"Pebble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... frightened men to run to and fro on the haven's banks, and then suddenly came the ringing of a bell from the low tower of the church, and the Danes began to look to their arms, stringing bows, and bringing up the pebble ballast for sling stones, in case the landing should ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... beaks and feet of birds are generally clean, earth sometimes adheres to them: in one case I removed sixty-one grains, and in another case twenty-two grains of dry argillaceous earth from the foot of a partridge, and in the earth there was a pebble as large as the seed of a vetch. Here is a better case: the leg of a woodcock was sent to me by a friend, with a little cake of dry earth attached to the shank, weighing only nine grains; and this ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... that was quite foreign to his nature. And Marie watched him at work over his stones, spent her spare time in rambling in search of those which she had learned he liked, and laid upon his table without remark each new discovery of quartz, or crystal, or pebble. She had been in the habit of making little boxes which she decorated with a rude mosaic of small shells, and Father Xavier noticed that these gradually acquired more taste and were arranged with some eye to the harmonies of color, while the ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... the night was full of wilder sounds, and in the house the furniture and the boards creaked and sprung between the yawling of the wind among the chimneys, the rattle of the thunder and the pelting of the rain. It was a time to quicken the steadiest pulse, and when the crucial moment came, when a pebble suddenly rang against the pane with a sound that the tense waiting magnified into a shivering crash, Hollyer leapt from the bed on ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... called the Red Laryx,' he said. 'It is to be found in great quantities on the three-hundred fathom level, forty miles to the west-south-west of North Aran Island, and can be procured for you by the same man that gets the weeds for Hamar and Curtis. It is a blood-red pebble, covered with peculiarly vivid green spots, and cannot be mistaken. Sit with it pressed against your forehead for an hour every morning, and concentrate hard on amalgamating yourself with it—i.e. passing into it, and its properties will gradually be imparted to you. Do this regularly, ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... for this pitch?" asked the manager, taking up a pebble from a little pile that lay at his elbow, and ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the maps, which English tongues here have named Pebble Lane, skirts Ashtead Park by the south-east, at first a wide green lane, afterwards a narrow path sometimes half-choked by trees, sometimes, in wet weather, impassable with mud, but always driving straight as the Roman roadmaker drove his pick towards the cap of Mickleham ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... the historical phase of geology; and as he talked and pointed here and there in illustration, it seemed to the boys that every stone and boulder and pebble and overhanging cliff responded with the story of its life. This crevice, that oblique angle, this smooth indentation, that rough mass,—-each marking had its significant meaning to ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler
... thinking intelligent being, as that nothing should of itself produce matter. Let us suppose any parcel of matter eternal, great or small, we shall find it, in itself, able to produce nothing. For example: let us suppose the matter of the next pebble we meet with eternal, closely united, and the parts firmly at rest together; if there were no other being in the world, must it not eternally remain so, a dead inactive lump? Is it possible to conceive it can add motion to itself, being purely matter, or produce anything? Matter, then, by its ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... arming came up scooped out, as if by the margin of a large Caryophyllia. Beyond 33 fathoms I sounded only once; and from 86 fathoms, at the distance of one mile and a third from the edge of the reef, the arming brought up calcareous sand with a pebble of volcanic rock. The circumstance of the arming having invariably come up quite clean, when sounding within a certain number of fathoms off the reefs of Mauritius and Keeling atoll (eight fathoms in the former case, and twelve in the latter) and of its having ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... the ill-natured pebble that always will get in the golden slipper of the pilgrim ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... a blister suddenly formed on Leonetta's hand; at croquet it would be a fledgling just beside her ball; on the beach it would be a peculiar pebble,—anywhere, everywhere, there was always something over which Leonetta would suddenly stand dramatically still, until every male within sight, including sometimes Sir Joseph himself, had run all ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... annually burnt, by degrees form a soil. We are even now witnessing the operation that has formed, and is still increasing, the vast tract of alluvial soil through which we have passed. There is not a stone nor even a small pebble for a distance of two hundred miles; ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... was gold deposited in the lodes from aqueous solution, but that some gold found in form of nuggets had not been derived from lodes but was nascent in its alluvial bed; and for this proof was afforded by the fact that certain nuggets have been unearthed having the shape of an adjacent pebble or angular fragment of stone indented in them. Moreover, no true nugget of any great size has ever been found in a lode such as the Welcome, 2159 oz., or the Welcome Stranger, 2280 oz.; while it was accidentally ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... clump of junipers, and looked down upon a little basin hidden snugly in the gorge. A wisp of pungent smoke rose to his nostrils. The pony began cautiously the sharp descent. The escarpment was of disintegrated granite which rang beneath the hoofs of the animal. A pebble rolled to the edge of the bluff and dropped into the black ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... pleasure in sitting up late. "Indeed," says one of his friends, "he would talk all night in preference to going to bed, and, in the Chaucerian style, he was a brilliant conversationalist, and his laugh was like the rattle of a pebble across a frozen pond." "No man of sense," Burton used to say, "rises, except in mid-summer, before the world is brushed and broomed, aired and sunned." Later, however, he changed his mind, and for the last twenty years of his life he was a very ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... himself had told her in the days when he laughed. He told her also of the lawyers' drain upon his wealth, starving her days together to make a pebble of saving to fill ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... cry of love for the golden thing we call the Day, and that all thirst to feel again: the pine on its bark, the tortuous roots in woodland paths on their mosses, the feather-grass on each delicate spray, the tiniest pebble in its tiniest mica flake; it is so wonderfully the cry of all that misses and mourns its colour, its reflection, its flame, its coronet, its pearl; the beseeching cry of the dew-washed meadow begging for a wee rainbow at every grass-tip, of the ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... instinct of his shepherd blood asserted itself. He evidently considered the approach of the steer menacing and felt it his duty to interfere. With a sharp little staccato bark he dashed off in the direction of the herd as fast as his fat legs would carry him. His dash had much the effect of a pebble thrown into a pool, which gradually sets the whole surface of the water in motion. One by one the steers stopped grazing and faced in his direction, snuffing and hesitant. Huz yapped and ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... parish functionary in the words of a kind correspondent from Kilmarnock, although communicated in the following very flattering terms:—"In common with every Scottish man worthy of the name, I have been delighted with your book, and have the ambition to add a pebble to the cairn, and accordingly send you a bellman story; it has, at least, the merit of being ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... lacks not e'en a purer. White those haunches as any cleanly-silver'd Salt, it takes you a month to barely dirt them. 20 Then like beans, or inert as e'er a pebble, Those impeccable heavy loins, a finger's Breadth from apathy ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... learn of us and of our exhaustless supplies of these pebbles' (he pointed to nuggets of gold lying on the shore of the bay), 'which we know are the same as others in our museum, that our ancestors brought from Rome, and of which—so says our ancient history—one pebble the size of a fingerend would purchase a human captive! Some chance will carry to those people (no doubt the descendants of those barbarians who almost exterminated our Roman ancestors) a knowledge of this.' Here ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... you, and to dispute with you in human accents? You would be overwhelmed with horror. I am sure of it. And if the roses in your garden sang a weird song, you would go mad. And suppose the stones in the road began to swell and grow before your eyes, and if the pebble that you noticed at night had shot out ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... crept across the grass, her body dragging stealthily on crouched legs, boldly silhouetted in the moonshine, invisible in the shade. Alix defeated her hunting plans by flinging a well- aimed pebble into the shrubbery ahead of her. The cat, dissembling, lay down in the dry grass, cleaned a paw, and ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... crushed But, for the forces which cause this passive ruin of the tourmaline,—here is a stone which will show you multitudes of them in operation at once It is known as "biecciated agate," beautiful, as you see, and highly valued as a pebble yet, so far as I can read or hear no one has ever looked at it with the least attention At the first glance, you see it is made of very fine red striped agates, which have been broken into small pieces, and fastened together again by paste also ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... now I had seen them fall and receive no damage—this time, as Lucy Snowe's hapless luck would have it, they so fell that each clear pebble became a ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... pebble, dip it into water and notice the thin layer or film of water that clings to it. This is a form of capillary water and is sometimes called film water or film moisture. Take a handful of soil that is moist but not wet, notice that it does not ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich
... island beneath you," replied the voice. "A pebble, dropped from your hand, would strike in ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... Brereton Out in Sakarran; Tho' we earn our bread, Tom, By the dirty pen, What we can we will be, Honest Englishmen. Do the work that's nearest, Though it's dull at whiles; Helping, when we meet them Lame dogs over stiles; See in every hedgerow Marks of angels' feet, Epics in each pebble Underneath our feet; Once a-year, like schoolboys, Robin-Hooding go. Leaving fops and ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... girls, and listen to me," Teddy interrupted, picking a pebble from the dock and throwing it far out into the gleaming water, where it dropped with a little splash. "Our famous parade of cadets comes off next week. You're going to be on ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... the following years. I would say to him: 'You are now grown so many inches taller; there is the ditch which you jumped over, there is the burden which you raised. There is the distance to which you could throw a pebble, there the distance you could run over without losing breath. See how much more you can do now!' Thus I should excite him without making him jealous of any one. He would wish to surpass himself. I can see no inconvenience in this emulation with ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... at half-past four, Came the Ogs with triumphant glee. And the first of their stones hit poor Mister Ghones, The captain of industry. Then a pebble of Podge took the Knight, Sir Stodge, In the curve of his convex vest. He gurgled "Un-Gluggish!" His heart growing sluggish, He solemnly sank to rest. 'Tis inconceivable, Scarcely believable, Yet, he was sent ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... down into an eroded deep little ravine. Here the air was like that of a furnace, but at least we could walk upright for a few rods. This we did, with the most extraordinary precautions against even the breaking of a twig or the rolling of a pebble. Then we clambered to the top of the bank, wormed our way forward another fifty feet to the shelter of a tiny bush, and stretched out to recuperate. We lay there some time, sheltered from the sun. Then ahead of us suddenly rumbled a deep bellow. We ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... light. Everywhere were bits of charred wood. Did no place in James Towne escape the scourge of fire? A kitten came springing over the mounds of excavated earth and began to prowl about the old fireplace. Except for a skittish pebble that she chased across the empty front, she found nothing of interest; no hint of savoury odours from the great spit over the blazing logs that may have caused a James Towne cat to sit and gaze and sniff some two ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... water; but when the Crow put its beak into the mouth of the Pitcher he found that only very little water was left in it, and that he could not reach far enough down to get at it. He tried, and he tried, but at last had to give up in despair. Then a thought came to him, and he took a pebble and dropped it into the Pitcher. Then he took another pebble and dropped it into the Pitcher. Then he took another pebble and dropped that into the Pitcher. Then he took another pebble and dropped that into the Pitcher. Then he took another ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... generals. "Why, sir," answered Johnson, his old feeling of good-will working uppermost, "you will find ten thousand fit to do what they did, before you find one to do what Goldsmith has done. You must consider that a thing is valued according to its rarity. A pebble that paves the street is in itself more useful than the diamond upon a ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... iron down upon the edge of the wheel, which was notched, and touched the priming in the pan. The friction produced the sparks. It was from this use that the sulphuret of iron derived the name of pyrites, or fire-stone. Afterwards a flint or any common hard pebble was used. The complicated nature of this lock, and its uncertainty, prevented its general adoption. The next improvement was due to the Dutch. About the year 1600 there was in Holland a band of marauders known as snaphausen, or poultry-stealers. However ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... the fishes, and thrown pebble-stones into the brook some time, he began to be tired, and he asked Jonas what he ...
— Rollo at Play - Safe Amusements • Jacob Abbott
... bar and found the Sand was light, with Collection of Small pebble, & some Pit Coal I observe that the men Swet more than is Common from Some Cause, I think the Missouries water is the principal Cause our hunters Sent in 3 Bucks today The ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... She dropped the pebble whose ripples To the shores of all time shall extend, She has spoken the word into ether Whose ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... impressionist sketch—blobs and dabs and great sloshy washes; but the memories of Pear-tree Gully, of the Kapanja Sirt, and Chocolate Hill are drawn in with a fine mapping pen and Indian ink—like a Rackham fairy-book illustration—every blade of dead grass, every ripple of blue, every pink pebble; and towards the firing-line I could draw it now, every inch of the way up the hills with every stone and jagged ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... for goodness sake. All the servants'll have gone to bed. You'll see the window of my room. It's just above the porch. It'll be the only one lighted up. Heave a pebble at it, and I'll ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... also may recall to you that I am neither the only nor the highest officer who is serving as volunteer to-day, because Varro must have legions commanded by butchers and bakers and money-lenders. I, too, am a plebeian, and I cast my pebble for my order (whereat the infernal gods are doubtless now rejoicing); but I am also, as you say, an old soldier, and hold the camp to be no place for the tricks of the Forum. As for frightening recruits, if words and the sight of old scars will frighten ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... hair down, and walk bareheaded in and out and in and out round all the circle of stones. Then you put an offering of flowers on that biggest stone—the Giant King, he's called—and throw a pebble into the little pool below. You count the bubbles that come up—one for A, two for B, &c.,—and they'll give you the initial of your future lover. With very great luck, you might see his shadow in the pool, but that does not ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... was returning weary from the Stymphalian[72] wood; the weather was hot, and my toil had redoubled the intense heat. I found a stream gliding on without any eddies, without any noise, {and} clear to the bottom; through which every pebble, at so great a depth, might be counted, {and} which you could hardly suppose to be in motion. The hoary willows[73] and poplars, nourished by the water, furnished a shade, spontaneously produced, along the shelving banks. I approached, and, at first, I dipped the soles of my feet, and then, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... silence: then a horrible splash as he struck the water, far below: then again a slipping and trickling, as more of the ledge broke away—at first a pebble or two sliding—a dribble of earth— next, a crash and a cloud of dust. A last stone ran loose and dropp'd. Then fell a silence so deep I could catch the roar of the flames on ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... the term is inappropriate, as they may contain no lime, and are therefore not always genuine marls. In Britain the Bunter Sandstein consists of red and mottled sandstones, with unconsolidated conglomerates, or "pebble-beds," the whole having a thickness of 1000 to 2000 feet. The Bunter Sandstein, as a rule, is very barren ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... illustration of the narrowing effect on scientific theory of the identification of aesthetic objects with productions of art. To say that the experience of exploring with the fingers a velvety petal or the smooth surface of a sea-rounded pebble has no aesthetic element savours of a perverse arbitrariness. Touch is no doubt wanting in a prerogative of hearing and sight which we shall presently see to be important, namely, that being acted on by objects at a distance they admit of a simultaneous perception ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... store, Wolsey might have A Palace or a College for his grave, Yet here he lies interred, as if that all Of him to be remembered were his fall. Nothing but Earth on Earth, no pompous weight Upon him, but a pebble or a quoit. If thou art thus neglected, what shall we, Hope after death, that are ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... black? The daughter looks like a movie starlet, and her mom is exactly the same, except that she has that grey streak in front to match her husband. You can see the car in the drive; the treads of the tires must have just been scrubbed; they're not even dusty. There's not a pebble out of place; all the flowers are in full bloom; no dead ones. No leaves on the lawn; no dry twigs showing on the trees. That other house in the background looks like a palace, and the man with the rake, looking over the fence: he looks like this one's twin ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... for his sake thou nam'st, not for Ferdinand. There liv'd a Knight exceld his petty fame As far as costly Pearle the coursest Pebble,— An English Knight cald Pembroke: were his bones Interred heere, I would confesse of him Much more than thou requir'st, and be content To hang both shield and sword upon ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... slept that night. I am bad at sleeping when I have had a shock. My idiotic nerves again. Crane, in his book, Right and Wrong Thinking, says one should drop discordant thoughts out of one's mind as one drops a pebble out of one's hand. But my interior calm is not yet sufficient for this exercise, and I confess I am all too easily shaken to pieces by trouble, especially the troubles of ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... children and of great trouble to his parents. One day his mother dreamt she was in possession of a casket, containing portraits of herself and her lord, and on one side were set nine precious stones of lustrous beauty encircling one rough unpolished pebble. In her dream she carried the casket to a lapidary, and asked him to take out the rough stone as unworthy of such goodly company; but he advised her to allow it to remain, and subsequently it shone forth more brilliantly than ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... Mariposas. The men had suddenly awakened to the fact that there were beauty and significance in these trifles, which they had so long trodden carelessly beneath their feet. A flake of glittering mica, a fragment of variegated quartz, a bright pebble from the bed of the creek, became beautiful to eyes thus cleared and strengthened, and were invariably pat aside for The Luck. It was wonderful how many treasures the woods and hillsides yielded that "would do for Tommy." Surrounded by playthings such as never child out of fairyland had before, ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... the narrow track that led up to the little gully with the moon shining down upon the white quartz rock. The pathway wound through a 'blow' of it. I threw a pebble at the door and waited till Jim ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... wouldn't say that!" declared Hanky Panky; "there are other ways of doing it, you can wager. That hill yonder isn't the only pebble on the beach. What'll ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... of the heavens, while the apparently immoveable earth sweeps with giddy velocity around it; or of the great truth demonstrated by Newton, that our ponderous planet is kept from falling off into empty space by the operation of the same law that impels a descending pebble towards the ground! A great miracle wrought in proof of the truth of the revelation might serve to enforce the belief of it on the generation to whom it had been given; but the generations that followed, to ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... kilns on Watford Heath and at Bushey; they may also be traced from Watford to Harefield Park. These beds contain flints, usually found close to the Chalk, and consist chiefly of mottled clays, sands, and pebble-beds. Fossils are but rarely found. From the Woolwich and Reading Beds come those conglomerate masses of flint pebbles commonly called Hertfordshire plum-pudding stone. These have usually a silicious matrix and were often used by the Romans and others for ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... the bottom of the yellow clay and on top of the gravel, was a chalcedony pebble about 21/2 inches in diameter. The material is foreign to this locality. It had plainly been used as a hammer stone, and is the only object of human origin found anywhere below the dark earth. There was not the slightest evidence of any disturbance of the clay ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... adapted to tropical foliage, to the bark of trees, or to the soil or dead leaves on or among which they habitually live. Then we have the innumerable special adaptations to the tints and forms of leaves, or twigs, or flowers; to bark or moss; to rock or pebble; by which such vast numbers of the insect tribes obtain protection; and we have seen that these various forms of coloration are equally prevalent in the waters of the seas and oceans, and are thus coextensive with the domain of life ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Detroit known as "Skillagalee,'' which had puzzled him a long time. The name seemed to be Irish, and the question was how an Irish name could have been thus applied. Finally he found on an old map an earlier name. It was le aus Galets, or Pebble Island, which, in the mouths of Yankee sailors, had taken this apparently Celtic form. Another case was that of a river in Canada emptying into the straits not far from Detroit. It was known as "Yellow Dog ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... of the shore and buried in the sand. The boys brought in a half-bushel of this red treasure, and we set about constructing a narrow cement walk of quality. Our idea was to carry out and make perpetual the affinity of the red gleams as insets in a grey pebble walk. ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... A pebble would bring him to the window. He would come out, and come back here with her. She opened her arms suddenly. The room was so dark she almost could fancy him beside her. ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... in the strong glow. At 166th Street is an open area now called Mitchel Square, with an outcrop of rock polished by the rearward breeks of many sliding urchins. Some children were playing on that small summit with a toy parachute made of light paper and a pebble attached by threads. On 168th Street alongside the big armoury of the Twenty-second Engineers boys were playing baseball, with a rubber ball, pitching it so that the batter received it on the bounce ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... at least, thus getting a very good idea of its daily life. The province of Buenos Ayres is one great featureless, treeless, dead-flat plain, and being all an alluvial deposit, it contains neither a pebble in the soil nor a single spring of water. Water is found everywhere at a depth of six or seven feet, and this great level extends for a thousand miles. Where its undoubted fascination comes in is hard to say, yet I defy any one not to respond to it. It is probably ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... along a narrow shelf where a slip on some pebble might send them crashing to death in the tumbled mass of ice below. They scaled an all but perpendicular wall, to drag their sleeping-bag and the few other belongings, which they had dared attempt to carry, after them by the aid ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... in some places peat-meadows are buried deep under the sand, and the peat is cut through it; and in one place a large peat-meadow has made its appearance on the shore in the bank covered many feet deep, and peat has been cut there. This accounts for that great pebble of peat which we saw in the surf. The old oysterman had told us that many years ago he lost a "crittur" by her being mired in a swamp near the Atlantic side, east of his house, and twenty years ago he lost the swamp itself entirely, but has since seen signs of it appearing on the beach. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... As the pebble which stirs the lake in wider and ever wider circles, so the genial emotion which begins in the family extends to the neighborhood, and sometimes embraces the whole human race. Hence arises the philanthropic kindness ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... with vocal walls, on which the son of Latona[4] is reported to have laid his golden harp; {and} its sound adhered to the stone. The daughter of Nisus was wont often to go up thither, and to strike the resounding stones with a little pebble, when it was a time of peace. She used, likewise, often to view the fight, and the contests of the hardy warfare, from that tower. And now, by the continuance of the hostilities, she had become acquainted with both the names of ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... comes again," she whispered, once more imposing silence by a gesture. "Maria, give me a pebble. Give it here—bang! ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... in the pulpit he was simplicity itself. His sermons were like the waters of Lake George, so pellucid that you could see every bright pebble far down in the depths; a child could comprehend him, yet a sage be instructed by him. His best discourses were extemporaneous, and he had very little gesture, except with his forefinger, which he ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... is stated that a bamboo grown in a hot-house at Islington gave a rattling noise, and on being split open by Sir Joseph Banks yielded, not an ordinary tabasheer, but a small pebble about the size of half a pea, externally of a dark brown or black color, and within of a reddish brown tint. This stone is said to have been so hard as to cut glass, and to have been in parts of a crystalline structure. Its behavior with ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... perfectly fitted to her shape, embroidered in front with interlacings of black silk, according to the then fashion, outlined her nymph-like figure, and her rounded bosom. A French cambric collar, fastened by a large Scotch pebble, set as a brooch, served her for a necklace. Her magnificent golden hair formed a framework for her fair countenance, with an incredible profusion of long and light spiral tresses, which reached nearly to ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... not unlike this was known to the Romans in the time of the Republic. They attached small wheels about four feet in diameter to the sides of their ships; the passage of the water turned the wheels, and a very simple gearing was arranged which threw a pebble into a tallypot at each revolution. This device, however, seems to have been abandoned or forgotten in Columbus's day, when there was no more exact method of estimating dead-reckoning than the primitive one of spitting over the side in calm weather, ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... to work, when another one would move, to amend by inserting a clause that the bluffs be moved into the city to be crushed, as it would save expense. Then the matter would drop. For three years that stone crusher stood there, and it never crushed a pebble. New mayors and aldermen were elected, and every day they passed that crusher, but they never spoke to it. Finally a job was put up to get rid of it. There was a man there who owned a stone quarry, and it occurred to somebody to sell it ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... virtuous mind to wake As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake; The center moved, a circle straight succeeds, Another still, and still another spreads; Friend, parent, neighbor, first it will embrace, Its country next, and next, the ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... the Signor repeated to me that disgusting talk of Bruteman's, there could be no mistake that he had his eye fixed upon them; and it would have been ruinous to enter into competition with such a wealthy roue as he is. He values money no more than pebble-stones, when he is in pursuit of such game. But though I have removed them from his grasp for the present, I can feel no security if I bring them back to this country. I must obtain a legal ownership of them; but how shall I manage it?" Revolving many plans in his ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... set light foot where no foot seemed ever before to have been set, with Jarvo to inspect every twig and pebble and to take sharp turns where no turn seemed possible, the ascent, perilous as it was, proved to be no such superhuman feat as from below it had appeared. But it seemed interminable. Even when the sea lay far beneath them and the faces of the watchers on the deck of The Aloha ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... of rocks; but it was as well as he could, and always distinctly. Leaf, or stone, or animal, or man, it was equally drawn with care and clearness, and its essential characters shown. If it was an oak tree, the acorns were drawn; if a flint pebble, its veins were drawn; if an arm of the sea, its fish were drawn; if a group of figures, their faces and dresses were drawn—to the very last subtlety of expression and end of thread that could be got into the space, far off or near. But now our ingenuity is all "concerning smoke." ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... interested. They say, Padre, that a pebble set in motion at the summit of a mountain may gather other pebbles and increase in bulk and speed until, in the form of an avalanche, it overwhelms ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... then comes down vertically; but that of the percussion shell detaches itself from the broken mass after the explosion and usually abides buried at the point of contact, but at other times it flies off at random like a big red-hot pebble. One must beware of it. It may hurl itself on you a very long time after the detonation and by incredible paths, passing over the embankment and ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... themselves be drawn on to the plateau I think they are lost. From here we can watch the whole progress of the battle, and if our side are driven back it may easily happen that they will throw themselves into the castle. Now not a pebble must be thrown in vain, for if our tower becomes the central point of the struggle the defenders will need stones ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... thrown over the wall, weighted with a pebble tucked loosely under the flap of the improvised envelope, in such a manner that it would drop but when the letter struck the ground beyond. And each following day he had gone with high hopes to the appointed place under the cedar-tree to pick figs of thistles, lilac ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... adventures is now not unlikely.—But as a soldier, I must look with some interest upon that worm-eaten hold of ragged stone; and if this undermining scoundrel, who is now in possession, dare to displace a pebble ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... round Bruce brooches, of dark pebble, with a silver fern-leaf lying across it, the dots of small Cairngorm stones. "The Glenbracken badge, you ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... were of steel; it could not be dislodged: that was seen at a glance. The calmness and placidity of the old athlete was surprising, it was wonderful. Still bending the imprisoned arm further back, he put his knee on the neck of the poor little hero, game as a pebble through it all, and by a strong steady strain tried to bend him over, till we thought either the poor fellow's neck must break, or his arm be ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... but so little was there that, try as she might, she could not reach it with her beak, and it seemed as though she would die of thirst within sight of the remedy. At last she hit upon a clever plan. She began dropping pebbles into the Pitcher, and with each pebble the water rose a little higher until at last it reached the brim, and the knowing bird was enabled to quench ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... As a pebble striking an anthill stirs into angry life a thousand startled workers, so a mountain washout startles a division and concentrates upon a single point the very last reserve ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... in coming, and a few of the Boers lay down to sleep. Others filled their pipes and lighted them, and one abstracted a pebble from his shoe. As the cavalrymen drew nearer to them the burghers crept forward several paces and sought the protection of rocks or piled stones together in the form of miniature forts. "Shall we fire now?" ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... and threw a pebble down the slope, watching it bound and skip to the bottom, where it rolled away ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... blacks had been sitting, our men found a burning fire, near which there lay a number of assagays, together with three small hammers, consisting of a wooden handle to one end of which a hard pebble was fastened by means of a kind of wax or gum, the whole strong and heavy enough to knock ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... if you refuse to set this captive free, as I desire you, you shall die before I return from this province.' Having said this in presence of Brude the king, he departed from the royal palace and proceeded to the river Nesa, from which he took a white pebble, and showing it to his companions, said to them:—'Behold this white pebble, by which God will effect the cure of many diseases.' Having thus spoken, he added, 'Brochan is punished grievously at this moment, for an angel sent from heaven, striking him severely, ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... Nigh persuading gods to err! Guest of million painted forms, Which in turn thy glory warms! The frailest leaf, the mossy bark, The acorn's cup, the raindrop's arc, The swinging spider's silver line, The ruby of the drop of wine, The shining pebble of the pond, Thou inscribest with a bond, In thy momentary play, Would bankrupt ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... whisperings and mutterings, growing gradually louder till something resembling coherent conversation came to Psmith's ears, as he knelt by the trap making meditative billiard-shots with the stick at a small pebble. ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... exquisite sense of the strange. The thought of nature still remained, but her character seemed to have undergone modification, there was a weird symmetry, a thrilling uniformity, a wizard propriety in these her works. Not a dead branch—not a withered leaf—not a stray pebble—not a patch of the brown earth was anywhere visible. The crystal water welled up against the clean granite, or the unblemished moss, with a sharpness of outline that delighted while it ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... A pebble rolled down the face of the wall against which she leaned. Weaver looked up quickly—to find himself covered by ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... like those to the east, nor grey as are the rugged bulwarks to the west. They are of a deep red, warm and pleasant to the eye, with clumps of green showing brightly up against them on every little ledge where vegetation can get a footing; while the beach is neither pebble, nor rock, nor sand, but a smooth, level surface sloping evenly down; hard and pleasant to walk on when the sea has gone down, and the sun has dried and baked it for an hour or two; but slippery and treacherous when freshly wetted, for the red cliffs are of clay. Those who sail past in ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... small! No lily-muffled hum of summer-bee But finds some coupling with the spinning stars; No pebble at your foot but proves a sphere: . . . . . Earth's crammed with Heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees, takes off ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... white speck of cloud reflected in that peaceful stream was no break in its beauty,—it marred nothing, nay, even brought a little glow of its own to replace the sunbeams. Yet at that speck did Mr. Linden take aim—sending his pebble so surely, so powerfully, that the mirror itself was shattered to the remotest shore! Then he stood up and announced that it ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... the roof, and wants to say goodbye to me.' The wife said: 'Fool, that is not your little cat, that is the morning sun which is shining on the chimneys.' Hansel, however, had not been looking back at the cat, but had been constantly throwing one of the white pebble-stones out of his ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... of giving these six degrees of goodness to the object? To that end we must needs have the power to change our taste, or the things, as we please. That would be almost as if I could say to [424] lead, Thou shalt be gold, and make it so; to the pebble, Thou shalt be diamond; or at the least, Thou shalt look like it. Or it would be like the common explanation of the Mosaical passage which seems to say that the desert manna assumed any taste the Israelites desired to give to it. They only had to say to their homerful, Thou shalt ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... "What pebble that you tossed into the pool produced that ripple, do you think?" the doctor quizzed, twirling Molly about by her neck, much ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... humor, or the only thing sure of any landing is the sea. The long desolation of the sea rolls in with a sound of melancholy, the gray fog droops its fold of drizzle in the leaden-tinted troughs, the pent cliffs overhang the flapping of the sail, and a few yards of pebble and of weed are all that a boat may come home upon harmlessly. Yet here in the old time landed men who carved the shape of England; and here even in these lesser days, are landed ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... tooth of a monster of the deep. White with the dirty gray white of the cliff, the awful monolith was streaked with horizontal lines marked by flint and displaying the slow work of the centuries, which had heaped alternate layers of lime and pebble-stone one atop of ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... there is as much fancy shewn in the choice of them, as in the most studied expressions of our letters; there being, I believe, a million of verses designed for this use. There is no colour, no flower, no weed, no fruit, herb, pebble, or feather, that has not a verse belonging to it; and you may quarrel, reproach, or send letters of passion, friendship, or civility, or even Of news, without ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... "they certainly did pebble us with machine-gun bullets! I saw two bounce off the propeller, and one broke a wire on the left wing, making us flap around rather uncertainly for a few minutes. It was a great race, though, and ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll |
