to going out. The hat was not of that uniform and glossy smoothness which one could see into to shave, and the umbrella was weather-beaten of aspect. The morning coat, though well cut, was shiny at the seams. Yet, in spite of the wear and tear of his outer gear, with so unmistakably thoroughbred ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... hundred mean and dishonest Artifices employ'd to discredit this Edition, and to cry down its Editor, I have all the Grounds in Nature to be aware of Attacks. But tho' the Malice of Wit join'd to the Smoothness of Versification may furnish some Ridicule; Fact, I hope, will be able to stand its ...
— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald
... as that the Whigs and the Radicals should be furnished with fresh occasion to fall out, and the dissolution of the Government be the final consequence of their dissensions. Also it is expedient that time should be given for the angry waters to become smooth and calm once more, albeit the smoothness ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... parts of the plains on which they stand. Hence we may say that the Maria are only level in the sense that many districts in the English Midland counties are level, and not that their surface is absolutely flat. The same may be said as to their apparent smoothness, which, as is evident when they are viewed close to the terminator, is an expression needing qualification, for under these conditions they often appear to be covered with wrinkles, flexures, and little asperities, which, to be visible at all, must be of considerable size. In fact, were it possible ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... sleep under an elder bush. We had a big one that was in full bloom. I robbed it of all its flowers, and then I put them in the big box where the oats were kept and lay down in them. Did you ever notice the smoothness of oats? Soft to the touch as the skin of the human body! However, I pulled down the lid and closed my eyes—fell asleep and was waked up a very sick boy. But I didn't die, as you can see. What I wanted—that's more than I can tell. Of course, there was not the least hope of winning you—-but ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... text is exquisitely beautiful. Notice the smoothness of its rhythm, the simplicity of its style, the harmony of its cadences: "Man that is born of woman, is of few days, and full of trouble." This is the direct opposite of what all naturally desire. All living human beings would ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... heat was stifling. Gervaise slept for some time; when he awoke the same stillness reigned, but there was a change in the appearance of the sky; its brightness was dulled by a faint mist, while, although the sea was of a glassy smoothness, there was an imperceptible swell that caused the felucca to sway uneasily. Gervaise had sufficient experience of the Levant to know that these signs were ominous of a change, and he at once set to work to prepare for it. Although he saw that it ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... coal-dust remained under the skin, and that his chest was too hairy. But he put his hand on his side ruefully. It was his fixed belief that, because he did not get fat, he was as thin as a starved rat. Paul looked at his father's thick, brownish hands all scarred, with broken nails, rubbing the fine smoothness of his sides, and the incongruity struck him. It seemed strange they were ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... later Rupert heard a loud squeal of fear, and saw a dark spot blotting the smoothness of the lake's frozen surface. The Sheep was struggling helplessly in an ice-hole of his own making. Rupert gave one loud curse, and then dashed full tilt for the shore; outside a low stable building on the lake's edge he remembered having seen a ladder. If he could slide it across ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... I was puzzled, but presently, of course, it struck me that he must have seen Ayesha, wrapped in her grave-like garment, and been deceived by the extraordinary undulating smoothness of her walk into a belief that she was a white ghost gliding towards him. Indeed, at that very moment the question was settled, for Ayesha herself was in the apartment, or rather cave. Job turned, and saw her sheeted form, and then, with a convulsive howl of "Here it comes!" sprang into ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... ladies—by modern standards they would hardly be called "ladies"—do not bear the test of even the most elemental demands of modern taste. They are as different as the characters in Saxo Grammaticus's "Hamblet" are from those in Shakespeare's "Hamlet." But I may enjoy the smoothness of the "Idylls of the King," their bursts of exquisite lyricism, their cadences, and their impossibilities, and at the same time read Sir Thomas Malory with delight. When I hear raptures over Browning and Swinburne, when people grow dithyrambic over John Masefield ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... whole world had been wrapped in a blanket of the whitest, fleeciest, shiningest wool. Sidewalks, streets, crossings were all leveled to one smoothness. The fences were so muffled that they had swelled to twice their size. The houses wore trim, pointy caps on their gables. The high bushes in the yard hung to the very ground. The low ones had become mounds. The trees looked as if they had been ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... day. It appeared to him that no time was to be lost. There lay the dim and shapeless object that seemed to be the boat, distant, as he thought, about a mile. It would not have been visible at all but for the perfect smoothness of the sea, and the low position occupied by the observer. At times it did disappear altogether, when it would rise again, as if undulating in the ground-swell. This last circumstance, more than any other, persuaded ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... For I might urge, that he seems not consonant to himself about the Red, which as you have seen in one place, he represents as somewhat more Asperous than the Blew; and in another, very Smooth: But because he speaks of this Smoothness in that place, where he mentions the Roughness of Black, we may favourably presume that he might mean but a comparative Smoothness; and therefore I shall not Insist on this, but rather Countenance my Conjecture by this, that he ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... draught of the wind has blown constantly down the strait. Such are my rough notes made during the day, as the "Pioneer" and "Intrepid" worked to the westward; but as evening drew on, the increasing smoothness of the water, and a hard icy blink to the west, prepared us for a report which came from the crow's nest about midnight, that there was very much ice to ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... a great thing for Fleeming to make, even thus late, the acquaintance of his father; but the harrowing pathos of such scenes consumed him. In a life of tense intellectual effort a certain smoothness of emotional tenor were to be desired; or we burn the candle at both ends. Dr. Bell perceived the evil that was being done; he pressed Mrs. Jenkin to restrain her husband from too frequent visits; but here was one of those clear-cut, indubitable ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... reached the projecting angle all the loads were over, but the tusks still had to be passed up, and owing to their weight and the smoothness of their surface, this was a very difficult task. Of course I ought to have abandoned the tusks; often and often have I since reproached myself for not doing so. Indeed, I think that my obstinacy about ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... was of the darkest shade of brown, resting in soft wave-like smoothness above her high, pale forehead. Alas! that she was so lovely! had she been less so, either I might not have loved her, or I might have been permitted by fortune to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... she told me—of that." Mrs. Mason's voice was significant in its smoothness. "Your mother said she was going to get ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... That turns earth's smoothness rough, Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go! Be our joys three-parts pain! Strive, and hold cheap the strain; Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... wouldn't be too sure of that at all!" said Father Greer, with a smoothness that implied the laying aside of the ankus; "I think, my young friend, that your good father's house is as safe and happy a place for you as you could wish for!" He turned to the Doctor. "I may say that there is a belief among certain classes that no one ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... of numbers, and smoothness of sound, and endeavoured to make the sense plain and obvious. If the verse appears so gentle and flowing as to incur the censure of feebleness, I may honestly affirm, that sometimes it cost me labour ...
— Hymns and Spiritual Songs • Isaac Watts
... granddaughter knelt weeping. There was a strong family resemblance between them. Seeing them side by side, you thought of two beautiful Greek medals struck from the same matrix, but one old and worn and the other bright and clear-cut with all the brilliancy and smoothness of ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... the weather was a dead calm, and the water of glassy smoothness. Not a sound was to be heard save the distant thunder of bursting icebergs and the water swashing up against the field-ice that now and then passed with the current. It sounded for all the world like waves upon a rock-bound coast, or like the distant rumbling of a train of cars. About midnight ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... would fain, were it possible, have my tale run through from its little prologue to the customary marriage in its last chapter, with all the smoothness incidental to ordinary life. I have no ambition to surprise my reader. Castles with unknown passages are not compatible with my homely muse. I would as lief have to do with a giant in my book—a real giant, such as Goliath—as ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... continued illness of her lingere, Diane had begged to be allowed to take charge of the linen-room of the hotel, not merely as a means of earning a living, but because she delighted in such work. Methodical in her habits and nimble with her needle, the neatness, smoothness, and purity of piles of white damask stirred all those house-wifely, home-keeping instincts which are so large a part of every Frenchwoman's nature. Her fingers busy with the quiet, delicate task of mending, her mind could dwell with the greater content on such ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... shape; and evenly and steadily the ranked fours swing off, turn out into the road, and go tramping down between the poplars. There has been no flurry, no hustle, no confusion. The whole thing has moved with the smoothness and precision and effortless ease of a properly adjusted, well-oiled machine—which, after all, is just what the regiment is. The pace is apparently leisurely, or even lazy, but it eats up the miles amazingly, and it can be kept up with the shortest ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable |
