"Span" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a-do-be; also corrupted to dobie; from the Span. adobar, to plaster, traceable through Arabic to an Egyptian hieroglyph meaning "brick''), a Spanish-American word for the sun-dried clay used by the Indians for building in some of the south-western states of the American Union, this method having ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... into a large room which occupied the entire upper floor of the side building, and was not unlike the ruins of a former banqueting-hall. The heavy, smoke-blackened ceiling went right up under the span roof and had once been decorated; but most of the plaster had now fallen down, and the ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... shaken-witted thing, 'Plaining his little span. But of proud virgin joy the appropriate birth, The Son of God ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... to Lord Carnarvon shortly after the close of the arduous parliamentary session of 1885. There can be little doubt that these words expressed his inmost sentiments at the time. He had passed the allotted span of threescore years and ten, had 'sounded all the depths and shoals of honour,' and was beginning to look forward to a brief period of freedom from the cares of state before he should be too old to enjoy it. His great work was done. The scattered colonies ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... when the high sea span About the rocks a web of foam, I saw the ghost of a Cornishman Come home. I saw the ghost of a Cornishman Run from the weariness of war, I heard him laughing as he ran Across his unforgotten shore. The great cliff, gilded by the west, Received ...
— Twenty • Stella Benson
... sight in the distance, and his boat drifted further and further out upon the blue waters. Somehow, he knew not why, he felt unusually happy that morning; and he could not help wishing that, like the tortoise he set free the day before, he had thousands of years to live instead of his own short span ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... instinct, that the life he craved for was not to be found in America, but awaited him in Europe. In the following year he carried his point, and set off for Paris—a departure which may fairly be called his Hegira, the turning-point of his history. That it shortened his span there can be little doubt. Had he settled down to literary work, in his native city, he might have lived to old age. But it secured him four years of the tense and poignant joy of living on which his heart was set; ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... jump over the fence and run away, but stay and let them make a handsome, useful span of ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... corn. [273] "What are we going to name it?" they said. "The best name is Galinginayen, for it is the name of the ancestor of the people who live in Kadalayapan," said the alan. Gamayawan gave him a bath and he grew about one span, for she used her magic. Not long after the baby was large, for she always used her magic when she bathed him. [274] Not long after ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole
... mean he was murdered," the officer hastened to add, seeing my mistake. "He was on the middle span of the bridge when it was carried away by the flood, and that's ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... acting by broken efforts, as man is seen to act. On the other side we have the conception that all we see around us and feel within us—the phenomena of physical nature as well as those of the human mind—have their unsearchable roots in a cosmical life, if I dare apply the term, an infinitesimal span of which is offered to the investigation of man.' Among thinking people, in my opinion, this last conception has a higher ethical value than that of a personal artificer. Be that as it may, I make here no claim for the theory of evolution which can ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... of drill and chisel as the blasting and the shaping of the stone goes on. The snows of winters have drifted deep above its rough beginnings; the suns of many a spring have melted the snows away. Well nigh a generation of human lives has already measured its brief span about the cornerstones. Far-brought, many-tongued toilers, toiling on the rising walls, have dropped their work and stretched themselves in their last sleep; others have climbed to their places; the work goes on. Upon the shoulders of the images of the Apostles, which stand about the chancel, ...
— A Cathedral Singer • James Lane Allen
... while crawling? How many joints are there to the body? Note the short fine hair all over the body which gives it the appearance of green velvet. What color is the head? How does the caterpillar feed? Write a brief description of the worm. Do not mistake it for the cabbage span-worm which is also green, but which walks by ...
— An Elementary Study of Insects • Leonard Haseman
... to span Behring Strait and connect North America with Asia and Europe by an international railway. This line, if constructed, would be simply an extension of the proposed Pan-American railroad and would follow the western coast of the ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... feel that I am derelict if I do not manage a jaunt to the Cliff House. The most desirable method demands a span of horses for a spin out Point Lobos Avenue. We may, however, be obliged to take a McGinn bus that leaves the Plaza hourly. It will be all the same when we reach the Cliff and gaze on Ben Butler and his companion sea-lions as they disport themselves ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... rich men of Mexico, the first Count of Regla, and one who has succeeded to his mine. As I was standing on the Paseo, a lad passed driving a fine span of mules. "That is the Count de Galvez," said my companion, "the son of the late Count Perez Galvez, the lucky proprietor of the bonanza in the mine of ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... situation naturally seems both appalling and intolerable, at the first blush. It must be confessed that, to begin with, Kirkwood drew a long and disconsolate face over his fix. And in that black hour, primitive of its kind in his brief span, he became conscious of a sinister apparition taking shape at his elbow—a shade of darkness which, clouting him on the back with a skeleton hand, croaked hollow salutations in ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... Mylne, grandson of Johnson's foe. The design of Mr. Page was first selected, as the handsomest and cheapest. It consisted of only three arches. Ultimately Mr. Joseph Cubitt won the prize. Cubitt's bridge has five arches, the centre one eighty-nine feet span; the style, Venetian Gothic; the cost, L265,000. The piers are grey, the columns red, granite; the bases and capitals are of carved Portland stone; the bases, balustrades, and roads of somewhat ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Budge engaged the rooms, and speedily arrived to take possession, bringing with him a spick-and-span new fishing-rod and basket. He did not know much about fishing, but he enjoyed himself just as thoroughly as if he did; and he laughed so good-humouredly at his own Cockney blunders, as he called them, that Thomas would ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... a dear old man, sire, kindly and gentle. The beggars and little children call him their patron saint. Well past the allotted span of years, he has prayed to be spared until the day when he can anoint the head of the King of Krovitch. Then, he says, he will ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... shelf that was his bed behind a huge padlocked door and gazed dreamily out through the bars—when he was not carrying a bundle to the train for his wardens or engaged in the janitor duties that kept Corozal station so spick and span. Oh! To be sure there were also a couple of negro policemen in the smaller room behind the thin wooden partition of our own, but negro policemen scarcely count ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... Rome. Three street urchins were teasing and maltreating a rough coated, muddy little cur. Brinnaria called imperiously to her lictor to interfere. He was too far ahead to hear her. Her coachman had all he could do to control her mettlesome span of Spanish mares. She spoke to the boys and they laughed at her. Before she knew it she had flung open her carriage door, had leapt out, had cuffed soundly the ears of the three dumbfounded gamins, and was back among her cushions, the dog in ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... Gothland and Norway, turns eastwards, widening much in breadth, and is bounded by a curve of firm land. This limit of the sea the elders of our race called Grandvik. Thus between Grandvik and the Southern Sea there lies a short span of mainland, facing the seas that wash on either shore; and but that nature had set this as a boundary where the billows almost meet, the tides of the two seas would have flowed into one, and cut off Sweden and Norway into an island. The regions ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... were in a straight line with those of the next boy, each shoulder-strap set at the same angle as its fellows, each gun was as well polished as its neighbor, and the spick and span appearance the line presented, after its long fatiguing march, spoke volumes in favor ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 27, May 13, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... advice and warnings so loudly that everybody could hear, and you know it is not well to reprove a child before company if it can be helped. Indeed, it was this very question that was troubling the span of Bays now. Each of them had a two-year-old Colt, and they knew that it was nearly time for the farmer to put these Colts to work. The span of Bays were sisters, so of course their children were cousins, and they were all very fond of each other and of the Blind Horse, who was the uncle ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... may repaint iron and wood; but who can restore the faded colours to broken hopes and a bankrupt ambition? You see these arches here which with so light a span bear the burden of the house above them. So was the span of my heart on that opening day. No weight of labour then seemed to be too much for me. The arches remain and will remain; but ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... millinery, jewellery, and frizzled false hair, or else—far more horrible still—social hermaphrodites, who storm the posts that have been assigned to men ever since that venerable and sacred time when 'Adam delved and Eve span,' and who, forsaking holy home haunts, wage war against nature on account of the mistake made in their sex, and clamour for the 'hallowed inalienable right' to jostle and be jostled at the polls; to brawl in the market place, and to rant on the ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... When this spick-and-span non-commissioned officer demanded Mr. Traill's price for the little dog that took his eye, the landlord replied curtly that Bobby was not for sale. The soldier ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... to be expected that those who assumed a power so preposterous as that of prolonging the life of man for several centuries, should pretend, at the same time, to foretell the events which were to mark that preternatural span of existence. The world would as readily believe that they had discovered all secrets, as that they had only discovered one. The most celebrated astrologers of Europe, three centuries ago, were alchymists. Agrippa, Paracelsus, Dr. Dee, and the Rosicrucians, all laid as much stress upon their ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... center of the room. He is faultlessly clad in a black suit, spick and span from top to toe). Here I am! ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... two a wild idea crossed Dalgard's mind. How long was the natural life span of a snake-devil? Until the coming of the colonists they had been the undisputed rulers of the deserted continent, stupid as they were, simply because of their strength and ferocity. A twelve-foot, scale-armored monster, that ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... stream, And fishes poising where the waters ran, And lo! upon the glass a golden gleam, And purple as of robes Sidonian, Then, sudden turning, she beheld a man, That knelt beside her; as her own face fair Was his, and o'er his shoulders for a span Fell the bright tresses of his ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... two thousand pounds. Well might Gladstone say of him, as he did,—"Rare is the privilege of any man who, having fourteen years ago rendered to his country one signal and splendid service, now again, within the same brief span of life, decorated neither by rank nor title, bearing no mark to distinguish him from the people whom he loves, has been permitted to perform a great and memorable service to his sovereign ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... the house the front door was open, but nobody was to be seen. Bob and Jim, the two small boys, had not yet returned from seeing the gray span taken to the mill, and the women and girls had gone ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... lap would have yielded thee one petty drop of the essence which had filched from his store of life but a moment? Me, who so loved and so cherished him—me he would have doomed to the pitiless cord of my servant, the Strangler, if my death could have lengthened a hairbreadth the span of his being. But what matters to me his crime or his madness? I loved ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... a good idea of "Caledonia stern and wild," and at the same time had developed in us an enormous appetite when by two o'clock we entered the hotel facing Bonar Bridge for our dinner. The bridge was a fine substantial iron structure of about 150 feet span, having a stone arching at either end, and was of great importance, as it connected main roads and did away with the ferry which once existed there. As we crossed the bridge we noticed two vessels from Sunderland discharging coals, and some fallen fir-trees lying on ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... composed chiefly of hibiscus, pandanus, and cocoa-nut trees, with here and there a large pisonia, close to the lagoon. One gigantic specimen of this last species, which we stopped a moment to admire, could not have been less than twenty feet in girth. Max, Morton, Arthur, and myself, could not quite span it, taking hold of hands, and Johnny had to join the ring, to make it complete. For several hours we continued our journey pretty steadily, encountering no living thing, except tern, gannets, and other sea-birds, and ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... in relating that Porus was four cubits and a span high, and that when he was upon his elephant, which was of the largest size, his stature and bulk were so answerable, that he appeared to be proportionably mounted, as a horseman on his horse. This elephant, during the whole battle, gave ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... if this life is all there is to us, then, indeed, it is a pitiful failure. If our thoughts and longings are bounded by this little span of life, then there is no balance-sheet for mortality. The gift of life is then not worth the expense of ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... a span-breadth is he from his goal; but from weariness hath he lain down obstinately in the dust, ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... marsh and on, With earthquake of salutation the impossible thing is gone; Gaul, charioted and charging, great Gaul upon a gun, Tiptoe on all her thousand years, and trumpeting to the sun, As day returns, as death returns, swung backward for a span, Back on the barbarous reign returns ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... unchanging view or something in the air has stimulated everybody into being their nicest. It is surprising how quickly graciousness possesses some people when there is a witching girl around. Vivacious young men and benevolent officers have suddenly appeared out of nowhere, spick and span in white duck and their winningest smiles. Entertainments dovetail till there is barely time for change of costume ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... allow for drift of winds. The great-circle course was simple; the point he marked was drawing them as if it had been a magnet—drawing them as it drew the eyes of Walt Harkness, staring strainingly ahead as if to span the thousands of ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... be the highest place. Let them know their just subordination. They deserve not to be the primary concern, for there is another, to which in importance they bear no more proportion than our span ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... affect us at moments as creatures all too suddenly, too alarmingly, too menacingly met. Meagre, primitive, undeveloped, he yet is immeasurably strong; he even suggests that if he had lived the due span of years later Michael Angelo might have found a rival. Not that he is given, however, to complicated postures or superhuman flights. The something strange that troubles and haunts us in his work springs rather from a kind ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... violence the thread she span. "They have talked you over, sir," she said curtly. "When you went ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... the original book had a side note stating the time span treated on that page. Those side notes have ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... to get over. It was a fearful point, for in order to reach a space narrow enough to have a chance of throwing a plank over, it was necessary to go down the broken side of the precipice some twenty feet, and there, high above the seething lava, to cross on such a piece of wood as could be got to span the abyss, and then clamber up the rugged opposite side. Paulett had been down to the point he selected, and had got timber, which a wrecked vessel had supplied, to the edge, so that Ellen and Charles might push a plank ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... brother-dog, began To flag, and feel his narrowing span. And cold, besides, his blue blood ran, Since, 'gainst the classes, 40 He heard, of late, the Grand Old Man deg. ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... infusoria, seen through a microscope, or a little heap of cheese-mites that would otherwise be invisible. Their activity and struggling with each other in such little space amuse us greatly. And it is the same in the little span of life—great and earnest activity produces a ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... was well fitted out, spick and span in fresh carpets and paint, and crowded to the utmost capacity for comfort. Every stateroom was full; each seat at the tables occupied. Not a foot of space above or below decks was left unused, but provision was made for all, and the ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... Span, in a most interesting article called "Some Glimpses of the Unseen," that appeared in the Occult Review for February, ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... movement. A fund of twenty million dollars is to be spent in constructing a national system of telephone and telegraph. Peking is now pointing with wonder and delight to a new exchange, spick and span, with a couple of ten-thousand-wire switchboards. Others are being built in Canton, Hankow, and Tien-Tsin. Ultimately, the telephone will flourish in China, as it has done in the Chinese quarter in San Francisco. The ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... sister, and Jamie had first thought of her. Craigiebuckle, however, strongly advised him to take Janet instead, and he consented. Alack! heavy wobs have taken all the grace from Janet's shoulders this many a year, though she and Jamie go bravely down the hill together. Unless they pass the allotted span of life, the "poorshouse" will never know them. As for bonny Chirsty, she proved a flighty thing, and married a deacon in the Established Church. The Auld Lichts groaned over her fall, Craigiebuckle hung his head, and the minister told her sternly to go her way. But a few weeks afterwards ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... large group would be safe, and the strong social instinct, the herd feeling, was the basis of the home. Here the men and women dwelt in a promiscuity that through the ages went through an evolution which finally became the father-controlled monogamy of to-day. Here the women lived; here they span, sewed, built; here they started the arts, the handicrafts, and the religions. And from here the men went forth to fish and hunt and fight, grim males to whom a maiden was a thing to court and a wife a thing ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... underrate him. But greater is He that is in you. You cannot overrate Him. He got the victory at every turn during those thirty-three years, and will get it for you as many years and turns as shall make out the span of your life. Your one business will be to ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... no good, there is no bad, these be the whims of mortal will; What works me weal that call I good, what harms and hurts I hold as ill. They change with space, they shift with race, and in the veriest span of time, Each vice has worn a virtue's crown, all good been ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... So brief the span between our birth and death that the etiquette of burial may fittingly follow that of the christening ceremony. It might be supposed that the funeral, especially the private, could be conducted without formality. But ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... business of Dohna's men. I thought, when we joined them, they looked too spick and span to be any good; but that they should run, almost as fast and far as the men of the Federal army at Rossbach, is shameful. Neither in the last war nor in this has a Prussian soldier so ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... life's short span appears Mixed up with joyous smiles and tears; So interwove with doubts and fears His harp did ring; And made the world to ope' its ears ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... tips of the thumb and middle finger extended and opposed is the shortest linear measure used by the Igorot, although he may measure by eye with more detail and exactness, as when he notes half the above distance. This span measure is called "chang'-an" or "i'-sa chang'-an," ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... following grounds:—(B) the relative mortality of the two classes between childhood and maturity; (C) the relative mortality of the rural and urban mothers during childbearing ages; (D) their relative celibacy; and (E) the span of a rural and urban generation. It will be shown that B is important, and C noteworthy, but that D and E ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... inflicted on her, the greater was the chance of her ultimate victory. In what was the darkest hour of his life, in 1846, when the Galician peasantry, incited by Austrian propagandists, rose and massacred the Polish nobles and Austria annexed Cracow, he wrote: 'That last span of earth torn from us by the fourth partition has more than anything else advanced our cause. Every wound inflicted on something holy and good becomes a far deeper wound, by the reflection of the Divine Justice that rules history, on him who inflicted ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... never come to me in ten years, seemed now perfectly natural. I would return at once to that far off village where, for a brief hour, I had dwelt in a "Fool's Paradise," through which my way had lain but a brief span, and where I had passed, like the fabled bird, that "floats through Heaven, but ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... span the broad muddy Orange River, thick with the washings of the Basutoland mountains. One of these is the magnificent high railway bridge, already blown to ruins by the retreating Boers. Dead men or shattered horses do not give a more vivid ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a rent of a thousand crowns, crammed with all the vulgar magnificence that money can buy, occupied the first floor of a fine old house between a courtyard and a garden. Everything was as spick-and-span as the beetles in an entomological case, for Crevel ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... so charmed with this address that he ordered a little chair to be made, and also a palace of gold a span high, with a door an inch wide, for little Tom to live in. He also gave him a coach, drawn by six small mice. This made the Queen angry, because she had not a new coach too; therefore, resolving to ruin Tom, she complained ...
— The History Of Tom Thumb and Other Stories. • Anonymous
... Fr. chamarre, Mod. Fr. simarre; Ital. zimarra; cf. Span. zamarra, a sheepskin coat; possibly derived ultimately from Gr. [Greek: cheimerios], "wintry," i.e. a winter overcoat), in modern English use the name of a garment worn as part of the ceremonial dress of Anglican bishops. It is a long sleeveless gown of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... puffy, colourless, clean-shaven face and straight flaxen hair. He wore spectacles, and a big gold ring on his fat finger. He was twenty-seven. He had on a light grey fashionable loose coat, light summer trousers, and everything about him loose, fashionable and spick and span; his linen was irreproachable, his watch-chain was massive. In manner he was slow and, as it were, nonchalant, and at the same time studiously free and easy; he made efforts to conceal his self-importance, ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... for of the countless threads, Drawn from the heap, as white as unsunn'd snow, Or as the lovely lilly of the vale, Was never one beyond the little span Of infancy untainted: few there were But lightly tinged; more of deep crimson hue, Or deeper sable [4] died. Two Genii stood, Still as the web of Being was drawn forth, Sprinkling their powerful drops. From ebon urn, The one unsparing dash'd the bitter wave Of ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... or just policy be expected of the citizen who does not, like his fellows, bring to the decision the interests and apprehensions of a father. While those of you who have passed your prime must congratulate yourselves with the thought that the best part of your life was fortunate and that the brief span that remains will be cheered by the fame of the departed. For it is only the love of honour that never grows old; and honour it is, not gain, as some would have it, that rejoices the heart of age ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... But in the midst of all his bravery Death rounds him in the ear, "Friend, thou must die." Or like a shadow in a sunny day, Which in a moment vanishes away; Or like a smile or spark,—such is the span Of life allowed this microcosm, Man. Cease then vain man to boast; for this is true, Thy brightest glory's as the morning dew, Which disappears when first the rising sun Displays his beams ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... correctly that sweet memories are frequently nothing more or less than outbursts of hidden passion and attacks of sensual love. Seume is mistaken in his assertion that mysticism lies mainly in weakness of the nerves and colic—it lies a span deeper. ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... led deep down on the lower side of this wonderful natural span. It showed the cliffs of limestone, porous, craggy, broken, chalky. At the bottom the gorge was full of tremendous boulders, water-worn ledges, sycamore and juniper trees, red and yellow flowers, and dark, beautiful green pools. I espied tiny gray frogs, reminding me of ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... a master of war as Napoleon. Two battles were fought at Jena and Auerstadt, by which the Prussian power was overthrown; more than 50,000 men were slain. These battles were followed by the capture of Erfurt, Span-dau, Potsdam, Berlin, Luben, Stettin, Kuestrin, Hameln, Nienburg, and Magdeburg; and by victories over Prince Hohenlohe, near Prenzlow; and over the reserve army of Brucher, towards the lower Elbe. Within six weeks after the battle ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... span, or through it where the crossing gullies ran, Mary Anerley rode at leisure, allowing her pony to choose his pace. That privilege he had long secured, in right of age, wisdom, and remarkable force of character. Considering his time of life, he looked well and sleek, and almost sprightly; ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... Archbishop's hand, The dozen peers are nothing short of that, With one accord join battle all the Franks. Pagans are slain by hundred, by thousand, Who flies not then, from death has no warrant, Will he or nill, foregoes the allotted span. The Franks have lost the foremost of their band, They'll see no more their fathers nor their clans, Nor Charlemagne, where in the pass he stands. Torment arose, right marvellous, in France, Tempest there was, of wind and thunder black, With rain and hail, ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... span-long lives" must ever bear in mind our limited time for acquisition. And remembering how narrowly this time is limited, not only by the shortness of life, but also still more by the business of life, we ought to be especially solicitous to employ what time we have to the greatest ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... span of fifty years, Painted upon a cloud of tears, In blue for hopes and red for fears, Finds end in a golden hour to-day. Ah, YOU to our childhood the legend told, "At the end of the rainbow lies the gold," And now in our ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... their diurnal round Each day-span's sum of hours In peerless ease, without jolt or bound Or ache ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... belief of the Hidatsa Indians, as reported by Dr. Matthews, in the "Makadistati, or house of infants." This is described as "a cavern near Knife River, which, they supposed, extended far into the earth, but whose entrance was only a span wide. It was resorted to by the childless husband or the barren wife. There are those among them who imagine that in some way or other their children come from the Makadistati; and marks of contusion on an infant, arising from tight swaddling ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... He had reached the runway by a route known only to himself. He was sure that for a time, at least, he would not be followed. At last he reached the bridge which was coming to harbor many mysteries for him. Halfway across the span he paused, and sinking into the shadow of an iron girder, began watching the surface of ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... life worth living? It depends on your believing;— If it ends with this short span, Then is man no better than The beasts that perish. But a Loftier Hope we cherish. "Life out of Death" is written wide Across Life's page on every side. We cannot think as ended, our dear dead ...
— 'All's Well!' • John Oxenham
... philanthropy, my dear. It is homeliness, or rather homeyness, that is dear to my bourgeoise mind. I was afraid of spick-and-span, sap-green aestheticism, but those curtains have done their own fading in pleasing shades, that good old sofa can be lain upon, and there's a real comfortable crack on that frame; while as to the chiffonier, is not it the marrow of the one Mrs. Froggatt ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... born? Ah, I'll tell you—it was in his twenty-fifth year—about three in the afternoon, by the clock, October Twenty-first, Eighteen Hundred Thirty-five. The day was Indian summer, warm and balmy. He sat there reading in the window of his office on Court Street, Boston, a spick-span new law-office, with four shelves of law-books bound in sheep, a green-covered table in the center, three armchairs, and on the wall a steel engraving ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... his own beautiful house he would have liked to keep the neighbourhood free from this essentially modern phase of river-life; but to Toni the gay little bungalows had a charm of their own. They were all specially spick and span just now, having been newly painted and garnished with flowers for the season; and Toni looked across the river with frank interest at the Cot, the Dinky House, the Mascot, and the rest of the tiny shanties. ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... wandered slowly over the little knots of people in the foyer. Beyond the fact that a large diamond sparkled on one of his plump fingers, and that his olive tinted face was curiously opposed to the whiteness of the uplifted hand, he differed in no essential from the hundreds of spick and span idlers who might be encountered at that hour in the west end of London. He had the physique and bearing of a man athletic in his youth but now over-indulgent. An astute tailor had managed to conceal the too rounded curves of the fourth decade by fashioning ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... Monthly for April, 1909, were from the pen of the author of Animal Experimentation—a work which is reviewed in the Appendix to the present edition. To his advanced age—now far beyond the allotted span—we may ascribe the inaccuracies which, at an earlier period of his career, would doubtless have ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... scares, not because he is really afraid, but because he feels skittishly inclined to turn back, or to make trouble between his enemies - the boatmen, his task-master, and the cycler, an intruder on his exclusive domain, the Erie tow-path. A span of mules will pretend to scare, whirl around, and jerk loose from the driver, and go "scooting" back down the tow-path in a manner indicating that nothing less than a stone wall would stop them; but, exactly in the nick of time to prevent ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... tall to reach the pole, Or grasp the ocean with my span, I must be measured by my soul: The mind 's the standard of ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... music to the altar, made nevertheless a pretty picture: the bride, a handsome demoiselle de boutique, or shop assistant, in white, with veil and wreath; behind her, girls in bright dresses bearing enormous bouquets; bridegroom and supporters, all in spick and span swallow-tail coats, with white ties and gloves, like beaux in a French comedy, backwards and forwards; the priests looking gorgeous, although in their second-best robes, their gold plates shining as they collected the money; for whether married first, second or third class, the Church exacts its ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... sufficed us to span the narrow stretch of water that separated us from our late antagonist; and upon climbing the side we were received at the gangway by an officer of some twenty-five years of age, whose head was swathed in a blood-stained bandage, and who handed his sword to Percival ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... delved and Eve span," agriculture has been the principal occupation of civilized man. With the advance of chemistry, particularly that branch known as agricultural chemistry, farming has become more of a science, and its successful pursuit demands not only unceasing industry, ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... away. It was a walk of more than two hundred miles, but youth and enthusiasm count such a tramp as an enjoyable trifle. Froebel wore his seedy clothes and carried his good ones, and so he appeared before the master spick and span. ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... chivalrous not to take my fancy; and, strange as it may seem of two well-born gentlemen of to-day, we span a half-crown (like a pair of ancient paladins) whether we were to cut each other's throats or be sworn friends. A more romantic circumstance can rarely have occurred; and it is one of those points in my memoirs, by which we may see the old tales of Homer and the poets are equally true to-day—at ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... from that majestic height, was suddenly revealed. True, it was a November night, but unusually clear and vivid; the stars seemed to burn rather than shine, so piercing was their effulgence. The vast track of the milky way appeared to span the dark and level platform, like the bow of some triumphal arch. They seemed to stand on a huge circle, black, bare,—its verge unapproachable, contrasting deeply with the encompassing splendour. Proceeding onwards, a dark speck was visible, springing out abruptly from the verge of the horizon. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... officers who so love to see a ship kept spick and span clean; who institute vigorous search after the man who chances to drop the crumb of a biscuit on deck, when the ship is rolling in a sea-way; let all such swing their hammocks with the sailors; and they would soon get sick of this daily damping of ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... it all as she went—all she was to do. There was the threadbare blanket they used for a silence cloth, and the table-cloth with the red stain by Johnny's place where he had spilled cranberry jelly the night before last, when the cloth was "span clean." There were the places to set, as always, with the same old dishes and the same old knives and forks; and with the mechanical precision born of long practice she would rightly place, without half looking at them, the various napkins each in its slightly different wooden ...
— Everybody's Lonesome - A True Fairy Story • Clara E. Laughlin
... arterial. They also demonstrate that the internal secretion of the sex glands, well advertised as it has been as the Elixir of Youth that Ponce de Leon, and Brown-Sequard with so many others, pursued in vain, is not the whole story. For if it was, the duration of the new youth should be another span of life, whereas in actuality it is only a fraction of that time. This fact, together with a number of others, make clear that while the gonads may be the jeune premier of the drama, the vitality of the plot depends ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... bubble, and the Life of Man Less than a span: In his conception wretched, from the womb, So to the tomb; Curst from his cradle, and brought up to years With cares and fears. Who then to frail mortality shall trust, But limns on water, or but ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... dusty and derelict, in the spick-and-span office, where hung the old-fashioned steel engravings on the wall, of Civil War battles, of generals and officers seated about tables on camp ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... Friendship. That the Privateer Boat came on board said Spanish Schooner with a Lieut. Christop'r Miller[15] by Name and seven more Seamen. That he this Deponent shewed said Lieut. his Licence telling him at the same time that they were Spaniards and the Vessel and Cargoe Span'h property, From whence they came and whither Bound. That said Lieut. and People seemed very Civil and Regular till they discovered the Money which as soon as they had done, they Insisted on the Spaniards having run away with it and gave that ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... fractured slate, embedded among a mass of rounded pebbles, proves voluble with ideas of a kind almost too large for the mind of man to grasp. The eternity that hath passed is an ocean without a further shore, and a finite conception may in vain attempt to span it over. But from the beach, strewed with wrecks, on which we stand to contemplate it, we see far out towards the cloudy horizon, many a dim islet and many a pinnacled rock, the sepulchres of successive eras,—the monuments of consecutive creations: the entire prospect is studded ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... must be, for he never drives less than six span of oxen, and seldom less than three pairs of horses or mules (the Bulawayo coach had, in 1895, five pairs). It takes two men to drive. One wields an immensely long whip, while the other holds the reins. Both incessantly apostrophise the animals. It is chiefly with the whip that the team is driven; ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... back to take refuge for a time. When Vasco da Gama heard of turning backward he cried that they should not speak such words, because as he was going out of the bar of Lisbon he had promised God in his heart not to turn back a single span's breadth of the way, and he would throw into the sea whosoever spoke such things. None could withstand such an iron will, and they struggled on to Mossel Bay, already discovered by Diaz. Here they ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... Pekin is the village of Sha-ho, near two old stone bridges that span a river now nearly dried away. The village is a sort of half-way halting place between. Pekin and the Nankow pass, a rocky defile twelve or fifteen miles long. The huge boulders and angular fragments of stone have been somewhat worn down and smoothed by constant use, though ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... in span and 21 inches high. Carved in relief in the centre of the stone is a cross, on one side of which is an animal—very probably intended for the Agnus Dei; while, on the same side, a little below the Agnus Dei, there are three figures with helmets on their heads and swords in their right hands. ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... desire." These ambitions had been ended in Tahiti by the frowns of the missionaries, to whom athletics were a species of diabolical possession, unworthy souls destined for hell or heaven, with but a brief span to avert their birthright of damnation in sackcloth ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... the town they assembled the glider, single-surfaced, like a monoplane, twenty-two feet in span, with a tail, and with a double bar beneath the plane, by which the pilot was to hang, his hands holding cords attached to the entering edge of the plane, balancing the glider ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... for plant houses, low, narrow, span-roofed buildings, formed by 6 feet sashes, one on each side, the ends of the houses facing north and south. These we attach three together, on the "ridge and furrow" system, as shown in sketch. ...
— Woodward's Graperies and Horticultural Buildings • George E. Woodward
... years ago flying was popularly regarded as a dangerous hobby and comparatively few had faith in its practical purposes. But the phenomenal evolutions of the aircraft industry during the war brought progress which would otherwise have required a span of years. With the cessation of hostilities considerable attention has been diverted to the commercial uses of aircraft, which may conveniently be classified ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... not what a day or an hour will bring forth. For many years one may be permitted to move on "the even tenor of his way," without anything of momentous import occurring to mark the passage of his little span of time as it sweeps him onward to eternity. At another period of life, events, it may be of the most startling and abidingly impressive nature, are crowded into a few months or weeks, or even days. So it was now with our travellers on the African river. When ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... N. J.—In constructing a kiln house for a cement works one story columns with bracket tops and 50-ft. span roof girders were molded on the ground and erected as single pieces. The columns by rough calculation averaged about 2 cu. yds. of concrete and 675 lbs. of reinforcement each or about 337 lbs. of steel per cubic yard. The girders averaged by similar calculation 5 cu. yds. ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... cutting Drona's head from off his trunk. Meanwhile, the valiant Drona, regaining his senses, took up his bow and seeing Dhrishtadyumna arrived so near him from desire of slaughter, began to pierce that mighty car-warrior with shafts measuring a span only in length and therefore, fit to be used in close fight. Those arrows of the measure of a span and fit to be used in close fight, were known to Drona, O king! And with them he succeeded in weakening Dhrishtadyumna. The ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... from the railroad, and as we left the barracks we ran afoul of four outfits, three span to the wagon, with the loads piled on till the teams was all lather and the wheels complainin' to the gods, trying to pass the corner of the barracks where there was a narrow opening between ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... receding and perceived that he was no longer held. He turned about and came full into a man in black. One of the green weapons cracked close to him, a drift of pungent smoke came into his face, and a steel blade flashed. The huge chamber span ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... the evening of next day, a hurrying ocean greyhound overtook them in her race from New York toward the East, and the bunting talked out long sentences in the commercial code from the wire span between the Flamingo's masts. Fresh quartettes of flags flicked up on both steamers, were acknowledged, and were replaced by others; and when the liner drew up alongside, and stopped with reversed propellers, she had a loaded boat ready swung out in davits, which dropped ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... that the performances are under his direct patronage. "Victoria, the Empress of the Arena," is to-night to perform her unparalleled feats in the ring in the presence of His Excellency. This was the only tribute we saw paid in India to Her Majesty's spick-and-span brand-new title of Empress. We attended the performance, which was really creditable, but the natives sat unmoved throughout every scene; so different from the conduct of the Japanese, who scream with delight like children under ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... when we have done our span."— "Well, then, for Christ," thou answerest, "who can care? From sin, which Heaven records not, why forbear? Live we like brutes our life ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... other hearts a long long road doth span, From some far region of old works and wars, And the weary armies of the thoughts of man Have trampled it, and furrowed it with scars, And sometimes, husht, a sacred caravan Moves over ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... interest to all strangers. Traffic passing through, consisting of tugs towing barges, colliers, of large and small tonnage, freight boats and occasional government craft can be seen at close view from the highways on either side and from the bridges that span the canal. The opening and closing of the two huge jack-knife bridges is seldom without ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... horse und soldiers Vas all de funeral knell; De ring of sporn und carpine Vas all de sacrin bell. Mit hoontin knife und sabre Dey digged de grave a span, From German eyes blue gleamin De holy ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... considerable time after the tide had begun to flow, the artificers were occupied in removing the forge from the top of the building, to which the gangway or wooden bridge gave great facility; and, although it stretched or had a span of forty-two feet, its construction was extremely simple, while the road-way was perfectly firm and steady. In returning from this visit to the rock every one was pretty well soused in spray before reaching the tender at two o'clock p.m., where things awaited the landing party in as comfortable ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... according to many—was Palma Vecchio. It is curious that of a painter whose works are so widely admired, almost nothing is known. Even the traditions which once lent color to his life have been shattered by the ruthless hand of the modern investigator. The span of his life extended from 1480 to 1528. Thus he came at the beginning of the century made glorious by Titian, and contributed not a little in his own ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... through all turns of weal and woe Followed proud Tarquin still. Now right across proud Tarquin 365 A corpse was Julius laid; And Titus groaned with rage and grief, And at Valerius made. Valerius struck at Titus, And lopped off half his crest; 370 But Titus stabbed Valerius A span deep in the breast. Like a mast snapped by the tempest, Valerius reeled and fell. Ah! woe is me for the good house 375 That loves the people well! Then shouted loud the Latines; And with one rush they bore The struggling Romans backward Three lances' length and more: 380 And up they took proud ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... somewhat, she felt sure, beyond Margaret's comprehension. She lived on dry crusts for many a day to sanction her extravagance in purchasing several books, one after the other, suited to the little maiden's taste. Margaret was delighted to receive them, and while Janet sat and span she read them aloud to her, and amply rewarded was the kind nurse for her self-denial. Not dreaming that Margaret could possibly educate herself, she still continued turning in her mind how that ...
— Janet McLaren - The Faithful Nurse • W.H.G. Kingston
... town where various old mansions have been turned into factories, and new factories have sprung up, square, spick-span, trimmed-stone buildings, with fire-escapes and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... Having completed that sacrifice of theirs on the breast of that foremost of mountains. Himavat, the deities attached to the gift of earth a sixth part of the merit arising from their sacrifice. The man who makes a gift of even a span of earth (unto a Brahmana) with reverence and faith, has never to languish under any difficulty and has never to meet with any calamity. By making a gift of a house that keeps out cold, wind, and sun, and that stand upon a piece ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... of the wave-worn shore, They passed the Tropic's red meridian o'er; Nor long the hours—they never paused o'er time, Unbroken by the clock's funereal chime,[391] Which deals the daily pittance of our span, 350 And points and mocks with iron laugh at man.[fn] What deemed they of the future or the past? The present, like a tyrant, held them fast: Their hour-glass was the sea-sand, and the tide, Like her smooth ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... very diversified, since no two bridges are alike. At one time he might be ordered to span a stream in the midst of a populous country where every aid is at hand, and his next commission might be the building of a difficult bridge in a foreign wilderness far ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... the earth, whose globe they knew to be minute compared with her distance from the sun, is really circling around the sun in a mighty orbit many millions of miles in diameter, it follows of necessity that the fixed stars must lie so far away that even the span of the earth's orbit is reduced to nothing by comparison with the vast depths beyond which lie even the nearest of those suns. This was Tycho Brahe's famous and perfectly sound argument against the Copernican theory. 'The stars remain fixed in apparent position all the time, yet the Copernicans tell ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... violence, the princes and knights: it was what broke up the icefloes in that mighty deluge. Still, the chief aim of Christianity is not so much to make this life pleasant as to render us worthy of a better. It looks away over this span of time, over this fleeting dream, and seeks to lead us to eternal welfare. Its tendency is ethical in the highest sense of the word, a sense unknown in Europe till its advent; as I have shown you, by putting the morality and religion of the ancients ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... and in relieving distress I have never encountered a more interesting or a more perplexing case. I fear that I have overlooked hens in my researches and observations. As to their habits, their times and manner of laying, their many varieties and cross-breedings, their span of life, their—" ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... taken a view of the frightful place, which may rather be imagined than described. One part of the water was formerly so narrow, that a wager was laid by a gentleman that he could span it with the thumb and little finger, and which he would have accomplished, but his adversary, getting up in the night time, chipped a piece off the rock with a hammer, and thus won the wager. It is now, however, little more than from a foot and a half, to two feet broad, excepting ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various |
