"Spiral" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Every schoolboy knows (that is, of course, every Buddhistic schoolboy) that when the Buddha made "the great renunciation," he attained Nirvana by sitting under a "Bo tree." My "Bo tree" is a great oak in the heart of the woods, mounted by a dizzy spiral staircase, at the summit of which you enter Nirvana by means of the "House on the Garden," a glass-house floored with boards and furnished with rustic chairs, a lounge and a writing-table; and here, amid the tree-tops, I write to the music of thrush and ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... right opened and he stepped into a dimly-lighted chamber, about the walls of which were three other doors, each of which he tried in turn. Two were locked; the other opened upon a runway leading downward. It was spiral and he could see no farther than the first turn. A door in the corridor he had quitted opened after he had passed, and the third warrior stepped out and followed after him. A faint smile still lingered upon the ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... huge, white granite obelisk which towered like a pillar of snow against the dense blue of the sky. Below it a massively sculptured lion, also of white granite, lay couchant, holding a shield between its paws,—and on either side two fine fountains were in full play, the delicate spiral columns of water being dashed up beyond the extreme point of the obelisk, so that its stone face was wet and glistening ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... have of late obtained the general name of Fire Towers, and our engraving represents the view of one of them, at Brechin, in Scotland. It consists of sixty regular courses of hewn stone, of a brighter colour than the adjoining church. It is 85 feet high to the cornice, whence rises a low, spiral-pointed roof of stone, with three or four windows, and on the top a vane, making 15 feet more, in all 100 feet from the ground, and measuring 48 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... old oak staircase three or four stairs at a time sprang the baron; then he walked quickly with beating heart down the long corridor to the west wing, where the nursery was, and pausing at the top of a spiral staircase which led to the side door he intended to go out by, he shouted impatiently to the housemaid who was left in charge of ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various
... Thus in many breeds the horns are deficient in the ewe, though this likewise occurs occasionally with the female of the wild musmon. In the rams of the Wallachian breed, "the horns spring almost perpendicularly from the frontal bone, and then take a beautiful spiral form; in the ewes they protrude nearly at right angles from the head, and then become twisted in a singular manner." (3/82. 'Youatt on Sheep' page 138.) Mr. Hodgson states that the extraordinarily arched nose or chaffron, which is so highly developed ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... columns, and threading the grove by the bronze lion, came upon the tree-crowned terrace above the fountain. Below lay the basin shining in the sunlight. Flowering almonds encircled the terrace, and, in a greater spiral, groves of chestnuts wound in and out and down among the moist thickets by the western palace wing. At one end of the avenue of trees the Observatory rose, its white domes piled up like an eastern mosque; at the other end stood the ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... hand, he fixed it into a hole cut for the purpose in the "blanket," or outer covering, near the head. Others being lowered to assist him, they commenced cutting with sharp spades a strip between two and three feet broad, in a spiral direction round the body. This strip, as it was hoisted up by the tackles, caused the body to perform a rotatory motion, till the whole of the strip or "blanket-piece" was cut off to the flukes; which "blanket-piece," by-the-by, the mate told Walter, was so ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... the house. We then mentioned that there was a person in the turret watching their movements. As they disappeared in the direction of Ludgate, this individual quitted his post of observation, and, descending the spiral staircase, threaded a long passage in the darkness, like one familiar with the place, until he arrived at a particular chamber, which he entered; and, without pausing, proceeded to a little cabinet beyond it. The moonlight streaming through a grated window, ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... It is difficult for you, at first, to feel this order and beauty of surface, apart from the imitation. But you can see there is a pretty disposition of, and relation between, the projections of a fir-cone, though the studded spiral imitates nothing. Order exactly the same in kind, only much more complex; and an abstract beauty of surface rendered definite by increase and decline of light—(for every curve of surface has its own luminous law, and the light and shade on a parabolic solid differs, specifically, from ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... In the welcome silence which followed, as they drifted downward in a slow spiral, not a man spoke. Their eyes were ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... of the cloister are fourteen studies, where the monks write and study, and over the said studies is the new library, to which one mounts by a broad and lofty spiral staircase from the aforesaid cloister. This library is 189 feet long, by 17 feet wide. In it are 48 seats (bancs), and in each seat 4 shelves (poulpitres) furnished with books on all subjects, but chiefly theology; the greater number of the said books are of vellum, ...
— Libraries in the Medieval and Renaissance Periods - The Rede Lecture Delivered June 13, 1894 • J. W. Clark
... The spiral striae that cross its whorls are grouped in pairs; their interstices are raised, and more or less finely crenulated; as they pass out on the expanded and wing-like varices they diverge, and the lobe-like projections that scallop the margins of the wings ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... changed by the continual appearance of new objects, while others are retiring out of sight. The scene is closed by a west view of the lake, for several miles, having its sides lined with alternate clumps of wood and arable fields, and the smoke rising in spiral columns through the air from villages which are concealed by the intervening woods; the prospect is bounded by the towering Alps of Arrochar, which are checkered with snow, or hide ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various
... side is a dining-room, which connects with the kitchen by a door cut through a corner tower. This tower corresponds in the design of the facade toward the court-yard with another tower at the opposite corner, in which is a spiral staircase leading to the ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... was on one of the nights of the debate on the Coercion Bill. He was describing the promises of equal laws to Ireland, with the restrictions on Irish liberty which were contained in the Bill, and as he described restriction he gradually raised the fingers on one hand, then turned them spiral fashion until he had pointed the index finger to the roof—- as though he were describing the ascent of a funambulist to the top of spiral stairs. It was at once eloquent and grotesque, and the House cheered and cheered yet again without any distinction of party—the friends in admiration of ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... minutes afterwards that a soft rustle of silken clothes came up the spiral staircase, and, hesitating onwards, reached the orifice, where appeared the form of Lady Constantine. She did not at first perceive that he was present, and stood still to reconnoitre. Her eye glanced over his telescope, ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... across the ages, is a microcosm which has, like the world itself, successive stages of youth, maturity, and old age; but it never dies—it renews itself perpetually. It is not like a perfect circle; it is like a spiral, and in its growth is always mounting higher. I believe in making students follow the same path that art itself has followed, so that they shall undergo during their term of study the same transformations ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... for various purposes, you will find that there is a broad historical division of schools, which will materially assist you in understanding them. The earliest art in most countries is linear, consisting of interwoven, or richly spiral and otherwise involved arrangements of sculptured or painted lines, on stone, wood, metal or clay. It is generally characteristic of savage life, and of feverish energy of imagination. I shall examine these schools with you hereafter, under ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... obvious, given what we now know of him, that such a view of the novel cannot appeal to Unamuno. He is a utilitarian, but not of worldly utilities. His utilitarianism transcends our daily wants and seeks to provide for our eternal ones. He is, moreover, a mind whose workings turn in spiral form towards a central idea and therefore feels an instinctive antagonism to the dispersive habits of thought and sensation which such detailed observation of life usually entails. For at bottom the opposition between ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... cried the mother, as the battered head of an ancient doll was displayed over his shoulder by Perseus, decorated with two enormous snakes, one made of stamps, and the other a spiral of whalebone shavings out ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the north pole of the magnet, N.S. (Fig. 1), projected itself in an opposite direction at C, upon the south pole, S, of the same magnet; but, between the two poles, these two contrary actions being obliged to unite, they gave rise in doing so to a very characteristic helicoid spiral whose direction depended upon that of the current of discharge through the aureola, or upon the polarity of the magnetic poles. On the contrary, when the discharge took place in the direction of the equatorial line, as in Fig. 2, the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... used were generally chain-stitch, split-stitch, petit point, and lace-stitch; and the patterns were most frequently outlined with a gimp made of flattened spiral wire, or purl, which was a fine copper wire covered with coloured silks and cut in lengths for use. Very often, also, small silver spangles were employed, either stitched down with a piece of purl or a ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... chronograph a platform, arranged to descend slowly alongside of a vertical rotating cylinder, carries two markers, controlled by electromagnets, which describe a double spiral on the prepared surface of the cylinder. One electromagnet is in circuit with a clock, and the marker actuated by it marks seconds on the cylinder; the circuit of the other is completed through a series of contact pieces attached to the screens through which the shot ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... of the bronze shoes and glaring color of the waistcoat. All these details I noted, as he turned somewhat indolently in my direction, calmly flipping the ash from off a cigarette, and permitting a spiral of thin blue smoke to curl slowly upward from his lips ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... a bit of Sphagnam, a curious moss, with curious incomplete spiral cells in the leaves. I dare say it will bear preservation in Canada balsam. I have received a new microscope, a queer-looking thing, very portable; one object glass of a quarter inch focus, by Ross; two eye- ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... nearer; and more intense, in the same degree, grew her apprehension, till the sound of her messenger's voice, calling the warder, struck her ear—and she imagined she never heard a voice so hollow and ominous of death. The man was admitted, and his heavy step up the spiral stair, flustering in the toil of a vain precipitude in the dark entrance, declared the impatience ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... unto a cave, Whence a rare glory issued, and a smell Of spice and roses, frankincense and balm. They entering stood within a marble hall, With straight, slim pillars, at whose farther end The goddess led him to a spiral flight Of stairs, descending always 'midst black gloom Into the very bowels of the earth. Down these, with fearful swiftness, they made way, The knight's feet touching not the solid stair, But sliding ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... last sailed out of the feathery clasp of the elm branches, and the whole landscape was in a pale, clear glow. Then Horace came. Rose started up. She stood for an instant irresolute, then she stole out of her room and down the spiral stair very noiselessly. She opened the front door before Horace could insert ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... kitchen jack leaned against a pyx, a republican sabre on a mediaeval hackbut. Mme. du Barry, with a star above her head, naked, and surrounded by a cloud, seemed to look longingly out of Latour's pastel at an Indian chibook, while she tried to guess the purpose of the spiral curves that wound towards her. Instruments of death, poniards, curious pistols, and disguised weapons had been flung down pell-mell among the paraphernalia of daily life; porcelain tureens, Dresden plates, translucent cups from china, old salt-cellars, ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... sailing in circles,—or rather in a spiral curve, that was constantly contracting downward and inward. The centre of that curve was the spot occupied ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... most powerful of telescopes to define their stellar structure; all that can be distinguished of these is a cloudy luminosity resembling in appearance an irresolvable nebula. Globular clusters usually present a radiated appearance. Rays, branches, and spiral-shaped streams of stars appear to flow from the circumference of some; and, in other instances, fantastic appendages of stars project outwards from the parent cluster. There doubtless exists much variety in the structural arrangement ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... that even a jaguar or puma which has received the slightest wound soon becomes convulsed and dies. Instead of feathers, a little cotton is wrapped neatly round the lower end of the arrow, to make it go steadily through the air: and at about an inch from the point it is spiral. ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... back, the other is fastened to the waist. It is composed of a Bunsen pile, which I do not work with bichromate of potash, but with sodium. A wire is introduced which collects the electricity produced, and directs it towards a particularly made lantern. In this lantern is a spiral glass which contains a small quantity of carbonic gas. When the apparatus is at work this gas becomes luminous, giving out a white and continuous light. Thus provided, I can ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... Avenue, under the thunder of the L, past lighted lunchrooms, oyster saloons, and pawnshops, Miss Chapman resumed her sway. With the delightful velocity of thought his mind whirled in a narrowing spiral round the experience of the evening. The small book-crammed sitting room of the Mifflins, the sparkling fire, the lively chirrup of the bookseller reading aloud—and there, in the old easy chair whose horsehair stuffing was bulging out, that blue-eyed vision of careless girlhood! Happily he had ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... commanding eminence. The massive tower supports a tall but suddenly tapering spire of the most puzzling construction to the eye. It must have been designed by a monk of the olden time, with a Chinese turn of ingenuity. There is no order known to architecture to furnish a term or likeness for it. A ridgy, spiral spire are the three most descriptive words, but these are not half enough for stating the shape, style and posture of this strange steeple. It is difficult even to assist the imagination to form an idea of it. I will essay a few words in that direction. Suppose, then, a plain spire, 100 feet ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... like the familiar "pin-wheel" fireworks toy. Another form is akin the ring of smoke projected from the coughing locomotive, or the rounded lips of the cigar smoker, the movement in this kind being a form of spiral rotation. Other thought forms have the appearance of swiftly rotating balls of cloudy substance, often glowing with ...
— The Human Aura - Astral Colors and Thought Forms • Swami Panchadasi
... drew near the clearing in the forest, he both trembled and rejoiced, at the thought of soon being able to deliver his message to the woodmen. Coming yet nearer, however, he no longer saw any blue smoke curling up in a thin spiral between the straight stems of the forest trees. Neither did he hear any sound of saws sawing timber, or the men shouting to their horses. The whole place was silent and deserted. When he reached the clearing, nobody was there. Even the huts had gone. He ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... earlier. No backlog of demand can exist very long in the face of our tremendous productive capacity. We must expect again to face the problem of shrinking demand and consequent slackening in sales, production, and employment. This possibility of a deflationary spiral in the future will exist unless we now plan and adopt an ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... we come to a new phase of coastal scenery. From the high land above us green scrub-covered spur after spur shoots downward to the shore, enclosing numerous little beaches of coarse sand and many coloured spiral shells—"Reddies" we boys called them—with here and there a rare and beautiful cowrie of banded jet black and pearly white. The sea-wall of rock has here but few pools, being split up into long, deep, and narrow chasms, ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... of the car and let himself down upon the shell. It was not a pleasant surface to stand upon, being uneven, with great spiral ribs, and Clewe sat down upon it, clinging to it with his hands. Then he leaned over to one side and looked beneath him. The shadows of that shell went down, down, down, until it made him sick to look at it. He drew back quickly, clutched the shell with his arms, and shut his eyes. He felt as if ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... Ton-Kunst, the Ton-Welt, give me now more stimulus than the written Word; for music seems to contain everything in nature, unfolded into perfect harmony. In it the all and each are manifested in most rapid transition; the spiral and undulatory movement of beautiful creation is felt throughout, and, as we listen, thought is most clearly, because ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... this gigantic granite jewel which is as light as a bit of lace, covered with towers, with slender belfries to which spiral staircases ascend, and which raise their strange heads that bristle with chimeras, with devils, with fantastic animals, with monstrous flowers, and which are joined together by finely carved arches, to the blue sky by day, and to the ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... BULLION STITCH (fig. 700).—Put the needle halfway into the last buttonhole stitch, twist the thread ten or twelve times round it from left to right, draw it through and tighten the thread, so that the spiral on the thread form a semicircle, then continue the bar (see also for the bullion stitch figs. ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... labouring upward and onward through the most frightful part of that tremendous desolation, when snow begin to fall. At first, but a few flakes descended slowly and steadily. After a little while the fall grew much denser, and suddenly it began without apparent cause to whirl itself into spiral shapes. Instantly ensuing upon this last change, an icy blast came roaring at them, and every sound and force imprisoned until now was ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... closed by a spring, which was fastened at one end to the connecting rod and at the other to the top of the frame. At first we used a rubber band for this purpose, but it soon wore out, so we then made a spiral spring out of stiff spring brass wire by wrapping it around a pencil. When the key was pressed down the slats would be turned open, as shown in Fig. 159; but as soon as the key was released the spring would pull ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... care is to be taken by the Inspector that it has both the necessary stiffness to act efficiently and elastically enough, when pressed home, to yield sufficiently to allow the bristles to act also. Spiral spaces extending the whole length of the sponge-head, including the portion adapted to the main bore in chambered guns, are to be left, in order to bring out the unconsumed portions of cartridges. These spaces must ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... invisible. We cannot indeed see the augmentation of intensity in the region beyond the red, but we can measure it and express it numerically. With this view the following experiment was performed: A spiral of platinum wire was surrounded by a small glass globe to protect it from currents of air; through an orifice in the globe the rays could pass from the spiral and fall afterwards upon a thermo-electric pile. Placing in front of the orifice an opaque solution of iodine, the platinum was ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... I said, and knelt again in my seat. The plane suddenly seemed to swerve. Then it slanted at a most terrifying angle, and began to descend rapidly towards the earth in a spiral form. I filmed the scene on the journey. To say the earth looked extraordinary would be putting it very mildly. The ground below seemed to rush up and mix with the clouds. First the earth seemed to be over one's head, then the clouds. I am sure the most ardent futurist artist would ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... through it on our return. Its work for the day was finished, its strange, weary song uninterrupted by the mighty waggons thundering up and down its spiral way. Hal paused, leaning against the railings that encircled ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... as he wandered on, a golden door. After many a hearty shove he forced it open. A steep flight of rugged stone steps led winding upwards he knew not where. Boldly he entered, and climbed on, on, on. Though rough and steep were the steps he did not weary or hesitate. Sometimes the stair was spiral, and he went round and round, and sometimes it led him directly upwards. Scarcely a glimmer of light enabled him to find his way; but the Dwarf was at his heels, encouraging him, and he recollected the silver wand of which he was in search, and ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... A pretty talk! Eh, I will tell thy father, I will have a stop put to this—hush, would you have him hear?" she admonished, in a sudden whisper, as they opened the little door at the foot of the dark well of spiral steps. ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... strap of deerskin attached at one end to a round piece of bone, fourteen inches long, tapered to a point, and covered over with leather. This looks like a little whip, the handle of which is placed up and down the hair, and the strap wound round it in a number of spiral turns, making the tail thus equipped very much resemble one of those formerly worn by our seamen. The strap of this article of dress, which is altogether called a tŏglēēgă, is so made from the deerskin as to show, when bound round the hair, alternate turns ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... body being perfectly white. On each side was a bunch of feathers, tinged with the richest golden-green; and from the middle of the tail extended two very long, naked shafts, which terminated in a broad golden-green web of spiral form. So delighted were the young people with the spectacle, that they could not tear themselves from the spot, forgetting all about the object of their excursion. They were still intently watching ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... This is a good mixer. All are asked to form in line, one behind another, each one's hands on the shoulders of the person ahead. The leader then starts the line winding around and round the room into a spiral and then unwinding it—the well-known gymnasium class stunt which carried through in a sprightly way is bound to make ...
— Entertaining Made Easy • Emily Rose Burt
... Manicamp's steps. On the first floor, behind curtains of red damask, the soft light of a lamp placed upon a low table faintly illumined the room, at the other extremity of which, on a large bedstead supported by spiral columns, around which curtains of the same color as those which deadened the rays of the lamp had been closely drawn, lay De Guiche, his head supported by pillows, his eyes looking as if the mists of death were gathering; ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... pieces of equal length and lay them on the solid boil longways and equal distances apart, then roll the boil into shape, bring down one end to a point; pull out into convenient lengths, twisting them so that the stripes form a pretty spiral round ...
— The Candy Maker's Guide - A Collection of Choice Recipes for Sugar Boiling • Fletcher Manufacturing Company
... forgotten or disdained. Why was she not rehearsing there with them? she asked herself. At once the answer came. Because your husband hates you—because he wants to make love to another woman. Then, like one crazed, she clattered down the iron spiral staircase to the stage. She did not even hear Mortimer and Dubois cry out as she pushed past, ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... fingers, From the pulses of the air, Call out melody that lingers All along the golden stair Of the spiral that ascendeth To the paradise on high, And arising there emblendeth With the ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... construction and arrangement of stock, A, mouth piece, B, inhaling and exhaling tubes, C' C, plate, D, air tube, E', valve, E, spiral spring, b, valves, c c, rods, d d, fulcra, e e, arm, f, and rod, g, substantially in the manner and for the purposes as ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... inhabiting the East Indies. In-fest'ed, troubled, annoyed. 3. Sub'tile, acute, piercing. In-fus'es, intro-duces. 4. Ob-structs', hinders. De-lir'i-um, a wandering of the mind. 5. Ran'kle, to rage. Par'ox-ysm, a fit, a convulsion. 7. Worm, a spiral metallic pipe used in distilling liquors. Still, a vessel used ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... The stove hid the door and the white cat, round and symmetrical, formed the center of the visible universe. On the marble table beside Andrews were some pieces of crisp bread with butter on them, a saucer of damson jam and a bowl with coffee and hot milk from which the steam rose in a faint spiral. His tunic was unbuttoned and he rested his head on his two hands, staring through his fingers at a thick pile of ruled paper full of hastily drawn signs, some in ink and some in pencil, where now and then he made a mark with a pencil. At the other edge of the pile of papers were ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... suggest to him what it was good for. His pains were rewarded by finding on the flat head the nearly obliterated figures 3 and 5, inscribed one above the other, in the manner of a vulgar fraction, thus, 3/5; and by the conviction that the spiral conformation of the rod was not the result of accident, as he had at first supposed, but had been communicated to it intentionally, for some purpose unknown. These conclusions naturally stimulated ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... with brass-knobbed banisters, has fifteen or twenty wooden steps, high, narrow, with sharp angles, which rise perpendicularly to the first floor and turn upon themselves in a spiral of about eighteen inches in diameter. Would you not be inclined to ask ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... you get to a rising ground on the western bank where stands a single hut, and about half a mile in the forest there are a few more: some of them square and some round, with spiral roofs. ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... and looked at it attentively. It lay before him as far as the sky-line, flat, frozen, and covered with snow. Some tufts of heather shivered in the wind. No roads were visible—nothing, not even a shepherd's cot. Here and there pale spiral vortices might be seen, which were whirls of fine snow, snatched from the ground by the wind and blown away. Successive undulations of ground, become suddenly misty, rolled themselves into the horizon. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... the horse, like those of man, are composed of simple tubes, which extend down through the cuticle and dermis in a spiral manner, and are coiled into balls in the deeper layer of the true skin. In addition to their importance in throwing offensive waste products out of the system, these glands tend to cool the skin and the entire economy of the animal through the evaporation of their watery secretion. Their ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... cement, oil refining and transshipment, salt, rum, aragonite, pharmaceuticals, spiral-welded ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... moment from the form as a unit, and to consider here only what may be called the quality of line. A line may be straight or broken, and if curved, curving continuously or brokenly, etc. That this quality of line is distinct from form may be shown by the simple experiment of turning a spiral—a logarithmic spiral, let us say—in different ways about its focus. The aesthetic effect of the figure is absolutely different in the different positions, and yet the feeling about the character of the line itself seems to remain the same. In what sense, and for what reasons, does ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... Grand. Ojen was there with his two close-cropped poets. He was speaking about his latest prose poems: "A Sleeping City," "Poppies," "The Tower of Babel." Imagine the Tower of Babel—its architecture! And with a nervous gesture he drew a spiral ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... sometimes in flexure, especially with dry material. The tension portion of the fracture is nearly the same as though the piece were pulled in two lengthwise. The fibre walls are torn across obliquely and usually in a spiral direction. There is practically no pulling apart of the fibres, that is, no separation of the fibres along their walls, regardless of their thickness. The nature of tension failure is apparently not affected by the moisture condition of the specimen, ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record
... and is the regular entrance into the cathedral from the south. It opened from the eastern walk of the cloister. It is of later date than the wall in which it is placed. The ornamentation is very rich; one spiral column is especially noteworthy. There is a trefoiled arch, the cusps having circular terminations with the star ornament. In the spandrels are quaint, crouching monks, each holding a pastoral staff. Above ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... boat wandered into a miniature whirlpool, grooved in a spiral and pleasant to see. Slowly the water went round and round, and so did the boat without any assistance from Jane. Watching this movement thoughtfully, she brought forth from her drenched pocket some sodden ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... sixteen years ago. It shows the flight of the first piece of human machinery heavier than air that ever kept itself up for any length of time. It was a model, a little affair that would not have lifted a cat; it went up in a spiral and came down unsmashed, bringing back, like Noah's dove, the promise of ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... his hand again and again over the long curls and grasped them a little, as if their spiral resistance made his inward vision clearer; then he passed his hand over the brow and cheek, tracing the profile with the edge of his palm and fourth finger, and letting the breadth of his hand repose on the ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... not perceive a scratch, he was too busily employed in that said chair in forming plans for cutting up Europe; within three yards of his table was a little door, or rather trap door, by which you descended down the oddest spiral staircase you ever beheld into the Library, which was low and small; the books were few of them new, almost all standard works upon history—at least I am sure 4 out of 5 were historical—all of his own selection, and each stamped, as in fact was everything else from high to low, far and wide, with ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... us, with wide spiral curves, He wheels, each circle closer than before? And, if I err not, he appears to me A line of fire upon his ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... fair as to gain from this marble-like radiance its chief characteristic, was delicately tinted to-night on either cheek so as to emulate the early blushes of Aurora. Her colorless hair, of a tint so neutral as to defy description, curling in light spiral ringlets so as to drop profusely on her bosom, had been richly powdered with gold-dust for this occasion, and glistened like the sunlight, or, to fall in my comparison, the tresses of Lucretia Borgia, as ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... to the above, the doctor caused to be constructed two sheet-iron chests two lines in thickness. These were connected by means of pipes furnished with stopcocks. He joined to these a spiral, two inches in diameter, which terminated in two branch pieces of unequal length, the longer of which, however, was twenty-five feet in height and the shorter only ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... though the Rivermouthians are such early birds that not a worm may be said to escape them. By and by one of the brown Holland shades at one of the upper windows of the Bilkins Mansion—the house from which Miss Margaret had emerged—was drawn up, and old Mr. Bilkins in spiral nightcap looked out on the sunny street. Not a living creature was to be seen, save the dissipated family cat—a very Lovelace of a cat that was not allowed a night-key—who was sitting on the curbstone opposite, waiting for the hall door to be opened. Three quarters of an hour, we ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... trimmed and fitted closely to its neighbour. Then while Matuk cut more blocks and handed them to Akonuk as they were needed, the latter standing in the centre of the structure placed them upon edge upon the other blocks, building them up in spiral form, and narrowing in each upper round until the igloo assumed the form of a dome. When it was nearly as high as his head, the upper tier of blocks was so close together that a single large block was sufficient to close the aperture at the top. This block was like the keystone in an arch, ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... first is carried on the back, the second is fastened to the belt. It consists of a Bunsen battery that I activate not with potassium dichromate but with sodium. An induction coil gathers the electricity generated and directs it to a specially designed lantern. In this lantern one finds a glass spiral that contains only a residue of carbon dioxide gas. When the device is operating, this gas becomes luminous and gives off a continuous whitish light. Thus provided for, I ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... circular space of about six yards in diameter, the centre of which, from the whirling of the water round it, formed a hollow; and from the outer part of the circle the water was thrown up with much force in a spiral direction, and could be traced to the height of fifteen or twenty feet. At this elevation we lost sight of it and could see nothing of its junction with the column above. It is impossible to say what injury we should have suffered if it ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... Spiral puttees have advanced so far in popular favour that they are now being issued for general wear by such a conservative (but ever reliable) gent's furnishing house as the U.S.Q.M.C.D. They are considered warmer than the old-style canvas leggings, although, ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... rose, going round and round in a spiral. When he was well up in the blue, blue sky, he began to sail again in wide circles as when Peter had first seen him. It wasn't long before he again paused and then shot down towards the water. This time he abruptly spread his great wings just before reaching the ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... vine springs the capreolus, which is a little spiral tendril, like a curled hair, by means of which the vine holds on while it creeps towards the place of which it would take possession, from which quality of taking hold of things (capere) it is ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... of combining weight and protection in the cable itself. He constructed it with eighteen pieces of wire, placed lengthwise around the cable, and bound together with soft iron wire at intervals. While the spiral cordage of hemp, such as was used at that time on the cable from Dover to Calais, would stretch, and allow the strain to come on the cable itself. This invention caused the strain to come on the armor. It was a complete success, and lasted until ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... banking, cement, oil refining and transshipment, salt production, rum, aragonite, pharmaceuticals, spiral welded steel pipe ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... is brought down to the surface of the earth beyond the calms of the tropics, and that it thence proceeds with an increasing eastward motion, appearing in our northern hemisphere as the prevailing northeastward winds. Approaching the poles with a spiral motion, the air there rises, according to this hypothesis, in a vortex, and returns toward the equator in the upper atmosphere, gradually acquiring a westward motion; till, returning to the tropics, it is again brought ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... gold-tipped one. Now he removed it from between his lips with that hand that always shook a little, and dropped it to the floor, crushing it lightly with the toe of his boot. He threw back his handsome head and sent out the last mouthful of smoke in a thin, lazy spiral. I remember thinking what a pity it was that he should have crushed that costly-looking cigarette, ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... visible emotion or speech; but there was an utter tumult, a tumult like the spiral of a hurricane, within him. Rebellious feelings, tyrannical desires and thoughts, swept through him in waves of heat and cold. Nettie's voice grew weak, the shadows deepened under her eyes, for a little they closed; and but for the faint stir of the coverlet over ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... awakened from a death-like sleep in the early hours of a warm summer Sunday. Dawn steeped the bush in crimson, the smoke of a dying camp-fire curled high in the air and its top most spiral caught the red glow of the young sun. About that camp-fire, twisted on their rugs and blankets on the grass in the quaint attitudes of out-door drunks, lay four shearers, Bill, Mike, Ben, and Fred. Near them were scattered various bottles, ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... beheld the silent toil That spread his lustrous coil; Still, as the spiral grew, He left the past year's dwelling for the new, Stole with soft steps its shining archway through, Built up its idle door, Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... hair did not hang down her back in the rich spiral curl which is now becoming so common among schoolgirls; for that it was too plentiful, too troublesomely luxuriant. It hung like heavy bronze in a thick stiff plait—a badge both of her robust youth and the redundant richness of ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... she asked Choulette if he had finished the portrait of Misery on his stick. Misery had now become a figure of Piety, and Choulette recognized the Virgin in it. He had even composed a quatrain which he was to write on it in spiral form—a didactic and moral quatrain. He would cease to write, except in the style of the commandments of God rendered into French verses. The four lines expressed simplicity and goodness. He consented ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... A charge formed of a spiral line of blue on a white field, and supposed to represent a whirlpool: borne (H.3) by R. DE GORGES: ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... enough in it in the sunlight. It shines like a buttercup in the grass. You know the plant. When it fades—and I ask whether you think Philostratus looks like a bud—when it fades, it leaves a hollow spiral ball which a child's breath could blow away. Suppose in future we should call the round buttercup seed-vessels 'Philostratus heads'? You like the suggestion? I am glad, fellow-citizens, and I thank you. It proves your good taste. Then we will stick to the comparison. Every head contains ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Falconhurst easier and safer, a spiral staircase was built in the trunk of the huge tree whose branches upheld the "Nest." This is the "task" spoken of in the opening paragraph of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... was very still—a sharp night, with a thin moon, like a scimitar, hanging bright in the sky, and a myriad of intense stars blinking in the heavens, above the steep roofs and spiral chimneys of Brandon Hall, and the ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... a Bunsen pile worked with bichromate of potash, which makes no smell; an induction coil carries the electricity generated by the pile into communication with a lantern of peculiar construction; in this lantern there is a spiral glass tube from which the air has been excluded, and in which remains only a residuum of carbonic acid gas or of nitrogen. When the apparatus is put in action this gas becomes luminous, producing a white steady light. The pile and coil are placed in a leathern bag ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... termed protoplasm. At one time it was supposed that protoplasm was structureless. Now it is known that the protoplasmic cell contains a nucleus and a surrounding body. Moreover, the nucleus, or small spot in the centre, has within it a spiral structure of a very complicated kind. Every cell is derived from a pre-existing cell by a process of division, the two resulting cells being apparently identical with the parent cell. {77} The cells ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... SPIRAL: One husband! The woman consenting to marriage takes but one. For her there is no widowhood. That punctuation of the sentence called death is not the end of the chapter for her. It is the brilliant proof of her having a soul. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... now, no mounting heavenward, as I have seen him mount till his petty persecutor grew dizzy with the height and returned to earth. But the next day, with a fairly good breeze blowing, I watched two hawks for many minutes climbing their spiral stairway to the skies, till they became very small objects against the clouds, and not once did they flap their wings! Then one of them turned toward the mountain-top and sailed straight into the face of the ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... away on the hills beyond the river came a faint sound borne on the morning wind, yet it electrified the camp, and from in front of the Fire Eater's tent a passing man split the air with the wolfish war-yell of the Chis-chis-chash. As though he had been a spiral spring released from pressure, the Fire Eater regained his height. The little boy sat briskly down in the ashes, adding his voice to the confusion, which now reigned in the great camp in a most disproportionate ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington
... sure—just as men had developed generators long before they knew the laws that governed them. Ato had a theory that the Fourth Gear slid the ship from plane to plane. If a bug were crawling along a million mile spiral of wire, he might go on until he died before getting anywhere—but if he simply lumbered across the intervening space to the next coil, would he have traveled a short distance, or a million miles? Ato had also told Odin that the ship took energy from the gravitational ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... bracelets, smaller crowns as if for children, dainty butterflies for ornaments of dresses, and that golden flower on a silver stalk—all of pure, [212] soft gold, unhardened by alloy, the delicate films of which one must touch but lightly, yet twisted and beaten, by hand and hammer, into wavy, spiral relief, the cuttle-fish with its long undulating ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... recess dressing-room, equipped with a bath and all that is necessary to one's toilet; and the water, one remarks, is warmed, if one desires it warm, by passing it through an electrically-heated spiral of tubing. A cake of soap drops out of a store-machine on the turn of a handle, and when you have done with it, you drop that and your soiled towels, etc., which are also given you by machines, into a little box, through the bottom ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... regaled his guest with the flank of a kid served with cucumber, and fruit gathered early, and some native wine, scarcely good enough for the Venusian bard, but as rich as ambrosia to Scudamore. Then he supplied him with the finest tobacco that ever ascended in spiral incense to the cloud-compelling Jove. At every soft puff, away flew the blue-devils, pagan, or Christian, or even scientific; and the brightness of the sleep-forbidden eyes returned, and the sweetness of the smile so long gone ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... a slanting condition over a smaller area of supporting air, and the whole apparatus would tend to glide downwards in that direction. The projection of a small vertical plane upon either side would make the gliding mass rotate in a descending spiral, and so we have all the elements of a controllable flight. Such an affair would be difficult to overset. It would be able to beat up even in a fair wind, and then it would be able to contract its bladders and fall down a long slant in any direction. From some such crude beginning a form like a soaring, ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... dagger just here, and gave her head an absent-minded shake so that her lustrous coil of hair uncoiled itself and fell on her shoulders in a ruddy spiral. It was a sight to induce covetousness, but one couldn't be envious of Egeria. She charmed one by her ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and suckauhock crept into local use among the different tribes. The Iroquois in their civil and religious ceremonies employed a variety named otekoa, and made from spiral fresh water shells of the genus unio. This as may be inferred from its uses was held in the highest esteem, and no other could be employed in the different stages of the ceremonial.[7] In New England and perhaps elsewhere, an inferior kind ...
— Wampum - A Paper Presented to the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society - of Philadelphia • Ashbel Woodward
... St. Margaret, and within a hundred feet of the spot where the conflagration began. It is of the Doric order, and rises from the pavement to the height of two hundred and two feet, containing within its shaft a spiral stair of black marble of three hundred and forty-five steps. The plinth is twenty-one feet square, and ornamented with sculpture by Cibber, representing the flames subsiding on the appearance of King Charles;—beneath his horse's feet a figure, meant to personify religious ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... grateful for that; nor that you do 'eat your dinner'? Indeed you will be ingenious to prevent me! I fancy myself meeting you on 'the stairs'—stairs and passages generally, and galleries (ah, thou indeed!) all, with their picturesque accidents, of landing-places, and spiral heights and depths, and sudden turns and visions of half open doors into what Quarles calls 'mollitious chambers'—and above all, landing-places—they are my heart's delight—I would come upon you unaware ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... raising his voice, but Mr. Cupples could perceive that he was ablaze with excitement as he stared at the faint gray marks. "This one should be the index finger. I need not tell a man of your knowledge of the world that the pattern of it is a single-spiral whorl, with deltas symmetrically disposed. This, the print of the second finger, is a simple loop, with a staple core and fifteen counts. I know there are fifteen, because I have just the same two prints on this negative, which I have examined in detail. Look—!" he held one of the negatives ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... for use, measuring twelve inches and upwards in length, and an inch in diameter, nearly cylindrical, often irregular, and sometimes assuming a spiral or cork-screw form; skin white and smooth; flesh white, not so firm as that of most varieties, and considerably pungent; leaves ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... in mud which the other reproduced in carbonate of lime. But the most curious fact is that a true mollusc (VERMETUS) so far departs from the fashion prevalent in the molluscan world of building a spiral shell, that after beginning one in proper spiral mode it elongates itself in vermiform manner and forms an irregular serpuloid tube on the surface of larger shells or stones just as the SERPULA ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... antiquated chambermaids entered the bedroom, and they were shortly afterwards followed by the Countess, who, more dead than alive, sank into a Voltaire armchair. Hermann peeped through a chink. Lizaveta Ivanovna passed close by him, and he heard her hurried steps as she hastened up the little spiral staircase. For a moment his heart was assailed by something like a pricking of conscience, but the emotion was only transitory, and his heart became ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... wandered across the room. Archer, remaining seated, watched the light movements of her figure, so girlish even under its heavy furs, the cleverly planted heron wing in her fur cap, and the way a dark curl lay like a flattened vine spiral on each cheek above the ear. His mind, as always when they first met, was wholly absorbed in the delicious details that made her herself and no other. Presently he rose and approached the case before ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... down a spiral stairway. She kissed his mouth, took off his winged cap and coat, threw them somewhere out of sight, and then he had time to look at ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... not a pessimist, and I like to believe that, although our course frequently resembles a circle, it is much better to characterize it as a spiral, and that, although we do get back to a point that we recognize, it is not, after all, our old starting point; it is an homologous point on a higher plane. We have at least climbed a little, even if we have not traveled in a ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... when dusk fell upon the wilderness a dozen fires kept company with the lone little spiral ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... for the narrow spiral stairs that led to the main floor of the barn, stopped at its ...
— Youth • Isaac Asimov
... corkscrew in a slanting direction and turn it slowly to the right, supposing that the point dips up a portion of water each time it revolves, one can in imagination follow the flow of that portion of water from spiral to spiral, the water always running downward, of course, yet paradoxically being lifted higher and higher towards the base of the corkscrew, until finally it pours out (in the actual Archimedes' tube) at ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... castaway Who sees a vessel drifting far astray Of his last hope, and lays him down to die. The children, riotous from school, grow bold And quarrel with the wind, whose angry gust Plucks off the summer hat, and flaps the fold Of many a crimson cloak, and twirls the dust In spiral shapes grotesque, and dims the gold Of gleaming tresses with the ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... which he has constructed is exceedingly simple. A current of hot air flowing from below upward is deflected more or less from its direction by the human voice. By its action an adjacent thermo-battery is excited, whose current passes through the spiral of an ordinary telephone, which serves as the receiving instrument. As a source of heat the inventor uses a common stearine candle, the flame of which is kept at one and the same level by means of a spring similar to those used in carriage lamps. On one side of the candle ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... like the man through the various phases of infancy, youth, and manhood back to the infancy of old age again. Evolution necessarily means ultimate progress, even though the turning back of its ascending spiral may seem to make the history of politics or of religion a record not merely of development and progress but also of degradation ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... Lee stands up. He turns on a small electric light. This is a concession. This done, he opens a drawer behind the counter and removes a little bronze casket. The casket is placed on the counter. Slowly as if in a deep dream Sing Lee lights a match and holds it inside the casket. A thin spiral of lavender ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... the pigskin as if his shoe belonged there, and back through space went the twisting oval, in a long spiral curve, while the cohorts of both teams loosed the yells that had been ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... There was not the slightest trace of inflammation, nor any thing unnatural to be discovered in the part; there was merely a round worm, which was situated in the upper part of the intus-susceptio. The intestine was brought together by means of six spiral stitches, after the manner of the glover's suture, and the end of the silk was allowed to hang out of the external wound ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... simple columella is not only lateral, but occupies indeed the sharp vertical angle of the triangular, prismatic sporangium. Furthermore, the sporangium is at maturity strangely twisted, so that the columella in its ascent accomplishes one or more spiral turns. In forms collected by Dr. Rex, which seemed to him most nearly to agree with Massee's species, the inner capillitium is somewhat abundant, but the character of ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... us they're thin, They're angular, or smooth and fat, Some spiral are, and gimlet in, And some are sharp, and others flat. The slim one pink you clean and neat, The flat ones bat a solid blow Much as a camel throws his feet, And leave you beastly incomplete. If lucky you don't ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... but the famous mosaics, the ancient windows, and the splendid carvings it is impossible to remove, and they are the most precious of all. The two pulpits of colored marbles and the celebrated screen with its carven figures are now hidden beneath pyramids of sand-bags. The spiral columns of translucent alabaster which support the altar, are padded with excelsior and wrapped with canvas. Swinging curtains of quilted burlap protect the walls of the chapels and transepts from flying shell fragments. Yet all these precautions would probably avail but ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... under my bare feet; the wind tore at my hair and face; and the sound of the river burst upon my ears with a sudden roar. These things, I knew, were real, and proved that my senses were acting normally. Yet the figures still rose from earth to heaven, silent, majestically, in a great spiral of grace and strength that overwhelmed me at length with a genuine deep emotion of worship. I felt that I must fall down and ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... lighted from the top by a large and handsome cupola. Perhaps it could not be said to belong to any decided style of architecture; but its central appearance was light, airy, and elegant. After traversing a wide and spacious entrance-hall, you arrived at the foot of a handsome spiral hanging staircase; on the right of which were two spacious apartments, one above the other, which were occupied as sitting chambers by the two houses of representatives. From these branched off several smaller rooms, fitted up as offices, and probably used as such by the various officers of state. ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... the glass, but through it everything presented a wavering appearance, as though the island and all upon it consisted of an infinite number of separate and distinct particles, each revolving in a spiral direction upwards. I called Ella on deck to see the singular phenomenon, for it was a more perfect example of mirage than I had ever before witnessed or could have believed possible. As we continued to gaze upon the curious spectacle, a faint foamy ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... birds at once. This gull, having spread his wings wide, swept up the dean, or valley, with great speed, and, turning a large circle, rose level with the hill. Round again he came, rising spirally—a spiral with a diameter varying from a furlong to a quarter of a mile, sometimes wider—and was now high overhead. Turn succeeded turn, up, up, and this without a single movement of the wings, which were held extended and rigid. The edge of the wing on the outer side ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... pretend that I am so unused to the more perishable smoking contrivance, that a few whiffs would make me feel as if I lay in a groundswell on the Bay of Biscay. I am not unacquainted with that fusiform, spiral-wound bundle of chopped stems and miscellaneous incombustibles, the cigar, so called, of the shops,—which to "draw" asks the suction-power of a nursling infant Hercules, and to relish, the leathery palate of an old Silenus. I do not advise you, young man, even if my illustration strikes your ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... cylindrical axis with scales of the same size, the spiral arrangement would appear as in fig. 62, where the scales are quadrangular and any four adjacent scales are in mutual contact at their sides or angles. These four scales lie on four obvious secondary spirals (fig. 59, a-a, b-b, c-c, ...
— The Genus Pinus • George Russell Shaw
... the cutout armature strikes when the cutout opens. By bending this stop the air-gap between the points may be decreased. This is the adjustment which should be made to have the cutout close earlier, rather than to decrease the spring tension. Some cutouts have a spiral spring attached to the cutout armature. Others have a flat spring. On still others, the spring forms the connection between the armature and the cutout frame. In the first two types, the spring tension may be decreased, but wherever possible ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... runs slowly round and round into the centre, and can either wind the children up tightly or can turn them on nearing the centre and run out again. For another change the long line can start running and so unwind the spiral. ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... App. 11, you can use short lengths of mailing-tubes, which are used to protect pictures, etc., when sent by mail. If you find that the particular tube tends to unwind when soaked, you can use a little paraffine along the edges of the spiral, as suggested in App. 11. Bottoms can be made for ...
— How Two Boys Made Their Own Electrical Apparatus • Thomas M. (Thomas Matthew) St. John
... work has been carried out entirely in it, and when a monotonous even line is required, this is a most suitable stitch to employ. It is equally in request for outline and filling in, and its chain-like adaptability makes it specially good for following out curved forms or spiral lines. Tambour stitch is practically the same in result, though worked in quite a different manner, for it is carried out in a frame with a fine crochet hook, instead of with a needle. This makes it quicker in execution, ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... he threw tobacco into the fire, and, this time, no portent interposed. The greedy flame seized upon the dry leaves, which crackled in the heat, and bore them on its shining billows high into the air. The fire continued burning till all was consumed, and the heap sent up only a spiral of indistinct smoke. ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... the Greek mythology a sea deity, son of Poseidon and Amphitrite; upper part of a man with a dolphin's tail; often represented as blowing a large spiral shell; there were several of them, and were heralds ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... new moon rising When the silence From the valleys rose in a faint blue spiral, Have ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... fish and insects, his accustomed fare. When the fish do not approach his station, he flies along, just over the water, and occasionally hovers with rapidly moving wings over the spot where he sees a trout or minnow. In the next instant, descending with a quick spiral sweep, he seizes a fish, with which he rises to his post and swallows it in an instant. All these proceedings were watched frequently by the children, with intense delight, as they stood concealed among the bushes, not daring to move for ...
— Frank and Fanny • Mrs. Clara Moreton
... masters—Manet and Monet. That view of a plain by Monet—is it not facile? It flows like a Japanese water-colour: the low horizon evaporating in the low light, the spire of the town visible in the haze. And look at the celebrated "Lecon de Danse" by Degas—that dancer descending the spiral staircase, only her legs are visible, the staircase cutting the picture in twain. On the right is the dancing class and the dancing master; something has gone wrong, and he holds out his hands in entreaty; a group of dancers are seated on chairs in the foreground, ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... a pith on the inside, which could only be divided into slices with a knife, either in stripes of a width permitted by the sides of the prism, or else shaved round and round, like the operation of cork making, and producing a long spiral shaving. ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... showed himself much exhausted, and it was with hanging head he followed his mistress up the grand staircase and the second spiral one that led yet higher to her chamber. Thither presently came lady Elizabeth, carrying a cushion and a deerskin for him to lie upon, and it was with much apparent satisfaction that the wounded and wearied animal, having followed his ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald |
