"Span" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... inheritance. At Yule every man should pay the king a meal of malt from every harvest steading, and a leg of a three-year old ox, which was called a friendly gift, together with a spand of butter; and every house-wife a rock full of unspun lint, as thick as one could span with the longest fingers of the hand. The bondes were bound to build all the houses the king required upon his farms. Of every seven males one should be taken for the service of war, and reckoning from the ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... thy home; The ivory hilt of thy blade With gold is embossed and inlaid; Since for Babylon's host a great deed Thou didst work in their need, Slaying a warrior, an athlete of might, Royal, whose height Lacked of five cubits one span— ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... to recommence;—the play Will be the last of seven, and spick-span new—' 'Tis usual here that number to present. A dilettante did the piece invent, And dilettanti will enact it too. Excuse me, gentlemen; to me's assign'd As dilettante ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... is increased. The carrying of cheap freight will be the special province of the apparatus, and it will therefore be an object to secure the form of truck which will give, with the least expense, the greatest degree of rigidity over the longest stretch of span from one support to another. Some modification of the tubular principle will probably supply the most promising form for the purpose. The hope of this will be greatly enhanced through the recent advances in the art ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... was not a'thegether sae great as they feared, and other folk thought for. The Whigs made an unco crawing what they wad do with their auld enemies, and in special wi' Sir Robert Redgauntlet. But there were ower mony great folks dipped in the same doings, to mak a spick and span new warld. So Parliament passed it a' ower easy; and Sir Robert, bating that he was held to hunting foxes instead of Covenanters, remained just the man he was. [The caution and moderation of King William ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... He lies, for I invented it myself.—Go to, sirrah, tell the king from me that, for his father's sake, Henry the Fifth, in whose time boys went to span-counter for French crowns, I am content he shall reign; but I'll be protector ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... to the Watergate, Hard bound with hempen span, As though they held a lion there, And not a 'fenceless man. They set him high upon a cart— The hangman rode below— They drew his hands behind his back, And bared his noble brow. Then, as a hound ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... tuneful and well measur'd Song First taught our English Musick how to span Words with just note and accent,... To after age thou shalt be writ the man, That with smooth aire couldst humor ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... did not wear overalls, like Johnnie Green. But they did not seem to mind that. They knelt right down beside him in their spick-and-span velvet suits and stared ...
— The Tale of Buster Bumblebee • Arthur Scott Bailey
... those who combine prayer with study, need not fear necessary difference of result, from holding different views; the grand error is too loosely generalizing; a little circle suits our finite ken; we cannot, as yet, mentally span the universe. These crude and cursory remarks may serve to introduce a likely-looking idea to which my thoughts have given entertainment, and which, with others of a similar sort, were once to have come ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... thoughts upon them, have greatly supported me under all my afflictions. The one is the brevity of life even at its longest duration, which the wisest of men hath compared to the short dimension of a span. One of the Roman poets compares it to the duration of a race; and another, to the much shorter transition ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... and Mrs. Reed found it very pleasant. One afternoon late in March, Mr. Reed came home quite early, and carried his wife down into the dining-room. He had asked the Deans over to tea, and Doctor Joe. And there was the table, spick and span, the silver shining, the windows so clean you couldn't see there was any glass in them, the curtains fresh, the tablecloth ironed so that every flower and leaf in it stood out. There wasn't a ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... way they keep the body in the house is this: They make a coffin first of a good span in thickness, very carefully joined and daintily painted. This they fill up with camphor and spices, to keep off corruption [stopping the joints with pitch and lime], and then they cover it with a fine cloth. Every day as long as the body is kept, they set a table before ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... are too apt to be struck with Images of Beauty; and that the Passage where the Gentleman is said to span the Waist of Pamela with his Hand, is enough to ruin a ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... mound we erected the other white cross to keep company with the first one, and tell its silent story to the passengers who flew past aboard swift trains, that two pitiful tragedies had been enacted at this lone section reservation within the short span of a few months. ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... and even a spice of danger when the rapids are reached. The last of these down stream, although insignificant when compared with the perilous falls up river, are sufficiently swift and voluminous to cause considerable anxiety to a nervous mind. The five granite pillars which here span the Yukon, at intervals of a few feet, from shore to shore, are known as the "Five Fingers," and here the steamer must be hauled up the falls through a narrow passage blasted out of a submerged rock. A steel hawser attached to a windlass above ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... yet (in 1268) conquered by the Tartars.[11] Like Venice, Kinsai stood upon lagoons of water and was intersected by innumerable canals. It was a hundred miles in circuit, not counting the suburbs which stretched round it, and there was not a span of ground which was not well peopled. It had twelve great gates, and each of the twelve quarters which lay within the gates was greater than the whole of Venice. Its main street was two hundred feet wide, and ran from end to end of the city, broken every four miles by a great square, ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... ardent heart, but most resign'd, Deep in the dreadful gloom, with pious heat, Amid the silence of her dark retreat, Address'd her God,—"Almighty power divine! 'Tis thine to raise, and to depress, is thine; With honour to light up the name unknown, Or to put out the lustre of a throne. In my short span both fortunes I have prov'd, And though with ill frail nature will be mov'd, I'll bear it well: (O strengthen me to bear!) And if my piety may claim thy care; If I remember'd, in youth's giddy heat, And tumult of a court, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... monument is a peculiarly personal thing and appertains in a peculiar way to a particular time. And the circumstance that it has stood untouched by the passing years while everything around has changed, helps the imagination to span the interval. And the common headstone, the memorial of some dead and gone farmer or labourer who lived and died in the village hard by, is still more intimate and suggestive. The rustic, childish sculpture of the village mason and the artless doggerel ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... placed as it is over the Apsu, its size is dependent upon the latter. Its measurement from one end to the other cannot exceed the width of the Apsu, nor can it be any narrower. The ends of the earth span the great Apsu. The following line specifies the shape ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... common with God, mortality in common with men. Hence "for this purpose did He intervene, that having fulfilled the span of His mortality, He might from dead men make immortal—which He showed in Himself by rising again; and that He might confer beatitude on those who were deprived of it—for which reason He never forsook us." Wherefore He is "the good Mediator, Who reconciles enemies" (De ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... a most anomalous conjunction of words; old Arthur Gride and dark eyes and eyelashes, and lips that to look at is to long to kiss, and clustering hair that he wants to play with, and waists that he wants to span, and little feet that don't tread upon anything—old Arthur Gride and such things as these is more monstrous still; but old Arthur Gride marrying the daughter of a ruined "dashing man" in the Rules of ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... decide that it would be impossible to swim out with the cases and place these in such a situation that the explosion would damage the structure. They then moved quietly up to the spot where the end of the last span touched the level ground; it rested upon a solid wall built into the rock, and ran some forty feet above their heads. They were now just under where the Boers were sitting, could hear their voices, and see the glow of their fire. They were unable to make out the exact position ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... is the grettest ryvere of fressche water, that is in the world. For there, as it is most narow, it is more than a myle of brede. And thanne entren men azen into the lond of the grete Chane. That ryvere gothe thorghe the lond of Pigmaus: where that the folk ben of litylle stature, that ben but 3 span long: and thei ben right faire and gentylle, aftre here quantytees, bothe the men and the wommen. And thei maryen hem, whan thei ben half zere of age, and geten children. And thei lyven not, but 6 zeer or 7 at the moste. And he that lyvethe 8 zeer men holden him there righte passynge ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... saddened, older than they should be, And wiser than a lived-out span of years; One wonders what those self same faces would be, If they had never looked on pain—if tears Had never been their portion; if the morrow, Had never held the pallid ghost of care— Child faces, graven deep with worlds of sorrow, ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... intended to propose that the wages of the Corporation workmen should be increased to the standard recognized by the Trades Unions. (Loud laughter.) It had been proved that the notoriously short lives of the working people—whose average span of life was about twenty years less than that of the well-to-do classes—their increasingly inferior physique, and the high rate of mortality amongst their children was caused by the wretched remuneration they received for hard and tiring work, ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... not like a consuming fire into your bosom when hope has departed. Is not the Lord of the Sabbath the Creator of the sea as well as of the dry land? Know ye not that ye are now braving the wrath of him before whom the mighty ocean is a drop, and all space but a span? Will ye, then, glory in insulting his ordinances, and delight in profaning the day of holiness? Will ye draw down everlasting darkness on the Sabbath of your soul? When ye were but a youth, ye have listened ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... point on the route. One of the largest Customs stations in the province of Yuen-nan is here situated at the east end of a one-span suspension bridge, about one hundred and fifty feet in length. No ponies carrying loads are allowed to cross the bridge, the roads east of this being unfit for beasts of burden. There is then a fearful climb to a place called Teo-sha-kwan, a stage of only sixty li. The reader should not mentally ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... without such a structure. You can hire logic, in the shape of a lawyer, to prove anything that you want to prove. You can buy treatises to show that Napoleon never lived, and that no battle of Bunker-hill was ever fought. The great minds are those with a wide span, that couple truths related to, but far removed from, each other. Logicians carry the surveyor's chain over the track of which these are the true explorers. I value a man mainly for his primary relations with truth, as I understand truth,—not for any secondary artifice ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... if this life is all there is to us, then, indeed, it is a pitiful failure. If our thoughts and longings are bounded by this little span of life, then there is no balance-sheet for mortality. The gift of life is then not worth the expense of ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... hurried forward. But they had tarried too long, for, not a hundred rods from their starting point, they came upon a broad, dark break in the floe, such a break as no draw-bridge of ice would ever span. ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... emerged from one of those crucial experiences of life, which, more than the turning of the earth upon its axis, serve to age a human being. For perhaps the first time in the brief span of his remembrance, he had scrutinized himself in the pitiless light of an intelligence higher than his own everyday consciousness; and the sight of that meaner self, striving to run to cover, had not been pleasant. Just why his late interview with Andrew Bolton ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... their backs up in the middle—span-worm lines, we may call them—are not to be commended for common use because some great poets have now and then admitted them. They have invaded some of our recent poetry as the canker-worms gather on our elms in June. Emerson has one or two of them here and there, but they never swarm on his ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... and I am not at all sure he is affected. I suppose it is the way he has been brought up. There is no saying what you might have been yourself if you had had nurses and people about you who always insisted on your turning out spick-and-span. Well, Easton, what have you been doing with yourself ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... when I was sixteen. There was a girl staying there. Her hair was copper, and her flesh was pink and white. Her waist, you could span it. I saw her walking one ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... that roars where the rocket soars Is the song of the stellar flame; The dreams of Man and galactic span Are equal and much ...
— The Stoker and the Stars • Algirdas Jonas Budrys (AKA John A. Sentry)
... though they were many more in number, they had to submit themselves to the robbers, who took away everything from them, even the very clothes they wore, and gave to each only a small loin cloth a span in breadth and a ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... he added to himself, as the professor was going down the stairs. "He is a span higher than I am, that ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... "a new cabin you shall have." And the old mart found one so spick-and-span that he hardly dare cross the floor for fear of soiling it. It would have pleased him greatly had his wife been contented, but she, good woman, did nothing ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... the end of its span, the fisheries came of age. Inequities were being ironed out, methods were being perfected, and planners were at work on ways of employing more and more of the fast-growing population in searching out and making available the bounty ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... origin of the enormous jaws, strong canines, prominent zygomae, and strongly developed orbital arches which he had so frequently remarked in criminals, for these peculiarities are common to carnivores and savages, who tear and devour raw flesh. Thus also it was easy to understand why the span of the arms in criminals so often exceeds the height, for this is a characteristic of apes, whose fore-limbs are used in walking and climbing. The other anomalies exhibited by criminals—the scanty beard as opposed to the general hairiness of the body, ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... grotto of the wave-worn shore, They passed the Tropic's red meridian o'er; Nor long the hours—they never paused o'er time, Unbroken by the clock's funereal chime,[391] Which deals the daily pittance of our span, 350 And points and mocks with iron laugh at man.[fn] What deemed they of the future or the past? The present, like a tyrant, held them fast: Their hour-glass was the sea-sand, and the tide, Like her smooth billow, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... except the emperor himself. Then the emperor's sons grew up. Ah, what princes they were! Three princes in one country, like three morning stars in the sky! Florea, the oldest, was a fathom tall, with shoulders more than four span broad. Costan was very different, short, strongly built, with a muscular arm and a stout fist. The third and youngest prince was named Petru—a tall, slender fellow, more like a girl than a boy. Petru did ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... save to make sweet faith bleed, And to defame God's laws. Oh! viler than the murderer or the thief Who slays the body and who robs the purse, Is he who strives to kill the mind's belief And rob it of its hope Of life beyond this little pain-filled span. God has no curse Quite dark enough to punish such a man, Who, seeing how souls grope And suffer in this world of mighty losses, And how hearts stagger on beneath life's crosses, Yet strives to rob them of their staff of faith And make them think dark death Ends all existence; ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... blast— Proclaimed the desperate conflict o'er On that too long afflicted shore:[403] Up to the sky like rockets go 1030 All that mingled there below: Many a tall and goodly man, Scorched and shrivelled to a span, When he fell to earth again Like a cinder strewed the plain: Down the ashes shower like rain; Some fell in the gulf, which received the sprinkles With a thousand circling wrinkles; Some fell on the shore, but, far away, Scattered o'er the isthmus lay; 1040 Christian or Moslem, ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... low, dark, smutty brick houses and insignificant streets, settles down hopelessly into the dumps when the weather is bad. Even with the sun doing its best on the eternal cloud of smoke, it is dingy and gloomy enough, and so dirty, after spick-span, shining Paris. And there is a contrast in the matter of order and system; the lack of both in London is apparent. You detect it in public places, in crowds, in the streets. The "social evil" is ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... when he emerged from the room in his spick and span outfit, his hat set side-wise on his wet, newly combed hair, he stood up very straight, surveying himself as best he could from head to foot, and exclaimed,—"Gee! I feel just like George Washington." The bath and the new suit were a realization of ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... talk!" cried the boy, holding out his arm and trying to span his wrist with his fingers. "Look how thin ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... I inuented it my selfe. Go too Sirrah, tell the King from me, that for his Fathers sake Henry the fift, (in whose time, boyes went to Span-counter for French Crownes) I am content he shall raigne, but Ile be ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... making increasing use of radioisotopes to improve manufacturing, testing, and crop-raising. Atomic energy has improved the ability of the healing professions to combat disease, and holds promise for an eventual increase in man's life span. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Dwight D. Eisenhower • Dwight D. Eisenhower
... time to fill your morning bath; for the most part, besides, it soaks unseen through the moss; and yet for the sake of auld lang syne, and the figure of a certain GENIUS LOCI, I am condemned to linger awhile in fancy by its shores; and if the nymph (who cannot be above a span in stature) will but inspire my pen, I would gladly carry ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cried suddenly. He ran into the next room, and there stood Geppetto, grown years younger overnight, spick and span in his new clothes and gay as a lark in the morning. He was once more Mastro Geppetto, the wood carver, hard at work on a lovely picture frame, decorating it with flowers and leaves, and heads ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... which the place takes its name was the very deuce for wheeled transport. All is fair in "love and war." This being a creed very staunchly adhered to by the private soldier when campaigning, the mess-servants of the staff of the Cavalry Brigade saw fit in the early morning to steal a span[26] of mules which had strayed from the protection of their rightful owners. Now the Brigade state fourgon with a span of four mules was a big enterprise, and if treated gently might have ministered to the comfort of the staff ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... lies in the span of memory of "Aunt Ferebe" Rogers. The interviewers found her huddled by the fireside, all alone while her grandaughter worked on a WPA Project to make the living for them both. In spite of her years and her frail physique, her memory was usually clear, ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... corporation, viz.: Mr. Mayor, Mr. Alderman Smith, Mr. Alderman Deane, Mr. Alderman Gordon, William Weare, Samuel Munckley, John Merlott, John Crofts, Levy Ames, John Fisher Weare, Benjamin Loscombe, Philip Protheroe, Samuel Span, Joseph Smith, Richard Bright ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the individual span, seeing that the generations, the centuries, and the worlds themselves are but occupied forever with the ceaseless reproduction of the hymn of life, in all the hundred thousand modes and variations which make up the universal symphony? The motive is always the same; the monad has but one ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... beautiful house he would have liked to keep the neighbourhood free from this essentially modern phase of river-life; but to Toni the gay little bungalows had a charm of their own. They were all specially spick and span just now, having been newly painted and garnished with flowers for the season; and Toni looked across the river with frank interest at the Cot, the Dinky House, the Mascot, and the rest of the tiny shanties. She liked the ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... politics, at that period; and it must be confessed that the natural philosophers have succeeded better than the constitution-makers. Paine's mechanical hobby was an iron bridge. A single arch, of four hundred feet span, and twenty feet in height from the chord-line, was to be thrown over the Schuylkill, near Philadelphia. The idea was suggested to him by a spider's web, a section of which the bridge resembled; and the principle he worked upon was, that the small segment of a large circle ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... in a place where a cat's right to live at all is contested every hour of the day, and where nine times nine lives would not cover a span of more than a few months at the most, as a rule. It had begun when Texas was little more than a kitten, and had wandered away one day from the warm kitchen fire, out into the shed, and from ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... his axe, tried the lower margin of the head, found it was a trifle out of the true—that is, its under curve centred, not on the handle one span down, but half an inch out from the handle. A nail driven into the point of the axe-eye corrected this and the chiefs went forth to select a tree. A White Pine that measured roughly six inches through was soon found, and Sam was allowed to clear away the brush around it. Yan ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... they liked it well enough and fell in with his wish. He'd promised to eat his Christmas dinner along with them and Joey; but the pup was to come as a rare surprise next morning, and though Minnie Ford didn't much hold with a young dog about her spick and span home, she couldn't withstand the little silky creature, nor yet Teddy's wish to ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... out, beyond, and see The far horizon's beckoning span! Faith in your God-known destiny! We are a part ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... my partner at night talking of the start the next day, I began to feel not a fear but a certain respect for that narrow little path which was not an arm's span in width, but which was nearly eight hundred miles in length. "From this point, Burton, it is business. Our practice ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... froze the ardent blood of Wallace. But the intrepid earl, descrying his friend on the ladder which might soon carry him to the summit of the battlement, exclaimed, "Forward! Let not my span of life stand between my country and this glorious day ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... right afar and over the great span. But they would not see in Spain, or not many would see, that the whole span must be taken. But I was not one to chide him, seeing that I, too, saw afar, and they would not see with me ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... not alter his title. He was always spoken of as Ulf of Romsdal. He and his old enemy Haldor the Fierce speedily became fast friends; and so was it with their wives, Astrid and Herfrida, who also took mightily to each other. They span, and carded wool, and sewed together oftentimes, and discussed the affairs of Horlingdal, no doubt with mutual ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... deep, is, however, its most attractive possession. The suspension-bridge, erected by the munificence of a citizen, spans this gorge at the height of two hundred and eighty-seven feet, and cost nearly $500,000. It is twelve hundred and twenty feet long, and has a single span of seven hundred and three feet crossing the ravine between St. Vincent's Rocks and the Leigh Woods. Alongside this gorge rises Brandon Hill, which Queen Elizabeth sold to two citizens of Bristol, who in turn sold it to the city, with a proviso that the corporation ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... Fisher was standing on one of the little bridges that span the gutterwide Oosbach, idly gazing into the water and wondering whether a good sized Rangely trout could swim the stream without personal inconvenience, when the porter of the Badischer Hof came ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... and completely blocking it lay a single span of an iron bridge. Although twisted and misshapen, it was still intact, the framework of its overhead truss-work retaining its cage-like shape. Behind it the logs had of course piled up in a jam, which, sinking ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... on the Surrey side Shall flaunt their gems and rare chinchillas To swell the local mummer's pride, And every bridge shall span the tide With ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... state. For nearly forty years these three had been leaders of men. All had grown old and gray in service. Calhoun was already broken in health and in a few months was to be borne from the political arena forever. Clay and Webster had but two more years in their allotted span. ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... days come back to me to-night Across the span of many happy years— Dreams, haunted by the music of the spheres, And glowing skies of gold and chrysolite. The world of science bursting on my sight, And words of wisdom falling on my ears, The rhythmic ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... endeavour to grasp Michelangelo's work in the Sistine as a whole, although it was carried out at distant epochs of his life. For this reason I have thrown these sentences forward, in order to embrace a wide span of his artistic energy (from May 10, 1508, to perhaps December 1541). There is, to my mind, a unity of conception between the history depicted on the vault, the prophets and forecomers on the pendentives, the types selected for the spandrels, and ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... come to me in ten years, seemed now perfectly natural. I would return at once to that far off village where, for a brief hour, I had dwelt in a "Fool's Paradise," through which my way had lain but a brief span, and where I had passed, like the fabled bird, that "floats through Heaven, but ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... will see 'em all down that man's throat." And says she, in still more bitter axents, "You will see four mules, and a span of horses, two buggies, a double sleigh, and three buffalo-robes. He has drinked 'em all up—and 2 horse-rakes, a cultivator, and ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... to its sacred page, Heaven still rebuilds thy span, Nor let the type grow pale with age, That first ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... in the stocks of trees, white fays do dwell, And span-long elves that dance about ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... Mr. Reginald B. Span, in a most interesting article called "Some Glimpses of the Unseen," that appeared in the Occult Review for ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... answer: "It is best that thou shouldst perish, Let destruction overtake thee, There is ample room in Mana, Room for all the dead in Kalma, There the worthiest must slumber, There must rest the good and evil." Ilmarinen's wife made answer: "Ukko, thou O God in heaven, Span the strongest of thy cross-bows, Test the weapon by thy wisdom, Lay an arrow forged from copper, On the cross-bow of thy forging; Rightly aim thy flaming arrow, With thy magic hurl the missile, Shoot this wizard through the vitals, Pierce the heart of Kullerwoinen ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... laid thee moons ago, who knows In what Dead Yesterday her shades repose; To some election turn thy waning span And rain ...
— Reginald • Saki
... garniture of the heavens, uninterrupted, from that majestic height, was suddenly revealed. True, it was a November night, but unusually clear and vivid; the stars seemed to burn rather than shine, so piercing was their effulgence. The vast track of the milky way appeared to span the dark and level platform, like the bow of some triumphal arch. They seemed to stand on a huge circle, black, bare,—its verge unapproachable, contrasting deeply with the encompassing splendour. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Reincarnation teaches gradual progress from lower to higher, through ages until the individual reaches perfection. It holds that each individual will become perfect like Jesus or Buddha or like the Father in heaven and manifest divinity either in this life or in some other. One span of life is too short for developing one's powers to perfection. If you should try to train an idiot to become a great artist or a philosopher, would you ever succeed in your attempt to make him so during his lifetime? No. And will you punish ...
— Reincarnation • Swami Abhedananda
... repetitions at the Alcazar at Tours,—but there! This individual was like the originals, yet unlike,—he was less gaudy, and a good deal dingier, than his Gallic prototypes are apt to be. Then he wore a burnoose,—the yellow, grimy-looking article of the Arab of the Soudan, not the spick and span Arab of the boulevard. Chief difference of all, his face was clean shaven,—and whoever saw an Algerian of Paris whose chiefest glory was not his well-trimmed moustache ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... moment's thought convinced me that, though there might be a little risk, there was no paralyzing danger. I had forgotten the narrowness of the gully through which alone we could gain the cliffs. From the open span of beach where we were now standing, there was no chance of leaving the caves except as we had come to them, by a boat; for on each side a crag ran like a spur into the water. The comparatively open space permitted the tide to lap in quietly, ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... first half and the second half of Elizabeth's reign have not been deemed wide enough by the writer to justify separate treatment. The whole reign was a time when the superstition was gaining ground. Yet in the span of years from Reginald Scot to the death of Elizabeth there was enough of reaction to justify a differentiation of statistics. In both periods, and more particularly in the first, we may be sure ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... slack surfaces of cheek and chin. In the interval between the hair and the face, Mr Holroyd should have a good supper downstairs with Foljambe and the cook. And tomorrow morning, when he met Hermy and Ursy, Georgie would be just as spick and span and young as ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... Eight Scholars spans the canal narrowly. On the gray stone of its arch are carvings in low relief, and the curve of its span is pleasing to the eye. No one knows how old is the ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens
... and suck it, the green sugar cane, Whatever is sweet is costly and vain; He'll cut you a joint as long as a span, And charge two piastres. ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... His perspective has steadily lengthened with the looking years. The object has been getting bigger and bigger to his eyes. He is getting off as far as possible within his earthly span. At last he feels that he has approximately gotten the range. And with the deep glow of his heart gleaming up out of his eyes, he picks up a freshly-sharpened quill to tell ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... never requires fuel, and always goes along at sixty miles an hour. Suppose we commence by employing it to gauge the size of our own planet, the earth. Let us send it on a trip around the equator, the span of which is about 24,000 miles. At its sixty-miles-an-hour rate of going, this journey will take nearly 17 days. Next let us send it from the earth to the moon. This distance, 240,000 miles, being ten times as great as the last, will of course take ten ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... three thousand miles from their homes for the maintenance of the Empire is to envisage the most startling of historical paradoxes. That old, bad time seems as unsubstantial as a dream; this seems the only reality; and yet the two periods are separated only by the span of a not very long human life. {163} The truth is that in those days there were no Canadians. There were French on the banks of the St Lawrence, but their political horizon was bounded by the parish limits. Their most renowned leader had no vision but of an independent ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... stream one after another by the wheel team, six men in each wagon, and as they successively reached the other side of the channel the mules were unhitched, the pole of each wagon run under the hind axle of the one just in front, and the tailboards used so as to span the slight space between them. The plan worked well as long as the material lasted, but no other wagons than my twenty-five coming on the ground, the work stopped when the bridge was only half constructed. Informed of the delay ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... look as spick and span as a nice little Queen of Sheba. Now don't slide down the banisters, or do anything hoydenish. Try to behave ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... awa', nichts and mornin's, Come ooks, years, a' time's clan; Ye're walcome ayont a' scornin': Tak me till him as fest as ye can. Come awa', nichts an' mornin's, Ye are wings o' a michty span! ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... could not be expanded. Friday must be spent at home. This was Wednesday, already three-quarters spent; but there was the coming night and the whole of Thursday. But Friday morning imperatively required that the traveller should be found back at home again. The whole span, the irreducible maximum, not to be stretched by any contrivance beyond about thirty hours. Something could be done, but not much. As I thought of the strict and narrow limits, it seemed that these were some precious golden hours, and never to recur ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... itself, though it is a natural thing, comes direct from God's hand; and all that you can do, with all your carking cares, and laborious days, and sleepless nights, is but to adorn a little more beautifully or a little less beautifully, the allotted span—but to feed a little more delicately or a little less delicately, the body which God has given you. What is the use of being careful for food and raiment, when down below these necessities there lies the awful ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... I'll put a ring around the date. It's the first time you've condescended to pay me a compliment in a year. You men are the limit. You take it as a matter of course that a girl should be neat and spick and span. If she wasn't you'd notice it soon enough. It's easy for a girl like this Miss Burnaby. I don't suppose she ever did a day's work or anything useful in her life. She orders her clothes from the best places, and gets them fitted and sent home, and that's all there is to it. But how about ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... stronger far, still remained standing. But even from that distance Stern could quite plainly see, without the telescope, that the Williamsburg Bridge had "buckled" downward and that the farther span of the Blackwell's Island Bridge was ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... could she be at peace with the love within her—love of something that was not self, of something that seemed vaguer than God, as if it had entered into God and made him Love—unless she mounted upwards during her little span of life. Again, as before in this land, in the first sunset, on the tower, on the minaret of the mosque of Sidi-Zerzour, Nature spoke to her intimate words of inspiration, laid upon her the hands of healing, giving her powers she surely had not known or conceived ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... distance to the rear. About midway between house and barn was a deep well, worked with a windlass and chain. During the preceding season a young orchard had been planted out in the space intervening between the house and the road. Everything about the place was kept in spick and span order. The tenant was fairly successful in his farming operations, and appeared to be holding his own with the world around him. He paid his rent promptly, and was on excellent terms with his landlord. He was, in fact, rather popular with his ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... was promised land and other things when dey was freed, and some wasn't promised nothin'. Some got land and a span of mules, and some didn't get nothin'. No suh, my daddy didn't farm none at first after he was freed because he didn't have no money to buy land, but he done odd jobs here and there till he come to Arkansas seven or eight years ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... of divine light is totally eclipsed, by being surrounded with about forty families of paupers, crouded almost within the compass of a giant's span, which amply furnish the congregation with noise, smoak, dirt and dispute. If the place itself is the road to heaven, the stranger would imagine, that the road to the place led to something worse: The words, Strait is the gate, ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... was waiting for Edith, spick, span and debonair as always (although during the war he had discarded his buttonhole). He was occupied, as he usually was in his leisure time, not in playing the piano or composing, but—in making photograph frames! This was his hobby, and people often said that he took more pleasure ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... seemed as though he were hesitating whether he would say a word more to this Major who in India talked of twenty-one years as a long span of time. But there was no one else to whom he could confide his fears. If Dewes was not brilliant, he was at all events all ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... from the "Troy Town Band," saluting the winner with "See the Conquering Hero Comes," the second boat with strains consecrated to first and second prize-winners in Troy harbour since days beyond the span of living memory, even as all races start to the less classical but none the less immemorial air of "Off She goes to Wallop ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... good Can spring from mutual slaughter! Lo, I hate Triumph and domination, wealth and ease, Thus sadly won! Aho! what victory Can bring delight, Govinda! what rich spoils Could profit; what rule recompense; what span Of life itself seem sweet, bought with such blood? Seeing that these stand here, ready to die, For whose sake life was fair, and pleasure pleased, And power grew precious:-grandsires, sires, and sons, ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... be nothing other, are to me but as the hundred Scalps in a Chactaw wigwam. The blind Plugson: he was a Captain of Industry, born member of the Ultimate genuine Aristocracy of this Universe, could he have known it! These thousand men that span and toiled round him, they were a regiment whom he had enlisted, man by man; to make war on a very genuine enemy: Bareness of back, and disobedient Cotton-fibre, which will not, unless forced to it, consent to cover bare backs. Here is a most genuine ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... been comparatively little change in human structure or human interest in historical times. It is a popular view that moral and cultural views and interests have superseded our animal instincts; but the cultural period is only a span in comparison with prehistoric times and the prehuman period of life, and it seems probable that types of psychic reaction were once for all developed and fixed; and while objects of attention and interest in different historical ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... to earth's contracted span Thy goodness let me bound, Or think Thee Lord alone of man, ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... the evenings and doze and muse on all manner of things. When it blew hard, and the door below stood open, all kinds of eerie sounds moaned up through the floor and from out the walls, and the Morgenbladet near the door was rent in strips a span long. ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... she continued, "will span its waist, or trunk, and this seems a very good reason for calling it little. Another name for this tree is poplar birch, because the triangular-shaped leaves, which taper to a very long, slender point, have a habit of trembling like those ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... steep and hot, as stony and glaring, as I have ever climbed. Up and up I went for half an hour, seeing nothing but the banks and hedges on either hand; every turn in the road I thought was the last span that would bring me out on the hill-tops, and every turn of the road showed me another. But at last I stood above Brendon, and before me spread the moors, brown and purple in the sunlight, and the little old grey church of Brendon just below me, in a slight ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... figure. In general Nimes is poor; its only treasures are its Roman remains, which are of the first order. The new French fashions prevail in many of its streets; the old houses are paltry, and the good houses are new; while beside my hotel rose a big spick-and-span church, which had the oddest air of having been intended for Brooklyn or Cleveland. It is true that this church looked out on a square completely French—a square of a fine modern disposition, flanked on one side by a classical palais de justice embellished with trees and parapets ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... farmers I hae muckle pride, But I mauna speak high when I 'm tellin' o't, How brawlie I strut on my shelty to ride, Wi' a sample to shew for the sellin' o't. In blue worset boots that my auld mither span, I 've aft been fu' vanty sin' I was a man, But now they 're flung by, and I 've bought cordivan, And my wifie ne'er grudged me ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... struck Manuel as quite pleasant. Everything was in its proper place, relatively spick and span; the hand of a methodical, neat person ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... no more, when we have done our span."— "Well, then, for Christ," thou answerest, "who can care? From sin, which Heaven records not, why forbear? Live we like brutes our life without ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... and crowd of children on the avenue! No wonder, for there is a pretty barouche, to which is harnessed a large ostrich, which marches up and down, drawing its load as easily as if it were a span of goats or a Shetland ...
— Harper's Young People, September 28, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... so, though they were many more in number, they had to submit themselves to the robbers, who took away everything from them, even the very clothes they wore, and gave to each only a small loin-cloth a span in breadth ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... ago the Snake, Horn, and Eagle people lived here (in Tusayan), but their corn grew only a span high, and when they sang for rain the cloud god sent only a thin mist. My people then lived in the distant Pa-lt Kw-bi in the South. There was a very bad old man there, who, when he met any one, would spit ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... used in the sense of several; as, a couple of horses, mules, birds, trees, houses, etc. The use of the word couple is not only limited to two, but to two that may be coupled or yoked together. A man and wife are spoken of as a couple. We speak of a span of horses, a yoke of oxen, a brace of ducks, ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... western mouth and half the way back again. On went that unwieldy car of triumph, bearing a freight of eager faces behind its windows, and carrying a crowd of sitters, precariously clustered wherever a perch could be found on its swaying roof, under the verdant span of the arches and the flow of ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... for investments. It would be no trouble at all to drive Mr. March back from the apothecary's and make him acquainted with Mr. Bulger. Was Mr. March fond of horses? Good! Bulger owned the fastest span in the city, and drove them every ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... depot, he consented to their demand; consequently they brought the Bible, and he took his oath 'that he could make a living there, but could not get it.' The Democratic 'bull-dozers,' who had sworn they would hang him if they ever caught him, took his span of horses, wagon, three cows, and his crop of cotton, corn, sugar-cane, and potatoes (all matured), and gave his wife money with which to pay the fare for herself and seven children, the twenty-five miles on the cars to meet her husband. The colored men were told 'that if they would be ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... take things better, Before life pleasures wholly flee. The deuce! thy head and all that's in it, Hands, feet and ——— are thine; What I enjoy with zest each minute, Is surely not the less mine? If I've six horses in my span, Is it not mine, their every power? I fly along as an undoubted man, On four and twenty legs the road I scour. Cheer up, then! let all thinking be, And out into the world with me! I tell thee, friend, a speculating churl Is like a beast, some ...
— Faust • Goethe
... and at study That ankle white I span, Its sandal slim, its lacings trim,— A fay ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... by the rebel fugitives. While crossing this bridge all pack animals over one to a company, were taken and appropriated to other use, for by general order only one was allowed to a company, but in spite of orders the boys would cling to their mules, one company having sometimes several span. These creatures were a great help to us in carrying our heavy plunder. On the march from Milledgeville to Sandersville the command was for the first time molested seriously by the cavalry of the enemy. About these ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear
... so charmed with this address that he ordered a little chair to be made, in order that Tom might sit upon his table, and also a palace of gold, a span high, with a door an inch wide, to live in. He also gave him a coach, ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... fading; he had heard the last sleepy twitter of the birds; he had seen one star, two and three, come out; before his steadfast, brooding stare the trees had slowly lost their green for the somber shade of night. And now it was indeed night; that hushed and awe-inspiring span of gloom when worlds most sin; when men and women do their sobbing; do their yielding; count ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... England. With Catherine de Medici a thirteen-inch waist measurement was considered the standard of fashion, while a thick waist was an abomination. No lady could consider her figure of proper shape unless she could span her waist with her two hands. To produce this result a strong rigid corset was worn night and day until the waist was laced down to the required size. Then over this corset was placed the steel apparatus shown in the illustration on next page. This corset-cover reached from the ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... in his hard grip, and holding it out at arm's length he saw that its point was but a span's ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... beard his fingers touched, Lo! the silent man of death Grasp'd the hilt, and drew Tizona Full a span from out the sheath!" Ancient ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... believe you could drag them away from Gretchen with nine span of horses. But if you want to see them, put on your hat and come along; they're out somewhere ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the north as if to span the oceans by reaching to its neighbours on the east and west, tapering between vast oceans far to the south where the nearest land is in the little-known Antarctic regions, roughly presents the triangular outline that is to be expected from tetrahedral ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... scarcely help believing that he could do so, if he was not afraid of being compelled to work. Ungka was in fact a baboon from the wilds of Sumatra. He had been caught young by a Malay lad, who sold him to Captain Van Deck. He was about two feet and a half high, and the span of his arms was four feet. His face was perfectly free from hair, except at the sides, where it grew like whiskers. It also rather projected over his forehead, but he had very little beard. His coat was jet black, as was the ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... to the edge of the coffin leapt the most gigantic spider which he had ever seen in his life! It had a body as big as a man's fist, jet black, with hairy legs like the legs of a crab and a span of a foot ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... for his kid and thinks here's a chance to make some big money. He looks at the little patient and says yes, he can cure him, sure; but it'll be a hard job and he can't undertake it unless Pete comes through with forty dollars and his span of mules. But Pete ain't got forty dollars or forty cents, and the Kulanche doctor has got to the mules already, having a lien on 'em ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... hostess, despite her rapid evolutions among the flowers, despite her rubbing against the walls of the galleries when she enters to take shelter and, above all, despite the brushing which she must often give herself with her feet to dust herself and keep spick and span. Hence no doubt the need for that curious apparatus which no standing or moving upon ordinary surfaces could explain, as was said above, when we were wondering what the shifting, swaying, dangerous body might be on which the larva would ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre |
