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More "Fineness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... once as the type and realization of all the heroes of all those darling, greasy volumes which the young girl had devoured. Mr. Pen, we have seen, was rather a dandy about shirts and haberdashery in general. Fanny had looked with delight at the fineness of his linen, at the brilliancy of his shirt studs, at his elegant cambric pocket-handkerchief and white gloves, and at the jetty brightness of his charming boots. The prince had appeared and subjugated ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... underhung, and when he laughed, two white buck-teeth protruded themselves and glistened savagely in the midst of the grin. He had been dining with royal personages, and wore his garter and ribbon. A short man was his Lordship, broad-chested and bow-legged, but proud of the fineness of his foot and ankle, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... world was to lose that fineness, that distinction, that originality, that disturbing subtlety, which constituted Paquita ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... alive, as though lingering to accuse and to convict, lay the body of Greathouse, the missing man. Not merely a charred, incinerated mass, the figure lay in the full appearance of life, a cast of the actual man, moulded with fineness from the white ashes of the fire! Not a feature, not a limb, not a fragment of clothing was left undestroyed; yet none the less here, stretched across the bed of the burned-out fire, with face upturned, with one arm doubled beneath the ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... a fine and beautiful piece, very different from those he had showed her first. Even Ellen could see that, and fumbling for her little pattern of merino, she compared it with the piece. They agreed perfectly as to fineness. ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... would have guessed even without the aid of print which consistently described it as Our Best Society, for it was a Best attested to by all the marks by which Clarice herself expressed the essential fineness of things. ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, the fineness of which the minister noted mechanically—with other details which had before escaped him; such as the extreme, yellowish pallor of the man's face and hands and the extraordinary swiftness and brightness of his eyes. ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... generally is covered with very long silky hairs of a dark colour; some of which are seventeen inches long; on the middle of the back (which is broad and flat), the hair is lighter and not so long. Beneath the long hairs, in all parts, there is a thick coat of cinereous wool of exquisite fineness. M. Jeramie brought some to France, of which stockings were made ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... fancies, and with a soul as fervent and imperious as his own. As is usual in such cases, she was the apple of his eye, and was loved by him above all humanity. Among his courtiers was a young man of that fineness of blood and lowness of station common to the conventional heroes of romance who love royal maidens. This royal maiden was well satisfied with her lover, for he was handsome and brave to a degree unsurpassed in all this kingdom; and she loved him with an ardor that had ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... with Mr. Brann I found him a person of almost feminine fineness. It was amusing to meet him after some particularly atrocious issue of the ICONOCLAST, either personally or by letter, and have him "roar as gently as a sucking dove." In such moods he revealed a character that was really sweet—though ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... dexterous literary workmanship is to be found in the leading articles. In spite of such admirable qualities, there is an element of frivolity, a lack of seriousness (I speak of the typical Boulevard sheet) that is at first rather shocking to a British reader. He finds grave subjects treated with a fineness of touch and a lucidity of reasoning at once charming and full of edification: but, lo! a pun trails accidentally off the journalist's pen, or an odd collocation of ideas jostle each other in his brain: the writer at once stops his instructive ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... When we try to write human interest stories we are no longer interested in facts, as much as in words. Our readers are not following us to be informed, but to be entertained. And we can please them only by our style and the fineness of our perception. Although we have been told to write news stories in the common every-day words of conversation, we are not so limited in the human interest story. The elegance of our style depends ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... laboratories at Pittsburg; extended tests have been made as to the explosibility of various mixtures of gas and air; as to the explosibility of dust from various typical coals; as to the chemical composition and physical characteristics of this dust; the degree of fineness necessary to the most explosive conditions; and the methods of dampening the dust by water, by humidifying, by steam, or of deadening its explosibility by the addition of calcium chloride, stone dust, etc. A bulletin outlining the results thus ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson
... make up anything like that one there?—but no, because how would he get your measure?—and surely no modest woman could give him hers even if she did take it herself—anyway, you'd be insulted by all the street rowdies as you rode by, to say nothing of being ogled by men without a particle of fineness in their natures—but there's always something to be said on both sides, and it's time woman came into her own, anyway, if she is ever to be anything but man's toy for his idle moments—still it would never do to go to extremes in a narrow little town like this with every ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... malt before removal from the malt-house shall be ground and thoroughly mixed with one-tenth part at least of its weight of ground linseed-cake or linseed-meal, and ground to such a degree of fineness and in such manner as the commissioners shall approve, and mixed together in a quantity not less than forty bushels at a time in the presence ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... persevere in it; for my own leaf and branch studies express conditions of shade which even these most exquisite botanical plates ignore; and exemplify uses of the pen and pencil which cannot be learned from the inimitable fineness of line engraving. The frontispiece to this number, for instance, (a seeding head of the commonest field-thistle of our London suburbs,) copied with a steel pen on smooth grey paper, and the drawing softly touched with white ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... very antithesis of his sister—tall and somewhat ascetic-looking, with a face to which one was almost tempted to apply the word beautiful, it was so well-proportioned and cut with the sure fineness of a cameo. His dark hair was sprinkled with grey at the temples, and beneath a broad, tranquil brow looked out a pair of kindly, luminous eyes that were neither all brown nor all grey. Later, when she knew him better, Ann was wont to inform him that his ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... thought: "If only I willed to move away, I could move away. But, no! I shall not will it. I like remaining just here, in this fear, this shame, and this agitation." She had a clear, dazzling perception of the splendour and the fineness of sin; but she did not know what sin! And all the time the muscles of her arm were tense in the combat between the weakening desire to keep her arms still and the growing desire to let her hand seize the hand of George Cannon. And all the time the heavy footstep ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... eschewed by an artist, for the simple reason that his temptation will be to expend his force in entering into closer relations with the casual, and possibly unintelligent, person than the necessities of the situation warrant. The artist is so impatient of dulness, so greedy of fineness, in all his relations, that he is apt to subject himself to a wasteful strain in talking to unperceptive and unappreciative persons. It is not that he desires to appear brilliant; it is that he is so intolerant of tedium that he sacrifices ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... given in an English or German word; whereas in Latin we must too often be contented with a mere general and inclusive term. How indeed can it be otherwise, when we attempt to render the most copious language of the world, the most admirable for the fineness of its distinctions, into one of the poorest and most vague languages? Especially when we reflect on the comparative number of the works, still extant, written while the Greek and Latin were living languages. ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... what could the French Cook do for such a man? He ate with rapidity, almost with indiscriminate violence: his object not quality but quantity. He drank too, but did not get drunk: at the Doctor's order he could abstain; and had in later years abstained. Pollnitz praises his fineness of complexion, the originally eminent whiteness of his skin, which he had tanned and bronzed by hard riding and hunting, and otherwise worse discolored by his manner of feeding and digesting: alas, at last his waistcoat came to measure, I am afraid to say how many Prussian ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... was made, and in due time there was collected and tabulated a list of places from whence these effects were seen, together with the dates of such occurrences. Eventually it was concluded that such optical phenomena had a common cause, and that it must be the dust of ultra-microscopic fineness at an enormous altitude. All the facts indicated that such a cloud started from the Sunda straits, and that the prodigious force of the Krakatoa eruption could at that time alone account for the presence of impalpable matter at such ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... this road, however, is this, that each one keeps lock-step with a certain One who leads the way. This One is remarkable in appearance. His face combines all the strength and resolution of the strongest man's with all the fineness and gentleness of the finest woman's. But He bears peculiar marks as though He had been through some terrible experience. His face has a number of small scars as though it had been torn by thorns and cut by thongs. His hands and feet look as though huge spikes had been forced through them. But ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... money, he wanted also some of the good things which ought to accompany it. A superior intellect,—an intellect slightly superior to his own, of which he did not think meanly, a power of conversation which he might imitate, and that fineness of thought which, he flattered himself, he might be able to achieve while living with the daughter of a gentleman,—these were the treasures which Mr. Barry hoped to gain by his marriage with Dorothy Grey. And there had been ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... the public eye the invincible obscurity of his origins clung to him like a shadowy garment. He had handled millions without ever enjoying anything of what is counted as precious in the community of men, because he had neither the brutality of temperament nor the fineness of mind to make him desire them with the will power of a masterful adventurer ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... that this is not so, for these monoliths are in reality artificially made, having been fashioned by clever workers from the Coromandel country, who brought with them here supplies of a certain hard white stone, which they first roasted to a great heat, and then ground to the fineness of flour, finally compounding this material with other things, and constructing therefrom the columns of marble you ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... executed in beautiful tints of brown, red, yellow, black, and white, the design being sometimes in dark on a light ground, and sometimes in light upon dark. The extraordinary thinness of the walls of these polychrome vessels, and the fineness of the clay from which they are fabricated, show to what a pitch the potter's craft had reached at the early period to which they belong. Of the later pottery of Knossos, which substituted naturalistic motives, executed in ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... wool or cotton when worked[275] are increased by ten palas; if the thread be of middling fineness, the increase is five palas; if very ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... eyes, and hair black as pitch; her large white teeth gleamed between full red lips. She had on a white dress; a blue shawl, pinned close round her throat with a gold brooch, half hid her slender, beautiful arms, in which one could see the fineness of her race. She took two steps with the bashful awkwardness of some wild creature, stood still, and ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... vain had he been Scott Brenton's senior warden, all these months; not in vain Kathryn's medical adviser and unwilling confidant, during the recent weeks of her approach to motherhood. He had learned to know the fineness of the man, the reverent housing he gave to his ideals, the care he lavished on their betterment; and just so surely he also knew the sordid selfishness of the woman, her lack of any ideals beyond the petty ones concerning food and raiment and ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... Aldus. From 1494, the date of his first productions, until 1501 he printed his books in folio and quarto. But in the first year of the new century he began to use his famous cursive type, now called italic. The fineness of the new type, as has been suggested, called for a smaller size of book, which was also favored by considerations of economy and convenience; and so Aldus made up his sheets in a form which the fold compels us to call octavo, but which to-day would be called sixteenmo. Says Horatio F. Brown, in ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... Pliny) for the elegancy and fineness of the wood, is next to the very cedar it self. There are several kinds of it, especially the white, which is wonderfully beautiful; this is call'd the French-maple, and grows in that part of Italy, that is on the other side of Po beyond the Alpes: ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... turning into water, and the gold lying whole in the very form it was put in, mixed of gold and silver, which is a miracle; and to see no silver at all but turned into water, which they can bring again into itself out of the water. And here I was made thoroughly to understand the business of the fineness and coarseness of metals, and have put down my lessons with my other observations therein. At table among other discourse they told us of two cheats, the best I ever heard. One, of a labourer discovered to convey away the bits of silver ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... when ideas were crowding fast for expression, the border gave just the outlet necessary for the superfluous designs of the artist. He was wont to plot it off into squares with such architectonic fineness as Mina da Fiesole might have used, and to make of each of these a picture or a figure so perfect that in itself it would have sufficient composition for an entire tapestry. All honour to such artists, but let us never once forget that without the skill and ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... time he came home on short leave—a changed Roy; his skin browner; his sensitive lips more closely set under the shadow line of his moustache; the fibre of body and spirit hardened, without loss of fineness or flexibility. Livelier on the surface, he was graver, more reticent, underneath—even with her. By the look in his eyes she knew he had seen things that could never be put into words. Some of them she too had seen, through his mind; ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... liked to have Gudrun about, as a fellow-mind—but that was all. And she had no real feeling for him. He was a scientist, he had to have a woman to back him. But he was really impersonal, he had the fineness of an elegant piece of machinery. He was too cold, too destructive to care really for women, too great an egoist. He was polarised by the men. Individually he detested and despised them. In the mass they fascinated him, as machinery fascinated him. They were a new sort of machinery ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... area, brushed past the gorgeous state table, and gave her my arm. She laughed, and said it had all been very magnificent and amusing, but that some one had stolen her shawl! A few years before, I had purchased for her a merino shawl, of singular fineness, simplicity, and beauty. It was now old, and she had worn it on this occasion, because she distrusted the dirt of a palace; and laying it carelessly by her side, in the course of the evening she had found in its place a very common thing ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of tests, which, objectively speaking, run in a geometric series, and subjectively in an arithmetic one, may be applied to touch, by the use of wire-work of various degrees of fineness; to taste, by stock bottles of solutions of salt, etc., of various strengths; to smell, by bottles of attar of rose, etc., ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... was a dispiriting one despite the fineness of the day. T. X. had an uncomfortable sense that something distressing had happened. The run across the moor in the fresh spring air revived ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... 13th we observed something very like smoke rising from about Cape Welsford, which, being confined to one spot, was thought likely to be occasioned by the fires of natives. Nothing could exceed the fineness of the weather about this time; the climate was, indeed, altogether so different from that to which we had before been accustomed in the icy seas, as to be a matter of constant remark. The days were temperate ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... perhaps, the gist of the whole matter. To hitch one's wagon to a star was to be, primarily, a plain person, to go in for truth, patriotism, fineness of soul, long hours of labor, little exercise and no vacations, pies and doughnuts, ugliness of physical surroundings, and squeaky feminine voices. Public opinion justified making all the money one could, provided it was not spent in ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... catholicity of taste that it displays. Mr. Noel has a passion for panegyric. His eulogy on Keats is closely followed by a eulogy on Whitman, and his praise of Lord Tennyson is equalled only by his praise of Mr. Robert Buchanan. Sometimes, we admit, we would like a little more fineness of discrimination, a little more delicacy of perception. Sincerity of utterance is valuable in a critic, but sanity of judgment is more valuable still, and Mr. Noel's judgments are not always distinguished by their sobriety. Many of the ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... true son of the mountain-desert. He wore his old slouch hat even in the house, and his skin was that olive brown which comes from many years of exposure to the wind and sun. At the same time there was a peculiar fineness about the boy. His feet were astonishingly small and the hands thin and slender for all their supple strength. And his neck was not bony, as it is in most youths at this gawky ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... artificial; such as a house or other building, a village, a planted field, a thicket or place surrounded by trees, &c. The place of residence of the Sachem, which (says Roger Williams) was "far different from other houses [wigwams], both in capacity, and in the fineness and quality of their mats," was called sachima-komuk, or, as Edward Winslow wrote it, 'sachimo comaco,'—the Sachem-house. Werowocomoco, Weramocomoco, &c. in Virginia, was the 'Werowance's house,' and the name appears on Smith's map, at a place "upon the river Pamauncke [now York River], ...
— The Composition of Indian Geographical Names - Illustrated from the Algonkin Languages • J. Hammond Trumbull
... interference with his rights as a parent, but he seemed entirely oblivious of the fact that Sheila had changed her shabby studio black for the most cobwebby of muslins and linens, frocks that by virtue of their exquisite fineness cost Nancy ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... sphere not unlike that of Voltaire in a later century. There is another portrait of Erasmus by Holbein, often repeated, so that two great artists have contributed to his renown. That by Duerer is admired. The general fineness of touch, with the accessories of books and flowers, shows the care in its execution; but it wants expression, and the hands ...
— The Best Portraits in Engraving • Charles Sumner
... exhausted every possible expression of feeling. Their scales were in true intervals; they had really major and minor tones; we have neither, but a confusion of both. They had both sharps and flats: we have neither, but a mere set of semitones, which serve for both. In their enharmonic scale the fineness of their ear perceived distinctions which are lost on the ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... the Rueful Countenance was still very anxious to find out who the owner of the valise could be, conjecturing from the sonnet and letter, from the money in gold, and from the fineness of the shirts, that he must be some lover of distinction whom the scorn and cruelty of his lady had driven to some desperate course; but as in that uninhabited and rugged spot there was no one to be seen of whom he could inquire, he saw nothing else for it but ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... "Here the insight into character, the delicacy and fineness of touch, the keenness of analysis, and the firmness of the literary method, remind one of Mr. Henry James, but ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... is still negative, still keeps the Bridge up. One of the hundred does go, by way of foretaste: this lighted 'near the Ober Kirche, in the chimney of the Town Musikus;' brought the chimney crashing down on him [fancy a man with some fineness of ear]; tore the house a good deal to pieces, but again did not set it on fire. 'Your obstinate Town can be bombarded, then,—cannot it?' observed the Russian Messenger.—'Give us Free Withdrawal!' proposes Amim. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... established standard be raised in value? The famous Locke engaged in this dispute against Mr. Lowndes, who proposed that the standard should be raised; the arguments of Mr. Locke were so convincing, that the committee resolved the established standard should be preserved with respect to weight and fineness. They likewise resolved, that the loss accruing to the revenue from clipped money, should be borne by the public. In order to prevent a total stagnation, they further resolved, that after an appointed day ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... anxious that outward marks of such distinction should go with them. This is undoubtedly one of the grounds for tatuing the body. Among the Kayans a man's hands are only fully tatued when he has taken a head; while the social status of a woman is marked by the degree of fineness of the tatuing.[124] It follows that death is neither greatly feared nor desired; but an old man will sometimes affirm that he is quite ready or even desirous to die, although he may seem cheerful ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... day of the dinner at the Hall, Mrs. Wilson, with all her nieces and her nephew, availed herself of the fineness of the weather to walk to the rectory, where they were all in the habit of making informal and friendly visits. They had just got out of the little village of B——, which lay in their route, when a rather handsome travelling ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... tame. In winter she goes off in dog-cariole, traps cross-foxes off her own bat, shoots moose, and smokes the hide according to the ancient accepted mode. Coming home, she takes the smoked hide and works upon it silk embroidery of a fineness which would be the envy of any young ladies' seminary in Europe or America. She weaves fantastic belts of beads and sets the fashion for the whole North in chef d'oeuvres of the quills of the porcupine. She is a most observant "old ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... to him of the fineness of a farmer's life, but he would not agree with them. A farmer's life was too hard and too dull. He was set on joining ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... way to talk?" demanded the Rev. T.E. Brown of this last passage, when he talked about Sidney, the other day, in Mr. Henley's New Review. "No one can fail," said Mr. Brown, amiably assuming the fineness of his own ear to be common to all mankind—"no one can fail to observe the sweetness and the strength, the outspokenness, the downrightness, and, at the same time, the nervous delicacy of pausation, the rhythm ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... as a disciple of Izaak Walton would play with his game. You are gradually led from one piece of goods to another; your gauge as to price is adroitly discovered; and finally, with consummate judgment, a certain article, characterized by fineness, beauty, and quality, is placed before you. The moment your eyes rest upon it you are charmed. The shrewd old merchant has mentally taken your measure for this myriad-threaded beauty, and you are captivated. The price is named. "Too much," say you. But you are told that this establishment is ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... into the ground, and no nail drives a silver point into the plank," it is also true that, under the stimulus of the larger expenditure which the added supplies of gold make possible, the duller metal has taken a fineness, a brightness and hardness, with a tensile ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... the Governor, pausing dramatically in the door and eyeing the newly arrived guests as though their presence filled him with astonishment. He bowed to them and remarked upon the fineness ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... immediately preceded it, there appeared, both in France and Italy, some judicious historians, whose style possesses considerable vivacity, and who gave animated pictures of their times; some subtle philosophers, who astonished their contemporaries, rather by the fineness of their speculations than by the justness of their reasoning; some learned theologians, and some poets. The names of Paul Warnefrid, of Alcuin, of Luitprand, and Eginhard, are even yet universally respected. ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... magnificent sea-otter, an enhydrus, the only exclusively marine quadruped. This otter was five feet long, and must have been very valuable. Its skin, chestnut-brown above and silvery underneath, would have made one of those beautiful furs so sought after in the Russian and Chinese markets: the fineness and the lustre of its coat would certainly fetch L80. I admired this curious mammal, with its rounded head ornamented with short ears, its round eyes, and white whiskers like those of a cat, with webbed feet and ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... seemed to have been put on him once for all, like the bark of a tree, a long time ago. The observant stranger was sure to be puzzled by the contrast of this realistic and uncouth exterior with the internal fineness, amounting to refinement and culture, that shone through it all. What communion had supplied the place of our artificial breeding to ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... to conceal it, "that Lady of Quality, as you are inclined to think her, a very few years since, was nothing more than a pot-girl to a publican in Marj'-le-bone; but an old debauchee (upon the look out for defenceless beauty) admiring the fineness of her form, the brilliancy of her eye, and the symmetry of her features, became the possessor of her person, and took her into keeping, as one of the indispensable appendages of fashionable life, after a month's ablution at Margate, where he gave her masters ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... life, could set up. The plastic character of Middleton was perhaps a variety of American nature only presenting itself under an individual form; he could throw off the man of our day, and put on a ruder nature, but then it was with a certain fineness, that made this only [a] distinction between it and the central truth. He found less variety of form in the English character than he had been accustomed to see at home; but perhaps this was in consequence ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... banished himself from society? Did he know a single person whose existence would approximate his in seclusion and contemplation? Did he know a man capable of appreciating the fineness of a phrase, the subtlety of a painting, the quintessence of an idea,—a man whose soul was delicate and exquisite enough to understand Mallarme and ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... had never been before. His woman, too (as we say in those parts, Melody; wife is the more genteel expression, but I never heard Ham use it. My father, on the other hand, never said anything else; a difference in the fineness of ear, my dear, I have always supposed),—his woman, I say, or wife, had not "turned up her toes," but recovered, and as he was a faithful and affectionate man, his heart was enlarged by this also. However it was, he talked more in those weeks, I suppose, than in the rest of his life put together. ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... denunciative of mammon-worship—mammon-love—mammon-influence—and so on; and this for two quite sufficient reasons—one, that I have myself, I blushingly confess, a very strong partiality for notes of the governor and company of the Bank of England and sovereigns of full weight and fineness; the other, that the very best and fiercest discourse I ever heard fulminated against the debasing love of gold, especially characteristic, it is said, of these degenerate days, was delivered by a gentleman who, having lived some seventy useful and eloquent years at the rate of about ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... the subject in its different bearings, it soon became evident to all, that the matter of supreme importance would be the making of the rope. Could this be manufactured of sufficient fineness not to overburden the bearcoot, and yet be strong enough to sustain the weight of a man, the first difficulty would be got over. The rope therefore should be made with the greatest care. Every fibre ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... itself as a species of treason. The reason of which arises thus. As money is the universal standard or measure of the value of any commodity, so the value of money is always regulated, in respect of its weight, fineness, etc., by the public authority of the State. To counterfeit, therefore, is in some degree to assume the supreme authority, inasmuch as it is giving a currency to another less valuable piece of metal ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... several contemporaries and fellow-students who exercised and excited this virtue in themselves and others, thereby becoming so deservedly in favour with this age, and so good a proof of its nice discernment. His judgment, naturally good, soon ripened into an exquisite fineness and distinguishing sagacity, which as it was active and busy, so it was vigorous and manly, keeping even paces with a rich and strong imagination, always upon the wing, and never tired with aspiring. ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... early in May that Martha first began to notice the white lisle socks marked E.G. She picked them from among the great heap at her work table because of the exquisite fineness of the darning that adorned them. It wasn't merely darning. It was embroidery. It was weaving. It was cobweb tapestry. It blended in with the original fabric so intimately that it required an expert eye to mark where darning finished and ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... very true that this unnatural grease is very delicious, and that this damnable skill gives them the fineness and succulence which are the delight of our ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... a boy in looks, with smooth face and white skin healthily flushed in places like a baby's. His face, too, was hard and set in sternness like a mask, as if life had used him badly; but behind it was a fineness of feature and spirit that could not be utterly hidden. They called him the Kid, and thought it was his youth that made him different from them all, for he was only twenty-four, and not one of the rest was under forty. They were doing their best to help him get over that innate fineness that ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... measured indulgence fit for a sick and wayward child. In all the terrible troubles of their life her courage had been higher than his. The metal of which she was made had been tempered to a steel which was very rare and fine, but the rareness and fineness of which he had failed to appreciate. He had often told her that she was without pride, because she was stooped to receive from others on his behalf and on behalf of their children, things which were needful, but which she could ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... enough for human beauty to possess symmetry of structure, within and without: there must be a beautiful coloring also, wealth of complexion, fineness of texture. So the next element of literary art lies in the choice of words. Style must have richness and felicity. Words in a master's hands seem more than words; he can double or quadruple their power by skill ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... apothecary's son, a regular shop-drudge," he raged inwardly, watching the youth of the Faubourg Saint-Germain pass under his eyes; graceful, spruce, fashionably dressed, with a certain uniformity of air, a sameness due to a fineness of contour, and a certain dignity of carriage and expression; though, at the same time, each one differed from the rest in the setting by which he had chosen to bring his personal characteristics into prominence. Each one made the most of his personal ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... three years younger than Madeline, and a slender, pretty girl. She did not resemble her sister, except in whiteness and fineness of skin, being more of a brown-eyed, brown-haired type. Having recovered her breath soon after Madeline took her to her room, ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... fingering it carelessly; "it is in reality a sort of air-gun, with a wonderful compression, and a most ingenious silencer; quite as deadly, they say, as any firearm ever invented. It ejects a cylindrically-shaped bullet, tapered down almost to the fineness of a needle. Now," he added, with a faint smile and a rapid glance round the room, "if only one dared—" he turned in his chair, and I saw the thing steal out below his cuff, "one could free the child ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... all his cabinet colleagues disapproved his high-handed acts and stood ready to disavow them with reparation. On this occasion Jackson owed much to one whom he subsequently hated and denounced, viz., Quincy Adams, by whose bold and acute defence of his doubtful doings, managed with a fineness of argument and diplomacy which no then American but Adams could command, he was formally vindicated before both his own Government and the Governments of England ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... want of depth and fineness of intonation in a period, is all gross excess of colour, because excess of colour is connected with graver faults in the region of the intellectual conscience. Macaulay is a constant sinner in this respect. The wine of truth is ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... put in the pastiles, and closing it up, the vapour issues beautifully through the nostrils, eyes, ears, and mouth, all at once. Here, sir," turning to Douglas, "if you are curious in new workmanship, I would have you examine this. I defy any jeweller in London to come up to the fineness of these hinges, and delicacy ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... letters for a background. What she saw was a tall man, slender, and about him there was to Linda a strong appeal. As she looked into his eyes, she could feel the double hurt that Fate had dealt him. She thought she could fathom the fineness in his nature that had led him to made home-building his chosen occupation. Instantly she liked him. With only one look deep into his eyes she was on his side. She stretched out both her ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... be too clever; yet only three weeks after his first encounter with Mrs. Ryves he sat at his delightful davenport (well aware that he had duties more pressing), trying to string together rhymes idiotic enough to make his neighbour's fortune. He was satisfied of the fineness of her musical gift—it had the touching note. The touching note was in her ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... Jews of good stature and commanding presence had their dignity hopelessly spoilt by the big blue spotted handkerchief worn over the head and tied under the chin; Jewesses in rich apparel seemed quite content with the fineness within their houses, and indifferent to the mire ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... monument, but a suspended wheel of which he is himself the hub; and so delicately fashioned are the silver spokes thereof, radiating from his round and gem-like body, and the rings, concentric tire within tire, that its exceeding fineness, like swift revolving motion, renders it almost invisible. Caterpillars, too, in great plenty—miniature porcupines with fretful quills on end, and some naked even as they came into the world. This one, called the earth-measurer, ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... tears of the sufferer were falling on the cheeks of her lost treasure, now interfered. But the mother had still a last request to make. A few downy curls were perceptible on the temples—in colour and fineness resembling her own. She wished to rescue from the grave this slight remembrance of her poor nameless offspring; and her wish having been complied with, she suffered the babe to be taken from her relaxed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... the hair of the ancient Peruvians, as found upon their mummies, as "a lightish brown, and of a fineness of texture which equals that of the Anglo-Saxon race." "The ancient Peruvians," says Short ("North Americans of Antiquity," p. 187), "appear, from numerous examples of hair found in their tombs, to have been an auburn-haired race." Garcilasso, ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... be found for such cunning palates. They would drink their fill from brown, smoky Indians, or from old white folk flavored with tobacco and whiskey, when no better could be had. But the surpassing fineness of their taste was best manifested by their enthusiastic appreciation of boys full of lively red blood, and of girls in full bloom fresh from cool Scotland or England. On these it was pleasant to witness their enjoyment as they feasted. Indians, we were ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... detestation for such living; it wasn't moral in any sense with which she was familiar; in fact it appeared to have a vague connection with her own revolt from the destruction of death. She wanted Vigne as well to escape that catastrophe, to hold inviolate the beauty of her youth, her fineness and courage. ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... nature seems to halt in expectation of the coming of something unusual. The decreasing portion of sun becomes more and more narrow, until at length it is reduced to a crescent-shaped strip of exceeding fineness. Strange, ill-defined, flickering shadows (known as "Shadow Bands") may at this moment be seen chasing each other across any white expanse such as a wall, a building, or a sheet stretched upon the ground. The western side of the sky has ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... and partaking somewhat of the character and appearance of a powerful Danish dog. This agrees with the account given of it by some writers, especially in "The Sportsman's Cabinet," a work more remarkable for the truth and fineness of its engravings, than for the matter contained in it. Buffon also forms much the same opinion. That great strength must be necessary to enable a dog to compete with a wolf, cannot be doubted, and perhaps there is no breed of the ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... agricultural operations. Sheep-raising is the most profitable of their pursuits. The climate appears to be more congenial to the growth of wool than of cereal productions. The Faroese sheep are noted for the fineness and luxuriance of their fleece, and it always commands a high price in market. A considerable portion of it is manufactured by the inhabitants, who are quite skillful in weaving and knitting. They make a kind of thick woolen shirt, something like that known as the Guernsey, which ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... assembled" had power to treat with foreign countries, to send and receive ambassadors, to determine peace and war. Congress was the last resort on appeal in all disputes between the states; could fix the standard of weights and measures, and of the fineness of coin; could establish and regulate postoffices; could ascertain and appropriate "the necessary sums of money to be raised for the service of the United States;" could borrow money "on the credit of the United ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary
... such a serious thing in that untroubled way. As she served the table, there being griddle-cakes of cornmeal that morning to flank the one egg and fragments of rusty bacon each, she studied the boy's face carefully. She noted the high, clear forehead, the large nose, the fineness of the heavy, black hair which lay shaggy upon his temples. She studied the long hands, the grave line of his mouth, and caught a quick glimpse now and then of his large, serious ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... to make her an object of their merriment. In general, indeed almost universally, the limbs of these people were small; of most of them the arms, legs, and thighs were thin. This, no doubt, is owing to the poorness of their living, which is chiefly on fish; otherwise the fineness of the climate, co-operating with the exercise which they take, might have rendered them more muscular. Those who live on the sea-coast depend entirely on fish for their sustenance; while the few who dwell in the woods subsist on such animals as they can catch. The ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... the fineness and goodness of the Ore, by which the Mine is wont to be estimated? And what are the marks and {339} characters, that distinguish ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... the proprietor, and in admirable keeping with its exterior. The rooms are fitted up with light Gothic tracery on the walls, very chaste and elegant; and the colors are so delicate and subdued, that you are not offended with that feeling of over-fineness ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... because it's true that it's fine. It has no other beauty, mind! And it's not because it's fine that it will come. Fineness is not in vogue, any more than love is. It's because it's true that it has ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... were two Persians, who unfolded before our eyes some of those marvellous shawls, where you forget the barbaric pattern in the exquisite fineness of the material and the triumphant harmony of the colors. Scarlet with palm-leaf border,—blue clasped by golden bronze, picked out with red,—browns, greens, and crimsons struggling for the mastery in a war of tints,—how should we choose between them? Alas! we were not able ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... and scarcely visible even under lens. Color pale dull brown or grayish brown. Wood light, soft, not strong, straight-grained, fairly easy to work. Cottonwood can be separated from other light and soft woods by the fineness of its rays, which is equaled only by willow, which it rather closely resembles. The wood is largely used for boxes, general ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... could not have been heard; for the peddler, burying his body in the pack, brought forth a quantity of lace of exquisite fineness, and, holding it up to view, he required the admiration of the young lady. Miss Peyton dropped the cup she was engaged in washing, from her hand; and Frances exhibited the whole of that lovely face, which had hitherto only suffered one of its joyous eyes to ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... complain finely that I do not appreciate their fineness. I shall not tell them whether I do or not. As if they expected a vote of thanks for every fine thing which they uttered or did. Who knows but it was finely appreciated. It may be that your silence was the finest thing of the two. There are some things which a man never speaks ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... piazza, with its pretty characteristic varieties of pleasant stone-built houses, solid Georgian fronts interspersed with mullioned gables. But the church! That is a marvellous place; its massive lantern-tower, with solid, softly-moulded outlines—for the sandy oolite admits little fineness of detail—all weathered to a beautiful orange-grey tint, has a mild dignity of its own. Inside it is a treasure of mediaevalism. The screens, the woodwork, the monuments, all rich, dignified, and spacious. And the glass! Next to King's College Chapel, ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... designed that gas is generated without producing sufficient heat to cause yellow discoloration of residuum (which will occur at about 500 deg. F.) or abnormal pressure at any stage of the process when using carbide of any degree of fineness. ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... on a tiny sofa in the corner, a curiously impregnable intrenchment, as I noted—for my impulse was to carry her by storm. I was astonished at my own audacity; I was wondering where my fear of her had gone, my awe of her superior fineness and breeding. "Mama will be down in a ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... rocks of the sea), but if his mother has loved into his life, the rare flower of fastidiousness, he will come back, with innocence aglow beneath the weathered countenance. It is the sons of strong women who have that fineness which makes them choice, even in their affairs of an hour. A beautiful spirit of race guardianship is behind this fastidiousness.... Miraculously, it seems to appear many times in the sons of women who have failed to find their own knight-errants. ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... visible at the first glance"; "Grief destroys wisdom, grief destroys scholarship, grief destroys endurance; there is no perturbation of the mind like grief." Often we hardly know whether a psychological observation or a metaphor is given to us. In any case we may appreciate the fineness of a saying like this: "Even a most translucent, beautiful, perfectly round and charming pearl can be strung on a thread as soon as it has been pierced; so a mind which longs for salvation, perfectly pure, free from quarrel with any one and full of goodness, will ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... with poses that outnumbered the silver eyes in the peacock's tail in multitude ... and yet there was to be found in them a sincerity, a fineness, and a genuine feeling for humanity that "regular" folks never achieve—perhaps because of ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... his worst for the figure, but even an unskilled hand and a poor camera had not wholly obliterated the fineness of the face. Spirit, honor, and strength were all there. The eyes that met hers were as fine and fearless as her own, and the honest smile that hovered on his lips seemed to be in frank amusement at his ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... in charge. To his inquiries she made answer that Protogenes was not at home; and then asked whom she should name as the visitor. "Here he is," was the reply of Apelles; and seizing a brush, he traced with color upon the panel an outline of a singularly minute fineness. Upon his return the old woman mentioned to Protogenes what had happened. The artist, it is said, upon remarking the delicacy of the touch, instantly exclaimed that Apelles must have been the visitor, for that no other person was capable of executing anything ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... true that this unnatural grease is very delicious, and that this damnable skill gives them the fineness and succulence which are the delight ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... tissues are removed, leaving only the nervous tissue, a complete skeleton outline of the body still remains. This nerve skeleton, as it has been called, has the general form of the framework of bones, but differs from it greatly in the fineness of its structures and the extent to which it represents every portion of the body. An examination of a nerve skeleton, or a diagram of one (Fig. 125), shows the main structures of the nervous system and their connection with the different ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... between them, seemed to part, and reveal soul to soul. As swiftly the mood changed and Dorothy felt it first, like a chill mist in the air. Neither dreamed that with the writing of the first paragraph in the book, the spell had claimed one of them for ever—that cobweb after cobweb, of gossamer fineness, should make a fabric never to be broken; that on one side of it should stand a man who had exchanged his dreams for realities and his realities for dreams, and on the other, a woman, blindly hurt, eternally straining to ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... health. Dr. Eben had had severe illnesses, which had told heavily upon his strength. From all these things it had come to pass, that now he looked older and more worn than Hetty. She looked vigorous; he looked feeble; she was still comely, he had lost all the fineness of color and outline, which had made him at forty so handsome a man. He had been ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... during which we heard, from time to time, the noise of battle, when a mounted Varangian presented himself at the side of the Emperor's litter. The horse was covered with foam, and had obviously, from his trappings, the fineness of his limbs, and the smallness of his joints, been the charger of some chief of the desert, which had fallen by the chance of battle into the possession of the northern warrior. The broad axe which the Varangian bore was also stained with blood, and the paleness of death itself was upon ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... were sound. Not in vain had he been Scott Brenton's senior warden, all these months; not in vain Kathryn's medical adviser and unwilling confidant, during the recent weeks of her approach to motherhood. He had learned to know the fineness of the man, the reverent housing he gave to his ideals, the care he lavished on their betterment; and just so surely he also knew the sordid selfishness of the woman, her lack of any ideals beyond the petty ones concerning food and raiment and mere ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... exchange. Foreign exchange from America to Europe is, however, in two features different from domestic exchange: (a) the cost of shipment of gold is greater; (b) the monetary units of the two countries usually differ in name, weight, and fineness, and sometimes in materials. We may define foreign exchange as the purchase and sale of the right to receive a given kind and weight of metal or its monetary equivalent in current funds at a specified time and place. Par of exchange between two countries ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... such a person, and to keep her, even now that she knew the worst, unwilling to relinquish the thought of him. His depravity loomed to her enormous; but was that all there was to be said of him? Did his delicacy, his insight, his tempered fineness, count for nothing beside it? Must their talks, their walking through the trees, the very memory of his voice, be ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... listens, penetrates, where the earlier mind passed roughly by, is a large element in the complexion of modern poetry." We recognize at once the truth of this characterization as applied to Wordsworth. But there is something more distinguished about this poet's sensibility even than its extreme fineness and delicacy; a quality that is suggested, though not made explicit, by Shelley's allusion to Wordsworth's experience as "a sort of thought in sense." Nature possessed for him not merely enjoyable and ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... would have been peculiarly embarrassing but for the gentlemanly demeanor of James, who, always courteous, particularly to those whom he thought neglected, bowed politely, and made to her several remarks concerning the fineness of the day and the delightful view which Laurel Hill commanded of the surrounding country. She was no menial, he knew, and looking in her bright, black eyes he saw that she had far more mind than the dollish Nellie, who, as usual, was provoking J.C. to say all manner ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... exotic and alien—which had been just the spell—even to the perceptions of youth. There was the danger—she frankly touched it—that such a temperament mightn't have matured, with the years, all in the sense of fineness; it was the sort of danger that, in renewing relations after long breaks, one had always to look in the face. To gather in strayed threads was to take a risk—for which, however, she was prepared if Milly was. The possible "fun," she confessed, was by itself rather tempting; and she ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... last the greatness of his sacrifice and the fineness of his soul, and she fell into a passion of weeping and ran from ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... that man do an act of supreme and unselfish bravery. It was an act of both physical and moral courage the like of which the Bishop had never witnessed. It was an act which had revealed in Clifford W. Stanton a depth of strong fineness that no man would have suspected. It was done in the dim, dead time of faraway youth, but the Bishop had not forgotten. And he knew that men do not rise to such heights without having very deep in them the nobility to make it possible and at times ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... forget the fineness of the sight. It was a clear and rather a chilly night; the stars were twinkling with an intense brightness, and as far as the eye could reach there was not a cloud to be seen. The horizon met the sea in a defined line. A painter could ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... window was the gayest and the most gratifying to witness, and to me who loves you so dearly as I do, made it the more delightful. The good humour of all around, the fineness of the day, the manner you were received in both going and coming from the Exhibition, was quite perfect. Therefore what must it have been in ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... strongly than their merely physical features, and among his principal associates excited no little appreciative comment upon this tendency. In some of his portraits of women of that period, wherein he evidently attempted to present the superior fineness and sensibility of the feminine nature, this effort toward ideality is quite strongly indicated; they are painted with a more hesitating and lingering touch than his portraits of men, and with a certain seeming lack of confidence, which throws about them a ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... was a true son of the mountain desert. He wore his old slouch hat even in the house, and his skin was that olive brown which comes from many years of exposure to the wind and sun. At the same time there was a peculiar fineness about the boy. His feet were astonishingly small and the hands thin and slender for all their supple strength. And his neck was not bony, as it is in most youths at this ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... sand and silt, not only in size of particles, but also in properties and formation. It is said that clay particles reach a degree of fineness equal to 1/2500 of an inch. Clay itself, when wet and kneaded, becomes plastic and adhesive and is thus easily distinguished from sand. Because of these properties, clay is of great value in holding together ...
— Dry-Farming • John A. Widtsoe
... manner, who was sallow of face, who was obviously getting gray, and who was generally insignificant in appearance, was not the sort of man, one would think, to fascinate an exceptionally handsome girl, who had brains enough to know the fineness of her own face. But here was this princess paying attentions to him such as must have driven a more impressionable man out of his senses, while Ingram sat quiet and pleased, sometimes making fun of her, and generally talking to her as if she were a child. Sheila had chatted very pleasantly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... less than four inches in length, the product is classed as a short-staple or "carding" wool. By far the greater part of the wool of the United States, Canada, and Europe is of this class. It is disposed of according to its fineness or fitness for special purposes, the greater part being made into cloths for the ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... divined some fineness of feeling in this coarse man. He wanted to spare her not only pain, but the necessity of watchful eyes on her every moment. Lucy did not like to promise not to try to escape, if opportunity presented. Still, she reasoned, that once deep in the canyons, where she ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... this over and over, but he was never tired of hearing it. It was like some simple croon with which babies are hushed to sleep. The snow on the ground, which was enduring remarkably well for this time of year, the fineness of the day, which had started out to be clear and bright, the hope that the courtroom might not be full, all held the attention of the father and his two sons. Cowperwood, senior, even commented on some sparrows fighting over a piece of bread, marveling how well they ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... indefinite age. Then there was Josie herself. She seemed to be the center of the family: always busy at service, or at home, or berry-picking; a little nervous and inclined to scold, like her mother, yet faithful, too, like her father. She had about her a certain fineness, the shadow of an unconscious moral heroism that would willingly give all of life to make life broader, deeper, and ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... home on short leave—a changed Roy; his skin browner; his sensitive lips more closely set under the shadow line of his moustache; the fibre of body and spirit hardened, without loss of fineness or flexibility. Livelier on the surface, he was graver, more reticent, underneath—even with her. By the look in his eyes she knew he had seen things that could never be put into words. Some of them she too had seen, through his mind; so close was the spiritual link between them. In that ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... thirty-three grains of pure metal. Darius, son of Hystaspes (B.C. 538), coined darics, containing one hundred and twenty-one grains of pure metal, which were preferred, for several ages throughout the East, for their fineness. Next to the darics were some coins of the reigns of the tyrants of Sicily: of Gelo (B.C. 491); of Hiero (B.C. 478); and of Dionysius (B.C, 404). Specimens of the two former are still preserved in modern cabinets. Darics are supposed ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... love to deliver their minds with a sound simplicity, that they have the middle qualities between the reserved, subtle southern and the rough, unhewn northern people, that they are not extremely prone to speak, that they are more concerned what others will think of the strength than of the fineness of what they say, and that a universal modesty possesses them. These qualities are so conspicuous and proper to the soil that we often hear them objected to us by some of our neighbor Satyrists in more disgraceful expressions.... Even the position of our ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... troupe that was performing at the old Lion Theatre on Washington Street in Boston. He had many opportunities for hearing Perez play upon the guitar. The richness and beauty of melody and harmony, and the unsurpassed variety and fineness of expression, that were evolved from this beautiful instrument by this master-performer, so charmed Holland, that he decided to give his chief attention to the study of the guitar. Not that he then dreamed of ever becoming a teacher or professor of the instrument: he wished to learn ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... mosaics were brought from the Levant for our old San Marco. Thus came the knowledge to us in those early days. But now there is no longer any country that shares it equally with Venice, for elsewhere they know not the art in its fineness. These, when they are finished, shall be sent as a gift from the Republic; it is so written in ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... that firmness of structure in the body which renders it capable of the most delicate sensation, and of that structure in the mind which renders it capable of the most delicate sympathies—one may say simply fineness of nature. This is, of course, compatible with heroic bodily strength and mental firmness; in fact, heroic strength is not conceivable without such delicacy. Elephantine strength may drive its way through a forest, and feel no touch of the boughs, but the white skin of Homer's Atrides would have ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... deferential to the great, always knowing how to keep his place in their company, assiduous and respectful at Marly as at Versailles, amid the formal creations of a decorative landscape and the reverential bows, graces, intrigues, and fineness of the braided seigniors Who get up early every morning to obtain the reversion of an office, together with the charming ladies who count on their fingers the pedigrees which entitle them to a seat ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... a little, but enough to bring out the exquisite fineness of her white skin. "Oh, I don't mind," said she, and there was no embarrassment in her manner. "I've got to learn—and doing things ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... before him. Beside it the log lay open, and he had under his hand a book in which he was writing. Door framed blue sky and sea, a pleasant wind was singing in a pleasant warmth, the great cabin which, with the rest of the ship, he made to be kept very clean, was awash with light and fineness of air. "Would you like to look at the chart?" he asked, and I came ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... since before the war, only I had never known it. On that Anti-Potter investigation tour I had observed and analysed her, and smiled cynically to myself at the commercial instinct of the Potter twins, the lack of the fineness that distinguished Katherine and Juke. I remembered that; but I remembered, too, how white and round Jane's chin had looked as it pressed against the thymy turf of the cliff where we lay above the sea. All through the war I had seen her at intervals, enjoying life, finding the war a sort of lark, ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... away for safe-keeping differ in one respect from those things which are stored away in the memory. The material object is the same, whether we visit and inspect it from day to day or not. The banker's dollars are not increased in fineness or value by his handling them over carefully every day. Not so with intellectual coin. The more frequently we re-examine our knowledge and pass it under review, the more does it become fixed in its character, the more full and exact in its proportions. Handling it does not wear it out. ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... brown-barked Libocedrus here reach their finest developments of beauty and grandeur. The majestic Sequoia is here, too, the king of conifers, the noblest of all the noble race. These colossal trees are as wonderful in fineness of beauty and proportion as in stature—an assemblage of conifers surpassing all that have ever yet been discovered in the forests of the world. Here indeed is the tree-lover's paradise; the woods, dry and wholesome, letting in the light in shimmering masses of ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... thousand roubles a year, and which is disposed of on their account in Rybeeck. In the districts where the forest-trees mostly consist of lindens, the inhabitants are principally engaged in the manufacture of matting, which, according to its greater or less degree of fineness, is employed either for sacking or sail cloth, or merely as packing mats. The linden-tree grows only on moist soils, rich in black humus, or vegetable mould; but will not grow at all in sandy soils, which renders it comparatively scarce in some parts of Russia, while in others it grows ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... was the first night's bivouac, and much noise and bustle went to its accomplishment. The young men covertly watched the Gillespie Camp. How would this ornamental party cope with such unfamiliar labors? With its combination of a feminine element which must be helpless by virtue of a rare and dainty fineness and a masculine element which could hardly be otherwise because of ill health, it would seem that all the work must devolve upon ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... flower-breathing from the walks, the stars shone in their lustre, and I felt all the power of nature to soothe the troubled spirit. Some of the fashionable inhabitants of the surrounding houses had been induced by the fineness of the night to prolong their promenade; and the light laugh, and the sound of pleasant voices, added to the touching and simple charm of the scene. A group had stopped round a player on the guitar, with which we ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... as though lingering to accuse and to convict, lay the body of Greathouse, the missing man. Not merely a charred, incinerated mass, the figure lay in the full appearance of life, a cast of the actual man, moulded with fineness from the white ashes of the fire! Not a feature, not a limb, not a fragment of clothing was left undestroyed; yet none the less here, stretched across the bed of the burned-out fire, with face upturned, with one arm ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... have been put on him once for all, like the bark of a tree, a long time ago. The observant stranger was sure to be puzzled by the contrast of this realistic and uncouth exterior with the internal fineness, amounting to refinement and culture, that shone through it all. What communion had supplied the place of our ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... wish, but if I chain you down you sacrifice the fineness of your virtue. You make a virtue ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... hesitated to adopt this extreme measure. Not from any fineness of feeling. Though scarce so rough a villain as his companion, it was not delicacy of sentiment that restrained him now. He had been accustomed all his life to regard with heartless indifference the feelings of those he had wronged; and it was not out of any consideration ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... glistened savagely in the midst of the grin. He had been dining with royal personages, and wore his garter and ribbon. A short man was his Lordship, broad-chested and bow-legged, but proud of the fineness of his foot and ankle, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the people were greatly superior to those he had seen hitherto. They wore over their shoulders a cloak, made of cottons of different degrees of fineness, according to the condition of the wearer. These and the ample sashes worn round the loins were wrought in rich and elegant figures, and edged with a deep fringe, ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... black-fellow is, perhaps, not quite so entirely eligible for extinction as a good, wholesome, horse-racing, sheep-farming Australian white may think. These queer little races, the black-fellows, the Pigmies, the Bushmen, may have their little gifts, a greater keenness, a greater fineness of this sense or that, a quaintness of the imagination or what not, that may serve as their little unique addition to the totality of our Utopian civilisation. We are supposing that every individual alive on earth is alive in Utopia, and so all the surviving "black-fellows" are ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... never deviated into poetical language as such, whether in rhetoric or highly coloured phrase, yet throughout the substance of his talk the same mode of thought, the same imaginative grasp of nature, the same fineness and gentleness in his view of character, the same forbearance and toleration, the aurea mediocritas despised by fools and fanatics, which are stamped on his poetry, were constantly perceptible: whilst in the easy and as it were unsought choiceness, ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... says, in his "Resources of the Southern Fields and Forests": "Upon examining with a sharp instrument the specimens of various southern woods deposited in the museum of the Elliott Society, ... I was struck with the singular weight, density, and fineness of this wood. I think I can confidently recommend it as one of the best to be experimented ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... fine, forsooth! Sir Fine-face, sir Fair-hands? But see thou to it That thine own fineness, Lancelot, some fine ...
— 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.
... fellow of fine feeling, I think, though of course he had no more polish than the rest of us. We were naturally a hail-fellow-well-met crowd, with standards of our own—no worse, I daresay, than other people's; but polish was not one of them. Davidson's fineness was real enough to alter the course of the steamer he commanded. Instead of passing to the south of Samburan, he made it his practice to take the passage along the north shore, within about ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... he engaged in divers charitable and civic affairs and was commissioner for improving the streets and buildings in London. He had charge of the sick and wounded of the Dutch War and also, with the fineness of character typical of his kind, he remained at his post through the Great Plague. Evelyn was also active in organizing the Royal Society and became its ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... going on, the poor captives were able to examine their chief captor more carefully. They remarked with surprise the fine quality of the handkerchief which he had handed to his man, and they were even more surprised to note the whiteness and fineness of the linen of his shirt. His breeches were of blue velvet, and his sash and the kerchief which bound his head were of crimson silk. On the fingers of each hand he wore three or four diamond rings, which sparkled brilliantly in the half-darkness. His stockings were plainly of silk, and the buckles ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... name which it has borne ever since. The golden apples, which Atlas guarded with so much care, were probably either gold mines, which Atlas had discovered in the mountains of his country, and had secured with armed men and watchful dogs; or sheep, whose fleeces were extremely valuable for their fineness; or else oranges and lemons, and other fruits peculiar to very hot climates, for the production of which the poets especially remarked the country of Tingitana (the modern Tangier), as ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... Sunday the gallery of the college chapel. An amiable and modest fancy gives to them all a sweet classic grace. The very atmosphere of these courts, wakened with high metaphysic discourse, seems to lend them a Greek beauty and fineness; and you attach to the prettiest, that your eye can reach, all the charms of some Sciote maiden, and all the learning of her father—the professor. And as you lie half-wakeful and half-dreaming, through the long Divisions of the Doctor's ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... Rembrandt lighting. The roll of dark hair framed her face, highbred, aristocratic, yet wholly human and sweet. Gravity sat on all her features; a woman for thought, said they. A woman for dreams; so declared the fineness of brow and temple and cheek and chin, the hand—which, lifted now for an instant, lingered at her throat. But a woman for love! so said every throb of the pulse of the man regarding her. And now, most of all, pity of her just because ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... fritters, we must use finely powdered sugar, and it will be found a saving of both time and trouble to buy pounded sugar for the purpose. It is sold by grocers under the name of castor sugar. We cannot make this at home in a pestle and mortar to the same degree of fineness any more than we could grind our own flour. ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne
... Palace are seen vividly contrasted the fineness and strength, the delicacy and courage of the fancy, which, rather than the higher gift of imagination, characterize Giulio's work. There is such an airy refinement and subtile grace in the pretty grotesques with which he decorates a chamber; there is such daring ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... life. Margaret describes 'his complexion as clear in its pallor, and his eye steady.' His turn of mind, and his habits of life, had almost a monastic turn,—a jealousy of the common tendencies of literary men either to display or to philosophy. Margaret was struck with the singular fineness of his perceptions, and the pious tendency of his thoughts, and enjoyed with him his proud reception, not as from above, but almost on equal ground, of Homer and AEschylus, of Dante and Petrarch, of Montaigne, of Calderon, of Goethe. Margaret wished, also, to defend his privacy from the dangerous ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... supplying any reasonable demand of individual or imperial character. At Zlatoust there is a manufactory of firearms and sword blades that is said to be unsurpassed in the excellence of its products. The sabres from Zlatoust are of superior fineness and quality, rivaling the famous ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... people occupied no low plane of civilization. The Mangbettu work both iron and copper. "The masterpieces of the Monbutto [Mangbettu] smiths are the fine chains worn as ornaments, and which in perfection of form and fineness compare well with our best steel chains." Shubotz in 1911 called the Mangbettu "a highly cultivated people" in architecture and handicraft. Barth found copper exported from Central Africa in competition with European copper ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... and silk were the two articles from their trade in which the Saracens derived the greatest portion of their wealth. Cyprus, Rhodes, Amorea, and Marta (probably Malta), produced sugar; silk was the produce of Apulia, Romania, Crete, and Cyprus. Egypt was celebrated, as in old times, for the fineness of its flax; European flax was far inferior. The Egyptian manufactures of linen, silk, and linen and silk mixed, and also the dates and cassia of that country were exported to Turkey, Africa, the Black Sea, and the western ports of Europe, ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... removal from the malt-house shall be ground and thoroughly mixed with one-tenth part at least of its weight of ground linseed-cake or linseed-meal, and ground to such a degree of fineness and in such manner as the commissioners shall approve, and mixed together in a quantity not less than forty bushels at a time in the presence ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... the exquisite molding of her face as he had noted it at their first meeting, and her wide brow and clear brown eyes and the fineness of her skin, and her warm, sensitive lips, at this instant moving in the barest tremble imaginable. She was gazing at him with a curious, ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... art now in existence, far excelling, in the gigantic size of the letters in the frontispieces of the Gospel, the excessive minuteness of the ornamental details, the number of its decorations, the fineness of the writing, and the endless variety of initial capital letters with which every page is ornamented, the famous Gospels of Lindisfarne in the Cottonian Library. But this MS. is still more valuable on ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... belongings, her top drawer, her various boxes, and her linen closet. You must keep all these things just as she did. You may think it a very foolish thing for her to have three piles of handkerchiefs, each of a different age, or degree of fineness, but if that is her way, she will be better satisfied if she knows you will not lay a fine handkerchief over a more common one. So keep them as carefully divided as if they were the two parts of ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
... interest, not to say delight, with which they went about their daily avocations, the fineness of the weather, and the romance of their situation, had prevented their minds from dwelling much on the flight of time, and if Pauline had not remembered the Sundays by conscientiously keeping a daily record with a pencil on a piece of bark, not one of them would have believed it possible that ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... the life and mind of the Middle Class were thus described by the foreign critic. "The fineness and capacity of man's spirit is shown by his enjoyments; your Middle Class has an enjoyment in its business, we admit, and gets on well in business, and makes money; but beyond that? Drugged with business, your Middle Class seems to have its sense ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... probably he asked whether she prefers bleached or unbleached damask. The latter—called "half-bleach" in trade vernacular—is made in Scotland and comes in cheap and medium grades alone. Though it lacks the choiceness of design and the beauty and fineness of the Belfast bleached linens, it is good for everyday wear and quickly whitens when laid in the sun on grass or snow; while the fact that its cost is somewhat less than that of the corresponding quality ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... customary proportions, had all been dwarfed. This had been achieved in some cases by ingenious design in its construction, in others by the simple process of cutting down, thus reducing table and chair, couch and bureau, in itself of whatever grace of style, dignity of age, or fineness of workmanship, to an equality of uncomely degradation in respect of height. The resultant effect was of false perspective. Nor was this unpleasing effect lessened by the proportions of the room itself. In common ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... go to Mr. Endicott until he had found lodgings somewhere. An innate delicacy had brought him to this decision. He would not put one voluntary burden upon his kind benefactor. Born and bred in the slums, whence came this fineness of feeling? Who ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... vigorous and flowing, good in sentiment, and certainly worthy of being sent to "some paper," if you like to print them. On the other hand, they do not indicate to me that you have any special call to write verse. A man of your ability and fineness of structure must necessarily be enough of a poet not to fail altogether in use of the poetical form. But all that I know of you indicates a predominance of reflective intellect—a habit of mind quite foreign from the lyrical. I think it may be very good practice to compose ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... up, then!" And, preceded by the dog Balthasar, they ascended through the field. The sun was almost level in their faces now, and he could see, not only those silver threads, but little lines, just deep enough to stamp her beauty with a coin-like fineness—the special look of life unshared with others. "I'll take her in by the terrace," he thought: "I won't make a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... countries, to send and receive ambassadors, to determine peace and war. Congress was the last resort on appeal in all disputes between the states; could fix the standard of weights and measures, and of the fineness of coin; could establish and regulate postoffices; could ascertain and appropriate "the necessary sums of money to be raised for the service of the United States;" could borrow money "on the credit of the United States;" could ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary
... repealed. The remainder is boiled down into a syrup, or further simmered until it thickens into cakes, called chancacas, or brown sugar. After a careful purification it is made into the white cakes called alfajores, or prepared as white sugar. In fineness of grain and purity of color it is inferior to the Havannah sugar, which, however, it exceeds in sweetness. The regular weight of the sugarloaf is two arobas; only for convenience of transport into the mountainous districts their weight is sometimes diminished. The consumption ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... his power on the atoms that went to the making up of the daily record of his days. Had he kept a diary it would have been interesting from its very lack of large interest. And yet, with all this narrowing down, a certain fineness and purpose evolved that were both touching and inspiring. He never complained, not even to himself. After recognizing the power which Ledyard held in his life, he relinquished the one hope that had held him to the ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... of what Brunetiere calls in an admirable phrase, the true function of the novel—"to be an abridged representation of life." Construction in the modern sense Richardson had not studied, naturally enough, and was innocent of the fineness of method and the sure-handed touches of later technique. And there is a kind of drawing-room atmosphere in his books, a lack of ozone which makes Fielding with all his open-air coarseness a relief. But judged ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... from society? Did he know a single person whose existence would approximate his in seclusion and contemplation? Did he know a man capable of appreciating the fineness of a phrase, the subtlety of a painting, the quintessence of an idea,—a man whose soul was delicate and exquisite enough to understand Mallarme and ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... Parson with a forced Smile,—Do not you think Doctor, says he, That the Dispute in the Romance, between the Parson of the Parish and John, about the Height of John's Desk, is a very fine Panegyrick upon the Humility of Church-Men?—I think, says the Parson, it is much of the same Fineness with that which your Profession is complimented with, in the pimping, dirty, pettyfogging Character of Trim,—which, in my Opinion, Sir, is just such another Panegyrick upon the Honestly ...
— A Political Romance • Laurence Sterne
... But think of the fineness of the tools that must be used, the tiny files and chisels in carving the lovely, delicate shells. The shell cameos with the pink lower stone and white upper figure, are most expensive of all; other shells have ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... I established myself out of sight under the doorway of an unfinished house opposite, and waited. I don't know why; perhaps I fancied that when his friends were gone, the fineness of the night might induce Monsieur Steinmetz to take a stroll, and that then I should be able to gratify my curiosity. You see, I knew that if he were my man, I should know him directly. I waited a good while: shadows crossed the lighted blinds; once a big, broad shadow appeared there, ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... to the disc and then gives the spindle a rapid twirl. As it revolves she holds the yarn out so that it twists. As it tightens sufficiently she allows it to wrap on the spindle and repeats the operation until the spindle is full. The spinning is done loosely or tightly, according to the fineness of the weave required in ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... atmosphere, a souvenir of the present darkness of the crust; yet during a certain period, within fixed limits of gravitating force and heat of mass, the human race may continue to exist; progressing, we may suppose, in force and fineness of organization. The race will perish, perhaps, in the order of nature, by failure or insufficient number of offspring, a principal cause of the extinction of superior races. The earth must become lone and voiceless long before the incandescence of the crust. Science may follow it into the condition ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... blessedly true as well. She gloried in the whole therefore, breathing through it a larger air of faith and hope, and confident fortitude. The kindred qualities of her own heart and intelligence, the flush of her fine enthusiasm, sprang to meet and join with the fineness of it, its richness of promise and ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... built; the strength and grasping power of the foot in relation to the weight of the bird, a power absolutely essential to the constructor of a delicately-woven and well-finished nest; the length and fineness of the beak, which has to be used like a needle in building the best textile nests; the length and mobility of the neck, which is needful for the same purpose; the possession of a salivary secretion like that used in the nests of many of the swifts ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... of such distinction should go with them. This is undoubtedly one of the grounds for tatuing the body. Among the Kayans a man's hands are only fully tatued when he has taken a head; while the social status of a woman is marked by the degree of fineness of the tatuing.[124] It follows that death is neither greatly feared nor desired; but an old man will sometimes affirm that he is quite ready or even desirous to die, although he may seem ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... only upon the arrangement of the microphone, which is new (at least in practice), and upon the uselessness of having well magnetized steel bars and wires of extreme fineness in the receiver. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... that was all. I was always against offering a reward. And the word 'handsome' too. In any case I never agreed to that. You put that in later. Another thing," Mrs. Bathurst continued, "I knew it in some curious way—in my bones, as they say—that the fineness of Cherub's nature, its innocence, its radiant friendliness, would overcome any sordidness in the person who found him, poor darling, all lost and unhappy. No one who has been much with that simple sweet character could fail to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, October 6, 1920 • Various
... at her and could not help marking again the fineness and firmness of her skin. Her hair was dark, as were her eyebrows, which were almost straight and rather low over her long eyes. Gray her eyes were, a warm gray, and very steady and direct in expression, intelligent and alive. Perhaps, taking her face as ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... and silver, but it was the first metal to be coined into money in ancient Rome. The Roman as or pondo weighed a Roman pound of good copper, therefore possessed the two principal attributes of good money, a definite weight and a definite fineness. It was divided like our troy pound into twelve ounces ...
— The Paper Moneys of Europe - Their Moral and Economic Significance • Francis W. Hirst
... stiff, sharp bodies, it is easie to conceive, how with rubbing they might easily be thrust into the tender parts of the skin, and there, by reason of their exceeding fineness and driness, not create any considerable trouble or pain, till by remaining in those places moistned with the humours of the body, some caustick part sticking on them, or residing within them might be dissolv'd and mix'd with the ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... mystery," observed William. "We have often been puzzled to know what has become of vessels which have disappeared, and which, from the fineness of the weather, and for other reasons, we did not suppose had been lost. We should do good service if we could get away without being discovered, and send some of our cruisers to ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... case too much, too complex, and too beautiful adaptation, in every structure, to believe in its sudden production. I have alluded under the head of beautifully hooked seeds to such possibility. Monsters are apt to be sterile, or NOT to transmit monstrous peculiarities. Look at the fineness of gradation in the shells of successive SUB-STAGES of the same great formation; I could give many other considerations which made me doubt such view. It holds, to a certain extent, with domestic productions no doubt, where man preserves some abrupt change in structure. It amused me to ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... beauty, and flavour, those raised in any other part of the province. Cider abounds at the table of the meanest peasant, and there is scarcely a farm that has not a fruitful orchard attached to it. This fineness of the fruit is one consequence of the amelioration of climate, which takes place in the vicinity of the Detroit river and Lake St. Clair. The seasons there are much milder and more serene than they are a few hundred miles below, and ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... Middleton was perhaps a variety of American nature only presenting itself under an individual form; he could throw off the man of our day, and put on a ruder nature, but then it was with a certain fineness, that made this only [a] distinction between it and the central truth. He found less variety of form in the English character than he had been accustomed to see at home; but perhaps this was in consequence of the external nature ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... AEolian word-music in William Drummond applies with equal truth to Crashaw; while of our own poets, somehow or other, he reminds me of Shelley, in the silvery shine and bell-like melody both of his verse and his imagery; and in one of his poems, Music's Duel, the fineness of his phrase reminds me of Keats. But I must not forget that it is only with his sacred, his best poems too, that ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... molded legs, the thin-soled low boots—all proclaimed him the typical time-killing dandy of the times. His superb proportions made him look smaller, lighter than he really was, and his lean features, which under the I.F.P. skullcap would have looked hawk-like, were sufficiently like the patrician fineness of the character part he was playing. Young men of means in the year 2159 were by no means without their good points. They indulged in athletic sports to counteract the softening influence of idleness, and so Quirl Finner had no misgivings about ...
— In the Orbit of Saturn • Roman Frederick Starzl
... different. Neither could the others explain why they liked it better than the Canadian Rockies, or why its beauty puzzled and disturbed them. It is only he whom intelligent travel has educated to analyze and distinguish who sees in the fineness and the extraordinary distinction of Glacier's mountain forms the completion of the more heroic undevelopment ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... company in their blindness condemned their ward added much to Adelle's spiritual opportunities. Pussy Comstock, for all her sophistication, was no better, and as for the "two Pols" and Archie Davis, the reader can judge what fineness of mind or soul was to be found in them. Even the officers of the Washington Trust Company, who were of indubitable respectability and prominence in their own community,—everything that bankers should be,—had neither mental nor spiritual elevation, and coarsely pigeonholed their ideas ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... this sentence on her lips. Her cheeks were glowing, and her eyes full of sparkles. So complete was the change, that for a brief space the aunt gazed at her wonderingly. She wore a handsome fawn-colored silk, made high in the neck, around which was a narrow lace collar of exceeding fineness, pinned with a single diamond. A linked band of gold, partly hidden by the lace undersleeve, clasped one of her wrists. A small spray of pearls and silver formed the only ornament for her hair, and nestled, beautifully contrasted among its dark ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... the pleasant town of Xerez, and lodged the next night at Lebrija; and the next night at Utrera, where we saw the ruins of a brave town, nothing remaining extraordinary, but the fineness of the situation. We were met there by Don Lope de Mendoca, who was sent with his troop of horse from Seville, by command of the Asistente of that city, [Footnote: The Asistencia of Seville is a high municipal office, peculiar to that ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... of dress, I was most struck with the fineness of the voices and beauty of the intonations of both sexes. Every common ruffian-looking fellow, with a slouched hat, blanket cloak, dirty under-dress, and soiled leather leggins, appeared to me to be speaking elegant Spanish. It was a pleasure, simply ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... with it the pound weight of gold or silver which is to be tried by the usual methods of assay. The jury then return their verdict, stating how much the coins examined have varied from the weight and fineness required, and whether the variations exceed or fall short of the remedies which are allowed; and according to the terms of the verdict, the master's quietus is ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... dogs, informs me that it was smooth, strong, and partaking somewhat of the character and appearance of a powerful Danish dog. This agrees with the account given of it by some writers, especially in "The Sportsman's Cabinet," a work more remarkable for the truth and fineness of its engravings, than for the matter contained in it. Buffon also forms much the same opinion. That great strength must be necessary to enable a dog to compete with a wolf, cannot be doubted, and perhaps there is no breed of the rough greyhound now known capable ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... truth a city could no longer be doubted. Long walls came to view, pierced by gates with fantastic arches. Domes rose to heaven. Delicate minarets, carved into a fretwork of amazing fineness, pointed their fingers at the yellow shimmering sky. The contrast of that brilliance, with the soft green gardens and feathery palm-groves before, the grim black cliffs behind, filled the Legionaries with a kind ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... herbage on which it feeds; in the lower jaw there are eight incisor teeth and six molars on each side of both jaws, making in all 32 teeth. The fleece consists of two coats, one to keep the animal warm, the other to carry off the water without wetting the skin. The first is of wool, the weight and fineness of which depend on the quality of the pasture and the care bestowed on the flock; the other of hair, that pierces the wool and overlaps it, and is in excess in exact proportion to the badness of the keep and inattention with which ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... sides that formed the angle, but so strong was it fastened that it seemed to resist any weight or pressure of a moderate kind; it was composed of the fibres of the bass-wood bark; which are very thready, and may be drawn to great fineness: on the whole it was a curious specimen of the ingenuity of these admirable little architects. I could not discover the builder; but rather suspect the nest to have belonged to my protege, the little winter titmouse that I told ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... them at a level all over the world, than it is the demand and supply of most other commodities. And this all the more as there are not different kinds of gold and silver, but only different qualities of their fineness.(726) It also contributes to the uniformity of their value in exchange, that they minister mainly only to wants of luxury. The most indispensable commodities are subject to the greatest variations in price (see 103), whereas, in the case ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... days when he was most fully in the public eye the invincible obscurity of his origins clung to him like a shadowy garment. He had handled millions without ever enjoying anything of what is counted as precious in the community of men, because he had neither the brutality of temperament nor the fineness of mind to make him desire them with the will power of ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... appeared in finer condition. A few years ago, nobody could grow roses fit to be seen in pots; many said it was impossible to do so: now, one can scarcely imagine anything finer than they are seen at the metropolitan flower-shows. Both in healthy appearance, and in fineness of flower, they exceed those which we admire so much in the open garden in summer. One or two are conspicuous, though all are beautiful. Souvenirs d'un ami has pale flesh-coloured flowers, exceedingly delicate; nor is the perfume they emit less attractive. Niphetus, pure white; Adam, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... cracked his neighbours' heads with the precision and fineness of touch which only manual craftsmanship can give. The housewives who flatly refused to cook the hot dinner knew how much or how little, cold meat there was in the house. The sailor who defied discipline by mutinying ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... None lordlier than themselves but that which made Woman and man. She had founded; they must build. Here might they learn whatever men were taught: Let them not fear: some said their heads were less: Some men's were small; not they the least of men; For often fineness compensated size: Besides the brain was like the hand, and grew With using; thence the man's, if more was more; He took advantage of his strength to be First in the field: some ages had been lost; But woman ripened earlier, and her life Was longer; and albeit their glorious names Were ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... subject in its different bearings, it soon became evident to all, that the matter of supreme importance would be the making of the rope. Could this be manufactured of sufficient fineness not to overburden the bearcoot, and yet be strong enough to sustain the weight of a man, the first difficulty would be got over. The rope therefore should be made with the greatest care. Every fibre of it should be of the best quality of hemp—every strand ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... there are, in many rivers that relate to the sea, salmon trouts, as much different from others, both in shape and in their spots, as we see sheep in some countries differ one from another in their shape and bigness, and in the fineness of their wool. And certainly, as some pastures breed larger sheep, so do some rivers, by reason of the ground over which they ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... see me?" interrupted Ellen. She felt that she could not endure this reiterated suggestion of fineness, of consideration in him. She would betray herself—betray what she did not even realize herself. She must force other footing—and that should be the one of strife between the Jorths ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... erect and confident. Well, these fancies of mine only went to prove how erroneous and false are the conclusions of one whose capacity has not been amplified and concatenated by the ingenuities of a very refined civilization. His grace the most gracious father in God, wore a mantle of extraordinary fineness and beauty, the material of which was composed of every tenth hair taken from all the citizens of Leaphigh, who most cheerfully submitted to be shaved, in order that the wants of his most eminent humility might be decently supplied. The mantle, wove from such a warp and such a woof, was necessarily ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... pleaded: that he sought occasions in his by-talk to shew men that he was excellently well learned. Furthermore, by their phrases a man may discern some spark of their manners and conditions. For Demosthenes' phrase hath no manner of fineness, jests, nor grace in it, but is altogether grave and harsh, and not only smelleth of the lamp, as Pytheas said when he mocked him, but sheweth a great drinker of water, extreme pains, and therewith also a sharp ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... happiness to have several contemporaries and fellow-students who exercised and excited this virtue in themselves and others, thereby becoming so deservedly in favour with this age, and so good a proof of its nice discernment. His judgment, naturally good, soon ripened into an exquisite fineness and distinguishing sagacity, which as it was active and busy, so it was vigorous and manly, keeping even paces with a rich and strong imagination, always upon the wing, and never tired with aspiring. Hence it was, that, though he writ as young as Cowley, he had no puerilities; and ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... surrounded with rocks of grey limestone or white marble. The colour and value of the nests depend on the quantity and quality of the insects caught, and perhaps also on the situation where they are built. Their value is chiefly ascertained by the uniform fineness and delicacy of their texture; those that are white and transparent being most esteemed, and fetching often in ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... spontaneity, in company above his social or intellectual level. Such a man's danger was obvious; he might, in default of congenial associates, decline upon inferiors; all the more that a softness of heart, a fineness of humanity, ever disposed him to feel and show special kindness for the poor, the distressed, the unfortunate. Sherwood's acquaintances had little attraction for him; they were mostly people who lived in a luxurious way, went in for sports, talked about the money market—all of ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... those tiny features a resemblance to its father. Old Barbara, perceiving how bitterly the tears of the sufferer were falling on the cheeks of her lost treasure, now interfered. But the mother had still a last request to make. A few downy curls were perceptible on the temples—in colour and fineness resembling her own. She wished to rescue from the grave this slight remembrance of her poor nameless offspring; and her wish having been complied with, she suffered the babe to be taken from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
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