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Slate   Listen
noun
Slate  n.  
1.
(Min.) An argillaceous rock which readily splits into thin plates; argillite; argillaceous schist.
2.
Any rock or stone having a slaty structure.
3.
A prepared piece of such stone. Especially:
(a)
A thin, flat piece, for roofing or covering houses, etc.
(b)
A tablet for writing upon.
4.
An artificial material, resembling slate, and used for the above purposes.
5.
A thin plate of any material; a flake. (Obs.)
6.
(Politics) A list of candidates, prepared for nomination or for election; a list of candidates, or a programme of action, devised beforehand. (Cant, U.S.)
Adhesive slate (Min.), a kind of slate of a greenish gray color, which absorbs water rapidly, and adheres to the tongue; whence the name.
Aluminous slate, or Alum slate (Min.), a kind of slate containing sulphate of alumina, used in the manufacture of alum.
Bituminous slate (Min.), a soft species of sectile clay slate, impregnated with bitumen.
Hornblende slate (Min.), a slaty rock, consisting essentially of hornblende and feldspar, useful for flagging on account of its toughness.
Slate ax or Slate axe, a mattock with an ax end, used in shaping slates for roofs, and making holes in them for the nails.
Slate clay (Geol.), an indurated clay, forming one of the alternating beds of the coal measures, consisting of an infusible compound of alumina and silica, and often used for making fire bricks.
Slate globe, a globe the surface of which is made of an artificial slatelike material.
Slate pencil, a pencil of slate, or of soapstone, used for writing on a slate.
Slate rocks (Min.), rocks which split into thin laminae, not necessarily parallel to the stratification; foliated rocks.
Slate spar (Min.), a variety of calcite of silvery white luster and of a slaty structure.
Transparent slate, a plate of translucent material, as ground glass, upon which a copy of a picture, placed beneath it, can be made by tracing.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Slate" Quotes from Famous Books



... winter, both the teachers wished to attend an examination at Seir, and asked them if they would be diligent during their absence. "O, yes," was the reply, "if you will only let us write composition." The following was found on the slate of Nazloo, when ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary

... my cast-iron principles, I fixed up mostly on the inside of my head instead of the outside. I studied the map of the United States. I done several sums on the slate, to harden my mind, and help me grasp great facts, and meet difficulties bravely. I read Gass'es "Journal,"—how he rode up our great rivers on a perioger, and shot bears. Expectin', as I did, to see trouble, I read over agin that book that has been my ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)

... a worthy man! Perhaps 'tis his blood in me that withholds Unreasoning my hand from washing clear This scribbled slate with one quick tide of peace. Would more of him were in me! that like him I might spend eagerly a useful life In medicining miserable men Who were better dead—employ my force To aid a world within whose marrow dwells An evil none can ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke

... education of girls, and our rapid survey of the difficulties which attend the choice of a wife will explain up to a certain point this national frailty. Thus, after indicating frankly the aching malady under which the social slate is laboring, we have sought for the causes in the imperfection of the laws, in the irrational condition of our manners, in the incapacity of our minds, and in the contradictions which characterize our habits. A single point still claims our observation, ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... first heap she came to was open, so, picking out a good big turnip, she went on till she came to the churchyard wall, and sat down there to eat it. The village looked more desolate than usual. The slate roofs of the cottages were still wet with the rain that had fallen in the night, and a cold wind moaned in the yew-trees. There were only a few snowdrops out, and for once the sexton was not to be seen, but a heap of earth at ...
— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick

... was given a bag and a large basket. The bag was hung around the neck and the basket was placed at the end of the row. At the close of the day the overseer met all hands at the scales with the lamp, the slate and the whip. If any slave failed to pick the required 200 lbs. he was soundly whipped by the overseer. Sometimes they were able to escape this whipping by giving illness as an excuse. Another form of strategy adopted by the slaves was to dampen the ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration

... The worst of him is, he is one of the most indiscreet persons I ever met with. Does the queerest things, when the whim takes him, and doesn't care what other people think of it. They say the Lepels have all got a slate loose in the upper story. Oh, no; not a very old family—I mean, nothing compared to the family of his friend, young Rothsay. They count back, as I have heard, to the ancient kings of Scotland. Between ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins

... difficult to explain. You are so odd about James. He is either the sort of being you name in a whisper—or makes you edgy all over—like a slate-pencil. But James—I dare say you haven't noticed it: you think he's a clever man, and so he may be; but really he has never ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... enter it. Of course she knew that dancers and actors, both male and female, existed,—a whole troupe of them came every year to the small theatre of the country town which, by breaking out into an eruption of new slate-roofed houses among the few remaining picturesque gables and tiles of an earlier period, boasted of its "advancement" some eight or ten miles away; but her "father," as she had thought him, had an insurmountable objection to what he termed "gadding ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli

... old, when writers bold Betrayed the least disparity Between their genius and an age When frankness was a rarity, An odious word was often heard From critics void of charity, Simplicity or clarity, Or vision or hilarity, Who used to slate or deprecate The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various

... Showanon, Prescott alone, tenax propositi, held to his purpose, and death found him at his post. His grave is in the old "burial field" at Lancaster, yet not ten citizens can point it out. Over it stands a rude fragment from some ledge of slate rock, faintly incised with characters ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... thus obtained. But it is not quite certain yet that the grain of the rock—volcanic ash—will admit of the lettering. If this cannot be carried out, it has been determined to have the letters engraved upon a slab of Langdale slate, and imbed it ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth

... experienced, and, at last, came to Glanelg, a place on the seaside, opposite to Skie. We were, by this time, weary and disgusted, nor was our humour much mended by our inn, which, though it was built of lime and slate, the highlander's description of a house, which he thinks magnificent, had neither wine, bread, eggs, nor any thing that we could eat or drink. When we were taken up stairs, a dirty fellow bounced out of the bed, where one of us was to lie. Boswell ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... to heverythink, wus luck! That's where we're fogged. Passiges like foul pigstyes, gents, and backyards like black bogs, Banisters broke for firewood, and smashed winders stuffed with rags, These make the sniffers slate the poor, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various

... us into several. Some had two and even three stories, and the floors of slabs of stone or slate still remained. We at last reached a house larger than the rest, with a number of windows. Manco stopped in the centre of the chief hall, and said, stamping his foot, "Dig there." Lighting our torches, we stuck them in the ground, ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston

... always with him. When any one questioned him as to its contents, his answer was, "That will be known when the chest is opened." When he died he was buried with great honour and ceremony, and then the chest was opened by the expectant heirs. In it were found broken potsherds and bits of slate, and a long-handled, white wooden mallet with this legend ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... led the way along a narrow passage, roofed with rock and floored with slate-coloured shale and shingle, and winding in and out, until we stopped at a great stone block or boulder, lying across the floor, and as large as my mother's best oaken wardrobe. Beside it were several sledge-hammers, battered, and some with ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... so amply illustrated in every year of its working, continues. But at least, our bluff Englishman urges, the dead past can be suffered to bury those crimes and blunders of Unionism which you have enumerated. Let us start with a clean slate. Now, as will have been gathered from a previous chapter, we recognise in this invitation an accent of soundness. We modern Home Rulers desire above all to be loyal to the century in which we live. We are sick of that caricature which depicts ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle

... that if it pleased the surgeon to leave him there he could not possibly get out. Neither his size nor his phenomenal strength could assist him in the least. There was no furniture in the place. Half a dozen slabs of slate for the bodies were built against the wall, solid and immovable, and the door was of the heaviest oak, thickly studded with huge iron nails. If the dead men had been living prisoners their place of confinement could not have been more ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford

... Serpentine, stretching like a phantom lake, rose and slate-colored, through the Peter Pan haunted glades of Kensington Gardens. Then he emerged from the Victoria Gate and found himself ringing a bell and being admitted by a butler, who relieved him of his coat and hat with the ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson

... tell he squalled out loud, an' he th'owed spitballs, an' he make him some watermelon teeth, an' he paint a chicken light red an' tuck it to the teacher fer a dodo, an' he put cotton in his pants 'fore he got licked, an' he drawed the teacher on a slate. That's what you go to school fer is to have fun, an' I sho' is goin' to have fun when I goes, an' I ain't goin' to take no bulldozin' ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun

... natural. That is why we find their company so restful. Among acquaintances the pretence is worth making. But those who know anything at all about us are apt to find us out. That is why we find acquaintances such a nuisance. Among perfect strangers, who know nothing at all about us, we start with a clean slate. If our pretence do not come off, we have only ourselves to blame. And so we 'bluff' these strangers, blithely, for all we are worth, whether there be anything to gain or nothing. We all do it. Let us despise ourselves for doing it, but not one another. By which I mean, ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... the formation of dew on roads, slates were found to be useful. One slate was placed over a gravelly part of the road, and another over a hard dry part. Examined on dewy nights, the under sides of these slates were always found to be dripping wet, while their upper surfaces, and the ground all round, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various

... the woods the slate-colored snowbird starts up before me and chirps sharply. His protest when thus disturbed is almost metallic in its sharpness. He breeds here, and is not esteemed a snowbird at all, as he disappears at the near ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... waited in this auberge while the rain fell in torrents, the lightning blazed, and the thunder crashed. The whole sky was the colour of slate. When at length a line of bright light appeared in the western sky, I could curb my impatience no longer, and, hoisting my pack, I was soon on the ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... With the mind so crammed with other people's goods, how can you have room for any fresh manufactures of your own? A great memory is, I think, often fatal to originality, in spite of Scott and some other exceptions. The slate must be clear before you put your own writing upon it. When did Johnson ever discover an original thought, when did he ever reach forward into the future, or throw any fresh light upon those enigmas with which mankind is faced? Overloaded with the past, he had ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... materials employed there is progress to be noted. The brick-making machine and the Hoffmann kiln have economized labor and fuel, while attempts have been made, which I trust may prove successful, for utilizing the clay which is to be found in the form of slate in those enormous mounds of waste which disfigure the landscape in the neighborhood of slate quarries. Certain artificial stones, moreover, appear at last to be made with a uniformity and a power of endurance, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various

... of her, too, were black, frowning precipices, full of seams and fissures and inequalities, showing vague and shadowy in the fading rays of the sun. Here and there were the huge, gaping mouths of gloomy slate quarries that had long been disused, and were now half full of foul water. Around them the earth was heaped with loose fragments of rock which had evidently been detached from the principal mass and shivered to pieces in the fall. A few trees, among which were the black walnut, the slippery ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell

... Maramba spoke of the black stone with the Tibetan legends appearing on it, I at once recalled that it was possible. In southeastern Urianhai, in Ulan Taiga, I came across a place where black slate was decomposing. All the pieces of this slate were covered with a special white lichen, which formed very complicated designs, reminding me of a Venetian lace pattern or whole pages of mysterious runes. When the slate was wet, these designs disappeared; and then, as they were dried, ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski

... Arkansas Territory are various species. Here may be found the native magnet, or magnetic oxide of iron, possessing strong magnetic power. Iron ores are very abundant. Sulphate of copper, sulphuret of zinc, alum, and aluminous slate are found about the cove of Washitau, and the Hot Springs. Buhr stone of a superior quality exists in the surrounding hills. The hot springs are interesting on account of the minerals around them, the heat of their waters, and as furnishing ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck

... disturbed, and panting, in a sluggish agony, with eyes closed, or half opened, when let alone. It distressed me a good deal; and I felt relieved, though somewhat shocked, when B—— put an end to its misery by squeezing its head and throwing it out of the window. They were of a slate-color, and might, I suppose, have been able to shift for themselves.—The other day a little yellow bird flew into one of the empty rooms, of which there are half a dozen on the lower floor, and could not find his way out again, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various

... ruby. It burns with a glow, but does not blaze. Most of the anthracite coal is used in houses, and householders will not buy it unless the pieces are of nearly the same size and free from dirt, coal dust, and slate. The work of preparation is done in odd-shaped buildings called "breakers." One part of a breaker is often a hundred or a hundred and fifty feet in height. The coal is carried to the top of the breaker. From there it makes a journey ...
— Diggers in the Earth • Eva March Tappan

... in storied box Of triple epoch, we survey the rocks, A learned nomenclature! Behold in time Strange forms imprison'd, forms of every clime! The Sauras quaint, daguerrotyped on slate, Obsolete birds and mammoths out of date; Colossal bones, that, once before our flood, Were clothed in flesh, and warm'd with living blood; And tiny creatures, crumbling into dust, All mix'd and kneaded in one common ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various

... and Mr. Furze went to chapel; then Mrs. Furze went on fine days, and, after a little interval, Mr. Furze went on a fine day. A fund had been set going to "restore" the church: the heavy roof was to be removed, and a much lighter and handsomer roof covered with slate was to be substituted; the stonework of many of the windows, which the rector declared had begun to show "signs of incipient decay," was to be cut out and replaced with new, so as to make, to use the ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford

... family in the very humblest condition, who yet were holding and equally prizing the same opinions, at which, after so much research and labor, I had myself arrived. I perceived in this power of Christianity to adapt itself to minds so different in their slate of previous preparation, and in their ability to examine and sift a question which was offered to them; in the facility and quickness with which it seized both upon the understanding and the affections; in the deep convictions which it produced ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... But the Navy of the Future, TOMMY ATKINS, is our care, We have gone through many changes, and for others must prepare. It will make the Navy popular, more prospect of advance; And what I say is, TOMMY,—let the young uns have a chance! Some I know will cry "Impossible," and slate the scheme like fun. Most good things are "impossible," my TOMMY,—till they're done! Quarter-decks won't fill from fokesels, not to any great extent; But, give good men a better chance! I guess that's all that's meant. As the Times says, werry sensible and kind-like, prejudice, Though strong ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 31, 1891 • Various

... for instance, of a weight of at least an hundred tons, was distinctly recognisable as identical in every respect with the granitic syenite of Schooley's mountain, distant at least forty miles. Others had no known type nearer than Connecticut, in the opposite direction, while the gneiss and mica slate of the island of New-York, with their various embedded minerals, the serpentine and many of the magnesian minerals of Hoboken, with sandstone and trap of the Pallisadoc range, were distinctly recognisable. In this great ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... the Carpathians consist of various older strata—secondary, primary, and metamorphic—and the rocks of which they are composed are limestone, marble, schist (mica-schist and slate), and gneiss. On the summits are found conglomerates formed of quartz, ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson

... colour against it. Through the green grass and the green corn below crept two silvery threads, meeting far away and flowing in one—the two rivers which watered the valley of Strathglamour. Between the rivers lay the gray stone town, with its roofs of thatch and slate. One of its main streets stopped suddenly at the bridge with the three arches above Tibbie's cottage; and at the other end of the bridge ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... than your marbles hard I love the tender slate, Than Tiber more the Loire, and France than Rome, Mine own dear hills than Palatinus' state, More than the salt sea breeze the ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... sunshine as well as the mass of Jupiter. A triangle with its apex in the sun, and its base beyond the solar system, has the same properties and comes under the same laws as one that a schoolboy scrawls upon his slate. God's truth is not too great to rule the smallest duties. The star in the East was a guide to the humble house at Bethlehem, and there are starry truths high in the heavens that avail for our guidance in the smallest acts ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... of course to see only fragments of the carriages and the dead bodies of its inmates, but the gods had taken them into their almighty protection, and there lay the carriage, with broken wheels, in the arms of two gigantic cypresses which had taken firm root in the fissures of the slate rocks, and whose dark tops reached up to the edge of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... down and awkwardly lighted his pipe. "Wanted to begin again with what they call a clean slate. Besides, the stove's the best place ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss

... very convenient word with a meaning easily adaptable to all sorts of explanations; but if there were no bounds and no end to this explaining by suggestion, we might as well rub out from our suggested slate of life, with a suggested sponge, the whole beautiful world of clear and eternal realities. No, the Christ of Lucia and my mother was no suggested fancy, but a ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden

... In the Place contiguous to the Temple Protestant is the H. du Rhne, 8 to 10 frs. In a garden of its own, Le Chlet. Near the diligence office, the France. The H. Very. Nearly a mile from Allevard at the junction of the lias with the primitive talc-slate rise the springs, temp. 61 Fahr., with a great deal of free sulphuric acid gas, especially efficacious in diseases of the throat and the respiratory organs, for the cure of which the establishment is especially adapted, the apparatus for inhalation ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black

... was a regular pass, which put me wonderfully in mind of the passes of Spain. It took us a long time to get to the top. After resting a minute on the summit we began to descend. My guide pointed out to me some slate-works, at some distance on our left. "There is a great deal of work going on there, sir," said he: "all the slates that you see descending the canal at Llangollen came from there." The next moment we heard ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... rodents. It passed all its leisure time in preening its fur, and after eating always most scrupulously cleaned its hands and face. It was easily taught, and in course of time it could perform many surprising feats. I made a small trapeze, the bar being a slate pencil about four inches long, which was wound with yarn and hung from strings of the same; and on this the rat would perform like an acrobat, appearing to enjoy the exercise as much as the performance always delighted me. I made a long cord out of ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... that evening. Rain drummed against the slate roof of Peter's house and reverberated through the rooms to where Mirestone and the Dutchman sat by the fire in silence. Mirestone broke the still atmosphere by putting forth a question that Peter somehow knew would be coming ...
— The White Feather Hex • Don Peterson

... trying to slip past on the other side of the street. Someone caught sight of her and with a whoop the Apaches were upon her pell-mell. She began to run, but they hemmed her in. One tugged at her braided hair. Another flipped mud at her dress from the end of a stick. Merrill snatched her slate and made off ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine

... hesitations, and he stole back into his darkling sitting-room. He paused in the doorway. The stranger was still in the same attitude, dark against the window. Save for the singing of some sailors aboard one of the little slate-carrying ships in the harbour, the evening was very still. Outside, the spikes of monkshood and delphinium stood erect and motionless against the shadow of the hillside. Something flashed into Isbister's ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells

... took courage from the warmth of her welcome. His heart beat high with a hope which no ordinary mundane affairs could have inspired. All the ill-fate behind him was wiped off the slate. The world shone radiant before eyes, which, at such times, are mercifully blinded to realities. An Almighty Providence sees that every man shall live to the full such moments as were his just then. It is in the great balance of things. The greater the ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum

... imperforate and while the 3d, of which at least three millions were issued, varies but little in shade, the 6d, printed in comparatively small quantities, provides a number of striking tints. In his check-list, Mr. Howes gives "black-violet, deep-violet, slate-violet, brown-violet, dull purple, slate, black brown, brownish black, and greenish black", and we have no doubt the list could be considerably amplified, though the above should be sufficient for the most ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole

... or four days they should turn to a light slate color if they are the sort of eggs we want. Those that remain yellow are the unfertilized ones and will be of no use to ...
— The Story of Silk • Sara Ware Bassett

... withheld until nearly morning. It was more than hinted that this delay was prolonged until the returns had been received from all other precincts, so that any deficiencies might be made up by the sixth. The "slate" went through unbroken. ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White

... Pack's skeleton regiments were enveloped yet not overwhelmed by four brigades of the French infantry. From the others I received at the time a promise that the accusation against young Mackenzie should be wiped off the slate by his death, and the affair kept secret between us. Since then, however, there has come to me an explanation which—though hard indeed to credit—may, if true, exculpate the lad. I laid it before the others, and they agreed that if, in spite of precautions, the affair should ever ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... the third or youngest of the children of the cardinal virtue, Temperance; and apt to be despised, being more given to arithmetic, and other vulgar studies (Cinderella-like), than her elder sisters; but she is useful in the household, and arrives at great results with her yard-measure and slate-pencil—a pretty little Marchande des Modes, cutting her dress always according to the silk (if this be the proper feminine reading of "coat according to the cloth"), so that, consulting with her carefully of a ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin

... no triumph: no defeat: Only an empty pail, a slate rubbed clean, A merciful putting away ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke

... hotel, and that we mustn't bother ourselves about it for she wasn't going to; Anitra and she had run this road too many times when they were children. That is all I have to tell of my intercourse with these ladies prior to our appearance at the hotel. I think it right for me to clear the slate, Ransom. Who knows what we may wish ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green

... and Otto are exactly the same, whether you read them forward or backward—exactly the same. I'll just show you." He took down a child's slate that was hanging on the wall with a stump of slate-pencil, and began laboriously to write the names. "Now, ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... Appearance of Materialized Substance. Materialized Spirit Forms. Scientific Proof of Materialization. How To Conduct a Materializing Seance. Trumpet Mediumship. Spirit Playing on Musical Instruments. Independent Slate Writing. The Slate Writing Circle. Spirit Paintings. Practical Advice to ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita

... crescendos. With the exception of one, who looked like a faded kid glove, the men discarded the grease paint, but the women under their make-ups ranged from pure white, pale yellow, and sickly greens to brick reds and slate grays. They were dressed in costumes that were not primarily intended for picnic going. But they could sing, and they did sing, with their voices, their bodies, their souls. They threw themselves into it because ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... several which are spread over the greater part of the northern continent, some indeed being found also in great numbers in South America. These are the turkey vulture, the black vulture, the little rusty-crowned falcon, the pigeon hawk, slate-coloured hawk, red-tailed buzzard, American horned owl, little American owl, and five other species of falcons. The ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... is generated, and which is connected by a pipe on the left hand with a large galvanised iron receptacle for steaming food for pigs, and on the right with a large wooden tub, lined with copper, in which the cake, mixed with water, is made into a thick soup. Adjoining this is a slate tank, of sufficient size to contain one feed for the entire lot of bullocks feeding. Into this tank is laid chaff with a three-grained fork, and pressed down firmly; and this process is repeated until the slate tank is full, when it is covered down for an hour or two before feeding ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron

... came up Whitehall Street recently, he met a little colored boy carrying a slate and a number of books. Some words passed between them, but their exact purport will probably never be known. They were unpleasant, for the attention of a wandering policeman was called to the matter by hearing the old man ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris

... buxom was Miss Peecher; cherry-cheeked and tuneful of voice. A little pincushion, a little hussie, a little book, a little work-box, a little set of tables and weights and measures, and a little woman all in one. She could write a little essay on any subject exactly a slate long, and strictly according to rule. If Mr. Bradley Headstone had proposed marriage to her, she would certainly have replied 'yes,' for she loved him;" but Mr. Headstone did not love Miss Peecher—he loved Lizzie Hexam, and had no love to spare for any other ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... to her and takes her playfully by the ear.) The same little featherhead! Suppose, now, that I borrowed fifty pounds today, and you spent it all in the Christmas week, and then on New Year's Eve a slate fell on my head ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen

... is Newburgh, which is in the great valley of Lower Silurian or Cambrian limestone and slate. North of that, on the west side of the river, the formations occur in their usual order, their outcrops running northeast and southwest. On the N. Y. C. & H. R. R. R., on the east side, the same valley crosses, and the slates from Fishkill to Rhinebeck are about the same place in the series; ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce

... platforms, the metal track which contracts into the murk is the road to China, though that is, perhaps, the last place you would guess to be at the end of it. The train runs over a wilderness of tiles, a grey plateau of bare slate and rock, its expanse cracked and scored as though by a withering heat. Nothing grows there; nothing could live there. Smoke still pours from it, as though it were volcanic, from numberless vents. The region is without sap. Above ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson

... that part of Normandy called the Pays de Caux, when, as evening was closing in, he perceived the turrets of an ancient chateau rising out of the trees of its walled park, each turret with its high conical roof of gray slate, like a candle with an ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... old friend of mine" (she sighed a little, some time I may tell you why), "and treats me with infinite bowing and respect; so the donkey, not to be out of medical fashion, bows too, though it is sadly against the grain; and he pulled a face as if he had heard a slate- pencil gritting against a slate, when I told Doctor Trevor I meant to sit up with the two lads, for I call Mr. Gray little more than a lad, and a pretty conceited one, ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell

... little village of North Oxford, Massachusetts. She was the youngest child of a large family, and her brothers and sisters were very proud of her because she learned so rapidly and because she was never afraid of anything. She would follow her oldest brother about the house with a slate, begging him to give her hard sums to do. Out of doors she was eager for adventure; her brother David often said, "Clara is never afraid, she can ride any colt on the farm," and often he would throw her on the bare back ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford

... pasteboards, or common cards, might be still more convenient. The difficulty is, how to reconcile figures which must have a very sensible breadth to our ideas of a mathematical line, which, as it has neither breadth nor thickness, will revolt more at these than at simple lines drawn on paper or slate. If, after reflecting on this proposition, you would prefer having them made here, lay your commands on me, and they ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson

... the northward I beheld the other yacht standing out in bold relief upon a blacker, more dismal background. She was beautiful at that moment—her sides and sails unnaturally whitened against the gloom, suggesting a cameo set on a piece of slate. Our blocks began to creak, sails bulged into huge scoops, masts tilted majestically, and the Whim, freed from her enforced idleness, bounded ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... slate bright, penetrating eyes. He was quite an old man in his ways—wise even from his babyhood, and quiet even when Guy snubbed him; but, I noticed, he did not come to "kiss and make friends" so soon as Guy. And though Guy was much the naughtiest, ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... Orpheus Crisodd's Devilgrass Symphony was first played in Carnegie Hall an audience three times as great as that admitted had to be accommodated outside with loudspeakers and when the awesome crescendo of horns, drums, and broken crockery rubbed over slate surfaces announced the climax of the sixth movement, the crowds wept. Even for Mozart the hall ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... have been supposed to be asleep. Close by was a small heap of limpet and mussel shells, and within his reach were two bottles—one was empty, but the other was full of water. Another object attracted their attention. It was a piece of slate, on which were scratched several zigzag marks, which had apparently been formed by the hand of the dying man, who had probably in his last moments attempted to write his name and give some ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston

... Robert), mate on a bark trading between Liverpool and St. John's, N.B., sees a man writing in the captain's cabin, a stranger who disappears after pencilling certain lines on the slate. These prove a providential warning by which the vessel escapes certain destruction. The story is told by Robert Dale Owen in Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World, and ...
— 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.

... Congregationalists, and was formerly known as Connaught Chapel. Just beyond the chapel we come to the St. Marylebone Almshouses. They are built round three sides of a square, and enclose a quadrangle of green grass. The blue slate roofs and drab stuccoed walls form a gentle contrast. The central house, occupied by the superintendent, is fronted by a clock over the ...
— Hampstead and Marylebone - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... do just now to fix up our general earthly affairs. But we may as well clean the slate between us two. That will help our consciences a little. I haven't any quarrel with you any more. We won't be mushy about it. But let's ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... billowy masses of slate-colored clouds came rolling on, obscuring the sunlit landscape beneath with an effect of lights turned down on a stage. Turning to Jess, who occupied the seat behind ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham

... empties into it, is the largest part of it, and forms a curious pouch called the cecum, or "blind" pouch. From one side of this projects a little wormlike tube, twisted and coiled upon itself, from three to six inches long and of about the size of a slate pencil. This is the famous appendix vermiformis (meaning, "wormlike tag"), which is such a frequent source of trouble. It is the shrunken and shriveled remains of a large pouch of the intestine which once opened into the cecum, ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson

... only got to mind the ship's course, and keep your slate to half a point. A babby could do that, let alone a college graduate like you. There ain't nothing TO sailoring, when you come to look it in the face. And now we'll go and put her about. Bring the slate; we'll have to start our ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... drop in on him again if they ever chanced up that way. As they passed below the mouth of Grand river, the scenery began to change. Instead of grassy buttes, the prairies were crowned with clay hills, riven as though by volcanic action and the river flowed under huge cliffs of a peculiar slate color. Wild vines twined their tendrils over shores ancient and fossilized, that were trod by tribes whose camp fires had burned out before Columbus ever dreamed of the new world. About four miles below Grand river, on a bluish cliff that shot out in the water almost ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton

... de figgurs on de slate—de queerest figgurs I ebber did see. Ise gittin' to be skeered, I tell you. Hab for to keep mighty tight eye 'pon him 'noovers. Todder day he gib me slip 'fore de sun up and was gone de whole ob de blessed ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... The farmhouse was half frame, half white brick, with a slate roof. It was apparently only one story high. On impulse, Rick gave a long blast on the ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin

... the Earl of Coventry the strange fact that the Earl of Devon's harriers last week gave chase, in his demesne, to an unhappy donkey, whom they tore to pieces before they could be called off; upon which his lordship asked for a piece of chalk and a slate, and composed the following jeu d'esprit ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various

... useless inlets of the Cumberland, Welsh, and Scotch lakes, and turning them, with their rivers, into navigable reservoirs and canals, there would be no difficulty in working the whole of our mountain districts as a gigantic quarry of slate and granite, from which all the rest of the world might be supplied with roofing ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

... of which the first open-plumbing fixtures were made consisted of marble, copper, zinc, slate, iron, and clay. Time soon proved that marble and slate were absorbent, copper and zinc soon leaked from wear, iron rusted, and clay cracked and lacked strength; therefore these materials soon became insanitary, and foul odors were easily detected rising from the fixture. Besides ...
— Elements of Plumbing • Samuel Dibble

... even told of cootie fights during long, rainy winter evenings which must be spent indoors. The harborers of the contestants simply reached under their shirts, drew forth a doughty grey-backed warrior, placed him on a child's slate which was used as an arena, and ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill

... in the air. Near these a simpler building attracts the eyes of the traveller by its magnificent situation and imposing size; it is the chateau of Chaumont. Built upon the highest hill of the shore, it frames the broad summit with its lofty walls and its enormous towers; high slate steeples increase their loftiness, and give to the building that conventual air, that religious form of all our old chateaux, which casts an aspect of gravity over the landscape of most of our provinces. Black and tufted ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... right idea!" exclaimed the blacksmith, evidently pleased. "All Cheyenne's friends have been waitin' for years for him to clean that slate and start fresh again. He used to be a right-smart hand, ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... as I looked out of my window one dull November day, the only cheerful thing I saw was the red cap of a messenger who was examining the slate that hung on a wall opposite my hotel. A tall man with gray hair and beard, one arm, and a blue army-coat. I always salute, figuratively at least, when I see that familiar blue, especially if one sleeve of the coat is empty; so I ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott

... and Rosa Nell (that ain't her name, as you can see by the initial stake if you want to dig it out from under the snow) is the half owner today of one of the handsomest quartz ledges on the whole Seward Peninsula. Walls of grey slate and trachyte, and the yellow stuff is good and plenty. Zounds, boys! I wish I had a bumper," and the speaker threw his furry cap ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan

... a rock or mountain side, and even Marco Basaiti, whose landscape has hardly been surpassed by Giovanni Bellini himself, could not treat a rock as he treated other natural objects. As for Giovanni Bellini, I do not at this moment remember to have seen him ever attempt a bit of slate, or hard grey gritty sandstone rock. This is not so with Gaudenzio, his rocks in the Magi chapel, and again in the Pieta compartment of his fresco in the church of St. Maria delle Grazie, at the foot of the ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler

... crisp, cold night outside; starry, wintry, but open weather, and clear; the ground would be just right on the morrow, neither hard as the slate of a billiard-table, nor wet as the slush of a quagmire. Forest King slept steadily on in his warm and spacious box, dreaming doubtless of days of victory, cub-hunting in the reedy October woods and ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... budding greenery, almost met together. Under their branches she made her way, to where the lane opened out to a grassy square, on which stood a tiny whitewashed cottage. The thatch reached low over the door, and its one window no bigger than a child's slate. There were no signs of life, but Sara did not hesitate to raise the wooden latch and open the door, ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine

... the kitchen, parlour, or whatever it was, a nice little room with a slate floor. They made me sit down at a table by the window, which was already laid for a meal. There was a clean cloth upon it, a tea-pot, cups and saucers, a large plate of bread-and-butter, and a plate, on which were a few very thin slices of brown, ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow

... Broad, the avenue spruces up a bit and enters upon a vivacious phase. Dogs are frequent: white bull terriers lie sunning in the shop windows. Offers to lend money are enticing. There is a fascinating slate yard at 1525, where great gray slabs lie in the sun, a temptation to urchins with a bit of chalk. In the warm bask of the afternoon there rises a pleasing aroma of fruits and vegetables piled up in baskets and crates on the pavement. Grapes ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley

... across a pewter plate, On the grey disk of the unrippling sea, Beneath an airless, sullen sky of slate Dazzled destroyers zig-zag restlessly, While underneath the sleek and livid tide, Blind monsters nosing through the soundless deep, Lean submarines among blind fishes glide And through ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various

... course a good score of them ran away to tell that the Captain had murdered his father. The milk-man stood there with his yoke and cans, and his naily boots on our new oil-cloth, and, not being able to hide himself plainly, he pulled out his slate and ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... anthracite coal measures yet worked; and the worn folds about Lake Superior have yielded the ores that have made the United States the foremost copper and steel manufacturing country of the world. Gold, silver, tin, lead, zinc, platinum, granite, slate, and marble occur mainly ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway

... of a barren little field, he saw Benjulia's house—a hideous square building of yellow brick, with a slate roof. A low wall surrounded the place, having another iron gate at the entrance. The enclosure within was as barren as the field without: not even an attempt at flower-garden or kitchen-garden was visible. At a distance of some two hundred yards from the house ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins

... Melville Carter had paid the bill the March Hare owed and deposited the remainder of their combined cash in the bank, so that the accounts now stood even. Whatever should now become of the magazine, its slate was a clean one so far as ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett

... filial respect, I hope, to confess that these are wearisome memories. We went in solemn procession, the family being invariably ready and waiting when I arrived. We sat in a long row in a pew quite in front of the slate-colored pulpit—my mother sitting sternly upright at the outer end, my tallest sister next, and so on, in regular progression, down to wretched baby Gertrude and me. The very color of the pew, a dull Spanish brown, was enough to send one to ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic

... entirely composed of cottages whose stone walls and thick slate roofs are beautifully mellowed by the hand of time. Nowhere does there appear anything new to jar with the silver greys and the grey greens of the old cottages, the church, and the ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home

... sir," said Will Ward, the cabin-boy, advancing with a slate in his hand, "I can't make out the sum you set me yesterday, an' I'm quite sure I've tried and tried as hard as ever I ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne

... instrument I had purchased, and felt a sudden expansion of my boyish frame! It was my world! I deposited it in my pocket among other valuables,—twine, marbles, slate-pencils, &c. I went home to my father; I told him how long I had toiled for it, and how eagerly I had spent time, which others had allotted to play, to possess myself ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders

... person they came up to had scrawled a variety of figures on a piece of slate. Harley had the curiosity to take a nearer view of them. They consisted of different columns, on the top of which were marked South-sea annuities, India-stock, and Three per cent. annuities consol. "This," said Harley's instructor, "was a gentleman well ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie

... governess, who came to keep school for three hours every morning. When Hugh forgot his lesson, and sat staring at the upper panes of the window, in a reverie about his future travels; or when he was found to have been drawing a soldier on his slate instead of doing his sum, Miss Harold reminded him what a pretty figure a soldier would cut who knew no geography, or a sailor who could not make his reckonings, for want of attending early to his arithmetic Hugh could not deny this; but he was always wishing that school-hours were over, ...
— The Crofton Boys • Harriet Martineau

... a harpooned him? that's all. He made a considerable of a long yarn of it, and as it was a text he had often enlarged on, I thought he never would have ended, but like other preachers, when he got heated, spit on the slate, rub it all out, and cypher it over again. Thinks I to myself, I'll play you ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... spacing between records. The operation of the printing hammers is such that the uniform motion of the type wheel is not disturbed in the act of printing. The whole instrument is mounted on a heavy slate plate 45 cm. by 60 cm., and protected by a ...
— Astronomical Instruments and Accessories • Wm. Gaertner & Co.

... A slate or flat stone acts like a mulch; if you leave one on the soil for a few days in hot weather and then lift it up on a hot day you will see that the soil underneath is quite moist; you may also find several slugs or other animals that have gone there for the sake of the coolness ...
— Lessons on Soil • E. J. Russell



Words linked to "Slate" :   slate roof, roofing material, destine, slating, list, slate-black, clean slate, intend, slate-grey, sedimentary rock, listing, designate, tablet, slate pencil, slate-gray, cross-file, slate club, slate-colored junco, register



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