"Span" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Within the span of a brief half hour they had been swept along on a rushing tide of emotions. They had been thrilled and mystified, mystified and thrilled. Nor was there any relief in the reaction. There was more mystery and more thrill ahead that demanded ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... produced on us by visible nature. In this silent solitary place, with the walled field which was once Calleva Atrebatum at my feet, I yet have a sense of satisfaction, of security, never felt in a land that had no historic past. The knowledge that my individual life is but a span, a breath; that in a little while I too must wither and mingle like one of those fallen yellow leaves with the mould, does not grieve me. I know it and yet disbelieve it; for am I not here alive, where men have inhabited for thousands of years, feeling what I now feel—their ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... view of Christianity which missionaries have hitherto offered to the heathen may fail; but my universal church will open its doors to all the world—and, mark my words, Conrad, all the world will enter in. I may not live to see the day. My span of life has not long to ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... the additional payment of thirty cents. Now, this may seem exaggerated, but honestly, my boy, I have given you just about the course of action of these scientific philanthropic enterprises. They are spic and span as the ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... and aspirations of most lovers. For it was devoid of selfishness, and they looked for happiness—not in an immediate gratification of all their desires and an instant fulfilment of their hopes, but in a mutual faith that should survive all separation and bridge the longest span of years. Loyalty was to be their watchword. Loyalty to self, to duty, ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... That shaw'd the dead in their last dresses; And, by some devilish cantrip slight, Each in its cauld hand held a light— By which heroic Tam was able To note upon the haly table, A murderer's banes in gibbet-airns; Twa span-lang, wee, unchristen'd bairns; A thief, new cutted frae a rape, Wi' his last gasp his gab did gape; Five tomahawks, wi' bluid red rusted; Five scimitars, wi' murder crusted; A garter, which a babe had strangled; A knife, a father's throat had mangled, Whom his ain son ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... made it the easier to descend; but so furious was Dick's hurry, and so small his experience of such gymnastics, that he span round and round in mid-air like a criminal upon a gibbet, and now beat his head, and now bruised his hands, against the rugged stonework of the wall. The air roared in his ears; he saw the stars overhead, and the reflected stars below him in the moat, whirling ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... are full of heavenly stuff, and bear the inventory Of your best graces in your mind; the which You were now running o'er. You have scarce time To steal from spiritual leisure a brief span To keep your earthly audit. Sure, in that I deem you an ill husband, and am glad To have you therein ...
— The Life of Henry VIII • William Shakespeare [Dunlap edition]
... hemisphere. There are, besides these, some small plain cockles, limpets; and some strangers, who come into the Sound, wore necklaces of a small blueish volute or panamae. Many of the muscles are a span in length, and some having pretty large pearls, which, however, are both badly shaped and coloured. We may conclude, that there is red coral in the Sound, or somewhere upon the coast, some thick pieces, or branches, having been seen in the canoes ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... arch or vault, and of the truss. The principle of the lintel is that of resistance to transverse strains, and appears in all construction in which a cross-piece or beam rests on two or more vertical supports. The arch or vault makes use of several pieces to span an opening between two supports. These pieces are in compression and exert lateral pressures or thrusts which are transmitted to the supports or abutments. The thrust must be resisted either by the massiveness of the abutments or by the opposition to it of counter-thrusts from other arches ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... the heart of man Which our existence measures, Far longer is our childhood's span Than that ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... design is little more than the following of an outline or example in the textbook and substituting values in formulas. The design of an ordinary short-span steel truss bridge, as ordinarily taught, is an example of this method of instruction. Another example is the design of a residence for which no predetermined limiting conditions are laid down and which does not differ materially from those found in the ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... 