"Span" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... exhibited itself in a remarkable talent for mortifying persons in a small way; by a gesture, an expression, a look, cloaked too very often with all the character of profound deference. The old nobility of Spain delighted to address each other only by their names, when in the presence of a spick-and-span grandee; calling each other, "Infantado," "Sidonia," "Ossuna," and then turning round with the most distinguished consideration, and appealing to the ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... The subtle vibrations of the ether, propagated on all sides from the surface of luminous bodies, travel at the rate of 186,300 miles a second, or (in round numbers) six billions of miles a year. Four and a third such measures are needed to span the abyss that separates us from the nearest fixed star. In other words, light takes four years and four months to reach the earth from Alpha Centauri; yet Alpha Centauri lies some ten billions of miles nearer to us (so far as is yet known) than ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... appearing before them, they asked him what he knew of a bridge. He replied that he could readily describe his plan of the one they proposed to build, if they would be good enough to write down his figures. The span of the arch, 18 feet," said he, "being a semicircle, makes 27: the arch-stones must be a foot deep, which, if multiplied by 27, will be 486; and the basis will be 72 feet more. This for the arch; but it will require good backing, for which purpose there are proper stones in the old Roman wall ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... and when she saw the King's son gazing in at her, she blushed red all over, cast down her eyes and span on. Whether the thread was quite as even as usual I really cannot say, but she went on spinning till the King's son had ridden off. Then she stepped to the window and opened the lattice, saying, 'The room is so hot,' but she looked after him as long as she ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... dressed in fine style, in dainty ruffled frocks and necklaces and bright hair-ribbons, tripped gracefully in and advanced to meet Mrs. Morris, quite like grown ladies in their manners. Behind them came several boys, spick and span in fresh white linen waists and silk neckties and ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... flat coil with the spruce roots, and sewed it together with the willow bark for thread, until it was a span wide. And whenever a new root was to be added, she cut both old piece and new, to a long point, so they would overlap without ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... men and doing a man's work. He had charge of the circulation—which is to say, he carried the papers. During the last year of the Mexican War, when a telegraph-wire found its way across the Mississippi to Hannibal—a long sagging span, that for some reason did not break of its own weight—he was given charge of the extras with news from the front; and the burning importance of his mission, the bringing of news hot from the field of battle, spurred him to endeavors ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the maiden span, The snow-white web augmenting; The veil is clear like a web, And green ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... these prayers were ascending like sweet incense to the throne above, and every eye was bathed in tears, a rumbling noise was heard in the distance, like a mighty chariot winding its way near, when all at once a fine span of horses, before a beautiful coach, stood before the door, out of which alighted a noble and elegant-looking man. In a moment's time he entered the room, and embraced the hand of his dear father and mother. She clasped her arms around ...
— History of the Comstock Patent Medicine Business and Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills • Robert B. Shaw
... the tenor, "ain't satisfied with the fit of his surplus. I've got one jest his size. It's done up spick and span clean, and I'll rent it to him fer the show. He kin hev it fer the ev'nin' fer a dollar. Would you ask ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... Priestly Clan, and for those of us who have had to carve out territories for the new colonies, it comes with enough frequency to cloy even the most chivalrous appetite. So I can speak here as a man of experience. Up till that time, for half a life-span, I had heard men shout "Deucalion" as a battlecry, and in my day had seen some lusty encounters. But this sea-fight surprised even me in its savage fierceness. The bleak, unstable element which surrounded us; the swaying decks ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... to inherit Wealth, estate, and proud degree? There must be some other merit, Higher yet than these for me. Something greater far must enter Into life's majestic span; Fitted to create and centre ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... between the States of New York and New Jersey, the terminus of which in the city of New York shall not be below Sixty-sixth street. It contemplates the construction of a bridge upon piers placed in the river. No mention is made of a single span crossing the entire river, nor is there anything in the bill indicating that it was within the intention of the Congress that there should be a bridge built without piers. I am by no means certain that the Secretary of War, who is invested by the terms of the bill with considerable discretion ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... narrow lane, and looking as blank as a wall, with a trap-door of a mouth, and a grating cast of eye. How yonder bridegroom, just cemented in an alliance that will not last out his lease of life, "spick and span new," all eyes, and a double row of buttons ornamenting his latticed waistcoat, looks at his adored opposite, who holds her Venetian parasol—sun shade—before her face, glowing like a red brick wall in the sun. Ah! his regards are attracted by a modest little nymph of the grove, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 385, Saturday, August 15, 1829. • Various
... intelligence with technology, and I do not think he has ever met a race higher than the barbarian level before. Such races were not, of course, human—by his definition. They showed possibilities, perhaps, but they had not evolved far enough. Considering the time span involved, it is not at all unlikely that the Nipe thinks of technology as something that evolves with a race in the same way ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... rode up at a gallop. "Sorry I couldn't come before, but I was over at Thomson's borrowing a new trolling spoon," he said. "Jimmy's too slow for anything, and I had to look at a span of oxen he'd ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... and has given us, in addition, a native gooseberry span-worm, the larva of a small moth. These several worms, unchecked, would soon render the culture of the currant and gooseberry impossible in the regions where they abounded; and, at first, horticulturists were ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... fillets, the cantelevers, the form of the roof, all point to an origin in some southern forest-clad country, and strikingly corroborate the view derived from philology, that Greece was colonised from north-western India. But to erect columns and span them with huge blocks of stone, or marble, is not an act of reason, but one of pure unreasoning imitation. The arch is the only true and reasonable mode of covering over wide spaces with stone, and therefore, Grecian architecture, however exquisitely beautiful, is false in principle, ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... from the brow of a hill they beheld the spires of Luscombe, imbedded amid the level meadows that stretched below, watered by the same stream that had wound along their more rural pathway, but which now expanded into stately width, and needed, to span it, a mighty bridge fit for the convenience of civilized traffic. The town seemed near, but it was full two ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... heightened by the glimpse to be obtained of the mosques and minarets of Mostar, washed by the turbid waters of the Narenta, and backed by the rugged hills which hem it in. 'It is of a single arch, 95 ft. 3 in. in span, and when the Narenta is low, about 70 feet from the water, or, to the top of ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... a people are instructed by revolutions and catastrophes better than by sermons. More quickly than Isaiah and Jeremiah, Nebuchadnezzar brought the Jews to a recognition of their tasks. The short span of the Babylonian Exile (586-538 B. C. E.) was a period of introspection and searching self-examination for the people. Spiritual forces hitherto latent came into play; a degree of self-consciousness asserted ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... box down on the ground: it burst open with the shock, and out stepped a little old man. He was only one span high, but his beard was a span and a quarter long, and trailed ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... her minnie, And day by day she sat and span; Nor did she think it aught but sin aye, To bear the stare of gentleman: She doated on her own dear Willie, For dear to her fond heart was he, Who, though his sire was poor, yet still he Was far above the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... the children came to know Venice better than they had known Florence, which is not saying much, since in Florence they had so completely lost themselves. They could go from Giovanni's house to the Rialto, the largest of the three bridges which span the Grand Canal, and find their way through the maze of streets to the beautiful Piazza of San Marco. They liked best to go there, not only because it is the most beautiful spot in Venice, not even because it is ...
— The Italian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... Garden Magazine, says: "The best type of greenhouse for all-round purposes is unquestionably what is known as the even span—that is, a house in which the roof is in the form of an inverted V, so as to be exposed as much as possible to sunlight, and having the ridge-pole in the center. All other types of houses are modifications from the simplest form, and are designed in some way ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... wrought for the Linen Company. Here I got a fresh direction for Pilrig, my destination; and a little beyond, on the wayside, came by a gibbet and two men hanged in chains. They were dipped in tar, as the manner is; the wind span them, the chains clattered, and the birds hung about the uncanny jumping-jacks and cried. The sight coming on me suddenly, like an illustration of my fears, I could scarce be done with examining it and drinking in discomfort. And as ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... aside, and saw the bosom of the woman near him rise and fall in quick respirations that moved slightly up and down her hand, which was pressed to her breast with all the fingers spread out and a little curved, as if grasping something too big for its span. And nearly a minute passed. One of those minutes when the voice is silenced, while the thoughts flutter in the head, like captive birds inside a cage, in rushes ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... register; and it may be assumed that he jolted rather horribly at the splintering bite of bone into brain. But who can say he did not reach a point-of-prescience, that his neuro-thalamics did not leap to span the eons, and gape in horror, in that precise and endless time just before his brains spewed in a gush of gray and ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... make the ordinance of death in itself an accusation against the Most High; we are not specially shocked or outraged by the thought that the whole population of the globe dies out within quite a moderate span of time, nor even by the reflection that several hundred thousand persons die every year in the United Kingdom alone. We know quite well that every one of those who perished in Messina must have paid his debt to nature in, at most, a few decades. So, then, the whole point ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... shores that round our coast From Deal to Ramsgate span, That I found alone on a piece of ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... peasants make ready 290 To cross by the ferry. "Eh, Vlass," says the carter, As, stooping, he raises The span of his harness, ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... beautiful, clear, moonlit night, so clear, indeed, that we could see the Dover lights almost from Calais harbor. But we had considerably more than a capful of wind, and there was a turgent ground-swell on, which made our boat—double-engined, and as trim and tidy a craft as ever sped across the span from shore to shore—behave rather lively, with sportive indulgence in a brisk game of pitch-and-toss that proved anything but comfortable to most ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... rooms, and speedily arrived to take possession, bringing with him a spick-and-span new fishing-rod and basket. He did not know much about fishing, but he enjoyed himself just as thoroughly as if he did; and he laughed so good-humouredly at his own Cockney blunders, as he called them, that Thomas would have been quite angry had any one else presumed to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... short a time, when compared to the span of human life, expectant motherhood occupies, and realize the vastness of its influence upon the nature of the child, and through that ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... it look like a gardener's garden, all clipped an' spick an' span, would you?" he said. "It's nicer like this with things runnin' wild, an' swingin' an' catchin' hold of ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the modern world stands Goethe, chief of his own generation, challenging comparison with the greatest of all time. His literary activity embraces a span of nigh seventy years in a life of more than fourscore, beginning, significantly enough, with a poem on "Christ's Descent into Hell" (his earliest extant composition), and ending with Faust's—that is, Man's—ascent into heaven. The rank of a writer—his spiritual import to human kind—may be ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... see 'em all down that man's throat." And says she, in still more bitter axents, "You will see four mules, and a span of horses, two buggies, a double sleigh, and three buffalo-robes. He has drinked 'em all up—and 2 horse-rakes, a cultivator, and ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... is that of the mill floors, which should be laid on beams, generally of Southern pine, 12 x 14 inches, or two inches larger when required by unusual loads or longer span than twenty-two feet. These beams are placed from eight to ten feet ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... to other matters, until at last it lost itself God only knows where. He thought of the amenities of a life, of friendship, and of how nice it would be to live with a comrade on, say, the bank of some river, and to span the river with a bridge of his own, and to build an enormous mansion with a facade lofty enough even to afford a view to Moscow. On that facade he and his wife and friend would drink afternoon tea in ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... that the Boer prisoners are not to be ill-used," said the sergeant. Then, turning to the prisoner: "This your wagon and span?" ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... the men of the 65th and Wheat's Tigers speedily found, crossing the wagon bridge over the Shenandoah! One span was all afire. The flooring burned their feet, flames licked the wooden sides of the structure, thick, choking smoke canopied the rafters. With musket butts the men beat away the planking, hurled into the flood below burning scantling and brand, and trampled the red out of the charring ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... the tomb of Qa the holes for the beams yet remain in the walls, and even the cast of the end of a beam, and in the tombs of Merneit, Azab, and Mer-sekha are posts and pilasters to help in supporting a roof. The clear span of the chamber of Zet is 240 inches, or 220 if the beams were carried on a wooden lining, as seems likely. It is quite practicable to roof over these great chambers up to spans of twenty feet. The wood of such lengths was actually used, and, if spaced out over only a quarter of the area, ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... magnitude, which sprang from the ground-floor level. These arches were uniform throughout the town, and the base of the arch was the actual ground, without any pillar or columnar support; so that in the absence of a powerful beam of timber, the top of the one-span arch formed a support for the joists of the floor above. In large houses numerous arches gave an imposing appearance to the architecture of the ground floors, which were generally used as warehouses. Even the wooden joists were imported poles of fir, thus proving the scarcity ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... himself equally to both gentlemen; 'a selfish precaution on my part, and not personally interesting to anybody but myself. But as a buffer living on his means, and having an idea of doing it in this lovely place in peace and quiet, for remaining span of life, I beg to ask if the ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... knowledge and the means and, within the span of only one day, could bring about the much-longed-for ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis
... Fr.; alferez, Span.] Standard-bearer; ensign; cornet. The old English term for ensign; it was in use in our forces till the ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... scrubbed, and holystoned the decks and cleaned paintwork for an hour, after which the planks were thoroughly squeegeed and dried. Then all hands went to work to polish brasswork until eight bells, by which time the ship looked as spick and span as if she had been kept under a glass case, ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... Rottnest Island and the mainland of Australia. The island was searched for wreckage with little result. One piece of timber was found which, it was conjectured, might have been deck timber, and a plank was found, three feet long and one span broad. The nails in the wreckage were very rusty. The search for shipwrecked sailors on the adjacent mainland was unsuccessful. On the 20th and on the 31st of December, and on the 1st of January, ...
— Essays on early ornithology and kindred subjects • James R. McClymont
... that under such conditions life could be prolonged far beyond what is now usually considered its span. One hundred years or more might easily, we imagine, become the average of life, instead of the ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... there is no bad, these be the whims of mortal will; What works me weal that call I good, what harms and hurts I hold as ill. They change with space, they shift with race, and in the veriest span of time, Each vice has worn a virtue's crown, all good been banned as sin ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... the world began, Time, that was not before creation's hour, Divided it, and gave the sun's high power To rule the one, the moon the other span: Thence fate and changeful chance and fortune's ban Did in one moment down on mortals shower: To me they portioned darkness for a dower; Dark hath my lot been since I was a man. Myself am ever mine own counterfeit; And as deep night grows ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... organization of public and private life, a condition of society implying so many discoveries and so long a practice in thought and handicraft, could not have been an early stage of existence. Long vistas are dimly visible into a past far vaster than the span as yet laid open to our view, and we long to pierce the tantalizing gloom. There, in that gloom, lurk the beginnings of the races whose high achievements we admire, emulate, and in many ways surpass; ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... personages, and upon these is much work in gold, with many precious stones. In this chair is placed an idol, also of gold, embowered in roses and flowers. On one side of this chair, on the dais below, stands a head-dress; this also is made in the same manner; it is upright and as high as a span, the top is rounded, it is all full of pearls and rubies and all other precious stones, and on the top of it is a pearl as large as a nut, which is not quite round. On the other side is an anklet for the foot made in the same fashion; ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... pillar—a pillar of the Infinitely Still, the pillar of Nirvana—rose forever into the empty blue, human life an atom of microscopic dust crushed under its basis, and at the summit God Himself. And I find time to ask myself why, at this of all moments of my tiny life-span, I am able to write as I do, registering impressions, keeping a finger upon the pulse of the spirit. But oh! if I had time now—time to write down the great thoughts that do throng the brain. They are there, ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... bounty, sweetness, beauty, goodness, such, That none e'er thought her happiness too much; So well-inclined her favours to confer, And kind to all, as Heaven had been to her! The virgin's part, the mother, and the wife, So well she acted in this span of life, That though few years (too flew, alas!) she told, She seem'd in all things, but in beauty, old. As unripe fruit, whose verdant stalks do cleave Close to the tree, which grieves no less to ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... effort you cannot persuade yourself to decide. And the reason is that at such a distance the man is so much diminished that the character of the details cannot be determined. And if you wish to see how much this man is diminished [by distance] hold one of your fingers at a span's distance from your eye, and raise or lower it till the top joint touches the feet of the figure you are looking at, and you will see an incredible reduction. For this reason we often doubt as to the person of a friend ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... been abundant and very rich, but the structures were in a sad state of dilapidation. One remarkable monument found at Kabah resembles a triumphal arch. It stands by itself on a ruined mound apart from the other structures. It is described as a "lonely arch, having a span of 14 feet," rising on the field of ruins "in solitary grandeur." Figure 41 gives a ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... love them again; and if we do not, why, there will be others to love. One of the worst limitations I feel is the fact that there are so many thousand people on earth whom I could love, if I could but meet them—and I am not going to believe that this wretched span of days is my only chance of meeting them. We need not be in a hurry—and yet we have no ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... eyes Missy Joyce could do nothing wrong. He had been drilled by Joyce until he knew just what to do. He was to go home, but as soon as it was dark, he was to return, being careful not to be seen. After he was sure the household was asleep he was to harness a span of horses, being careful to make no noise, and have a carriage waiting in a grove a short distance back of the house. Here he was to wait for further orders from Joyce. Being well acquainted with the place, and Joyce promising to see that ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... tune, retaining it from first not to last. The ordinary musical consciousness has merely a much shorter breath. It can "feel" an air, a movement; it cannot "feel" a symphony, it can only perceive the relation of keys and harmonies therein. With repeated hearing, study, experience, this span of beauty may be indefinitely extended—in the individual, as in the race. But no one will deny that the direct experience of beauty, the single aesthetic thrill, is measured exactly by the length of this span. It is only genius—hearer ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... a Familiar Tune" the poet conceives of himself as of a wedding guest who travels far away to join the festival. The bride, "thrice-beautiful" seems to be Earth; and the bridegroom, the Sun. The journey to the festival is the span of mortal life. The poet, who must travel over this path, endeavors to brighten it with dreams and shorten his ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... fortunes. At the end of a month, in which the Master and Finn plumbed unsuspected deeps of misery, the Mistress, white and wan, and desperately shaky, left her bedroom for the tiny sitting-room which Finn could almost span when he stretched his mighty frame. (He measured seven feet six and a quarter inches now, from nose-tip to tail-tip; and when he stood absolutely erect he could just reach the top of a door six feet six inches high with his fore-paws.) And there the Mistress sat, ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... bridges, newer and stronger far, still remained standing. But even from that distance Stern could quite plainly see, without the telescope, that the Williamsburg Bridge had "buckled" downward and that the farther span of the Blackwell's Island Bridge was in ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... before. They meant cities growing larger than provinces, factories growing larger than cities; they meant the empire of the slum. They meant a degree of detailed repetition and dehumanised division of labour, to which no man born would surrender his brief span in the sunshine, if he could hope to beat his ploughshare into a sword. The nations of the earth were not to surrender to the Kaiser; they were to surrender to Krupp, his master and theirs; the French, the British, ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... a finger lang, And thick and nimble was his knee; Between his brows there was a span, Between his shoulders ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... and fly under the bellying sails. The stars, each one, do seem to pause, affixed To the ethereal caverns, though they all Forever are in motion, rising out And thence revisiting their far descents When they have measured with their bodies bright The span of heaven. And likewise sun and moon Seem biding in a roadstead,—objects which, As plain fact proves, are really borne along. Between two mountains far away aloft From midst the whirl of waters open lies A gaping exit for the fleet, and yet They seem conjoined in a single isle. When ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... need gentle handling, and sometimes people seize them roughly and tear and soil them, and then of course they are no longer pretty. But listen now. What will you have? The first in the wheel is a very, very old fairy story. I span it for your great-great-grandmothers; shall I spin it again ...
— The Tapestry Room - A Child's Romance • Mrs. Molesworth
... a ring around the date. It's the first time you've condescended to pay me a compliment in a year. You men are the limit. You take it as a matter of course that a girl should be neat and spick and span. If she wasn't you'd notice it soon enough. It's easy for a girl like this Miss Burnaby. I don't suppose she ever did a day's work or anything useful in her life. She orders her clothes from the best places, and gets them fitted and sent home, and that's all there is to ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... direct patronage. "Victoria, the Empress of the Arena," is to-night to perform her unparalleled feats in the ring in the presence of His Excellency. This was the only tribute we saw paid in India to Her Majesty's spick-and-span brand-new title of Empress. We attended the performance, which was really creditable, but the natives sat unmoved throughout every scene; so different from the conduct of the Japanese, who scream with delight like children under similar circumstances. The Indians seem to ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... down the turnpike on a hired horse and met her and her servants pushing forward to our appointment as best they could. Now, I said, our business, a law matter, was accomplished and she was gone on on my hired horse. This span I was taking back to the stable whence I had hired them for her ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... years ago, about the First Homaging of Herstal, had been of similar complexion; nor had other such failed in the interim, though this last outrage exceeded them all. This last began in the end of 1738; and span itself out through 1739, when Friedrich Wilhelm lay in his final sickness, less able to deal with it than formerly. Being a peaceable man, unwilling to awaken conflagrations for a small matter, Friedrich Wilhelm had offered, through Kreutzen on this occasion, to part with Herstal altogether; to sell ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... bridge was opened for traffic. The supporting chains, which were brought from old Hungerford Bridge, are thrown over lofty turrets, resting in one case on a projecting bastion of rock, and in the other on a solid pier of masonry. These slender suspenders carry a roadway and two footpaths across a span of 700 feet. The bridge stands 245 feet above high-water level, and its altitude seems to furnish an irresistible temptation to people of a suicidal tendency. The prospect from the footway is extraordinarily impressive. Looking ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... Half the span of a generation has passed since W. E. Henley, after reading two chapters, sent me a verbal message: "Tell Conrad that if the rest is up to the sample it shall certainly come out in the New Review." The most gratifying recollection of my ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... consequences to the world were deplorable. The Supreme Council never knew how to deal with an emergency and every week unexpected incidents in the world outside were calling for prompt action. Frequently it contradicted itself within the span of a few days, and sometimes at one and the same time its principal representatives found themselves in complete opposition to one another. To give but one example: In April M. Clemenceau was asked whether he approved the project of relieving famine-stricken ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... She had cleared the garret spick and span, scrubbed up the floor, wiped off her quilting frames, and put in her white quilt, rolling up both sides so she could get at the middle. There was to be a circle, with clover leaves on the outside. Then long leaves rayed off from the exact middle. She had all the patterns marked out. When that was ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... were busy with their thoughts and walked along in silence for some distance. Presently the steel span of the great bridge across the Molton River loomed ahead of them in ...
— Bob Cook and the German Spy • Tomlinson, Paul Greene
... the Watergate, Hard bound with hempen span. As though they held a lion there, And not a 'fenceless man. They set him high upon a cart— The hangman rode below— They drew his hands behind his back, And bared his noble brow. Then, as a hound is slipped from leash, They ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... miss that comes so near the mark? Well aimed, young archer! With what ease he bends The bow. To see those sinews, who'd believe Such strength did lodge in them? That little arm, His mother's palm can span, may help, anon, To pull a sinewy tyrant from his seat, And from their chains a prostrate people lift To liberty. I'd be content to die, Living to see that ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... Pamper'd with ease, and jealous in your age, Your duty is, as far as I can guess, To Love's Court to dresse* your voyage, *direct, address As soon as Nature maketh you so sage That ye may know a woman from a swan, Or when your foot is growen half a span. ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... to endure as a man and abide The doom of the will of the Lord of the loud world's tide, Whom thunders utter, and tempest and darkness hide, With larger light than flamed from the peak whereon Prometheus, bound as the sun to the world's wheel, shone, A presence passed and abode but on earth a span, And love's own light as a river before him ran, And the name of God for ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... for the incline were similar, except that those below 16 ft. in height were of single-deck construction. The spacing of the bents varied from 9 ft. 6 in. to 12 ft., except the three outer bays, which had a span of 23 ft., all to agree with the position of the pile bents. The double-deck construction extended for the full length of the original pier. A single-deck extension, of full width and 180 ft. in length, was subsequently built for the accommodation of four ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 - The Site of the Terminal Station. Paper No. 1157 • George C. Clarke
... lived on in him, as she had promised. There is a Breton superstition that those who die young are not dead, but stay and hover over the places where they lived until they have fulfilled the normal span of their existence.—So Antoinette lived ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... so fair were more than match For fairest she e'er saw mine eyes before! And what a form! A foot and instep there! Vouchers of symmetry! A little foot And rising instep, from an ankle arching, A palm, and that a little one, might span. ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles
... change of humour, or cast aside in light indifference and independence because a man is bored by it and would have something new. It is a routine and drudgery to which some few are born, for which they are prepared, to which they must devote their span of life, and in which they must die. "How shall we pass the day?" asked a weary Roman emperor, "I am even tired ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... everything. So far as this book is concerned, annual driving trips through Central Vermont are responsible. They were great events, planned months in advance. With a three-seated carriage and a stocky span good for thirty miles a day and only spirited if they met one of those new contraptions aglitter with polished brass gadgets, that fed on gasoline instead of honest cracked corn and oats, we took to ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... on the door that he was leaving, and while his distress for what had befallen in this room brought a foreboding of what might impend in the other, he felt the chiding of that celestial benignity and was dimly made to see its illimitable span and the smallness of magnifying the things ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... mobility of his temperament, sat not so lightly upon him as they might have done, and this, joined to the physical debility produced by the enervating climate of New Guinea, fairly wore him out, making him prematurely old before much more than half of the allotted span was completed. But he died in harness, the end attained, the work that lay before him honourably done. Which of us may dare to ask for more? He has raised an enduring monument in his works, and his epitaph shall be the grateful thanks of ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... I was in Hyde Park, gazing at the people in the drive, when a spick-and-span and very brand-new open carriage went by, and in it sad Mrs. Deane (that was), all alone in her glory, and looking very sulky indeed. She recognized me and bowed, and I bowed back again, with just a moment's little ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... night you burn, Manhattan, In a vesture of gold— Span of innumerable arcs, Flaring and multiplying— Gold at the uttermost circles fading Into the tenderest hint of jade, Or fusing in tremulous twilight blues, Robing the far-flung offices, Scintillant-storied, forking flame, ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... married a Mr. Mooney and Mr. Gardner allowed her to take Joseph William to her home. The Mooney estate was situated up on the Carthridge road and some of Joseph William's most vivid memories of slavery and the curse of bondage embrace his life's span with the Mooneys. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... span of mules trying their best to kill her two weeks ago, when they came sailing down that Paradise Road up yonder; but they couldn't do ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... Enlarge this meditation upon this great world, man, so far as to consider the immensity of the creatures this world produces; our creatures are our thoughts, creatures that are born giants; that reach from east to west, from earth to heaven; that do not only bestride all the sea and land, but span the sun and firmament at once; my thoughts reach all, comprehend all. Inexplicable mystery; I their creator am in a close prison, in a sick bed, any where, and any one of my creatures, my thoughts, is with the sun, and beyond the sun, overtakes the sun, and overgoes ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... of the year; There are four seasons in the mind of man: He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear Takes in all beauty with an easy span: ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... the leisure he wanted for study. This he was enabled to do through a contract with one of the Ellicotts, by the terms of which his friend was to take the title to Banneker's property, making the latter an annual allowance of 12 pounds for a given period of time calculated by Banneker to be the span of years he could reasonably be expected to live. Banneker was to continue to occupy and use the property during his life, after which the possession was to go to Ellicott.[173] Banneker lived, however, eight years longer than he thought he would, but Ellicott faithfully lived up to this contract. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... whose life is a span, Protracted with sorrow from day to day; Naked and featherless, feeble and querulous, Sickly, calamitous creatures of clay! Attend to the words of the sovereign birds, Immortal, illustrious lords of the air, Who survey from on high, with a merciful eye, Your struggles of misery, labor, and ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... gentleman was in his travelling jacket, and occupied in painting, elegantly, one of those natty pairs of boots in which he daily promenaded the Boulevards. A couple of pairs of tough buff gloves had been undergoing some pipe-claying operation under his hands; no man stepped out so spick and span, with a hat so nicely brushed, with a stiff cravat tied so neatly under a fat little red face, with a blue frock-coat so scrupulously fitted to a punchy little person, as Major British, about whom we have written ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of three converging roads to Rome. Three triumphal arches span them where they debouch on a square at the gate of the city. Looking north through the arches one can see the campagna threaded by the three long dusty tracks. On the east and west sides of the square are long stone benches. An old beggar sits on the east side of the square, his ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... "Ma'janah," a place for making unbaked bricks (TobSpan. Adobe) with chaff and bruised or charred straw. The use of this article in rainless lands dates from ages immemorial, and formed the outer walls of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... and these fears would scarcely have arisen in the old woman's breast, had she alone been subject to the possible plottings of that evil nature. For herself she had little fear. Her span of life was nearly ended; very few were the sands that had yet to run; and, for her own sake, she would have cared little if some rough hand had spilt them untimely. But a new interest in life had been given to Mrs. Woolper just as life drew near its close. That peerless child, the son and heir ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... curves, which quite prevented us sleeping, we got here (Washington) yesterday at six o'clock. A man met us who was sent by an astronomer friend of John's, and brought us to this hotel, Wormley's. On our way in a spic and span omnibus we felt going down on one side, and found a wheel had come of. We jumped out, and a crowd collected, and finally we had to transfer our baggage and ourselves into another omnibus, and got through some handsome wide streets, with trees ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh
... justice. Yes, Arthur, it is four long years since I sent that wretched victim of that woman to his last solemn reckoning. Look at me to-day; my locks are white; 'tis not with age: I have not yet lived out the half of man's allotted span on earth. But that bleeding corpse; the trickling, oozing drops from out that breast; the gurgling sound of the unuttered death-words of Adele's first seducer—these have made me prematurely old. Oh! woe to him who dares to seek and takes revenge. Vengeance has been claimed ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... sailor. He told us midshipmen that he intended we should become sailors, and he began by sending us aloft the first calm day to black down the rigging and grease the masts. I began to go aloft with my span new uniform on. "No! no!" he said, calling me down, "the second mate will serve you out a shirt and trousers fit for that work." The mates laughed and the men laughed also. I got the shirt and trousers, and spent a couple ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... poor peasant who sat in the evening by the hearth and poked the fire, and his wife sat and span. Then said he, "How sad it is that we have no children! With us all is so quiet, and in other houses it is noisy ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... nature of an eyesore. Fond as he was of his own beautiful house he would have liked to keep the neighbourhood free from this essentially modern phase of river-life; but to Toni the gay little bungalows had a charm of their own. They were all specially spick and span just now, having been newly painted and garnished with flowers for the season; and Toni looked across the river with frank interest at the Cot, the Dinky House, the Mascot, and the rest of the tiny shanties. ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... little currents along the shallow shore. This, even without any prudential respect for the floods of the great current, he would do in simple economy of work and stone; for the smaller your arches are, the less material you want on their flanks. Two arches over the same span of river, supposing the butments are at the same depth, are cheaper than one, and that by a great deal; so that, where the current is shallow, the village mason makes his arches many and low: as the water gets deeper, and it becomes troublesome to build his piers up from ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... her dress open at the throat, and she kept her yellow hair brushed, trying hard to make each meal a little less like a pig's swilling. She knew how things ought to be done, a little, for at "The Gold Fish Ranch" and at Starr Baker's everything was spick and span (Mrs. Baker especially was a careful and energetic housekeeper), but to keep to this higher level every day was too great an effort even for a girl in love. She dropped back, now and ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... 's backet like a peacock; She 's breasted like a swan; She 's jimp about the middle, Her waist you weel may span— Her waist you weel may span; And she has a rolling e'e, And for bonnie Annie Laurie I 'd lay down my head ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... lecture and at study That ankle white I span, Its sandal slim, its lacings trim,— A fay I ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... those stockings as I drew them on. The shoes, too, were of the clumsiest make; they were large for me, which perhaps accounted for their extreme heaviness. I was a bit of a dandy; always priding myself upon my spick and span get-up. No doubt this made me critical, but certainly the tweed of which the clothes were made was the roughest thing of its kind I had ever handled. I got into them, however, without any comment, only remarking, when my toilet was finished, that I could ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various |
