"Speck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... opened his eyes. Uncle Guy stood before him. "I jes' taut I'd drap in, Kurnel, but didn't speck ter fin' yer sleep," said he, wincing under the Mayor's abstracted gaze. "Oh, I don' want nut'n; don' make er scratch on dat paper. I ain't beggin'," he exclaimed, as the Mayor, recovering, reached for his pen. "That's ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... it's a great honour to bear arms in the service of your king, and if you're carrying Sir Granby Royland's arms you're carrying the king's, so take care of 'em. A good soldier wouldn't have a speck of rust on his helmet or his sword; they're as bright as I can make 'em now, and as sharp, so mind they're always so. Now go to your new quarters and put 'em on—proper, mind; and your master, the captain here, will have a ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... boat flotilla that accompanied us during the last two days was made up mostly of American and British destroyers, though there were two French boats among them. They made a lively scene, and surely gave us great protection. If a speck would appear on the horizon, two boats would be off to investigate it, and would return later to join the fleet. We were also accompanied on the last day of the voyage by two airplanes as a further ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood
... it was not so with others. The one speck in the perfect balm was that, to have this man here at all, she had had to manage it secretly, as if it were ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... alone now. Still Bork waited, staring upwards. Then Dave saw something in the sky. A speck appeared and came hurtling down. In seconds, it was the body of one of the men who had risen. Dave felt his stomach tighten and braced himself. There was no slowing as the body fell. It landed in the center of the clearing, without losing speed, ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... with their strange men from other ports of the world. I saw them unfurl their snowy sails and speed over the blue waters bound for the shores of other climes. I watched them until they were but a speck of white down on the blue horizon, and I longed to be on board—to feel the ship roll upon the billows and hear the wind whistling through the rigging, to climb aloft and view the limitless expanse of ocean and feel that I was a part of these white ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... herbs, and so abundant was the pasturage that hardly might they consume all that grew about them: and the two were like one to another, for they were the sons of one mother. And as I looked, I saw, far off to the northward, a speck within the sky, so small it was, and so high it was, that the eye scarce might mark it. Then it came nearer and hovered over the spot where the two beasts fed:—and its neck was bare, and its beak was hooked, and its talons were long, and its wings strong. ...
— Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland • Olive Schreiner
... shaggy mane by which came his name floating over his shoulders. Out into the sunshine of a perfect day the riders went, and the group around the platform stood silently and watched until they were a speck in the distance blurring with the sunny plain and ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... the cups every morning, and polish up the old-fashioned spoons, the fat silver teapot, and the glasses till they shone. Then she must dust the room, and what a trying job that was. Not a speck escaped Aunt March's eye, and all the furniture had claw legs and much carving, which was never dusted to suit. Then Polly had to be fed, the lap dog combed, and a dozen trips upstairs and down to get things or deliver orders, for the old lady was very lame and seldom left her big chair. ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... quite surprised one day when a lark sprang suddenly from a field of long grass and went soaring up and up in the clear sunshine till it looked only like a speck, and at last could scarcely be seen, but yet all the time kept trilling ...
— Naughty Miss Bunny - A Story for Little Children • Clara Mulholland
... of combat. "Look, my lad!" said Ferdiad, "is Cuchulain on the ford?" "That he is not," replied the gilla. "Look well for us," said Ferdiad. "Cuchulain is not a little speck where he would be in hiding," answered the gilla. "'Tis true, then, my lad; till this day Cuchulain hath not heard of a goodly warrior coming to meet him on the Cow-spoil of Cualnge, and now when he has heard of one, he has left ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... tired of carrying the chest on our necks; and when thou hast opened the gate thou shalt have one of those we catch inside, a fine fat rat which we will fry for thee after such excellent fashion that not a speck of his fat shall be lost." But Bukhayt answered, "I am afraid of somewhat which my weak wits have suggested to me: we should do better to throw the chest over the gateway; for it is our treasure." "If we throw ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... said Wetzel as he stepped to the mark. He fastened his keen eyes on the stake. At that distance the head of the nail looked like a tiny black speck. Wetzel took one of the locks of hair that waved over his broad shoulders and held it up in front of his eyes a moment. He thus ascertained that there was not any perceptible breeze. The long black barrel started ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... pen, reduced the gas to a speck of blue, and in half a minute was hurrying along Oxford Street. The hour was ten o'clock, and the month was July; the evening favoured romance. He turned into Bury Street, and knocked like fate at a front-door with a brass tablet on it, No. 8 of ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... the ranch-house the day before the visitors were expected. Mrs. Brewster and Polly were in the midst of a light house- cleaning as the strangers must not find a speck of dust anywhere! ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... the sea for something, and presently he found it. Viewed from the height at which they flew it looked no more than a white speck in a great blue saucer, but presently the machine began to dip, falling at a terrific rate of speed, which took away the breath of the man who was hanging on with both hands ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... speck of privacy in the house!" flared Rosemary. "I think I might buy something once in a while that the whole family didn't have to see. And no one has to come straight home from school, except me. If I'm an hour late, Aunt Trudy always wants ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... haven't one speck of feeling for that blessed darling, you naughty boy! To talk of such a thing in such a way with not a tear on your face! And to think of him laying there a helpless cripple, and him the owner of the biggest estate in ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre
... a soul for hours, and though I knew we were getting into dangerous parts again, I hoped we might work through all right. Of course I thought first about my errand, and my mind was on every turn of the road and every speck in the landscape, but all the same there was one corner of it—or of something—that didn't forget that red-headed girl—not an instant. I kept wondering if I'd ever see her again, and I was mighty clear that I would, if there was enough left of me by the time I could ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... of bare volcanic sand, and then began the snow. The highest peak no longer looked steep and pointed as from below, but seemed to rise from the darker line of sand in a gentle swelling curve up into the sky. There did not seem to be a speck or a wrinkle on this smooth snowy dome, the brilliant whiteness of which contrasted so wonderfully with the dark ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... very blaze of stars. But that stellar creation, now that we are freed from all dubiety concerning the significance of those hazes that float numberless in space, how glorious, how endless! Behold, amid that limitless ocean, every speck, however remote or dim, a noble galaxy. Lustrous they are, too; in manifold instances beyond all neighboring reality—beyond the loftiest dream which ever exercised the imagination. The great cluster in Hercules has long dazzled the heart with its splendors, but we have learned ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... events, the workers in biology have not only accepted all these, but have added more startling theses of their own. For, as the astronomers discover in the earth no centre of the universe, but an eccentric speck, so the naturalists find man to be no centre of the living world, but one amidst endless modifications of life; and as the astronomer observes the mark of practically endless time set upon the arrangements ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... stick frayed by many deep cuts with a knife, and waved them repeatedly from left to right, at the same time pouring out a rapid flood of words. They had caught sight of a hawk high up and far away from them, and they were trying to persuade it to fly towards the right. Presently the hawk, a tiny speck in the sky, sailed slowly out of sight behind a hill on the right, and the men settled themselves to watch for a second hawk which must fly towards the left, and a third which must circle round and round. In the course of about half-an-hour two hawks had obligingly put in an appearance, and behaved ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... hand enclosed in a grasp as strong as a man's; and three minutes later Mrs Olliver—whose seat on a horse was as ungainly as her hand on its mouth was perfect—had become a mere speck on the wide ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... discontent had been shown as excuse; but, in this case, no cause was guessed for Holleben's disgrace except the Kaiser's wish to have a personal representative at Washington. Breaking down all precedent, he sent Speck von Sternburg ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... "Not a speck in sight," was the answer; and still the Sea Rover clove through the water on what they guessed to have been their former course, and the sky and the sea grew darker and darker and seemed to mingle together, gradually ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... projecting ledge, and crouched in the deep damp shadow. Amante sat a little above me, and made me lay my head on her lap. Then she fed me, and took some food herself; and opening out her great dark cloak, she covered up every light-coloured speck about us; and thus we sat, shivering and shuddering, yet feeling a kind of rest through it all, simply from the fact that motion was no longer imperative, and that during the daylight our only chance of safety was to be still. But the damp shadow in which we were sitting ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... deep again. As George Marshall spoke his last adieu, he slipped a tiny billet-doux into the hand of the departing girl, who half heeding the action, dropped it into her pocket, and sat down in loneliness upon the deck, to watch the slowly vanishing shore. Fainter and dimmer grew the speck upon the deep to the friends who watched on shore, fainter and dimmer in the gathering twilight, till the bark rounded old Defiance, and was divided by distance and darkness from ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... crystal may be, when reduced even to small size it will be found that the crystals are still of the same shape. If this process is taken still further, and the substance is ground to the finest impalpable powder, as fine as floating dust, when placed under the microscope each speck, though perhaps invisible to the naked eye, will be seen a perfect crystal, of the identical shape as that from which it came, one so large maybe that its planes and angles might have been measured and defined by rule and compass. This shows how impossible it is to alter the shape of ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin
... another instant would have been too late. He stood a moment, only half-pausing among the palmettos and rushes as the hurtling mass thundered by; then pushed quickly into the whirling dust of the track and hurried on between the clicking rails, not knowing that yonder dark, dwindling speck behind was bearing away from him strange ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... one white speck of cloud reflected in that peaceful stream was no break in its beauty,—it marred nothing, nay, even brought a little glow of its own to replace the sunbeams. Yet at that speck did Mr. Linden take aim—sending his pebble so surely, so powerfully, that ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... looked on the ground, still hesitating and troubled, 'The Joy of the flourishing tree and the Lord of all Magnificence is my Lord,' he answered slowly, 'the gift I crave is unworthy of his bountiful goodness. How shall one small speck of dust be noticed in the full blaze of the noonday sun? Yet, in truth, I have promised this mere speck of dust, this white stranger woman, by the mouth of my interpreter, that I would mention ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... they are dreams—since I am quite sure that the reality would be far less satisfactory than it seems in anticipation. There is "always a fly in the amber" as the saying goes, and my experience is, that the truth more nearly resembles a great big fly with a tiny speck of amber sticking somewhere to its back. For in our dream voyages we overlook the fleas, the mosquitoes, the hunt for lodgings, the struggle with languages, the hundred-and-one disturbances of the spirit which are inseparable from real voyages of any kind and bombard our inner tranquillity at ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... contemptible Creature. You call yourself the All in All, but you are the Nothing: your so-called Universe is a mere speck in a Line, and a Line is a mere shadow as compared with—" "Hush, hush, you have said enough," interrupted the Sphere, "now listen, and mark the effect of your harangue ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... in size as she approached, followed in her wake by a river of molten gold that spread over the blue, faintly rippled expanse. Now he could distinguish people on the upper deck, a moving crowd, and sailors busy with the ropes, now a fluttering speck of white near the wheel-house. There was no one besides him on the landing-stage, the moving white speck could only be meant for him, and no one would wave to him but her. He pulled out his handkerchief and answered her greeting, and in doing so he noticed that his handkerchief ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... you with a real gun, how many men of your own company do you speck you can manage ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 2 • Charles Farrar Browne
... looked—without a visible movement on the part of the cow—with never a perceptible tremor of her frame, nor a lapse in the placid regularity of her chewing—that hog had gone away from there—had utterly taken his leave. But away toward the pale horizon a minute black speck was traversing the empyrean with the speed of a meteor, and in a moment had disappeared, without audible report, beyond the distant hills. It ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... glimpse of his real significance. "I am only a gnat, a speck in the sun, a youth facing the millions of great and wise and wealthy!" He leaped up in a frenzy. "Oh, I mustn't stay here! I must get back to my studies. Life is slipping by me, and I am ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... is a shackle upon the hands, of liberty. One of the greatest blessings we enjoy, one of the greatest blessings a people can enjoy, is liberty. But every good in this life has its allay of evil. Licentiousness is the allay of liberty. It is an ebullition, an excrescence; it is a speck upon the eye of the political body, which I can never touch but with a gentle, with a trembling hand; lest I destroy the body, lest I injure the eye, upon which it is apt to appear. If the stage becomes at any time licentious, if a play appears to be a ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... steamer, waving their handkerchiefs to Eugenia and her father on the dock. Smaller and smaller grew the familiar outlines, wider and wider the distance between the ship and the shore, until at last even Eugenia's red jacket faded into a mere speck, and it was no longer of any use to ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... sweet foretaste of heavenly joys to come. Called from his flocks and herds in humble strait And made to rule a nation; high in Heaven The great Jehovah lighting up the way; On earth an upright Judge and Prophet wise Sent by the Lord to bend his steps aright; Sons dutiful and true; no speck to mar The noble grandeur of a proud career; Yet, from the rays that flickered o'er his path, Sent for his good, he wove the lightning shaft That seared his heart, e'en as the stalwart oak, Soaring in pride of pow'r, falls 'neath the flash, And lies a prostrate wreck. ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... slowly up the great avenue, and paused at the bend to see for the first time at close quarters the house, which from the valley below had seemed little more than a speck of white set in a deep bower of green. Seen at close quarters its size amazed him. With its cluster of outbuildings, it occupied nearly the whole of the plateau, which was like a jutting tableland out from the side of the mountain. It was of ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... perchance deem sleep, Wherewith the steadfast coral-stems uprise, Which by the toil of gathering energies Their upward way into clear sunshine keep, Until, by Heaven's sweetest influences, Slowly and slowly spreads a speck of green Into a pleasant island in the seas, Where, 'mid tall palms, the cave-roofed home is seen And wearied men shall sit at sunset's hour, Hearing the leaves ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... you wrote to me at the commencement of your administration, you said "the only dark speck in our horizon is in Louisiana." By your excellent conduct it is now the brightest we have ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... and we want to know who did it! We are amazed when we hear in answer the name of some quiet girl of whom we had never thought much, and we exclaim, "Why, I did not know she could do any thing! Where did she ever get the courage? I didn't know she had a speck of brains, or heart, or any kind of faculty,—no brilliancy ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... face and stooped over to flick an imaginary particle of dust from his trousers' leg. There was but one object in their going and he had not dreamed of being asked what it was. He could not be employed forever in brushing away that speck, and yet he could not, to save his life, construct an answer to Veath's question. In the midst of his despair a sudden resolution came, and he looked up, his ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... like Him. Now, then, what does this chain of argument lead us to? That we may follow in the footsteps of God, and where He has gone, or shall go, we may go. Think of it—no, we can't. Only for an instant can our minds dwell upon it, then we drop to the common level again, and here we are, a speck on the ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... a yellow small bush, a black speck or eye, are tough and tasteless, and little worth in cookery, ...
— American Cookery - The Art of Dressing Viands, Fish, Poultry, and Vegetables • Amelia Simmons
... black speck creeping across that cleared field near the top of the mountain at the head of the valley, three quarters of a mile away? It is like a fly moving across an illuminated surface. A distant mellow bay floats to us, and we know it is the hound. He picked up the trail of ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... after bein' sent down to that port o' missin' men in no hurry. I'll stick it out on this line jest as long as you say an' try to keep from grumblin'. Thar goes the last o' the rotten stuff overboard, Boss, an' we're all clear again. While we're a'waitin' till the last speck o' daylight slickers away, wouldn't it be right smart if we set our teeth in some o' that fine grub I laid in, to keep us from starvin' ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... Mrs. Trout had started, Tommy Trout swam off by himself to the edge of the pool. "I wonder what is on the other side of the Big Rock," said Tommy Trout. "The sun is shining and the brook is laughing and nothing could happen if I go just a little speck ...
— Old Mother West Wind • Thornton W. Burgess
... met them a little farther on, they would be cornered, as the cutting narrowed very much, leaving not more than twenty yards, and that was a generous estimate. At last, after what seemed an eternity, I reached the summit of the slope; the tiger was a mere speck along the line. I rushed after it as fast as I could go, stumbling, half falling, pulling myself together, and tearing on, and the faster I went the quicker moved the great white figure. A feeling of despair seized me; all my fondness for my wife became intensified ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... happy scenes of domestic honor and prosperity, that angel should have drawn up the curtain, and unfolded the rising glories of his country, and whilst he was gazing with admiration on the then commercial grandeur of England, the genius should point out to him a little speck, scarce visible in the mass of the national interest, a small seminal principle rather than a formed body, and should tell him,—"Young man, there is America,—which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... sound—that little picaninny's cry; surrounded as we were by a boundless sea of sand, it made one think how small a speck our party was on the face of the earth; it somehow took one's thoughts back to civilisation and crowded cities, and one felt that it was not just very certain if one would see such things again; and how little it would take to wipe ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... did that. In the meantime Concobar polished the pole, and the yoke, and the chains. From the wall he took the head-gear of the horses and the long shining reins of interwoven brass and did the same very carefully till there was not a speck of rust ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... beating the eggs. He cut up the meat into small pieces, and when he was finished, took the egg-beater away from her. He turned it so energetically that a speck of foam flew ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... Allan, standing up and looking, 'and that little black speck seems to be Carlo; but surely those can't be Reggie and ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... highest cliff; I hear the sound Of dashing waves; I gaze intent around; I mark the gray cope, and the hollowness Of heaven, and the great sun, that comes to bless The isles again; but my long-straining eye, No speck, no shadow can, far off, descry, That I might weep tears of delight, and say, It is the bark that bore my child away! Sun, that returnest bright, beneath whose eye The worlds unknown, and out-stretched ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... it not long before, and the sky was glowing in the clear, light night. I had to stand still for a minute. In the midst of all this beauty, man was doing the work of a beast of prey! At this moment I saw to the north a dark speck move down the height where the mate and Hansen ought to be. It divided into two, and the one moved east, just to the windward of the animals I was to stalk. They would get the scent immediately and be off. There was nothing for it but to hurry on, while I rained anything ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... now," announced Jack, sitting back in the cushions, and flicking an imaginary speck ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... everything. Armstrong guns, themselves indestructible but capable of destroying everything within sight, and most things out of sight, were the only recognized results of man's inventive faculties. To build bigger, stronger, and more ships than the French was England's glory. To hit a speck with a rifle bullet at 800 yards distance was an Englishman's first duty. The proper use for a young man's leisure hours was the practice of drilling. All this had come upon us with very quick steps since the ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... God that I could almost bear the Jones's for five years out of the pleasure I feel in knowing such things, and when I think that every dirty speck upon the fair face of the Almighty's creation, who writes in a filthy, beastly newspaper; every rotten-hearted pander who has been beaten, kicked, and rolled in the kennel, yet struts it in the editorial "We," once a week; every vagabond ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... struck the polar sea and the Eskimo, and it was with this thought of the lifelessness and mystery of a dead and empty world that Philip turned his eyes from the sun into the gray desolation that reached from Pierre Thoreau's door to the end of the earth. Far off to the north he saw a black speck moving in the chaos of white. It might have been a fox coming over a snow-dune a rifle-shot away, for distances are elusive where the sky and the earth seem to meet in a cold gray rim about one; or it might have been a musk-ox or a caribou at a greater distance, but the longer he looked the ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... the sun was low, though it was possible, as Raoul perceived, to detect the speck that was still swinging at the Minerva's fore-yard-arm; a circumstance to which the young man, with considerate feeling, refrained from adverting. The Proserpine had been some time in motion, standing out of the fleet under a cloud of canvas, but with an air so light as to permit the yawl to gain ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... separated from the rest will toughen and taste leathery, besides failing in the special purpose of giving lightness to the mixture. After mixing lightly and perfectly all such preparations should be cooked at once. The white "speck" always should be removed from a broken egg, as it is easily distinguished after cooking, and in anything of a liquid nature, such as custards, sauces, etc., it would be ...
— The Story of Crisco • Marion Harris Neil
... paper slipped on it was stuck up in the middle, and a rudder made fast to the stern; such a boat would sail boldly out upon the vastness of the lake, till the eye could no longer follow the diminishing white speck. These days beside the lake were full of good things. The water was clear, with a white sand bottom; we were given swimming-lessons in the hot summer weather; having waded in up to our middles, we faced towards the shore, where sat our father with a long fishing-pole, the end of which ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... a grain of dust here, but a speck whose wonders astonish thee; only a grain of dust, and yet a star under stars. That long column of worlds thou callest thy starry firmament, revolves like the myriads of grains of dust, visibly hovering in the sunbeam's revolving column, ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... Treherne answered, "I hear, see, and understand many things that escape others. Jasper, allow me to advise you to smooth the hair which your sleep has disarranged. Mrs. Snowdon, permit me. This rich velvet catches the least speck." And with his handkerchief he delicately brushed away several streaks of white dust which clung ...
— The Abbot's Ghost, Or Maurice Treherne's Temptation • A. M. Barnard
... star, nor could star be beheld from which the Gods' hall, with all its vastness, would not have been utterly invisible. Elenko leaned over the battlements, and watched the racing meteors. Prometheus stood by her, and pointed out in the immeasurable distance the little speck of shining dust from ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... wherein the old Man—forty years long in this wise— His housekeeper was wont to scold, Look through the window and kill flies. 'Twas plain—an oaken floor ye scan, Two cupboards, table, soft divan, And not a speck of dirt descried. Oneguine oped the cupboards wide. In one he doth accounts behold, Here bottles stand in close array, There jars of cider block the way, An almanac but eight years old. His uncle, busy man indeed, No other ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... sound of feet belong' to soldiers company, and so quick they stop in long line and hold all hands to hat for salute, I think maybe Oyama San coming. I give piercing look, and my eyes see marching straight by those big mens a speck of blue all trimmed with gold braid. It was Tke Chan. Same war clothes as his papa, even same number stripes on his sleeve, and twelve inch' of sword on his side, which make song on heel of shoe ...
— Mr. Bamboo and the Honorable Little God - A Christmas Story • Fannie C. Macaulay
... moment, heart thumping and pulses throbbing, to listen and to look. But he saw nothing—beyond the faint indication of the waning moonlight outside the red-curtained, circular windows high above him, and a fainter speck of glowing cinder, left behind in the recently emptied furnace. He heard nothing, either, save a very faint crackling of the expiring ashes in that furnace. Presently even that minute sound died down, the one speck of light went out, and the silence ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... the joyless monotony of things. Then, far beyond the ploughing-teams, a black speck was seen. It had come from the corner of a fence, where there was a gap, and its tendency was up the incline, towards the swede-cutters. From the proportions of a mere point it advanced to the shape of a ninepin, and was soon perceived to be a man in black, arriving from the direction ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... before I found my horse; this would give him about a mile or more start of me. I hurried on, but failed to overtake him. At the end of an hour I rode to the top of a hill which commanded a view of the course he should have taken. Not a moving speck was to be seen. I knew then that he had gone astray. But ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... as a speck of dirt, then, were it?" she queried. "And maybe mine ain't for Daddy. But the student air a-prayin' for him! It air a damn shame ye ain't got him a-prayin' for yerself and the kid.... Ye'd a seen yer man before now, and the ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... of the degree to which nature, in some few instances, concentrates powerful qualities in minute or subtile forms of matter. But if a man comes to me with a pestle and mortar in his hand, and tells me that he will take a little speck of some substance which nobody ever thought to have any smell at all, as, for instance, a grain of chalk or of charcoal, and that he will, after an hour or two of rubbing and scraping, develop in a portion of it an odor which, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... observant of even the smallest trifles. A speck of dust may be an important clew to ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... bending over the table and pointing to a black speck in the midst of the white blankness of the chart. "And here, in between, is another island. ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... vitally concerned in removing an infinitesimal speck from his left cuff. "Ah," he commented, "the Canned Meat Trust. What have you ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... piece of filter paper moistened with the liquid and burnt leaves an ash with a distinctly purple tint if any gold is present. It is better, however, to filter off the solution, evaporate, and ignite. Then, either take up with mercury, and ignite the amalgam so as to get a speck of the metallic gold; or treat with a few drops of aqua regia, and test the solution with stannous chloride: a ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... her pulse by pulse, as the excitement grows in a man waiting for a friend at a station; he sees first the faint smoke like a cloud on the skyline, and then a black speck beneath the smoke, and next the engine draws up on him with a humming of the rails which grows at length to ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... own home and cooked and served their own meals. We used wooden trays and wooden spoons. Once a week all the cullud chillun went to the Big House to eat dinner. The table was out in de yard. My nickname was "Speck". I didn't like to eat bread and milk when I went up there and I'd just sit there. Finally they'd let me go in de house and my mother would feed me. She was the house woman and my Auntie was cook. I don't know ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... A dewy freshness fills the silent air; No mist obscures; nor cloud, or speck, nor stain, Breaks the serene of heaven: In full-orbed glory, yonder moon divine Rolls through the dark blue depths; Beneath her steady ray The desert circle spreads Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky. ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... fire makes such a dust; and this carpet is one that shows every speck of dust; it keeps one ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... him and asked what he wanted. The youth told him all his story, and when he had finished, the old man said: 'Spade and shovel do your duty,' and they danced about the cave till, in a short time, there was not a speck of dust left on the floor. As soon as it was quite clean ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... of Bethany was set in order three days before the expected arrival of Passover guests. Followed by Eli, who was girt about with a long towel, Martha made a last survey of the large and well furnished living-room, looking for a truant speck of dust. She paused for a moment at a table containing writing materials and bade the servant wipe it carefully and place it, with a case of scrolls, at one end of the wide, latticed window-couch, ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... grin and chuckle like the laffin' hyena, when ransackin' Navy Yards and whisky distilleries. But, if you insist on goin' ahead and earnin' your daily peck by smashin' things and layin' out the onsofisticated, all I have got to say is, that next time you've got a sure thing to make a speck, by telegrafin' me at Skeensboro, I won't mind comin' down and takin' a hand in, if my pocketin' a few hundred thousands will be the means of betterin' your morrils, by my sharin' your burden. In concloosion, feller citizens, feelin' in rather a poetical mood to-day, I will close with the follerin' ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... their backs towards the east; and down the side of the wooded and precipitous clough of Feltram, the light, with a pleasant contrast against the beetling purple of the fells, was breaking in the faint distance. On the lake he saw the white speck that indicated the sail of Philip Feltram's boat, now midway between Mardykes and the wooded shores ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... if they were shaken out of a pepper-box upon his page, and so leaves it. These are deficiencies lying very bare to criticism; and I confess I never could completely understand them in such a man. He that would have ordered arrest for the smallest speck of mud on a man's buff-belt, indignant that any pipe-clayed portion of a man should not be perfectly pipeclayed: how could he tolerate false spelling, and commas shaken as out of a pepper-box over his page? It is probable he cared little about Literature, after ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... the story of her heart. She described her lover as he appeared to her in the early days of courtship, young, handsome, good, noble in sentiment, and warm and tender in manner. Halcyon days—not a speck to ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... soothingly. "They haven't upset. There isn't a speck of water in the boats. They've simply floated off and left the folks somewhere. What were the Hares doing out in boats, anyway?" she mused. "But if they're along the shore here somewhere we ought to go and look for them. Maybe ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... faithlessness that was obvious to every one but Cho-cho-san, who still believed that her husband would return with the roses. Firm in her trust, she pictured to Sazuki the day when he would come, 'a little speck in the distance, climbing the hillock'—how she would wait 'a bit to tease him and a bit so as not to die at our first meeting'—ending with the triumphant assurance (born of her woman's intuition, which, alas! proves so frequently ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... and predicable order and succession of events, the workers in biology have not only accepted all these, but have added more startling theses of their own. For, as the astronomers discover in the earth no centre of the universe, but an eccentric [48] speck, so the naturalists find man to be no centre of the living world, but one amidst endless modifications of life; and as the astronomers observe the mark of practically endless time set upon the arrangements of the solar system so the student ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... seemed a little speck, And then it seemed a mist; It moved and moved, and took at last ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... is equally subject to change. True enough, the old questions—Whence? Whither? and Why? are constant. As we know ourselves to be living in a world which is less than a speck in an immensity wherein the birth and death of suns are ephemeral, we may rightly distrust our own value for the vaster order. We shall, therefore, the more insistently ask Whence? and Whither? and Why? But, none the less, there is always a shifting emphasis of religious need. ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... that he wore false calves, probably because his black silk stockings never exhibited a wrinkle; they might just as well have said that he waddled, because his shoes creaked; for these last, which were always without a speck, and polished as his crown, though of a different hue, did creak, as he walked rather slowly. I cannot say that I ever saw him ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... keep Honest Moses fum de debil. Dat nigger's not got no religion to his name—not a speck. Didn't I tell Missus when she thought she cotched me and Ransom sellin' watermillions and sweet 'tatoes to de boys from Marietta, dat it was ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... often see them through the winter weather, Behind the shutters by a light's faint speck, Poring o'er books, their faces close together, The lame girl's arm around her mother's neck. They dressed their windows not one time but twenty, Each change more pinched, more desperately neat; Alas! I wondered if behind ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... education, morality, and religion; its solemn Sabbaths and thronged sanctuaries; and above all, its rising institutions of liberty—flourishing so vigorously,—conspire to make Antigua one of the fairest portions of the earth. Formerly it was in our eyes but a speck on the world's map, and little had we checked if an earthquake had sunk, or the ocean had overwhelmed it; but now, the minute circumstances in its condition, or little incidents in its history, are to our minds invested ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... distance I could trace no signs of life about this harbour. No stockyards, cattle, nor even smoke, although at the highest northern point of the bay I saw a mass of white objects which might have been either tents or vessels. I perceived a white speck, which I took for breakers or white sand, on the projecting point of the north-eastern shore. (B.) On that day nine years exactly I first beheld the heads of Port Jackson, a rather singular coincidence. ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... then. I believe I need another bed to make; I'm growing thin for want of exercise, and, by the way, that suggests an item in his favor; being a doctor, he will be out all night occasionally, perhaps, and the bed won't need making so often. Mother, I do believe I didn't put a speck of soda in that cake I made this morning. What will that do to it? or, more properly speaking, what will it not do, inasmuch as it is not there to do? As for Ester, I shall consider it a personal insult if you refer to her again, when I am so ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... same red-gold glow, which needed but the sunshine to wake it into flame. The disused quarry, not half a mile away, where the sun was bright, might have been an open gold mine—so brilliant the shining of its wealth of broom bushes! The hedge of gorse which bordered the road on both sides had no speck of green ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... whilst in the sickly rice swamps foreign supplies are necessary, if we go no farther than is urged, we shall be unjust towards S. Carolina & Georgia—Let us not intermeddle. As population increases; poor laborers will be so plenty as to render slaves useless. Slavery in time will not be a speck in our Country. Provision is already taken place in Connecticut for abolishing it. And the abolition has already taken place in Massachusetts. As to the danger of insurrection from foreign influence, that will become a motive to ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... great noying to mankind. For all that see his eyen, should die anon, and the same kind hath the cockatrice, and the serpent that is bred in the province of Sirena; and hath a body in length and in breadth as the cockatrice, and a tail of twelve inches long, and hath a speck in his head as a precious stone, and feareth away all serpents with hissing. And he presseth not his body with much bowing, but his course of way is forthright, and goeth in mean. He drieth and burneth leaves and herbs, ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... certain by proper chemical tests. The presence of membrane on a tonsil and a small patch streak, or speck of membrane, on the adjacent surface of the uvula or tip of the uvula; a patch of membrane on the tonsil and an accompanying patch on the posterior wall of the pharynx; the presence of a croupy cough and harsh breathing with ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... much delighted they were to see the light again, though some of the poor things had suffered sadly from the moths since the day when they had made their complaint to Pet. Full occupation was given to the money and the bread-basket; and, in fact, there was not a speck of discontent to be found in ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... architecture of the Titans. At the next turn we are met by the portal of a Gothic cathedral, with its pointed gables, its clustered basaltic columns. Out of the dingy wall shines now and again a golden speck like a glimpse of the Ark of the Covenant—there sulphur blooms, the ore-flower. But living blossoms also deck the crags. From the crevices of the cornice hang green festoons. These are great foliage-trees and pines, whose dark masses are interspersed ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... mere speck in the lonely circle of the sky. The events of the last two days seemed to have divided her forever from her short dream of bliss. Even Harney's image had been blurred by that crushing experience: she thought of him as so remote from her that he seemed hardly more than a memory. In her ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... thought is the decay of the bodily vesture. The first grey hair may seem to us an amusing accident, but very few years will pass before another and yet another appear, and if these do not succeed in reminding us that decay has begun, a black speck on a tooth cannot fail to do so; and when we go to the dentist to have it stopped we have begun to repair artificially the falling structure. The activity of youth soon passes, and its slenderness. I remember still the shock I felt on hearing an athlete say that he could no longer ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... the rest into the sugar-bush, where we will rendezvous about one o'clock, and in the afternoon help 'sugar off.' See the sunlight on the barns yonder; how warm it looks! Look off on that hill-side, where the snow lies so deep! How like a speck of gold it shimmers to the eye! and there goes Dancer on the crust, as if he enjoyed the freshness of the air, and the warm sunlight. Let us try the crust too, and if it will bear us, we shall save time by going across lots. Here ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... commodious room with lockers for each man and two shower baths make it easy to keep clean. Down on the first floor the retail bakery is so immaculately clean that you would be willing to defy anyone to find one speck of dust in the place. Every article of food is under shining glass. The floor is white tiled. But the food is what attracts one. The pies swell out as if about to burst. To look at the bread and rolls makes one hungry and to smell ...
— Consumers' Cooperative Societies in New York State • The Consumers' League of New York
... "all the villagers assembled, and recited the Fatihah, consoling us with the information that we were dead men." The little company, carrying their lives in their hands, then set forward, and presently came in sight of Harar, "a dark speck upon a tawny sheet of stubble." Arrived at the gate of the town, they accosted the warder, sent their salaams to the Amir, and requested the honour ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... on the Turk. "Wilt thou be beaten then, and by an Israelite? Shall this lovely maid be given to a perverter of the Scriptures, to an inheritor of the fire, to one of a race that would not bestow on their fellow-men so much as the speck out of a date-stone? It were a shame ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... good; the radar-screen showed the city clearly, and it was just as clear on the radiation and heat screens. The Keegarkan ship was completely blacked out, but the radiations from her engines and the distinctive radiation-pattern of her contragravity-field showed clearly, and there was a speck that marked her position on the radar-screen. The same position was marked with a pin-point of light on the vision screen—some device on Sky-Spy, synchronized with the detectors, kept it focused there. ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... fairly like one long leap, went by the runabout and dwindled almost instantaneously in perspective, with a lace handkerchief in a black-gloved hand fluttering sweet derision as it was swept onward into minuteness—a mere white speck—and then ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... they stopped coming past and then I got up and went along the bank and looked for him. I could see, way across the river, a little white speck, shining through the trees, which I knew was ...
— W. A. G.'s Tale • Margaret Turnbull
... within the poor little room. Not a speck of dust or a litter of any kind on the quaint little old-time high bureau, unless you might except a sheet of paper lying loose with something written on it. Titiche had evidently inherited his prying propensities for the landlady turned it over ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... continued to go about "like a snail in a dream" whenever she fetched me to carry her things on these short expeditions, she would leave me in the hotel to mend her clothes; whereupon I became actually servile in my ministrations. I brushed a microscopic speck of dust off her gown; I pushed in a hairpin; I tucked up a flying end of veil; I straightened her toque, and made myself altogether indispensable; for the bare idea of being left behind was a box on the ear. I could not endure such a punishment—and the front seat would ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... he had gathered together his routed army, and was as formidable as before. The Germans liked the bold old fellow, and called, and still call him, Marshal Forwards. He had his disappointments, no doubt, but turned them, like the oyster does the speck of sand which annoys it, to a pearl. To our minds, the best of all these heroes is Robert Hall, the preacher, who, after falling on the ground in paroxysms of pain, would rise with a smile, and say, "I suffered much, but I ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... hemorrhagic septicemia consist of hemorrhagic areas in the subcutaneous, subserous, and muscular tissues, the lymph glands, and the viscera; in fact, they are distributed more or less widely throughout the body and vary in size from a mere speck to the diameter of a half dollar or even larger. The superficial form presents itself first as a doughy tumefaction of the skin about the region of the throat, neck, dewlap, or legs, which pits on pressure. This tumefaction ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... soft waves flashed and sparkled beneath the oars, and it was along one sapphire track of moonlight that the frail vessel bore away the lovers. Farther and farther from his gaze sped the boat, till at last the speck, scarcely visible, touched the side of the ship that lay lifeless in the glorious bay. At that instant, as if by magic, up sprang, with a glad murmur, the playful and freshening wind: and Glyndon turned to ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... have been unworthy of notice had they not resembled the small cloudy speck, which, though scarcely visible in the distant horizon, approaches, and swells, and bursts over the head in a storm. The beginning contest between the Earl and the Mowbray family, the interest which the worthy Mr. Glibly had thought ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... his station, coming round the hill into Marston. He never thought of that being it, he said afterward. They got busy in the office and called me up again, and I located her again—only in a different place. Fellow on Claremont—that's it away over there; see that white speck? That's the station, just like this one. He's an old crab, Hank tells me. He said I must be bugs. Had him squinting around some, I bet! Then they got wise that I was reporting a through freight, and they kid me about it yet. But they fell for it at ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... higher slopes of the mountains; and now and then a magnificent eagle, startled from his solitary watch on some jutting rock, expanded his broad-barred wings, launched himself into air, and soared upward in ever-widening circles until he became a mere moving speck against the white snowy crater of the Avachinski volcano. Never had I seen a picture of such wild primitive loneliness as that presented by this beautiful fertile valley, encircled by smoking volcanoes and snow-covered mountains, yet green as the Vale of ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... have seen how England is flooded, and you will like to hear that this tiny speck has escaped. The Lodden is over the park, and turns the beautiful water meadows down to Strathfieldsaye into a no less beautiful lake, two or three times a week; but then it subsides as quickly as it rises, so there is none of the lying under water which results in all sorts of ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... last three days. There is but a Third now: one pull more, and then! It seems to me, I will fly into some obscurest cranny of the world, and lie silent there for a twelvemonth. The mind is weary, the body is very sick; a little black speck dances to and fro in the left eye (part of the retina protesting against the liver, and striking work): I cannot help it; it must flutter and dance there, like a signal of distress, unanswered till I be done. My familiar friends tell ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... his wife, sitting down before the blaze, pointed proudly to this heap of ashes, and the doctor said, "I brought Alice to this house a year ago, on the day of our wedding, and we kindled a fire here, on the bare hearth. Since then not a speck of ashes has been removed, except little bits from the front when the carpet was invaded. That pile of ashes is the witness to our ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... find the soap-grease, if there is any. As to the rest, I don't want to see nothin' o' him in the kitchen so I'll relieve him if he don't want to see much o' me in the parlour.—I shouldn't wonder if there wa'n't a speck ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... had the weest, teentiest toes, And the leastest speck of a blackish nose, With great, great eyes"—"Coo, coo! coo, coo!" Baby's awake—and ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... that one day my minister's little wife left one of those tell-tale instruments pinned to the paper, close to my looking-glass. My usual one had immediately seen this little black speck, no bigger than a flea, and had taken it out without saying a word, and then had left one of her pins, which was also black, but of a different pattern, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... slowness and want of immediate applicability of mere legal processes in cases of state emergency; and it is worth noticing again and again that in spite of the shriekings of reaction, the few atrocities of the Terror are an almost invisible speck compared with the atrocities of Christian churchmen and lawful kings, perpetrated in accordance with their notion of what constituted public safety. So far as Rousseau's intention goes, we find in his writings one of the strongest denunciations of the doctrine of public safety that is to be found ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... along. There beyond the farther sight was the ruddy, scintillating speck, apparently at the end of the stick itself, so accurately had it ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... half an hour, we chase in every direction, then fire again toward the shore. It is just four; a gray light is working up through the mist, and we catch the faintest glimpse of the Daylight, one of our fleet. A few minutes later, and we see a speck near the shore, which the spyglass shows to be the steamer we chased and fired after in the night. The surf beats about her; in her frantic efforts to escape, she in the darkness has been run ashore by our close pursuit. We steam up, to get within range and destroy, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... their powerful glasses, no sign could they see of the little safari. In all directions the plain stretched out dry, white, dusty, with no moving speck to break the monotony. The general cased ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney
... the missing world. On the first day of the last century, Piazzi—who, by the way, was not a member of the society—discovered a tiny world in the vacant gap. Although eagerly welcomed, as better than nothing, it was a disappointing find. The new world was a mere rock. A speck of about 160 miles in diameter. It was obviously never intended that such a body should have all this space to itself. And, sure enough, shortly after, another small world was discovered. Then another was found, and another, and ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... richly-furnished rooms, is shut up from the sunlight and rarely echoes to the patter of childish feet. The mistress lives in the back part, but exercises a care over the whole house, which is kept in a state of perfect order and neatness. Not a speck of dirt is to be seen on the painted wood-work or the window-glass, not a stain mars the floor—long as the deck of a ship—of the porch which extends the length of the ell. The plates in the corner cupboard in the sitting-room are freshly arranged every day, the tins in the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... well-cooked meat— Cold pullets, pigeons, savory messes— Besides unnumbered fond caresses." The wolf, by force of appetite, Accepts the terms outright, Tears glistened in his eyes; But faring on, he spies A galled spot on the mastiff's neck. "What's that?" he cries. "Oh, nothing but a speck." "A speck?"—"Ay, ay: 'tis not enough to pain me: Perhaps the collar's mark by which they chain me." "Chain! chain you! What! run you not, then, Just where you please and when?" "Not always, sir; but what of that?" "Enough for me, to spoil your fat! It ought to be a precious price ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... I tackled a glass panel and began to finger it in every direction, hunting for the weak point on which to press in order to turn the door in accordance with Erik's system of pivots. This weak point might be a mere speck on the glass, no larger than a pea, under which the spring lay hidden. I hunted and hunted. I felt as high as my hands could reach. Erik was about the same height as myself and I thought that he would not have placed the spring higher ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... show you the good apple trees," she continued, and led the way through the orchard. "These three great ones, here below the garden wall, are Orange Speck trees; they are real nice apples for winter; and there is the Gilliflower tree. Over here is the Early Sweet Bough; and that big one is the August Sweeting; and out there are the three August Pippins. All those away down there toward the road are Baldwins and Greenings. Those two ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... with broom, etc.) What are ye doing, coming in this room again after I having it settled so nice? I'll allow no one in the place again, only carriage company that will have no speck of dust upon ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... (pointing above) More footprints up there, stopping at that window, and under the window this key-ring, without a speck ...
— The Squire - An Original Comedy in Three Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... furiously, and the stranger did not re-appear. Again they were on the look-out. At daybreak she was not to be seen; the wind, however, had abated. As the day drew on, Peter, who was on the look-out, caught sight of a small speck in the south-east; it grew ...
— The History of Little Peter, the Ship Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... sleeper. Wildly, feverishly, with all her calmness turned to eager haste, she then bent over the body, tore open the rich doublet, turned back the shirt, and, without uttering one syllable, pointed to a tiny puncture just above the region of the heart—a spot so small, so insignificant, such a mere speck upon the marble, that but for the pale violet discoloration which spread round it like a halo, I could scarcely have believed it to be the cause of death. The wound had evidently bled inwardly, and, being inflicted with some singularly slender ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... the glass from Byfield, and brought it to focus upon one of these peepshow rifts: and lo! at the foot of the shaft, imaged, as it were, far down in a luminous well, a green hillside and three figures standing. A white speck fluttered; and fluttered until the rift closed again. Flora's handkerchief! Blessings on the brave hand that waved it!—at a moment when (as I have since heard and knew without need of hearing) her heart ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... one of those historical novels once about a chap—a buck he would have been, no doubt, or a macaroni or some such bird as that—who, when people said the wrong thing, merely laughed down from lazy eyelids and flicked a speck of dust from the irreproachable Mechlin lace at his wrists. This was practically what I did now. At least, I straightened my tie and smiled one of those inscrutable smiles of mine. I then withdrew and went out for a saunter in ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... and looked around, thinking they might see the animal itself. There was a wide circle of snow around them, and its surface was smooth and level; but not a speck upon it betrayed the presence of ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... "In the winter there are some doves." No wild beast haunt the environs; they cannot get at the water. The people keep a few sheep, goats, and fowls. There are also a dozen or so of camels. It is remarkable that the soil of this speck of vegetable existence is entirely sandy, and all the water comes out of the sand. But in places, indeed, on the coast of Barbary, the finest and most vigorous vegetation often bursts forth out of a purely sandy soil. By the time all the ghafalah had ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... more above its present one, I doubt if you could. They told me this place is called Boko Boko, and that the cave is a very long one, extending on a level some way into the hill, and then ascending and coming out near a mass of white rock that showed as a speck ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... eagerness. Now when the button was undone and the leash uncast the peregrine dashed off with a whir of her sharp-pointed wings, whizzing round in a great ascending circle which mounted swiftly upward, growing ever smaller as she approached that lofty point where, a mere speck in the sky, the heron sought escape from its enemies. Still higher and higher the two birds mounted, while the horsemen, their faces upturned, strained their eyes in ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... outline of Malabar Hill quite clearly, and below all its trees and gardens and the great houses rising among them, but at one part, the highest, the hill is kept for other uses. Look up into the clear blue sky overhead, do you see a black speck? Not got it yet? Wait a moment and try again. There! That is right, and there is another and another; you can't help seeing them now. Their flight is the slow heavy flight of clumsy birds. What do you suppose they are? Vultures. They live, as you know, on carrion, which ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... that tiny speck of light in the side towards the picture? Well, the view is thrown from this box on the wall, and it is the motion of the powerful light that gives apparent life to the angel. ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben |
