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More "Discernible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they acquiesced. The Roman Catholics were discriminated against, and the nonconformists were not requited for their services; but out of many minor injustices and wrongs, a condition better than anything which had preceded it was soon discernible. The principle was established that royal power was not absolute, nor self-continuing; it could be created only by the representatives of the people, who could take it away again if its trustee were guilty of breach of contract. The dynastic theory ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... comparatively few original wooden roofs in structures of the fourteenth century, for such have generally been superseded by roofs of a later date and of a more obtuse form. The high and acute pitch of the original roof is, however, still generally discernible by the weather moulding on the east wall of the tower. In the nave of Higham Ferrars Church, Northamptonshire, is a wooden roof which apparently belongs to this style: the roof is angular-pointed and open to the ridge-line, the walls are connected by tie-beams, ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... that there are bodies infinitely more minute; we clearly perceive, that we are not possessed of any instrument or art of measuring, which can secure us from ill error and uncertainty. We are sensible, that the addition or removal of one of these minute parts, is not discernible either in the appearance or measuring; and as we imagine, that two figures, which were equal before, cannot be equal after this removal or addition, we therefore suppose some imaginary standard of equality, by which the appearances and measuring are exactly corrected, and the figures ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... nowhere has the spirit of modern inductive philosophy been more happily indicated than in the words of the Statesman:—'If you think more about things, and less about words, you will be richer in wisdom as you grow older.' A similar spirit is discernible in the remarkable expressions, 'the long and difficult language of facts;' and 'the interrogation of every nature, in order to obtain the particular contribution of each to the store of knowledge.' Who has described ...
— Statesman • Plato
... once in the yellow light of the waning moon, Marcos leading the way up a pathway hardly discernible amid the rocks and undergrowth. Once or twice he turned to help Juanita over a hard or a dangerous place. But they did not talk, as conversation was not only difficult but inexpedient. They had climbed for two hours, slowly and steadily, when the barking of ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... not desire to know the truth, or blind themselves to it that they may please themselves with passion; for then they are no longer pure: but if, continually seeking and accepting the truth as far as it is discernible, they trust their Maker for the integrity of the instincts. He has gifted them with, and rest in the sense of a higher truth which they cannot demonstrate, I think they will be ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... which a devout man bemoans his exceeding sinfulness, that he has led a worse life than his neighbors. Many excellent persons, whose moral character from boyhood to old age has been free from any stain discernible to their fellow-creatures, have, in their autobiographies and diaries, applied to themselves, and doubtless with sincerity, epithets as severe as could be applied to Titus Oates or Mrs. Brownrigg. It is quite certain that Bunyan was, at eighteen, ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... for the modern mind to understand Erasmus's positive importance: first that his influence was extensive rather than intensive, and therefore less historically discernible at definite points, and second, that his influence has ceased. He has done his work and will speak to the world no more. Like Saint Jerome, his revered model, and Voltaire, with whom he has been occasionally ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... them. The road ran gradually upward, a shallow sheet of running water covering it, but firm, hard roadway discernible nevertheless. Rachael stopped the car, and Ruddy came again and put his face close to ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... seconds she did not utter a syllable. Her lips were a little parted. The color seemed suddenly drawn from her face, and her eyes narrowed. One realized then the pernicious effect of cosmetics. Her blackened eyebrows were painfully apparent. The little patch of rouge was easily discernible against the pallor of her powdered skin. She was suddenly ugly. Saton, looking at her, was amazed that he could ever have brought himself to touch ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... outward form the Buddhism of the invaders tended to be a compound of Indian, Greek and Persian ideas in which Sun worship played a large part, for not only Indian myths, but Apollo and Helios and the Persian Mithra all entered into it. Persian influence in art is discernible as early as the architecture of Asoka: in doctrine it has something to do with such figures as Vairocana and Amitabha. Graeco-Roman influence also was powerful in art and through art affected religion. In Asoka's time likenesses ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... quick-footed dusk of the short October day stepped lightly over the garden, little red tongues of fire might be seen to leap and vanish in the smoke. Harold, anon staggering under armfuls of leaves, anon stoking vigorously, was discernible only at fitful intervals. It was another sort of smoke that the inner eye of Selina was looking upon,—a smoke that hung in sullen banks round the masts and the hulls of the fighting ships; a smoke from beneath which came thunder and the crash and the splinter-rip, the ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... want to see Young Si," she whispered, pointing to the skids, where a busy figure was discernible in a large boat, "that's him, with his back to us, in the cream-coloured boat. He's counting out mackerel. If you go over to that platform behind him, you'll get a good look when he turns around. I'm going to coax a mackerel out of that stingy ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... where she was, reading the inscription on the tombstones; some of them so faint with time as to be hardly discernible. While standing up to make out one that seemed of a rather better class than the rest, she observed Nancy Cale, the clerk's wife, sitting in the church-porch and watching her attentively. The poor old woman had been ill for a long time, and Alice was surprised to see her out. Leaving ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... face, and the lineaments of the body, grow more plain and visible with time and age; but the peculiar physiognomy of the mind is most discernible in children.—Locke. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... convenience for the careening of vessels. The surveyor thought it in every way a superior harbour. "Neither," he writes, "will so many die there as there daily doe in Nombre de Dios." By the middle of the seventeenth century the ruins of the old town were barely discernible; but all traces of them have long since disappeared. Dampier (writing of the year 1682) says that: "I have lain ashore in the place where that City stood; but it is all overgrown with Wood; so as toe leave noe sign that any Town hath been there." A thick green cane brake has overgrown the Plaza. ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... such a state of elevation that, like the two rivals in the Roman State, one could no longer bear an equal, nor the other a superior. Of the gradual abatement of kindness between friends, the beginning is often scarcely discernible to themselves, and the process is continued by petty provocations, and incivilities sometimes peevishly returned, and sometimes contemptuously neglected, which would escape all attention but that of pride, and drop from any memory but that of resentment. That the quarrel ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... such errors may be the family likeness discernible in all stage material. Still, it is much better for the writer fully to recompense Peter, than to rob Peter to ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... are the same wind-hollowed hills, rooted into permanence by twisted oaks and magnolias. Upon their limbs in April the Spanish moss and air-plants were just blossoming, the former into little star-like, hardly-discernible flowers, the latter throwing up a green stem with a pink terminal bud, which in August had burst into a spike of crimson flowers. Curious lichens cover the rough trunks of these oaks—some gray, some ashy-white, some pink, some scarlet like blotches of blood. The Mitchella, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... intervening gates—for if we noticed every gate that was unlocked for us to pass through, and locked again as soon as we had passed, we should require a gate at every comma—we came to a door composed of thick bars of wood, through which were discernible, passing to and fro in a narrow yard, some twenty women: the majority of whom, however, as soon as they were aware of the presence of strangers, retreated to their wards. One side of this yard is railed off at a considerable distance, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... horizon, lay vast blotches of dirty-white and faded yellow alkali and sand. Occasionally a dwarfed mesquite raised its prickly leaves and rustled mournfully. With the exception of the riders and an occasional Gila monster, no life was discernible. Cacti of all shapes and sizes reared aloft their forbidding spines or spread out along the sand. All was dead, ghastly; all was oppressive, startlingly repellent in its sinister promise; all was ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... the term in the lay press. Neither is Kraepelin's dictum that Kleptomania is a form of impulsive insanity, necessarily correct. It is obviously, however, a form of abnormally conditioned conduct. Healy's criterion of Pathological stealing is the fact that the misconduct is disproportionate to any discernible end in view. In spite of risk, the stealing is indulged in, as it were, for its own sake, and not because the objects in themselves are needed or intrinsically desired. This definition at once excludes all cases of stealing from cupidity, or from development of a habit. It furthermore ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... chief attention to the other side of the Xingu, where so many stirring scenes had taken place that afternoon and evening. The camp-fire, which had been left burning, had smouldered so low that none of the embers were discernible, and only a thin column of smoke crept slowly upward marking where it had been. But this vapor was so clearly seen in the wonderful moonlight that it was easy to fix the precise point where the trail entered ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... the occult sciences, turned their attention to the more profitable hocus pocus of trade, and soon became expert in the legerdemain art of turning a penny. Still, however, a tinge of the old leaven is discernible, even unto this day, in their characters; witches occasionally start up among them in different disguises, as physicians, civilians and divines. The people at large show a keenness, a cleverness and a profundity of wisdom, that savors ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... they were getting on. I took up my post by the window. It was really quite interesting to watch the boat getting smaller and smaller; finally I opened the window, even looked through my field-glasses. As it was not yet quite light, I could not see them very clearly, but the red hat was still discernible. Then the boat disappeared behind an island. I dressed and went down. The children were all still in bed, but the wife, Regine, was up. How calmly and naturally ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... object being to discover any marks of violence. In persons drowned by force, and especially in women, the doctor expects to find red or livid marks upon the wrists, arms or neck, where the assailant had seized the victim. Of course, these are not always discernible, for it is easier to entice the unfortunate one to the water's edge and give a gentle push than grapple in violence and hurl a person into the stream by main force. The push leaves no trace; therefore, the verdict in hundreds of cases ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... long shanty-built structure running out to sea like a jetty; it is the shore market. The panorama could not be more charming and curious. Still farther west, towering above every other, stands the Bad Tumantangas peak (Mount of Tears), the last point discernible by the westward-journeying Joloano, who is said to sigh with patriotic anguish at its loss to view, with all the feeling of a Moorish Boabdil bidding adieu to ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... hour later, and the cruiser was not yet plainly discernible to the naked eye, when the ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... of the vessel's crew had seen our boat, as it was scarcely daylight and such a small object lying close to the water would not be readily discernible. I had thought, a few hours before, that my strength was entirely exhausted, but the sight of the vessel called out a reserve ...
— Out of the Fog • C. K. Ober
... emerged from the forest, and came to a sandy plain. Before us was the ocean, just discernible. There were two or three lights, belonging to vessels that were anchored near the shore. We could see the waves and hear their murmur, as they broke gently upon the shore. A soft breeze was blowing from the west, and the sea was almost as smooth as ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... commented my companion. And so it appeared to me, for the Germans were dropping their shells from the southeast, at least one kilometer over range. We were standing beside a strawstack and looking due south, watching the just discernible line of French guns, when we heard the ominous whistling screech of an approaching shell. Down on our faces behind the stack, down we went like lightning, and over to the left, not 200 yards away, rose a huge column of black smoke and earth, and just afterward a very loud boom. A ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... not only the sheep and the goats, but also the horses and cows, considered, in the words of Mr S., as new animals, would have been referred by these islanders to the same genus, and therefore considered as birds. The circumstance of their greater size, or, indeed, any other discernible difference, cannot here be pleaded as exceptive, without in reality abandoning the principles on which the solution is constructed. On the whole, perhaps, it may seem more correct to imagine, that these islanders were struck with some fanciful and distant ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... of the room, and together they went through the passages, calling Etta and looking for her. There was an air of gloom and chilliness in the rooms of the old castle. The outline of the great stones, dimly discernible through the wall-paper, was singularly suggestive of a fortress ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... and shone on the boys' sweaters in little beads of moisture. The Adventurer seemed to be standing still, for, with nothing to judge by, progress was made known only by the slow lazy throb of the engine. Even the water alongside was scarcely discernible. Joe pulled the lever of the fog-horn again, and this time, beside the response from the Follow Me, an answering bellow ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... the two gates, that is to say, those of the outmost and the inmost walls, have been passed, one mounts by means of steps so formed that an ascent is scarcely discernible, since it proceeds in a slanting direction, and the steps succeed one another at almost imperceptible heights. On the top of the hill is a rather spacious plain, and in the midst of this there rises a temple built with ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells
... morning he as usual looked out from his prison, he saw a boat pulling from the shore, followed quickly by several others conveying cargo, and steering for the "Polly;" the bustle upon the deck, and the refitting of ropes and rigging, plainly discernible from the prison window, left no doubt upon Paul's mind that the "Polly" was about to leave the harbor, and perhaps ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... more searching than a fixed gaze. Though vastly relieved by the assurance that Mrs. Woolstan had used discretion concerning him, Dyce could not become at ease under that restless look: he felt himself gauged and registered, though with what result was by no means discernible in Mrs. Toplady's countenance. Those eyes of hers must have gauged a vast variety of men; her forehead told of experience and meditation thereon. Of all the women he could remember, she impressed him as the least manageable according to his method. ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... years; her deliverer Roger de Lauria, without whose resourcefulness and audacity it might have gone ill with Aragon; Popes and Palaso-logus—brilliant colour effects; the king of England and Saint Louis of France; in the background, dimly discernible, the colossal shades of Frederick and Innocent, looked in deadly embrace; and the whole congress of figures enlivened and interpenetrated as by some electric fluid—the personality of John of Procida. That the element of farce might not be lacking, Fate contrived that exquisite ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... the Galbraith bathing pavilion, easily discernible by its ornate red chimneys, and Mona turned to have a good old-fashioned chat ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... contrast to the white cloister pillars and the red brick walls above. Over the windows of the King's Gallery on the south side are a dozen round, false windows, filled with time and atmosphere darkened paintings. These paintings, now but dimly discernible as such, were the work of Louis Laguerre, who had been employed in "restoring" the Mantegna "Triumph" in the Communication Gallery, who was very highly esteemed as an artist by William the Third, and who was granted by that monarch apartments in Hampton Court. Probably these pictures, ...
— Hampton Court • Walter Jerrold
... of old Megan, who was bemoaning the loss of her property on the wrong side of the gorge so many years ago, when there appeared to her suddenly a cowled monk, whose dark face was scarcely discernible, with a rosary hanging to his girdle, and a ...
— Legend Land, Vol. 1 • Various
... irrepressible cheers. That infinitesimal creature, upon whom some score of others, as minute as he, are gazing in open-mouthed admiration, is a famous philosopher, expounding to a select audience their capacity for the Infinite. That scarce discernible pufflet of smoke and dust is a revolution. That speck there is a reformer, just arranging the lever with which he is to move the world. And lo, there creeps forward the shadow of a skeleton that blows one breath between its grinning ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... the man's business, but it is finished; and judging from the satisfaction discernible on his face as he raised the lamp and turned to depart, the result must have been according to his best hope. He took off his robe, and tossed it to his slaves; then he laid a hand upon the edge of the sarcophagus ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... which lay near, and retreating a little, stood upon it, watching the surging water in its heedless career. This one board was all that was left of the bridge over which Tom Slade and Uncle Sam were to have rushed in their race with the dawn. Already the first glimmering of gray was discernible in the sky behind him, and Tom looked at Uncle Sam as if for council in his dilemma. The dawn would not require any bridge to ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... was cool and fresh. The stars, still discernible, were fading in the light of the approaching dawn; and as he left the grotto he hastened, drawn by an indefinable and insensible impulse, to seek the place where he had left the body of ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... the body of the girl, and imbedded its fearful talons in her throat, retaining its grasp until she expired. Its wandering and wild glances fell at this moment upon the head of the bed, over which the face of its master, rigid with horror, was just discernible. The fury of the beast, who no doubt bore still in mind the dreaded whip, was instantly converted into fear. Conscious of having deserved punishment, it seemed desirous of concealing its bloody deeds, and skipped about the chamber ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... and amusement and irritation and admiration and love. She was so quick, and so lambent, like discernible fire, and so vindictive, and so rich in ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... the crowd, in the dim uncertain light, was like the rising and falling of billows—like the ebb and flow of the tide upon the stranded shore of the ocean. Close to the house the faces were plainly discernible, but they faded into mere ghostly outlines on the outskirts of the assembly; and what added to the weird, spectral beauty of the scene, was the confused hum of voices that rose above the sea of forms, sounding like the subdued, sullen roar of an ocean storm, ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... plainly avows his conviction that they were trees, which on a prodigious tall stem had short and slender branches, not discernible at a distance. Captain Cook, it is very evident, uses the language of banter, not quite consistent with either the dignity of his own character, or the respect due to even the mistaken opinion of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... brother's course an object of any other feeling than incurious, indignant contempt. Yet the lovingness of Romola's soul had clung to that image in the past, and while she stood rigidly aloof, there was a yearning search in her eyes for something too faintly discernible. ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... think exactly as I spoke, strive as I might to believe the man in jest. Too much solemnity and sorrow both were discernible in his worn and rugged features, hewn grandly as if from granite, to admit of a hope like this. His words were earnest, and some great calamity was in store, I could not doubt, or at least he apprehended such. For some time he replied ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... and he became conscious that not only clouds above were bringing the darkness, but that the day was waning. In the west a faint tint of red and yellow, barely discernible through the grayness, marked the sinking sun, and in the east the blackness of night was still advancing. Yet the conflict, as important to those engaged in it, as a great battle between civilized foes, a hundred thousand on a side, and far more ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... frequent crescent-shaped lakes peculiar to the region; sometimes, miles in extent, the lacustrine contour is not discernible to the glance; here the broad expanse seemed as if the body of water were circular and ...
— The Crucial Moment - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... an excellent sketch of his friend, illustrated by personal reminiscences and anecdotes. He alludes, among other things, to the picturesque confusion of the papers in his study. There was some sort of order in the mass, discernible however, by Hamilton alone, and any invasion of the domestics, with a view to tidying up, would throw the mathematician as we are informed, into "a ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... a mild winter day without wind, without character—one of the days on which Nature seems to take no interest in herself and creates no interest in others. The sky was overcrowded with low, ragged clouds, without discernible order or direction. Nowhere a yellow sunbeam glinting on any object, but vast jets of misty radiance shot downward in far-diverging lines toward the world: as though above the clouds were piled the waters of light and ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... the age bore a higher character than sir Thomas Smith for rectitude and benevolence, and nothing of the wiliness and craft conspicuous in most of his coadjutors is discernible in him. There was one foible of his day, however, from which he was by no means exempt: on certain points he was superstitious beyond the ordinary measure of learned credulity in the sixteenth century. Of his faith in alchemical experiments a striking instance ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... alone," said Miss Sylvette de Long, in a tone not part of her role. "When the traffic policeman sticks up his mitt it's time to halt, see?" Lines not before discernible in Miss De Long's face had long since begun to creep out, smoky shadows beneath her eyes and a sunburst of fine lines showing through the ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... there in the days of Louis Philippe. However, he became interested in an old painting which hung in the bed-room, on the wall facing the bed, amidst some childish and valueless engravings. But partially discernible in the waning light, this painting represented a woman seated on some projecting stone-work, on the threshold of a great stern building, whence she seemed to have been driven forth. The folding doors of bronze ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... in size, variety in character and habit. In size there is the difference between the huge terminalia towering up 200 feet high and the tiny little potentilla; between the atlas moth 12 inches in spread and the hardly discernible midges; between the elephant, massive enough to trample its way through the densest forest, and the humble little mouse peeping out of its hole in the ground. In colour the difference ranges from the light blue of the ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... through the clouds; make its appearance, show its face, appear to one's eyes, come upon the stage, float before the eyes, speak for itself &c. (manifest) 525; attract the attention &c. 457; reappear; live in a glass house. expose to view &c. 525. Adj. visible, perceptible, perceivable, discernible, apparent; in view, in full view, in sight; exposed to view, en evidence; unclouded, unobscured[obs3], in the foreground. obvious &c. (manifest) 525; plain, clear, distinct, definite; well defined, well marked; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... visited a smaller god-house: this the 8th regiment had converted into a theatre. Very little traces of a holy temple were discernible; and the great Fo occupied a corner of the green-room. The scenes were painted in fresco, and the whole affair was very tolerably arranged. Most part of the scenery had been painted by my brother during his stay at this ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... struggle, except—yes—there were bruises on the man's neck, as though a hand had grasped it fiercely, and—he bent over—yes, faintly, but nevertheless distinctly enough, two blood-stained finger prints were discernible on the Rat's collar. He lifted the Rat's hands and examined them critically—it might perhaps have been the man himself clutching his own throat, as he choked and struggled for breath—no, the Rat's fingers showed not the slightest trace ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... put the greatest amount of "spring." It must be understood, however, that a good maker never uses a stick that is palpably unequal. He will only take this trouble to correct infinitesimal weaknesses (discernible only to a hand of great experience) in wood of exceptionally good grain. It is astonishing how many violinists seem to think good bows are made by accident. Few know that there are some men who ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... near, the loungers in the lower part of the street displayed a singularly unanimous desire to close in and follow them. There were hundreds of townspeople gathered on the pavements, and not a few vehicles occupied the roadway; so these concerted movements were not discernible to any one who was not a past master in the revolutionary art like Poluski, and to him only because his suspicions ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... at my companion—had I not suddenly seen the closed gateway in the heavens begin to open slowly, allowing a flood of golden radiance to pour out like the steady flowing of a broad stream. The kneeling woman's figure remained plainly discernible, but seemed to be gradually melting into the light which surrounded it. And then— something—I know not what—shook me down from the pinnacle of vision,—hardly aware of my own action, I withdrew my hand from my companion's, and saw—just the solemn grandeur of Loch Coruisk, with ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... American Civil War, and in the war in Cuba (in which the balloon merely served to expose the troops to severe fire), no very valuable information is, as a rule, to be obtained; but in fairly open country all important movements of troops should be discernible by an experienced observer at any point within about four or five miles of the balloon. The circumstances, it may be mentioned, are such as would usually preclude one unaccustomed to ballooning from affording valuable ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the sake of the extra pleasure added to rest; assuming, for the present, equality of condition among men. But it seems to me that it is not the case that the practice of art adds to painful labour; nay more, I believe that, if it did, art would never have arisen at all, would certainly not be discernible, as it is, among peoples in whom only the germs of civilization exist. In other words, I believe that art cannot be the result of external compulsion; the labour which goes to produce it is voluntary, and partly undertaken for the ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... you would have the peace of God, as you call it, you must know what God it is you serve, which is not a God without you, visible among bodies, but the Spirit within you, invisible in every body to the eye of flesh, yet discernible to the eye of the spirit. And when souls shall have communion with that spirit, then they have peace, ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... speculative people. It was propagated, like the dominion of Rome, by conquest. It either took the place of the language of the conquered nation, or became ingrafted upon it, and gradually pervaded its composition; hence its presence is discernible in ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... becomes more remote loses first those parts which are smallest. Thus of a horse, we should lose the legs before the head, because the legs are thinner than the head; and the neck before the body for the same reason. Hence it follows that the last part of the horse which would be discernible by the eye would be the mass of the body in an oval form, or rather in a cylindrical form and this would lose its apparent thickness before its length—according to the 2nd rule given above, &c. [Footnote 23: Compare ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... society had been formed in America for the same object. These thoughts almost overpowered me. My mind was overwhelmed by the thought, that I had been providentially directed to this house; the finger of Providence was beginning to be discernible, and that the day-star ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... up, Lyveden uncovered and pointed to a weather-beaten arm, upon which the words FRANCE 4 MILES were still discernible. ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... they are a sweet outfit, I tell you!" The Chief had laughed as if these things were merely amusing. Then he had gone on to explain that across the Bay of Katleean in the shadow of the great blue glacier which was discernible on sunny days, there had been a lonely Thlinget graveyard. Because of its isolation this burial place had been so riddled with re-opened graves and so much killing, torturing and fighting had ensued among the Indians in their efforts to detect and punish so-called witches that he, their ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... a distance of the bridge that the features of the Federal soldiers at the other extremity were plainly discernible, Conrad suddenly halted, threw one company into line, keeping the other in column behind it, and opened fire upon it, which was returned with interest. Just then Lieutenant Welsh carried his company across the creek on the extreme left, followed by Lea (the water coming up to the men's ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... to paint the sculptures, either on stone or wood, with bright colors—yellow, blue, red, green predominating. In Mayab the same custom prevailed, and traces of these colors are still easily discernible on the sculptures; whilst they are still very brilliant on the beautiful and highly polished stucco of the walls in the rooms of certain monuments at Chichen-Itza. The Maya artists seem to have used mostly vegetable colors; yet they also employed ochres as pigments, and cinnabar—we having found ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... the cultivation ended abruptly on the edge of a sandy desert that, seamed with nullahs, or deep, steep-sided ravines, and dotted with tall clumps of thorny cactus, stretched away to the horizon. The road became a barely discernible track; but the two sowars cantered on, confidently heading for the spot where the fresh horses awaited ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... scientists have proved as ruling the manifestations of light and sound, applies also to the efforts of human emotion. And who shall tell us the ultimate bounds of these waves of light and sound? If these discernible waves can be traced till they fade into impalpable nothingness, may we not think that this other, impalpable at the beginning as they are at the end, can alone stretch into the dimness of memory? Sir Joshua's gallant compliment, ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... even when he is saying the deepest things! The poem is full of the elements of the finest mystical metaphysics, and yet there is no effort in their expression. The tendency to find God beyond, rather than in our daily human conditions, is discernible; but ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... divorce, she shut herself up in her room, and did not leave it, nor hold communion with any one, until the next morning. Then, with the exception of a wearied look, as if she had not slept well, and a shade of sadness about her lips, no change was discernible. When the decree, annulling the marriage between her and Dexter, was placed in her hands, she seemed bewildered for a time, as if she found it almost impossible to realize her ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... craft. The scoffers find a grimace in everything he ever wrote upon the subject, from "The Bibliomaniac's Prayer," with its palpable reflection of Watts and its ill-concealed raillery, down to the gentle, yet none the less discernible, mockery of the "Love Affairs." It would be a bootless task to follow the gradual evolution from the frequent authorship of such ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... all countries, just as there are nouveaux-riches. In Paris these latter are easily discernible. They have not yet had time to become accustomed to their new luxuries; especially the women, who wear exaggerated styles, and flaunt their furs and ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... again. This could be done by means of the string with which it was bound up. This he took off, and tying one end to the package, he thrust it into the crevice as far as he could, quite out of sight, leaving the end of the string hanging out about one inch, in such a way that it was discernible ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... prize, the deviation in the Alabama's course, occasioned by the chase, proved most fortunate for her. She had scarcely luffed up again, after ascertaining the brig's nationality, when again the welcome cry was heard, and the helm shifted in pursuit. Soon the new chase became clearly discernible from the quarter-deck, when she proved to be a large ship running to the northward and eastward under a press of canvas. So determinedly was she "cracking on" as to have everything set, even to her main-royal, notwithstanding that ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... whence the mischief had proceeded. I can give no idea in words of what I there found. The earth had been torn open, rooted up as if by a gigantic explosion. In some places sharp-pointed fragments of the coral rock, which at a depth of several feet formed the bed of the island, were discernible far below the actual surface. At others, the surface itself was raised several feet by debris of every kind. What I may call the crater—though it was no actual hole, but rather a cavity torn and then filled up by falling fragments—was two or three hundred feet in ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... they entered, sought the window, but the seat was vacant now; evidences of its having been lately occupied were discernible in a work-basket that stood on a table near, and on which some embroidered ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... evangelists do not agree as to the dwelling-place of Christ's parents, nor concerning the circumstances of the crucifixion; they differ about the woman who anointed our Lord's feet; and the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy is not discernible in the New Testament history. To the question, What is inspiration? there are two answers: first, That idea of Scripture which we gather from the knowledge of it; and, second, that any true doctrine of inspiration must conform to all the ascertained facts ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... to listen, then set off on the run for the old yard semaphore, dimly discernible a hundred yards distant. Reaching it, he caught the lantern in his teeth, and ran up the ladder hand over hand, clambered onto the little platform, ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... "Purgatory... is a fond thing, vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the word of God." However, in the celebrated "Essays and Reviews" case, the point arose in respect of a doctrine, scarcely discernible from that of Purgatory, being taught by Mr. H. B. Wilson, and the Privy Council decided that there is no condemnation of it in the Anglican formularies. The teaching of Article xxii. is borne out by the following: Luke xxiii, 43; Phil. i 23; 2 Cor. v. ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous
... and a dimly discernible figure on the opposite side of the room stooped and opened a little cupboard in which was a lighted ship's lantern. The lantern being lifted out and set upon a rough table near the stove, it became possible to view the apartment and ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... have been written by a sort of half Jews, as the foregoing quotations mention, is discernible enough. The frequent references made to that chief assassin and impostor Moses, and to the men called prophets, establishes this point; and, on the other hand, the church has complimented the fraud, by admitting the Bible and the Testament ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... as is discernible from the immediate prospect, we cannot look to an early disappearance of deafness from the race, there are indications at present that deafness is tending to become less. The probabilities are that the future will be able to report advance, and so far as ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best
... finds within his own spirit so little adventure that he is driven to seek it by changing his horizon. The towns remain unvaried, yet the individual faces alter like classes in college. The Gopher Prairie jeweler sells out, for no discernible reason, and moves on to Alberta or the state of Washington, to open a shop precisely like his former one, in a town precisely like the one he has left. There is, except among professional men and the wealthy, small permanence ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... upon a gravel walk could be heard on the other side of the fence, and a trio of cloaked and umbrella-screened figures were for a moment discernible. They vanished behind the gymnasium; and again nothing resounded but the river murmurs and the clock-like drippings of ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... boats are plying again, but they stop at nightfall, and the river is inky-smooth, with the same long weed-like reflections as in August. Only the reflections are fewer and paler; bright lights are muffled everywhere. The line of the quays is scarcely discernible, and the heights of the Trocadero are lost in the blur of night, which presently effaces even the firm tower-tops of Notre-Dame. Down the damp pavements only a few street lamps throw their watery zigzags. The shops are shut, and the windows above them thickly curtained. The faces of the ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... consciousness appears to the writer discernible in a letter of Wellington to Castlereagh, of May 25, 1814. To procure "the cession of Olivenza by Spain to Portugal, we could promise to bind North America, by a secret article in our treaty of peace, to give no encouragement, or countenance, or assistance, ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... the hunter, though there was somewhat of a quivering of the muscles of the cheek discernible amid the curls of his chestnut beard: "robbery is not the ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... westwards): (1) the Archdeacon's House, now used as the College library, (2) the Deanery—an embattled residence with gatehouse and turrets, built by Dean Gunthorpe, 1472-98 (the imposing character of the building is not discernible from the road, as the real front faces the garden), (3) Browne's Gate, through which the Close is entered from Sadler Street. The remainder of the official residences of the chapter lie to the N. of ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... novel, and I myself definitely classed by holding the opinion that this work was inferior to its immediate predecessor. Was it worse because she had been keeping worse company? If her secret was, as she had told me, her life—a fact discernible in her increasing bloom, an air of conscious privilege that, cleverly corrected by pretty charities, gave distinction to her appearance—it had yet not a direct influence on her work. That only made one—everything only made one—yearn ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... in plants is hidden, since they lack sense and local movement, by which the animate and the inanimate are chiefly discernible. And therefore, since they are firmly fixed in the earth, their production is treated as a ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... the other. The theist is, as is often the case, saying one thing and meaning another. What he says is that the cause must be adequate to the effect. There is no dispute here. But what he proceeds to argue is that the effect must be discernible in the cause, which is a different statement altogether. When he says that an effect cannot be greater than its cause, what he means is that an effect cannot be different from its cause, which is ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... with her needle, for some time thereafter. Yet she did not quite know what she was thinking of. There was a little stir in her mind, which was so unaccustomed that it was delightful; it was also vague, and its provoking elements were not clearly discernible. The young lady was conscious of a certain pleasant thrill in the view of the task to which she had been invited. It promised her possible difficulty, for even in the few short minutes just passed she ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... indication of failure recorded, the dates accompanying the grades for the subjects may tell the tale that two semesters were required to complete one semester's work in a subject. Some of these situations were easily discernible, and the indisputable failures treated as such in the succeeding tabulations; but in many instances this was not possible, and partial statement of these cases is ...
— The High School Failures - A Study of the School Records of Pupils Failing in Academic or - Commercial High School Subjects • Francis P. Obrien
... apparently unruffled ocean, which every moment gained a deeper and a deeper tint of blue and began already to assume a slight appearance of convexity. At a vast distance to the eastward, although perfectly discernible, extended the islands of Great Britain, the entire Atlantic coasts of France and Spain, with a small portion of the northern part of the continent of Africa. Of individual edifices not a trace could be discovered, and the proudest cities of mankind had utterly faded ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... away from the Peary, on the side opposite to the one Ken Torrance had approached, a dimly discernible object lay in the mud. In miniature, it resembled the submarine: a cigar-shaped steel shell, held down to the sea-bottom by ropes bound over it. Cutting edges of steel had been ...
— Under Arctic Ice • H.G. Winter
... the tides is greatly interrupted. Only in the southern ocean can the waters obey the lunar and solar attraction in anything like a normal way. In that part of the earth two sets of tides are discernible, the one and greater due to the moon, the other, much smaller, to the sun. As these tides travel round at different rates, the movements which they produce are sometimes added to each other and sometimes subtracted—that is, at times they come together, while again the elevation ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... test tube, unite to form a single colorless liquid; if one volume of benzine (from petroleum) be added to this, and the tube well shaken, the contents will soon separate into three distinct colorless fluids, the planes of demarkation being clearly discernible by transmitted light. Drop into the tube a particle of "acid magenta;" after again shaking the liquids together, the lower two zones will present different shades of red, while the supernatant ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various
... through the lower rooms, now gleaming, now intercepted, as the walls or the windows intervened, and suddenly disappeared. Alonzo gazed earnestly a few moments, and hastily returned back. No noise was to be heard, no new objects were discernible.—He clambered over the garden wall, and went around to the back side of the house. Here all was solemn and silent as in front. Immediately a faint light appeared through one of the chamber windows; it grew brighter; a candle entered the chamber; the sash was flung up, and Melissa ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... the heart of Robertson there was a strange peace. Being human, he naturally resented the discernible thoughts in the minds of his comrades of many a hard-fought battle. But a calmness made him forgetful of all this for he knew that at last, in a moment of the supreme test, he had conquered that which had been his master throughout all of his life—his temper. All ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... of this person's linen would seem to indicate that his association with mere runners was but occasional and for commercial ends. Also might that conclusion have been deduced from the immaculacy of his cream-white Panama hat. That was a jaunty article, with upturned brim, the pride of which was discernible in the very simplicity with which it sat, unadulterated by band or trimmings, upon the closely cropped, mole-colored head of the wearer. Thirty dollars, at least, must have been its marketable value. Instead of being fitted with chain-tackle, the watch of this superior ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... Palace. On the 17th, the Queen dissolved Parliament in person, dressed in white satin, decorated with gold and jewels, wearing the Order of the Garter and a rich diadem and necklace of diamonds. She bore the function remarkably well, although one evening paper said that "Her emotion was plainly discernible in the rapid heaving of her bosom, and the brilliancy of her diamond stomacher, which sparkled out occasionally from the dark recess in which the throne was placed, like the sun on the swell of the smooth ocean, as the billows rise and fall"! On the 19th July she held her first levee, ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... leave the room. As he did so Wilford, for the first time, raised his head, thereby disclosing a countenance which, pale as death, was characterised by an expression of such intense malignity as one might conceive would be discernible in that of a corpse reanimated by some evil spirit. After regarding Oaklands fixedly for a moment, he said, in a low, grating tone of voice, "You have foiled me once and again—when next we meet, it wilt, be my turn!" Oaklands merely smiled contemptuously, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... dissent as he returned the other's gaze. They were about the same height and had the same English type of face, while Winston's eyes were gray and his companion's an indefinite blue that approached the former color, but there the resemblance, which was not more than discernible, ended. Winston was quietly-spoken and somewhat grim, a plain prairie farmer in appearance, while a vague but recognizable stamp of breeding and distinction still clung to Courthorne. He would have appeared more in place in the States upon the southern Atlantic seaboard, ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... the day had been unusually fine, and, in consequence, the whole hilly ranges around were clearly discernible, but now the shades of evening ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... darkness would appear to anyone in the vehicle, I made a circuit, and got round to the rear. It was a single-seated buggy, with a white horse, travelling at a walk; and, in the darkness behind the lamps, two figures were discernible. I followed a little, to hear them introduce themselves. ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... fell still lower. The subscriptions to a new loan, which the Commons had, from mere spite to Montague, determined to raise on conditions of which he disapproved, came in very slowly. The signs of a reaction of feeling were discernible both in and out of Parliament. Many men are alarmists by constitution. Trenchard and Howe had frightened most men by writing and talking about the danger to which liberty and property would be exposed if the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that tallies with his preconceived notions. Accordingly, any close description of native Indian manners or people is apt to lose interest in proportion as it is exact; its value as a painting of life is usually discernible only by those who know the country. The popular traditional East was long, and indeed still is, that which has been for generations fixed in the imagination of Western folk by the Arabian Nights, by the legends of Crusaders, and by pictorial editions of the Old Testament. ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... brilliance of the gaudy morning sun, she saw for the first time signs of years in Eugenia's exquisite small face. There was not a line visible, nor a faltering of the firmness of the well-cared-for flesh, but over it all was a faint, hardly discernible flaccid fatigue ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... von Horn set out alone with his Dyak allies. For a time after they departed Sing Lee fretted and fidgeted upon the verandah of the long-house. He wholly distrusted von Horn, and from motives of his own finally decided to follow him. The trail of the party was plainly discernible, and the Chinaman had no difficulty in following them, so that they had gone no great way before he came within hearing distance of them. Always just far enough behind to be out of sight, he kept pace with the little column as it marched through the torrid heat of the morning, until a little ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... immovable, but far enough from a state of tranquility; agitation, joy, gratitude, ardent indefinite wishes, restrained by the fear of giving displeasure, which my unpractised heart too much dreaded, were sufficiently discernible. She neither appeared more tranquil, nor less intimidated than myself—uneasy at my present situation; confounded at having brought me there, beginning to tremble for the effects of a sign which she had made without reflecting on the consequences, neither giving encouragement, nor expressing ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... logically upon inference; inference from the whole body of our experiences, among which the most important place is held by our immediate moral judgements. The truth of Theism is in that sense a truth discernible by Reason. But it does not follow that, when it was first discovered, it was arrived at by the inferences which I have endeavoured to some extent to analyse, or by one of the many lines of thought which may lead to the same conclusions. ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... gratitude of those who are about me. If anybody owes to my mere favor a place, a post, let us have the name." He enumerated all the services he had rendered to the king, to the state, to the nation, with that somewhat pompous satisfaction which was afterwards discernible in his Memoires. There it was that he wrote: "Perhaps he who contributed, by his energies, to keep off new imposts during five such expensive years; he who was able to devote to all useful works the funds which had been employed upon them in the most tranquil times; ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... they would feel their dependence (if he failed to turn up) through a long month of anxious waiting. Prompted by his sensitive humanity, Davidson, in the gathering dusk, turned the Sissie's head towards the hardly discernible coast, and navigated her safety through a maze of shallow patches. But by the time he got to the mouth of the creek the night ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... at a rapid rate to windward, the direction in which the whales had been seen, and that we might keep as near them as possible the ship was hauled close up. They were soon not discernible from the deck, and on they went increasing their distance till even the look-out from the masthead could no longer distinguish them. Still the first mate had carefully noted the direction they had taken, and seemed to have no doubt about picking them ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... her one consolation, together with a miniature of Louis in full regalia. Who is this haggard wretch with still the vestiges of her wondrous beauty discernible in her perfectly moulded features?—not La Belle Bibi! Oh, Fate—Destiny—how cruel are you who guided her straying feet through the mazes of life! Why could she not have died at her zenith—when her ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... trees with which the country thereabout is covered, prevent the crater from being discernible at a distance; and this proves that the spot is not considerably raised or otherwise affected by the earthquakes which are very frequently felt there. Sometimes it has emitted smoke upon these occasions, ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... smote upon his ear, and a hope began to rise in his breast that no immediate danger threatened. A short distance away, embowered among the trees, was the house of Burrowes. The door was closed, and not a sign of life was discernible about the place. ...
— The Tapu Of Banderah - 1901 • Louis Becke
... certainly find that the increase of cancer would be seen only in those parts of the system, such as internal organs, where some degree of doubt might perhaps be entertained; while, on the other hand, there would be little or no increase discernible in the mortality of cancers affecting parts of the body where its nature could not be mistaken by any intelligent physician or surgeon. Now, for a number of years, perhaps with this hypothesis in view, the Registrar-General in England has tabulated ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... paused, hung for tremulous instants, was lost and discernible again. A frozen clod, loosened as she clutched at the projecting roots of a young beech, ricocheted behind her. Her course, paralleling that taken by Holton, was about ten yards to the left of it. To ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... look like land," assented the sailor, directing his glance upon something of a strange appearance, low down upon the surface of the sea, and still but dimly discernible through the fog. "Shiver my timbers if it don't! An island it be,—not a very big 'un, but for all that, it seem ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... toward the city. The huge bottle-shaped chimneys of the power plant injected heavy black smoke into the wet air. In Faber Street the once brilliant signs above the "ten-foot" buildings seemed dulled, the telegraph poles starker, nakeder than ever, their wires scarcely discernible against the smeared sky. The pedestrians were sombrely garbed, and went about in "rubbers"—the most depressing of all articles worn by man. Sodden piles of snow still hid the curb and gutters, but the pavements were trailed with mud that gleamed in the light ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... further in and see what it was that moved over by the patch of moonlight. Something did move—she was sure of that, but a fireman and a chief could not be asked to investigate anything but smoke or flame, and neither element was discernible, so she followed down the box stairway to confront ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... crowns of a whole world; those hands, of which the most coquettish women might have been vain, and whose white skin covered muscles of iron; in short, of all that personal beauty which distinguished Napoleon as a young man, no traces were discernible in the boy. Saveria spoke truly when she said, that of all the children of Signora Laetitia, the Emperor was the one from whom future greatness was least to be prognosticated" (vol. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... moment his boat was lifting on the swell towards the rocks. He pulled quickly, occasionally turning to note that the strange figure, whose movements were quite discernible to the naked eye, was still there, but gazing more earnestly towards the nearest shore for any sign of life or occupation. In ten minutes he had reached the curve where the trend opened northward, and the long line of shore stretched before him. He swept it eagerly with a single searching glance. ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... skin, shadowed by her little close black hat, was dazzling, her eyes large, grey flecked with gold, and shaded by long dark lashes. Altogether there was about her the clear beauty of a star, which even the traces of emotion now discernible could ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... night, and reached Augsburg at dawn. It is a beautiful city, but we merely stopped there for breakfast, and saw the streets only as we passed through them. On leaving Augsburg, the Tyrolean Alps, though nearly forty leagues away, were in sight. About eighteen leagues off was also discernible an immense forest; of this we had a nearer view as we advanced, for it encircles Munich at some distance from the town. We arrived here on Sunday, the 4th, in the afternoon. . .My address is opposite the Sendlinger Thor Number 37. ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... Variety in form, variety in colour, variety in size, variety in character and habit. In size there is the difference between the huge terminalia towering up 200 feet high and the tiny little potentilla; between the atlas moth 12 inches in spread and the hardly discernible midges; between the elephant, massive enough to trample its way through the densest forest, and the humble little mouse peeping out of its hole in the ground. In colour the difference ranges from the light blue of the forget-me-not to the deep blue of the ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... we are naturally prepared to find a general resemblance in manners and customs between this part of its inhabitants, and kindred sects established in adjacent countries; accordingly, the differences are so faint as to be scarcely discernible in a single instance.” Now, I must here observe, that Nepal, in the proper sense of the word, when Colonel Kirkpatrick wrote, had not been governed for half a century by chiefs, who even pretended to be descended ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... events described by him; the evangelists do not agree as to the dwelling-place of Christ's parents, nor concerning the circumstances of the crucifixion; they differ about the woman who anointed our Lord's feet; and the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy is not discernible in the New Testament history. To the question, What is inspiration? there are two answers: first, That idea of Scripture which we gather from the knowledge of it; and, second, that any true doctrine of inspiration ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... is not without "the defects of its qualities," and consequently among the less able composers a certain tendency to repeat combinations of similar companion ideas is discernible at times, while the danger that facile construction might usurp the place of originality and strategy was already apparent to Chocholous when, in an article on the classification of chess problems (Deutsche ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... while the boat's five oars were seen simultaneously peaked. Boat and crew sat motionless on the sea. Instantly the three spread boats in the rear paused on their way. The whales had irregularly settled bodily down into the blue, thus giving no distantly discernible token of the movement, though from his closer vicinity Ahab had observed it. Every man look out along his oars! cried Starbuck. Thou, Queequeg, stand up! Nimbly springing up on the triangular raised box in the bow, the savage stood erect there, and with intensely eager eyes gazed off ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... Freydis into a dark place where some of these magic-workers were at labor. By the light of a charcoal fire, clay images were ruddily discernible; before these the enchanters moved unhumanly clad, and doing things which, mercifully perhaps, were veiled from Manuel ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... investigated; on the contrary, they still take place, but are intermingled with, and disguised by, the homogeneous and closely allied effects of other causes. They are no longer a, b, c, d, e, existing side by side, and continuing to be separately discernible; they are a, -a, 1/2b, -b, 2b, etc.; some of which cancel one another, while many others do not appear distinguishably, but merge in one sum; forming altogether a result, between which and the causes whereby ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... in this fowl, to which of the crossed ancestors each quality is due. To a certain extent it is undoubtedly true that here we have the secret of the origin of many of those interesting people whom we are pleased to call geniuses. They may not possess any qualities not clearly discernible in various of their near ancestors, but in them we find what we, for the lack of a better understanding, call chance combination in one individual of the finer qualities of many ancestors, and this individual is so placed in life as to have these ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... secure in that stodgy immobility that takes no risks. Oblivious, apparently, of all secret warnings of excitement or alarm, she lay in a tight round ball, inactive, undisturbed. Even her breathing revealed her peculiar idiosyncrasy: no actual movement on her surface was discernible. Her breathing involved the least possible disturbance of the pink and white contours that bulged the sheets and counterpane. Her face was calm, expressionless, and even dull, yet wore a certain look as though she knew so much that she had no need to maintain her position by the least ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... motives, after they have held sway for years, are easily discernible. Sensuality, arrogance, vanity, coldness, benevolence, sympathy, and others are easily determined. But, in order to be successful in persuasion, you need to be able to trace all of the ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... the room, and together they went through the passages, calling Etta and looking for her. There was an air of gloom and chilliness in the rooms of the old castle. The outline of the great stones, dimly discernible through the wall-paper, was singularly suggestive of a ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... mild and harmless character, fancied himself the greatest genius in the world. He was, moreover, under the impression that he suffered from a gigantic, monstrous tooth. Of the two idiosyncrasies, the latter alone made his lunacy discernible,—too many individuals being affected with the other symptom to render it an anomalous feature of the human mind. My friend was in the habit of protesting that this enormous tooth increased periodically and threatened to encroach upon his entire jaw. Tormented, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... visible, its sinister cross plainly discernible, and dived. The sentry heard something sizzle down and—a mighty flash lit up the woods: the whole earth trembled violently beneath a fierce concussion. The roar echoed and re-echoed, was followed ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... have referred to, as mentioned by Hall and others, seems the most probable we can find (no other cause for such abrupt hostility being discernible), the date for it must be placed where it is in this work,—namely, just prior to the earl's revolt. The next question is, who could have been the lady thus offended, whether a niece or daughter. ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... exhausted Humanity was essaying a feeble twitter of hope as it plumed itself for a peaceful flight might be again obscured. To us of a remote posterity the momentary division of epochs seems hardly discernible. So rapidly did that fight of Demons which we call the Thirty Years' War tread on the heels of the forty years' struggle for Dutch Independence which had just been suspended that we are accustomed to think and speak ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the world, became the dream of anonymous poets, one that prophets, sometimes equally anonymous, proclaimed. It was the prophets that reviled the false gods, denounced the abominations of Ishtar, and purified the Israelite heart. While nothing discernible, or even imaginable, menaced, however slightly, the great empires of that day, the prophets were the first to realize that the Orient was dead. When the Christ announced that the end of the world was at hand, ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... the sad plight of old Megan, who was bemoaning the loss of her property on the wrong side of the gorge so many years ago, when there appeared to her suddenly a cowled monk, whose dark face was scarcely discernible, with a rosary hanging to his girdle, and a deep but ...
— Legend Land, Vol. 1 • Various
... two years he wrote nothing; it was a time of internal mental activity and silent progress. But, when he began to write again, the results of it were at once discernible. The Epistles written after this imprisonment have a mellower tone and set forth a profounder view of doctrine than his earlier writings. There is no contradiction, indeed, or inconsistency between his earlier and later views: in Ephesians and Colossians he builds on the broad ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... pretty woman, and with much of that delicacy of form and outline which constitutes the gentility of person. She had a sweet voice too, except when angry. Her defects of education, of temper, or of conventional polish, were not discernible in the overflow of natural emotion. Darrell had come resolved to be released if possible. Pleased he was, much more than he had expected. He even inly accepted for the deceased Captain excuses which he had never before admitted to himself. The linen-draper's daughter ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... far as is discernible from the immediate prospect, we cannot look to an early disappearance of deafness from the race, there are indications at present that deafness is tending to become less. The probabilities are that the future will be able to report advance, and so far as the ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best
... closer to the south as Jane Clayton, Lady Greystoke, slid quietly over the stern of the canoe into the chill waters of the lake. She scarcely moved other than to keep her nostrils above the surface while the canoe was yet discernible in the last rays of the declining moon. Then she struck ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... those fruits. The particular fruit, within which Takshaka had entered, was taken by the king himself for eating. And when he was eating it, there appeared, O Saunaka, an ugly insect out of it, of shape scarcely discernible, of eyes black, and of coppery colour. And that foremost of kings, taking that insect, addressed his councillors, saying, 'The sun is setting; today I have no more fear from poison. Therefore, let this insect become Takshaka and bite me, so that my sinful ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... said Knight, there being a faint ghastliness discernible in his laugh. 'They are much worse in a lady's eye than being thought self-conscious, ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... give no idea in words of what I there found. The earth had been torn open, rooted up as if by a gigantic explosion. In some places sharp-pointed fragments of the coral rock, which at a depth of several feet formed the bed of the island, were discernible far below the actual surface. At others, the surface itself was raised several feet by debris of every kind. What I may call the crater—though it was no actual hole, but rather a cavity torn and then filled up by ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... of influences—perhaps the atmosphere of the place, added to the stimulation of the faintly discernible faces around me, and my impulse to prove my own ability in this untried field of narration—gave me a sudden sense of being inspired. I found myself voicing fancies as though they were facts, and readily including imaginary names and data which ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... careening of vessels. The surveyor thought it in every way a superior harbour. "Neither," he writes, "will so many die there as there daily doe in Nombre de Dios." By the middle of the seventeenth century the ruins of the old town were barely discernible; but all traces of them have long since disappeared. Dampier (writing of the year 1682) says that: "I have lain ashore in the place where that City stood; but it is all overgrown with Wood; so as toe leave noe sign that any Town hath been there." ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... over the interest of the pope; and he sharpened those weapons which were soon pointed against the Roman church. [111] He had been the friend of the most eminent scholars of the age: he became their patron; and such was the humility of his manners, that the change was scarcely discernible either to them or to himself. If he pressed the acceptance of a liberal gift, it was not as the measure of desert, but as the proof of benevolence; and when modest merit declined his bounty, "Accept it," would he say, with a consciousness of his own worth: "ye will not always have a ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... the girl's manner, that despite a faint wistfulness discernible in her face, Thorne put aside the half-thought formulated in his brain by the familiar mention of Jim Byrd's name. He allowed himself to be persuaded to re-pocket part of the game, particularly a brace ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... of the dike. The shale, as it approaches the trap, becomes gradually more compact, and is most indurated where nearest the junction. Here it loses part of its schistose structure, but the separation into parallel layers is still discernible. In several places the shale is converted into hard porcelanous jasper. In the most hardened part of the mass the fossil shells, principally Producti, are nearly obliterated; yet even here their impressions may frequently be traced. The argillaceous limestone undergoes analogous mutations, ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... stiff prickles on their backs and sides as would easily have fetched blood, had they not been handled with caution. Their spines are quite white at this age; and they have little hanging ears, which I do not remember to be discernible in the old ones. They can, in part, at this age draw their skin down over their faces; but are not able to contract themselves into a ball as they do, for the sake of defence, when full grown. The ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... have of course their own ballads, which have been recently collected. That the influence of the German population, with whom they live intermingled, has been very great, even in these songs, cannot be matter of surprise. It is, however, chiefly discernible in the melodies they sing; which are said to be the same familiar to the German mountaineers of Styria and Tyrol. Several narrative ballads of some length are still extant among them, similar to ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... travellers have observed respecting the characters of the French and English Creoles, will perfectly apply to those of Chili. The same modes of thinking and the same moral qualities are discernible in them all. They generally have respectable talents, and succeed in all the arts to which they apply. Had they the same motives to stimulate them as are found in Europe, they would make as great progress ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... trembling with anxiety, and was actually pale in the face; for a distinctly discernible pallor overspreads the countenance of the negro when under the influence of ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... its galloping vacation-days, did the little boy come to understand that Santa Claus was not a real presence. And instead of wailing over the ruins of this idol, he brought a sturdy faith to bear, building in its place something unseen and unheard of any save himself—an idol discernible only by him, but none the less ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... linen would seem to indicate that his association with mere runners was but occasional and for commercial ends. Also might that conclusion have been deduced from the immaculacy of his cream-white Panama hat. That was a jaunty article, with upturned brim, the pride of which was discernible in the very simplicity with which it sat, unadulterated by band or trimmings, upon the closely cropped, mole-colored head of the wearer. Thirty dollars, at least, must have been its marketable value. Instead of being ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... interest and weight to his narrative. But it seems to have been composed rather for the sake of the ENGRAVINGS—which are generally most admirably executed. Great delicacy and truth of drawing, as well as elegance of grouping, are frequently discernible in them; and throughout the whole of the compositions there is much of the air of Parmegiano's pencil; especially in the females. Sadeler makes his monks and abbots quite gentlemen in their figures and deportment; and some of his ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... a hardly discernible opening in the brush shouldered a big roan. Tossing up his head, he stretched out in the long, easy lope of the desert-bred, his rider sitting him loosely and with ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Chung-wei was for waiting until this had abated before deciding on a final attack; but luckily another officer, Li Shou- cheng by name, was quicker to see an opportunity, and said: "They are many and we are few, but in the midst of this sandstorm our numbers will not be discernible; victory will go to the strenuous fighter, and the wind will be our best ally." Accordingly, Fu Yen-ch'ing made a sudden and wholly unexpected onslaught with his cavalry, routed the barbarians and succeeded in ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... more clearly retained, if the successive steps of the development are so well marked, so plainly related, that they may be carried away in a hearer's understanding. It might be said that one test of a good speech is the vividness with which its framework is discernible. Hearers can repeat outlines of certain speeches. Those are the best. Of others they can give merely confused reports. These are the badly ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... as they entered, sought the window, but the seat was vacant now; evidences of its having been lately occupied were discernible in a work-basket that stood on a table near, and on which some embroidered muslin had ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... L. two sisters, the one about four and the other about three years old, were inoculated Feb. 7, 1791. On the 10th there was a redness on both arms discernible by a glass. On the 11th their arms were so much inflamed as to leave no doubt of the infection having taken place. On the 12th less appearance of inflammation on their arms. In the evening Miss L. had an eruption, which resembled the measles. On the 12th the ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... water, is known to these hunting Veddahs; they are consequently the best assistants in the world in elephant-hunting. They will run at top speed over hard ground upon an elephant's track which is barely discernible even to the practised eye of a white man. Fortunately, the number of these people is very trifling or the ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... increased in volume, and the distant light brightened until a long line of white foam was clearly discernible. It approached with extraordinary speed. There was a sudden puff of air. It lasted but a few seconds, ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... fairest ornaments; but we believe that a consideration of those Senators who remained faithful to the interests of their country, will discover the fact that in them was displayed at least equally conspicuous merit in oratory and legislation. A distinct contrast was discernible between Northern and Southern eloquence; the latter being of an impulsive and passionate character, unadorned generally by the graces which mental culture lends to that art, (which might be inferred from their well-known temperament,) while the former appears to be more deliberate ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... ravines or on slopes in the vicinity. It is contended that if any previous excavation had been made here and filled up afterwards the mixed earth would be easily distinguished from that which was not removed, and that the line of demarcation would be easily discernible. ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... abode of his grandmother, who had kept a little grocer's shop there in the days of Louis Philippe. However, he became interested in an old painting which hung in the bed-room, on the wall facing the bed, amidst some childish and valueless engravings. But partially discernible in the waning light, this painting represented a woman seated on some projecting stone-work, on the threshold of a great stern building, whence she seemed to have been driven forth. The folding doors of bronze had for ever closed behind her, yet she remained there in a mere drapery ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... of thought. Herrera intimates that he had a talent for poetry, and some slight traces of it are on record in the book of prophecies which he presented to the Catholic sovereigns. But his poetical temperament is discernible throughout all his writings and in all his actions. It spread a golden and glorious world around him, and tinged every thing with its own gorgeous colors. It betrayed him into visionary speculations, which subjected him to the sneers and cavilings of men of cooler and safer but more groveling ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... [Footnote: Even the sharp and angry clang made by the iron scabbards of modern cavalry ringing against the steel-tipp'd saddles and stirrup, betrays their approach from a distance. The clash of the armour of knights, armed cap-a-pie, must have been much more easily discernible.] At once this mighty sound ceased, as if the earth on which they trod had either devoured the armed squadrons or had become incapable of resounding to their tramp. The defenders of the Garde Doloureuse concluded that their friends had ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... jewellers and watchmakers. .. Sailors put it on their hones. Porpoise meat is good eating, you know. It may never have occurred to you that a porpoise spouts. Indeed, his spout is so small that it is not very readily discernible. But the next time you have a chance, watch him; and you will then see the great Sperm whale himself in miniature. BOOK III. ( Duodecimo), CHAPTER II. ( Algerine Porpoise). — A pirate. Very savage. He is only found, I think, in the Pacific. He ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... There is an extensive view from Asolo. Venice, with its cupolas and steeples, is seen to the east. Ottima detects the belfry of the Church of St. Mark. The towns of Vicenza and Padua are also discernible. ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... was led on to a further consideration. I saw that the principle of development not only accounted for certain facts, but was in itself a remarkable philosophical phenomenon, giving a character to the whole course of Christian thought. It was discernible from the first years of the Catholic teaching up to the present day, and gave to that teaching a unity and individuality. It served as a sort of test, which the Anglican could not exhibit, that ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... unlike oblong corn or hay-stacks; or, perhaps, a better idea may be conceived of them, if we suppose the roof of a barn placed on the ground, in such a manner as to form a high, acute ridge, with two very low sides hardly discernible at a distance. The gable at each end corresponding to the sides, makes these habitations perfectly close all round; and they are well thatched with long grass, which is laid on slender poles disposed with some regularity. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... downward toward the deck. This I grasped quickly with both hands, and bawling with all my might to Jackson and Davis to follow, I swung clear of the yard. Looking below, the sea appeared as white as milk in the ghastly light, with the ship's outline now dimly discernible in contrast. I breathed a prayer that the line was fast amidships and slid down. There was a terrific ripping instantly overhead, and I knew the topsail had gone. The line bowed out with the wind, but ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... noise, now more distinct and definable. The heartless intruder had become daring; the click of a shovel was discernible; he was ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... much shorter to the adult than to the child. The novel and comparatively exciting impressions of childhood tend to fill out time in retrospect, and also to throw back remote events into a dimly discernible region. ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... visualize the object we have chosen on the plate I will be holding up before me. You will do this with your eyes open, and to each of you, in your own subjective reality, the object will become, as you know, more or less clearly discernible. ...
— Ham Sandwich • James H. Schmitz
... more aggravated form, followed by what is called the "cold stage," marked by great severity of griping pain in the stomach, accompanied with frequent and copious watery evacuations, and presently with cramps in all parts of the body; after which the extremities become chilled, the pulse scarcely discernible, the result of which is stupor ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... really climbed the baobab, and now they were seen rising on all sides, winding along the boughs like reptiles, and advancing slowly but surely, all the time plainly enough discernible, not merely to the eye but to the nostrils, by the horrible odors of the rancid grease with ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... unfriendly disposition. As she drew near, I felt more and more convinced that she must be the Foam. She had a peculiarly long cutwater and a very straight sheer, which, as she came up to the windward of us, and presented nearly her broadside, was discernible. As she heeled over to the now freshening breeze, I fancied that I could even discern, through the glass, Captain Hawk walking the quarter-deck. When she got about a quarter of a mile to windward of us, she ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... elections, then their arguments become more worthy of consideration. And so the great heart of the parliamentary Pharaoh began to soften towards the anti-vaccinators, and of this softening the first signs were discernible within three or four days of my taking my seat as ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... signal is still out. That threatening forty thousand dollars' deficit does not let up in its indications of approach. The black clouds are plainly discernible. We have been for months anxiously watching their movements. Our prayers and efforts have been steadily turned towards their dissipation. We do not lose faith. We believe in our work. We believe in our ...
— The American Missionary—Volume 39, No. 07, July, 1885 • Various
... in the room lengthened until it was difficult to distinguish the various objects scattered about the place. The few members that had dropped into the club faded into dark images barely discernible in their broad leather chairs. Then, of a sudden, the lights were switched on. The sharp rays that spread from the clusters of electric lamps revealed a man's figure outlined in the doorway. His eyes traveled about the room as if imploring ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... epoch to epoch. But each epoch has had its peculiar crocodiles; though all, since the chalk, have belonged to the modern type, and differ simply in their proportions, and in such structural particulars as are discernible only to ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... infinitesimal creature, upon whom some score of others, as minute as he, are gazing in open-mouthed admiration, is a famous philosopher, expounding to a select audience their capacity for the Infinite. That scarce discernible pufflet of smoke and dust is a revolution. That speck there is a reformer, just arranging the lever with which he is to move the world. And lo, there creeps forward the shadow of a skeleton that blows one breath between ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... discernible in this dramatic revelation of progress from spiritual chaos to spiritual order— for to order the play must be said to lead, and progress is implied in its onward movement, if there be anything at all in our growing modern conviction that any vital faith is better than none at ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... reflection of the moon, swinging like some supernal craft in the great lacustrine sweep where the stream broadens in rounding the point. Now a filmy veil was over all, yet the night was so fine that the light filtered through the mist, and objects were still discernible, though only vaguely visible, like the furnishings of a dream. A rowboat was rocking on the ripples among the boulders at the water's edge. As the child made the perilous descent in the practised clasp of the grandfatherly Clenk, he could look up and see the jagged portal of the ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... fact at once yields for our apprehension two factors, which I will name, the 'discerned' and the 'discernible.' The discerned is comprised of those elements of the general fact which are discriminated with their own individual peculiarities. It is the field directly perceived. But the entities of this field have relations to other entities ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... universe existed only in the first divine idea yet unexpanded, as if involved in darkness, imperceptible, undefinable, undiscoverable by reason, and undiscovered by revelation, as if it were wholly immersed in sleep; then the sole, self-existing power, himself undiscovered, but making this world discernible, with five elements and other principles of nature, appeared with undiminished glory, expanding his idea or dispelling the gloom. He, whom the mind alone can perceive, whose essence eludes the external organs, who has not visible parts, who exists from eternity, even ...
— The Christian Foundation, February, 1880
... little brook down there in spring," said she, pointing to a small, grass-grown water-course in the meadow, hardly discernible from the height, "but there's no water in it now. It runs quite full for a while after the snow breaks up; but it dries away ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... are the remains of the poison contained in this cup so discernible, and present in such a quantity, ...
— The Stepmother, A Drama in Five Acts • Honore De Balzac
... be sure, was barely discernible, still it was sufficiently so for a detective to found on. His dress, too, was brown tweed, not grey; but of course dresses can be changed; and as to his manner, there could not be two ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... understand the description of the ruins just mentioned, and those at Apache Springs, they are villages of these small houses and their inclosures. In such villages the inclosures meet each other, so as to form a checker-board of irregularly alternating houses and courts. The houses are easily discernible from the fact of little rubbish mounds having accumulated where they stood. Around these parts of the wall can still be traced. This combination makes a strong, easily defended position. Each of such villages contains one or ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... negroes who came in from the country with their produce. The other sides were taken up by the fabric and gewgaw venders, while in the centre stood the platforms from which the auctioneers offered treasures from the Occident. Through a break in the foothills, the chateau was plainly discernible, the sea being obscured from view by the dense forest that crowned ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... right. For all the world as though they led war dogs, the keepers in brazen armor advanced, the dull metallic clank of their accoutrement clearly discernible above the sibilant hiss of their hideous charges, which hopped along grotesquely like kangaroos, using their long and ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... an hour had elapsed when the lookout reported a blur on the horizon that, despite the mist of early morning, was easily discernible as the smoke of several vessels under forced draft. Very soon the head of the column loomed over the horizon—-a German cruiser in the lead—-followed closely by a destroyer that was belching forth dense ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... an ultimate fact about which, explicable or inexplicable, there can be no doubt. Strictly speaking, we have no direct apprehension of any other cause of motion. But experience furnishes innumerable examples of the production of kinetic energy in a body previously at rest, when no impact is discernible as the cause of that energy. In all such cases, the presence of a second body is a necessary condition; and the amount of kinetic energy, which its presence enables the first to gain, is strictly dependent on the relative positions of the two. Hence the phrase ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
... the scenes that have made my life worth living. As I peer into the dark abysm of things gone by, many places that seemed at first indistinct, grow clearer; but many more must remain impenetrable. Upon the whole, however, I am surprised to find how much is still discernible. Nearly a score of years ago I published, in the shape of a formal biography of Hawthorne and his wife, the consecutive facts of their lives, and numerous passages from their journals and correspondence. My aim is different ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... quadruped was thus warily creeping toward him. Holmes stood leaning against a storehouse platform in the deepest shade of an over-hanging roof; the figure was perhaps twelve or thirteen yards away, and, as it neared the window, the vague outlines of the mysterious creature became more easily discernible. Immediately under the beams of light that shot across the dark enclosure the figure paused; slowly raised itself; a hand went up to the head and whipped off a cap just as the crown was tinged by the gleam ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... who have been greatly tried but not destroyed. The late but splendid maturity of Lincoln's mind and character dates from this time, and, although he grew in strength and knowledge to the end, from this year we observe a steadiness and sobriety of thought and purpose, as discernible in his life as in his style. He was like a blade forged in fire and tempered in the ice- brook, ready for battle whenever the battle ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... opposite the promontory upon whose apex we were placed, and at a distance of some five or six miles out at sea, there was visible a small, bleak-looking island; or, more properly, its position was discernible through the wilderness of surge in which it was enveloped. About two miles nearer the land, arose another of smaller size, hideously craggy and barren, and encompassed at various intervals by a cluster of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... her part. Her attitude was graceful, but though she appeared to listen with all her faculties her face remained perfectly blank; a fact, however, not discouraging to Wayworth, who liked her better for not being premature. Her companions gave discernible signs of recognising the passages of comedy; yet Wayworth forgave her even then for being inexpressive. She evidently wished before everything else to be simply sure of ...
— Nona Vincent • Henry James
... serpentine outline, and to the desolate majesty of the hills which environ it, Lough Veagh, though not a large sheet of water, may well be what it is reputed to be, a rival of the finest lochs in Scotland. No traces are now discernible on its shores of the too celebrated evictions of Glen Veagh. But from the wild and rugged aspect of the surrounding country it is probable enough that these evictions were to the evicted a blessing in disguise, and that their descendants ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... as to be quite visible in the profound black darkness of the shop; while Mrs Verloc, veiled, had no face, almost no discernible form. The trembling of something small and white, a flower in her hat, marked her place, ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... were very large indeed now, his cheeks sunken, and every rib of his emaciated body plainly discernible to whomsoever should care to count them. Constant terror, perhaps, had had as much to do with his physical condition as had improper food. Tarzan noticed the change and was worried. He had hoped to see his balu wax ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... front was our wire barely discernible in the fog. The Major interrupted five wordless reveries by expressing, with what almost seemed regretfulness, the fact that in all his fighting experience he had never seen it "so damn quiet." His observation passed without ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... quickly summoned a soldier and sent him to the engineer with a message calling for more speed. After another minute the increase in speed was easily discernible. ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock
... bare-headed, the garden lights shining full upon his upturned face, he made a striking picture. His hair was absolutely black, and his face was of the pure Italian type, very dark, and cast in noble lines. About the mouth and eyes, a touch of austere melancholy was discernible, even now, in the animation of the moment. He was like his brother, though his face lacked the sunlit quality which was his brother's chief charm of countenance. On the other hand, the intelligence of his brother's face was here developed ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... River, from whence they appear to have been brought. The summit of this tumulus was nearly 30 feet in diameter, and there was a raised way to it, leading from the east, like a modern turnpike. The summit was level. The outline of the semicircular pavement and the walk is still discernible. The earth composing this mound was entirely removed several years since. The writer was present at its removal and carefully examined the ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... the epoch of the thymus explains why, in any given geographic locality, the babies look alike and act alike. Specialists in the observation and treatment of infants have noted that not until after the second year is any tendency to differentiation discernible to any extent among them. It is only after the second year, or somewhere around that time, that the child begins to individuate, and distinct individual traits and a personality manifest their outlines. The thymus ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... its nineteen chapels, the works of the piety of individuals, completed before 1350. The roof of the choir remained imperfect till ninety years afterwards, whilst that of the transept is as recent as 1628[5]. The most ancient work is discernible in the transepts, but the lines are obscured by later additions. A cloister gallery fronted by delicate mullions runs round the nave and choir, and the extent and arrangement of the exterior would induce a stranger, unacquainted with the history of the building, ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... picture of the Christ, a Byzantine painting in a bronze frame. The ikon had grown dark with age, the paint had been cracked in many places, so that the Christ face was hardly recognisable, but the eyelids were still plainly discernible, and the eyes looked out dreamily on the worshippers; the folded hands ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... view of the country was attainable.... Pundit says that the route for the great Kanadaw railroad must have been in some measure marked out about nine hundred years ago! In fact, he goes so far as to assert that actual traces of a road are still discernible—traces referable to a period quite as remote as that mentioned. The track, it appears was double only; ours, you know, has twelve paths; and three or four new ones are in preparation. The ancient rails were very slight, and placed so close together as to be, according to modern ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... of the worker. An investigation in 1874, and indignation at some of the conditions then discovered, brought about modifications of the law. That of the general congress of 1891 accomplished much more; but work must still be done before any very marked advance becomes discernible. ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... into his vocabulary only one new word. In the sixty-third week he seized a biscuit that had been dipped in hot water, let it fall, drew down the corners of his mouth, and began to cry. Then I said "heiss" (hot), whereupon the child, speedily quieted, repeated hai and hai-s (with a just discernible s). Three days later the same experiment was made. After this the hais, haisses, with distinct s, was often heard without any occasion. Some days later I wanted him to say "hand." The child observed my mouth closely, took manifest pains, but produced only ha-iss, then very ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... going on beneath its surface. Their grisly shapes vivid in the disturbed phosphorescence, drawing a wake of flame behind them, rushed two great sharks. Hither and thither they darted, every detail of their ugly forms discernible on the framing of the phosphorescent blaze, even the set glare of the cruel eye; and, no less nimble in swift doubling flashes, several smaller fish were trying to evade the laws of nature—the absorption of the weakest, to wit. There was something indescribably horrible in the fiery rush ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... of a thick cloud that the wind was driving to the east. The surface of the sea glittered with its rays. This kindly light reanimated us. My head got better again. I looked at all points of the horizon. I saw the frigate! She was five miles from us, and looked like a dark mass, hardly discernible. But ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... trail in the jungle soon told the story. The tracks of a single steer were discernible, pointing toward the opening, and there were no tracks returning. The animal, lost in the thicket had fought its way out till, in the open space, its strength ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... however. It was ascertained by the old marks in the snow at the edge of the precipice that, whatever members of the party who owned the sledge had tumbled over, at least two of them had escaped, for their track—faint and scarcely discernible—was traced for some distance. It was found, also, that Wapaw's track joined this old one. The wounded Indian had fallen upon it not far from the precipice, and, supposing, no doubt, that it would lead him to some encampment, he had followed it up. Robin and his men also followed it—increasing ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne
... find that the arrangement of the faces is subject to fixed and definite laws." We find also that a crystal is always finished and has its form as perfectly developed when it is the minutest point discernible by the microscope as when it has attained its ultimate growth. I might add parenthetically that crystals are sometimes of immense size, one at Milan of quartz being 3 feet 3 inches long and 5 feet 6 inches in circumference, and is estimated to weigh over 800 pounds; and a gigantic beryl at Grafton, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... he was pushing aside the branches, his eyes detected something white, out near the gate, moving through the deep shadows of the trees. He stopped, puzzled. A faint radiance from the stars made the spot where he stood quite discernible and, now seeing him, this white thing, whatever it was, changed its course and approached. As it came he saw that it seemed to be stumbling, or staggering, and he thought that it was moaning. Then suddenly ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... the impression that reaches him he tends to translate it into action. At what age a child accomplishes what can be called a "thought" or what these first thoughts are, is surely beyond our present powers to describe. But that his early thoughts have a discernible muscular expression, I fancy we may say. It may well be that thought is merely associative memory as Loeb maintains. It may well be that behaviorists are right and that thought is just "the rhythmic mimetic rehearsal of the first hand experience in motor terms." ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... vernacular culture of a primitive kind'. There were in Britain splendid houses and poor ones. But a continuous gradation of all sorts of houses and all degrees of comfort connects them, and there is no discernible breach in the scale. Throughout, the dominant element is the Roman provincial fashion ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield
... the world like folds of gray-brown cloth. Beyond Batok we could catch a glimpse of Bromo itself, belching skyward great clouds of billowing smoke and steam, while from its crater came a rumble as of distant thunder. And far in the distance, its purple bulk faintly discernible against the turquoise sky, rose Smeroe, the greatest volcano of ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... lover. He crouches beneath the Ionic portico, his figure hardly discernible. A bolt—the last bolt is withdrawn. A form is dimly seen ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... rolling away to the horizon; bounded only by the sky. To my surprise, Finch's boy descended; took the pony by the head; and deliberately led him off the high road, and on to the wilderness of grassy hills, on which not so much as a footpath was discernible anywhere, far or near. The chaise began to heave and roll like a ship on the sea. It became necessary to hold with both hands to keep my place. I thought first of my luggage—then ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... if that winter excursion and adventure had never been. Even the memory of it must have faded into a haze that scarce left discernible any semblance of reality, for I was once again Boccadoro, the golden-mouthed Fool, whose sayings were echoed by every jester throughout Italy. My shame that for a brief season had risen up in arms seemed to be laid ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... make it difficult for the modern mind to understand Erasmus's positive importance: first that his influence was extensive rather than intensive, and therefore less historically discernible at definite points, and second, that his influence has ceased. He has done his work and will speak to the world no more. Like Saint Jerome, his revered model, and Voltaire, with whom he has been occasionally compared, 'he has his reward'. But like them he has been the enlightener ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... having extinguished the candle and substituted for it a night-lamp, she glided through an inner door, which she left ajar—the entrance to her own chamber, a large, well-furnished apartment; as was discernible ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... she turned east, advancing toward where passing trolley-cars promised some life and activity even at that late hour. Helpless to do otherwise I moved along with her in the same direction, our grotesque shadows dimly discernible beneath the yellow mist of light. Impulsively she stopped, and ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... wealth, special society columns, which dealt with the ultra-fashionable, ignored him entirely. Already the machination of certain Chicago social figures in distributing information as to his past was discernible in the attitude of those clubs, organizations, and even churches, membership in which constitutes a form of social passport to better and higher earthly, if not spiritual, realms. His emissaries were active enough, but soon found that their end ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... relieved by a faint lift of the upper lip, perhaps an echo of the smile with which he greeted death. There was a gleam of teeth from under the lip. The eyes had closed peacefully; the lids lay light upon their secrets as if they might flutter and open again. On cheek and chin was a discernible growth of dark beard; the hair above the brow was black and abundant. It was a kingly face, a face of command, though benign. It was all too easy to believe that a crown had become it well. And there had been no weakening at the end, no sunken cheeks ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... gathered us in small groups and carefully explained the plan of attack. We were to take the three lines of German trenches that were clearly discernible on the aeroplane photograph which was shown us; the first wave was to take the first trench, the second jumping over their heads and attacking the second German line, the third wave going on to the third German line. When all the Germans had been killed in the ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... glanced at his own garments, thought of his own stained visage, and a revelation came to him like a flash of lightning—the man was Giovanni—Giovanni in disguise! He hurriedly looked after his retiring figure; it was now but a mere speck in the distance, scarcely discernible in the fading twilight. He started swiftly in pursuit, almost running across the bridge. After a hot and weary chase, he at length gained so much on the object of his solicitude that he was as near as he deemed it prudent to approach. He was now sure that the man ahead ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... winter day without wind, without character—one of the days on which Nature seems to take no interest in herself and creates no interest in others. The sky was overcrowded with low, ragged clouds, without discernible order or direction. Nowhere a yellow sunbeam glinting on any object, but vast jets of misty radiance shot downward in far-diverging lines toward the world: as though above the clouds were piled the waters of light and this were scant ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... world of lunatics, and that its two moons were bewitched. Yet it must not be supposed that all the peculiarities just mentioned would be clearly seen from the surface of Mars by eyes like ours. The phases of Phobos would probably be discernible to the naked eye, but those of Deimos would require a telescope in order to be seen, for, notwithstanding their nearness to the planet, Mars's moons are inconspicuous phenomena even to the Martians themselves. Professor Young's estimate is that ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... a large city lying at the foot of the Alleghanies, and in ascending the Alleghanies fine scenery and great engineering feats are discernible. From this we ran on to Pittsburg, which claims to be the best lighted city in America, the streets being brilliantly illuminated by arc and incandescent electric lights. Nine bridges cross the Allegheny, and five the Monongahela ...
— A start in life • C. F. Dowsett
... stretched toward him from a lower bunk. A bearded face, cadaverously sunken, in which gleamed bright fevered eyes, was now discernible. ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... minute details of past facts known only to yourself, why should he not foresee the events to be produced by existing causes? The world of ideas is cut out, so to speak, on the pattern of the physical world; the same phenomena should be discernible in both, allowing for the difference of the medium. As, for instance, a corporeal body actually projects an image upon the atmosphere—a spectral double detected and recorded by the daguerreotype; so also ideas, having a real and effective ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... dogs, Nettuno keeping close to the side of Uberto in order to prevent separation, since the path was no longer discernible without constant examination, the darkness having so far increased as to reduce the sight to very narrow limits. Each time the name of the latter was pronounced, the animal would stop, wag his tail, or ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... applied to the soil. Whoever will observe fields where coal has been burned, will see that grass or grain about the bed of the former pits, will be earlier and much more luxuriant than in any other portion of the field. This difference is discernible for twenty years. It is the best known agent for absorbing any noxious matter in the soil or in the moisture about the roots of the trees. No peach-tree should be planted without a few quarts of pulverized charcoal in the soil. This would also ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... to their fathers in the two old churchyards near to the High Street - retirement into which churchyards appears to be a mere ceremony, there is so very little life outside their confines, and such small discernible difference between being buried alive in the town, and buried dead in the town tombs? Over the way, opposite to the staring blank bow windows of the Dodo, are a little ironmonger's shop, a little tailor's shop (with a picture of the Fashions in the small window and a bandy-legged baby on the pavement ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... style, and in that particular could not be at all distinguished. JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, I think every man whatever has a peculiar style[816], which may be discovered by nice examination and comparison with others: but a man must write a great deal to make his style obviously discernible. As logicians say, this appropriation of style is infinite ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... verb; as, "When one sort of wind is said to whistle, and an other to roar; when a serpent is said to hiss, a fly to buzz, and falling timber to crash; when a stream is said to flow, and hail to rattle; the analogy between the word and the thing signified, is plainly discernible."—Blair's Rhet., p. 55. But let it not be supposed that participles or infinitives, when they are governed by prepositions, are therefore in the objective case; for case is no attribute of either of these classes of words: they are indeclinable in English, whatever be the relations ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... of evil persisted in torturing him. Looking back through his past life, he asked himself if any woman (his late wife of course excepted!) had ever taken the predominant place in his thoughts which Mrs. Zant had assumed—without any discernible reason to account for it? If he had ventured to answer his own question, the reply ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... on everything and shone on the boys' sweaters in little beads of moisture. The Adventurer seemed to be standing still, for, with nothing to judge by, progress was made known only by the slow lazy throb of the engine. Even the water alongside was scarcely discernible. Joe pulled the lever of the fog-horn again, and this time, beside the response from the Follow Me, an answering bellow came across ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... the service making marked contrast with the blue he wore and the green he sat upon. I, on the other hand, was haggard from hard, sleepless service and insufficient food, my shapeless old slouch hat and dull gray jacket torn and disfigured, the marks of rank barely discernible. ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... from the other. The theist is, as is often the case, saying one thing and meaning another. What he says is that the cause must be adequate to the effect. There is no dispute here. But what he proceeds to argue is that the effect must be discernible in the cause, which is a different statement altogether. When he says that an effect cannot be greater than its cause, what he means is that an effect cannot be different from its cause, which is downright nonsense. He asks, How can that which has not life produce ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... constantly divided by numerous islands, that its great width is not discernible: it seldom has less than two or three channels, often more: it courses through a succession of bold bluffs, rising sometimes perpendicularly, and always abruptly from the banks or flat land, occasionally diversified by the prairies, ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... they would show in scattering luster over an embroidered dress, or knitting the links of a coat of mail. But ships cannot be drawn at times of rest. More complicated in their anatomy than the human frame itself, so far as that frame is outwardly discernible; liable to all kinds of strange accidental variety in position and movement, yet in each position subject to imperative laws which can only be followed by unerring knowledge; and involving, in the roundings and foldings of sail and hull, delicacies ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... empty and void; the earth beneath, lifeless and dead. Although neither of us was cowardly of heart, yet we instinctively drew closer together, and our eyes strained anxiously over the black sand-ridges, now barely discernible through the dense gloom. We tried to talk, but even that soon grew to be a struggle, so heavily did the suspense rest upon our spirits, so oppressed were we by imaginings of evil. I remember telling ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... was truth in the remark, but hell in the spirit of it: for the heart of the father was turned from his son. The Messiah came to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children. Strange it should ever have wanted doing! But it wants doing still. There is scarce a discernible segment of the round of unity between ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... passages that can be properly compared, I remember only the description of heaven, in which the different manner of the two writers is sufficiently discernible. Cowley's is scarcely description, unless it be possible to describe by negatives: for he tells us only what there is not in heaven. Tasso endeavours to represent the splendours and pleasures of the regions of happiness. Tasso affords images, and Cowley sentiments. It happens, however, ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... and touched the stone lightly with her lips, then passed on to another which was half buried in the earth, the last letters of the inscription being barely discernible. ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... state of the heavens, except in the south-east quarter, and for about ten degrees of altitude all round the horizon, was a whitish haze, through which stars of the third magnitude were just discernible. All round, the horizon was covered with thick clouds, out of which arose many streams of a pale reddish light, that ascended towards the zenith. These streams had not that motion which they are sometimes seen to have in England; but were perfectly steady, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... ethical truth. All religious truth, as I hold, depends logically upon inference; inference from the whole body of our experiences, among which the most important place is held by our immediate moral judgements. The truth of Theism is in that sense a truth discernible by Reason. But it does not follow that, when it was first discovered, it was arrived at by the inferences which I have endeavoured to some extent to analyse, or by one of the many lines of thought which may lead to the same conclusions. It was not the Greek philosophers so much as the Jewish prophets ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... of four minutes the glimmer of his candle was discernible through the semitransparent semicircular glass fanlight over the halldoor. The halldoor turned gradually on its hinges. In the open space of the doorway the man reappeared without his hat, with ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... tightly folded arms, his head tipped slightly to one side, braced himself as he sent his keen gray eyes searching the crowd. Far away he selected his man. He was young, strong, criminally handsome, clean and alert; there was discernible anxiety on his face, and it touched the Harvester's soul that he was coming just as swiftly as he could force his way. As he passed the gates the ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... at its own ignorance; actuated with a restless desire to be informed; acquiring an unwonted applicableness of its faculties to thought; attaining a perception combined of intelligence and moral sensibility, to which numerous things are becoming discernible and affecting, that were as non-existent before. We have known instances in which the change—the intellectual change—has been so conspicuous, within a brief space of time, that even an infidel observer must have forfeited all claim to a man of sense, if he would not ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... impatience. I stood at the bows with my glass at my eye directed constantly at the spot where the station was to be found. As the sun then was, objects close in under the land were not distinctly discernible, but as my glass every now and then swept the horizon on either side, the sails of a fleet of canoes came into view. The instrument almost dropped from my hand. We were too late. The attack had been made and the victors were sailing away with ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... But it is among those people that stories of Fians and Fairies are most rife, and many claim an actual descent from them. And although they are certainly not pigmies, yet they live in a district in which the small type of this heterogeneous nation of ours is still quite discernible; and that part of the island of Lewis (Uig), which has longest retained those places as dwellings, is inhabited by a caste whom other Hebrideans describe as small, and regard as different from themselves.[70] Dr. Beddoe states that the tallest people in the United Kingdom ...
— Fians, Fairies and Picts • David MacRitchie
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