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Surface   /sˈərfəs/   Listen
Surface

noun
1.
The outer boundary of an artifact or a material layer constituting or resembling such a boundary.  "The cloth had a pattern of red dots on a white surface"
2.
The extended two-dimensional outer boundary of a three-dimensional object.  "A brush small enough to clean every dental surface" , "The sun has no distinct surface"
3.
The outermost level of the land or sea.  Synonym: Earth's surface.  "Three quarters of the Earth's surface is covered by water"
4.
A superficial aspect as opposed to the real nature of something.
5.
Information that has become public.  Synonym: open.  "The facts had been brought to the surface"
6.
A device that provides reactive force when in motion relative to the surrounding air; can lift or control a plane in flight.  Synonyms: aerofoil, airfoil, control surface.



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"Surface" Quotes from Famous Books



... and admired as long as the ministers and captains existed who really deserved the name. When they were no more, the machine kept moving some time by impulsion, and from their influence. But soon afterwards we saw beneath the surface; faults and errors were multiplied, and decay came on with giant strides; without, however, opening the eyes of that despotic master, so anxious to do everything and direct everything himself, and ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... pastoral industry involves an enlargement of the sphere of man's domain, by encroachment upon the forests which once covered the greater part of the earth's surface otherwise adapted to his occupation. The felling of the woods has been attended with momentous consequences to the drainage of the soil, to the external configuration of its surface, and probably, also, to local climate; and the importance of human life as a transforming power is, perhaps, more clearly ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... art. The legends illustrated by her drawings were collected by herself, through an intimate acquaintance with Italians of all classes, from the nobles to the peasantry, whom she understood and loved, and by whom she was loved and understood. By such intercourse she had learned to look beneath the surface. In religious matters her American common-sense saw through her neighbours—saw the good in them as well as the weakness—and she was as friendly, not only in social intercourse, but in spiritual things, with the worthy village priest as with T.P. Rossetti,[47] the leader ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood

... gateway, at the dilapidated stone side-posts of which Max gave a significant wave of the hand as he passed. An overgrown hedge ran along the entire front of the place, its untrimmed wildness adding to the general unkempt look, as did the sodden, tangled surface of what had once been a lawn, the rank bunches of shrubbery which half hid the front windows from sight, and the broken bricks in the old walk which led, beside a grass-grown ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond

... Thy words! whose surface, behold! is before us, inviting to little ones; yet are they a wondrous depth. O my God, a wondrous depth! It is awful to look therein; an awfulness of honour, and a trembling of love. The enemies thereof I hate vehemently; oh that Thou wouldest slay them with Thy two-edged ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine

... Roe, but we found little that was worthy of our attention. The basis of the island is granitic, and covered with a shallow soil, formed of decayed vegetable matter, mixed with sand, which nourishes the stunted vegetation that thickly clothes the surface, particularly on the north-eastern, which is its ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King

... a waiter, told that she was not fit to associate with respectable people. There was more behind that, than appeared on the surface. She had been recognised. Yes, she was sure of it, it was not the first time ...
— Married • August Strindberg

... Duckling went. He swam on the surface of the water, he plunged beneath, but all animals passed him by, on account of his ugliness. And the autumn came, the leaves turned yellow and brown, the wind caught them and danced them about, the air was very cold, the clouds were heavy with hail or snow, and the Raven sat on the hedge ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall

... appears in its substance alien to them, changes its nature, and, instead of justifying a breach of duty, aggravates all its mischiefs to an almost infinite degree; by the apparent lustre of the surface, it hides from you the baseness and deformity of the ground. Here is Mr. Hastings's agent, Mr. Larkins, the Company's general accountant, prefers his attachment to Mr. Hastings to his duty to the Company. Instead of the account which he ought to give to them in consequence ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... motive for so earnestly exhorting him to polish his shield. In its surface he could safely look at the reflection of the Gorgon's face. And there it was—that terrible countenance—mirrored in the brightness of the shield, with the moonlight falling over it and displaying all ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various

... was the big American flag which had floated above the house of Don Roberto Yorba for thirty years. It had been carefully washed, and although broken bits of spiders' weavings hung to its edges, there were none on its surface. ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... very silent room in which the three men sat, furnished with the extreme common sense of the period. It had neither window nor door; for it was now sixty years since the world, recognising that space is not confined to the surface of the globe, had begun to burrow in earnest. Old Mr. Templeton's house stood some forty feet below the level of the Thames embankment, in what was considered a somewhat commodious position, for he had only a hundred yards to ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson

... had entertained the most remote or distant idea of the state of the affections of Nathaniel Pipkin, he would just have razed the school-room to the ground, or exterminated its master from the surface of the earth, or committed some other outrage and atrocity of an equally ferocious and violent description; for he was a terrible old fellow, was Lobbs, when his pride was injured, or his blood was up. Swear! Such trains of oaths would come rolling and pealing over the way, sometimes, when he was ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... modes of practice, without touching their principles. What, for example, in this case of D—, has been done to vary the principle of action? What is all this boring, and probing, and sounding, and scrutinizing with the microscope and dividing the surface of the building into registered square inches—what is it all but an exaggeration of the application of the one principle or set of principles of search, which are based upon the one set of notions regarding human ingenuity, to which the Prefect, in the long routine of his duty, has been accustomed? ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... Southern Spain, he was satisfied with the moderate degree of shelter obtained in the little glade he occupied; into which, although the sunbeams did not enter, a certain degree of heat was reflected from the convent walls, of whose grey surface he obtained a glimpse through the branches. The sheep-skin jacket which was his constant wear—its looseness rendering it a more endurable summer garment than might have been inferred from its warm material—lay upon the grass beside him, exposing ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various

... "instituted the 'musical reform' in Germany—the new German school of Liszt and Wagner. Berlioz's music is all on the surface, while Brahms' music sounds the depths. He uses the contra-bassoon in about all of his orchestral compositions (you will hear it to-day), and most of his piano works take the last A on the piano. If his bass seems at times muddy ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor

... in through every crevasse, sits the artless and pure-minded Maria McArthur. How different are the thoughts, the hopes, the emotions of these two women. Comfort would seem smiling on the one, while destitution threatens the other. To the eye that looks only upon the surface, how deceptive is the picture. The one with every wish gratified, an expression of sorrow shadowing her countenance, and that freshness and sweetness for which she was distinguished passing away, contemplates herself a submissive captive, at the mercy of one for whom she has ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... coldest, windiest, highest (on average), and driest continent; during summer, more solar radiation reaches the surface at the South Pole than is received at the Equator in ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... things might have seemed somewhat different from what they actually were, and that, instead of forcibly holding their companion under the water, perhaps the two bathers were endeavouring to bring him to the surface. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... what I wanted. But suddenly all the sweet calm was broken. You've often looked out from the dormitory windows over the lake, and seen how a wind springing up in an instant ruffles the clear surface. It's just like a mirror broken into a thousand tiny fragments. Well, it was so with me, with my spirit. And after all these years, when I'd been so contented, so happy that I couldn't even bear, as a ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... turned up the surface of the sawdust in another corner of the floor, and drew forth a cigar-box in which were half a dozen cigarettes, made of hayseed and thick brown wrapping paper, a lead-pencil, an eraser, and a small note-book, the cover of which was labelled in his ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington

... close fitting top; pour over them three quarts of cold water, adding half a pound of lean ham or bacon cut into slices or pieces; also a teaspoonful salt, a little pepper and a stalk of celery cut fine. When the soup begins to boil, skim the froth from the surface. Cook slowly from three to four hours, stirring occasionally until the peas are all dissolved. Strain through a colander and leave out meat. It should be quite thick. If not rich enough, add a small piece of butter. Serve with small squares of toasted bread ...
— Stevenson Memorial Cook Book • Various

... clearer understanding of each other. It was as if, after a swim through bright opposing waves, with a dazzle of sun in their eyes, they had gained an inlet in the shades of a cliff, where they could float on the still surface and gaze far down ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton

... rather a sunny road, just touched a corner of the old mansion's dooryard. The morass ran dry. Its venomous denizens slipped away through the bulrushes; the cattle roaming freely upon its hardened surface trampled the superabundant undergrowth. The bellowing frogs croaked to westward. Lilies and the flower-de-luce sprang up in the place of reeds; smilax and poison-oak gave way to the purple-plumed iron-weed ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable

... you to imagine further that it shall be a plant which shall produce every year fifty seeds, which is a very moderate number for a plant to produce; and that, by the action of the winds and currents, these seeds shall be equally and gradually distributed over the whole surface of the land. I want you now to trace out what will occur, and you will observe that I am not talking fallaciously any more than a mathematician does when he expounds his problem. If you show that the conditions of your problem are such as may actually occur in nature and do ...
— The Conditions Of Existence As Affecting The Perpetuation Of Living Beings • Thomas H. Huxley

... about seven knots, current of the gulf included. The sun had set beneath heavy radiant clouds, which rolled up like masses of inflamed matter, reflecting in a thousand mellow shades, and again spreading their gorgeous shadows upon the rippled surface of the ocean, making the ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams

... that nowhere was there the slightest break in it, and so dense and solid that it would have seemed like land around me but for its very gentle undulating motion—which made me giddy if I looked at it for long at a time. The only relief to this dull flat surface was when I came upon a wrecked ship, or upon a hummock of wreckage, rising a little up from it—also swaying very gently with a wearying motion that seemed as slow as time. And the silent despairing desolateness of it all sunk down into my ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier

... dog's tracks led aside to a scummy puddle, saucered by alkali, dotted with the spoor of desert animals that drank the bitter water in extremity. Then it ran straight to a wide reef of lava. Sandy set down the collie. Grit ran fast across the pitted surface, ahead of the horses, waiting for them to cross the lava. They had hard work to get him to come to hand again, but he gave in at last to the knowledge that they would not ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn

... convulsions, or by frightful visions, was worse than the waking hours; and when the reason sank under a delirium which had its seat in the brain, repose utterly forsook the patient's couch. The progress of the fever within was marked by yellowish spots, which spread over the surface of the body. If then, a happy crisis came not, all hope was gone. Soon the breath infected the air with a fetid odor, the lips were glazed, despair painted itself in the eyes, and sobs, with long intervals of silence, formed the only language. From each side of the mouth, spread foam tinged ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown

... pipes and lay back watching a moon of silvered steel poised 'midships in a cloudless sky. Before us, unbroken in its wide expanse, save for two miniature islets near the eastern horn of the encircling reef, the glassy surface of the sleeping lagoon was beginning to quiver and throb to the muffled call of the outer ocean; for the tide was about to turn, and soon the brimming waters would sink inch by inch, and foot by foot from the hard, white sand, and with strange swirlings and bubblings and ...
— Pakia - 1901 • Louis Becke

... anything in this world more busy and active than water, as it rushes along in the swift brook, or dashes over the stones, or spouts up in the fountain, or trickles down from the roof, or shakes itself into ripples on the surface of the pond as the wind blows over it? But have you never seen this water spell-bound and motionless? Look out of the window some cold frosty morning in winter, at the little brook which yesterday was flowing gently past the house, and see how still it lies, with the stones ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley

... is the case. Eight years elapsed, and found it still in the land of the living: yes, and to the eye external, as proper and as good a house of business as any you shall name. Its vitals were going—were gone, before the smallest indications of mischief appeared upon the surface. Life must have been well nourished to maintain itself so long. And was it not? Answer, thou kind physician, gentle Margaret! Answer, thou balm and life's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... value of Physiological knowledge! Why is it that educated men can be found to maintain that a slaughter-house in the midst of a great city is rather a good thing than otherwise?—that mothers persist in exposing the largest possible amount of surface of their children to the cold, by the absurd style of dress they adopt, and then marvel at the peculiar dispensation of Providence, which removes their infants by bronchitis and gastric fever? Why is it that quackery ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley

... man "to the manner bred," there is no saddle for hard work and long work, whether in the hunting-field or Indian campaign, like a broad seated English hunting saddle, there is no doubt that its smooth slippery surface offers additional difficulties to the middle-aged, the timid, and those crippled by gout, rheumatism or pounds. There can be very little benefit derived from horse exercise as long as the patient travels in ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey

... air pollution, principally from vehicle and power plant emissions; nitrogen and phosphorus pollution of the North Sea; drinking and surface water becoming polluted from ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... latter part of the word Bayswater. Some writers affirm that the name originated in a public-house kept by a Mr. Bays, where horses were given water, hence the more ancient rendering "Bayswatering." Lysons says of it, "The springs at this place lie near the surface, and the water is very fine." He adds, "The conduit at Bayswater belongs to the City of London, and, being conveyed by brick drains, supplies the houses in and about Bond Street, which stand upon ...
— Mayfair, Belgravia, and Bayswater - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... pole into the bottom of the river, which was so far below that only a few feet of the stick remained above the surface, and he was forced to lean over the side of the craft to secure any leverage. Any one who has tried it knows that it is next to impossible to accomplish much under similar circumstances, and the young scout was of the ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis

... that woman is better than man, but that the sexes have a civilizing power on each other. The distinguished historian, Henry Thomas Buckle, says: "The turn of thought of women, their habits of mind, their conversation, invariably extending over the whole surface of society, and frequently penetrating its intimate structure, have, more than all other things put together, tended to raise us into an ideal world, and lift us from the dust into which we are too prone to grovel." ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... touch, looked up and for the first time seemed to be aware of his presence. Like a bubble under water, that which had been striving for utterance came to the surface. She snatched one of ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath

... to escape that way his hope was desperate. The depth to the water-level was not, he judged, twelve feet. But Peridol had told the truth. Below lay not water, but a smooth surface of viscid slime, here luminous with the florescence of rottenness, there furrowed by a tiny runnel of moisture which sluggishly crept across it to the slow stream beyond. This quicksand, vile and treacherous, lapped the wall below ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman

... with the carcase? We cannot dwell in its neighbourhood. It would be impossible long to inhabit the same globe with it: its stench were enough to pollute and poison the atmosphere of our planet. It must be buried or burned. It cannot be allowed to remain on the surface of the earth: it would breed a plague, which would infect, not a world only, but a universe. It is in this direction that we are to seek for instruction; and here, if we are able to receive it, thirty generations ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... Danish marine for the invasion of Great Britain and Ireland." Further, that Holstein once occupied, Zealand would be at the mercy of France, and the navy of Denmark at her disposal. Looking on the surface of the matter, the justice of the expedition appears to be of an equivocal nature; but when it is recollected that Denmark would have formed one of the most formidable sections of the projected northern confederation, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... usual methods of design and construction for rural highways in sufficient detail to establish a clear understanding of the distinguishing characteristics and relative serviceability of each of the common types of roadway surface. ...
— American Rural Highways • T. R. Agg

... massive door his senses returned to him. Then, seizing the flask the stranger had left behind him, he sprang from his chair, meaning to fling it after him into the street. But the flashing of the firelight on its burnished surface stayed his hand. ...
— The Soul of Nicholas Snyders - Or, The Miser Of Zandam • Jerome K. Jerome

... after all, neither more nor less than what may be seen any day drifting hither and thither amongst scraps and straws upon the surface of a stream—only a child's sailor-hat, which had once been white, but was now sadly discoloured, soaked with water, and hanging almost in pieces. A faded blue ribbon dangled from its battered brim, bearing on its surface in tarnished ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur

... placid surface of the river, thousands of logs lay quietly "in boom" until the "turning out" process, on the last day of the drive, should release them and give them their chance of display, their brief moment of notoriety, their opportunity of interesting, ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... soil. So then, as I followed it, it seemed to me to bear in itself, and in its contrast with untamed surroundings, the history and the character of this one nation out of the many which live by the tradition of Europe. As I followed it and saw its exact gradient, its hard and even surface, its square border stones, and, every hundred yards, its carved mark of the distance done, these elaborations, standing quite new among the tumbled rocks of a vague upland, made one certain that Paris had been at work. Very far back (how far was marked on the ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc

... the deep lanes and struck across the hard-rutted fields. A thin powder of snow lay upon the land, and under the yellow light of the winter sky the surface was blue, shadowed with white patches where the snow had fallen more thickly. The trees and hedges were black and hard against the white horizon that was tightly stretched like the paper of a Japanese screen. The smell of burning wood was in the air, and once ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... shrine, and gradually the juices which the broad leaves of the Great Vegetable had sucked up from an acre and curdled into a drachm are diffused through its thirsting pores. First a discoloration, then a stain, and at last a rich, glowing, umber tint spreading over the whole surface. Nature true to her old brown autumnal hue, you see,—as true in the fire of the meerschaum as in the sunshine of October! And then the cumulative wealth of its fragrant reminiscences! he who inhales its vapors takes a thousand whiffs in a single breath; and one cannot touch it without awakening ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... subscriptions from any source; in case of death the hair of the deceased was immediately cut off and shared among his friends to be added to their felt. When in full dress (the men being naked) this mass of felt was plastered thickly with a bluish clay, so as to form an even surface; this was most elaborately worked with the point of a thorn, so as to resemble the cuttings of a file: white pipe-clay was then arranged in patterns on the surface, while an ornament made of either ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... father says not to lay up treasure for roth and must to corrupt!" put in Nan, coming to the surface. At this, they all shouted, much ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden

... that deep, deep sea, which gives us back none of all the treasures that it swallows up. Youth goes down and innocence goes with it, and peace is then drowned too. Some sweet and happy feelings that belonged to youth, like the strong swimmers from some shipwrecked bark, struggle a while upon the surface, but are engulfed at last. Strength, vigour, power of enjoyment, disappear one by one. Hope, buoyant hope, snatching at straws to keep herself afloat, sinks also in the end. Then life itself goes down, and the broad sea of events, which has just swallowed up another argosy, flows on, as if ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James

... remained, the less his spirit was troubled by the duties which devolved upon him this afternoon. The minutes glided by uncounted, until the evening shades began perceptibly to deepen, and the eyes of the three were but sparkling points on the surface of darkness. Coggan's repeater struck six from his pocket in the usual ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... low stone wall into the Marden woods, and took the slippery downward path, over pine needles. Sometimes a rounded root lay above the surface, and she stumbled on it; but the child only tightened her grasp. Amelia walked and ran with the prescience of those without fear; for her eyes were unseeing, and her thoughts hurrying forward, she depicted to herself the little drama at its close. She would be at the Crossing and ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown

... tell who really was the lucky marksman, but, while the little triangle of moving water still seemed two or three hundred yards below the boat, suddenly it ceased to advance. There lay upon the surface of the water ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough

... under them, are so perfectly neat and clean, that no one who has seen them can feel any squeamishness in eating St. Croix sugar, or molasses either. To look at a vat-full, a foot deep, just chrystalizing over the surface, and perfectly transparent to the bottom, would satisfy the most scrupulous upon this point. There is about twenty-five thousand black, and three thousand white population. Of course, it is seldom a white man is seen in ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... a long time to come, be at the service of what is false. But the true has great power, when it is free; the true endures; the false is ever changing and decays. Thus it is that the true, though only understood by a select few, always rises to the surface, and ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan

... been one of its busiest children: could he turn his back upon it for any charm or use that was in the past? Again that unnerving doubt, that paralysing distrust, beset him, and tempted him to curse the day in which he had returned to this outworn Old World. Idler on its modern surface, or delver in its deep-hearted past, could he reconcile himself to it? What did he care for the Italians of to-day, or the history of the Florentines as expressed in their architectural monuments? It was the problems of ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells

... commerce will feel with tremendous effect the blow which her prestige will experience when the first vessel, laden with foreign coal, weighs anchor in a British harbour. In the great coal lock-out of 1893, when, for the greater part of sixteen weeks scarcely a ton of coal reached the surface in some of her principal coal-fields, it was rumoured, falsely as it appeared, that a collier from America had indeed reached those shores, and the importance which attached to the supposed event was shown by the anxious references to it in the public press, where the truth or otherwise of ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin

... while suspicious; and, when she had waited fully two months, seeing that he did not return, she caused the broker to break open the store-rooms. And trying first of all the casks, she found them full of sea-water, save that in each there was perhaps a hog's-head of oil floating on the surface. Then undoing the bales, she found them all, save two that contained stuffs, full of tow, and in short their whole contents put together were not worth more than two hundred florins. Wherefore Jancofiore, knowing ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio

... the open country; not so clear, for other waters have come in upon him, and he is becoming useful, no longer turbulent,—travelling more contentedly; now he is navigable, craft of all kinds coming and going upon his surface forever; and then, as if by some gentle and great necessity, "deep and smooth, passing with a still foot and a sober face," he pays his last tribute to "the Fiscus, the great Exchequer, the sea,"—running out fresh, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... a horrid clang As on Mount Sinai rang,{43} While the red fire and smould'ring clouds out brake; The aged Earth, agast, With terrour of that blast, Shall from the surface to the center shake; When at the worlds last session{44} The dreadfull Judge in middle air shall spread ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin

... see a rat cleaning his whiskers at the water's edge. The deep places were rich with tangled weeds, and in them fishes lurked—to me they were big fishes—water-boatmen and water-beetles traversed the calm surface of these still deeps; in one pool were yellow lilies and water-soldiers, and in the shoaly places hovering fleets of small fry basked in the sunshine—to vanish in a flash at one's shadow. In one place, too, were Rapids, where the stream woke with a start from a dreamless brooding into foaming ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... to the foot of the hill, hobbled it, and took off his swag. He went up the hill again, filled his pan with earth, and washed it off at the nearest waterhole. He had struck it rich; the hill-side was sprinkled with gold, either on the surface or just below it. For two weeks there were only two parties at work on that hill, parties of one, but they did not form a partnership. The woman came every day, picking and scratching like an old hen, ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale

... father—who is not only her father, but the "father of the Marshalsea"—the prison blight is on all three. Her father especially is a piece of admirable character-drawing. Dickens has often been accused of only catching the surface peculiarities of his personages, their outward tricks, and obvious habits of speech and of mind. Such a study as Mr. Dorrit would alone be sufficient to rebut the charge. No novelist specially famed for dissecting character to its innermost recesses could exhibit ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials

... German consulate also is on the river-front. As in all Mahommedan cities, the mosques are conspicuous objects. Of these very few are old. The Marjanieh mosque, not far from the minaret of Mostansir, although its body is modern, has some remains of old and very rich arabesque work on its surface, dating from the 14th century. The door is formed by a lofty arch of the pointed form guarded on both sides with red bands exquisitely sculptured and having numerous inscriptions. The mosque of Khaseki, supposed ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... prepared to spend on your little garden in two. Lay out half in making good soil, and spend the rest on a limited range of hardy plants. If mother earth is well fed, and if you have got her deep down, and not a surface layer of half a foot on a substratum of builder's rubbish, she will take care of every plant you commit to her hold. I should give up the back of the borders (if the aspect is east or south) to a few very good "perpetual" ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... Maori blow-fly soars supreme. It is a colonizer with a vengeance. It does not go to the trouble of laying eggs or nits; it carries its family about ready hatched. The blow-fly is always ready, at a moment's notice, to deposit an incredible number of lively, hungry maggots upon any desirable surface. ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay

... steel plates which were first brought into notice by Father Hell, would cure gout, rheumatism, palsy, and in fact, almost every disease the human frame was subject to, if applied externally to the afflicted part, and moved about gently, touching the surface only. The most wonderful stories soon obtained general circulation, and the press groaned with pamphlets, all vaunting the curative effects of the tractors, which were sold at five guineas the pair. Perkins gained money rapidly. Gouty subjects forgot their pains in the presence of this new remedy; ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... sent word he had papers of little importance, apparently, but thought they might contain some secret advices; of course, a spy would not carry anything in writing that looked suspicious on the surface." ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner

... in equatorial seas— and to prompt, unquestioning action. Not many minutes elapsed before the Sunshine was under the smallest amount of sail she could carry. Even before this had been well accomplished a stiff breeze was tearing up the surface of the sea into wild foam, which a furious gale soon ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne

... is obvious that small tunnels for single lines, of the usual standard gauge, may be constructed some distance below the ground, and yet the atmosphere of such tunnels be as pure as upon a railway on the surface."—Illustrated London News, on the City & South ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various

... trusty fellow to guide thee, dear Adam; he will take thee through ways where thy brutal neighbours are not likely to meet and molest thee. Call all thy wits to the surface. Speed and prosper!" ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... cold to it; put it on the fire, and bring it to the boiling-point; then skim well. Put in the salt when the water boils, and simmer the beef tea gently from 1/2 to 3/4 hour, removing any more scum should it appear on the surface. Strain the tea through a hair sieve, and set it by in a cool place. When wanted for use, remove every particle of fat from the top; warm up as much as may be required, adding, if necessary, a little more salt. This preparation ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... when all things seem our wish to serve, Full opportunity may strike us dumb— May sink our precious thoughts in deep reserve, And to the surface bid the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various

