"Slab" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ft., two stories high, and substantially constructed of heavy stone masonry, with a slate roof. The structure within is entirely fire-proof. Iron columns and girders, and wooden girders heavily encased in cement, support the floors which are either of cement slab construction or of wooden flooring protected by expanded metal and cement mortar, both above and beneath. At one end, on the ground floor, is the exposing and recording apparatus for flame tests of explosives, also pressure gauges, and a calorimeter, and, at the other ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson
... not quite vertical and gave a good hold, but when I'd got up eighteen or twenty feet I came to an awkward slab. It bulged out, but I found a hold for my hands and scrambled over the edge. I managed this because the alternative was falling off and shooting to the bottom of the coulee, but perhaps because I was weaker than I thought, I wrenched my shoulder during the lift. Anyhow, I ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... grand dinner was afterwards served up, at which the guests sat on carpets, with their legs across. There were twenty tables, and five or six people at each table. That of the General-in-Chief and the sheik El Bekri was in the middle; a little slab of a precious kind of wood ornamented with mosaic work was placed eighteen inches above the floor and covered with a great number of dishes in succession. They were pillaws of rice, a particular kind of roast, entrees, and pastry, all very highly ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... the Commandments in black and gold, and walls bristling with genii and angels of all descriptions, weeping over Underwoods of different generations. Lance stood open-mouthed before a namesake of his own, whose huge monumental slab was upborne by the exertions of a kind of Tartarean cherub, solely consisting of a skull and a ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the cross is the rogue's whipping-post, a stone pillar about eight feet high, on the sides of which are hooks to which the culprit was fastened. Between this and the cross stands another useful feature of a Lancashire market-place, the fish stones, an oblong raised slab for the display ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... since the leaf all day Draws to the spot the solar ray, Ere sunset quarrying inches down, And halfway to the mosses brown; While the grass beneath the rime Has hints of the propitious time, And upward pries and perforates Through the cold slab a thousand gates, Till green lances peering through Bend happy in the ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... found in the town, either alive or dead, that she should have more glory in the grave than she appeared to have enjoyed on this side of it; and, with our united exertions, we succeeded in raising a marble slab, which surmounted a monumental vault, and was beautifully embellished with armorial blazonry, and, depositing the body inside, we replaced it again carefully. If the personage to whom it belonged happened to have a tenant of his own for it soon afterwards, he must have been rather astonished ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... form swing noiselessly round to the other side of the stone. Wilks passed on and dropped on his knee beside a large, weather-worn slab that rested on a brick under-structure a foot or so high. The long grass largely hid the bricks, and among it Wilks plunged his hand, feeling along the brick surface. Presently he drew out a loose brick, and laid it on the slab. He felt again in the place, and brought forth a ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... garner of plenty; they knew that strawberries, though not really insects, were almost as delicious; they knew that the huge danaid butterflies were good, safe game, if they could only catch them, and that a slab of bark dropping from the side of a rotten log was sure to abound in good things of many different kinds; and they had learned, also, that yellow-jackets, mud-wasps, woolly worms, and ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... many feet wide. At the further end a squat smokestack broke the flat line of the roof. Guards, many guards, were pacing their slow patrol about it. From the center of the side nearest me, cables thick as a man's trunk issued forth. I followed them with my eye. They ended in a marble slab on which rested a concrete sphere, somewhat larger than the others. The door of this one was closed. On the roof of the queer edifice was a peculiar arrangement of wires, gleaming in the artificial daylight. This building, too, ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... the second at a price openly and without shame; and are, apparently, content to do without the third. One would almost expect racial sense of humour would stay them from expecting only praise—slab, lavish, and slavish—from the stranger within their gates. But they do not. If he holds his peace, they forge tributes to their own excellence which they put into his mouth, thereby treating their own land which they profess to honour as a quack treats his ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... him, "Please you Royal Highness, since you are an Irish peer, will you tell us if you ever trod upon Irish ground?" When he told them he had not, "Oh, then," said one of the order, "you shall soon do so". They then spread some earth, which had been brought from Ireland, on a marble slab, and ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... To propose a subscription to all well disposed people, to raise a certain sum of money, to be expended in the care of a cheap monument for the former and the future great dead men,—the monument to be a white cross, with a wooden slab at the end, telling their names and qualifications. This wooden slab and white cross to be perpetuated to the end of time. To survive the fall of empires and the destruction of cities by means of a map, which was, in case of an insurrection among the people, or any other cause by which ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... Ranald. He took up a slightly concave chisel or gouge, and slit a slim slab from off a block of cedar about ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... surf. All the rest of the expanse of sand back to the cliff-like hills lay dry and tumbled into hummocks and drifts, from which projected here a sawlog cast inland from a raft by some long-past storm, there a slab, again a ship's rib sticking gaunt and defiant from the shifting, restless medium that would smother it. And just beyond the edge of the hard sand, following the long curves of the wash, lay a dark, narrow line of ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... notable haste he undid the wrapping, discovering a good half-loaf, a thick slice of roast beef and a slab ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... is a slab of bluish-black marble, which formerly was in the chancel. That it in no way relates to Captain Smith a near examination of it shows. This slab has an escutcheon which indicates three heads, which a lively imagination may conceive to be those of Moors, on a line in the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... he took off his clothes and dived head foremost into the pool. He came up shivering and sputtering. It was certainly the coldest water into which he had ever leaped! After such a dash one might lie on a slab of ice to warm. Dick forgot that every drop in the brook had come from melting snows far up on the peaks, but, once in, he resolved to fight the element. He dived again, jumped up and down, and kicked and thrashed those waters as no beaver had ever done. Gradually he grew ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... of a great Englishman, fare along the Avenue du Cimetire to the grave of John Stuart Mill, who with his wife lies buried within the cemetery under an elder-tree on the right and toward the end of Avenue 2. A plain stone slab bears the well-known inscription to Mrs. Mill's memory —the noblest and most eloquent epitaph ever composed by man for woman. It is pleasant to remember that Mill has left golden opinions of his gentleness and generosity behind him at Avignon. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... the memory of the departed humourist, and with a statement, inaccurate by eight months, of the date of his death, and a year out as to his age. Dying, as has been seen, on the 18th of March, 1768, at the age of fifty-four, he is declared on this slab to have died on the 13th of November, aged fifty-three years. There is more excuse, however, for this want of veracity than sepulchral inscriptions can usually plead. The stone was erected by the pious hands of "two brother Masons," many years, it is ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... desks of the pupil. Maps of as many countries as might be desired showed in frames up and down which they followed one another by the silent turning of a handle. A blackboard on an easel looked across the desks at a wall into which was let a solid slab of blackboard. The window adjoining this display exhibited a miniature classroom in which the "F.E. & S." system of classroom ventilation maintained air so pure and fresh that the most comatose pupil could not but keep alert and ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... a bottle across the redwood slab used for a bar, "the drinks are on Grizzley Bob ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... once stepped from the end of the bridge to the marble platform, followed by Dorothy, and then the bridge disappeared with a slight clang of steel and a marble slab covered the opening from which it ...
— Glinda of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... two in its terrific course. A bell rang, and the doctor popped his head out to see if he was wanted. It was only a message for Aunt Plenty, and he was about to pop in again when his eye was caught by a square parcel on the slab. ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... the spot where the far-famed stable was said to have stood and reached by a flight of stone steps, worn smooth by the tread and kisses of multitudes of worshippers. The manger is represented by a marble slab a couple of feet in height, decorated with tinsel and blue satin and marked at the head with a chiseled star, bearing above it the inscription in Latin, "Here was Jesus Christ born of the Virgin Mary." At ...
— Myths and Legends of Christmastide • Bertha F. Herrick
... the marks caused by this episode remain with me to this day.) We had one or two nice walks weekly, on parole, escorted by a German officer. One day, during a long walk through some pine woods, we had reached the top of a hill when we came upon a large slab of rock, about four feet thick, resting on two smaller ones, with a broad crack right through it near the centre. The German officer told us a legend about this, which affirms that at this spot somewhere about the eighth century Emperor Charlemagne met ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... of Redgrave's first visit to the home of the Stangroves, his neighbours on the Warroo. On the journey he passed a Bush inn of the period where drunkenness was the normal condition of everyone, from the owner to the stable-boy. The shanty itself, an ugly slab building roofed with corrugated iron, 'stood as if dropped on the edge of the bare sandy plain.' It faced the dusty track which did duty as a highroad; at the back of the slovenly yard was the river, chiefly used as a receptacle for rubbish and broken ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... table in the parlor. Miss Barbara Dearborn had made it at boarding-school and presented it to her sister-in-law many years before. How Robin ever managed to lift off the glass case without breaking it no one ever knew. That he had done so was evident, for in every waxen red-cheeked pear and slab-sided apple were the prints of his sharp little teeth. It seemed little short of sacrilege to Mrs. Dearborn, whose own children had regarded it for years from an admiring distance, fearing to lay unlawful fingers even on the glass case that ...
— Big Brother • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... watchmen say, is a ghostly footstep that seems to follow anybody who crosses Statuary Hall at night. It was in this hall, then the chamber of the House of Representatives, that John Quincy Adams died—at a spot indicated now by a brass tablet set in a stone slab, where stood his desk. Whether or not it is his ghost that pursues is a question open to dispute, though it is to be hoped that the venerable ex-President rests more quietly in his grave. At all events, the performance is unpleasant, and even gruesome for him who walks across that historic ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... of architectural taste, but the memory of the departed worthies who once walked the winding streets is now the glory of the place. There, the church where Herder preached now stands; near by, the slab that covers the dust of Wieland; yonder, the humble cottage of Schiller, with the room just as it was when the mute minstrel was borne from it to his home in the earth; across the brook is Goethe's country villa; and back in the grove, the table whereon he wrote. There is a quiet ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... the grueling work possibly in store for him. Slone unsaddled the horse and turned him loose, and with a snort he made down the gentle slope for the grass. Then Slone carried his saddle to a shady spot afforded by a slab of rock and a dwarf cedar, and here he composed himself to rest and watch and think ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... between the borders, where old-fashioned flowers crowded together, towards the stone bench. This was a slab of sandstone, worn and flaked by weather, and set on two low posts; it leaned a little against the trunk of a silver-poplar tree, which served for a back, and it looked like an altar ready for the sacrifice. The thick ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... to private parties. All the rest was State or Government land. He carried in his hand a repeating rifle. The pack, if opened, would have been found to contain a woolen and a rubber blanket, fishing tackle, twenty pounds or so of flour, a package of tea, sugar, a slab of bacon carefully wrapped in oiled cloth, salt, a suit of underwear, and several extra pairs of thick stockings. To the outside of the pack had been strapped a frying pan, a tin pail, and ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... from the ground. These stones were large, flat slabs of marble, and I used to climb up on top and sit or lie down, and trace the letters or figures with my fingers. I visited this graveyard in 1903. The eight graves were there in a good state of preservation, with not a slab broken, although my grandfather was buried there, ninety years ago. My father had a stone wall built around these graves for protection, when he left Kentucky. I am glad that family graveyards have given place to public cemeteries, ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... the city. At his feet lay the quiet strip of garden, lawn and bush; beyond, the lamps burning on the parapets of the Embankment, and beyond them, the river shining in the starlight, polished and lucent like a slab of black marble, with broad regular rays upon it of a still deeper blackness, where the massive columns of Hungerford Bridge cast shadows on the water. An engine puffed and snorted into the station, leaving its pennant of white smoke in the air. Through the glass walls of the ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... bedroom, the ground floor of the chapel wing of the house, struck chill as he entered it. Above the range of pigeon-holes and little drawers, forming the back of the writing-table, two candles burned on either side of a bronze pieta, which Julius had brought back with him from Rome. On the broad slab of the table below were the many quires of foolscap forming the library catalogue, neatly numbered and lettered; while his diary lay open upon the blotting-pad, ready for the chronicle of the past day. Beside it was the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... left besides the framework of the house, but in one corner there was a stone slab laid down by way of hearth and an old rusty iron ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... slabs of johnnycake at five dollars a slab. And a cup of coffee at five dollars a ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... several other sacred relics preserved in the church; for instance, the staircase of Pilate's house up which Jesus went, and the porphyry slab on which the soldiers cast lots for his garments. These, however, we did not see. There are very glowing frescos on portions of the walls; but, there being much whitewash instead of incrusted marble, it has not the pleasant aspect which one's eye learns to demand in Roman churches. There ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Now Browny was a very dirty little pig, and I am sorry to say spent most of his time rolling and wallowing about in the mud. He was never so happy as on a wet day, when the mud in the farmyard got soft, and thick, and slab. Then he would steal away from his mother's side, and finding the muddiest place in the yard, would roll about in it and thoroughly enjoy himself. His mother often found fault with him for this, and would shake ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... quartered, by everybody there, neither flinched from the situation, nor assumed any theatrical air in it. He was quiet and attentive; watched the opening proceedings with a grave interest; and stood with his hands resting on the slab of wood before him, so composedly, that they had not displaced a leaf of the herbs with which it was strewn. The court was all bestrewn with herbs and sprinkled with vinegar, as a precaution against gaol air and ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... met them carrying in a corpse, with the feet and face bare. This I then first learned is Venetian custom, and sure no other town will ever rob them of it, nor of this that follows. On a great porphyry slab in the piazza were three ghastly heads rotting and tainting the air, and in their hot summers like to take vengeance with breeding of a plague. These were traitors to the state, and a heavy price—two thousand ducats—being ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... cried Burke. "The handle is on the other side of that slab, I'll bet my head!" And putting down the lantern, he went ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... crouch in the porches of the temples; the owl roosts in the casements of the palaces; the jackal roams among the ruins in vain; there is not a bone left for him to gnaw of the multitudes which have passed away. There is their handwriting upon the temple wall, upon the granite slab which has mocked at Time; but there is no man to decipher it. There are the gigantic idols before whom millions have bowed; there is the same vacant stare upon their features of rock which gazed upon ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... the British Museum at night, rid at last of those who gape at Egypt's dishonoured dead, may not be filled with snatches of music from throat or hand of those unfortunates, priest, priestess, fair woman and honoured man, dug out and laid upon a slab of grass for the education of the revellers of a wet Bank Holiday, or those others from Northern climes, who bid their snuffling, sticky progeny to "coom oop, lad, an' ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... at her heels. They came into a room bright with windows, where a big log smoldered in a rough-stone fireplace. On the stone slab above stood a huge Mexican jar, filled with autumn branches and trailing fluffy smoke-vine. The walls were finished in warm natural woods, stained but without polish. The air was aromatic with clean wood odors. A walnut organ loomed in a shallow corner of the room. All corners were ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... the Itinerant Tinker. Whereupon he walked over to it and immediately began sawing a thin slab from off ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... until, finally, all trace of color disappears and the pearly drops of sweat come full and free. Soon the attendant appears and leads the way to the shampooing-room, where, lying upon a warm marble slab, massage is applied most thoroughly to ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... moving on. Janice sat down and opened the package. There was first of all a thermos bottle filled with hot tea. There were ham sandwiches—more satisfying as to thickness than delicacy, perhaps—a slab of plum cake and several solid looking doughnuts with a piece of ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... replied. "It's tucked away in a corner of the Benicia Cemetery, marked by a marble slab carved with her ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray
... said he. "Leave it to me for that. I'll lay him out so stiff that a slab in the morgue'll be bent ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... whaler and foremast man in Hobart Town and on the Tamar, discussed the evidence both drunk and sober, and the opinion was universal that the cook ought to have sworn an oath strong enough to go through a three-inch slab of hardwood that he had seen Captain Blogg carried up to heaven by angels, instead of swearing away the lives of men who had taken his part when he was triced up to the mast. The cook was in this manner tried by his peers and condemned to die, and he ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... long-legged slab of a Hatteras went out to-night down the harbour. The old man brought home a lot of money bags, but what was in 'em ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... both hung upon that one charge. Robin rose suddenly to his feet after binding thee, and I thought for certain I was seen. But no; he turned and leaned over the well, and drew forth from it yon huge round slab of stone, which he flung there on the grass as thou seest it. When his back was thus turned I crept nearer yet. I would have fired then, but still feared to miss. Then he bent over thee and lifted thee in his arms. He could not see me then, he was too much engrossed in his task. I saw well what ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Academy of Sciences, who died in Kamtchatka in 1741, upon his return from an expedition undertaken by command of the Czar for the survey of the American coast. His fellow-countrymen honoured his memory by placing an engraved copper slab over his grave. They paid the same homage to Captain Clerke, Captain Cook's second ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... must take a line," he declared, passing his hand through his hair and giving a glance at the long narrow mirror which adorned the space between the two windows, and which had at its base a little gilded bracket covered by a thin slab of white marble, supporting in its turn a backgammon board folded together in the shape of two volumes, two shining folios inscribed in letters of greenish gilt, History of England. If Morris had been pleased to describe the master of the house as a heartless ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... a great folio that had for some time been leaning threateningly, like a slab at Stonehenge, above the speaker, suddenly fell and silenced him; but he had not spoken in vain, and from various sets of books about the room I heard the voices of excited agitators taking up his words. Then an idea struck me. ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... learning that difficult art,—the management of a fire so as to produce desired and exact results in cooking, themselves having the entire responsibility of feeding it and regulating the draughts. On a thin marble slab another was cutting fresh beef into bits, which she presently placed in a bottle for the purpose of preparing nourishment for a member of the family who was ill. The preparation of food for the sick is taught in all its branches with utmost ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... somewhat mollified by this aspect of the case, and being further soothed by a huge slab of bread and jam, he set off with his uncle in high glee. Duncan put on his bonnet and plaid and with Collie bounding in front, half mad with joy at this unexpected excursion, they stepped out upon the road. The moon was shining, but its rays were ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... Liver of blaspheming Jew, Gall of goat, and slips of yew Sliver'd in the moon's eclipse, Nose of Turk, and Tartar's lips, Finger of birth-strangl'd babe Ditch-deliver'd by a drab,— Make the gruel thick and slab: Add thereto a tiger's chaudron, For the ingredients ...
— Macbeth • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... building materials. Embedded in the earth's surface are blocks and boulders apparently erratic, dislodged or washed down from the upper heights, where similar masses are seen. Many are scattered, as if by an eruption; others lie in slab or dome shape upon the shore. The shape is usually spheroidal, and the material hypersthene (a hard and close-grained bluish granite) or diorite, greenstone-trap blackened by sun and rain. In the few cuttings of the higher levels I afterwards remarked that detached 'hardheads' are puddinged ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... wearily upon my doorstep—which, by the way, happens to be a rough hewn slab some ten feet square surmounted by a portcullis that has every intention of falling down unexpectedly one of these days and creating an earthquake. "Whew!" ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... the kitchen, and, passing through the several storeys, projects a few feet above the lantern. The centre window is ornamented with marble sides and top, and above it stands a marble bust of Robert Stevenson, the engineer of the building, with a marble slab below bearing testimony to the skill and energy with which he had planned and ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... ground, chewing it pensively. The picture as a picture had been humiliatingly absent from the Senator's arguments. The painter had been held up as a grandson, pure and simple. While this was gratifying on certain lines, it made art look little and slab-sided. The Boy Artist ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... her bar manners and her town manners, and she slipped on the former as she would an article of clothing when she lifted the slab and passed behind. They consisted principally of cordial smiles, personal observations, and a look of vacancy which she assumed when the conversation became coarse. From behind the bar she spoke authoritatively, she was secure, it was ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... looked about eighteen; and her face was white as the dust that lay thick upon her grey linen cloak. Under the cloak we had caught a glimpse of a thin, slab-chested figure. She wore thread gloves, and said "I thank you" in ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... prettily couched on the slope of a hill. The sanctuary is a subterranean grotto, and is committed to the joint-guardianship of the Romans, Greeks, and Armenians, who vie with each other in adorning it. Beneath an altar gorgeously decorated, and lit with everlasting fires, there stands the low slab of stone which marks the holy site of the Nativity; and near to this is a hollow scooped out of the living rock. Here the infant Jesus was laid. Near the spot of the Nativity is the rock against which the Blessed Virgin was leaning when she ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... It frequently happened that a burgher fell and slipped backwards under his horse. The climb became now more and more difficult; and when we had nearly reached the top of the mountain, there was a huge slab of granite as slippery as ice, and here man and horse stumbled still more, ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... are right. Had a pretty close shave with those fellows, didn't you? Ought to have killed them right there. I've seen Scott. Thought he was a pretty bright fellow, naturally; rather witty. Would make a first-rate subject on the slab." ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... easily begun with full pockets than left off with the same; and though Wildeve in a cooler temper might have prudently declined this invitation, the excitement of his recent success carried him completely away. He placed one of the guineas on a slab beside the reddleman's sovereign. "Mine is ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... He heard the closing of the library door. Then there was a long silence, followed by the rattling of shutters, the shooting of bolts, the noise made by bars, and after another lapse, the murmur of deep voices in the hall, the clink of silver candlesticks on the marble slab, ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... This apartment was like the vestibule, oak-panelled, but the walls were decorated with family and other portraits, including a very curious painting of the Castle itself, as it was before its destruction in the time of Cromwell. This painting was executed on a massive slab of oak, and conceived in a most quaint and formal style, being relieved in the foreground with stags at gaze and woodeny horses, that must, according to any rule of proportion, have been about half as large as the gateway towers. Evidently, also, it was of an older date than the present ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... preserved some towers built of stones without cement. Some of them are square (BASINA) and surmounted by a small dolmen, others are round (CHOUCHET) and closed at the top by a large slab of stone, as in the NURHAGS ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... black tobacco into it with a horny thumb, "a full hold makes fair sailin', that's my motto and 'Be Prepared' is yers. A man can be no better prepared than with a good meal under his belt. Give me a well-fed crew and I'll navigate a raft to Hindustan, but a pack uv slab-sided lime juicers couldn't work a full-rigged ship uv the ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... over him to feel the heart, when, as promptly, he sprang back. Spite of the maltreated face, he recognized his combatant in the duel with canes; it was Major Von Sendlingen, who had been flung on the slab in the public dead-house. ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... more to do after this in the neighbourhood of Lidford, except to pay a pious visit to the Captain's grave, where a handsome slab of granite recorded the virtues of the dead. It lay in the prettiest, most retired part of the churchyard, half-hidden under a wide-spreading yew. Gilbert Fenton sat down upon a low wall near at hand for a long time, brooding over his broken life, and wishing ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... all men flourish; but there are three classes of men who flourish especially, methodist preachers, slave-drivers, and paper-money manufacturers; and as one of the latter, I have just painted the word BANK, on a fine slab of maple, which was green and growing when I arrived, and have discounted for the settlers, in my own currency, sundry bills, which are to be paid when the proceeds of the crop they have just sown shall return from New Orleans; so that my notes are the representatives of vegetation that is to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... and women, boys and girls, I want you to remember the permanent effects of your most fleeting acts. Nothing ever dies that a man does. Nothing! You go into a museum, and you will see standing there a slab of red sandstone, and little dints and dimples upon it. What are they? Marks made by a flying shower that lasted for five minutes, nobody knows how many millenniums ago. And there they are, and there they will be until the world is burned up. So our fleeting deeds are all recorded here, in our permanent ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... and low, Stands like a maiden in the snow; And the old door-slab is half hid Under ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... challenge with true heart and hand. Forgotten trails are marked with scar and wand; A blasted rock and broken twigs assure The traveler that others fought the moor, And sailed the stormy breakers, crossed the sand To build the city on a granite slab. They tamed the wilderness, a sturdy clan! Retracing paths recall the glory made, Lays bare the secrets of the field and lab. Such tours give hope for future life and plan. Brave men have set the ...
— Some Broken Twigs • Clara M. Beede
... about my introduction, but with the urgent concerns here, he didn't think it right for him to come about this small thing, and make any trouble. But if you really believe that I might be of use to you, in either grinding the ink, or washing the slab, why shouldn't you at once make the needful arrangements, so that neither you nor I may idle our time? And as we shall be able to come together often and talk matters over, and set at the same time our parents' minds at ease, and to enjoy the pleasure of ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... room, his own apartment in the friar's small house. His office fronted this, and gave him a door to the street. Its bottles and jars and iron mortar and the vitreous slab on which he rolled pills were all lost in twilight now. There were many other doctors' offices in Kaskaskia, but this was the best equipped one, and was the lair of a man who had not only been trained in Europe, but had sailed around the entire world. Dr. Dunlap's books, ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... into the sudarium, or hot room, your first sensations only occur about half a minute after entrance, when you feel that you are choking. I found myself in that state, seated on a marble slab; the bath man was gone; he had taken away the cotton turban and shoulder shawl: I saw I was in a narrow room of marble, with a vaulted roof, and a fountain of warm and cold water; the atmosphere was in a steam, the choking sensation went off, and I felt a sort of pleasure presently in a soft boiling ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... had done the work. It nearly turned my ankle as I jumped on to it, but I hardly felt the pain. Torch and lantern showed clearly that the crevice in the wall was not a natural crack, but a man-made opening. It was as if a slab of rock fitted roughly into grooves had first been lifted, and had then fallen heavily on ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... the edge of the slab, he hung outwards, his head falling back, his spine arched tensely, like a bow; and the red sparks coming from above with the dancing whirl of snowflakes, vanished in the air before they could settle on ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... to him that summer had been these. Stephen was dressed more carefully than usual, in view of a visit to Bellefontaine Road. Whereupon the Judge demanded whether he were contemplating marriage. Without waiting for a reply he pointed to a rope and a slab of limestone on the pavement below, and waved his hand unmistakably toward ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... cupola, is decorated with wreaths and ribbons. In 1839 Mr. Godwin describes an immense sounding-board over the pulpit, and an altar-piece of carved oak, guarded by two wooden figures of Moses and Aaron. There is a slab to Mr. Stephen Winmill, twenty-four years parish clerk; and a tablet commemorative of Mr. Francis Kemble and his two wives, with ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... a very extraordinary thing happened. The idol, and the great slab of stone on which it rested and of which it was a part, slowly moved; the head sinking, and the other end of the slab, on which the legs were carved, rising in the air! Young sprang up with a cry as he felt the stone sinking beneath ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... paint was made from lapis-lazuli powder, green paint from sulphate of copper, and white paint from lime-white. Sometimes the ink was placed in small wide-mouthed pots made of Egyptian porcelain or alabaster. The scribe rubbed down his colours on a stone slab with a small stone muller. The writing reed, which served as a pen, was from 8 to 10 inches long, and from one-sixteenth to one-eighth of an inch in diameter; the end used in writing was bruised and not cut. In late times a very much ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... Ireland.—The following lines were transcribed by me, and form part of an epitaph upon a tombstone or mural slab, which many years past was to be found in (if I mistake not) the churchyard of Old ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... containing the prints of two feet side by side, impressed upon its surface, as if a person had stopped short on a journey. These are said to be the miraculous prints of the Saviour's feet on the pavement of the road when He appeared to Peter; but like the copy of Michael Angelo's statue, this slab is a facsimile, the original stone being preserved among the relics of the neighbouring basilica of St. Sebastian. Unwilling as one is to disturb a legend so beautiful, and with so touching a moral, ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... of the city to find the place where the dead sleep, and I looked all along the line of the beautiful hills, the place where the dead might most blissfully sleep, and I saw towers and castles, but not a mausoleum or a monument or a white slab was to be seen. And I went into the chapel of the great town, and I said: 'Where do the poor worship, and where are the benches on which they sit?' And the answer was made me, 'We have ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... girl who fills half of the rear seat and who, as the cruel phrase goes, will never see thirty again? She seems to be tall and lean, and one divines, somehow, that her back is narrow and of a slab-like flatness. Her forehead is high and full, and its bulging outlines are but slightly softened by a thin and dishevelled bang. Her eyes are of a light and faded blue, and have the peculiar stare which results from over-full eyeballs when completely ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... man here and there began to eat, taking a slab of bread and meat in one hand and a cup of black coffee in the other, walking back and forth and talking thickly. The girl at the fireplace sat stiff and still, staring at the flames; she had lost her appetite, had quite forgotten it in fact. ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... their mother and Jean, with awed faces and hushed voices, along the little gleaming sheep-walk, fringed by sweet wild thyme and dog violets, with tendrils of deerhorn moss flinging their arms across the path. At length they came on a little marble slab, by the side of one of the knolls. The last golden shafts of sunlight were stealing over its memorial words, and the young ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... of the shadow of the trees, her heart leaped and then almost stood still as she perceived in the churchyard lying below her, beside the great slab of granite which lay over the remains of her long-departed beloved one, the figure of a man, whose back was turned towards her, and whose erect outline was darkly silhouetted against the ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... my plan of operations, and then the great method came to me like the dawning of the sun after a night of abysmal darkness. I went to the royal tent and discovered His Majesty hard at work chiseling out an article on "How I Brought Down My First Proterosaurus" on a slab of granite he had brought with him. As I approached he smiled broadly, and with a wave of his hand called my attention to the previous day's bag. It covered a ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... the vast Alpine wall, and stood on a bare granite slab, and looked over into Italy, as men might lean from the battlements of a fortress. Behind lies the Alpine valley, grim, declining slowly northward, with wind-lashed lakes and glaciers sprawling from storm-broken pyramids of gneiss. Below spread the unfathomable depths ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... candy. Probably this was a treat for those two boys, his son and his grandson, whom a visitor two years later found sleeping in the little cemetery at Morgan's Bluff near the fort, their resting place marked by a rude slab with a Latin inscription: "Lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen
... water. Unleavened bread made of corn, called tortillas, forms the staple diet of the Mexican Indians. The corn, previously softened by soaking in lime water, is ground to a fine paste between a stone slab and roller called a metate, then patted and tossed from hand to hand until flattened into thin, wafer-like cakes, and baked over a quick fire, on a thin iron ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... weeping widow of a well-known man, requested that the words "My sorrow is greater than I can bear" be placed upon the marble slab of her dear departed. ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... this dictum, he removed a slab of cake from a near-by plate, steered it through the jungle, and ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... with it and a wick composed of some twisted threads from my shirt. The difficulty was to kindle the candle when made, for none of us had a tinder box, though we had steel in our chisel and could easily break a piece of stone from the slab ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... the continuity of the open floor. The body of St. Apollinare was originally laid beneath it, but was in a subsequent age removed to a more specially honourable position under the high altar at the eastern end of the church. There is still, however, the slab deeply carved with letters of ancient form, which tells how St. Romauld, the founder of the order of Camaldoli, praying by night at that altar, saw in a vision St. Apollinare, who bade him leave the world, and become the founder of an ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... Storisende, the Claims Office was opening; he filed preliminary claim to an underground installation with at least two entrances in uninhabited country, and claimed a ten-mile radius around it. By that time, the gang working on top had uncovered a vitrified slab over the hundred-foot circle of the vertical shaft and were cracking it with explosives. According to the scanners, it was full of loose rubble for a hundred feet down. Below that, ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... Then Felix, stooping down, tried the matches against the box. They were unfortunately wet, but half an hour's exposure, he knew, on sun-warmed stones, in that hot, tropical air, would soon restore them again. So he opened the box and laid them carefully out on a flat white slab of coral. After that, he had time to consider exactly where they were, and what their chances in life, if any, ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... of the wall was a stone slab set with an endless array of switches and insulated control-buttons. Gauges and indicators of all kinds, whose purpose could not even be guessed at, were lined above and below, all throbbing rhythmically to ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... slab? Grab it, pile it yonder. The boards, slide over the shoot." For these were still primitive days for labor-saving devices, and men were still the cheapest thing about ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... batch of barley squares. Just as soon as you pour it on the slab sprinkle over it three-fourths ounce dry Tartaric Acid, two tablespoons Lemon flavor; turn the cold edges in to the center of the batch, work it like bread dough; place this before a hot stove on your table ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... as possible. But in winter the vast airy space had a peculiar and searching chill. No barn could be colder, except that the numerous footstoves made some little change in the air during service. The minister stood upon a heated slab of soap-stone. I used to watch this in its progress up the broad aisle and the pulpit stairs, under the arm of the boy from the parsonage, and the irreverent way in which he made his descent, in view of the assembly, ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... out. She went boldly to Morsfield and they conferred. He was led by her to the chariot, where she pointed to a small padded slab of a seat back to the horses. Turning to the bar, he said:—My friend will look to my horse. Both want watering and a bucketful. There!'—he threw silver—'I ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that time condemned himself to the most absolute seclusion, and disappeared in the depths of his convent, as if the slab of his tomb had already fallen over him. There, kneeling on the flags, praying unceasingly before a wooden crucifix, fevered by vigils and penances, he soon passed out of contemplation into ecstasy, and began to feel in himself that inward prophetic ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... take the nearest example, there is a horse-trough across the road from my house, a plain stone trough, and no man could pass it with any feelings save vague discontent at its ugliness. But suppose that on its front slab you ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... divans with mattings and head-rests for opium smokers. The walls were painted blue and hung with vertical Cantonese legends in red and silver, while all around the sides of the room small ebony tables alternated with ebony stools, each inlaid with a slab of mottled marble. A chandelier, all a-glitter with tinsel, swung from the centre of the ceiling over a huge round table ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... an' Olesons, an' Swansons, an' Andersons. Blissed Mary! an' ye call them things names? If ye have anny other cognomen, it's somethin' ye stole from some Christian all unbeknownst to him. Holy Mother! but ye ought to be 'shamed to be a Swade, ye miserable, slab-sided haythen." ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... pinnacles on the tower are from the old tower; the choir screen was formed from that formerly round the small choir, but only one-third of the original, {151b} which was used as a pew by the tenants of Halstead Hall. Under the stone slab nearest the screen, in the nave, were deposited the remains of a Mr. Boulton, who stabbed his mother to death in the little chapel outside the Priory gate, for which he was hanged at Lincoln. The stone face and ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... across it, waving the heavy hangings and bringing a hot breath of some strange heady perfume to the nostrils. Laurence, with a beating heart, ensconced himself in a hidden nook behind the door. The niche was covered by a curtain and furnished with a grooved slab of marble placed there for some ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... people to write you of the noble side, the heroic side, the exalted side of war. I must write you of what I have seen, the other side, the backwash. They are both true. In Spain, they bang their silver coins upon a marble slab, accepting the stamp upon both sides, and then decide whether as a whole they ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte
... ragged coverlet partially spread over a dirty bed tick filled with leaves. There was only one chair, and that was a broken rocker, on which the unhappy mistress of the cottage was seated. But there were two or three rough stools, made of pieces of pine slab, standing beside the rickety table. Pointing to these stools, Mrs. Button, without quitting her chair, ...
— Aunt Amy - or, How Minnie Brown learned to be a Sunbeam • Francis Forrester
... balcony—stone slab and iron railing—jutted out from my window. I thought I saw a hand on the railing, another on the slab, then both together on the lower level for one instant before they disappeared. There was a dull yet springy thud ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... fires: Castor meanwhile, the bridler of the steed, And Polydeuces of the nut-brown face, Had wandered from their mates; and, wildered both, Searched through the boskage of the hill, and found Hard by a slab of rock a bubbling spring Brimful of purest water. In the depths Below, like crystal or like silver gleamed The pebbles: high above it pine and plane And poplar rose, and cypress tipt with green; With all rich flowers that throng the mead, when wanes The Spring, sweet workshops of the ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... his waste and short-length stock into sash, door, blinds, moldings, and so forth, he had been wont to use about fifty per cent. of this material for fuel to maintain steam in the mill boilers, while the remainder passed out over the waste-conveyor to the slab pile, where ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... removed to the city of Saint Domingo, Hayti, and interned in the principal chapel. But they were not permitted to rest even there, for in 1796 they were brought to Havana with imposing ceremonies. His final resting place in the Cathedral is marked by a slab elaborately carved, on which is inscribed ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... doubt for more than a half century as to where the body of the great sleeper had been laid. Curiosity, whetted by patriotism, then discovered the spot. But the name of another was on the covering slab, and no small token was to be found indicative of the last resting place of the lightning-smitten body of James Otis, the prophetic giant of the pre-revolutionary days. He who had lived like one of the Homeric heroes, who had died like a ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... eggs as nearly fresh as can be obtained in Clerkenwell, invited him with appetising odour; a large cup of what is known to the generality of English people as coffee steamed at his right hand; slices of new bread lay ready cut upon a plate; a slab of the most expensive substitute for butter caught his eye with yellow promise; vinegar and mustard appealed to the ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... love mixed," said the old man, placing himself at the head of the board. "And ah, Lord, when we grow out of one and forget the other, there's not much left to live for. I'd rather be a young fellow in love than to be an emperor. Help yourself to a slab of that fried ham. She'll bring the coffee pretty soon. Here she comes now. Waiting for you, Aunt Liza. Have some hoe-cake, Jimmie. Yes, sir; youth and love constitute the world, and all that follows is a mere makeshift. Thought may come, ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... large pedestal and carted off to the dumping-ground of inadequate things. To be sure, if he chances to have been not entirely unworthy, and on cool examination is found to possess some appreciable degree of merit, then he is set up on a new slab of appropriate dimensions. The late colossal statue shrinks to a modest bas-relief. On the other hand, some scarcely noticed bust may suddenly become a revered full-length figure. Between the reputation of the author living and the reputation ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... another glance at the Chumleys, and then stepped to a corner of the great hall-like place which formed their prison, drew aside a rug on the floor, lifted a slab of stone, and pointed to a coil of worsted rope as thick as a good walking-stick, and evidently of ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... disproportionately short. The body, too, was more attenuated than that of any lizard. The thing was headless and the statue, idol or whatever it was, stood on a pedestal, and before that again, seemed to be a slab of stone. Then my attention was caught by the head of the thing, which was to be seen in a corner. It was shaped roughly triangular. The jaws were broad at the base and the thing had, even in the photograph, something ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... uttered a shrill scream, and darting forward, stooped over one of the stone supports which had formerly upheld old Peter's beloved rick, eagerly groping in a certain little fissure in the rough stone, almost hidden beneath the horizontal slab which surmounted it. ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell) |
