"Tapering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Rillage, and now Hillsborough, two of the most picturesque of headlands; see how their round foreheads of glistening grey shale sink down into two dark, jagged moles, running far out to seaward, and tapering off, each into a long black horizontal line, vanishing at last beneath its lace-fringe of restless hissing foam. How grand the contrast of the lightness of those sea-lines, with the solid mass which rests upon them! Look, too, at the glaring lights and Tartarean shadows ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... enters your open windows with the morning sunshine; its branches, always tending upward, closely gathered together, and slenderly formed, afford a harbor to the singing-birds, who revel among them as a favorite resort; and its long tapering spire, that points to heaven, gives an air of cheerfulness and religious ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... more prosperous and happy havens than belong to this too substantial world. Each sketches out the boat of his desire, and fits her with wondrous comfort and conveniences. He glances, approving head thrown back, up her tall, tapering, well-oiled masts, silver-topped with golden trucks. He paints her in rival colours, rigs her with silken sails, names her after a sweetheart, and sails away to lands fairer than any of the isles of the Pacific—those ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... we may call a lengthened oval, tapering off at the head and tail, which were under the water, only part of the scaly back being exposed to ...
— The Wizard of the Sea - A Trip Under the Ocean • Roy Rockwood
... parallel stripes on each shoulder. Of these four stripes the posterior one was very minute and faint; the anterior one, on the other hand, was long and broad, but interrupted in the middle, and truncated at its lower extremity, with the anterior angle produced into a long tapering point. I mention this latter fact because the shoulder-stripe of the ass occasionally presents exactly the same appearance. I have had an outline and description sent to me of a small, purely-bred, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... and went again among the dark trees of the forest, and soon his ear caught the sweet strains, as he drew near they became more beautiful; he listened till he learned them and could make the same sweet sound, then he knew that it was a plant with a tall green stem and long tapering leaves. He took his knife and cut the stalk, but ere he had scarcely finished, it healed and was the same as before; he cut it again, and again it healed. Then he knew it would heal diseases, he took it home, dried it by the fire, pulverized it, and applied a few particles ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... her by the hand, but on the way he saw at the edge of her upper veil the thick, dark eyebrows which met each other, and her fingers seemed to him so strangely cold and tapering that a shudder ran through his frame ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... subdued. Him, to the front advancing, in the breast, By the right nipple, Ajax struck; right through, From front to back, the brass-tipp'd spear was driv'n, Out through the shoulder; prone in dust he fell; As some tall poplar, grown in marshy mead, Smooth-stemm'd, with branches tapering tow'rd the head; Which with the biting axe the wheelwright fells, To bend the felloes of his well-built car; Sapless, beside the river, lies the tree; So lay the youthful Simoisius, felled By godlike Ajax' hand. At him, in turn, The son of Priam, Antiphus, ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... right hand; with this they beat on the spear, as an accompaniment to their own voices in songs, that varied both as to time and measure, especially the latter; yet their voices, and the sounds produced from the rude instruments, which differed according to the place on which the tapering spear was struck, appeared to accord very well. Having engaged us a short time in this vocal performance, the court ladies made their appearance, and were received with shouts of the greatest applause. The musicians retired a few paces, ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... the proud, patrician face was pure as some bending lily frozen on its graceful, rounded stem: and the tapering fingers with daintily curved, polished nails would have suited better the lace and velvet of royal robes than the rough home-spun sleeves folded back ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... was first fixed by the strange contrast between his massive jaw and short neck which spoke the physical strength of an ox, and the slender gracefully tapering fingers of his small hand. The wrist was small, the fingers almost feminine in ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... found in the Vivarais Cave bear traces of having been violently fractured by stone weapons with tapering points. In the Challes Cave (Savoy) lies the skeleton of a woman whose skull was fractured by a flint weapon, but in this case death was evidently immediate, at least if we may judge from the fact that there are no signs of the wound having received any treatment. In the Castellet Cave, a human ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... two, is one of the prettiest of public walks, ten feet wide, having rows of trees on each side, and terminating in a point; being the end of a splendid granite wall, at its base thirty feet thick, and tapering to half the thickness, dividing the natural from the artificial stream. Here we come to a point of great interest: on the right is an artificial dam across the river, with two sharp lines at an angle of sixty-seven degrees, the point meeting the stream, thus stopping ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... nodded so vigorously as to bring the black curls down over his face; his laughter was ringing and hearty, and merriment found added expression in the doubling up of his body and the shaking of his hand. His hands were small, with sensitive, tapering fingers, and when playing the fingers acted as if endowed with separate life and intelligence. There was no effeminacy connected with his lovable nature; he was quick to resent meanness or deceit, or wrong-doing of any kind. His anger was exceedingly ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... and story had excited our interest ever since the ship came into the port. He was a delicate, slender little fellow, with a beautiful pearly complexion, regular features, forehead as white as marble, black haired, curling beautifully, rounded, tapering, delicate fingers, small feet, soft voice, gentle manners, and, in fact, every sign of having been well born and bred. At the same time there was something in his expression which showed a slight deficiency of intellect. How great ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... not care to say much about radishes; I do not like them. They are, however, universal favorites. They come round, half- long, long and tapering; white, red, white-tipped, crimson, rose, yellow-brown and black; and from the size of a button to over a foot long by fifteen inches in circumference—the latter being the new Chinese or Celestial. So you can imagine what a revel of varieties the seedsmen may indulge ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... sexual excitement. A remarkable part of the reproductive system in many of the true Helicidae is the so-called dart, Liebespfeil, or telum Veneris. It consists of a straight or curved, sometimes slightly twisted, tubular shaft of carbonate of lime, tapering to a fine point above, and enlarging gradually, more often somewhat abruptly, to the base. The sides of the shaft are sometimes furnished with two or more blades; these are apparently not for cutting purposes, but simply to brace the stem. The dart is contained ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... most delicate whiteness. Although it was so hot, he did not perspire visibly, while I had to keep mopping my face. His hands are large and massive, but in perfect proportion to the arms; the fingers long, strong, white, and tapering to a blunt end. His nails are square, showing about an eighth of an inch separate from the flesh, and I noticed that there was not a particle of impurity beneath any of them. But his majesty is concentrated in his head, which is set with leonine grace and dignity upon his ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... wear the pantalon collant, which is a most unbecoming and trying costume, being of black cloth fitting very tight and tapering down to the ankle, where it finishes abruptly with a button. Any one with a protruding ankle and thin ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... body, indigo blue, of a darkish tinge; down the centre of the back a white streak, terminating at the root of the tail; sides blue, tail blue, quite white underneath, its belly altogether resembling that of a frog; tail tapering to a point. ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... woman, with an aristocratic nose, large dark eyes, hair caught back by tortoise-shell combs under a peculiar head-dress, having a gleam of gold directly on the top. Her gown was of dark green, with white puffs let into the sleeves below the elbows; around her tapering waist was a narrow belt of jewels; the front of her corsage was also trimmed with jewels. But the most distinctive feature of her costume consisted in a floating scarf of old-rose, worn like the frontispiece lady in ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... count as one. I remember also the little triangular tin candlesticks that we inserted at the base of each of the very small panes of the window when we illuminated the hotel on special nights. I distinctly recall the quivering of the full glasses of jelly on tapering disks ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... cable standard became a striking fact in urban landscape, for the most part stout iron erections rather like tapering trestles, and painted a bright bluish green. One, it happened, bestrode Tom's house, which looked still more retiring and apologetic beneath its immensity; and another giant stood just inside the corner of his garden, which was ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... the usual way, except that the heels are lowered a little and the frog remains untouched. A shoe, called a "tip," is made by cutting off both branches at the center of the foot and drawing the ends down to an edge. The tapering of the branches should begin at the toe, and the shoe should be of the usual width, with both the upper and lower surfaces flat. This tip is to be fastened on with six or eight small nails, all set well forward, two being in the toe. With a common ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... face,—a most impressive face. If you could fancy some mighty serpent transformed into man, preserving in the human lineaments the old serpent type, you would have a better idea of that countenance than long descriptions can convey: the width and flatness of frontal; the tapering elegance of contour disguising the strength of the deadly jaw; the long, large, terrible eye, glittering and green as the emerald,—and withal a certain ruthless calm, as if from the consciousness ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... oesophagus can be contracted to such an extent as to form a complete diaphragm bisecting the stomach. Messrs. Miall and Greenwood say: "The stomach is smooth, externally elongate, and nearly straight. The cardiac end is much prolonged and tapering. A number of transverse, nearly circular, folds project inwards from the cardiac wall; they almost disappear when the stomach is greatly distended, and are at all times too shallow to serve as water-cells, though they have been figured and described ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... of the Rocky Mountain sheep of America, except they are much larger. They spring up from the forehead, tilt backward, then boldly curve below the muzzle, before finally again pointing upward and tapering into a sharp and delicate point. They are hollow, though exceedingly stout and elastic, and strengthened on the outside by a number of ridges or horny rings set very close together. They are found ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... if they weathered such persecution as this, perhaps these may; but I could not stand it, I!—Do you know (with great awe) there are dungeons called Hippocrates' Sleeves, the walls of which slope like the inside of a funnel tapering to a point, so that those who are put inside them can neither lie, sit, nor stand? They are let down into them with cords, and drawn up ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... she admired in the mirror her freshly-budded breasts, her supple waist, her arms, a trifle slender, round and tapering, and her smooth, beautiful knees; and, seeing all this subservient to the fine art of comedy, she became animated and exalted; a slight flush, like rouge, tinted ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... went and on, till Foy, tired out, nearly fell asleep at his oar. Suddenly Martha tapped him on the shoulder. He looked up and there, not two hundred yards away, its tapering mast showing dimly against the sky, was the vessel that had pursued them from The Hague, a single lantern burning on its stern. Martha looked and grunted; then she leant forward ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... with the tapering rods and rattling reels of modern days, fishers never become fully aware of the strength of salmon, unless, indeed, a hitch in their line occurs, and everything snaps! It was otherwise about the beginning of the sixteenth century. ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... point between the Eastern Forest and Western Forest Temples, beneath the Incense-Burner Peak, I was enamoured by the unequalled prospect of cloud-girt waters and spray-clad rocks. Unable to leave this place, I built a cottage here. Before it stand ten tall pines and a thousand tapering bamboos. With green creepers I fenced my garden; with white stones I made bridge and path. Flowing waters encircle my home; flying spray falls between the eaves. Red pomegranate and white lotus cluster on the steps of the pond. All is after this pattern, though I cannot here name each delight. ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various
... us, as we entered the great court, was the peculiar South Russian taste for filling in the line of roof between the numerous domes with curving pediments and tapering turned-wood spirelets surmounted by golden stars and winged seraphs' heads surrounded by rays. The effect of so many points of gold against the white of the walls, combined with the gold of the crosses, the high tints of the external frescoes, and the gold ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... resemble those seen in the lower animals, differing, if at all, but slightly. They are hard, solid, dry and somewhat brittle; usually tapering, and may be either straight, curved or crooked. Their surface is rough, irregular, laminated or fissured, the ends pointed, blunt or clubbed. The color varies; it is usually grayish-yellow, but may be even blackish. As commonly seen they are small in size, a fraction of an inch or an inch or thereabouts ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... with me? I suffer the agonies of death! And this is all the comfort you give me! Ah! you men, it is plainly seen that nature has not given you the task of bringing children into the world. What egoists and tyrants you are! You take us in all the beauty of our youth, fresh, rosy, with tapering waist, and then all is well! When your pleasures have ruined the blooming gifts which we received from nature, you never forgive us for having forfeited them to you! That was all understood. You will allow us to have neither the virtues nor the sufferings of our condition. ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... town is sweet to see; full of fine maples—long avenues of green and gold. And in August, high in air, the beautiful and bountiful horse-chestnuts, candelabra-wise, proffer the passer-by their tapering upright cones of congregated blossoms. So omnipotent is art; which in many a district of New Bedford has superinduced bright terraces of flowers upon the barren refuse rocks thrown aside at ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... revelations of her sister-in-law and her husband she had come to seem to me almost a sinister personage. Yet the signs of a sombre fanaticism were not more immediately striking in her than before; it was only after a while that her air of incorruptible conformity, her tapering monosyllabic correctness, began to affect me as in themselves a cold thin flame. Certainly, at first, she resembled a woman with as few passions as possible; but if she had a passion at all it would indeed be that of Philistinism. She might have been (for there are ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... it was rare to meet with one that small. At first I thought a waist that tapered from the arm pits would be an added beauty, if only these ladies would be taught how to acquire it. But I lived long enough among them to look upon a tapering waist as a disgusting deformity. They considered a large waist a mark of beauty, as it gave a greater capacity of lung power; and they laid the greatest stress upon the size and health of the lungs. One little lady, not above five feet in height, I saw draw ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... nothing more, but rummaged among the riff-raff on an upper shelf. He got down with the tapering, translucent, wicked-looking thing in his hand. "I reckon ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... conical top compartment, a room scarcely fifteen feet in diameter, tapering sharply upward to a hollow point some twenty feet above them. The true shape of the room, however, was not immediately apparent, because of the enormous latticed beams and girders which braced the walls in every direction. The air glowed with the ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... that the hand-writing compensated for the hands; and as she attached great importance to blood and race, that she did not live to read Byron's "thoroughbred and tapering fingers," or to be shocked by his theory that "the hand is almost the only sign of blood which aristocracy can generate." Her Bath friend appeals to a miniature (engraved for this work) by Roche, of Bath, taken when she was in her ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... the French airmen, and which is extremely deadly when hurled against dense masses of men, is the steel arrow, or "flechette" as it is called. It is a fiendish projectile consisting in reality of a pencil of solid polished steel, 4 3/4 inches in length. The lower end has a sharp tapering point, 5/8ths of an inch in length. For a distance of 1 1/8th of an inch above this point the cylindrical form of the pencil is preserved, but for the succeeding three inches to the upper end, the pencil is provided with four equally spaced angle flanges or vanes. This ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... exhausted by incessant weeping, his limbs began to be changed into a green colour, and the hair, which but lately hung from his snow-white forehead, to become a rough bush, and, a stiffness being assumed, to point to the starry heavens with a tapering top. The God {Phoebus} lamented deeply, and in his sorrow he said, "Thou shalt be mourned by me, and shalt mourn for others, and shalt {ever} attend upon those who ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... in regal pride, but her eyes were the wide dark eyes of a fawn, fear-haunted, at the gaze. Her throat and shoulders gleamed white as starlight while her tapering arms would have urged an envious sigh from a Phidias or a David. Her gown of silk was snow white; the light clung to its watered woof waving and trembling in its folds as though upon a frosted glass. Diagonally from right to left across her breast descended a great red ribbon ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... the other bank, We enter'd on a forest, where no track Of steps had worn a way. Not verdant there The foliage, but of dusky hue; not light The boughs and tapering, but with knares deform'd And matted thick: fruits there were none, but thorns Instead, with venom fill'd. Less sharp than these, Less intricate the brakes, wherein abide Those animals, that hate the cultur'd fields, Betwixt ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... survive in us still, for the arterial and nervous systems are trees, the roots of one in the heart, of the other in the brain. Has not our body its trunk, bearing aloft the head, like a flower: a cup to hold the precious juices of the brain? Has not that trunk its tapering limbs which ramify into hands and feet, and these into fingers and toes, after the manner of the twigs and ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... leaves: I. four outer perigone leaves (sepals) (F), small, green, pointed leaves traversed by three simple veins, and together forming the calyx; II. four larger, white, inner perigone leaves (petals) (G), broad and slightly notched at the end, and tapering to the point of attachment. The petals collectively are known as the "corolla." The veins of the petals fork once; III. and IV. two sets of stamens (E), the outer containing two short, and the inner, four longer ones arranged in pairs. Each stamen has a slender filament (H, f) ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... other. Now, what could two idle hands do, when one belonged to a man deeply in love, the other to a young woman who for some time had ill-treated her lover and exhausted her severity? Before the end of the first part, the long unoccupied, tapering fingers of the treble were imprisoned by those of the bass, without the least disturbance in the musical effect—and ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... for in the building of dams. Nay, for my own part, I would venture to affirm that not only metre but even rhyme itself was not without suggestion in outward nature. Look at the pine, how its branches, balancing each other, ray out from the tapering stem in stanza after stanza, how spray answers to spray in order, strophe, and antistrophe, till the perfect tree stands an embodied ode, Nature's triumphant vindication of proportion, number, and harmony. ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... bud soon," answered Dong-Yung, glancing over her shoulder at the tapering, yellowing twigs of ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... lies, most of all, in their harmonious proportions and perfect symmetry. In the best examples of the Greek temple there are, for instance, no straight lines. The columns are not set at equal intervals, but closer together near the corners of the building. The shafts of the columns, instead of tapering upward at a uniform rate, swell slightly toward the center. The artistic eyes of the Greeks delighted in such subtle curves. These characteristics make a classical temple unique of ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... Suddenly he stood still, his gaze fixed on the vision of the girl in the clinging dress, with the blossoms resting on her breast. The curve of her back, the round of the hip; the way her moulded shoulders rose above the lace of her bodice; the bare, full arms tapering to the wrists;—the color, the movement, the grace of it all had taken away his breath. With only a side nod of recognition toward Jane, he walked straight to Lucy and with an "Excuse me," elbowed the doctor out of the way in his eagerness ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... absolutely the fashioning of tools, and is responsible for any beauty of form they may possess. Of all tools none, of course, is more exquisite than a fiddle-bow. But the fiddle-bow never could have been perfected, because there would have been no call for its tapering delicacy, its calculated balance of lightness and strength, had not the violinist's technique reached such marvellous fineness of power. For it is the accomplished artist who is fastidious as to his tools; the bungling beginner can bungle ...
— Progress and History • Various
... characteristic of the true Parisian woman,—self-willed, merry, well-informed, but inaccessible to vulgar seductions. Her hands, which were almost transparent, were hanging down at the end of each arm of her chair; the tapering fingers, slightly turned up at their points, showed nails like almonds, which caught the light. Adam smiled at his wife's impatience, and looked at her with a glance which two years of married life had not yet chilled. Already the little countess had made herself mistress of the situation, ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... cried Peter, springing up in a sitting position, to find it was daylight once more. "Oh, it's you, is it?" he cried, for there was a crackling by the door, and the great, tapering, serpent-like trunk of an elephant was waving to and fro and ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... personal comfort in a draughty corner of the hotel garden, with Mrs. Callowgas. Affected by the poetic influences of moon, stars, and sea, affected also conceivably by pagan amorous influences, naughtily emanating from the neighbouring Venus Temple—whose elegant tapering columns adorn the facade of the local Mairie—Mrs. Callowgas became extensively reminiscent of her dear dead Lord Bishop. Protracted anecdotes of visitations and confirmation tours, excerpts from his sermons, speeches and charges, arch ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... enjoyment in watching the ever varying sea and sky. To the captain's merry challenge to find anything so grand as the ocean, she replied, "Yes, these mighty forces in nature do indeed fill me with awe; but this vessel, with deep-buried fires, powerful machinery, spacious decks, and tapering masts, walking the waves like a thing of life, and all the work of man, impresses one still more deeply. Lo! in man's divine creative power is fulfilled the prophecy, 'Ye shall ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... by Clare as "a long dark cloud stretching across the heavens, broad in the centre and tapering at each end, resembling the figure of the ark, and supposed to foretell great floods. But it depends on the direction of the ark. If it is from south to north it is a sign of good weather, but if from east ...
— Weather and Folk Lore of Peterborough and District • Charles Dack
... tapering and well-kept, though somewhat too thin, Mme. de Bargeton amiably pointed to a seat by her side, M. du Chatelet ensconced himself in an easy-chair, and Lucien then became aware that there was no one else in ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... Indian maid, though the proportions of her person were as light and buoyant as at all comported with the fullness that properly belonged to her years. The limbs, seen below the folds of a short kirtle of bright scarlet cloth, were just and tapering, even to the nicest proportions of classic beauty; and never did foot of higher instep, and softer roundness, grace a feathered moccason. Though the person, from the neck to the knees, was hid by a tightly-fitting vest of calico and the short kirtle named, ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... the qualities of a sweet wild-flower, delicate of form yet hardy enough to stand up under the stress of a storm. A critic might have declared the sensitive mouth a shade too broad for the tapering lines which formed the firmly rounded chin; he might have said that the upper lip, against which its companion was now tightly pressed to check its trembling, was too short for classic beauty; but he would hardly have been able to find a flaw in the molding ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... our interest ever since the ship came into the port. He was a delicate, slender little fellow, with a beautiful pearly complexion, regular features; forehead as white as marble, black hair curling beautifully round it; tapering, delicate fingers; small feet, soft voice, gentle manners, and, in fact, every sign of having been well born and bred. At the same time there was something in his expression which showed a slight deficiency of intellect. How great the deficiency was, or ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... namely, the island, the lagoon, and the encircling reef. The island, which, being dry, was of course the highest part of the atoll, measured about three and a quarter miles long, and was crescent-shaped, being about three-eighths of a mile wide in the middle, tapering off north and south in the form of the cusps of the crescent moon; and from the extremities of the two cusps there swept away the encircling reef which enclosed the lagoon in a very perfect natural breakwater, having the inevitable ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... most beautiful feature of a Gothic church is the spire, raising its tapering form far above the town or village and forming a prominent landmark, denoting the location of the House of God. Although found occasionally in other styles, the spire is essentially Gothic, and one of the most marked characteristics of this period. Spires are generally ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath
... The girls, with flower-decked hair and scanty garb, occupy a long, low shed, filled with rude frames for stretching the cloth, painted in soft-tinted dyes—brown, blue, and amber for the most part—with tapering funnels. These waxed cloths allow infinite scope for native imagination, only a small panel of formal design being obligatory, the remaining surface fancifully coloured at will in harmonious hues. No two sarongs are alike, ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... adventure arrives. Telouchkine, provided with nothing more than a coil of ropes, ascends the spire in the interior to the last window. Here he looks down at the concourse of the people below, and up at the glittering "needle," as it is called, tapering far above his head. But his heart does not fail him; and stepping gravely out upon the window, he ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... situation! What exquisite proportions! That wide curve of snow-white sand about the dark blue bay is as exact a crescent as if cut with a knife. And that semicircle of hills behind the town, with its pine and brush forest tapering down to the crescent's points! Nor could anything be more picturesque than this scattered little town with its bright red tiles above the white walls of the houses and the gray walls of the yards; its quaint church surrounded by the ruins of the old presidio; its beautiful, ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... appointed brigadier-general of volunteers in the next year and was severely wounded at Antietam, after which he was made major-general and commanded the Twenty-third Army Corps in Burnside's campaign of East Tennessee.] He was a large man, of heavy frame; his face was broad, and his bald head, tapering high, gave a peculiar pyramidal appearance to his figure. He was systematic and accurate in administrative work, patient and insistent in bringing the young volunteer officers in his department into habits of order and good military form. His coolness tempered the impulsiveness ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... If iron spouts are used they are already provided with hooks. If wooden or tin ones are used, instead, the common practice is to drive into the tree, a few inches below the spout, a nail made of wrought-iron, with a tapering point and thin head, and upon this to hang the bucket by means of its upper hoop; or, if the ground is level and the snow nearly gone, it is ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... straight into those of Condon. The man was suddenly conscious that the boy was alone in the bed. Then he clutched for his victim's throat. As the lad rose to meet him Condon heard a low growl at his back, then he felt his wrists seized by the boy, and realized that beneath those tapering, white ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... fiscal year to the individuals now on relief, or until such time as private employment is available. In order to make adjustment to increasing private employment, work should be planned with a view to tapering it off in proportion to the speed with which the emergency workers are ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... man leaned over and patted Terry's hand that lay on the counter. He smiled. His own hand was incredibly slender, long, and tapering. ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... described to him as small brushes made of camels' hair fastened in a quill. As there were, however, no camels in America, he could not think of any substitute, till he happened to cast his eyes on a black cat, the favourite of his father; when, in the tapering fur of her tail, he discovered the means of supplying what he wanted. He immediately armed himself with his mother's scissors, and, laying hold of Grimalkin with all due caution, and a proper attention to her feelings, cut off the fur at the end of her tail, and ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... along the grass had caught the far-seeing eye of an enemy, whose dark shadow was now seen moving over the ground. On looking up, the boys beheld a large bird wheeling in the air. Its snow-white head and breast, the far spread, tapering wings, but, above all, the long forked tail, told them at a glance what bird it was. It was the great Southern ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... manual of God in all His works, just as imperfection and the falling below our thought and wish is our 'token in every epistle' and deed of ours. Take the finest needle, and put it below a microscope, and it will be all ragged and irregular, the fine, tapering lines will be broken by many a bulge and bend, and the point blunt and clumsy. Put the blade of grass to the same test, and see how regular its outline, how delicate and true the spear-head of its point. God's work is perfect, man's is clumsy and incomplete. God does ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... and hid a yawn behind tapering pink finger-nails. "'Slife, you had a cursed run of the ivories to-night, Kenn! When are you for your revenge? Shall we say to-morrow? Egad, I'm ready to sleep round the clock. Who'll take a seat in my coach? ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... two youthful figures passed under the pine-boughs, which closed over them odorously in dark arches of shadow, and wended their slow way down to the seashore, from whence they could see the Royal yacht lying at anchor, every tapering line of her fair proportions distinctly outlined against the sky, and all her masts shining as if they had been washed with silver dew; and the Heir- Apparent to a throne was,—for once in the history of Heir-Apparents,— happy—happy in knowing that he was loved as princes seldom or never are ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... pointed, I saw, above the adjacent headland, the tapering spars of a ship. Slowly she hove into view, boltsprit, forecastle, waist and poop, until she was plain to view, and I knew her for that same black ship that fouled us in Deptford Pool. She was standing in for the island under her lower courses ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... about a quarter of a mile from the town. Labour had long ceased; a beautiful heaven, clear and serene, canopied the city of smoke and toil; in all directions rose the columns of the factories, dark and defined in the purple sky; a glittering star sometimes hovering by the crest of their tall and tapering forms. ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... the dash Phosphoric of the oar, or rapid twinkle Of the far lights of skimming gondolas,[434] And the responsive voices of the choir Of boatmen answering back with verse for verse; 100 Some dusky shadow checkering the Rialto; Some glimmering palace roof, or tapering spire,[eg] Are all the sights and sounds which here pervade The ocean-born and earth-commanding City— How sweet and soothing is this hour of calm! I thank thee, Night! for thou hast chased away Those horrid bodements which, amidst the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... Polycarp Jenks was the outrageous name of him. He was under the average height, and he was lean to the point of emaciation. His mouth was absolutely curveless—a straight gash across his face; a gash which simply stopped short without any tapering or any turn at the corners, when it had reached as far as was decent. His nose was also straight and high, and owned no perceptible slope; indeed, it seemed merely a pendant attached to his forehead, and its upper termination was indefinite, except that somewhere between his eyebrows one felt ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... gazing at the pallid blue sky across which great masses of cloud were rapidly sweeping—to be outpaced by the low-flying shreds and tatters of steamy scud—the opaque, muddy green waste of foaming, leaping waters, and the flying ship swaying her broad spaces of damp-darkened canvas, her tapering and buckling spars, and her tautly-strained rigging in long arcs athwart the scurrying clouds as she leapt and plunged and sheared her irresistible way onward in the midst of a wild chaos and dizzying ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... by-play of the festival—dressed—and resorted to Grignon's. Every thing looked well and auspiciously. Our room was in the shade; and a few lingering breezes seemed to play beneath the branches of an acacia. The dark green bottles, of various tapering shapes, were embedded in pails of ice, upon the table: and napkins and other goodly garniture graced the curiously woven cloth. I hung up, in the simplicity of my heart—over the seat which I was to occupy,— the portrait of ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... airy. afn m. eager desire, longing, anxiety, effort, toil, difficulty, bustle. afanar distress; —se desire eagerly, struggle for. afeminado, -a effeminate. afilado, -a sharp, slender, thin, tapering. afligido, -a troubled, distressed. afligir pain, grieve. afrenta f. insult, affront. gil adj. nimble, light. agilidad f. quickness, nimbleness, activity. agitar agitate, move, stir, stir up, sway, shake, disturb. agolpado, -a curdled. ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... white as a gull, new painted, new washed, cargoed and stoked, the Roumania reared three red smoke-stacks, and sat proudly with the gang-plank flung out from her mighty hip and her nose tapering toward the blue harbor ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... them on the back. the head and neck are shaped much like the grey plover, and are of a light brickdust brown; the beak is black and flat, largest where it joins the head, and from thence becoming thiner and tapering to a very sharp point, the upper chap being 1/8 of an inch the longest turns down at the point and forms a little hook. the nostrils, which commence near the head are long, narrow, connected, and parallel with the beak; the beak is much curved, the curvature being upwards ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... everywhere making his way through the crowd, to observe, as you often may, people pushing one against another, only perhaps to see a funeral pass. The English coffins are made very economically, according to the exact form of the body; they are flat, and broad at top; tapering gradually from the middle, and drawing to a point at the feet, not very unlike ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... for though it is needless to say that he was not very conversant in such matters, yet from the frequency of his seeing Americans trading to Ireland, his eye had become sufficiently accustomed to their lofty and tapering spars, and peculiar smartness of rig, to satisfy him that the ship before him was of transatlantic build; nor was he wrong ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... times is masterly. Delacroix inspired many of his landscape backgrounds, as Ingres gave him the proportions of his female figures. You continually encounter variations of Ingres, the sweet, serene line, the tapering feet and hands. Some critics have discerned the toe forms of Perugino; but such mechanical measurements strain our notion of eclecticism. Certainly Moreau studied Bellini, Mantegna, and Da Vinci without ever attaining ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... arrayed in a brocade dress, cut so as to show her beautiful neck and arms. A mass of wavy golden hair falls over her shoulders and upon her bosom. Her tapering wrists and delicate hands indicate gentle blood, but her features are somewhat heavy, and the face would not attract us by its beauty. The rapt expression of devotion is what makes it interesting. The whole ...
— Correggio - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... on hand early,—a jolly, ugly, good-hearted girl, who slyly dipped snuff and looked after her little bow-legged brother. When her mother could spare her, 'Tildy came,—a midnight beauty, with starry eyes and tapering limbs; and her brother, correspondingly homely. And then the big boys,—the hulking Lawrences; the lazy Neills, unfathered sons of mother and daughter; Hickman, with a stoop in ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... mere featherweight, a puff-ball of a hand—not quick and thrilling, not a speaking hand, but one to be fondled and dressed in rings, and to leave a rosy blur in the brain. The fingers were short and tapering, dimpled at the base, with nails as smooth as rose-leaves. Ralph lifted them one by one, like a child playing with piano-keys, but they were inelastic and did not spring back far—only far enough to ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... she was read in this literature—she had no time for reading. But, even when clothed in rough tweeds, Lancelot had for Mary Ann an aristocratic halo; in his dressing-gown he savoured of the grand Turk. His hands were masterful: the fingers tapering, the nails pedantically polished. He had fair hair, with moustache to match; his brow was high and white, and his grey eyes could flash fire. When he drew himself up to his full height, he threatened the gas globes. Never had No. 5 Baker's Terrace boasted of such a tenant. Altogether, ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... his master and his fellow, each intently leaning forward to the left, each impassively moving with the paces of his horse; their shadows went before them—still, noiseless, tapering attendants; and nearer a crouched cool shape was his own. He looked about him. What was it had gone? Then he remembered the reverberation from the banks of the gorge and the perpetual accompaniment of shifting, jostling pebbles. And, moreover—? ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... sea-shell glory, pink and white to hair Sun-lit, a lily crowned with powdered gold. She turned toward her dresser then and shook White dust of talcum on her arms, and looked So lovingly upon her tense straight breasts, Touching them under with soft tapering hands To blue eyes deepening like a brazier flame Turned by a sudden gust. Who gives her these, The thought ran through me, for her joy alone ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... number or proportion. Mockingly, On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths; A swanlike form invests the hidden thorn; Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall, 20 Mauger the farmer's sighs; and at the gate A tapering turret overtops the work; And when his hours are numbered and the world Is all his own, retiring as he were not, Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art 5 To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, Built in an age, the mad wind's night work— The frolic architecture ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... easily dried. Now-a-days, they are generally made either of canvas, or of a twilled sacking, and, when spread out, measure 4-1/2 feet by 3-1/2; but when lashed up, and ready for stowing away in the netting, they form long sacks, about as big as a man's body, but not tapering to ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... cut, now lay dotting the slope in cocks; a sinuous line of creamy vapor meandered through the lowlands at the base of the hill; while beyond was a dense grove of dwarfish trees, with here and there a tall tapering dead trunk, peeled of the bark, and overpeering the rest. The vapor wore the semblance of a deep stream of water, imperfectly descried; the grove looked like some closely-clustering town on its banks, lorded over ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... plate stands a miniature hill, broad at the base and tapering at the summit, composed of blended powder and water, which Mr. Potts has been carefully heating in an oven during his absence until, according to his lights, it has reached a ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... forever raged in his soul. His chin was pointed but firm, and his lips were set; around his mouth were marked the tiny, almost imperceptible lines which mean cruelty. His nose was aquiline, his ears large at the top, tapering almost to a point at the lobe, and his forehead unusually high and broad. His hair was soft, and his skin, although dark, suffered ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... hand—a slim old tapering, bony hand, in colour like dusky ivory—closed peremptorily, in a dumb-show of receiving; and now, by the bye, you could not have failed to notice the big lucent amethyst, in its setting of elaborately-wrought pale gold, ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... Quarry House, a handsome old red-brick mansion, "described as more Jacobean than Elizabethan," built in the form of a capital E, each storey slightly receding behind the front level of that beneath it, the top tapering into pretty gables, the effect being enhanced ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... the shop-windows are decorated. Behind the panes of clear glass the gilt of presentation-books rises like a glittering wave under the gaslight, the stuffs of various and tempting colours display their brittle and heavy folds, while the young ladies behind the counter, with their hair dressed tapering to a point and with a ribbon beneath their collar, tie up the article, little finger in the air, or fill bags of moire into which the sweets fall like a rain ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... century, but the eighteenth—one hundred and fifty years ago or more—in Frederick's day, the period of pigtails, of giant grenadiers in the old-time blue and red coats, the high and fantastic shako made of metal and tapering to a point, of three-cornered hats resting on powdered wigs, of yellow top-boots, and exhaling the general air of ruffianly geniality characteristic of the manners and soldiers of ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... domes, and tall spires and towers, glittering brightly in the sun, like some magic city of ancient romance. Conspicuous above all was the superb pile of the Isaac Church, the most modern sacred edifice in the city, and by far the finest; and near it was seen the graceful tower of the Admiralty, tapering up like a golden needle into the blue sky. Soon other buildings—hospitals, and palaces, and houses, and towers, either not so lofty or farther off—rose to view; but no land could be discovered on which their bases might rest. This vast city, they learned, was built by the imperial ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... thing, of the stern, sculptured heads of the Roman emperors, and the fragments of gods and goddesses which are the best testimony of the artistic aspirations of Greece. In the entresol of this house was one of his finest treasures—a carved and floriated base bearing a tapering monolith some four feet high, crowned by the head of a peculiarly goatish Pan, by the side of which were the problematic remains of a lovely nude nymph—just the little feet broken off at the ankles. The base on which the feet ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... thorns two to four inches long, hard as iron, black or chocolate-brown, polished and sharp as needles; and to make itself more formidable every long thorn had two smaller thorns growing out of it near the base, so that it was in shape like a round tapering dagger with a crossguard to the handle. It was a terrible tree to climb, yet, when a little older. I had to climb it a thousand times, since there were certain birds which would make their nests in ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... and something indistinct was slowly smoking at the top of it. Then further back, higher than the candelabrum, and much higher than the altar, rose the Moloch, all of iron, and with gaping apertures in his human breast. His outspread wings were stretched upon the wall, his tapering hands reached down to the ground; three black stones bordered by yellow circles represented three eyeballs on his brow, and his bull's head was raised with a terrible effort as if ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... her skin showing very brown beneath a wonderful silver tiara-like headdress, and in the broad interstices of a cloth-of-silver robe with short, stiffly wired-out skirt. She was seated, an idol, on a glittering black throne, at her feet with their tapering dyed nails a ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... gone Mrs. Clarke stood alone by the fountain for a moment, frowning, and with her thin lips closely compressed, almost, indeed, pinched together. She gazed down at her hands. They were lovely hands, small, sensitive, refined; they looked clever, too, not like tapering fools. She knew very well how lovely they were, yet now she looked at them with a certain distaste. Betraying hands! Abruptly she extended them towards the fountain, and let the cool silver of the water spray over them. ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... place we perceived a patch of somewhat yellow, which had greatly the appearance of a corn field, yet was probably nothing more than some dead flags, which are not uncommon in swampy places:[52] At some distance we saw groves of trees, which appeared high and tapering, and being not above two leagues from the south-west cod of the great bay, in which we had been coasting for the two last days, I hoisted out the pinnace and long-boat to search for fresh water; but just as they were about to put off, we saw several boats full of people coming ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... inches from the sandy bottom, gently fanning the water with his party-coloured fins, and opening and closing his rosy gill-fringes as he breathed. In length he was something over twenty inches, with a thick, deep body tapering finely to the powerful tail. Like all the trout of the Clearwater, he was silver-bellied with a light pink flush, the yellow and brown markings on his sides light in tone, and his spots of the most high, intense vermilion. His great lower jaw was thrust forward in a way that gave ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... this country is of the Gothic character. The mosques are built somewhat like our churches: the body of the mosques are covered with green glazed tiles; the steeples are invariably an exact square, the sides being ten or twelve feet, not tapering as those of Coventry, but the top having the same dimensions as the base. At the top is erected a smaller square, with a flag-staff similar to a gallows, to which is suspended every day at noon, a white flag, the signal ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... arranged, Antonio met them. We may have introduced him to the reader before, who likely enough has forgotten by this time our portraiture; so we shall say again, that the man was past thirty, tall, straight, well-made, even to the tapering of his well-formed limbs, as are the generality of the peasantry of that favored region. His teeth were white as sea-pearl; his cheek, though swarthy, had a deep, healthy flash; and his great velvet black eyes looked straight out from under their long silky lashes, just as do the eyes of the beautiful ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... succession of fresh sights, from the Turkish man-of-war that was of British build, to the low fishing-boat with its long graceful lateen sail, spread out upon its curved and tapering spar. ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... Beni-hasan, belonging to the Twelfth Dynasty, exhibit a feature which calls for mention. These tombs have been so made as to leave pillars of the living rock standing, both at the entrance and in the chapel. The simplest of these pillars are square in plan and somewhat tapering. Others, by the chamfering off of their edges, have been made eight-sided. A repetition of the process gave sixteen-sided pillars. The sixteen sides were then hollowed out (channeled). The result is illustrated ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... not such a church as you see in your own village. It has no tall steeple or tapering spire, no deep-toned bell, no organ, no singing-seats or gallery, no pews or carpeted aisles. It is built of logs. It was chinked with clay years ago, but the rains have washed it out. You can thrust your hand between the cracks. It is thirty or forty feet square. It has places for windows, ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... the trunk, which has valuable medicinal uses, in both external and internal application. This oil sometimes serves to give light, but the light is dim, and to anoint the hoofs of horses. It blooms in November, the flowers growing in bunches of seven or nine each; and its leaf is oval and tapering. The wood is light, exceedingly tough, and reddish in color. It is very plentiful in the Visayas, and generally grows close to the water. It is known by a number of different names, among them being bitanhol ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various |