... was the opportunity, Fouchette gave one terrified shriek as she went over the brink,—a shriek that pierced the river mists and reverberated from the stone walls and parapets and went ringing up and down the surface of ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray

... acquaintanceship, but in the name of all that is honorable, and all that is virtuous, why will you mix up a pretended act of benevolence to me with—you know what it means—a fraudulent scheme? You are determined that there shall be a rich vein below the surface. In plain words, if there is not, you want a false assay of the Lombard Deeps. That is the plain English of it, ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade

... daughter, he flung himself from the tent and tore across the lot as though pursued by demons. By the time he found Colonel Grand and David in the animal tent, however, his blind rage had dwindled to ugly resentment; the overwhelming shame his own child had brought to the surface shrank back into the narrow selfishness from which, ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon

... through every one of his works. His music has beauty, purity, and a delicate and noble simplicity which commends it to every hearer. His cassations, quartets and trios may be compared to a pure, clear stream of water, the surface now rippled by a gentle breeze from the south, and anon breaking into agitated billows, but without ever leaving its proper channel and appointed course. His symphonies are full of force and delicate sympathy. In his cantatas he shows himself at once ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden

... examination, went into every corner, tapped the walls and stared at the ceiling. The clean morning light showed its intricate pattern of interwoven circles converging from the walls to the centre, and so creating a sense of a lofty dome instead of a flat surface. In the centre was a boss of a conventional lily ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts

... yourself that these are true to the gem-law of the White Kingdom, if, when next the snow comes down, you look for the biggest flakes as they lie on some dark surface. You will find many patterns all of them beautiful, and all of them fashioned in accordance with ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson

... the head of the lake, over deep, clear water, we had been scraping and sweeping a large surface after every snow, in order to have clear ice. Two or three times a week Addison ran down and tested the thickness; and when it reached fifteen inches, we bestirred ourselves at our ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens

... at Matagalpa, the capital of the province of the same name. The town contains about three thousand inhabitants; the province, or department, about thirty thousand. Matagalpa is built close to the river, on a rocky surface, with stony knolls rising up in some parts amongst the houses. It contains three churches, and the usual large square or plaza. Around, the country appeared very dry and barren, and there is scarcely any cultivation in ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... organic plasticity, but the visibility which appertains to painting has its differences on a more ideal level, in the particular kinds of color; and thus painting frees art from the sensuous completeness in space peculiar to material things only, by confining itself to a plane surface. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... seen at Cardiff the other day. The suggestion that there are two Lloyd Georges has caused consternation among the German Headquarters Staff. But we are not exempt from troubles and anxieties in England. The bones of a woolly rhinoceros have been dug up twenty-three feet below the surface at High Wycombe, and very strong language has been used in the locality concerning this gross example of food-hoarding. The weather, too, has been behaving oddly. On one day of Eastertide there was an inch of snow in Liverpool, ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch

... were a globe, the distance round the surface, say, at 45 degrees south latitude, could not possibly be any greater than the same latitude north; but since it is found by navigators to be twice the distance—to say the least of it—or double the distance it ought to be according ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton

... the Rowski's helmet bore off the coronet, the horns, the helmet itself, and hurled them to an incredible distance: a piece of the Rowski's left ear was carried off on the point of the nameless warrior's weapon. How had he fared? His adversary's weapon had glanced harmless along the blank surface of his polished buckler; and the victory so far was ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... existed too, but ere it could come up from his deep nature to the surface, it must freeze and stiffen into monumental scorn —a laughter that seemed, while mocking at all things else, to mock at its own mockery most of all. Aird speaks in his 'Demoniac,' of a ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... sea, I am told, touched the massive walls of Brouage. There are still to be seen, several feet below the surface, rings to which mariners and fishermen moored their boats—they who used to come to Brouage for salt with which to cure their fish, they whose stories of the Newfoundland cod-banks stirred in the boy Champlain the desire ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... this stubbornness peculiar to the ancient Saxons, combined with the absence of large cities, has perpetuated the original character of Germania. All governments and powers have merely skimmed over the surface here; they have perhaps been able to break off the tops of the various growths, but not to destroy their roots, from which fresh shoots have ever sprouted up again, even though they may no longer close ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... Hircan, "are nearer to salvation than you are, for we do not conceal our fruits, and so the root is readily known; whereas you, who dare not display the fruit, and who do so many seemingly fair deeds, are hardly aware of the root of pride that is growing beneath so brave a surface." ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... fish too," Take said. And she ran to the kitchen where the maids were preparing breakfast. She came back with some white rice wafers in her fingers. First she threw some tiny bits of the wafer into the water. The fish saw them and came to the surface. Then Take reached down and held the wafer in her fingers. The little fish came all about her hand and nibbled the wafer without fear. One of them even ...
— THE JAPANESE TWINS • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... selfishness had struck very deep—would desire a wedding that would make a noise in the world, and would not be satisfied with a bride in a severely simple white dress and a complete absence of all display. But it seemed as if all that was good in his character had been brought to the surface by a marriage which his club-friends chuckled over as so absolutely unexceptionable from a worldly point of view. For almost the first time in his life he was a little ashamed of his worldliness. His marriage with Nan Pynsent was making—or so he thought—everything easy for him! ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... exhausted the list, and objected to this one as having a head voice, or to that as using the vibrato, or to the other as dwelling on an upper note ("queer sort of existence," says PULLER, gradually coming up, as it were to the surface to open his mouth for breath,—whereat Cousin JANE smiles, and Miss CASANOVA lazily nods approbation of the joke—while the rest of us ignore PULLER, putting him aside as not wanted just now,—when down he goes again), we generally agree that GAYARRE is about the best tenor we have had in ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various

... evolving heat, and extending from slow processes, such as those by which the heat of the human body is maintained, to the processes producing the most intense light also, as in a blast-furnace, or on the surface of the sun. Fire is always attended with light, as well as heat; blaze, flame, etc., designate the mingled light and heat of a fire. Combustion is the scientific, fire the popular term. A conflagration is an extensive ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... still to listen, but for a minute or two the sound which had caught Hugh's attention was not repeated. Everything about them was silent, except that now and then a soft faint breeze seemed to flutter across the water, slightly rippling its surface as it passed. The strange, even light which had shone over all the scene ever since the children had stepped out at the hillside door had now grown paler: it was not now bright enough to distinguish more than can be seen by an autumn twilight. The air was fresh and clear, though ...
— The Tapestry Room - A Child's Romance • Mrs. Molesworth

... bottle, he passed his hand tenderly over its crusted surface, paused for an instant to examine the cork, and held it closer to the light that he might note its condition. There he stood musing, his mind far away, his fingers caressing its sides. All the aroma of the past; all the splendor of the old regime—all its good-fellowship, hospitality, and courtesy—that ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith

... at dawn of morning Praying comes to Ganges' waters, Bends her o'er the glassy surface— Sudden, in the waves reflected, Flying swiftly far above her, From the highest heavens descending, She discerns the beauteous form Of a youth divine, created By the God's primeval wisdom In ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe

... were they living? We have only to read the letters written by Sidonius during the period between 460 and 470, when he was living on his estate in Auvergne, to realize that on the surface all is going on exactly as before. Gaul is shrunk, it is true, to a mere remnant between three barbarian kingdoms, but save for that we might be back in the days of Ausonius. There is the luxurious villa, with its hot baths and swimming pool, its suites ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power

... You can see for yourself, Varvara Petrovna, that there is a misunderstanding here, and much that is strange on the surface, and yet the thing's as clear as daylight, and as simple as my finger. I quite understand that no one has authorised me to tell the story, and I dare say I look ridiculous putting myself forward. But in the first place, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch attaches no sort of significance ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... heavy one, but I must admit that in spite of my tears I felt a deep inward peace, for I had made every effort in my power to respond to the appeal of my Divine Master. This peace, however, dwelt in the depths of my soul—on the surface all was bitterness; and Jesus was silent—absent it would seem, for nothing revealed ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)

... White with the promise of a bounteous yield, Across the late shorn meadow—down the hill, Red with the tiger-lily blossoms, till We stood upon the borders of the lake, That like a pretty, placid infant, slept Low at its base: and little ripples crept Along its surface, just as dimples chase Each other o'er ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... the passage of small nerve twigs, and enters the epithelial cell layer. The fluid finds its way between the epithelial cells in the deeper layers, apparently being taken into some of the superficial cells by imbibition. Some of the swollen surface cells open spontaneously and discharge their contents, others drop off. The process causes a roughening of the surface of the cornea and produces a faint haziness. There is another form of haziness that develops on sudden rise in tension and completely disappears on subsidence of the tension. ...
— Glaucoma - A Symposium Presented at a Meeting of the Chicago - Ophthalmological Society, November 17, 1913 • Various

... account of their size, all differences of this nature having been removed in 1828. By the new bill, however, this distinction was restored, an additional duty being imposed on every newspaper containing more than a certain number of square inches of surface. Government was accused of having so selected the particular number of inches, as to impose the additional duty on some of the most influential journals opposed to them, while it did not apply to their supporters. This imputation was repelled by the chancellor of the exchequer; but it ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... complexity in illustration and imagery and metaphor; and in contrast with it we observe a latent simplicity of idea, an almost rude strength of conception. The underlying thoughts are few, though the flowers on the surface are so many. We have likewise the perpetual contrast of the soft poetry of the memory, and the firm—as it were, fused—and glowing poetry of the imagination. His words, we may half fancifully say, are like his character: there is ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... her journey, threw herself down by the side of the brook and plunged her face into its cool and sparkling waters. Then she lifted her head and carried the water to her lips in the palm of her dainty hand, and as she drank beheld the image of her face on the surface of a quiet little pool. Small wonder that she stooped to kiss the red lips which were mirrored there! So did the fair Greek maidens discover and pay tribute to their own loveliness, in ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... sweeter, and fattens them more quickly, though it does not put them in such good fettle. The rock here is all white sandstone, and thinly overlaps an enormous bed of coal, cropping up from beneath the water-washed surface. At this time of year there are very few beasts or birds of any sort to be seen, though in the winter the veldt is one moving mass of ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard

... man is called to a case of sudden death, he should carefully note anything likely to throw any light on the cause of death. He should notice the place where the body was found, the position and attitude of the body, the soil or surface on which the body lies, the position of surrounding objects, and the condition of the clothes. He should also notice if there are any signs of a struggle having taken place, if the hands are clenched, if the face is distorted, ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson

... vital principle of the Republican party. In his satisfaction at the only triumph of his administration, the management of the finances and the purchase of a province without a ripple on the even surface of national finance, he gave up the very basis of the Republican theory, the reduction of the government to its possible minimum, and actually proposed a system of administration coextensive with the national domain, ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens

... the air. On every side appeared the majestic summits of the Pyrenees, some exhibiting tremendous crags of marble, whose appearance was changing every instant, as the varying lights fell upon their surface; others, still higher, displaying only snowy points, while their lower steeps were covered almost invariably with forests of pine, larch, and oak, that stretched down to the vale. This was one of the narrow vallies, that open from the Pyrenees into the country of Rousillon, and whose green ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... and disorder had come to the surface at last. Committees were formed, with the avowed object of yielding to the Invisible Emperor, and averting further disaster. In Washington, a city of the dead, half the members of Congress and the Senators had gathered in the ruined ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various

... from it towards the earth. The meteor pursued him, till he came within a spear's cast of the ground, when Gharib leaped from his shoulders and the fiery shaft overtook the Marid, who became a heap of ashes. As for Gharib, he fell into the sea and sank two fathoms deep, after which he rose to the surface and swam for two days and two nights, till his strength failed him and he made certain of death. But, on the third day as he was despairing he caught sight of an island steep and mountainous; so he swam for it ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton

... of a form of fiction, is to be detected an added interest in personality for its own sake. During the eighteenth century, commonly described as the Teacup Times, an age of powder and patches, of etiquette, epigram and surface polish, there developed a keener sense of the value of the individual, of the sanctity of the ego, a faint prelude to the note that was to become so resonant in the nineteenth century, sounding through all ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... his energies, walked straight up to the crucible, drew it out of the furnace and looked in. The gold was all melted, and its surface as smooth and polished as a river; but instead of its reflecting little Gluck's head, as he looked in, he saw meeting his glance, from beneath the gold, the red nose and the sharp eyes of his old friend of the mug, a thousand times redder and sharper than ever ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various

... smoothed half of a coconut shell, is to use it as a rat-guard, to shed off rats from our strings of dried fruit hanging from the roof. As the rat comes down the rattan rope, the halved coconut shell tips, and down he falls from its smooth surface, to the floor, and ...
— Fil and Filippa - Story of Child Life in the Philippines • John Stuart Thomson

... took the box, and opening it carefully took out a metal disk with a handle attached. One side was bright and shining like a crystal, and the other was covered with raised figures of pine-trees and storks, which had been carved out of its smooth surface in lifelike reality. Never had she seen such a thing in her life, for she had been born and bred in the rural province of Echigo. She gazed into the shining disk, and looking up with surprise and wonder pictured on her face, ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki

... their thick and branching crowns; and under each was an oasis of grass and bushes, gayly colored by the fallen leaves. These trees, the dwelling-places of countless birds, alone broke the monotonous surface of the plain—these, and at the verge of the horizon, on all sides, the dark forest mentioned above. The sky was gray, the ground colorless, the trees and bushes that bordered the brook were bare, and the forest, with its promontories ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... was disappointingly like what would happen to two ships destroyed in shallow water. The masts of the Cumberland, slightly off the vertical and still rigged, projected for half their length from the yellow surface of the river. That was all. Some distance to the left and half submerged was a blackened and charred mass that bore some resemblance to a ship that had once been proud and tall, and known by the name of Congress. That was all. Aladdin ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris

... Godfrey, gazing in astonishment at the bubbles on the surface of the water, which marked the spot where David had gone down. "Who'd a thought he would a jumped into the Bayou sooner nor take a leetle trouncin'? He's gettin' to be a powerful bad boy, Dave is, an' I had oughter ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon

... that these sills were not laid by men at all, but by the Dwarfs. As evidence of this folklore tale, it is pointed out that these logs have the mark of a rough turtle burned on their under surface like the turtle cut on the great stones in the mountains. And men differ about what wood they are of, some declaring them to be oak and others sugar, and still others a strange wood of which the stumps only are now found in the Hills. It is true that no mark of axe ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post

... what manner we should dispose of ourselves. We had been told of sledges and rein-deer to carry us over the snow in the winter season, the snow being frozen so hard, that the sledges can run upon the surface without any danger of going down. As I was bound to England, I now behoved either to go with the caravan to Jerosaw, from thence west to Marva, and the gulph of Finland, and so by land or sea to Denmark; or else I must leave the caravan ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe

... criminate himself. You shot him to save my life, at the very moment when you first learned all his cruelty and his vileness. The rest of the world could never be made to understand all that. They'd say to the end, as it looks on the surface, 'She shot her father to save ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen

... thought flung back into Earth's history. Like this, ancient travelers of the surface of the sea were herded by pirates to walk the plank, or put ashore, marooned upon some fair desert island of the tropic ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various

... roots, yet so very light that a woman can carry them with ease. She takes one of these canoes into a pond where the water is as high as the breast, and by means of her toes separates from the root this bulb, which on being freed from the mud rises immediately to the surface of the water, and is thrown into the canoe. In this manner these patient females remain in the water for several hours, even in the depth of winter. This plant is found through the whole extent of the valley in which we now are, but does not grow on ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks

... over the pinkest of calicoes; when the flowery curtains had been tied back with blue ribbons; when the china vases on the mantelpiece had been filled with nodding plumes of dyed grasses, mostly of a rosy red; and a long glass in a somewhat damaged condition, but still presenting enough surface to enable Miss Louie to study herself therein from top to toe, had been propped against the wall; there was and could be nothing in the neighbourhood of Potter Street, so John reflected, as he furtively looked about him, to vie with the splendours of Miss Grieve's apartment. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... mounted on a tricycle, to which the name of "electric horse" has been given, and which, running on the towing path, takes its current from an air line consisting of two wires, mounted five meters (nearly 17 feet) above the surface. This "horse," which weighs two tons, and is guided by a driver mounted upon it through the front wheel, proceeds on the towing path like a traction engine; and the boats are connected with it by a rope, with automatic disengaging ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various

... cleared away like the darkness of night before the sun as I saw the reality. I should probably have discovered much lurking misery, the consequence of ignorant oppression, no doubt, had I had time to inquire into particulars; but it did not stalk abroad and infect the surface over which my eye glanced. Yes, I am persuaded that a considerable degree of general knowledge pervades this country, for it is only from the exercise of the mind that the body acquires the activity from which I drew these inferences. Indeed, the King of Denmark's German dominions—Holstein—appeared ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft

... palaces and other great buildings he sees to-day rest on an earlier and invisible city buried in dust beneath the foundations of the Rome of the Twentieth Century. In like manner, and because all visible things on the surface of the earth have grown out of older things which have ceased to be, the world of habits, the ideas, customs, fancies, and arts, in which we live is a survival of a younger world which long ago disappeared. When we speak of Friday as an unlucky ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various

... details of the orphans, and the consultation over them seemed to be prolonged by her because, even now, she could not resolve to go below the surface. It lasted until her father came to ask whether she were ready to go with him to Mrs. Poynsett's sitting-room. She looked very fragile and childish as she stood up, clinging to his arm to help her wavering, ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... twice-trodden ground and entered upon the mountain road. It was hardly a road; in some places a beaten track was visible, in others Mr. Carleton wondered how his little companion found her way, where nothing but fresh-fallen leaves and scattered rocks and stones could be seen, covering the whole surface. But her foot never faltered, her eye read way- marks where he saw none; she went on, he did not doubt unerringly, over the leaf-strewn and rock-strewn way, over ridge and hollow, with a steady light swiftness that he could ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell

... water-gruel in an almshouse.... Was Thomas Paine here to-day his old remedies, religious and political popular free discussion and reasoning, would be thrown aside or only used to assist science and art to displace them in religious and state affairs." Truth will come to the surface! Here it is speaking for itself. The office of "art-liberty," the liberty for which infidels plead, is to destroy popular free discussion and reasoning, allowing them only in order to destroy themselves, that is, allowing the infidels to use them to ...
— The Christian Foundation, March, 1880

... seriously to vitiate his reasoning with regard to primary qualities. With admirable perspicuity he shows[34] how it is that our notions of primary qualities are formed; how the mind, by localising on distinct points of the sensory surface of the body its various, tactile sensations, obtains the idea of extension, or space in two dimensions, of figure, number, and motion: how the power, combined with consciousness of the power, of moving the hand in all directions over any substance it is in contact with, ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... double paddle, the ends of which were painted in gay colours, or emblazoned with the owner's crest. But Mr. Verdant Green, with a due regard for his own preservation from drowning, was content with looking at these cranky canoes, as they flitted, like gaudy dragon-flies, over the surface of the water. ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... the distemper seized upon his whole body, and greatly disordered all its parts with various symptoms; for there was a gentle fever upon him, and an intolerable itching over all the surface of his body, and continual pains in his colon, and dropsical turnouts about his feet, and an inflammation of the abdomen, and a putrefaction of his privy member, that produced worms. Besides which he had a difficulty of breathing upon him, and could ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus

... there a few rocks lifted their heads; you might have thought them gigantic animals couchant on the dunes. Along the coast were reefs, around which the water foamed and sparkled, giving them the appearance of great white roses, floating on the liquid surface or resting on the shore. Seeing this barren tract with the ocean on one side, and on the other the arm of the sea which runs up between Croisic and the rocky shore of Guerande, at the base of which lay the salt marshes, denuded ...
— A Drama on the Seashore • Honore de Balzac

... be more than three parts filled with the articles pickled, which should be covered with pickle at least two inches above their surface; the liquor wastes, and all of the articles pickled, that are not covered, ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... the strong, healthy young folk little heeded the surface mud or the lanes. Even Dolores when she heard her father's name in the reminiscences,' was interested for a time, and was always hoping that the others would fly off and leave her to her uncle; but she was much less used to country mud and stout boots than the others, and she had been very much ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Follett would flicker his hook over the surface of a shaded pool, poise it at the foot of a ripple, skim it across an eddy, cast it under a shelf of rock or dangle it in some promising nook by the willow roots, shielding himself meanwhile as best he ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson

... "But if you wish, I will try again." Much puzzled by this sudden request, the two fishermen pulled toward deep water. The people on the shore watched them put up the oars; the boat drifted slowly in the wind. The two men lowered the net. It had hardly sunk below the surface of the water when the fishermen knew that they had dropped it directly in the path of a great school of fish. Startled into action, they pulled desperately at the net, but it was too heavy. The cords began to break. In great excitement Andrew stood up and shouted to James, ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith

... is built to unite properly,—this triple construction of the jaw being an echo of ancestral fishlike and reptilian times when our jaws were built in five pieces to permit of wide distention in the act of swallowing our prey alive. All over the surface of the body are to be found innumerable little sebaceous glands originally intended to lubricate hairs, which have now atrophied and disappeared. These useless scraps, under various forms of irritation, both external and internal, become inflamed and give rise to pimples, ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... only a sort of accidental connexion with the material in which his thought was expressed. He is fancied to have been disdainful of such matters as the mere tone, the fibre or texture, of his marble or cedar-wood, of that just perceptible yellowness, for instance, in the ivory-like surface of the Venus of Melos; as being occupied only with forms as abstract almost as the conceptions of philosophy, and translateable it might be supposed into any material—a habit of regarding him still further ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... situation is that the sordid banality and ugly tragedy of their lot do not dawn on the people concerned. Greedy vanity in the more robust, lack of moral courage and firmness in the more sensitive, with a social organisation that aims at a surface dignity and a cheap showiness, are the ingredients of this devil's cauldron. The worst of it is that it has no fine elements at all. There is a nobility about real tragedy which evokes a quality of passionate and sincere emotion. ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson

... (seas and oceans), and let the dry land appear'." The contraction of the cooling earth caused the elevation of the land, and the draining of the waters into the seas. The geologist Lyell says, "All land has been under water." Hitchcock says, "The surface of the globe has been a shoreless ocean." "And the earth brought forth grass, herb yielding seed after its kind, and tree bearing fruit, wherein is the seed thereof, after its kind." Though the sun was not yet visible on account of dense clouds and vapors, the warm, humid ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams

... the snow and the black rim of the crater. Up this ice climbed de Garcia, and the task is not of the easiest, even for one of untroubled mind, for a man must step from crack to crack or needle to needle of rough ice, that stand upon the smooth surface like the bristles on a hog's back, and woe to him if one break or if he slip, for then, as he falls, very shortly the flesh will be filed from his bones by the thousands of sword-like points over which he must pass in his ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard

... terrible shriek; the man running beside me, who knew something of the country, cried out "A cockpit!" in accents of horror and stopped short. But the agonizing cries of the poor wretch who was sinking inch by inch into the horrible hole whose treacherous surface had beguiled him were more than I could endure. 'Twas not a death for the foulest villain on earth. Heedless of the warning shouts of my crew, I dashed forward, hoping to reach Vetch in time to rescue him ere he ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... are laid in hollows of the rocks, which are then adorned with drawings of birds, hands, and so forth. The hands are always painted white or yellowish on a red ground. The other figures are drawn with chalk on the weathered surface of the rock. But the natives either cannot or will not give any explanation ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... society. In outward form and institutions the manifestation of God has indeed undergone great changes; for it has existed successively under the patriarchal, the Mosaic, and the Christian dispensations. But if we look beneath the surface to the substance of religion in these different dispensations, we shall find it always the same. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Moses, Samuel, and David, is also the God of our Lord Jesus Christ. While he changes from time to time the outward ordinances of his people, he ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... he. "I know it. It's written in your face." He looked at her. She was not looking at him, but with eyes gazing straight ahead was revealing that latent, inexplicable power which, when it appeared at the surface, so strongly dominated and subordinated her beauty and her sex. He shut his teeth together ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips

... perpetually falling down these same stairways, or sliding gracefully or otherwise off the corridors in a heap, will always be a mystery to me. Yet, with the unimportant exception of sitting down occasionally to put on my boots, somewhat harder than I meant, I remember few such mishaps. It was not the surface that was unwilling; for the constant scuffle of stocking feet has given the passageways a polish ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell



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