"Cleft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Tintagel and the Land's End. And if Wessex cannot boast the sustained grandeur of the stern face that England turns to the Atlantic waves, the romantic arch of Durdle Door, the majestic hill-cliff that rises above the green cleft of Arish Mel, and the sombre precipices of St. Aldhelm's, with the smiling loveliness of the Wessex lanes and hamlets behind them, ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... elderly face, with a short nose, delicately pink at the tip. The eyes were a pale blue, and just under the lower lip, which protruded slightly, was a small gray-red goatee, sticking straight out from a cleft in the chin like a dab of a sandy sheep's wool. Also, as the speaker swung himself further round, I took note of a shirt of plaited white linen billowing out over his chest and ending at the top in a starchy yet rumply collar that rolled majestically ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... lakes, and then struck through a rocky pass of a very difficult character, into a series of valleys of widely different aspect. At last she came to a stream which flowed over a bed of lava, and between banks of lava, with great rapidity and a rushing, roaring sound. At one point the river-bed was cleft through its centre, to the depth of eighteen or twenty feet, by a chasm from fifteen to eighteen feet wide, into which the waters pour with considerable violence. A bridge in the middle of the river spans ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... there is every reason to believe, on the strength of all the testimony which modern science has wrested from the unwilling records of the past, that the earliest inhabitants of the islands of the Seine were contemporary with the mammoth, the cave-bear, the auroch, and the rhinoceros with cleft nostrils. ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... daylight had been needed for the task of escaping from the valley by this road. Their way lay through a narrow pass which ran through a deep cleft of the mountains, a cleft which seemed as though it had been carved out by a blow of a Titanic axe. There was scarcely a yard of the narrow path upon which a step could be taken smoothly and easily. For ages upon ages the forces of nature had been tearing huge ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... you," said the peasant, "at least your Reverence will take an egg. See here, how handily I can cook one," he added, striking his stick into a little cavity of a rock, from which, as from an escape-valve, hissed a jet of hot steam,—"see here, I nestle the egg in this little cleft, and it will be done in a twinkling. Our good God gives us our ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... joy looking out from their windows, all intoxicated with the mere delight of living and the gladness of a new day. The pagan populace of Antioch—reckless, pleasure-loving, spendthrift—were preparing for the Saturnalia. But all this Hermas had renounced. He cleft his way through the crowd slowly, like a reluctant swimmer weary of ...
— The Lost Word - A Christmas Legend of Long Ago • Henry Van Dyke
... woman of Nishada caste, begets the class called Karavara. From the Chandala again springs up the caste known by the name of Pandusaupaka whose occupation consists in making baskets and other things with cleft bamboos. From the union of the Nishada with a woman of the Vaidehi caste springs one who is called by the name of Ahindaka. The Chandala begets upon a Saupaka woman, a son that does not differ from the Chandala in status or occupation. A Nishada woman, by union with a Chandala, brings ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... sudden the dense foliage was cleft; there opened a broad alley between drooping boughs, and in the deep hollow, bordered with sand and stones, a flood rolled eastward. This river is now called Sinno; it was the ancient Sins, whereon stood the city of the same name. In the seventh century before Christ, Sins was lauded ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... frequent use, though "barbarous and cruel" punishments were forbidden in 1641. Scolds and railers were set on a ducking-stool and dipped over head and ears three times, in running water, if possible. Mrs. Oliver, a troublesome theologian, was silenced with a cleft stick applied to her tongue. Thomas Scott, in 1649, was sentenced for some offence to learn "the chatachise," or be fined ten shillings, and, after due consideration, paid the fine. Sometimes offenders, with a refinement of cruelty, were obliged to "go ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... eyes and now his quid, spat freely on the rich carpet, beat time on one big palm with the other and on the floor with one vast foot, while through the song like a lifeboat through waves, undisturbed and undisturbing, cleft the steady speech of the nurse to the boy. Regardless of the precaution just urged for Ramsey, her arm fell ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... temple must be regarded as a vast funerary chapel, and no one who has studied the religion of Egypt can entertain a doubt as to its purpose. Abydos was the place where the dead assembled before passing into the other world. It was here, at the mouth of the "Cleft," that they received the provisions and offerings of their relatives and friends who remained on this earth. As the dead flocked hither from all quarters of the world, they collected round the tomb of Osiris, and there waited till the moment came to embark on the Boat of the Sun. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... and Halahala point extends a strait a mile wide and a league long, which the Indians call 'Kinabutasan,' a name that in their language means 'place that was cleft open'; from which it is inferred that in other times the island was joined to the mainland and was separated from it by some severe earthquake, thus leaving this strait: of this there is an old tradition among the Indians."—Fray ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... about and at last saw something dim that thrust out of the dark on the ground, and then it got brighter, and he marked low down, no higher than his knee, a blue ghost of light shooting through some cleft among the stones. It waxed until he could put down his watch and read the hands by it. And he found it ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... the land, to turn away this wrath by repentance, and amendment of life? Behold the Lord cometh forth out of his place, and will come down and tread upon the places of the earth, and the mountains shall be molten under him, and the valleys shall be cleft, as wax before the fire, and as the waters that are poured down a steep place. But what is the cause of all this?—For the transgression of Jacob is all this, and for the sins of the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the fight, that their heads met above them, and their feet below them; and in their middles met their arms over the rims and the bosses of their shields. So closely were they locked in the fight, that they turned and bent, and shivered their spears from the points to the hafts; and cleft and loosened their shields from the centres to the rims. So closely were they locked, that the Bocanachs, and the Bananachs, and the wild people of the glens, and the demons of the air screamed from the rims of their shields, ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... ringing. But there is nothing which delights and terrifies our 'English' Theatre so much as a Ghost, especially when he appears in a bloody Shirt. A Spectre has very often saved a Play, though he has done nothing but stalked across the Stage, or rose through a Cleft of it, and sunk again without speaking one Word. There may be a proper Season for these several Terrors; and when they only come in as Aids and Assistances to the Poet, they are not only to be excused, but to be applauded. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... a broad cleft in the rocks, the water hurled itself out of its hiding-place, and, dashing down over its rocky bed, rushed impetuous over the sloping country, till, its force being spent, it waded tediously through the slushing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... the lean-tos, built with so much skill by soldiers and mountaineers, protected them, and the fires before them sank to great beds of gleaming coals that gave out a grateful warmth. Far overhead the wind still shrieked and howled, as if in anger because it could not get at them in the deep cleft. But for Dick all these shrieks and howls were transformed into a soothing song by his feeling of comfort, even of luxury. The cove was full of warmth and light and ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... only another of those irresistible strokes to stretch Gaston beside Sir Reginald, and Eustace was left alone to maintain the struggle. A few moments more, and the Lances would come up—but how impossible to hold out! The first blow cleft his shield in two, and though it did not pierce his armour, the shock brought him to his knee, and without the support of the staff of the pennon he would have been on the ground. Still, however, he kept up his defence, using sometimes his sword, and ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... some forty feet or so in a shorter time than I have taken to describe it, when we reached a platform, above which, as we looked upwards, it seemed impossible that we could ascend. There was, however, the branch of a tree, which grew in a cleft of ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... Aix-la-Chapelle, our automobile carried us down the Meuse. On the eastern bank, which mainly we followed during the first six hours of riding, there were craggy cliffs, covered with forests, which at intervals were cleft by deep ravines, where small farms clung to the sides of the steep hills. On the opposite shore cultivated lands extended from the limit of one's vision down almost to the water. There they met a continuous chain ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... It was a rocky cleft through the hills, perhaps a hundred yards wide here where it opened on the river, with a little stream in its centre fringed with low trees, but narrowing gradually, and becoming blocked with underbrush as ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... Reynolds, 'in a situation from which none but a man of perfect integrity could extricate himself. I pointed at some lines in The Traveller which I told him I was sure he wrote. He hesitated a little; during this hesitation I recollected myself, that, as I knew he would not lie, I put him in a cleft-stick, and should have had but my due if he had given me a rough answer; but he only said, 'Sir, I did not write them, but that you may not imagine that I have wrote more than I really have, the utmost I have wrote ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... star, Get with child a mandrake root, Tell me where all past years are, Or who cleft the Devil's foot; Teach me to hear mermaid's singing, Or to keep off envy's stinging, And find What wind Serves ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... sufficiently firm to restrain; the flood of passion. I knew I must refrain; I read it in the calm depths of those eyes fronting me in frank friendship. A word, a single, mad, ill-considered word, would sever the bond between us as though cleft by a sword. With any other I might have dared all, but not with her. Reckless as my nature had grown in the hard school of life, I shrank from this test, dreading to see her face change, her attitude harden. And it would; there had already been sufficient revealment of her ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... beaker inverse at a feast on Olympus, exhausted of wine, But inlaid as with rose from the lips of Dione that left it divine: From the lips everliving of laughter and love everlasting, that leave In the cleft of his heart who shall kiss them a snake to corrode it and cleave. So glimmers the gloom into glory, the glory recoils into gloom, That the eye of the sun could not kindle, the lip not of Love could relume. So darkens reverted the cup that the kiss of her mouth set on fire: So blackens ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Gordale on the east side of the village, happily remains what nature left it, a stony and desolate valley, without a single object to divert the eye from the scene before it. This is a solid mass of limestone, of perhaps equal height with the Cove, cleft asunder by some great convulsion of nature, and opening its "ponderous and marble jaws" on the right and left. The sensation of horror on approaching it is increased by the projection of either side from its base, so that the two connivant rocks, though considerably distant at the bottom, admit ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various
... with the mediaeval temper and, together with the new art, had emanated from Paris, is closely akin to Gothic architecture. For the Gothic style and scholastic thought share the characteristics of the infinitely constructive and infinitely cleft, the infinitely subtle and ornamental—perhaps the last trace of the spirit of the north as compared with the simplicity of ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... last winter I was away, I must have been dreaming, but it seemed to me that I was awake. I had come back home and was walking on the hraun. The hraun was covered with ashes. As I walked, I suddenly fell into a deep cleft and kept on falling and falling. At last I found myself lying on the bottom, unable to stir. Death came and sucked the life out of my eyes and held it in her hand like a tiny flame. Suddenly a woman stood beside me dressed in moss. She pleaded for me so long ...
— Modern Icelandic Plays - Eyvind of the Hills; The Hraun Farm • Jhann Sigurjnsson
... pale, ascetic cheek dawned a most amazing dimple. "Sort of jarred you girls some, didn't it," she queried, "to see me strutting round with a photo of the Senior Surgeon?" The little cleft in her chin showed suddenly with almost startling distinctness. "Well, seeing it's you," she grinned, "and the year's all over, and there's nobody left that I can worry about it any more, I don't mind telling you in the least that ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... him along the thicket and up the rocks to a cleft — a hole in the sheer rock overhung by ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... They cleft their way to the very centre, as a wedge driven by a powerful mallet cleaves its way to the heart of the tree. The followers of Mohammed scattered in all directions, and then, like wasps, clustered around in hope ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... switch of an electric torch as he spoke, and guided Myra over rocky ground to what seemed a mere cleft ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... the propagation of nut trees has been with the following methods. For budding, I use the plate bud exclusively. For grafting on stocks up to one inch I use either the splice graft or the modified cleft graft. For larger stocks I use either the simple bark graft or the slot bark graft. Each will be discussed ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... hard pressed; but they fought like men, led courageously by Peters, the sailing master. As Dolores cleft the sparkling water, speeding out to them like a gorgeous sprite of the waves, men tugged at gun-tackles to swing a piece around to rake their own decks, for Yellow Rufe and his ruffians had swept the forecastle clear of defenders. And Dolores reached the vessel, climbed over the low-listing ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... came three knights riding, one with a gold surcoat over his armour, and thereon a cleft heart of red; the second with a green surcoat, and on the same a chief of silver with green boughs thereon, their ends a-flaming; but the third bore a black surcoat besprinkled with silver tears. And ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... revived he found himself lying upon a rough stone pavement and it was still dark. He saw above a narrow cleft of somber sky, and something cold and trailing lay across his face. He shivered with repulsion, snatched at it to throw it off, and found that it was his rope. Then he felt of himself cautiously and fearfully, but found that no bones were broken. Nor was he bruised to any degree and ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... they discerned through a cleft between two high mountains about twenty shepherds coming down, all clad in jerkins of black wool, and crowned with garlands, some of which were of yew, and some of cypress. Six of them carried a bier covered with various flowers and boughs. One of the ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... beaten, insulted, let down into some cleft or cave. It is clearly a "Carrying out the Death," though we do not know the exact date at which it was celebrated. It had its sequel in another festival at Delphi called Herois, or the "Heroine." Plutarch[23] says it was too mystical and secret ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... finding a stream with an abundance of fresh grass on its banks. They dared not light a fire, but chewed some of the tough charqui, and watched the distant cleft in the hills which led to ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... pupil, the anterior wall of the capsule appeared opaque in its whole extent, and of a color and luster like mother-of-pearl. On looking from the temporal side in an oblique direction into the pupil, there was visible in the anterior wall of the capsule a very small perpendicular cleft of about one line and a quarter ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... sharply separated from contiguous parts. In the middle of its hind border there is a white, crescent-shaped groove—Koller's sickle-groove (Fig 1.59 s); a small projecting process in the centre of it is called the sickle-knob (sk). This important cleft is the primitive mouth, which was described for a long time as the "primitive groove." If we make a vertical section through this part, we see that a flat and broad cleft stretches under the germinal disk forwards from the ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... that wealth, or war shall seize, cruel killing, your king and lord!" Up stood then with shield the sturdy champion, stayed by the strength of his single manhood, and hardy 'neath helmet his harness bore under cleft of the cliffs: no coward's path! Soon spied by the wall that warrior chief, survivor of many a victory-field where foemen fought with furious clashings, an arch of stone; and within, a stream that broke ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... bribery of a few hundreds of its members, whose very names were as yet unknown. To keep the people faithful to the coalition was a much more difficult task. It was soon patent to all that the agitators had not been wrong in supposing that a serious cleft had opened between the late allies, and in the war of words with which the Forum was soon filled, Memmius seems to have been no match for his opponent. Crassus surpassed himself, and the keen but humorous invective with which he held Memmius up to the ridicule of his former ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... threaded corridors, and penetrated crypts, strange yet familiar to her eyes, which seemed to her as if they could see, as it were, in darkness. Then came a confused sense of eager search for something that she knew was hidden, whether in the cleft of a rock, or under the boards of a floor, or in some hiding-place among the skeleton rafters, or in a forgotten drawer, or in a heap of rubbish, she could not tell; but somewhere there was something which ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the right and left the ground fell away as if cut with a knife, leaving a precipice of over a hundred feet sheer down; but close by where I was standing was the head of a watercourse, which in time had gradually worn a sort of cleft in the wall, up or down which it was not difficult to make one's way. Further down this little gorge widened out and became a deep ravine, and further still a wide valley, where it opened upon the flats far below us. ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... army, saw it strike the breastplate of a gigantic and fierce-looking warrior. Immediately on feeling the blow, he seemed to take it for granted that somebody had struck him; and, uplifting his weapon, he smote his next neighbor a blow that cleft his helmet asunder, and stretched him on the ground. In an instant, those nearest the fallen warrior began to strike at one another with their swords, and stab with their spears. The confusion spread wider and wider. Each man smote down his brother, and was himself smitten down before ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the leaves are larger in this plant, and are not quite so deep a green. The leaves of fool's parsley are also finer cleft, and appear to end more ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... into harmony and concord; and the only way by which wars and tumults within the soul turn into tranquil energy, and into peace which is not stagnation, but rather a mightier force than was ever developed when the soul was cleft ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... in their rods half dry; these also were set apart, Others gave in their rods half dry and cleft; these too were set by themselves. Others brought in their rods half dry and half green, and these were in like manner placed ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... appeal. After long separation he was taken seriously ill in the far Southwest. She left children, home and school work to go to his bedside. Her watchful care brought him back from the very door of death, and her prayers were answered in seeing him forsake the cup and hide for safety in the cleft of the Rock of Ages. He returned with her to their home, but soon after passed away. She buried him beneath the green Missouri sod, planted flowers about the grave, paid him tribute of her tears, ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... colors as the sun touched the painted crags of the Bulldog and lighted up the square summit of Red Butte across the river, throwing mysterious shadows into the black gorge which split it from crown to base. Between that high cliff and the cleft red butte flowed the Salagua, squirming through its tortuous canyon, and beyond them lay Hidden Water, the unknown, whither a single man was sent to turn back the ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... and at my window, leaving bed, By night I mused, of easeful sleep bereft, On those 'brave boys (Ah War! thy theft); Some marching feet Found pause at last by cliffs Potomac cleft; Wakeful I mused, while in the street Far footfalls died away till none ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... land a mile long, and laid flat upon the sea, it bears two forest trees standing close together, with a wide spread of shade at the foot of their smooth trunks. A ravine extending the whole length of the island is full of bushes; and presenting a deep tangled cleft on the high side spreads itself out on the other into a shallow depression abutting on a small ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... Procellarum, near the crater-mountain Aristarchus, which is famed for the intense brilliance of its central peak, whose reflective power is so great that it was once supposed to be aflame with volcanic fire. The cleft, or crack, in question is very erratic in its course, and many miles in length, and it terminates in a ringed plain named Herodotus not far east of Aristarchus, breaking through the wall of the plain and entering the interior. Many other similar chasms or canons exist ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... great public controversy with Eckius he kept a flower in his hand. Lord Bacon has a beautiful passage about flowers. As to Shakspeare, he is a perfect Alpine valley,—he is full of flowers; they spring, and blossom, and wave in every cleft of his mind. Even Milton, cold, serene, and stately as he is, breaks forth into exquisite gushes of tenderness and fancy when he ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... led down from the steep slope to the floor of the canyon. What from far above had appeared only a green timber-choked cleft proved from close relation to be a wide winding valley, tip and down, densely forested for the most part, yet having open glades and bisected from wall to wall by the creek. Every quarter of a mile or so the road crossed the stream; and at ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... verdure and fertility, and formed a lake in the middle, inhabited by fish of every species, and frequented by every fowl, whom nature has taught to dip the wing in water. This lake discharged its superfluities by a stream, which entered a dark cleft of the mountain, on the northern side, and fell, with dreadful noise, from precipice to precipice, till it was heard ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... utter the words, but they thrilled her through and through in the very thought, astonishing her, and irradiating her face with a smile. In the distance some fleecy cloudlets, driven by the breeze, now floated over Paris like a flock of swans. Huge gaps were being cleft in the fog; a momentary glimpse was given of the left bank, indistinct and clouded, like a city of fairydom seen in a dream; but suddenly a thick curtain of mist swept down, and the fairy city ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... panther had seized him; and then we saw it go bounding back up the rocks, grappling and gathering up the dog in its mouth, at every leap. Climbing still higher, it gained a projecting ledge, along which it ran to a great cleft, or fissure, seventy or eighty feet above the path. There ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... loved a maiden I worshipped where she trod; But, when she clove my heart, the cleft Set free the imprisoned god: Then was I king of all the world, My soul had burst its bars, For grief beyond the sunset And love beyond ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... was the first man to reach the bottom of the cleft, and he set off immediately round the base of the rock to the beach, the rest of us following him as we made safe our footing in the valley. I was the third man down; but, being light and fleet of foot, I passed the second man and caught up with the bo'sun ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... the last month of snows, and great rains had fallen, and the torrents were shouting from the mountains, and the Yaupaae pouring out a mightier flood than had ever been seen rushing through between the cleft rocks. It was then Wampum-hair announced his intention to undertake the adventure of the Falls, and invited the tribe to gather together to witness its performance. It is said that the heart of Leelinau, touched by so ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... for D'Artagnan's words began to return to his memory, and he had an indistinct recollection that D'Artagnan had made use of the same word. He looked, but uselessly, for some cleft or crevice which might indicate an opening or a ring to assist ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... iron chest, called a hatch, in which the Corporation of Yarmouth kept their charters and valuable documents. Among the contents are the tallies or cleft sticks upon which the accounts were formerly kept, the stick being notched according to the amount of money advanced, one part being given to the creditor, and the other to the debtor. The same plan is used in the present day by the hop-pickers in Kent, the overseer having ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... in the middle of a wide, flat valley. Then came a line of broken hills, yellowish and sandy, cleft apart by sharp indentations, and dry, winding arroyos, down which the buffalo trooped, thirsty, to the river. When the sun sloped westward, shadows lay clear in the hollows, violet and amethyst and sapphire blue, transparent washes of color as pure as the rays of the prism. The hills rolled ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... "Each bird, from cleft, from brake, or bower, Bears her a blessing on its wings; And every rich and precious flower Its ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... has gone how the surges of life ebb, ebb ever lower in my heart? Nay, nay, but there is hope. I have here beside me an Arab blade of subtle Damascene steel, insinuous to pierce and to hew, with which in a street of Bethlehem I saw a Syrian's head cleft open—a gallant stroke! The edges of this I have made bright and white for a ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... they told us, in front of that rich altar was the silver star which marked the place in the rock where the Holy Cross stood. And on either side of it were the sockets which received the crosses of the two thieves. And a few feet away, covered by a brass slide, was the cleft in the rock which was made by the earthquake. It was lined with slabs of reddish marble and looked ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... wholly unwelcome diversion when, late on an August afternoon, she saw the thick laurels of the hedge near her part a little and the form of Ram Juna stand in the cleft, snowy white from turban to slippers save for the gleaming ruby and the polished bronze face. He looked like the ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... angle of the turn was a gigantic boulder almost blocking the way. In the inky darkness it was hideously difficult to get down without overturning the vehicles. The very path itself was a mere narrow cleft in the side of the nullah, and the lead horses, thrown out of draught to allow those in the wheel to bring their waggon round the boulder, had to scramble up the rocky slope again until they were almost level with the waggon itself. ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... stuck fast. Skarphedinn gave the shield such a quick twist, that Sigmund let go his sword. Then Skarphedinn hews at Sigmund with his axe, the "Ogress of war". Sigmund had on a corselet, the axe came on his shoulder. Skarphedinn cleft the shoulder-blade right through, and at the same time pulled the axe towards him, Sigmund fell down on both knees, but sprang ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... and temples without result, he removed his Norfolk coat—still warm and dry within—and with the help of two fir boughs contrived to shelter Lenox's head and chest from the chilling downpour. Then he set to work on the broken arm. The same fir,—springing sturdily from a cleft in the rock below,—provided a splint; and with two handkerchiefs (he had wrung the last drop of rain-diluted brandy from his own) he tied the injured limb skilfully and securely into place. That done, there remained nothing but to wait:—the ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... danger; as he onward creeps If, chance, his anxious eye at distance sees The mountain-shepherd's solitary home, Peeping from forth the moon-illumin'd trees, What sudden transports to his bosom come! But, if between some hideous chasm yawn, Where the cleft pine a doubtful bridge displays, In dreadful silence, on the brink, forlorn He stands, and views in the faint rays Far, far below, the torrent's rising surge, And listens to the wild impetuous roar; ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... resembling hay which arose from the thick and matted herbs and grass. Proceeding along the valley the stream on our left vanished at an isolated rocky hill; but, on closer examination, I found the apparent barrier cleft in two, and that the water passed through, roaring over rocks. This was rather a singular feature in an open valley where the ground on each side of it was almost as low as the rocky bed of the stream itself. The hill was composed of granular ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... to his mother 'to throw away the worser part of her cleft heart,' Pietro ridicules in act i. ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... will be well, and we shall all be glad. But who will build the Mills House for lonely girls and women who cannot pay seven or eight dollars a week, and would not go to the Woman's Hotel if they could? The social cleft between Madison Avenue and Bleecker Street is too wide to be bridged by the best intentions of a hotel company. I doubt if they would know where to go in that strange up-town country. When as an immigrant I paid two dollars a day for board that was not worth fifty cents, in ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... consisting in the allegation of historical facts, and the other in the invention of facts for oneself. Invention comprises illustration on the one hand and ... fables on the other." Then he tells how Aesop defended a demagogue by the fable of the fox caught in the cleft of a rock. The fox was infested with dog-ticks which sucked his blood. A benevolent hedge-hog offered to remove the ticks, but the fox declined the kind offer on the ground that his ticks were already full of blood and had ceased to annoy him much, whereas if they were removed, a new colony ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... rising from a cleft in some distant mountains, bathed the plains with a silvery flood when horse and rider reached a point within a mile of the pueblo, and Nigger covered the remainder of the distance at a pace that made the night ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... bottom of the bay the sea expands a little, assumes a bluer tint as it comes to reflect more of the cloudless heavens, and at length its tiny waves die away on a bed of violets, as closely netted together as the sand upon the shore. If you disembark from the boat, you find in the cleft of a neighbouring ravine a fountain of living water, which gushes beneath a narrow path formed by the goats, which leads up from this sequestered solitude, amidst overshadowing fig-trees and oleanders, to the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... coming down from the north, with England on one bank and Wales upon the other, entered the sea, widening out as it did so. Just before it reached the sea, another lesser river, called the Avon, the upper part of which is still there, joined it passing through this cleft in the rocks. ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... of frantic search. Unlike the previous leads, this spoke with authority, named names, gave dates, and outlined sketchily but adequately the operations of the young man in very plausible prose. Then the letter went on in the manner of a man with his foot in a cleft stick; the writer did not approve of James Holden's operations since they involved his wife and newly-adopted daughter, but since wife and daughter were fond of James Holden, the writer could not ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... Doraine swung around and pointed straight for the cleft in the shore. The ship, two miles out, had responded to the insidious pressure of the current and was being drawn toward the rocks,—at first so slowly that there was scarcely a ripple off her bows; then, as she lumbered onward, she began to turn over the water ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... have this valley—or mountain-cleft, one should call it—described, only verse could do it for you,' Diana pursued, and stopped, glanced at his face, and smiled. She had spied the end of a towel peeping out of one of his pockets. 'You came ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... time the light has stayed with me; so I knew it was the visible presence of the Spirit. In the morning I started to the world by the way I had come. In a cleft of the mountain I found a stone of vast worth, which I sold in Hurdwar. By Lahore, and Cabool, and Yezd, I came to Ispahan. There I bought the camel, and thence was led to Bagdad, not waiting for caravans. ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... misshapen figure might have been the original of one of those intaglios of Venice, which seem to reproduce all that is refined and choice in human features. He had the broad brow, delicate, sensitive nose, curved and mobile lips, and the square, slightly cleft chin that make up an almost perfect outline. Yet the large dark eyes bore an expression of such hopelessness, such unyouthful gravity, that the whole face seemed gloomed over, as when a heavy cloud shuts out the brilliant sunshine of ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... other anatomical anomalies, except cleft palate, is reported among males. Manley reports that of 33 cases of harelip treated by him only 6 were females.[51] It appears also that supernumerary digits are more frequent in males. Wilder[52] has recorded ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... lines on a face grey beneath the great brown hood of his duffle—a face so youthful, yet with the knowledge of the command of men writ plain thereon. The propellers have swirled faithfully and unceasingly; the good ship in consequence has cleft the passive waves. But who knows what hideous lurking peril of mine or torpedo we have not survived, what baleful eye has not glowered at us, itself unseen, and retired again to its foul underworld, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... recalling the minaret of Mansourah near Tclemcen in Algeria, that gigantic monolith apparently carved out of Indian gold and cleft ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... to see his brother so covetous, and to divert his mind he looked up at the great hills. As he looked, three creatures like sheep scoured up a cleft in one of the hills, as fleet as any deer; and when Kind turned he saw his brother coming with the bag and shears, but not a single ewe was to be seen. Clutch's first question was, what had become of them; and when Kind told him what he saw, the eldest ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... very one without doubt in which many of the spoons of the first colonists were made; and wherever such spoons are found, if they are genuine antiques, they may safely be assigned a date earlier than 1714. The handle was flat and broad at the end, where it was cleft in three points which were turned up, that is, not toward the back of the spoon. This was known as the "hind's-foot handle." The bowl was a perfectly regular ellipse and was strengthened by continuing the handle ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... a cleft of the hills of Jamaica, fifteen hundred feet above that blue tropical sea below, on the brow of a cool valley, where that bounding stream of white water rushes from the tall peak in the sky in tiny ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... a long, thin rope which I had in my room, anticipating such a trial for it, I roused five of my picked men, and silently we made our way to the foot of the northern cliff. Here, with the rope around my waist, I worked my way diagonally up along a cleft in the rock, which, like others parallel to it, marked the face of the precipice. A slip would be fatal. The loosening of a stone would give warning to the sentinel, whose slow steps I heard on the wall above me, but at last I reached a narrow ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... above the level of the ground, and vanished so quickly that Zinti, who as watching, rubbed his eyes in wonder. After waiting a while, however, he followed in their steps to find that behind the shrub was a narrow cleft or crack such as are often to be seen in cliffs, and that down this cleft ran a pathway which twisted and turned in the rock, growing broader as it went, till at last it ended in the hidden krantz. This krantz was a very beautiful spot about ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... gap, where the shiftless one had placed the Angel with the Flaming Sword. It was only a few hundred yards away, and he was able to see that it was but a narrow cleft between the hills. While he looked he saw a human figure appear upon the crest of the hill, outlined perfectly against the sun which was a blazing ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... He knew what the invitation meant; it was a feast of death; but he calmly rose, his spirit steeled for the worst. His guide entered a wigwam and ordered him to follow; and, as he bent his head to enter, a savage concealed by the door cleft his skull with a tomahawk. On the following day Lalande shared a similar fate. Their heads were chopped off and placed on the palisades of the town, and their bodies thrown into the Mohawk river. The Mission of the Martyrs was at an end for ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... the way that old Ridley was gone: Or with those securities what he had done: Or whether they had been already call'd out: If they are not, their fate is, I fear, past a doubt. Twenty families ruin'd, they say: what was left,— Unable to find any clew to the cleft The old fox ran to earth in,—but join you as fast As I ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... days' upward struggle. These rapids extend about twelve miles as the river runs, alternating between rattling, rocky plunges and swift, smooth water, for the most part through a densely-wooded ravine cleft through low but abrupt hills, and as lonely and cheerless as the heart of Africa. The solitude is of that sort which takes hold upon the very soul and weaves about it hues of the sombrest cast. From our parting with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... the knife handed to him. And with the point, very gently, he began to scratch the mixture of earth and moss that filled the narrow cleft. ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... not marred, by the touch of heat and cold. The straight white throat rose like a column from the neck to the delicate lobe of the faultless ear, and a generously modelled line sprang in a clean curve of beauty to the sudden rounding of the ivory chin, cleft in the midst by nature's supreme touch. Low on her forehead the heavy waves of her hair were drawn back to each side under the apple-green silk coverchief that was kept in place by the crown of state. But she wore no wimple, and ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... consecrated Cedd with staff and ring; And by the morning's sunrise Sigebert Rode with them, face to south. The Spring, long checked, Fell, like God's Grace, or fire, or flood, at once O'er all the land: it swathed the hills in green; It fringed with violets cleft and rock; illumed The stream with primrose tufts: but mightier far That Spring which triumphed in the monarch's breast, All doubt dispelled. That smile which knew not cause Looked like his angel's mirrored on his face: At times he seemed with utter ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... somewhat abashed and looked on; yet was his heart in his mouth the while. And so while the maiden stood as one astonied before the worm, who gaped upon her with wide open mouth, there came forth from a cleft in the rocks a goodly knight who bore silver, a red cross; and he had his sword in his hand, and he fell upon the worm to smite him; and the worm ramped up against him, and there was battle betwixt them, while the maiden knelt anigh with her hands ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... a neck or saddle of drifted snow lying in a gap of the mountain rampart which flanked the last curve of the glacier. Under the cliffs on either hand, like a moat beneath the ramparts, lay a yawning ice-cleft or bergschrund, formed by the drawing away of the steadily moving Barrier ice from the rocks. Across this moat and leading up to the gap in the ramparts, the Gateway provided a solid causeway. To climb this and descend its reverse face gave ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... as far as Massa Lubrense, a little town on the steep shore; over against it the giant cliffs of Capri, every cleft and scar and jutting rock discernible through the pellucid air, every minutest ruggedness casting its clear-cut shadow. But the surpassing glory was the prospect at the Cape of Sorrento when they reached it on their walk back. Before them ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... swiftly to the tent door. The child instinctively turns and runs inside. The man's gun is raised with inexorable purpose. His shot rings out. The child screams; and the man crashes to the earth with his head cleft ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... most beautiful I have ever seen. It stood at a point where the vast forests which surround the mountains in a belt, from ten to twenty miles broad, run down into the plains and touch the river. As at Baroona, the stream runs in through a deep cleft in the table land, which here, though precipitous on the eastern bank, on the western breaks away into a small natural amphitheatre bordered by fine hanging woods just in advance of which, about two hundred yards from the river, stood the house, a long, low building densely covered with creepers ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... walked by the silver stream into a wild gorge. Graceful pines afforded cover for Mariposa and Alfonso, as swift of foot, they scaled high cliffs, till the Indian girl held aloft her hand, and above in a cleft of white quartz the yellow gold shone ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... to rest, and they soon passed away. After a few minutes he pursued his walk, climbing towards the open stretches of heathery moor, which lay beyond the park, and a certain ghyll or hollow with a wild stream in it that cleft the moor high up—one of his ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... for we were close to the village, and already we had heard voices from thence as men woke. For Olaf was ever touched by the sight of a fair land lying before him. And while he spoke, a man seemed to rise out of a cleft of the rocks below us, and climbed up to us, and bowed before us, saying that ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... teachings, or indeed any of the religious exercises of the church. In Sandwich a man was publicly whipped for speaking deridingly of God's words and ordinances as taught by the Sandwich minister. Mistress Oliver was forced to stand in public with a cleft stick on her tongue for "reproaching the elders." A New Haven man was severely whipped and fined for declaring that he received no profit from the minister's sermons. We also know the terrible shock given the Windham church in 1729 by the "vile and slanderous expressions" ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... At its head it was a dry wash, full of gravel and rocks. It began to cut deep into the bowels of the earth. It shut out sight of the surrounding walls and peaks. Water appeared from under a cliff and, augmented by other springs, became a brook. Hot, dry, and barren at its beginning, this cleft became cool and shady and luxuriant with grass and flowers and amber moss with silver blossoms. The rocks had changed color from yellow to deep red. Four hours of turning and twisting, endlessly down and down, over boulders and banks and every ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... at any time forgotten you, be that justice done the unfortunate: and though I see well enough what a great deep cleft divides us, in our ways of practically looking at this world,—I see also (as probably you do yourself) where the rock- strata, miles deep, unite again; and the two poor souls are at one. Poor devils!—Nay if there were no point of agreement at all, and I were more intolerant "of ways of thinking" ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... this girl beautiful, it would have conveyed a totally erroneous picture of her, and but ill defined her subtle fascination. Her features were irregular, a trifle heavy perchance, with high cheek bones and massive square chin, with a cleft in the centre as though the Master Sculptor had said: 'This were too strong a face for a woman; I will give her a hint of tenderness to make her utterly irresistible,' and so He had planted a child's dimple in her chin and another near her lips when she smiled. Wilhelmine ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... alone; in foam and spray Wave after wave Breaks on the rocks which, stern and gray, Shoulder the broken tide away, Or murmurs hoarse and strong through mossy cleft ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... father being asleep and the house oppressively still, took her book and went out to a little nook back of her cottage, where she was in the habit of going to study, and where Chi Lu had built a rustic seat for her beneath a great pine tree that grew out of a cleft ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... spirit. The position of the latter, and countenance, are less grotesque and more demoniacal than is usual in paintings of the time; the triple wings expanded—the arms crossed over the breast, and holding each other above the elbow, the claws fixing in the flesh; a serpent buries its head in a cleft in the bosom, and the right hoof is lifted, as if ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... and the revulsion was inspiring. I found myself in a little green vale hemmed in by magnificent heights whose rocky summits were covered with freshly-fallen snow. Close at hand rose the Watzmann, a soaring pyramid whose summit was cleft into two sharp peaks inclined into some semblance of a bishop's mitre. My recent association with the monk had made vivid the thought of the old church, and it seemed fitting that there should be lifted high in air such a symbol of the ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... though differently performed, is analogous in its results to budding, and many amateurs not infrequently speak of them in the same terms. To graft a cion, one end is carefully cut in the shape of a wedge, and inserted in a cleft where it is to grow; on the other hand, in budding, we use but a single eye, taken from a small branch, and insert it inside of the bark of the stock or tree we wish to bud. From this one eye, we may in time look for a tree laden ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan
... door and peered ineffectually into the opaque window, nothing rewarded his curiosity, and after half an hour of diligent endeavor he was compelled to return home no wiser than when he had first stood on the summit of the path and looked down into the rocky cleft. ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... for D'Artagnan's words began to return to his memory, and he had an indistinct recollection that D'Artagnan had made use of the same word. He looked, but uselessly so, for some cleft or crevice which might indicate an opening, or a ring to assist in lifting up ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... of a man cut in two, downwards, by the sweep of a sword—one half of him falls toward the spectator; the other half is elaborately drawn in its section—giving the profile of the divided nose and lips; cleft jaw—breast—and entrails; and this is done with farther pollution and horror of intent in the circumstances, which I do not choose to describe—still less some other of the designs which seek for fantastic extreme of sin, as this for the utmost horror ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... and stepped into the cleft in the wall. Martin followed, and found himself again on a level floor, and in the entrance ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer |
