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Niche   /nɪtʃ/   Listen
Niche

noun
1.
A position particularly well suited to the person who occupies it.
2.
A small concavity.  Synonyms: corner, recess, recession.
3.
An enclosure that is set back or indented.  Synonym: recess.
4.
(ecology) the status of an organism within its environment and community (affecting its survival as a species).  Synonym: ecological niche.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Niche" Quotes from Famous Books



... been here after his party had left. "He stayed long enough to cook his meals and sleep," thought the captain. "I'll look into this provision business." Passing through the other rooms, he went to a deep niche in the wall of the entrance passage where his party had kept their stores, and where Edna had written him they had left provisions enough for the immediate use of himself and the men who should return. Here he found ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton

... a bold hardy world—this of ours—up to the advent of our giant-servant, Steam,—every foot of which was won by fierce conquest of one sort or another. Out of this past the pirate emerges as a romantic, even at times heroic, figure. This final niche, despite his crimes, cannot altogether be denied him. A hero he is and will remain so long as tales of the sea are told. So, have at him, ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various

... shall not set you to work—or entertain you, either. You will have to look out for yourself. However, as you say, it may amuse you to go to the store, and perhaps when you get there you can make some sort of a niche for ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett

... conjectured; but what is seen would make any region famous. We now came once more to outcrops of limestone in regular layers, with disintegrated masses overlying them, or sandwiched between their solid courses. A lovely niche, at one point, was scooped out of the rock, over the coping of which poured a thin sheet of water, evidently impregnated with mineral, and staining the rock down which it poured with variegated tints of bronze, beautified by ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair

... straw. Two cooks, country women, sat in the hidden corner behind the stove, and poked in the great bales of straw and gossiped. Their voices and the answers of the serving amah filled the kitchen with noise. In their decorous niche at the upper right hand of the stove sat the two kitchen gods, small ancient idols, with hidden hands and crossed feet, gazing out upon a continually hungry world. Since time was they had sat there, ensconced at the very ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... him. "Ah!" he said, "the church of Saint Joseph is near." Then he crossed himself and seemed to hurry his steps. Presently he stood still. We were beside the church. Against the door, in a niche, was a figure of the Virgin in stone. He got to his knees and prayed fast. And yet as he prayed I saw his hand go to his pocket, and it fumbled and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... receive and to forward ships' letter bags, and to have accommodations for holding auctions. But he was persuaded from the idea, partly by the fact that the Merchants coffee house seemed to be satisfactorily filling that particular niche in the city life, and partly because the hotel business offered better inducements. He abandoned the plan, and opened the Mansion House hotel in the ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... the world at one with us, our equal in sin as well as in virtue. To love, for us men, is to clasp one woman with our arms, feeling that she lives and breathes just as we do, suffers as we do, thinks with us, loves with us, and, above all, sins with us. Your mock saint who stands in a niche is not a woman if she have not suffered, still less a woman if she have not sinned. Fall at the feet of your idol an you wish, but drag her down to your level after that—the only level she should ever reach, that ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... the arches: here these shafts combine with an ornamented stringcourse which runs in a straight line along the entire front. In each of the six spandrels are a deeply recessed quatrefoil, two trefoiled arches (like the upper part of a niche), a pair of lancet-shaped niches containing figures, and a beautifully designed hexagonal ornament, with wavy edges, the cusps uniting in a central boss. The pinnacles on each side of the middle ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting

... enhance her fragile beauty, and to render more observable the grace of her slender form. She leans against the iron trellis-work, and one slim white hand sweeps back the sunny hair that is playing about her temple. Her thoughts are not so very far away. He is standing in the shadow of a curtained niche in a room whose light comes mainly from the flickering coal-fire in the grate, for the October evening is chill. She stands where the light from the big lamps at the corner is sufficient to plainly show her every look ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King

... way down the passage was a niche in which stood three lamps ready lighted. One of these she took and gave the others to us. Then we followed her down a steep incline of many steps, till at length we found ourselves in a hot and enormous hall hewn from the living rock and ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... been winding out in the maze of passages, Lige, in the meantime, keeping a sharp lookout for guide marks, now and then gouging a niche in the wall to guide them ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin

... capable of being wrapped round the body, so as to cover the thighs. Why it is called a pea jacket I should be glad to be informed by any knowing person; and I beg leave accordingly to refer the question to that corner of the United Service Journal reserved for technical queries, a valuable niche in that ably conducted periodical. A seaman must also have two pairs of blue trousers, two pairs of shoes, six shirts, four pairs of stockings, two Guernsey frocks, made of a sort of worsted stocking-work, without any opening in front; two hats, two black ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall

... children had the best view. The Monte Pincio seemed a vast amphitheatre filled with spectators; the balconies of the two churches at the corner of the Via del Babuino and the Via di Ripetta were crammed; the steps even seemed a parti-colored sea, that was impelled towards the portico; every niche in the wall held its living statue. What the count said was true—the most curious spectacle in life is that of death. And yet, instead of the silence and the solemnity demanded by the occasion, laughter and jests arose from the crowd. It was evident that the execution was, in the eyes of the ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... sentence which indicated sufficiently how wide a niche in the temple of his mind was filled with the image of his brother-in-law, ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard

... also shewn the subterranean niche in which Jesus is said to have been a prisoner; also the niche where the soldiers cast lots for our Saviour's garments, and the chapel containing the grave of St. Nicodemus. Not far from this chapel ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer

... occupied a niche in the Chapel wall, and before it burned the silver lamp of Repentigny which had been hung there two generations before, in memory of the miraculous call of Madelaine de Repentigny and her victory over ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... "I suppose so. I don't wear reversible cuffs and I am disgustingly rich. I've shot tigers in India, lived in the Latin quarter, owned a steam yacht, climbed San Juan Hill—but I have not found a permanent niche. There are not places enough to go round for men with millions, and she calls me a rolling stone. Come, now, I'll swap places with you. You shall own this motor and—and I'll write the press notice ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant

... in his bureau, and as the bureau descended to my grandfather, my mother, and myself, the key descended with it. After the first thirty or forty years, nobody ever asked for it. One day I saw it, lying rusty in its niche, and, finding that it belonged to this column, I took it and came up. I stayed here till it was dark, and the stars came out, and that night I resolved to be an astronomer. I came back here from school several months ago, and I mean ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy

... alive but is still a comparatively young man in the height of his powers. A pure and simple biography cannot always determine with any satisfaction its subject's literary standing. Critical studies of classic authors do not usually give any preciseness about the exact niche the subject fills. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke

... high, which has an arched roof similar to the Gothic chapels of England and a balcony or gallery over a richly sculptured gateway very similar to the organ loft of a modern church. At the upper end, sitting cross-legged in a niche, is a figure four feet high, with a serene and contemplative expression upon its face. Because it has none of the usual signs and symbols and ornaments that appertain to the different gods, archaeologists have ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis

... men forgot their hostility, their criticisms, their sneers—forgot that they had ever done anything but honor him. The assassin, who thought to revenge the wrongs of the southern slaveholders on Lincoln, gave to him a lasting niche in the ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... valley of my birth, I lived wholly and with joy in the present. Song, poetry, history mingled with the sports which made our life so unceasingly interesting. There was a certain girl, the daughter of the shoe merchant, who (temporarily) displaced the image of Agnes in the niche of my shrine, and to roll the platter for her at a "sociable" was a very high honor indeed, and there was another, a glorious contralto singer, much older than I—but there—I must not claim to have even ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... the corner, looking down Fore Street, was a fine fourteenth-century life-size figure of St. Peter, holding a model of a church in his right hand and a book in his left, his feet trampling on a demon. This has been removed from its original position and placed high up in a niche over a shop close by. On the opposite side of High Street is St. Petrock's Church, at one time almost hidden from sight by the adjacent buildings. It is a curious little church, of which portions have been assigned to the Saxon period. The parish ...
— Exeter • Sidney Heath

... a pale page upon the church wall, and illumines the kneeling family in the niche, and the tablet set up in 1780 to the Squire of the parish who relieved the poor, and believed in God—so the measured voice goes on down the marble scroll, as though it could impose itself upon time and ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... chirped, and soon passed out of sight. About a hundred feet below us were the pointed roofs of the city, the empty courtyards of the old mansions, and the black holes of the smoky chimneys. Leaning in the niche of a battlement, we gazed and listened, and breathed it all in, enjoying the beautiful sunshine and balmy air impregnated with the pungent odour of the ruins. And there, without thinking of anything in particular, without even phrasing inwardly about something, ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert

... town. A most striking sight. A large room, like a county ball-room, with glass chandeliers, carpeted with common carpet, all but a space at the entrance, railed off for shoes; the Caaba and pulpit at one end; over the niche, a crescent painted; and over the entrance door a crescent, an Arabic inscription, and the royal arms of England! A fat jolly Mollah looked amazed as I ascended the steps; but when I touched my forehead and said, 'Salaam Aleikoom', he laughed and said, 'Salaam, Salaam, come ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon

... the window a niche, wherein he beholds all the world of his former walk as the picture ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald

... many of the precious heirlooms of the family, which had disappeared during the Jacobite rebellions, and were supposed to have been lost. The cabinet was made of ebony inlaid with ivory, as was also a broad round table in the centre of the room. In a niche opposite the cabinet gleamed a complete suit of sixteenth century armor; and so dry was the atmosphere of the apartment, that scarce a spot of rust appeared upon the polished surface, which, however, like every other object in the room, was overlaid with fine dust. ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne

... happily along, and the two weeks allotted for Louis' stay came nearly to a close. I dreaded to have the last day appear. Like his mother, he had dropped into his own appropriate niche, and came into our family only as another ray of the sunshine that brightened our home. I had Halbert in my mind much of the time, and talked of him to Louis until he said he felt well acquainted with him, and looked forward to meeting him as one ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell

... know what we were thinking of anyway to enter his especial territory. And shortly from nowhere appeared two Canada Jays, silent as the wind itself, hoping for a share in our meal. Then the Tenderfoot discovered in a niche some strange, hardy alpine flowers. So we established a connection, through these wondrous brave children of the great mother, with the world of ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White

... small, but it boasted of a pretty grey tower; and on each side of the door of the church were two works of art, much celebrated in the neighbourhood. On the left side, beneath the window, a large niche was grated in with thick, rusty iron bars. It occupied the whole extent from the portico to the corner of the church, and from the ground to the window; and, within the bars, six monster demons—spirits of the unrepentent dead, the forms of wretches ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... end ones being occupied by Emily and Charlotte, they alone securing the privilege of age or English eccentricity to curtain off their beds from the gaze of the eighteen girls who shared the room with them. The crucifix, indeed, has been removed from the niche in the Oratoire where the children offered up prayer every morning; but with a copy of Villette in hand it is possible to restore every feature of the place, not excluding the adjoining Athenee with its small window overlooking the garden of ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... threw now on grimy floor and wall the shadows of the two men, one seated at the table, the other not far from it. Before John Steele lay paper and ink, procured from some niche. He had ceased writing; for the moment he leaned back, his vigilant gaze on the figure near-by. From a corner of the room the rasping sound of a rat, gnawing, broke ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham

... more open countenance than Blanche; softer features too, and a skin some shades fairer (Miss Ingram was dark as a Spaniard)—but Mary was deficient in life: her face lacked expression, her eye lustre; she had nothing to say, and having once taken her seat, remained fixed like a statue in its niche. The sisters were both ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... flickered,—flickered on something tall and white,—something white and shadowy, standing erect, and shrinking aside, behind the counter. My heart stood still; a sepulchral chill came over me. My old self, trembling, angry, foreboding, stepped suddenly within the niche whence the self-confident, full-grown, sensible woman had vanished utterly. For an instant, I felt like a ghost myself. It seemed natural that ghosts, if such there were, should spy me out, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... averaging in size about 35 ft. by 20 ft. To left and right, and at the back, dormitories are excavated opening on to this hall, and in the centre of the back, facing the entrance, an image of the Buddha usually stands in a niche. The number of dormitories varies according to the size of the hall, and in the larger ones pillars support the roof on all three sides, forming a sort of cloister running round the hall. The meeting-halls go back into the rock about twice as far as the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... come, and even a skeleton must hang and gibber behind your door; but that, be the skeleton what it may, you will nail the door back on the unsightly thing, clothe it in some decent garments, and make it as respectable as possible in its niche, since it must stay with you. Events, decrees, circumstances, will not change for just you and me; but we can change ourselves, and so defeat them. Do not mind untoward circumstances. "Seize hold of God's hand, and look full in the face of His creation, ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder

... protruding rock, have accommodated their buildings to such irregularities. This is very noticeable in the center cluster of Mummy Cave (in Canyon del Muerto, Arizona), where a large mass of sandstone, fallen from the roof of the rocky niche in which the houses were built, has been incorporated into the house cluster. Between this and another kiva to the north the mesa top is nearly level. The latter kiva is also subterranean and was built in an accidental break in sandstone. On the very margin ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various

... letters and the number of each, but a woman who loves Shakespeare and what he wrote. Think of her sitting down for sixteen years to pick up senseless words one by one, and stow each one away in its own niche, with a ticket hanging to it to guide the search of any one who can bring the smallest sample of the cloth of gold he wants. Think of this, whenever you open her miracle of patient labor, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... which entitled the holder to pecuniary or other reward. As for himself, his part was that of spectator and arbiter; he handicapped the competitors; he declared the prizes. On this occasion he ensconced himself in a niche of the ruins, where he was out of the glare of the sun, and gracefully surrounded by masses of ivy; while his relatives hauled out to the middle of the green plateau several trunks of fir-trees, of various ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black

... effigy receiving all oblations intended for him. And in the days of his boyhood, listening to the old legends of the Mardian mythology, Media had conceived a strong liking for the fabulous Taji; a deity whom he had often declared was worthy a niche in any temple extant. Hence he had honored my image with a place in his own special shrine; placing it side by side with his ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... diametrically opposed to that of Ibsen; in all Europe there were not two authors less alike. Hertz would have pleased Kenelm Digby, and if that romantic being had read Danish, the poet of chivalry must have had a niche in The Broad Stone of Honour. Hertz's style is delicate to the verge of sweetness; his choice of words is fantastically exquisite, yet so apposite as to give an impression of the inevitable. He cares very little for psychological exactitude or truth of observation; but ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse

... Sorrowfully, reverently, he lifted, from a niche in the wall, a small box of smooth, shining metal, ...
— The God in the Box • Sewell Peaslee Wright

... might bar their way? And more terrifying still, was the growing sense of a human presence, a human menace, an unseen treachery. As Vic felt his way along the stone, his hand closed over something thrust into a little niche, shoulder-high in the wall. It seemed to be a small pitcher of unique pattern, solid silver by its weight. Was it the booty of some dead and forgotten robber chief, the buried treasure of some old Kickapoo raiding tragedy, or the loot of ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter

... beneath their sculptured effigies. And all at once all the buried multitudes who had ever worshipped there came thronging in through the aisles. They choked every space, they swarmed into all the chapels, they hung in clusters over the parapets of the galleries, they clung to the images in every niche, and still the vast throng kept flowing and flowing in, until the living were lost in the rush of the returning dead who had reclaimed their own. Then, as his dream became more fantastic, the huge cathedral itself seemed to change into the wreck of some mighty antediluvian vertebrate; its flying-buttresses ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... annoyance, and a sequestration of British property to a large amount was promptly executed in various quarters. The fate which awaited the Mussulman negociator was a lamentable one: he was accused of imbecility or treachery; and his head was taken off his shoulders to decorate the niche over the Seraglio gate: he paid dear for his friendly feelings towards the English. So ended the famed expedition to the Hellespont and the Bosphorus. It broke the spell by which the passage of the Dardanelles had for ages been guarded; but beyond this it was little more than a brilliant bravado, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... pictures, her elevation is very slight. There is a curious composition, by Andrea del Sarto (Berlin Gallery), where we are puzzled to know if the Madonna is enthroned or enskied. A flight of steps in the centre leads up as if to a throne, but above these the Virgin sits in a niche, on a bank ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll

... the difference between the old and the new, draw the cords of ancient friendship tighter. At all events, you may depend upon it, my dear Periwinkle, that no new friend shall ever tumble you out of the niche which you occupy in ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne

... combat. In spite of the common belief, however, his plays—thesis plays as they nearly all are in one way or another—seldom attack these evils directly. Caciquismo is an issue only in Mariucha and Alma y vida, and in them occupies no more than a niche in the background. Sloth and degeneracy are a more frequent butt, and Voluntad, Mariucha, La de San Quintn, and, in less degree, La loca de la casa, hold up to scorn the indolent members of the bourgeoisie ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos

... in all of them. The birds hop into them, probably in quest of food or seeking shelter, and they never come out. We saw the body of a martin on the bank of one hole. Into one we sank a lighted torch, and it was extinguished as quickly as if we had dropped it into water. Each cave or niche is a death valley on a small scale. Near by we came upon a steaming pool, or lakelet, of an acre or more in extent. A pair of mallard ducks were swimming about in one end of it,—the cool end. When we approached, they swam slowly over into the warmer water. ...
— Camping with President Roosevelt • John Burroughs

... recreation. The banian is styled also "the tree of councils," from the prevalent custom of assembling legislators, magistrates and savants under its protecting canopy to deliberate on civil affairs; while all around, ensconced in every niche, are the tutelary gods and goddesses that make up the Hindoo mythology. It is indeed a quaint, weird spot, full of the witchery of romance and legendary lore; and though years have passed since I last sat under the Cubber Burr's sheltering boughs with a merry party of picnicking maidens, now grown ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various

... having become adapted to one particular kind of life. The development of diversified situations on the earth, the varieties of climate, the variation between marsh and upland, between valley and plateau, furnish a complexity of environment into each niche of which a new form ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker

... you do, you will die instantly. At the end of the third hall, you will find a door which opens into a garden, planted with fine trees loaded with fruit. Walk directly across the garden to a terrace, where you will see a niche before you, and in that niche a lighted lamp. Take the lamp down and put it out. When you have thrown away the wick and poured out the liquor, put it in your waistband and bring it to me. Do not be afraid that the liquor will spoil your clothes, ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various

... the two boys took off their boots and socks, and stood them in a niche in the rock, while Hardock passed in through the mouth of the adit; and directly after he had disappeared in the darkness, he re-appeared in the midst of a glow of light produced by a lanthorn he had placed ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn

... interrupted my friend, as he stept unsteadily forward, while I followed immediately at his heels. In an instant he had reached the extremity of the niche, and finding his progress arrested by the rock, stood stupidly bewildered. A moment more and I had fettered him to the granite. In its surface were two iron staples, distant from each other about two feet, horizontally. From one of these ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... who had found her niche in a congenial set at the Villa Camellia, was capable of feeling the pangs of homesickness, that unpleasant malady exhibited itself with far more serious symptoms in the case of another new girl who had entered the school upon the same day. Desiree Legrand could not settle down among the juniors. ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil

... assign to Gustav Freytag his exact niche in the hall of fame, because of his many-sidedness. He wrote one novel of which the statement has been made by an eminent French critic that no book in the German language, with the exception of the Bible, has enjoyed in its day so wide a circulation; ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... seal was the first on which the arms of the See of London were placed. An impress of this seal is preserved in the Stowe collection at the British Museum, attached to a deed of 1348, which, although in a somewhat broken condition, clearly shows St. Paul seated in a niche, holding the sword and a book, and beneath, in the base, the bishop kneeling, having on the dexter side the arms of the See, and on the sinister side the bishop's personal arms (fig. 2). The arms of the See show ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various

... now quite dark in the cellar, but Peter Zudar knew his way about there all the same. He was well aware of the exact locality of the best cask of beer, and lost no time in staving in the top of it, found a pitcher in a niche close at hand, filled it with fresh beer, sat him down by the side of the barrel, and took a monstrously long pull at his pitcher. After that he moistened well his head and face, and then he replenished his pitcher ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai

... hand, she thought she would be able to effect, but she found it impossible. She, therefore, only dipped a piece of linen in the blood which exuded; and she took the measure of the body, by which she had a niche made of similar size, on that side of the choir which the religious occupied, in which the image of the saint was afterwards placed. These pious virgins would have been glad to have detained the body longer, but it was necessary to resume the route to Assisi, where he ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe

... truth could be known; and, as I have said more than once in these rambling memoir's, I was not disposed to take a false view of my own social position. I belonged, at most, to the class of small proprietors, as they existed in the last century, and filled a very useful and respectable niche between the yeoman and gentleman, considering the last strictly in reference to the upper class of that day. Now, it struck me that Emily Merton, with her English notions, might very well draw the distinctions Rupert had mentioned; nor am I ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... then the work which seemed delegated to a comparatively small number of the assembled crowd, went on with incredible celerity. Some were armed with axes, some with bludgeons, some with sledge-hammers; others brought ladders, pulleys, ropes, and levers. Every statue was hurled from its niche, every picture torn from the wall, every wonderfully-painted window shivered to atoms, every ancient monument shattered, every sculptured decoration, however inaccessible in appearance, hurled to the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... down on a boulder. They were quite alone, in this great white niche thrust out to sea. Here, he could see, the tide would beat the base of the wall. It came plunging not ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence

... no appendix for their elucidation. No one who speaks the English language can fail to appreciate his wonderful humor. It will always be funny. There is a fascination about it which can neither be questioned nor resisted. His particular niche in the temple of Fame will not be claimed by another. His intellect was sharp and electric. He saw the humor of anything at a glance, and his manner of relating these laughter-provoking absurdities is original ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne

... thousand livres, you would not think much about the people. If you are smitten with a tender passion for the race, go to Madagascar; there you will find a nice little nation all ready to Saint-Simonize, classify, and cork up in your phials, but here every one fits into his niche like a peg in a hole. A porter is a porter, and a blockhead is a fool, without a college of fathers to ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac

... Scott occupied pedestals. In a niche was deposited the bust of our countryman, the ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... sticking on one corner of it, the flag of another king; that the havoc of my brain, subsiding calmly into the pendulum regularities of metre, was much ado about nothing; and all those pretty fancies were the catalogued property of another. Such a subject, too! intrinsically worthy of a niche in the temple of Fame, besides Hope, Memory, and Imagination, if only one could manage it well enough to be named in the same breath with Campbell, Rogers, and Akenside. Well, it was a mental mortification; for I ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... battles and sieges upon stairs which descended from this terrace to the hippodrome below. After watching them awhile, with laughter and applause, she threw an arm round Veranilda's waist, and drew her on to a curved portico where, in a niche, stood a statue ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing

... that he had gipsy blood; That in his heart was guile: 50 Yet he had gone through fire and flood Only to win her smile. Some say his grandam was a witch, A black witch from beyond the Nile, Who kept an image in a niche And talked with it the while. And by her hut far down the lane Some say they would not pass at night, Lest they should hear an unked strain Or see an unked ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti

... growth of public sentiment has been occasioned by the needs of the children and the working women of that great State. I come here to ask you to make a niche in the statesmanship and legislation of the nation for the domestic interests of the people. You recognize that the masculine thought is more often turned to material and political interests. I claim that the mother-thought, the woman-element needed, is ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... policeman. Wallenstein, remaining where he was, laughed. Meantime the policeman frowned. It was incredible; his excellency could not possibly have intended any wrong, it was only a harmless pleasantry. Gretchen's lips quivered; the law of redress in Ehrenstein had no niche for the goose-girl. ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath

... house, and enjoyed in complete liberty the right of living as seemed good to them. In order that it might not be permitted that they should be accused of wanting for religion, they had stolen a statue of the Father Eternal from the church of Saint Pierre aux Boeufs and had placed it in a niche, before which they willingly made the sign ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton

... in a niche of a window of the hall, stood Messrs. Krause and Kretschmer, with sullen looks, witnessing the homage paid to Gotzkowsky, their souls filled with envy and rage. They, too, had come to thank him, but ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach

... indeed in a state of agitation and incapacity to think for himself, which led him to yield the more readily to the suggestions of another. He suffered himself to be dragged into the small tavern which Richie recommended, and where they soon found themselves seated in a snug niche, with a reeking pottle of burnt sack, and a paper of sugar betwixt them. Pipes and tobacco were also provided, but were only used by Richie, who had adopted the custom of late, as adding considerably to the gravity and importance of his manner, and affording, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... but enough were left to perpetuate the memory of their fathers, to hand down the prophecies uttered in the phrenzy of their dying patriots; and the Peruvian, when he visited Lima, looked round the chamber of the viceroys, as he saw niche after niche filled up with their pictures, till the fated number should be accomplished, with no common emotion[1]; and many a dreamer on the Peruvian coast, when he saw the Admiral of the Chilian squadron, was ready to hail him as the golden-haired son of light ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham

... billet. A good-natured farmer takes her off, judging that she may earn her keep in his kitchen, and if not—well! he is prosperous, and should be generous too. And so old granny toddles away amid the friendly laughter of the crowd, satisfied enough to find there is a niche even ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay

... on the base of the monumental niche which occupies the centre of the Pieta, "Quod Titianus inchoatum reliquit, Palma reverenter absolvit, Deoque dicavit opus," records how what Titian had left undone was completed as reverently as might be by Palma Giovine. At this stage—the question being much complicated ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips

... Grammar School was taken down the statue of the King, which had stood in its niche in the front of the old building for generations, was broken to pieces on account of so many gentlemen (including governors) wanting it; as all could not ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... for Marjorie to bear. Surrounded as she always was with the four faithful members of her own little set, she was often lonely. If only Constance had been in school she could have better borne Mary's disloyalty, although the latter could never quite fill the niche which years of companionship had carved in her heart for Mary. But Connie was far away, so she must go on enduring this bitter sorrow and ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... moment you speak of it, it is all wrong? I oughtn't have said a word, and yet it doesn't really make anything different. See, I haven't so much as touched your hand; you are different from other women, you are like a pure little angel shut in a niche. And I mean to do whatever will make you happiest. If you would like me ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... proved by the fact that every square foot of floor space and ground is put to some practical use, and one finds cobblers, barbers, fortune-tellers and a multitude of small tradesmen carrying on a business in a jog, or niche in the wall, not as large as an ordinary bootblack's stand. Along the narrow sidewalks are seen many of these curbstone merchants. Some have their goods displayed in glass show-cases, ranged along the wall, where are exhibited ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... plan of a small ruin of the same type, which occurs in the middle region of De Chelly. It occupies the site marked 34 on the map, and is situated in a niche in a deep cove, where the outlook is almost completely obscured by a large sand dune in front of it. It comprised one circular kiva and four rectangular rooms, but, contrary to the usual result, the latter are fairly ...
— The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff

... opportunity, it containing, however, a marriage condition. But the voice of a siren, singing of flowery prairies and pecan groves on the Salado, in which could be heard the music of hounds and the clattering of horses' hoofs at full speed following, filled every niche and corner of his heart, and he balked at ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams

... filled with enthusiasm for the works of the master. He considered him one of the greatest of painters, if not the greatest, of all times. The verdict of posterity does not grant him quite so exalted a niche in the temple of Fame, but his paintings have many solid merits and his friendship and favor were a source of great inspiration to the ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse

... the east of the tomb; and this is exactly in accord with the next period that we know, in which, at Medum, Snofrui had two great steles and an altar between them on the east of his tomb; and Rahotep had two great steles, one on either side of the offering-niche, east of his tomb. Probably the pair of obelisks of the tomb of Antef V., at Thebes, were a later form of this system. Around the royal tomb stood the little private steles of the domestics, placed in rows, thus forming an enclosure ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... precipice behind, the stern front of which was relieved by the pleasant foliage of many creeping plants, that made a tapestry for the naked rocks, by hanging their festoons from all its rugged angles. At a small elevation above the ground, set in a rich framework of verdure, there appeared a niche, spacious enough to admit a human figure, with freedom for such gestures as spontaneously accompany earnest thought and genuine emotion. Into this natural pulpit Ernest ascended, and threw a look of familiar kindness around upon his audience. ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... hairy wild men, armed with clubs. On the remaining portion of the canopy pier, on the right, is the figure of St. Peter, in a cope, wearing the tiara, a key in his left hand and a crozier in the right, with canopied niche. In another, above, is a figure of St. Maurice, in armour of the 15th century, in his right hand a halbert, and in his left a sword. Corresponding with these, on the left, is a figure of St. George, in similar armour, thrusting his lance into the dragon’s mouth. Above is the figure of St. ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter

... really come off, especially with loss of life. Thus violence may be "militant," but it is not "tactics." And violence against society at large is peculiarly tactless. George Fox would hardly occupy so exalted a niche in history if he had used his hammer to make not shoes ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... darting Beneath the crystal arch, Piping, as they flew, a march,— Belike the one they used in parting Last year from yon oak or larch; Dusky sparrows in a crowd, Diving, darting northward free, Suddenly betook them all, Every one to his hole in the wall, Or to his niche in the apple tree. ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin

... approach and again about the columns at the foot of the grand staircase were dancing groups most gracefully modeled by Oscar L. Lenz. The same sculptor was also responsible for the figure of "Greeting" which stood in the lower niche at the north end of the building. The coat of arms of the State which appeared frequently in the scheme of decoration was by Allen G. Newman. The work of reproduction in staff of the models prepared by the artists was performed ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis

... to put some more questions when he was brought to a sudden stand, and rendered for the moment speechless by the sight of Moses Pyne—not bearing heavy burdens, or labouring in chains, as might have been expected, but standing in a shallow recess or niche in the wall of a house, busily engaged over a small brazier, cooking beans in oil, and selling the same to ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne

... another man in whom faith begat courage and for whom courage carved a large niche in the temple of imperishable fame. The Daniel who interpreted to the trembling Belshazzar the fateful handwriting on the wall; who, unawed by enemies, prayed with his windows open toward Jerusalem, and who, in the lions' den, ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan

... immovable cot fingering the boards low down in the right rear corner when he felt something give beneath his thumb. A flash of hope almost stifled him, and he lay quiet for a moment to regain command of himself. Then he put his thumb again in the niche and lifted up. With all his strength he lifted and, all at once, a panel rushed up and stuck, revealing a little box perhaps a foot square that had been built back from the rear wall of the ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams

... steps were quite heated during the repast. I cannot describe in detail all that there was in this part of the room, but all kinds of arrangements were being made there for preparing the Paschal Supper. Above this hearth of altar, there was a species of niche in the wall, in front of which I saw an image of the Paschal Lamb, with a knife in its throat, and the blood appearing to flow drop by drop upon the altar; but I do not remember distinctly how that was done. In a niche in the wall there were three cupboards of various colours, ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich

... pseudo-philosophy and so-called theology—this it is to which science is an implacable and irreconcilable foe. And she will never cease from her determined opposition until the ecclesiastical idol vacates the very last niche it occupies in its "chapel," clothes itself with the white robe of contrition, and sits humbly upon the stool of repentance awaiting a ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... little holes to look through, that he held before his face. One day he came into this turret when they who worked the guns in Orleans were all at their meat. But it so chanced that two boys, playing truant from school, went into a niche of the wall, where was a cannon loaded and aimed at Les Tourelles. They, seeing the gleam of the golden shield at the window of the turret, set match to the touch-hole of the cannon, and, as Heaven ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang

... wholly imitative and mechanical. Was there ever a human face which so completely reflected inward experience and individual genius as the bust which haunts us throughout Italy, broods over the monument in Santa Croce, gazes pensively from library niche, seems to awe the more radiant images of boudoir and gallery, and sternly looks melancholy reproach from the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... either side of it. At the back is the embrasure of a French window opening on a balcony. In another wall is the outer door. The room is lighted by tall candles. There is an image of the Virgin in a niche in the corner. ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell

... are carving out your own niche in a higher tier. You are already beginning to do it; and yesterday his niche was the ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... conscientious Oblivion has infolded under his loving pinions nine hundred and ninety-nine in every thousand; while we think of concerning ourselves with those only whose names occupy some notable niche, pedestal, or other position, in the august house of the great goddess, Fame. We desire to show the spirit and power of British criticism, to display the characteristic working of the British intellect in this ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... he was here; he remembered the secret niche in the wall, where he had once seen the Doctor deposit some papers. He looked, and there they were. Who was the heir of those papers, if not he? If there were anything wrong in appropriating them, it was not perceptible to ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... with his natural sons that they give him the sumptuous tomb they stand pledged to,—such a tomb as will excite the envy of his old enemy Gandolf, who cheated him out of a favorite niche in St. Praxed's Church, by dying before him, and securing it for ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... blood! You'll never be sorry for adopting Canada as your country. Now, what are your plans?' bestowing an aside left-hand grasp upon Arthur. 'Can Hiram Holt help you? Have the old people come out? So much the better; they would only cripple you in the beginning. Wait till your axe has cut the niche big enough. You rush on ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... month had glided away, and they had been pretty busy, during their many visits to the place, carrying all kinds of little things which they considered they wanted, with the result that the lanthorn and a supply of candles always stood in a niche a short distance down the passage; short ropes were fastened wherever there was one of the sharp or sloping descents, so that they could run down quickly; and in several places a hammer and cold chisel had been utilised so as to ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn

... cottage, with his chamber window at one end, a few old and twisted, but blossom-laden, crape-myrtles on either hand, now and then a rose of some unpretending variety and some bunches of rue, and at the other end a shrine, in whose blue niche stood a small figure of Mary, with folded hands and uplifted eyes. No other window looked down upon the spot, and its seclusion was often a ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable

... some verses to illustrate one of the pictures, which was called The Church Porch. A Spanish damsel was hastening to church with a large prayer-book; a youth in a cloak was hidden in a niche watching this young woman. The picture was pretty: but the great genius of Percy Popjoy had deserted him, for he had made the most execrable verses which ever were perpetrated by a ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... reached the shrine—a little alcove in a rotting mass of brick and plaster. Beneath it extended a stone seat whereon the wayfarer might kneel or sit; above, in the niche, protected by a wire grating, stood a doll painted with a blue cloak and a golden crown. Offerings of wayside flowers decorated the ledge ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts

... volume called "Readable Books." What a deplorable history it was!—I mean his own,—the most unredeemed vice that I have met with in the annals of genius. But he was a very remarkable writer, and must have a niche if I write again; so must your two poets, Stoddard and Taylor. I am very sorry you missed Mrs. Trollope; she is a most remarkable woman, and you would have liked her, I am sure, for her warm heart and her many accomplishments. I had a sure way to Beranger, ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... a double personality—he was an intermittent reincarnation, vibrating between the inorganic and the essence of vitality. In a reasonable scheme of earthly things he filled the niche of a giant green tree-frog, and one of us seemed to remember that the Knight Gawain was enamored of green, and so we dubbed him. For the hours of daylight Gawain preferred the role of a hunched-up pebble of malachite; or if he could find a leaf, he drew eighteen purple vacuum toes beneath him, ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... a man can render to a woman. She knew then, and she knew better to-day, that she had never loved Pollock, and never indeed could have loved him as a woman loves her husband. But she revered him then, and he would have forever a place in her heart like the niche given to a saint, and she hoped that his prayers for her—for she knew he would intercede for her—would be answered in the highest. Nor could she refrain from the comparison between Pollock and Graham. In ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren

... on calmly. "For she's going to be a very famous woman, make no doubt about that. It's quite on the cards that she may have a niche in history. You might be useful to her in many ways, with that brain of yours, but it was given to you for another purpose, and you'd end by leaving her. You'd come home like a sick dog to its kennel—and ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... rose like an automaton, and cast an involuntary glance about me; the guests were filing through the drawing-room, into the room where refreshments were laid. When the last had gone, I left the friendly protection of the niche by the fire-place, and stood so near him that I saw his nostrils quiver! Then there came into his face an expression of pain, which softened it. I had wished him to please me; now I wished to please him. It seemed that he had no intention of speaking, and ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard

... 1814, when Macdonough won his niche in the naval hall of fame, was also the climax and the conclusion of the long struggle of the American armies on the northern frontier, a confused record of defeat, vacillation, and crumbling forces, which was redeemed towards the end by troops ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine

... of my cherries, and the cedar-birds have known every red cedar on the place these many years. While my house is yet surrounded by its scaffoldings, the phoebe-bird has built her exquisite mossy nest on a projecting stone beneath the eaves, a robin has filled a niche in the wall with mud and dry grass, the chimney swallows are going out and in the chimney, and a pair of house wrens are at home in a snug cavity over the door, and, during an April snowstorm, a number of hermit thrushes have taken ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... great. Great offices will have Great talents. And God gives to every man The virtue, temper, understanding, taste, That lifts him into life, and lets him fall Just in the niche he was ordain'd ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... these birds return to the same nesting places: a box set up against the house, a crevice in the barn, a niche under the eaves; but once home, always home to them. The nest is kept scrupulously clean; the house-cleaning, like the house-building and renovating, being accompanied by the cheeriest of songs, that makes the bird fairly tremble by its intensity. But however angelic the voice of the house wren, ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan

... been said about the elaborate, high-hung structures, few nests perhaps awaken more pleasant emotions in the mind of the beholder than this of the pewee,—the gray, silent rocks, with caverns and dens where the fox and the wolf lurk, and just out of their reach, in a little niche, as if it grew ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... in the United States has achieved or been placed in a certain artistic niche. When he is thought of artistically, it is as a happy-go-lucky, singing, shuffling, banjo-picking being or as a more or less pathetic figure. The picture of him is in a log cabin amid fields of cotton or along ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson

... his eyes to heaven and prayed. The two were alone, for their companions had long since departed. The light from a lamp in a niche behind Honorius but dimly illumined the scene. Thus they remained in ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous

... of Pope Clement XII (who himself belonged to the Corsini family and who was an uncle of Cardinal Corsini) is in a niche between two columns of porphyry, and there is a bronze statue of the Pope. On the opposite side is a statue of Cardinal Corsini, and in the crypt below are tombs of the Corsini family. On the altar—always lighted—is a "Pieta" by Bernini, of which the face of the ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting

... your bricks. Mortar there? No need to mix? That is well. And picks and hammers? Verily these are no shammers!— There, my friend, build up that niche, That one with ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald

... exquisite, of the narrowly-pierced heading of window already described, into a veil of tracery—and aided throughout by an accomplished precision of design in its moldings which we believe to be unique. In St. Petronio of Bologna, another and a barbarous type occurs; the hollow niche of Northern Gothic wrought out with diamond-shaped penetrations inclosed in squares; at Bergamo another, remarkable for the same square penetrations of its rich and daring foliation;—while at Monza and Carrara the square ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... "It is the beggar's fear of cold," said he, "that prevails over such parents, and so they pull the poor thing's head down, and give it the look of a baby that plays about Westminster Bridge, while the mother sits shivering in a niche." ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... But still there was no sound except the murmur from the shore, and nothing stirred except the sunbeams as they climbed the carved balustrade of the great staircase and gleamed on the frozen faces of a marble group in a niche. I did not ring at first, for it seemed as if my mother or Helen must come out—that they were close at hand, picking roses on the terrace or descending from their rooms. But it was Mills who presently issued from the dining-room and saw me. He greeted me as if I ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... by two courses of rectangular apertures. On it stands a peristyle of thirty columns of the Corinthian order, 40 feet high, including bases and capitals, with a plain entablature crowned by a balustrade. In this peristyle every fourth intercolumniation is filled up solid, with a niche, and connection is provided between it and the wall of the lower cone. Vertically over the base of that cone, above the peristyle, rises another cylindrical wall, appearing above the balustrade. It is ornamented with pilasters, between which are two tiers of rectangular windows. From ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... at all great for New World study, in the sense that Isaiah and Eschylus and the book of Job are unquestionably great—is not to be mention'd with Shakspere—hardly even with current Tennyson or our Emerson—he has a nestling niche of his own, all fragrant, fond, and quaint and homely—a lodge built near but outside the mighty temple of the gods of song and art—those universal strivers, through their works of harmony and melody and power, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... high by two and a quarter wide, and one at its west end, leading into the adjoining room, two feet wide, and at present, on account of rubbish, only two and a half feet high. The stone walls still have their plaster upon them in a tolerable state of preservation. In the south wall is a recess or niche, three feet two inches high by four feet five inches wide by four deep. Its position and size naturally suggested the idea that it might have been a fire-place, but if so, the smoke must have returned to the room, as there was no chimney ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan

... picturesque beauty of an English cottage in a pastoral landscape. There was a shabby dustiness, a barren, comfortless look about everything; and the height of ugliness was attained in the new church, a plastered barn, with a gaudily painted figure of our Blessed Lady in a niche above the door, all red and blue and ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... to the sculpture, one piece, of debased character, has been found—a Minerva with a breast-plate, helmet, and shield in alto relievo within a niche.] ...
— The Excavations of Roman Baths at Bath • Charles E. Davis

... there would have been perfect darkness but for artificial light. On a table was a large student's lamp and in a niche in the wall was another. Besides this there was a lantern hanging from the roof of the chamber, but this ...
— A Cousin's Conspiracy - A Boy's Struggle for an Inheritance • Horatio Alger

... east and west. In the centre of this stood the Diwan-i-Amm, or great audience hall of the palace, very similar in design to that at Agra, but more magnificent. Its dimensions are about 200 feet by 100 feet over all. In its centre is a highly ornamental niche, in which on a platform of marble richly inlaid with previous stones, and directly facing the entrance, once stood the celebrated peacock throne, the most gorgeous example of its class that perhaps even the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... they passed quickly before the house, the girls involuntarily shied like young horses to the further side of Harkness, their eyes glancing eagerly for signs of the old man. In a minute they saw the door in an opening niche at the corner of the house; on its steps sat the old preacher, his grey hair shining, his bronzed face bathed in moonlight. He sat peaceful and quiet, his hands clasped. Harkness next led them through, a dark overgrown walk, and, true ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... at the ebb, the ship follows the narrow crack of water between the shore and the moving pack of the center, driving ahead with all her force; then, when the flood tide begins to rush violently southward, the ship must hurry to shelter in some niche of the shore ice, or behind some point of rock, to save herself from destruction ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary

... in black, went very quietly to the wedding with her little girl beside her. She wept sadly during the service, but she looked stronger now, and less suffering than she had been wont to do. A niche seemed to have been found for her in the village of Culversham, where she loved the poor people, and went about amongst the cottages, and read to sick folk, and was happier, perhaps, than she quite knew, in ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan

... receive it, rather than that it shall be left to roam up and down, baffling, defiant, and alone. Indeed, so great is our abhorrence of outlying, unclassified facts, that we are often ready to accept classification for explanation; and having given our mystery a niche and a name, we cease any longer to look upon it as mysterious. The village-schoolmaster, who displayed his superior knowledge to the rustics gazing at an eclipse of the sun by assuring them that it was "only a phenomenon," was but one of a great host of wiseacres who stand ready with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... Established seemed a strong wall or fortress supporting other (some would say) old fancies. I must confess in this, our very pleasant age of novelties, I like to know there is something old still in its niche of time." ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny

... said Lovey. On went her shawl again, and once again she faced the night and hurried across the towans to St. Gwithian's Chapel. There in her niche stood Our Lady, quite as though nothing had happened, with the infant Christ in her arms and the tiny lamp burning ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... piece of work than the first, and superbly framed in by Gothic decorative sculptures, statuettes, arabesques, flowers, and heraldic designs. The little mourning figures or pleureuses, each in its graceful niche, are wonderfully beautiful, and for the most part veiled, whilst the artist's fancy has been allowed to run riot in the ornamentation surrounding them. The Princess wears her long ducal mantle and crown, and at her feet ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... summed up the Unknown Woman, looking her through and through until she was no longer an Unknown Woman, while the Maluka looked on interested. He knew the bush-folk well, and that their instinct would be unerring, and left the missus to slip into whichever niche in their lives they thought fit to place her. And as she slipped into a niche built up of strong, staunch comradeship, the black community considered that they, too, had fathomed the missus; and it became history in the camp that the Maluka had stolen ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... his hand resting on the greasy arm of a large cane chair lined with morocco, of which the original hue had disappeared; he seemed to hesitate as to seating himself. He looked with affection at the double desk, where his wife's seat, opposite his own, was fitted into a little niche in the wall. He contemplated the numbered boxes, the files, the implements, the cash box—objects all of immemorial origin, and fancied himself in the room with the shade of Master Chevrel. He even pulled out ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac

... the cave en masse, to do reverence to the memory of the strange medicine-woman who had told them so many wonderful things. They found, upon their arrival there, only a small niche in the side of the mountain, and a sparkling little stream. Both the cave and the ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... the wall to support an arch, niche, beam, or other apparent weight. It is often a head or part of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 404, December 12, 1829 • Various

... the wall on one side was a long writing- table, with drawers; surmounted by a small cabinet of polished wood, with folding doors richly studded with brass ornaments, within which Scott kept his most valuable papers. Above the cabinet, in a kind of niche, was a complete corslet of glittering steel, with a closed helmet, and flanked by gauntlets and battle-axes. Around were hung trophies and relics of various kinds: a cimeter of Tippoo Saib; a Highland broadsword from Flodden Field; a pair of Rippon spurs from Bannockburn; and above ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving



Words linked to "Niche" :   bionomics, cinerarium, apsis, hearth, alcove, pharyngeal recess, incurvature, enclosure, open fireplace, concave shape, ecology, bay, station, incurvation, condition, fireplace, place, status, apse, columbarium, ecological niche, mihrab, environmental science, concavity



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