"Top" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... my entire ignorance of Botany, I am sorry to say that I cannot answer any of the questions which you ask me. I think I mention in my "Journal" that I found my old friend the southern beech (I cannot say positively which species), on the mountain-top, in southern parts of Chiloe and at level of sea in lat. 45 deg, in Chonos Archipelago. Would not the southern end of Chiloe make a good division for you? I presume, from the collection of Brydges and Anderson, Chiloe is pretty well-known, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... &c. And so it is for his interest to do this. But how often does the lust for supremacy over-ride interest itself! How often does an imperious personality thrust itself forward in the most absurd ways, damaging its own property and welfare, just as a boy breaks his top, or a balked rider shoots his horse, or an independent congregationalist locks his pew-door, as much as to say—"There, the world knows one thing about me, at least. It knows that I ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... a choice bone. He had buried it several days before. And when he came back from the woods and found a woodpile on top of the place where he had hidden it, it was no wonder that ...
— The Tale of Old Dog Spot • Arthur Scott Bailey
... brute, with a great deal of humour of a rough kind. He saw through ——, an Austrian, who is a toad-eater, in a moment, and stopped a pompous story of his about ——. As soon as we were told by the narrator, with a proper British shake of the head, that he 'drank,' Bismarck shouted at the top of his voice: 'Well, that is one point in his favour.' ——, disconcerted, went on and said: 'He fell from the landing and was killed.' 'Ah,' cried Bismarck, 'what a wretched constitution he must have had!'" In an aside to me Bismarck violently attacked Papists, and broke ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... all went on together through the woodland path, the torches still flaring about them. Presently they came out into a clearing of the wood, and lo, looming great and black before them against the sky, where the moon had now broken out of the clouds somewhat, the masses of the tofts, and at the top of the northernmost of them a light in the upper window of a tall square tower. Withal the yellow-litten windows of a long house showed on the plain below the tofts; but little else of the house might be seen, save that, as they drew near, the walls brake out in doubtful ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... with a smile, That I may venge my noble brother's death; And in the midst of stately Troinouant, I'll build a temple to thy deity Of perfect marble and of Iacinthe stones, That it shall pass the high Pyramids, Which with their top ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... Forester. "Presently," he continued, "as these young trees grow up together, one will overtop the rest. If the adjacent small trees be cut down when this tallest tree has reached a good height, it will spread at the top in order to get as much sunlight as possible. In order to carry a large top the diameter of the trunk must increase. So, by starting the trees close together and allowing one of them to develop alone after a certain height ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... a different stripe. "We had a man with us at Menlo called Segredor. He was a queer kind of fellow. The men got in the habit of plaguing him; and, finally, one day he said to the assembled experimenters in the top room of the laboratory: 'The next man that does it, I will kill him.' They paid no attention to this, and next day one of them made some sarcastic remark to him. Segredor made a start for his boarding-house, ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... see wherein they erred. They gave superciliously, handing down their alms from a top lofty altitude of Tory superiority, and the Radicals down below sniffed or growled even while they grudgingly took these gifts—that was all nonsense. These aristocratic or tuft-hunting philanthropists were the veriest duffers. They laid out millions of pounds in the ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... open air, he recovered his self-possession to some extent, and holding the gold coins fast in one hand, threw his cap up in the air with the other, uttered a loud shout of joy, and bounded homeward again at the top of his speed. Having reached the cottage, he put the money in a corner of the cupboard in which his father kept his small stock of cash, locked the door, and put the key in a place of safety, and ...
— Harper's Young People, November 4, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... next morning just at daybreak that the lookout on the fore-top hailed the deck with the inspiriting cry that sent a thrill through all who heard, and brought the officer of the watch forward with ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... Wouldn't it be great? No more splitting kindling and carrying in coal; no more: "Hurry up, now, or you'll be late for school;" no more poking along in a humdrum existence, never going any place or seeing anything, but the glad, free, untrammeled life, the life of a circus-boy, standing up on top of somebody's head (you could pretend he was your daddy. Who'd ever know the difference?) and your leg stuck up like five minutes to six, and him standing on top of a horse—and the horse going around ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... several of the men, including Captain Byron. The President had lost ground by yawing, but she soon regained it, and, coming up closer than before, again opened from her bow-chasers a well-directed fire, which severely wounded her opponent's main-top mast, cross-jack yard, and one or two other spars; [Footnote: James, vi, 119. He says the President was within 400 yards.] but shortly afterward she repeated her former tactics and again lost ground by yawing to discharge another broadside, even more ineffectual than the first. Once more she ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... over the top of Lily's golden head. After all, she told herself, in the case of Mrs. Volsky she could see the point of Dr. Blanchard's assertion! She had known many animals who apparently were quicker to reason, who apparently had more enthusiasm ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... while he dug another hole in the sand. Then with a long stick he pushed the hot wood and coals from the first hole into the second, and carefully laid the big plaice fish on the hot sand, pushed a thick covering of hot sand over it, and started a new fire on top ...
— A Little Maid of Province Town • Alice Turner Curtis
... impulse, without nibbling, and from impulse refraining to bite, and sculling indifferently past. It rather prefers the clear water and sandy bottoms, though here it has not much choice. It is a true fish, such as the angler loves to put into his basket or hang at the top of his willow twig, in shady afternoons along the banks of the stream. So many unquestionable fishes he counts, and so many shiners, which he counts and then throws away. Old Josselyn in his "New England's Rarities," published in 1672, mentions the ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... first, if not only Champion in verse against the Presbyterian party. His Epistles were pregnant with Metaphors, carrying in them a difficult plainness, difficult at the hearing, plain at the considering thereof. His lofty Fancy may seem to stride from the top of one Mountain to the top of another, so making to it self a constant Level and Champian of ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... were lying extended downward perhaps three hundred yards, then sloped backward, leaving sheer empty space beneath them. They seemed to be poised in mid-heaven. It was totally unlike the sensation on a mountain-top, or even floating among the clouds; for a moment it seemed to Stern that he was looking up toward an unfathomable, infinite ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... whom the Lord had chosen to be the future captain and champion of Israel. He at once treated him with distinguished honor, and made him sit at his own table, much to the amazement of the thirty nobles who also were bidden to a banquet. The prophet took the young man aside, conducted him to the top of his house, anointed him with the sacred oil, kissed him (a form of allegiance), and communicated to him the will of God. But Saul was only privately consecrated, and with rare discretion told no man of his good ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... eight or ten—the son of the Marchioness de Boisfresnay—who had annoyed her extremely the night before, by parading through the ball his own pretentious little person, and by throwing himself pleasantly like a top between the legs of the gentlemen and through the dresses of the ladies. The marchioness went into ecstasies at these charming pranks. Clotilde defended her mildly, alleging that this child was her ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... Parthians, the Sakae, and the Bactrians: Astyages was left almost alone, save for a few faithful followers, in the palace at Ecbatana. His daughter Amytis and his son-in-law Spitamas concealed him so successfully on the top of the palace, that he escaped discovery up to the moment when Cyrus was on the point of torturing his grandchildren to force them to reveal his hiding-place: thereupon he gave himself up to his enemies, but was at length, after being ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... few minutes only he appeared again, on the top of the flight of steps which led into the garden from the house. He held by the iron rail with one hand, while with the other he beckoned to Mrs. Lecount to join him ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... traitor in the company, and even now four pairs of hostile eyes were watching them as they moved in the light of the fire. The Captain of the Sea Eagle and his three trusty men were hidden in some bushes at the top of the pocket on ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... the gladsome hill, Where lay my hope; Where lay my heart; and, climbing still, When I had gained the brow and top, A lake of brackish waters on the ground, Was all I ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... be, some people who display to the world a formidable aspect, as it were a stone wall with a bristling row of broken bottles on the top, or an ugly notice board with injunctions, such as "Strictly Private," or "Keep off the Grass," but Philippa was not one of these. You might wander in her company along paths of pleasant conversation, through a garden where bloomed bright flowers of intelligence and humour, and it was only afterwards ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... is so obstructed by fallen trees, that we were forced to return, after ascending about four miles. We left our boats near its entrance, and walked to the small but steep mountain, Tubbang. Its length may be about 400 feet. After mounting, by a winding path, about half-way up toward the top, we arrived at the entrance of a cave, into which we descended through a hole. It is fifty or sixty feet long, and the far end is supported on a colonnade of stalactites, and opens on a sheer precipice of 100 or ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... in his breast. It seemed to heave him upwards. The way grew steeper and more steep. The stream of grass, faithful so far, ended abruptly five feet below the top. Those feet were sheer, the chalk darkening to the blackness of soil, and the crest of grass making a ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... of Vimy Ridge, carried by the Canadian troops in a series of historic charges, showed that the British artillery virtually blew off the top of it, and the German stronghold which had resisted all efforts of the French and British during more than two years of war, was finally forced into such a position by high explosives that it could no ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... who have worked on the land, and whose chief reward is familiarity with its beasts, can with complete equanimity face bulls? One day a path they were taking down to the sea ran for a while along the top of a stone hedge, about five feet high and three feet wide. Most people would have walked along this, leading their bicycles. Nan, naturally, bicycled, and Barry and Kay, finding it an amusing experiment, bicycled ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... adidums, then Nandy-Pandy, Nandy-Pandy..." and Miss Jones: "Now, Mary! Now, Jeremy! Now, Helen!"; although this was going on just as it always had gone on, his eyes were searching for the wagonette. Ah, there it was! He could just see the top of it beyond the iron bridge, and Jim, the man from the Farm, would be coming down to help with the boxes; yes, there he was crossing the bridge now, with his red face and broad shoulders, and the cap on the side of his head, just as he always wore it. Jeremy recognised him with a strange, little ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... were more valuable than any lace ever manufactured, and I am sure that Charlotte will absolve me when she hears of the exigencies of the case," father pleaded over the top of his morning paper. Mammy was pretending to dust his study, as a blind to the lecture she ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... with a pearl pin he whistled the "Wedding March." Catching Frank's eyes, he laughed and sang at the top of his voice as he went down ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... as the carriage drew up, and the Duke-King as he alighted turned his handsome face, on which shone the ruddy glow of torches, to acknowledge these loyal acclamations. He passed up the steps, at the top of which Mr. Newlington—fat and pale and monstrously overdressed—stood bowing to welcome his royal visitor. Host and guest vanished, followed by some six officers of Monmouth's, among whom were Grey and Wade. The sight-seers flattened ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... although he had already been driven by the unhappy circumstance of his peerage from the House of Commons which he loved so well, there were still open to him many fields of political work. But if he should once consent to stand on the top rung of the ladder, he could not, he thought, take a lower place without degradation. Till he should have been placed quite at the top no shifting his place from this higher to that lower office would injure him in his own estimation. The exigencies of the service ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... to have a coast," he said to Bud. A smooth board which he found near the woodpile furnished him with a fine toboggan. By the help of an overturned chicken-coop, which he dragged across the yard, he managed to climb to the top of the shed. Squatting down on the board, he gave himself a starting push with one hand. The downward progress was not so smooth or ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... call at No. 36 to enquire whether anything has been sent there. Leverton had better be employed to make a couple of boxes or cases for the books in the sacks. The sacks can be put on the top in the inside. There is an old coat in one of the sacks in the pocket of which are papers. Let it be put in with its contents just as it is. I wish to have the long white chest and the two deal boxes also brought down. Buy me a thick under-waistcoat like the one I am now wearing, and ...
— Letters to his mother, Ann Borrow - and Other Correspondents • George Borrow
... would take too much space. I have simply selected a representative list from the various classes of foods. Under flesh are given fish, meats and eggs. Under succulent vegetables are given both root and top vegetables, because of their similarity. Nuts, cereals, legumes, tubers and fruits are each grouped because it is easy to gain an understanding of them in this way. Milk is given a rather long chapter of its own because of its great importance in ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... top of the radical changes in agriculture came an industrial and commercial revolution. The South had long been rich in natural resources, but the slave system had been unfavorable to their development. Rivers that would have turned millions of spindles ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... investigation was the tea. There was a small sliding trap at the top of the tin, and when Edgar poured out half a cup of the contents, these were examined with great curiosity. The men took a few grains in their fingers, smelt them, and then tasted them. The result was ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... road from Houlton to Woodstock and about half a mile east of the exploring meridian line. At the time when that line was run by the British and American surveyors, under the fifth article of the treaty of Ghent, the top of this hill was covered with wood, and they were obliged to content themselves with the view from Park's barn, which is at least 200 feet beneath the summit. At the present moment the latter is cleared, and the view from west-southwest ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... thief. The petty kingdom of Casso, which they came to next, proved very trying. There were six rivers to cross, full (says Isaaco) of alligators and hippopotami. There was the forbidding rock of Tap-Pa in the desert of Maretoumane to get by. And there was the mountain of Lambatara, on the top of which they were attacked by a cloud of bees. Maddened with the stings, the Negroes ran everywhere; the mules broke loose and threw their packs down the hill. Poor Isaaco had to collect them all, physick the dying and distressed, and number the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... one man-at-arms, the Lances of Lynwood had taken several prisoners. It was high noon, and the field was well-nigh cleared of the enemy, when Sir Reginald drew his rein at the top of a steep bank clothed with brushwood, sloping towards the stream of the Zadorra, threw up his visor, wiped his heated brow, and, patting his horse's neck, turned to his brother, saying, "You have seen sharp work in this your first ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pillar of the portal of noble life seems to me to show still greater signs of being out of repair and in want of restoration, and that pillar is reverence,—that heaven-eyed quality which Dr. Martineau rightly places at the very top of the ethical scale. Let that crumble, and the character which might have been a temple sinks into a mere counting-house. When in these days children are allowed to call their father Dick, Jack, or Tom, and nickname ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... to see any other paper secure Snowdon's talent, so he gave him a box stall up in the top of the Times building, and any day, after 3 o'clock in the afternoon, you can go there and borrow a couple of dollars of him, if you are ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... Pong Pang of China was probably brilliant and scholarly, but it was expressed in Chinese characters of the Ming period, which Prince Otto did not understand; and even if he had it would have done him no good, for he tried to read it from the top downwards instead of from ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... prostration, sleeplessness, exhaustion, over-fatigue from mental trouble, overstudy and anxiety, indigestion, dyspepsia, constipation, headache, inability to concentrate the mind, general lassitude, melancholia, backache and pains from the top of my head to the sole of my feet. You treated me about twelve months ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... bounding up them. Mrs. March stood at the top, pale and trembling. "A man!" she cried, "with a gun! I saw him down in the moonlight under my window! I saw him! ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... signs of having been recently occupied, the stone steps which led to the roof-chambers were covered with enormous cobwebs and great layers of dust, showing that nothing had been disturbed for very many years. That was as it should be. At the very top of one tower we discovered a locked door, and beating it in amid showers of dust, we penetrated a room such as a witch of mediaeval Europe would dearly have loved. Nothing but cobwebs, dust, flapping, grey-yellow paper and decay. It ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... heads, and that opening shielded now by a simple curtain, but which in an instant, without my moving from this place, I can so hermetically seal that no man, save he be armed with crowbar and pickaxe, could enter here, even if man could know of our imprisonment, in a house soon to be closed from top to bottom by ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... head. I should have liked to walk, too, very much indeed; but I did not know how far I might do it; and, in fact, I dared not speak to ask to be helped down the deep steps of the gig. We were at last at the top,—on a long, breezy, sweeping, unenclosed piece of ground, called, as I afterwards learnt, a Chase. The groom stopped, breathed, patted his horse, and then mounted ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... pits are filled with moulding sand—a composition of a damp and tenacious character, used in moulding. The mould is made and lowered into one of these pits, the pit is filled up, the sand being rammed as hard as possible all around it. When all is ready, the top of the mould, with the cross by which it is to be lifted and lowered surmounting it, presents the appearance represented on the right hand lower ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... peripatetic sun-bonnet, conscientiously weighed down with one billet, he strode into the house, and let his burden fall with a mighty clatter in the corner of the chimney. The sun-bonnet staggered up and threw her stick on the top of ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... a sad change in the peaceful village, which now looked as if it had been stormed and sacked by a cruel enemy. We had no time to stop to examine whether any of the prostrate forms we saw were still alive, so we pushed on. Just, however, as we reached the top of the pathway down the mountain, a party of soldiers, with an officer at their head, appeared suddenly before us. It was impossible to escape notice, so we attempted to ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... flashed on and the four spacemen turned to watch a large wire cage rise out of the shaft. It was built in three sections, each seven feet high. A ladder on one side of the cage gave easy access to the higher and lower levels. Astro climbed to the top section while Hawks took the lower. Roger stepped into the center section to avoid a climb. An enlisted man secured the gates and turned on the motor. The cage dropped through the shaft ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... madly cross stage at top-speed (if we take the literal word of the text for it), with girded loins, in search of somebody right under his nose, the while unburdening himself of exhaustive periods that, however great the breadth of the Roman stage, would carry him several times ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... up a great career to go to the Front? When you have got your foot at the top of the ladder, you climb down?" Her voice was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... my head; So here upon my back I'll lie And look my fill into the sky. And so I looked, and, after all, The sky was not so very tall. The sky, I said, must somewhere stop, And—sure enough!—I see the top! The sky, I thought, is not so grand; I 'most could touch it with my hand! And reaching up my hand to try, I screamed to feel it touch the sky. I screamed, and—lo!—Infinity Came down and settled over me; Forced back my scream into my chest, Bent back my arm upon my breast, And, pressing of the ...
— Renascence and Other Poems • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... to enthrone it. You comprehend?—the canaille quiescent is simply mud at the bottom of a stream; the canaille agitated is mud at the surface. But no man capable of three ideas builds the palaces and senates of civilised society out of mud, be it at the top or the bottom of an ocean. Can either you or I desire that the destinies of France shall be swayed by coxcombical artisans who think themselves superior to every man who writes grammar, and whose idea of a common-wealth is the confiscation of private property?" Rameau, thoroughly ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... brought forward a folder of yellow paper and handed it to Dyke. It was inscribed at the top "Tariff Schedule No. 8," and underneath these words, in brackets, was a smaller inscription, "SUPERSEDES NO. 7 ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... school, and it depends upon the place in the class that we take here where we shall be put at what schoolboys call the 'next remove.' If here we have indeed 'learned of Him the truth as it is in Jesus,' we shall be put up into the top classes yonder, and get larger and more blessed lessons ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... the chauffeur by whose side he was seated a little stiffly, for his limbs were numbed with the cold and exhaustion. The morning had broken with a grey and uncertain light. A vaporous veil of mist seemed to have taken the place of the darkness. Even from the top of the hill where the car had come to a standstill, there was little to ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the garden that Barker came to presently: an image of Washington on horseback, and some orator speaking, with his hand up, and on top of a monument a kind of Turk holding up a man that looked sick. The man was almost naked, but he was not so bad as the image of a woman in a granite basin; it seemed to Barker that it ought not to be ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... and as soon as he reached the spot where his bugler was standing—for bugles had now taken the place of the horns that had before served the purpose—the latter at once blew the assembly, and then the order to form line. The men dashed down at the top of their speed, and in a very short time formed up in a long line ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... is as necessary as punctuation. Place writing on a page as you would frame a picture, crowding it toward neither the top nor the bottom. Leave liberal margins. Write verse as verse; do not give it equal indention or length of line with prose. Connect all the letters of a word. Leave a space after a word, and a double space after a sentence. Leave room between successive lines, and do not let the loops of letters ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... burst anew upon my soul. Was it not possible, I asked, to reach the top of this pit? The sides were rugged and uneven. Would not their projectures and abruptnesses serve me as steps by which I might ascend in safety? This expedient was to be tried without delay. Shortly my strength would fail, and my ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... afterwards captured in a barn, and eventually brought up to London, together with his brother William, and committed to the Tower. Being arraigned and convicted of treason, they were handed over to the high sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk. Robert was hanged in chains on the top of Norwich Castle, whilst his brother William suffered a similar fate on the top ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... Hobart Town. For safety she placed it at the bottom of a deep wooden churn until better lodgings could be provided. Shortly after, on going to look at her captive, she found it clinging by its long claws to the top of the churn, with its funny little head peeping over. The bill gave an indescribably droll expression to its queer pursed-up face, while its bright eyes peered restlessly about from their furry nooks. There was something ...
— Harper's Young People, March 2, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... sympathetic crowd, but snatching a handful of silver from the carter's hat pushed his way out of the jam, and, holding the hand in which he clutched the silver high above his head, hurried on after the officer, crying at the top of his voice: "Here's the money, here's the money; oh, good people," for the street was nearly blocked with those that swarmed thickly in the wake of the officer and he could make but slow progress ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... his shouts or grunts at Aminta's report of the secretary's ideas on various topics, particularly the proposal that the lords of the land should head the land in a revolutionary effort to make law of his crazy, top-heavy notions, with a self-satisfied ejaculation: 'He has not favoured me with any of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... appeared to have no lock, so Prince Marvel opened it and walked in. Then he perceived, perched on the very top of a pyramid of casks, the form of a boy, who sat very still and watched him with a look of astonishment upon ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum
... father's estate was situated close to Inverness—some presents to his future wife, his cousin, and others. The gift to Sir Alan was noteworthy and fatalistic—a handsomely inlaid Japanese sword, with a small dagger inserted in a sheath near the top of the scabbard. David reached Beechcroft on the day of the ball. Relations between the cousins seemed to the servants to be cool, though the coolness lay rather with the baronet, and David, a year older, it may be here stated, was evidently ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... the minister stopped her at the door. She made some resistance, and Annie heard her say something about a pistol on the top of the bed, and the wonder if her father's daughter did not know how to ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... better than that those ark-like ships in the offing should come near enough for an artillery fight. A few tons of solid shot and shell dropped on top of them might be a very conclusive answer to ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name— Now Dasher! now Dancer! Now Prancer! now Vixen! On Comet! on Cupid! on Donder and Blixen! To the top of the porch, to the top of the wall! Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!' As the leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky; So up to the house-top the coursers they flew, With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too. And ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... enter into any proof of this statement; the memory of the lean years which began in 1893 is still vivid, and we can contrast them with the conditions in this very year which is now closing. Disaster to great business enterprises can never have its effects limited to the men at the top. It spreads throughout, and while it is bad for everybody, it is worst for those farthest down. The capitalist may be shorn of his luxuries; but the wage-worker may be deprived of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... six her father was appointed to the charge of the kirk at Hamilton. Her early growth went on, not in books, but in the fearlessness with which she ran upon the top of walls and parapets of bridges and in all daring. "Look at Miss Jack," said a farmer, as she dashed by: "she sits her horse as if it were a bit of herself." At eleven she could not read well. "'Twas thou," she said ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... early middle age, remember the two following species of bullying to which they were subjected, and which, perhaps, are obsolescent. Tall stools were piled up in a pyramid, and the victim was seated on the top, near the roof of the room. The other savages brought him down from this bad eminence by hurling other stools at those which supported him. Or the victim was made to place his hands against the door, with the fingers outstretched, while the ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... ver' true what I tell you all de time. If you cut off Mathurin at de chin, all de way up, you will say de top of him it is a priest. All de way down from his neck, oh, he is just no better as yoursel' or my Jean—non. He is a ver' good man. Only one bad ting he do. Dat is why I pray for him; dat is why everybody pray for ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... enemy!" Lifting their eyes to the top of the high railroad embankment, they saw Tim in the act of chastising Bob. It was afterward ascertained that Tim was rewarding Bob for not helping him more efficiently at the time of the raft accident. Tim completed the bestowal of this reward, and then ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... suggestions for Christmas gifts, and most patient with awkward fingers, and the M.Ks. were very happy over the things she was helping them to make. Now, on top of all this they had found something else to talk ...
— The Story of the Big Front Door • Mary Finley Leonard
... they bored a hole through her bottom, and took to their boats again. The knights of Malta were said to be amongst the worst of these robbers. In the library of the Monastery, which is built on the top of a mountain, and in the middle of the chief town, may be seen bulls from two of the Popes, and a protection from the Emperor Charles the Sixth, issued to protect the island from ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... process—perhaps that of the bichloride of mercury. This box was three feet and a half long, three feet broad, and two and a half feet deep. It was firmly secured by bands of wrought iron, riveted, and forming a kind of trellis-work over the whole. On each side of the chest, near the top, were three rings of iron—six in all—by means of which a firm hold could be obtained by six persons. Our utmost united endeavors served only to disturb the coffer very slightly in its bed. We at once saw the impossibility of removing so great a weight. Luckily, the sole fastenings of the lid consisted ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... said Mauperin. "By-the-bye, it's just possible he won't come, though. He's very busy—in the very thick of marking out his land. I fancy he's just busy transporting his mountain into his lake and his lake on to the top of ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... seem possible to her to drive up to her husband's house in a cab, and drive away again. She committed her, therefore, to the care of Dayman, and put the girl and her maid into a four-wheeler, with Lesley's luggage on the top. Then she established herself in the ladies' waiting-room, until such time as Dayman ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... the nearest water to the agency, and after dinner we caught out the top horses, and, dressed in our best, rode into the agency proper. There was quite a group of houses for the attaches, one large general warehouse, and several school and chapel buildings. I again met the old padre, who showed us over the place. ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... going to have the vicarage painted and papered from top to bottom. It's disgracefully shabby! The paper is hanging off the walls in some places, and where it isn't, it would be almost better if it were, it is so ugly and worn. It is too bad to expect Mr and Mrs Thornton to do all the hard, depressing work of the parish and keep bright and cheerful ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... whose hands Fenton had left his stock had been watching their opportunity, and closed it out at the top of the market, a consummation for which Fenton had so devoutly longed that it seemed cruel he could not have lived to see it. The returns from this and from her husband's life insurance secured to Edith and her son a small income, which was considerably increased ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... is now: this was in keeping with the fierce and warlike spirit of the age. If they had a lion there in Mary's time, Janet often, doubtless, took her little charge out to see it, and let her throw down food to it from above. The den is there now. You approach it upon the top of a broad embankment, which is as high as the depth of the den, so that the bottom of the den is level with the surface of the ground, which makes it always dry. There is a hole, too, at the bottom, through the wall, where they used to put the ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... for the first time into a telephone box had a sort of stage fright. They felt foolish. To do so seemed an absurd performance, especially when they had to shout at the top of their voices. Plainly, whatever of convenience there might be in this new contrivance was far outweighed by the loss of personal dignity; and very few men had sufficient imagination to picture the telephone as a part of the machinery of their daily work. The banker said it might ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... exception to the rule, his properties being seized by the Santana government on the ground that he was a traitor ready to deliver the country over to the Haitians and was guilty of other high crimes and misdemeanors. But when the wheel of fortune again brought Baez to the top he ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... mad woman, moreover, more than like any one I ever saw afore or since, and I could not take my eyes off her, but still followed behind her; and her feathers on the top of her hat were broke going in at the low back door and she pulled out her little bottle out of her pocket to smell when she found herself in the kitchen, and said, 'I shall faint with the heat ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... [Perhaps 'crests' would be a better word.] All people of one ododam (apparently under male kinship) lived together in a special section of each village. At the entrance to the enclosure was the figure of an animal, or some other sign, set up on the top of one of the posts. Thus everybody knew what family dwelt in what section of the village. Some of the families were called after their ododam. But the family with the bear ododam were called Big Feet, not Bears. Sometimes parts of different animals ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... your bath—you must wash ere the night descends, And all for the cause of conventional laws and the soapmakers' dividends! But if 'tis sooth that our meal in truth depends on our washing, Jill, By the sacred right of our appetite—haste—haste to the top of the hill!" ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... had any one ever found out how far his stupidity could go; it was too compact to be examined; it did not ring hollow; it absorbed everything and gave nothing out. Bixiou (a clerk of whom more anon) caricatured the cashier by drawing a head in a wig at the top of an egg, and two little legs at the other end, with this inscription: "Born to pay out and take in without blundering. A little less luck, and he might have been lackey to the bank of France; a little more ambition, and he could have been ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... with her family, part of the exodus that followed the fall of Saigon. They came to the United States with no possessions and not knowing a word of English. Ten years ago—the young girl studied hard, learned English, and finished high school in the top of her class. And this May, May 22d to be exact, is a big date on her calendar. Just 10 years from the time she left Vietnam, she will graduate from the United States Military Academy at West Point. I thought you might like to meet an American hero ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ronald Reagan • Ronald Reagan
... among the older sorts; the fruit being quite tender will not bear long shipment, but it possesses great value for home use, and being a poor grower, it had been thrown aside by nurserymen and orchardists. It should be top-grafted on more vigorous sorts. The Jonathan is another fine sort of slender growth, ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... cup to employ is one with a wide opening at the top and a bottom not too small. Cups with almost perpendicular sides are very difficult to read, as the symbols cannot be seen properly, and the same may be said of small cups. A plain-surfaced breakfast-cup is perhaps the best to use; and the interior should be white and have ...
— Tea-Cup Reading, and the Art of Fortune-Telling by Tea Leaves • 'A Highland Seer'
... eagerly, for they were to me very interesting. But he seldom, if ever, spoke to me inside of the hospital; it was always when I was at the steps minding my vocation, where he would come down and lean over the rail at the top of the wharf. He made and gave me a boat-hook, which I found very convenient. He had a great deal of information, and as the ships came up the river he would point out the flags of the different nations, tell me where they traded from, and what ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... friend, saw that the stag had fallen, his temporary ardour for the chase gave way to that feeling of reluctance which he endured at encountering in his fallen fortunes the gaze whether of equals or inferiors. He reined up his horse on the top of a gentle eminence, from which he observed the busy and gay scene beneath him, and heard the whoops of the huntsmen, gaily mingled with the cry of the dogs, and the neighing and trampling of the horses. But these jovial sounds fell sadly on the ear of the ruined nobleman. The chase, ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... in a flowing silken robe, rose, went over to her dressing-table, seated herself and picked up a round cut-glass jar with a silver top. The jar contained cold cream, or something of that sort. Mattie, having filed down her nail, was now faithfully brushing again, in the forties. Her eyes followed Cally; rested upon her as she sat. These eyes, large, dark, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... mixture of grey and fox coloured red with a yellowish hue. the belley flanks and breast are of the foxcoloured redish yellow. the legs black. the nails white the head on which the hair is short, is varia gated with black and white. a narrow strip of white commences on the top of the nose about 1/2 an inch from it's extremity and extends back along the center of the forehead and neck nearly to the sholders- two stripes of black succeed the white on either side imbracing the sides of the nose, the eyes, and extends back as far as the ears. two other spots ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... it is the gift of God to man at his creation; the very top and flower of his existence; that by which he is distinguished from the lower animals and raised to the rank of moral and accountable beings. Shall we sacrifice this divine gift, then, in order to secure the blessings of civil society? Shall we abridge or mutilate the image of God, stamped upon ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... laughing after he got 'em out, at the remembrance o' their faces. When he first went in they was all sound asleep in the top floor, for the smoke was only beginnin' to show there, an' the surprise they got when he jump in among 'em an' ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... how we felt as that hideous brute rose up in the road and began attacking the wagon. We called on Tenbrook to fire, but for some inconceivable reason he did not, although he still kept running at the top of his speed. Then we heard ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... snake's back, swirl past the arch towards me, bubbleless, almost without a ripple, till it showed all its teeth at once in breaking down. The piers of the arches jutted far out below the fall, like pointed islands. I was about to try to climb on the top of one from the boat, a piece of madness which would probably have ended in my death, but some boys in one of the houses on the bridge began to pelt me with pebbles, so that I had to sheer off. I pulled down among ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... Mr Bass Mullinger) which directs that 'any student refusing to take part in the acting of a comedy or tragedy in the College and absenting himself from the performance, contrary to the injunctions of the President, shall be expelled from the Society'—which seems drastic. And on top of all this, you have evidence enough and to spare of the part played in Elizabethan drama by the 'University Wits.' Why, Marlowe (of Corpus Christi) may be held to have invented its form—blank verse; Ben Jonson ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... top; tuft on head of birds; "a cop" may have reference to one or other meaning; Gifford and others interpret as ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... porcelain on the shelves; there was a French clock, a lamp; there were ornaments in biscuit china; the recess of the single ample window was filled with a green stand, bearing three green flower-pots, each filled with a fine plant glowing in bloom; in one corner appeared a gueridon with a marble top, and upon it a work-box, and a glass filled with violets in water. The lattice of this room was open; the outer air breathing through, gave freshness, the sweet ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Johnson, and see if they could prevail on him to join them in a ramble. They rapped violently at the door of his chambers in the Temple, till at last he appeared in his shirt, with his little black wig on the top of his head, instead of a nightcap, and a poker in his hand, imagining, probably, that some ruffians were coming to attack him. When he discovered who they were, and was told their errand, he smiled, and with great good humour ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... lands, reeds growing on the margins of streams and lakes are utilized for the construction of boats. The Buduma islanders of Lake Chad use clumsy skiffs eighteen feet long, made of hollow reeds tied into bundles and then lashed together in a way to form a slight cavity on top.[533] In the earliest period of Egyptian history this type of boat with slight variations was used in the papyrus marshes of the Nile,[534] and it reappears as the ambatch boat which Schweinfurth observed on the upper White Nile.[535] It is in use far away among the ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... manifestly pleased. Pietro began a voluble recital of the glories that would meet their enraptured gaze from the top ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... your ma's always 'ad since I've been here; it's done for her and the best families I've lived in. Fors grars is served at the end of dinner with apsia and jelly, or else in one of them things with crust on the top and truffles. But for tea I consider it quite out ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... after half past eight when Miss Peterkin chanced to meet her friend Mr. Carrington in the entrance hall of the Kings Arms. He was evidently going out, and she noticed he was rather differently habited from usual, wearing now a long, light top coat of a very dark grey hue, and a dark coloured felt hat. They were not quite so becoming as his ordinary garb, she thought, but then Mr. Carrington looked ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston |
