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Surface   /sˈərfəs/   Listen
Surface

noun
1.
The outer boundary of an artifact or a material layer constituting or resembling such a boundary.  "The cloth had a pattern of red dots on a white surface"
2.
The extended two-dimensional outer boundary of a three-dimensional object.  "A brush small enough to clean every dental surface" , "The sun has no distinct surface"
3.
The outermost level of the land or sea.  Synonym: Earth's surface.  "Three quarters of the Earth's surface is covered by water"
4.
A superficial aspect as opposed to the real nature of something.
5.
Information that has become public.  Synonym: open.  "The facts had been brought to the surface"
6.
A device that provides reactive force when in motion relative to the surrounding air; can lift or control a plane in flight.  Synonyms: aerofoil, airfoil, control surface.



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"Surface" Quotes from Famous Books



... was still rough, but the violence of the storm was past. In a few hours the surface of the sea was much less agitated. The spirits of the passengers rose, especially after learning from the mate that he had been able to stop the leak, through the experience which he acquired in his younger days as ...
— Facing the World • Horatio Alger

... perhaps other figures); these they let down into the water by a line with a small weight to sink it; when they think it low enough, they haul the line into their boats very fast, and the fish rise up after this figure, and they stand ready to strike them when they are near the surface of the water. But their chief livelihood is from their plantations; yet they have large boats, and go over to New Guinea, where they get slaves, fine parrots, &c, which they carry to Goram and exchange for calicoes. One boat came from thence a little ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton

... could afford him was by telling him that I had caught sight of several small rafts, and possibly they might be upon one of them. He had been washed away before he could secure himself when the ship foundered; and though he was carried down with her, on rising to the surface he had caught hold of the piece of wreck to which we ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston

... miles of hill and meadow land could be discerned, its bay windows and long piazzas, its sweet-faced, golden-haired Jessie, and its manly, noble Guy. Only the image of Agnes, flashing in silk and diamonds was a flaw on the picture's fair surface. From thoughts of her Maddy had insensibly shrank, until she met her in the carriage, and then received the note asking her services. These events wrought in her a change, and dread of Mrs. Agnes ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes

... sky is the same everywhere. Travellers, the shipwrecked, exiles, and the dying draw comfort from the thought, and no doubt if you are of a mystical tendency, consolation, and even explanation, shower down from the unbroken surface. But above Cambridge—anyhow above the roof of King's College Chapel—there is a difference. Out at sea a great city will cast a brightness into the night. Is it fanciful to suppose the sky, washed into the crevices of King's College Chapel, lighter, thinner, more sparkling ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... in maintenance of the Navy has been accomplished. We should maintain the policy of constantly working toward the full treaty strength of the Navy. Careful investigation is being made in this department of the relative importance of aircraft, surface and submarine vessels, in order that we may not fail to take advantage of all modern improvements for our national defense. A special commission also is investigating the problem of petroleum oil for the Navy, considering the best ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Calvin Coolidge • Calvin Coolidge

... lacking in drama and in surface pathos, yet its details remain with great clearness. The piece of damaged goods which, being of no further fighting use, was being returned with thanks to the hearthside from whence it came, was an individual answering to the unheroic cognomen of Briggs. A high-explosive shell had ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir

... Mediterranean sardine might be studied at a depth of many fathoms in a cold white light of more than ball-room brilliancy. Implicated in this invention (and, in the Duchess's eyes, the most attractive part of it) was an electric suction dredge, specially designed for dragging to the surface such objects of interest and value as might be found in the more accessible levels of the ocean-bed. The rights of the invention were to be acquired for a matter of eighteen hundred francs, and the apparatus for a few ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki

... would eliminate himself—for a consideration—and set up his own office. But it amazed him to find how swiftly and completely Helen had figured all these things out. Had her mind always worked so coldly and logically under her rather indifferent surface? He still wondered, too, at her efficiency. Was this a product of her social service with the Red Cross during war times?... Being a man, he couldn't concede that a proper domestic training was a pretty good schooling ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie

... trappings to the mob! I can look under them and see your skin. Are you not ashamed to live the loose life of Natta? But he is paralysed by vice; his heart is overgrown by thick collops of fat; he feels no reproach; he knows nothing of his loss; he is sunk in the depth and makes no more bubbles on the surface. Great Father of the Gods, be it thy pleasure to inflict no other punishment on the monsters of tyranny, after their nature has been stirred by fierce passion, that has the taint of fiery poison—let them look upon virtue and ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... of his weight forced Targo down upon the floor, and losing his balance he fell, with the Very Young Man on top of him. They hit the leg of the table as they rolled over, and something dropped from it to the floor, striking the stone surface with a thud. ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings

... invasion of the Huns. Attila, convinced of the strength and spirit of his enemy, retreated in haste, foreseeing ruin if he should be defeated in the heart of Gaul. He crossed the Seine, and halted not until he had reached the plains of Chalons, whose level surface was well adapted to the evolutions of the skilled horsemen who formed the ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris

... no intention of swimming all the way to the capital city, to be fished ignominiously out of the canal by the police. She was in need, not only of clothing, but of clothing that would disguise her. Her coral pink body near the surface of the water would attract attention for considerable distance, and would lead to ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl

... darted fire. 'You have not deserved it,' he uttered, in a voice like thunder, and seizing her he flung her into the jar of oil, where she was nearly suffocated. When she came to the surface screaming and struggling, the vengeful cat seized her again and rolled her in the ash-heap on the floor; then when she rose, dirty, blinded, and disgusting to behold, he thrust her from the door, ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various

... centre of which, near a small cabin, they found quite a number of harvesters engaged piling up sheaves of wheat in a circle on a spot of ground previously leveled and hardened until it presented a surface as even as ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... rills hastening toward it on either side. Thus in all directions the scene was lighted up with the glint and sparkle of water. The rays of the sun idealized even the muddy road, of which a glimpse was caught, for the pasty clay glistened like the surface of a stream. The returning birds appeared as jubilant over the day as the children whose voices blended with their songs—as do all the sounds that are absolutely natural. The migratory tide of robins, song-sparrows, phoebes, and ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... had washed off the surface soil from their last pan, which they had left in their hurry. Some passing miners were astonished to behold the ground glittering with gold; they appropriated it, but dared not molest the deposit until ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson

... meandered over a bowlder-strewn, moss-grown plateau, to dip again, a quarter of a mile away, to the banks of the river. But you must not imagine one of your easy portages of Maine or lower Canada. This trail was faint and dim,—here an excoriation on the surface of a fallen and half-rotted tree, there a withered limb hanging, again a mere sense in the forest's growth that others had passed that way. Only an expert could have ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White

... At the far side of the coppice, the operation of hewing down the underwood was still proceeding, and the sharp strokes of the axe and the bill, softened by distance, came across the monotonous jar of the never-ceasing saw. The surface of the ground was prettily tumbled about, comprehending as pleasant a variety of hill and dale as could well be comprised in some thirty acres. It declined, however, generally speaking, towards the centre of the coppice, along ...
— The Ground-Ash • Mary Russell Mitford

... if you scratch him you will find the ancestral Tartar. But it is no less true that the descendants of this rude forefather have now taken on a polish of which their own exquisite lacquer gives but a faint reflection. The surface was perfected after the substance was formed. Our word finish, with its double meaning, expresses both ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell

... means far more than appears on the surface. Transmutation, Alchemy, or Chemistry on the Mental Plane is important enough in its effects, to be sure, and if the art stopped there it would still be one of the most important branches of study known to man. But this is only the ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates

... the softer snow slowed the going. Instantly a sharp command hurled the leading dog heading for the open where the surface was hard and dry. The team swung away behind him and the sled pursued. ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... a skilful operator could swim so low on the surface of the water, as to approach at night very near to a ship without being discovered. After sinking quickly, he could keep at any necessary depth, and row to a great distance in any direction, without coming to the surface. ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson

... now, gave not a sign, made no sound. The impenetrability of the embodied Gould Concession had its surface shades. To be dumb is merely a fatal affliction; but the King of Sulaco had words enough to give him all the mysterious weight of a taciturn force. His silences, backed by the power of speech, had as many shades of significance as uttered words ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... around, as I go daily, by the Cathedral, to hear if the workmen have found any fresh defects. . . . They had opened a new pit by the south-east corner, a few yards from the first, and as I came by one of the men was levering away with a crowbar at a large stone not far below the surface. I waited while he worked it loose, and then, lifting it with both hands, he flung it on to the edge of the pit. . . . By the shape we knew it at once for an old gravestone that, falling down long ago, had somehow sunk and been covered by the turf. There was lettering, ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... That which he says he loves: for Cyril, howe'er He deal in frolic, as tonight—the song Might have been worse and sinned in grosser lips Beyond all pardon—as it is, I hold These flashes on the surface are not he. He has a solid base of temperament: But as the waterlily starts and slides Upon the level in little puffs of wind, Though anchored to the ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... new game, moving back to where a smooth stretch of sand lay invitingly. Immediately two minute shapes were etched with his stick on its surface. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 8, 1916 • Various

... present order of things had a beginning, is taught by every analogy around us, and as we have the glaring fact forced upon us, that our globe has experienced a far higher temperature on its surface than obtains at present, and moreover, as it is demonstrated beyond a cavil, that the interior is now of far higher temperature than is due to solar radiation, we are justified in concluding, not ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett

... said Rinkitink. "But it's lucky for me, too, for perhaps the beast can assist me out of this hole. If you can let a rope down the well, I am sure that you and Bilbil, pulling together, will be able to drag me to the earth's surface." ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum

... returned to Olifant's River and at the cobalt mine near there joined those who had remained behind under General Muller. The enemy, however, who seemed determined, if possible, to obliterate us from the earth's surface, discovered our whereabouts about the middle of July, and attacked us in overwhelming numbers. We had taken up a position on the "Randts," and offered as much resistance as we could. The enemy poured into us a heavy shell fire from their howitzers and 15-pounders, while their ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen

... impulse to flee she sprang to her feet just as Lincoln knocked.... For an instant her failing reason struggled to consciousness as a drowning swimmer writhes a last time to the surface, and gasps a breath only to give it up in futile bubbles that mark the spot where he sank. With a supreme effort her vanquished will for a moment re-asserted itself. She knew her lover was at the door, and she knew also that the feet of doom had been swifter than those of the bridegroom.... She sprang ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... of the oil of the machines and the new leather—a combination which, added to the stale odours of the building, was not pleasant even in cold weather. The floor, though regularly swept every evening, presented a littered surface. Not the slightest provision had been made for the comfort of the employees, the idea being that something was gained by giving them as little and making the work as hard and unremunerative as possible. What we know of foot-rests, swivel-back ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser

... than you did in the days before you left. Oh, I used to watch you then. I sensed what was going on between you. I would have stopped it then out of pity for her, if I could have, if I didn't know that any interference would only make matters worse. And then I thought that it might be only a surface affair—that after you were gone it would end for her. (She sighs—then after a pause.) You'll have to forgive me for speaking to you so boldly on a delicate subject. But, don't you see, it's for her sake. I love Eileen. We all do. (Averting ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill

... Eleanor's mind, yet now somehow it rose upon her, with the feeling of that once-wanted, still desired,—only she had forgotten it—armour of security. Why did she think of it now? was it because Eleanor's mind was in that disordered state which lets everything come to the surface by turns; or because she was still suffering, from vexation, and her spirit chose contraries with a natural readiness and relish? It was not more than three minutes, but Eleanor travelled far in dream-land; so far that the sudden feeling of two hands upon her shoulders, brought ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner

... hard and dry, and of the most brilliant emerald green. Drop five or six of these little crystals into a large glass of limpid water. They will dissolve; but instead of giving a green solution, the product is an exquisite crimson-rose color, the color seeming to trickle from the surface of the water downward. When the solution has proceeded for a short time, stir the water with a glass rod, and the uncolored portion of ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various

... twice-trodden ground and entered upon the mountain road. It was hardly a road; in some places a beaten track was visible, in others Mr. Carleton wondered how his little companion found her way, where nothing but fresh-fallen leaves and scattered rocks and stones could be seen, covering the whole surface. But her foot never faltered, her eye read way- marks where he saw none; she went on, he did not doubt unerringly, over the leaf-strewn and rock-strewn way, over ridge and hollow, with a steady light swiftness that he could not help ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell

... poor the drudgery of the household fell entirely upon the woman. She spun, wove, cut out and mended garments, fetched fresh water and provisions, cooked the dinner, and made the daily bread. She spread some handfuls of grain upon an oblong slab of stone, slightly hollowed on its upper surface, and proceeded to crush them with a smaller stone like a painter's muller, which she moistened from time to time. For an hour and more she laboured with her arms, shoulders, loins, in fact, all her body; ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... after their fifteen-mile drive along the unspeakable bush roads, finding the smooth surface of the railway grade beneath their feet, set off at a good lope. It was now quite dark. The snow was driving bitterly in Tommy's face, but that stout little Irishman cared nothing for himself. His concern was for the man lying under the buffalo robes in the sleigh. Mile after ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor

... much numeric progress, may not have grown big in figures nor loud in facts, but it has done good—has gone down in the diving bell of hope to the low levels of sin, and brought up to the clear rippling surface of life and light many a pearl which would have been lost without it. Primitive Methodism is just the religion for a certain class of beings just the exact article for thousands who can't see far ahead, and who wouldn't be able to make much out ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... Commission and the Life of Lord Kitchener, where his side of the story is so admirably set forth by his intimate friend, Sir George Arthur. The tale has been told and retold. Every morsel of the wreckage of our Armada seems to have been brought to the surface. There are fifty reasons against publishing, reasons which I know by heart. On the other side there are only ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton

... the pen is lightly drawn over the plate, the sounder responds and shows exactly how every letter and signal should sound. The student can then practise each letter until perfect. The surface of the plate is covered with a special insulating enamel, bare spots corresponding to correct dots and dashes. The polished brass plate measures about 6x8 inches and has a most elegant appearance. The book ...
— How Two Boys Made Their Own Electrical Apparatus • Thomas M. (Thomas Matthew) St. John

... one of the Abbot's Manor servants,—it did not matter which, so long as something or somebody from the Manor came along. Sir Morton Pippitt had, of course, not failed to take full advantage of any slight surface or social knowledge he possessed of Miss Vancourt's guests,- -and had, with his usual bluff pomposity, invited them all over to Badsworth Hall. Some of them accepted his invitation,—others declined it. Lord Charlemont and Mr. Bludlip Courtenay ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... colours is rendered almost out of the question. You may always suspect iron to be present in water flowing from or obtained directly out of old coal pits, iron mines, or from places abounding in iron and aluminous shales. Moreover, you sometimes, or rather generally, find that surface water draining off moorland districts, and passing over ochre beds, contains iron, and on its way deposits on the beds of the streamlets conveying it, and on the stones, red or brown oxide of iron. All water of this kind ought ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith

... as the young man here suggests; travelling over the west in midsummer is neither cool nor cleanly; but it's great, when things sell as ours did. Land seems to be moving, and there's money under the surface; nobody has lost so much, they are only economizing; we must do that ourselves, but Swain and I are both safe, so we shall enjoy a few years of work to recoup some pretty heavy losses; we're not worth what we were, but we are even, ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter

... be pious, nor can a shamefaced man (15) learn, nor a passionate man (16) teach, nor can one who is engaged overmuch in business grow wise (17). In a place where there are no men, strive to be a man" (18). 7. Moreover, he once saw a skull floating on the surface of the water. He said to it, "Because thou didst drown (others) they have drowned thee, and at the last they that drowned thee shall themselves be drowned" (19). 8. He used to say, "The more flesh, the more works; the more property, ...
— Pirke Avot - Sayings of the Jewish Fathers • Traditional Text

... place since it had last been worked, the changes consisting chiefly of falls of earth from the sides, here and there; but pebbles, singly and in little groups of half a dozen or so, were plentifully strewed about the surface of the soil, and the very first one examined proved to be exactly similar in character to those of which the king's necklace was composed. Such, however, was not invariably the case, many of the stones which the searchers picked up turning out to be quite worthless; nevertheless ten minutes ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood

... which my poor husband's body was laid, and then the neighbours buried him, but in such a manner that he lay but a foot or two below the earth's surface. I have been afraid the beasts of prey which infest this region would get possession of his corpse; so, with my children, I build every night ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green

... falls down in little drops, some of which soak into the ground, while others make rivulets that run into brooks that in time join the rivers that flow into the sea. Much of the water that soaks into the ground finds its way again to the surface in springs that feed the brooks and keep them alive when no rain is falling. Of course the sun when it shines turns some of the water into vapor that rises again to the sky. Sometimes on a cool morning you ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... lb. weight each, what we took with us lasted us near a month, and by that time we met with a fresh recruit on the coast of Mexico, where we often saw them in the heat of the day floating in great numbers on the surface of the water fast asleep. Our mode of taking them was this; we sent out our boat with a man in the bow, who was a dexterous diver; when the boat came within a few yards of the turtle, the diver plunged into the water, and took care to rise close upon it; on seizing the shell near the tail, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... at which the news of the battle reached England, and the surface brilliancy of the achievement,—especially the capture of the enemy's commander-in-chief,—diverted attention from any examination of possible shortcomings. Rodney received a vote of thanks from Parliament, and was advanced to the peerage by the King. A ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan

... very bad condition, and, in wet weather, often ankle-deep in mud. As a first step toward improving them the president had a quantity of limestone broken up and spread upon the roads and walks. The rough, jagged surface was most uninviting, and horsemen and footmen naturally took to the grass. seeing Colonel T. L. Preston riding one day across the campus on his way to his classes at the Virginia Military ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son

... "look before you leap;" for, when on the other side, I found myself in a deep and stagnant pit of water and mud. I sank over head, and with difficulty extricated myself from the mud at the bottom, and when at the surface I was equally embarrassed with the weeds at the top, among which I floundered. In the meantime my pursuers, warned by the loud splash, had paused when they came to the hedge, and perceiving my situation, were at the brink of the pit watching for my coming out. All ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat

... important underlying the surface of this inquisition and he paused a moment to reflect before continuing. "It was Langhorn who left first. Mr. Graham stood still a while, lookin' in this direction as if he still meant to come over, then he turned ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston

... words! whose surface, behold! is before us, inviting to little ones; yet are they a wondrous depth. O my God, a wondrous depth! It is awful to look therein; an awfulness of honour, and a trembling of love. The enemies thereof I hate vehemently; oh that Thou wouldest slay them with Thy two-edged ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine

... breeze freshening on her beam. She was a handsome ship. Her long, tapering spars rose towering into the semi-gloom overhead, and the great fabric of stretched canvas seemed like a huge cloud resting upon a dark, floating object on the surface of the sea, which was carried along rapidly with it, brushing the foam to either side with a roaring, rattling, seething, musical noise. At least, this is the picture she presented from the forecastle head looking aft. Her great main yard swung far over the water ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains

... if it is to bear its richest fruit, must be accompanied by a constant play of the imagination, than which there is no faculty more readily cultivated or more constantly neglected. Some readers see only a flat surface as they read; others find the book a door into a real world, and forget that they are dealing with a book. The real readers get beyond the book, into the life which it describes. They see the island in "The Tempest;" ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... had secured two fine kangaroos. For the first few miles we crossed a low flat country, which afterwards became undulating and covered with dwarf scrub, after this we passed over barren ridges for about three miles, with quartz lying exposed on the surface and timbered by the bastard gum or forest casuarinae. We then descended to a level sandy region, clothed with small brush, and having very many salt lakes scattered over its surface; around the hollows in ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... of them, I fear," he remarked, "a surface traveller; at least you will force me to believe so if you go on in this way. But come," he continued, "the storm threatens to last the morning; if you wish, I will help to make away with part of it, by recounting a little adventure ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... of thousands; for before it died away earthquake and wave together had turned the harbour quay of Lisbon bottom up, and engulfed it. Of all the population huddled there to escape from death in the falling streets, not a corpse ever rose to the surface of Tagus. ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... slaughter. Fish were at first the desired victims. Day after day I sat watching a hopelessly buoyant cork refuse to bob into the depths of the muddy and torpid Cuyahoga. I was like some fond parent, hoping against hope to see his child out-live the flippant period and dive beneath the surface of things, into touch with the great living realities. And when the cork finally marked a historic epoch by vanishing, and a small, inert, and intensely bored sucker was pulled in hand over hand, I felt thrills ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler

... ride from his door on the horse car to the elevated station, where an elevator will elevate him to the train and a revolving platform will swing him on board, or possibly the street car will be lifted from the surface track to the elevated track, and the passenger will retain his seat all the time. Then a man will simply hang out a red card, like an express card, at his door, and a combination car will call for him, take him to the nearest elevated station, elevate him, car and all, to ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various

... sea, according as the path served. It was generally very rough, and the sledges made but slow way. The dogs, too, had coverings put on their feet, and on every other delicate place, which made them less agile. In ordinary cases, on a smooth surface, it is not very difficult to guide a team of dogs, when the leader is a first-rate animal. But this is an essential point, otherwise it is impossible to get along. Every time the dogs hit on the track of a bear, or fox, or other animal, their hunting ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various

... ran, stooping, into the lane where the stretchers were being hurried across the little footbridge. As they crossed they saw a dead artilleryman lying in the water, a crimson thread wavering from his head to the surface. It was Arthur Wye; and Letty knew him, and halted, trembling; but Ailsa called to her in a frightened voice, for, confused by the smoke, they had come out in the rear of a battery among the caissons, and the stretchers had turned to ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers

... and dipped his pen in the inkwell with such force that the spotless surface of Morris' shirt, which he had donned that morning, assumed a polkadot pattern. It was, therefore, some minutes before Abe could devote himself to his task in silence. Finally, he evolved ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass

... time—it was too bad. She was a match for the others, but a conspiracy—ah, nobody is a match for that, when the victim that is to be injured is weak and willing. It grieved her, these troubled days, to be so hindered and delayed and baffled, and at times she was sad and the tears lay near the surface. Once, talking with her good old faithful friend and servant, the Bastard of ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain

... highest (on average), and driest continent; during summer, more solar radiation reaches the surface at the South Pole than is received at the Equator in an equivalent period; ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... nearer, they saw that the man must have been descending a steep rift, and as the light came into sight again, they found that they were standing on the very edge of this place, and that the light was away to their left, twenty feet or so lower, and gleaming upon the surface of a ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn

... its gradient on the scale, the rider pressed a button on the handle-bar with his left hand once, twice, thrice, or four times, so that the gearing adapted itself without an effort to the rise in the surface. Besides, there were devices for rigidity and compensation. Altogether, it was a most apt and ingenious piece of mechanism. I did not wonder ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... the survey near Mount Lubbock an island suddenly appeared, which he was quite sure was not to be seen two or three hours previously. He was much astonished, but it eventually turned out to be a large iceberg, which had turned over, and so exposed a new surface covered with earth ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock

... woman, or that Philip of Spain wondered how "a wanton" could hold in check the policy of the Escurial. But the Elizabeth whom they saw was far from being all of Elizabeth. Wilfulness and triviality played over the surface of a nature hard as steel, a temper purely intellectual, the very type of reason untouched by imagination or passion. Luxurious and pleasure-loving as she seemed, the young Queen lived simply and frugally, and she worked hard. Her vanity and caprice ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green

... before the power of the Sword of Fire!" exclaimed the Prince, and as he uttered the words the Ash Goblin saw the web that he had been at such pains to prepare, begin to shrivel and shrink away, and presently it had vanished completely from the surface of ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield

... data for forming adequate opinions. But there can be no doubt but that the amount of transportation coastwise by sea, and the transportation inland by railroads and canals, and by steamboats and other modes of conveyance over the surface of our vast rivers and immense lakes, and the value of property carried and interchanged by these means form a general aggregate to which the foreign commerce of the country, large as it is, makes but a ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Tyler • John Tyler

... it accumulated in great quantities. This debris contains many fragments of characteristic pottery, similar to that from Sikyatki, and would well repay systematic investigation. No walls of the old town rise more than a few feet above the surface, for most of the stones have long ago been used in rebuilding the pueblo on other sites. Kisakobi was situated higher up on the mesa, and bears every appearance of being more modern than the ruin below. ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes

... to cross the street, simultaneously a great silent motor-car, noiseless but wild with speed, tore down the surface-car tracks, blacker in the hulking ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst

... stirred an indescribable sympathy with something he divined in these two that was akin to himself, but that as yet he could not name. On the surface he felt an emotion he knew not whether to call uneasiness or surprise, but crowding past it, half smothering it, rose this other more profound emotion. Something enormously winning in the atmosphere of father and son called to him in the silence: it was significant, ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood

... for the drawing-room, red for the hall and library, yellow for the music room and pink for the dining room can be used. The roses are placed in immense Oriental bowls on polished table tops. The tea table has an immense basket of pink and white roses in rare varieties and the surface of the table is covered with a smilax mat bordered with pink roses and tiny electric light bulbs looking like glow worms. The ice cream is in the shape of a pink cup with green handles filled with fruit ...
— Breakfasts and Teas - Novel Suggestions for Social Occasions • Paul Pierce

... father—who is not only her father, but the "father of the Marshalsea"—the prison blight is on all three. Her father especially is a piece of admirable character-drawing. Dickens has often been accused of only catching the surface peculiarities of his personages, their outward tricks, and obvious habits of speech and of mind. Such a study as Mr. Dorrit would alone be sufficient to rebut the charge. No novelist specially famed for dissecting character to its innermost recesses ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials

... literal mountain of ice was before him. The snow of the recent fall had been whipped away, and the surface of the mountain, here perilously steep, was now sleek and solid with ice. Bull looked gloomily toward the summit so close above him, and the ice glimmered in the dull light. There was only one way to make even the attempt. He sat down, took off his snowshoes, strapped ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand

... sailed far past Kinsale point. Now blue and shadowy loom up the distant form of the Youghal Mountains, (pronounced Yoole.) The surface of the water is alive with fishing boats, spreading their white wings and skimming about like ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe

... old barrel-hoops, and patches of old sails, and dead bushes and dead dogs, and old saucepans, and little plots of ground where cabbages and pumpkins drag on a pining existence. And then there is the river Charles, no longer clear and bright, as when trees and hills and flowers were mirrored on its surface, but foul, turbid, and polluted, with ship-yards and steam-engines and cranes and windlasses on its ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... be square with the world. Business was business with him. He made no concessions to any man; pity and altruism were not in his vocabulary. Unconsciously to himself, he had grown to be a very hard man, and the heart within him found it difficult to make itself felt through the calloused surface of his life. But with it all Andrew Malden had been honest. His word was as good as his bond in all Grizzly county. No man questioned his statements. Everyone got a hundred cents on the dollar when ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher

... others in inverted commas, are taken from Mr. Walsh, 'Practical Entomologist,' Philadelphia, vol. iii. p. 88.) In the male of Penthe (a genus of beetles) a few of the middle joints of the antennae are dilated and furnished on the inferior surface with cushions of hair, exactly like those on the tarsi of the Carabidae, "and obviously for the same end." In male dragon-flies, "the appendages at the tip of the tail are modified in an almost infinite ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... shattered the tablet that bears those united names. But the lightning does not often make a channel in the surface of the silver barked beech. There are loftier trees around. The stately oak and branching elm will be more likely to win the fiery crown of ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... our system of conducting wars, it is all done over the heads of the people. War is with us the art of conquering at home. Taxes are not raised to carry on wars, but wars raised to carry on taxes. The shrewd hard-hitting blows range over the whole surface of existing institutions. Godwin from his intellectual eminence saw in all the follies and crimes of mankind nothing worse than the effects of "prejudice" and the consequences of fallacious reasoning. Paine saw more self-interest ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford

... fortunate man in Europe. My old castle-building propensities came back upon me in an instant, and I pictured myself, with Lady Jane as my companion, wandering among the beautiful scenery of the Neckar, beneath the lofty ruins of Heidelberg, or skimming the placid surface of the Rhine, while, "mellowed by distance," came the rich chorus of a student's melody, filling the air with its flood of song. How delightful, I thought, to be reading the lyrics of Uhland, or Buerger, with one so capable of appreciating them, with all the hallowed ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... the corn-fields of Pembera Pereh we emerged upon a broad flat plain, as level as the still surface of a pond, whence the salt of the Wagogo is obtained. From Kanyenyi on the southern road, to beyond the confines of Uhumba and Ubanarama, this saline field extends, containing many large ponds of salt ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... departure from Arles was made in order to avoid meeting her. It hurt. Woman-like, she set more value on a few pleasant words of farewell over a breakfast-table and a warm handshake than on a defence from assault at the risk of a man's life. The seeming illogicality of woman is of course a mere surface illusion. It hides a train of reasoning very different to a man's. It is a mental short-cut like an Irishman's "bull," which condenses a whole chain of thought ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg

... prince Zerbino all the arms unites, And hangs, like a fair trophy, on a pine. And, to preserve them safe from errant knights, Natives or foreigners, in one short line Upon the sapling's verdant surface writes, ORLANDO'S ARMS, KING CHARLES'S PALADINE. As he would say, 'Let none this harness move, Who cannot with its ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... of chairs and tables beneath permanent cafe awnings were one and all neglected. But in the roadways an amazing concourse of vehicles, mostly motor-driven, skimmed, skidded, and shot over burnished asphalting all, of course, at top-speed—else this were not Paris. Lanyard thought of insects on the surface of ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... least I saw Radnor and Mose in consultation, and though I did not know the subject of the conference my suspicions were very near the surface. I came upon them in the stables talking in low tones, Rad apparently explaining, and Mose listening with the air of strained attention which the slightest mental effort always called to his face. At ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster

... impress on wax, clay or other material, so as to fasten up doors, boxes, etc., containing valuable things, so they could not be opened without breaking the impression. The engraving on the under surface of the scarab was also impressed on wax, etc., to verify the execution of, or to keep secret, written documents; and in some instances, the papyrus or linen, was written upon, then rolled up, and a string used to fasten it; an impression of the signet, made on wax or other ...
— Scarabs • Isaac Myer

... is to clear away all the rubbish that clutters up the place. Do not make the mistake of dumping bits of wood into hollows with the idea that you are making a good foundation for a lawn-surface. This wood will decay in a year or two, and there will be a depression there. Fill into the low places only such matter as will retain its original proportions, like brick and stone. Make kindling-wood of the rubbish from lumber, or burn it. Get rid of it in some way before ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford

... demonstrations of sympathy, and other symptoms of partisanship or of aversion they so constantly show. In general, however, such intuitive response is due rather to the dog's memory, and can only be brought to the surface and recognized where the "Spelling Method" has become a familiar mode of expression. Indeed, it may be said that its attentiveness begins then to extend over a far greater ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann

... myself. Throwing off my jacket, I jumped overboard at the same moment that Jack bounded into the sea. In another moment we met in deep water, clasped each other round the neck, and sank, as a matter of course, to the bottom! We were well-nigh choked, and instantly struggled to the surface, where Peterkin was spluttering about like a wounded duck, laughing and crying by turns, and choking ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... diseases with a touch, a word, or a distant message; and to expel the most obstinate demons from the souls or bodies which they possessed. They familiarly accosted, or imperiously commanded, the lions and serpents of the desert; infused vegetation into a sapless trunk; suspended iron on the surface of the water; passed the Nile on the back of a crocodile, and refreshed themselves in a fiery furnace. These extravagant tales, which display the fiction without the genius, of poetry, have seriously affected the reason, the faith, and the morals, of the Christians. Their credulity debased ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... this mass add whiting until desired stiffness for modeling under skin is obtained. Beat and rub to an even smoothness and stop adding whiting at point where compo. is thick but still very sticky. Rub some of the compo. into inner surface of skin to be finished with it or skin will not take hold of mannikin or ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray

... has unusually long and hairy antennae. These are usually tactile organs, but it has been found that the habit of Corystes is to bury itself deep in the sand with only the tips of the antennae at the surface, and the two are placed close together so as to form a tube, down which a current of water, produced by movements of certain appendages, passes to the gill chamber and provides for the respiration of the crab while it is buried, to a depth of two or three ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham

... in the breeze that fanned his hot cheeks. Away and away he raced until he reached the crossroads, miles away, and down this he turned and galloped as recklessly as before. The sun was hot, today, and the sorrel's flanks begun to steam and show flecks of white upon their glossy surface. He turned again to the left, entering upon a broad highway that would lead him straight home at last; but he had almost reached the little village of Elmwood, which was the railway station, before he realized his cruelty to the splendid mare he bestrode. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne

... like reasonable fish, seemed possessed with the fancy that they could succeed better in the air, or on land; and accordingly jumped over each other's backs, scrambled out upon the mud, swam about with their goggle-eyes projecting above the surface of the water, and, in fact, did anything but ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... surface of the lake from where he lay, a beautiful silver in the clear moonlight, and he could even perceive wild fowl swimming at the far edge, unfrightened by the presence of man, or by the fires that he built. The skies were a great silver curve, in which floated a magnificent moon ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler

... the path described by it in its annual revolution about the sun, is, so to speak, a flattened circle, somewhat elongated, called an ellipse. The axis of the earth is not perpendicular to the plane of the orbit, which is an imaginary flat surface enclosed by the line of the earth's revolution, but is inclined to it at an angle of 23 deg. 28', which angle is called the obliquity of the ecliptic. The ecliptic is the path or way among the fixed stars which the earth in its orbit appears to describe to an eye placed in the sun, for the ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu

... to madder and more tumultuous efforts, then the darkest-minded of men feels that there is a melancholy principle in Nature which is as gloomy as his own thoughts. When it was calm in the Bay of Mansie the surface would be as clear and bright as a sheet of silver, broken only at one spot some little way from the shore, where a long black line projected out of the water looking like the jagged back of some sleeping monster. ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... stones and the fire, and placing banana-leaves all about the bottom and sides, in which the pig, his own interior filled with hot stones wrapped in leaves, was placed, with native sweet-potatoes and yams beside him. More leaves covered all, and another layer of red hot stones. A surface of ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... The little aeronaut as soon as it arrived on board was very active, running about, sometimes letting itself fall, and then reascending the same thread; sometimes employing itself in making a small and very irregular mesh in the corners between the ropes. It could run with facility on the surface of the water. When disturbed it lifted up its front legs, in the attitude of attention. On its first arrival it appeared very thirsty, and with exserted maxillae drank eagerly of drops of water, this same circumstance has been observed by Strack: may it not be in consequence of the ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... total eclipse of the sun the point of the shadow cone, which is constantly projected into space by the moon, touches a narrow strip of the earth's surface, from which region alone ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various

... actually the motive power was his aunt. People used to say so, but it did not appear on the surface to anyone in close contact with the man; or it appeared only in very small things. We used to work in a tall, dark, pleasant room, book-lined, and giving on to a lawn that was always an asylum for furtive thrushes. Miss Churchill, as a rule, sat half forgotten near the window, with ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad

... heat regulator, and in this, its most important work, it is aided by the two million or more sweat-glands which are distributed over almost the entire surface of the body. The skin and the sweat-glands work together to keep the blood at an even temperature, either by giving off heat or in preventing this process in case the outside air is too cool. The body temperature, as a rule, is higher than that of the outside air, so that heat is ...
— Keeping Fit All the Way • Walter Camp

... assistance to him, by giving him variety of plane, and hence a way of escaping monotony without further effort on his part. If D'Enrico had taken his ground down from the corner up to which Tabachetti had led it, he would have secured both continuity with Tabachetti's scene, and an irregularly uneven surface, without repeating his predecessor's arrangement. True, the procession was supposed to be at the top of Mount Calvary, but that is a detail. As it is, D'Enrico has copied Tabachetti in making his ground slope, but, unless my memory fails me, has made it slope evenly ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler

... increase of speed began in the early part of the century referred to—about 1822. Scarcely had the wars of Na-Bu-Leon subsided when the matter of getting over the earth's surface at a greater velocity was taken up as eagerly as if life consisted in going quickly to a certain point. Men, it would appear, had not yet learned that the principal aim of this existence is the going, and not the getting there. Then it was that the steam En-jo-in ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various

... approaching her shining, liquid bosom, and the sun hastened his descent, empurpled by the desire of their embrace. At length he joined her, and gradually disappeared. Then a freshness came from the horizon, and a breath of air rippled the surface of the water as if the vanished sun had given ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893

... best results," went on the seer, "the subject lays his uncovered hands outspread upon a smooth surface." It was evident that the invisible priestess was reading from the open book, for when the word "surface" was reached there was a slight stir that indicated the changing of position; and when. the voice came again it was in a ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... of our ignorance, which is possible only on a rational basis, is a science; the latter is merely a perception, and we cannot say how far the inferences drawn from it may extend. If I regard the earth, as it really appears to my senses, as a flat surface, I am ignorant how far this surface extends. But experience teaches me that, how far soever I go, I always see before me a space in which I can proceed farther; and thus I know the limits—merely visual—of my actual knowledge of the earth, although I am ignorant of the limits ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant

... The slow-burning ecstasy in which he knew himself at his height and was most conscious of fulness of life, was incompatible with the rapid and deliberate generation of ideas. The same soft passivity, the same receptiveness, which made his emotions like the surface of a lake under sky and breeze, entered also into the working of his intellectual faculties. But it happens that in this region, in the attainment of knowledge, truth, and definite thoughts, even receptiveness implies a distinct and active energy, and hence the very quality ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... here discovered. He uses it with much skill as a counterbalance to the aspect of the main plot. Thus, immediately after the apparent satisfaction of the rival claims of Horatio and Lorenzo, he places the unsuspected treachery of Villuppo to Alexandro, as if to warn us not to judge merely from the surface: but when the wickedness of Lorenzo attains its blackest moment in the murder of Horatio, he supplies a ray of hope by the presentment of Villuppo's punishment, to let us know that justice still reigns in ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... longing yet fearing to see herself. From the surface of the glass a stranger seemed to return her glance—someone she had never seen before, with quite a different look in her eyes. Certainly she was altered. Was it for the better? She did not know, and before she could tell she must get more used to this ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton

... sides and ends while sister drew the shape of the bear and cut it out of brown drilling. We got our quilting frame and stretched the flag on it, and when it was all nicely stretched we laid the bear on the white surface and began to get it into the right place. Then the basting began so that nothing should go wrong in putting it neatly and correctly in the middle. After it was securely basted we had some dark green drilling ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson

... of that jester, with attention. Occasionally, sorrow and grief had come to him in company with the trickster, but they were transient, not of the kind which go into the depth of the heart, but such as slip along over the surface. He grew gloomy; was sorry for having lost someone, or having missed something, and passed on with springy, lightly swaying gait, with his long continued youth, humming some fashionable ditty; or, ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)

... tribes he ordered them to bring up dirt from beneath the waters, and proclaimed death to the disobedient. The beaver and otter forfeited their lives. At last the muskrat went beneath the waters, and, after a long time, appeared at the surface, nearly exhausted, with some dirt. From this Unktehee fashioned the earth into a large circular plain. The earth being finished he took a deity, one of his own offspring, and, grinding him to powder, sprinkled it upon the earth, and this produced ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... 37:1-6] The hand of Jehovah was upon me, and he brought me by the spirit and set me down in the midst of the valley; and it was full of bones. And he caused me to pass by them round about; and, behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley; and, lo, they were very dry. And he said to me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord Jehovah, thou knowest. Again he said to me, Prophesy over these bones, and ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent

... on the ground, I summoned my boys to set to work. Each took a grater and a supply of well-washed manioc root, and when all were seated round the cloth—"Once, twice, thrice! Off!" cried I, beginning to rub a root as hard as I could against the rough surface of my grater. My example was instantly followed by the whole party, amid bursts of merriment, as each remarked the funny attitude and odd gestures of his neighbors while vehemently rubbing, rasping, grating, and grinding down the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester

... a coal-strike. Throttle-Ha'penny put new life into him. During a coal-strike the miners themselves began digging in the fields, just near the houses, for the surface coal. They found a plentiful seam of drossy, yellowish coal behind the Methodist New Connection Chapel. The seam was opened in the side of a bank, and approached by a footrill, a sloping shaft down which ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... during the hunt, I approached the bank of the river and noticed many very large fish with red backs, as though filled with blood. They were swimming on the surface enjoying the rays of the sun. When the river was entirely free from ice, these fish appeared in enormous quantities. Soon I realized that they were working up-stream for the spawning season in the smaller ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski

... Galvanism Cannot Restore Exhausted Vitality; Curious Optical Experiments; Ice Machines; American Antiquities; Protection from Lightning; Steam Machinery and Privateering; Man and Animals; The Limbs of Whales; Our Educational Standing; Surface Markings; The Oldest Stone Tools; Origin of the Spanish People; The English Meteorite; The Boomerang; A Western Lava Field; The Principle of Cephalization; Curiosities of the Herring Fishery; Natural Gas in Furnaces; South Carolina Phosphates; Rare Metals from Old Coins; A French Mountain Weather ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... the surface of the river as though to see if any more of the ugly creatures were in sight, but the water was unruffled ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Florida - Or, Wintering in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope

... his elbows on the cleared blotter and propped up his chin on his fists. The thing exactly in front of his eyes was his desk calendar. There was something familiar about the date—some subconscious association that couldn't quite rise to the surface. Was there something he had to do to-day, that he'd forgotten? No, Miss Beach would have reminded him of anything except a social engagement. And he distinctly remembered that Rose had said this morning that ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... think of denouncing gravitation. There is, in the best of us, an under-current of selfishness; indeed, selfishness and unselfishness are convertible terms; this is a higher kind of that, as the upper-current of the ocean is but the under-current risen to the surface. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... experiences were very memorable and valuable to me—anchored in forty feet of water, and twenty or thirty rods from the shore, surrounded sometimes by thousands of small perch and shiners, dimpling the surface with their tails in the moonlight, and communicating by a long flaxen line with mysterious nocturnal fishes which had their dwelling forty feet below, or sometimes dragging sixty feet of line about the pond as I drifted in the gentle night breeze, now and then feeling ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... stump went splash! into the icy waters of the creek, and as it plunged beneath the surface—all but its roots—the trio of frightened friends heard that eyrie ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson

... scared look and the thinness which was almost emaciation. And how well that print suited her! Lady O'Gara had sent down a bundle of things to the South lodge, so that Susan might not appear as a scarecrow to the people. The print had pale green leaves sprinkled over a white surface. It suggested a snowdrop, perished by the winter, as a comparison for Susan rather than the ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan

... river after the others had gone in a body to try to climb to the top of the rocky fireplace. She was all alone in the Keewaydin, and sent it darting around like a water spider on the surface of the stream. So absorbed was she in the joy of paddling that she did not see a sign on a tree beside the river which warned people in boats to go no further than that point, neither did she realize the significance of the quicker ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey

... as it stuck in the shallows became settled when covered over with mud: by these and the afflux of other things, which the river happened to bring thither, an island was formed by degrees. Afterwards I believe that mounds were added, and that aid was afforded by art, that a surface so well raised might be firm enough for sustaining temples and porticoes. After plundering the tyrants' effects, the traitors were condemned and capital punishment inflicted. Their punishment was the more remarkable, because the consulship imposed ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius

... dwell in the House of the good Hamet Abdoollah) was one of unmixed Joy and Gladness; but 'twas too complete to last long, and soon came a black Storm to lash into fury the calm surface of our Life's Lake. Seized with a Malignant Distemper, and after but three days' Sickness, the good Hamet Abdoollah died. His Pillow was smoothed by our reverent hands, and with his dying breath he blessed us. I know not if there ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... formed, handsome man. His eyes were dark and impressive, and beamed with the light either of energy or of susceptivity—it was difficult to say which; it might have been a little of both. That quick, glittering, practical eye, sharp for the surface of things and for nothing beneath it, he had not. But whether his apparent depth of vision was real, or only an artistic accident of his corporeal moulding, nothing but ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... there was a look of keen disappointment on the faces of the Cloudy Mountain boys as they gazed upon the receding figures of their sworn enemies; but almost in as little time as it takes to tell it there was a tumultuous lining up at the bar, the flat surface of which soon resounded with the heavy blows dealt it by the fists of the men desirous of accentuating the rhythm when ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco

... of a vigorous mind, will ever tell us how far the understanding has been enlarged by thought, and stored with knowledge. The richness of the soil even appears on the surface; and the result of profound thinking, often mixing, with playful grace, in the reveries of the poet, smoothly incorporates with the ebullitions of animal spirits, when the finely fashioned nerve vibrates acutely ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft

... the heart of a painter as being his beau ideal, perhaps, of a "quiet nook." The day was quiet too; the little birds, apparently, were very happy, and the sun was very bright—so bright that it shone through the mirror-like surface of the pool right down to the bottom, and there revealed several large fat trout, which were teazed and tempted and even exhorted to meet their fate, by the earnest Larry. The converse on the occasion, ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne

... responded loyally. "There's more stuff to Cis than shows on the surface, and you never catch ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray

... as a sort of Judaism, inasmuch as it did not rest its exclusiveness on the title of birth, but on especial knowledge communicated to the enlightened few. It was a philosophy whose esoteric doctrines soared above the comprehension of the vulgar; but it affected more than the surface of society; it poisoned the minds of those who aspired to lead the intelligence of the age. Its spirit was antagonistic to the simplicity of the faith, and so, as it prevailed, was an influence much to be dreaded, and called forth the greatest energies of the Alexandrian ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... to expect the need of applause due to his services; the present race is hermetically sealed against him: meantime let him content himself with having done well; with the secret suffrages of those few friends to veracity who are so thinly spread over the surface of the earth. It is after his death, that the trusty reasoner, the faithful writer, the promulgator of sterling principles, the child of simplicity, triumphs; it is then that the stings of hatred, the shafts of envy, the arrows of malice, either exhausted or ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... built here and there in the more accessible places, and round these were grouped the tombs of the whole country. The bodies of the common people, usually naked and uncoffined, were thrust into the sand at a depth of barely three feet from the surface. Those of the better class rested in mean rectangular chambers, hastily built of yellow bricks, without ornaments or treasures; a few vessels, however, of coarse pottery contained the provisions left to nourish the departed during the period of his existence. Some of the wealthy class had ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... he was comparatively safe. He had sworn to nothing about the letter; and though he himself had prepared the envelope, no proof of his handiwork was forthcoming that he had done so. But he was quite ready to start again to some distant portion of the earth's surface,—to almost any distant portion of the earth's surface,—if she would consent to a joining of purses. 'And who is to keep the joint purse?' asked Mrs. Smith, not without a touch ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope

... surface of the inside coating or skin of the shell of a raw egg. It will adhere of itself, leave no ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... we can silence them with threats—all right. If not...." He lapsed into silence. Then his anger boiled to the surface again. "What man in his right mind could believe such a fairy tale? That upstart ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith

... deepens the impression, of events with which they are historically connected. Renowned places, also, have a power to awaken feeling, which all acknowledge. No American can pass by the fields of Bunker Hill, Monmouth, and Camden, as if they were ordinary spots on the earth's surface. Whoever visits them feels the sentiment of love of country kindling anew, as if the spirit that belonged to the transactions which have rendered these places distinguished still hovered round, with power to move and excite all who in future ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various

... she was hinting at fickleness; but she gave him a smile which said so plainly, "The fault would be mine," that he was more than comfortable again—on the surface of his ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable

... beasts being maddened by thirst, broke out of the kraal and rushing to the spring, so trampled it with their hoofs that its waters were sealed up, and only very little could be obtained even by digging, for here the rock came near to the surface of the soil, and it would seem as though the course of the spring was turned or choked ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard

... of the Pictures of all the best Painters of the Italian, French and Flemish Schools, the fine sculptur'd Vases of the Ancients which are now remaining; in short, every Bird that flies, every Figure that moves upon the Surface of the Earth from the Insect to the human; and every Vegetable that springs from the Ground, whatever is of Art or Nature, may be introduced into this Design of fitting up and furnishing Rooms, with all the Truth of Drawing, Light, and Shadow, and ...
— John Baptist Jackson - 18th-Century Master of the Color Woodcut • Jacob Kainen

... he came to the surface and looked round, he saw the boat at a safe distance from the shore, and he swam quickly towards it. Reaching it his companions quickly hauled him aboard, and, looking towards the bank, he saw the brigands standing at the water's edge wildly ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld

... injure her reputation. It is the drawback of her sex, in this country. I am sorry. For though she hides it as best she can, striving to impress me with the immensity of her worldly experiences, there is an unsophisticated freshness in her outlook. The surface has not been ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... known girl's love, nor woman's love, nor the love of children; who had never played in the wide joy-fields of art, nor climbed the star-cool heights of philosophy, nor seen with my eyes more than a pin-point's surface of the gorgeous world; I decided that this was all, that I had seen all, lived all, been all, that was worth while, and that now was the time to cease. This was the trick of John Barleycorn, laying me by the heels ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London

... them each object presented that misty, indistinct appearance, which leaves the imagination power to give it either a pleasing or hideous shape. In the immediate vicinity, the country was uneven; rocky, and covered with cedars; but far off to the right could be discerned the even surface of the cane-brake, previously mentioned, now stretching away in the distance like the unruffled bosom of some beautiful lake. A light breeze slightly rustled the leaves of the trees, among whose branches an occasional songster piped forth his ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett

... northward. Salt lakes. Green Hill lake. Mitre lake. Relinquish the pursuit of the Wimmera. The party travels to the south-west. Red lake. Small lakes of fresh water. White lake. Basketwork of the natives. Muddy state of the surface. Mr. Stapylton's ride southward. Disastrous encounter of one man with a native. A tribe makes its appearance. More lakes of brackish water. Escape at last from the mud. Encamp on a running stream. Fine country. Discovery ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... perfectly proportioned lucid prose is a far subtler and more refined pleasure than that derived from the rhythmical beat of verse. Take, for instance, such works as The Ring and the Book and Aurora Leigh. Is there anything whatever to be gained by the relentless drumming, under the surface of these imaginative narratives, of the stolid blank verse? Would not such compositions have gained by being written in pure poetical prose? The quality which at present directs writers to choosing ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... inward parts were fastened together with iron, and preserved the joints immovable for all future times. When this work [for the foundation] was done in this manner, and joined together as part of the hill itself to the very top of it, he wrought it all into one outward surface, and filled up the hollow places which were about the wall, and made it a level on the external upper surface, and a smooth level also. This hill was walled all round, and in compass four furlongs, [the distance of] each angle containing in length a furlong: but within this wall, and on ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... gaiter-boots of black cloth, with rather thick soles, recalled to mind the coquettish, light and discreet run of a quail. She did not appear to walk, she merely touched the pavement; she slid rapidly on its surface. This walk, peculiar to grisettes, ought to be attributed, without doubt, to three causes: To their desire to be thought handsome; to their fear of an admiration expressed in pantomime too expressive; to the desire that they always have to lose as little time ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... to serve this useful end did not strike a deep root. While humanity is in the savage state, it can only be Christianized on the surface; and the convert of the Jesuits remained a savage still. They did not even try to civilize him. They taught him to repeat a catechism which he could not understand, and practise rites of which the spiritual ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman

... one had penetration enough, it would not be necessary to travel to make the discovery. A single country, a single city, almost a single village, would illustrate, to one who can look below the surface, the same truth. Under the professed uniformity of beliefs, even here in England, what discrepancies and incongruities are concealed! Every type, every individual almost, is distinguished from every other in precisely this point of the judgments he makes about Good. ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson

... quiet course of things within the house appeared to him to have a listening ear for big events outside. He dreaded a single step in the wrong direction, and therefore forbore to hang on any of his conjectures; for he might perchance be unjust to the blessedest heroine on the surface of the earth—a truly awful thought! Yet her name would no longer bear the speaking of it to himself. It conjured up a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... these brushes is closed at the end by the natural pith of the bamboo. I now find them all either open or otherwise tampered with, and the surrounding surface of the table littered with tiny balls, apparently of sawdust. I picked up one of the nearest brushes, and upon inverting it and giving it a slight tap, a tiny green worm fell out of the opening. From the next one I managed to shake out seven of the caterpillars, while the third had passed ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson

... the reply of the heart. We have seen men smile whoso whole life was a scene of misfortune, and yet this emblem of happiness has lit their features. It is outward show—a fruit, whose surface presents a tempting appearance to the eye, but which is blasted and withered within. Smiles are often like the fruit called the Guava. It is a beautiful looking fruit which grows in the West Indies, ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams

... growth of the whole tree; and many-sidedness, far from being a defect, is one of the first conditions of success in education. But in the Great Public Schools, where veneers of information are being assiduously laid on the surface of the boy's mind with a view to his passing some impending examination, the greater the number and variety of such veneers, the more certain they all are to split and waste and perish. Indeed the real reason why specialising has to be resorted ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... inhabit, wide and narrow, is but a small island surrounded by that sea which you call the great Atlantic Ocean—which, however large as you deem it, how small it is! Has your name or has mine been able, over this small morsel of the earth's surface, to ascend Mount Caucasus or to cross the Ganges? Who in the regions of the rising or setting sun has heard of our fame? Cut off these regions, distant but a hand's breadth, and see within what narrow borders will your reputation be spread! ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope

... invariable motive of the French novel made him. He perceived finally that, convention for convention, ours was not only more tolerable, but on the whole was truer to life, not only to its complexion, but also to its texture. No one will pretend that there is not vicious love beneath the surface of our society; if he did, the fetid explosions of the divorce trials would refute him; but if he pretended that it was in any just sense characteristic of our society, he could be still more easily refuted. Yet it exists, and it is unquestionably the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... things more unseemly than the act of sliding through the dust in order the more expeditiously to attain a given base or station; and even more objectionable, because so exceedingly unhygienic, is the custom, common among these youthful devotees, of expectorating on the outer surface of the ball before delivering the same in the ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... an unfathomable ocean: nothing ever filled it; no one ever plumbed it. At the surface are glancing waves, or flying spume, or, it may be, raging billows; beneath are silent depths invisible to man. A thousand streams flow into it in vain. Towards varying coast-lines it bears itself variously; here, placid and content; ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain

... study-fenders, people sitting up in bed, mothers and sons and daughters waiting for father to finish—a million scattered people reading—reading headlong—or feverishly ready to read. It is just as if some vehement jet had sprayed that white foam of papers over the surface of ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells

... giant spaceship settled smoothly to within a few feet of the surface of the concrete spaceport, Tom threw the master switch that cut all power. A moment later the huge craft dropped easily, then settled on the landing platform with ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell

... original purpose was to cross the watershed from the Potomac to the Ohio. In 1820, the great work was completed to Wheeling, on the Ohio. Three waggons could be drawn abreast over the greater part of its length. Solid stone bridges arched the watercourses. The well-paved surface greatly reduced the length of time required for carrying the mails across the mountains. Rapid stage lines and freight waggons of large capacity passed to and fro. Droves of cattle and hogs were frequently met, passing over ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks

... the Sitter, thence up towards the Sentis Alp, winding around and over a multitude of hills. The same smooth, even, velvety carpet of grass was spread upon the landscape, covering every undulation of the surface, except where the rocks had frayed themselves through. There is no greener land upon the earth. The grass, from centuries of cultivation, has become so rich and nutritious, that the inhabitants can no longer spare even a little patch of ground for a vegetable garden, for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various



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