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, Or soaring ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... chatting, bracelets jingling, and tiny bells at their ankles tinkling musically. It depressed him; it was such a terrible juxtaposition of frivolity and the gloomed shadow of idol worship that lay just the bridge's span of the sullen Narbudda: the gloomy, broken scraps of the long since deserted forts that cut with jagged lines the moonlit sky; and beyond them again the many temples with their scowling Brahmin priests, and the shrine wherein the god of destruction, ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... Demophilos. For he was a boy with boys, yet in counsels an old man of a hundred years: and the evil tongue he robbeth of its loud voice, and hath learnt to abhor the insolent, neither will he make strife against the good, nor tarry when he hath a deed in hand. For a brief span hath opportunity for men, but of him it is known surely when it cometh, and he waiteth thereon ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... six good carols, without knowing why. We did not care to disappoint them if a February thaw setting in on the 24th of December should break up the spree before it began. Then I had told Howland that he must reserve for me a span of good horses, and a sleigh that I could pack sixteen small children into, tight-stowed. Howland is always good about such things, knew what the sleigh was for, having done the same in other years, and made the span four horses of his own accord, because ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... glancing with silver plate; and there on a sofa lay Aaron Bang in all his pristine beauty, and fresh from his toilet, for he had just got out of his cot after an eight—and—forty hours sojourn therein—nice white neck cloth white jean waistcoat and trowsers, and span—new blue coat He was reading when we entered; and the Captain, in his flame—coloured costume, was close aboard of him before he raised his eyes, and rather staggered him a bit; but when seven sea—green spirits followed, he was exceedingly nonplussed, and then came the ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... said with an attempt at playfulness. "Gemma has been quite jealous of the unknown owner, but she says it is much larger than any of hers." The girls' eyes met but neither spoke, and Orazio babbled on, unheeding: "Her feet are carini, and I can span her ankle with my thumb and forefinger; but you are small ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... 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
... beyond the bridge at each side, and they supported braces which extended diagonally upward to the crossing ends of the spars. When this was done the temporary crosspiece above referred to was removed. As the span between the center cross beam and the banks was a little too long to provide a steady floor, a couple of intermediate cross beams were suspended from the inclined spars. The floor beams were then laid in place and covered with ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... glaciers; and, perhaps for the first time, learn the majesty of a road built and supported by government authority. Well, my Lord the King decided to build a highway from earth to heaven. It should span all the chasms of human wretchedness; it should tunnel all the mountains of earthly difficulty; it should be wide enough and strong enough to hold fifty thousand millions of the human race, if so many of them should ever be born. It should be blasted out of the "Rock ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... put 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 it. But how about ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... "He won't come alone, but with a gang big enough to make sure of the job. Blease, this isn't your scrap at all, and I suspect it's going to be a real one. The ox trail is open and the mules can travel it, so you'd better take a span of them and drive your family out ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... liberal, 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 almost in despair, for the pests seemed proof ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... unclouded. Fate hits such men particularly hard when her delayed blow falls. Existences long attuned to success and level fortune; lives which have passed through five-and-thirty years of their allotted span without much sorrow, without sharp thorns in the flesh, without those carking, gnawing trials of mind and body which Time stores up for all humanity—such feel disaster when it does reach them with a bitterness unknown by those who ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... parent goddess! since in early bloom Thy son must fall, by too severe a doom; Sure to so short a race of glory born, Great Jove in justice should this span adorn: Honour and fame at least the thunderer owed; And ill he pays the promise of a god, If yon proud monarch thus thy son defies, Obscures my ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... ankles, round his hips was a scarf adorned with fringes, which in front formed an apron, with broad, stiffened ends which fell to his knees; a wide belt of white and silver brocade confined the drapery of his robe. Round his throat and far down on his bare breast hung a necklace more than a span deep, composed of pearls and agates, and his upper arm was covered with broad gold bracelets. He rose from the ebony seat with lion's feet, on which he sat, and beckoned to a servant who squatted by one of the walls ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... 'Upon the exhaustion of those acts capable of prolonging life and bringing on fame which are done in a particular body that Jiva assumes, the embodied Jiva, with the span of his life shortened, begins to do acts hostile to life and health. On the approach of destruction, his understanding turns away from the proper course. The man of uncleansed soul, after even a correct ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... farmers I hae muckle pride, But I mauna speak high when I 'm tellin' o't, How brawlie I strut on my shelty to ride, Wi' a sample to shew for the sellin' o't. In blue worset boots that my auld mither span, I 've aft been fu' vanty sin' I was a man, But now they 're flung by, and I 've bought cordivan, And my wifie ne'er grudged me a ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... May once more when Buzz Werner's train came into the little red-brick depot at Chippewa, Wisconsin. Buzz, spick and span in his uniform, looked down rather nervously, and yet with a certain pride at his left leg. When he sat down you couldn't tell which was the real one. As the train pulled in at the Chippewa Junction, just ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... two stood fretfully debating, the door of the room again opened. There appeared an athletic, adventurous-looking officer in brilliant uniform who was smiling at something called after him from the antechamber. His blue coat was spick and span and very gay with double embroidery at the collar, coat-tails, and pockets. His white waistcoat and trousers were spotless; his netted sash of blue with its stars on the silver tassels had a look of studied elegance. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... did not alter his title. He was always spoken of as Ulf of Romsdal. He and his old enemy Haldor the Fierce speedily became fast friends; and so was it with their wives, Astrid and Herfrida, who also took mightily to each other. They span, and carded wool, and sewed together oftentimes, and discussed the affairs of Horlingdal, no doubt with mutual advantage ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... lie drowned in a heap, And Southey's last Pan has pillowed his sleep; That Felo de se who, half drunk with his Malmsey, Walked out of his depth and was lost in a calm sea, 10 Singing "Glory to God" in a spick and span stanza, The like (since Tom Sternhold was choked) ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... Romans[100] determined to surround the hill and the river bank near it with a wall, so that it might never be possible for an enemy to destroy the mills, and crossing the river, to carry on operations with ease against the circuit-wall of the city. So they decided to span the river at this point with a bridge, and to attach it to the wall; and by building many houses in the district across the river they caused the stream of the Tiber to be in the middle of the city. ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... even at the last moment, to sever all ties between the parent and the child. The character of that population has greatly altered since; generations have been born on the soil, whose recollections of their progenitors across the Atlantic have dwindled to the smallest span; and the intermixture of races has since done everything but destroy all filial feeling, has in fact destroyed nearly all but the common language, whilst ultra-democracy has been steadily at work upon the young idea to inculcate hatred to monarchy, and, above all, ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... Minute robbed impartially friend and foe. The confidant of Lo'Ben and the Company alike, he betrayed both, and on that terrible day when it was a toss of a coin whether the concession seekers would be butchered in Lo'Ben's kraal, John Minute escaped with the only available span of mules and left his comrades ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... in London that have impressed us more than the fine, massive bridges which span the Thames, and are so crowded with foot passengers and carriages. Every boy who has read much has had his head full of notions about London Bridge; that is, old London Bridge, which was taken down about thirty years ago. The old bridge was ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... wandered slowly over the little knots of people in the foyer. Beyond the fact that a large diamond sparkled on one of his plump fingers, and that his olive tinted face was curiously opposed to the whiteness of the uplifted hand, he differed in no essential from the hundreds of spick and span idlers who might be encountered at that hour in the west end of London. He had the physique and bearing of a man athletic in his youth but now over-indulgent. An astute tailor had managed to conceal the too rounded curves of ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... nutmegs, cloves, and some of the very best Maccaboy snuff. Oh, let me see! I want a new foot-stove. Our old one is all banged up, and I am ashamed to be seen filling it at noon in winter in Deacon Stonegood's kitchen, with all the women looking on, and theirs spick and span new." ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... Fisher was standing on one of the little bridges that span the gutterwide Oosbach, idly gazing into the water and wondering whether a good sized Rangely trout could swim the stream without personal inconvenience, when the porter of the Badischer Hof came to ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... dedication of the pile of stone and mortar which had stood before the face of the wind as sturdily as old Harpeth itself. His words held the simplicity of those of a great poet and each was a separate jewel that could be imbedded in the hearts of his people to last for the span of their lives. He made a grateful acknowledgment of the safety of the chapel and of the spared lives of those before him, and in a few ringing sentences he prayed that we all be delivered from the blindness ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... surrounded by coupled columns resting on finely sculptured pedestals. The central or main niche is flanked on either side by quaintly contrived blank windows; and between the columns, at the depth of the recesses, are simple pilasters sustaining the elliptic arches, which serve to top and span the niches, the latter to be occupied by statues of the great creators and interpreters of the drama in every age and country. The finest Concord granite, from the best quarries in New Hampshire, is the material used in the entire facade, as well as in the Sixth avenue side. The ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... forward. But they had tarried too long, for, not a hundred rods from their starting point, they came upon a broad, dark break in the floe, such a break as no draw-bridge of ice would ever span. ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... the world. For there, as it is most narow, it is more than a myle of brede. And thanne entren men azen into the lond of the grete Chane. That ryvere gothe thorghe the lond of Pigmaus: where that the folk ben of litylle stature, that ben but 3 span long: and thei ben right faire and gentylle, aftre here quantytees, bothe the men and the wommen. And thei maryen hem, whan thei ben half zere of age, and geten children. And thei lyven not, but 6 zeer or 7 at the moste. And he that ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... customs and used by them to produce insensibility. Their mode of using it was by inhalation and expelling the smoke through the nostrils by means of a hollow forked cane or hollow reed. Oviedo describes them as "about a span long; and when used the forked ends are inserted in the nostrils, the other end being applied to the burning leaves of the herb, using the herb in this manner stupefied them ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... so soon parted, so long separated, were at last reunited. Even to us here, with the chronology of earth still ours, the few years between the early martyrdom of James and the death of the centenarian John seem but a span. The lapse of the centuries that have rolled away since then makes the difference of the dates of the two deaths seem very small, even to us. What a mere nothing it will have looked to them, joined together ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... expected. His young companion, with keen, womanly intuition, had divined something of his feeling, and tactfully avoiding any allusion to their previous meeting, of which he had no recollection, kept the conversation on subjects within the brief span of his memory. She seemed altogether unconscious of the peculiar conditions surrounding himself, and the brown eyes, meeting his own so frankly, had in their depths nothing of the curiosity or the pity he had so often encountered, and had grown to dread. She ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... in the town they assembled the glider, single-surfaced, like a monoplane, twenty-two feet in span, with a tail, and with a double bar beneath the plane, by which the pilot was to hang, his hands holding cords attached to the entering edge of the plane, balancing the glider by ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... written on his wrinkled brow, and removed the tray and the plate of broken victuals. What had passed between them neither he nor Zora would afterwards relate; but Wiggleswick spent the whole of that night and the following days in unremitting industry, so that the house became spick and span as his own well-remembered prison cells. There also was a light of triumph in Zora's eyes when she entered a few moments afterwards with the tea-tray, which caused Sypher to smile and a wicked feeling of content to ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... what a different place it was then! A lovely cape, half bleak moorland and half shaggy wood, a few rocky headlands and a great many coots and gulls, and one solitary old farmhouse standing just where that spick-and-span summer hotel, with its balconies and cupolas, stands now. So it was nineteen years ago, and so it may be again, perhaps, nine hundred years hence; but meanwhile, what a pretty array of modern aesthetic cottages, and plank walks, and bridges, and bathing-houses, and pleasure-boats! And what ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... with its harmonies, is seen now as but one passing case of a certain sort of moving equilibrium in the heavens, realized by a local accident in an appalling wilderness of worlds where no life can exist. In a span of time which as a cosmic interval will count but as an hour, it will have ceased to be. The Darwinian notion of chance production, and subsequent destruction, speedy or deferred, applies to the largest as well as to the smallest facts. It is impossible, in the present temper of the scientific ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... in the middle, and kept squarely athwartships by means of a span, afforded, after all, only the merest apology for a sea-anchor, and barely gave just sufficient drag to keep the boats stem- on to the sea without appreciably retarding their drift to leeward; but it was none the ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... a new horse, in a general way, is in a great hurry to try him. There is sumthin' very takin' in a new thing. A new watch, a new coat, no, I reckon it's best to except a new spic and span coat (for it's too glossy, and it don't set easy, till it's worn awhile, and perhaps I might say a new saddle, for it looks as if you warn't used to ridin', except when you went to Meetin' of a Sabbaday, and kept it covered all the week, as a gall does her bonnet, ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... we are now supposed to be standing; but to leap across the space separating us from the nearest star, it would require many years for Light, travelling at 186,000 miles every second of that time, to span the distance. There are, in fact, only fifteen stars in the whole heaven that could be reached, on the wings of ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... absence from Wilhelmine. In Maulbronn's garden stands the haunted tower where legend says that Doctor Faustus, the frenzied searcher for the elixir of eternal life, bartered his soul to Satan in return for a span of youth and love. The Faust tower faces the great cloister, and they say the Doctor, when sealing his pact with the devil, was disturbed by the ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... never extending once my adventure beyond Bas Meudon, Ville d'Avray, Fontainebleau—and Paris has made me. How much of my mind do I owe to Paris? And by thus acquiring a fatherland more ideal than the one birth had arrogantly imposed, because deliberately chosen, I have doubled my span of life. Do I not exist in two countries? Have I not furnished myself with two sets of thoughts and sensations? Ah! the delicate delight of owning un pays ami—a country where you may go when you are ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... 'bridge' he stared at the young artist. "The only question," said he, "is whether Heaven will lend us a rainbow." But when Polykarp proposed to get some cedar trunks from Syria through his friend in Alexandria, and when his elder son explained his drawings of the arch with which he promised to span the gorge and make it strong and safe, he followed their words with attention; at the same time he knit his eyebrows as gloomily and looked as stern as if he were listening to some narrative of crime. Still, he let ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... breath or a murmur of wind; even the swell of ocean, which is never-ending, here approaches as near as possible to an end. The ocean rolled but slightly, but the light undulations gave a lazy, listless motion to the ship, the span creaked monotonously, and the great sails ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... "These three syllables, as used across the channel, summarize the history of English society." Democracy may make self-confident retorts to such a statement and fling back the question—"When Adam delved and Eve span, where then was the gentleman?" All the more pity that a gentleman was not present in Eden! The first parents missed him sorely and paid a high price for his absence. Had he been there, not only would the garden have been more tastefully ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... highly chivalrous not to take my fancy; and, strange as it may seem of two well-born gentlemen of to-day, we span a half-crown (like a pair of ancient paladins) whether we were to cut each other's throats or be sworn friends. A more romantic circumstance can rarely have occurred; and it is one of those points in my memoirs, by which we may see the old tales of Homer ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is," said Paul. There was a span of awkward silence. "Well," said he, with a wan smile, "we're facing, not a political, but a very unimportant party situation. Don't suppose I haven't a sense of proportion. I have. What for me is the end of the world is the unruffled continuance ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... help upstairs wash days with the housework. Eight o'clock and my house is spick span, even my cellar steps wiped down. Take off that pink thing and I'll help you make the bed. It was all right to wear it around the first week for your husband, but now one of your cotton crepes will do. ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... one to understand. We are glib concerning the laws of nature, and seem to regard them much as the printed regulations stuck on hackney carriages, whatsoever they may be. Yet, how cruelly just they are! I suppose that the finding of the ship's booty by that huge creature has given a new span of life to ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... brought under its own notice as a sensation, either directly, or through the ministry of the touch or of the imagination, (as it is when revealed to us in its organ,) falls very far—falls almost infinitely within its own sphere. Sight, revealing itself as a sense, spreads over a span commensurate with the diameter of the whole visible space; sight, revealing itself as a Sensation, dwindles to a speck of almost unappreciable insignificance, when compared with the other phenomena which fall within the visual ken. This speck is the organ, and the organ ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... sailed for days and days, pressed by the favouring gale, meeting the sun each day a long span earlier, making daily four degrees of longitude. It was the time, on these bright days, to forearm with dry clothing against future stormy weather. Boxes and bags were brought on deck, and drying and patching went on by ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... how as a little girl she gave her roses not to the spick and span Madonna of the Church, but to the poor, dilapidated Virgin, "at our street-corner in a lonely niche," with the babe that had sat upon her knees broken off: or that passage, with its exquisite naivete, where Pompilia relates why she called her boy Gaetano, because she wished "no ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... brace, doublet, dyad, team, span, twain; twins. Associated Words: dual, duality, double, dualism, duplex, duplicate, duplication, bifarious, binary, dimidiate, dimidiation, duet, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... environment and habits as the world has rarely seen, took place in the generation that reached early manhood in the year 1500. [Sidenote: 1483-1546] In the span of a single life—for convenience let us take that of Luther for our measure—men discovered, not in metaphor but in sober fact, a new heaven and a new earth. In those days masses of men began to read many books, multiplied by the new art of printing. In those days immortal ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... canals and waterways, there arose in the early Middle Ages a trading town, known in Flemish as Brugge, in French as Bruges (that is to say, The Bridge), from a primitive structure that here crossed the river. A number of bridges now span the sluggish streams. All of them open in the middle to admit the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... that stately Cedar; while it stood That was the onely glory of the wood; Great Charles, thou earthly God, celestial man, Whose life, like others, though it were a span; Yet in that span, was comprehended more Than earth hath waters, or the ocean shore; Thy heavenly virtues, angels should rehearse, It is a theam too high for humane verse: Hee that would know thee right, then let him look Upon thy rare-incomparable ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 480, Saturday, March 12, 1831 • Various
... as the room is, where it hangs. It hung up fronting my old cobwebby folios and batter'd furniture (the fruit piece has resum'd its place) and was much better than a spick and span one. But if your room be very neat and your other pictures bright with gilt, it should be so too. I can't judge, not having seen: but my ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... year—about three in the afternoon, by the clock, October Twenty-first, Eighteen Hundred Thirty-five. The day was Indian summer, warm and balmy. He sat there reading in the window of his office on Court Street, Boston, a spick-span new law-office, with four shelves of law-books bound in sheep, a green-covered table in the center, three armchairs, and on the wall a steel engraving of "Washington ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... used are the gntang, a cylindrical wooden vessel with a capacity of from 10 to 15 liters; the kabn,[1] which contains 25 gntang; the yard, measured from the end of the thumb to the middle of the sternum; the span, the fathom, the ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... front room of the shanty. Four miles to the south, Ithaca, too, slept,—the wholesome sleep of a small country town, while Cayuga Lake gleamed and glistened in the moonlight, as if fairies were tumbling it with powdered fingers. Above both town and span of water, Cornell University loomed darkly on the hill, the natural skyline sharply cut by its towers ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... is a natural thing, comes direct from God's hand; and all that you can do, with all your carking cares, and laborious days, and sleepless nights, is but to adorn a little more beautifully or a little less beautifully, the allotted span—but to feed a little more delicately or a little less delicately, the body which God has given you. What is the use of being careful for food and raiment, when down below these necessities there lies the awful question—for the answer to which you have to hang helpless, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... thick with dust, looked out on the dingy back-wall of a bank or some public building. The floor was uncovered, the walls were hung with yellow maps of gold-mines all in the West African district. Da Souza himself, spick and span, with glossy boots and a flower in his buttonhole, was certainly the least ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... head of the stairs another marine, in spick-and-span uniform, wearing white gloves and with a bayonet at his ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... thence to his feet; by him, cut in stone, were his birds, the eagle and the falcon.[1] So, also, on a certain occasion when he was said to have appeared in a dream to one of the Incas who afterwards adopted his name, he was said to have come with beard more than a span in length, and clothed in a large and loose mantle, which fell to his feet, while with his hand he held, by a cord to its neck, some unknown animal. And thus in after times he was represented in painting and statue, by order of ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... neat and tidy officers who so love to see a ship kept spick and span clean; who institute vigorous search after the man who chances to drop the crumb of a biscuit on deck, when the ship is rolling in a sea-way; let all such swing their hammocks with the sailors; and they would soon get sick of this daily damping of ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... not only slew the ravaging monsters, but went on to take part in a tournament, where King Janak offered his daughter, Sita, in marriage to any archer who would span a bow he had obtained from Siva. On arriving at the place where this test was to be made, Rama saw the huge bow brought forth on a chariot drawn by five thousand men, and, although no one else had even been able to raise it, took it up and bent it until it broke ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... end of the thumb to the end of the forefinger (both extended)—about equivalent to the English span. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XX, 1621-1624 • Various
... The span from Thales to Galen has compassed about eight hundred years—let us say thirty generations. Throughout this period there is scarcely a generation that has not produced great scientific thinkers—men ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... loved with an excess of tenderness and affection that could scarcely be blamed. The boy was handsome and manly, full of feeling, and possessed of great resolution and courage; all this, however, was ultimately of no avail in adding to the span of the poor youth's life. One day in the beginning of autumn, he overloaded himself with a log of fir which he had found in the moors; having laid it down to rest, he broke a blood-vessel in attempting to ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... [alfier, Fr.; alferez, Span.] Standard-bearer; ensign; cornet. The old English term for ensign; it was in use in our forces till the civil ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... the same as you always was!" she cried "Indeed I am!" said Mrs. Cliff. "Did you clean this dining-room yourself, Willy? It looks as spick and span as if I had ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... for, unlike the squirrels and monkeys, it travels along the under sides of the horizontal limbs, with its back downward. This it can do with ease, by means of its great curving claws, which are large enough to span the thickest boughs. In this position, with a long neck of nine vertebrae,—the only animal which has that number,—it can reach the leaves on all sides of it; and, when not feeding, this is ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... to the body? Note the short fine hair all over the body which gives it the appearance of green velvet. What color is the head? How does the caterpillar feed? Write a brief description of the worm. Do not mistake it for the cabbage span-worm which is also green, but which walks ...
— An Elementary Study of Insects • Leonard Haseman
... brave-hearted happy Irishman. He was too full of the sunny joy of existence, his heart beat with too much of good-will toward men, to be remembered otherwise than as a bright-faced, sweet-spirited boy whose span of years was short. How he ever endured the hardships and reached Springvale again is a miracle, and I wonder even now, how, waiting patiently for the inevitable, he could go peacefully through the hours, making us forget everything but his cheery laugh, his affectionate appreciation ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... short of days, how large the mind of man; A godlike force enclosed within a span! To climb the skies we spurn our nature's clog, And toil as Titans to elect ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... such, whom God hath not made free;" and Almeria gently ventured to explain the hopes of larger span which enable the soul that can soar upon their wings to disregard the limitations ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... a great success. For a year and a half, for even more than that, he had lived the fullest and most consistent life of which he was capable; what proportion of the sons of men can look back on an equal span of time in their own existence and say the same ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... miles from Pekin is the village of Sha-ho, near two old stone bridges that span a river now nearly dried away. The village is a sort of half-way halting place between. Pekin and the Nankow pass, a rocky defile twelve or fifteen miles long. The huge boulders and angular fragments of stone have been somewhat worn down ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... dream. The drowsy delight which follows on the loss of blood possessed me, and the little garret with the slanting roof, and its sloping sun-ray, and the whirr of the wheel, and the form of the patient woman that span, had begun to gather about them the hues of Paradise to my slowly fading senses, when I heard a voice that sounded miles away, and yet close to ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... and took a key from a box. "I'll show you your locker," he said; and presently Bonbright, minus his coat, was incased in the uniform of a laborer. Spick and span and new it was, and gave him a singularly uncomfortable feeling because of this fact. He wanted it grimed and daubed like the overalls of the men he saw about him. A boyish impulse to smear it moved him—but he was ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... home, I watchin' him from the buttery window and also keepin' my pardner at bey in the milk room, I see a buggy drive into the yard, and wuz I not glad to see the manly form and calm quiet face of Royal Nelson. After he drove his handsome span of grays into the horse barn he come in and I see his linement looked considerable brighter and happier, brightenin' still more as he met Rosy's sweet smiles and ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... and with it Miss Lucas, towing a brilliant bride, Mrs. Vivian, young, rich, pretty, and gay, with a waist you could span, and athirst for pleasure. ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... every two hundred miles' journey was worth a week's life; and if we accept the idea of a certain celebrated character, (not "Quintus Curtius," but Geoffrey Crayon, I believe,) that the time we spend in journeying is just so much subtracted from our little span of days, what a fearful loss of life must have resulted from our old modes of locomotion! And yet we inconsiderately grumble at an occasional smash-up! So easily ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... last to be dropped into its place, the keystone is of all the stones of an arch the first in importance; the others span no flood, carry no weight, are of no value, without it. It gives unity to the separate parts, and locking all together, makes them one. Of such consequence to the other parts of the Angels' Song is its last clause. It was not simply Glory to God, nor peace on earth, ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie
... came out again; Timmy Willie sat by his burrow warming his little fur coat and sniffing the smell of violets and spring grass. He had nearly forgotten his visit to town. When up the sandy path all spick and span with a brown leather bag ...
— The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse • Beatrix Potter
... anything of her life before she came to Heathermuir; but the story went that her husband had gone away to foreign parts and never come back again, and that her temper was soured in consequence. Be that as it might, she was an excellent manager; everything at the Low Farm was in spick-and-span order, and fit for inspection at any time of the day. Maids and men alike knew that they must do their work, or Alison Shaw would demand the reason of any neglect or unpunctuality; and with those black eyes fixed upon them ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... of being as a power or strength, a positive self-maintenance to which all affirmations refer. The remainder of the Eleatic philosophy is the analysis of this concept and the proof of its implications. Being must persist through all change, and span all chasms. Before being there can be only nothing, which is the same as to say that so far as being is concerned there is no before. Similarly there can be no after or beyond. There can be no motion, change, or division of ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... for a moment in order to preserve continuity, let us add that in the year 1821 this span of coast was divided into three, each division being subdivided into four districts. The divisions were under the superintendence of a senior lieutenant, a midshipman, one petty officer of the first class and one of the second. The districts, on the ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... altitude and intense cold mean practically the end of their lives. It ruins their lungs, and so, after a time, they go quietly down into the milder air of the Valley of the Rhone, in France, and there they wait cheerfully during the short span of life ahead of them. Only the young and strong monks are sent ...
— Prince Jan, St. Bernard • Forrestine C. Hooker
... that many new discoveries will be made about Tintoretto's life. It was an open and above-board one, and there is practically no time during its span that we are not able to account for, and to say where he was living and how he was occupied. The son of a dyer, a member of one of the powerful guilds of Venice, the "little dyer," il tentoretto, appears as ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... on brightened colors. Like the dawn (Beloved of all the happy, often sought In the slow east by hollow eyes that watch) She seemed to husked find clownish gratitude, That could but kneel and thank. Of industry She was the fair exemplar, us she span Among her maids; and every day she broke Bread to the needy stranger at her gate. All sloth and rudeness fled at her approach; The women blushed and courtesied as she passed, Preserving word and smile like precious gold; And ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... American engineering triumph will be the railway suspension bridge proposed to be built across the Hudson River at Peekskill, in the hilly district known to New Yorkers as the Highlands, which is to have a clear span of 1600 feet at a height of ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness |
