E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • More 'Background' Quotes from Famous Books

... Eastern village whose cause had departed. A community drained of the male principle, leaving only a few queer men, the blacksmith, and some halfling boys, to give tone to the background of dozens of ...

— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips

... the negative. My friends, and you more especially, dearest friend, have done their part in this respect fully and in the kindest manner. It seems to me now high time that I should be somewhat forgotten, or, at least, placed very much in the background. My name has been too frequently spoken of; many have taken umbrage at this, and been uselessly annoyed at it. While "paving the way for a better appreciation," it might be advisable to regard my things as a reserve corps, and to introduce new works ...

— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated

... crimson paper, and furnished with a sofa covered with crimson velvet, three arm chairs similarly covered, and six cane-bottomed chairs. Festoons of flags hung before the front of the box against a background ...

— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend

... its masses of clustering chimneys, a little bare and weather-beaten, impressed him with a sense of dignity due as much to the purity of its architecture as the singularity of its situation. Behind—a wonderfully effective background—were the steep gardens from which, even in this uncertain light, he caught faint glimpses of colouring subdued from brilliancy by the twilight. These were encircled by a brick wall of great height, the whole of the southern portion of which was ...

— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... 700 feet wide; the banks are steep, with a flat alluvial meadow between them, through which the river flows. The country is finely wooded. Chirk Castle stands on an eminence on its western side, with the Welsh mountains and Glen Ceriog as a background; the whole composing a landscape of great beauty, in the centre of which Telford's aqueduct ...

— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... soldiers, bathing in the Arno, are surprised by the sound of trumpets, and run to arms. His design has reached us only in an old engraving, which perhaps helps us less than what we remember of the background of his Holy Family in the Uffizii to imagine in what superhuman form, such as might have beguiled the heart of an earlier world, those figures may have risen from the water. Leonardo chose an incident from ...

— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater

... pedestrians stalking along in their white buffalo robes. These were the dignitaries of the village, the old men and warriors, to whose age and experience that wandering democracy yielded a silent deference. With the rough prairie and the broken hills for its background, the restless scene was striking and picturesque beyond description. Days and weeks made me familiar with it, but never impaired its effect ...

— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... prospects I had seen to the westward; and as for the hills, "capped with eternal snow," Mr. Coxe's description led me to look for them, but they had flown, for I looked vainly around for this noble background. ...

— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft

... junks, gleaming white against the background of dark foliage, were silently and dexterously manoeuvred by small, yellow, naked men, with long hair piled up on their heads in feminine fashion. Gradually, as we advanced farther up the green channel, the perfumes became more penetrating, and the monotonous ...

— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... caused his quivering lips to stream with blood. Gaunt said nothing this time, nor did he renew his worse than useless efforts to burst his bonds, but he directed toward the fellow a look of such deadly ferocity that the wretch actually quailed under it, and seemed glad enough to slink away into the background under cover of an order which another Malay, apparently one of the officers of the proa, now stepped forward and gave him. Possibly the order given may have been to desist from further ill- treatment ...

— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood

... a trifle clearer the character of the actors, or perhaps slightly to heighten the impression of commonplace reality. Even in "Sin and Sorrow" and "A Protegee" whole passages merely illustrate the background against which the plot is set rather than help forward the action itself. Many plays, such as "A Family Affair," end with relatively unimportant pieces of dialogue. Of others we are left to guess even the conclusion of the ...

— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky

... nothing," said Cooleen Bawn, "but my love for you. If you were not surrounded by danger as you are, if the whoop of vengeance were not on your trail, if death and a gibbet were not in the background, I could part with you; but now that danger, vengeance, and death, are hovering about you, I shall and must partake of them with you. And listen, Reilly; after all it is the best plan. Papa, if I accompany you—supposing that we are taken—will relent for my sake. I know his love for ...

— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... mental powers quickened. The house being on the main highway, there was always something to look at against the background of the beautiful common, and she conceived a vivid interest in the passing show. An active in lieu of a passive mind did its part in the improvement of her health. The tables were turned. Now it was she who ...

— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray

... of Norfolk, the lonely fens and quaint villages of which are a picturesque background of some of her best stories. In 1870, shortly after her marriage, she went with her husband, the Rev. George Frederick Cross, a clergyman of the Church of England, to Wangaratta, in Victoria. After residing successively in several other country towns of this colony, ...

— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne

... when he descended from the train and saw Laura awaiting him against a green background of forest, all recollection of Barclay and his financial genius, was swept from his thoughts. As he looked at her small distinguished figure, and met her charming eyes, radiant with love, he told himself that he had, indeed, ...

— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

... as there is the difference of two continents and two civilizations between them, it did not seem fair to let Abel bring round the Doctor's mare and sulky without touching his features in half-shadow into our background. ...

— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... generality of girls; but she could not help wondering if there would be any young men present, and if, indeed, there were any young men in Slowbridge who might possibly be produced upon festive occasions, even though ordinarily kept in the background. She had not heard Miss Belinda mention any masculine name so far, but that of the curate of St. James's; and, when she had seen him pass the house, she had not found his slim, black figure, and ...

— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... in the corridor. He saw nothing but a line of closed doors, presumably to servants' quarters. Now, however, the vibrant rasp of the radio spark was perceptibly stronger and had a background of subdued noise, echoes of distant voices, deadened sounds of hasty footfalls, now and again a heavy thump or the bang ...

— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... rather taken with the rustic seat that was standing on a white fur mat in front of a scene representing the Jungfrau, but he headed me off it. If I liked the Jungfrau as a background I could have it, but not with the seat; that was for engaged couples only. He recommended a pair of skis, or a bobsleigh; he could put a fine fall of snow into the negative. But as I had arrayed myself in a black coat, with one of those white waistcoat slips, and a flowing tie with a pearl pin, ...

— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various

... I had not observed her; she had her back to the light, was dressed in dark colors, and sat in the careless attitude of one who keeps in the background. The fact is, this one pleased me much better. Eyes with long lashes, rather narrow, but which would have been called good in any country in the world; with almost an expression, almost a thought. ...

— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti

... or the lack of it, which permitted Titian (in a picture now in the National Gallery, London) to paint the shadows of his figures falling away from the spectator into the picture, and towards the setting sun in the background. The return to nature, however, was not accomplished at once. It is doubtful, indeed, if a painter can ever arrive at a respectable technical achievement without imbibing certain conventions which prevent complete submission to nature; absolute ...

— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various

... the appearance of a new type of management. A group of younger men and women with a broad background, an intense interest in cooperation and a capacity of growing up with the business is working now to make these cooperatives even more successful. The cooperative movement is likely to grow in pretty close proportion ...

— Consumers' Cooperative Societies in New York State • The Consumers' League of New York

... separately and subsequently. But our knowledge of the Sun's Corona has developed so entirely by steps from a small beginning that it is neither easy nor advantageous to keep the history separate or in the background and I shall therefore not ...

— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers

... alone in the bedroom which she shared with a nurse, did she take it quite out of the envelope and gaze long at the faded yellow photograph, caressing with, her eyes every detail of faces and clothing, the steps of the veranda, and the bushes which served as a background to his and hers and his aunts' faces, and could not cease from admiring especially herself—her pretty young face with the curly hair round the forehead. She was so absorbed that she did not hear her ...

— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... fact that you aren't making any sense about this gambling kick you're on, Tex. You should have laughed my teasing off. Who would seriously suggest that you were a psi personality?" she demanded. "And most of all, with my background in psi, do you think I ...

— Card Trick • Walter Bupp AKA Randall Garrett

... have been expected to welcome the co-operation of one of his own family who was foremost among the rising men of Cecil's own generation, and who certainly was most desirous to do him service. But it is plain that he early made up his mind to keep Bacon in the background. It is easy to imagine reasons, though the apparent short-sightedness of the policy may surprise us; but Cecil was too reticent and self-controlled a man to let his reasons appear, and his words, in answer to ...

— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church

... As a background to modern, or scientific, Socialism there is the Socialism of the Utopians, which the authors of the Manifesto so severely criticised. It is impossible to understand the modern Socialist movement, the Socialism which is rapidly becoming the dominant issue in the ...

— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo

... there was a sound of shuffling in the porch, the door was thrown open, and a gaunt, haggard man, with torn, snow-sprinkled garments, pale face, and bloodshot eyes, stood pictured on the background ...

— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne

... before stated that Drury did not skulk in the background when he published his book in 1727; but, on the contrary, invited the public to Tom's Coffee-house, where he engaged to satisfy the incredulous, and resolve the doubting. By the 3rd edition of Madagascar, ...

— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various

... written without restraint. They show, I am sure, what the general trend of sentiment was in Germany for and against submarine warfare and disclose, too, that while the Emperor was often in the background and seemingly not the most powerful factor in the situation, it was his system that dominated Germany, his spirit that bred the lust for military gain at whatever cost—even the respect of the whole civilised world. ...

— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard

... the string to cut and the bag to open, I feel something of Peachey's wonder to think of you, across all this distance and change, as still sitting in your great chair by the green lamp, while past a dim background of books moves the procession of youth. Many of us, growing older in various places, remember well your friendship, and are glad that you are there, urging our successors to look backward into good books, and ...

— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout

... correspondingly constant; if the currents are variable, our mood also will be variable. Not only is mood dependent on our sensations and thoughts for its quality, but it in turn colors our entire mental life. It serves as a background or setting whose hue is reflected over all our thinking. Let the mood be somber and dark, and all the world looks gloomy; on the other hand, let the mood be bright and cheerful, and the world puts ...

— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts

... Stetson called the residence of Ipscott Bullone, leader of the majority party in the Marak Assembly. Mrs. Bullone took the call with blank screen. There was a sound of running water in the background. Stetson stared at the grayness swimming in his desk visor. He always disliked a blank screen. A baritone husk of a voice slid: ...

— Operation Haystack • Frank Patrick Herbert

... looking down into the basin below. From their feet ran a great semicircle of marble seats, descending tier below tier to a marble pavement, and facing a great ruined wall of pillars and arches which in the past had formed the background for the actors. From the height on which they stood above the city they could see the green country stretching out for miles on every side and swimming in the warm sunlight, the dark groves of myrtle on the ...

— The Princess Aline • Richard Harding Davis

... from Richmond to throw every thing else into the background. An express arrived at Randalls to announce the death of Mrs. Churchill! Though her nephew had had no particular reason to hasten back on her account, she had not lived above six-and-thirty hours after his return. A sudden seizure of a different nature ...

— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... his elbow, watching. Charge after charge, wild and impetuous, break the slowly retreating battalions. In vain I heard Carter's stern oaths (may the angel of tears forgive him!), and Charlie Marsh's boyish calls. The men are facing us. The enemy, cheering, and in the background huge torches flaming with pitch, ...

— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... serfs had not been freed by Nicholas. That sovereign had long understood the necessity for the change, and in 1847 he had actually appointed a Commission to report on the best means of effecting it. The convulsions of 1848, followed by the Hungarian and the Crimean Wars, threw the project into the background during the remainder of Nicholas's reign; but if the belief of the Russian people is well founded, the last injunction of the dying Czar to his successor was to emancipate the serfs throughout his empire. Alexander was little capable of grappling ...

— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... and altos, "And there came all Manner of Flies," set to a shrill, buzzing, whirring accompaniment, which increases in volume and energy as the locusts appear, but bound together solidly with the phrase of the tenors and basses frequently repeated, and presenting a sonorous background to this fancy of the composer in insect imitation. From this remarkable chorus we pass to another still more remarkable, the familiar Hailstone Chorus ("He gave them Hailstones for Rain"), which, like the former, is closely imitative. Before the two choirs begin, the orchestra prepares the ...

— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton

... portraits are grouped in the foreground of this 'conversation' piece, the background being filled with ...

— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... still felt those secret pangs of bitter disappointment and the fever of unsatisfied desire, but he was both too unselfish and too proud to show what he suffered. There are some of us who keep our dark thoughts and secret, hopeless longings in the background, as the maimed and diseased beggars are kept off the streets in Paris, and only let them come from their hiding-places at long intervals, like the beggars again, who crawl forth once or twice a year to solicit alms and pity. Although Mr. Morris knew Calvert so well, his impetuous ...

— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe

... tricks of the trade with magnificent speed. She was never so meek and helpless of expression as when she slipped in front of another actor or actress and filled as much of the foreground as her slenderness permitted. When she was crowded into the background she knew how to divert attention to herself during the best moments of the other people in the scene. And she could most innocently spoil any bit that she did not like to do herself or have ...

— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... of laughter even when in repose. Jolly wrinkles lurked around his eyes. Beth saw two rows of pearly teeth though his mouth was partly hidden by a mustache and beard. His nose was large and flat. It looked like a dirty piece of putty thrown at haphazard on a black background. Beth, however, did not mind ...

— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine

... velvet made a perfect background for her golden curls, a bit tumbled by her afternoon ...

— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells

... ran through me as I listened to my companion's words and saw the stern gravity which had hardened his features. This brutal preliminary seemed to shadow forth some strange and inexplicable horror in the background. Lestrade, however, shook his head like a man who is only ...

— The Adventure of the Cardboard Box • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Bishop said thoughtfully. "White and brown and yellow. Russian and British and French and German and Chinese and Spanish. They were chosen for technical background rather ...

— Competition • James Causey

... best to make him little. When I was lying on my back there in the Pantheon in Rome, looking up through that wide opening, and watching a moving-picture show that has no rival, the fleecy clouds in their ever-changing forms against that blue background of matchless Italian sky, those gendarmes debated the question of arresting me for disorderly conduct. My conduct was disorderly because they couldn't understand it. But, if Raphael could have risen from his tomb only a few yards ...

— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson

... the ups and downs and circuits had quite wearied us. Gradually the rocks decreased in size, and were more widely spread; a plain slightly depressed in the centre, dotted here and there with thinly growing thickets, was reached. In the background there was a clump of firs and a glittering lake, quite a liquid oasis hidden ...

— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart

... frankness of the eighteenth century—a bastard system, symptomatic of an age in which nothing that grows up is at all like the thing that has vanished, in which transition leads nowhere, everything is a matter of degree; all the great figures shrink into the background, and distinction is purely personal. I am fully convinced that it is impossible for a woman, even if she were born close to a throne, to acquire before the age of five-and-twenty the encyclopaedic knowledge of trifles, the practice of manoeuvring, the important small ...

— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac

... in how many ways this feeling appeals to us; it seems to be the background of our whole finite being. Saint ...

— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... disappointed. The Daika reformers had invariably contrived that conciliation should march hand in hand with innovation. Temmu relied on coercion. He himself administered State affairs with little recourse to ministerial aid but always with military assistance in the background. He was especially careful not to sow the seeds of the abuses which his immediate predecessors had worked to eradicate. Thus, while he did not fail to recognize the services of those that had stood by him in the Jinshin tumult, he studiously refrained from ...

— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... wanted, I remember, a button—and hastened to the Park. I did not tell my wife anything about it. I did not care to have her with me. In all such adventures I find her more useful as a sentimental figure in the background—I, of course, allow no sentiment in the foreground—than ...

— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas

... the poverty of their own surroundings by the magnificence of that great Cathedral which rose above the low horizon of their roofs, and opened its doors to poor and rich alike. The buildings that have so long outlived their inhabitants may be taken as the background—like the permanent stone scenery in a Greek theatre—to the shifting kaleidoscope of many-coloured life in the ...

— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook

... his title, his personality and role. In this artificial and declamatory tragedy of the Revolution he takes the leading part; the maniac and the barbarian slowly retire in the background on the appearance of the cuistre; Marat and Danton finally become effaced, or efface themselves, and the stage is left to Robespierre who attracts all the attention.[3187]—If we want to understand him we must look at him as he stands in the midst ...

— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... accordingly came in, took his glass, and sat himself just where Bell directed, on a step at her feet. Amy colored, and there was a subdued titter somewhere in the background, and Bell calmly resumed the reins of the conversation. "No, there is no knowing what we shall be put through this afternoon. One time when Mrs. Upjohn had got us all safely inside her doors, she divided us smartly into two classes, set herself in the middle, and announced that we were there for ...

— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield

... meaning of the struggle, arises from the obligation that I am under to preserve a proper personal reserve regarding the great figures behind the vast intellectual and political changes which really are in the background of the war. ...

— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... at this juncture that Marais arrived, accompanied by Marie. Where he came from I do not know, but I think he must have been keeping in the background on purpose to see what kind of a ...

— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard

... of pine that form the background to the Falls, when seen from above, are entirely lost from the surface of the river, and the descending floods seem to pour down ...

— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... girouettes on its steeples," and it was love for Italian fashions that had brought king and courtiers here to-day, with great eclat, as they said, frizzed and starched, in the beautiful, minutely considered dress of the moment, pressing the university into a perhaps not unmerited background; for the promised speaker, about whom tongues had been busy, not only in the Latin quarter, had come from Italy. In an age in which all things about which Parisians much cared must be Italian there might be a hearing ...

— Giordano Bruno • Walter Horatio Pater

... not, however, on these details that we desire to dwell, but to use the scenes before us as a background and contrast to magnify certain features in the death, grave, and abiding influence ...

— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer

... the dark hills, half-seen in the light of the rising moon, she settled down. Rupert turned to his silent companion. He had become aware during the evening that something was wrong, and his own sense of injury was frightened into the background. ...

— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross

... a sudden dwarf palmetto bristling all its bayonets against the peaceful night, and all the way singular uncouth shapes of vegetation, like conjurations of magic, cutting themselves out with minuteness upon the vast clear background so darkly and weirdly that the voyagers seemed to be sliding along the shores of some new, strange under-world,—now they got out, and, wading ankle-deep in plashy bog, drew the boat and its slumberer heavily after them,—now went slowly along, afloat ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... which can be invented by primitive imaginations. Each society has its own uniform, made up of tinsels and figured satins, tin-foil, gold and silver leaf, gaudy textiles, magnificent epaulets bearing large golden stars on a background of silver decorated with glittering gems of colored glass; tinted "ostrich" plumes of many colors sticking straight up eighteen inches above the heads of their wearers, gaudy ribbons, beruffled bodices, puffed sleeves, and slashed trunks. Some of these strange costumes are actually reminiscent ...

— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham

... roadside after nightfall. A fire of sticks is burning near the ditch a little to the right. Michael is working beside it. In the background, on the left, a sort of tent and ragged clothes drying on the hedge. ...

— The Tinker's Wedding • J. M. Synge

... the abrogation of the Sabbath by Christ or by His Apostles, but St. Paul declared that its observance was not binding on Gentile converts. Accordingly, in the very early days of Christianity the Sabbath fell more and more into the background, yet not without leaving some traces behind it (see art. Sonnabender in Kraut's Realenzyklop). Among Christians the first day of the Jewish week, the prima Sabbati, the present Sunday, was held in honour ...

— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley

... to foresee will be passed on them. It will undoubtedly be asserted that an undue prominence has been given to the religious side of the Irish question, while its many political aspects have been left in the background. This charge will be laid at the door of the clerical and religious character of the writer, and may give rise to the notion that the view here taken of the subject is not the right one, ...

— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... habitations. Water is plentiful, and though the scenery certainly lacks trees except in the immediate neighbourhood of the villages and houses, it has, nevertheless, a certain picturesqueness on account of its background of wooded mountains. I started from Pithoragarh at 6.30 A.M.; leaving the road to Tal on the left, I followed the track at a medium elevation of 6250 feet, arriving at Shadgora (6350 feet) just in time to witness the blessing ...

— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... han't had a drop!" said Mr. Coggan to a self-conscious man in the background, thrusting the cup ...

— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... the piano must decide for himself. He has already discovered that modern piano playing requires a perfect technic, together with the personal equation of vigorous health, serious purpose and many-sided mentality. Mme. Rider-Possart says: "Technic is something an artist has to put in the background as something of secondary importance, yet if he does not possess it he is nowhere." The student will not overlook the fact that to acquire the necessary technical control he must devote time and thought to it outside of piece playing. He ...

— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower

... of the impossible, and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow shows fascinating combinations of the unusual. Cooper achieved his greatest success in presenting the Indians and the stalwart figure of the pioneer against the mysterious forest as a background. Hawthorne occasionally availed himself of the older romantic materials, as in The Snow Image, Rappaccini's Daughter, and Young Goodman Brown, but he was more often attracted by the newer elements, the strange ...

— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck

... not my original intention to let you off so easily. I started with the idea of giving you a rapid but glowing and eloquent word-picture of the valley of the Rhine from Cologne to Mayence. For background, I thought I would sketch in the historical and legendary events connected with the district, and against this, for a foreground, I would draw, in vivid colours, the modern aspect of the scene, with remarks ...

— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome

... on once more; but when close to the gate she met her father, who asked her in a surly tone what she did there at that late hour. He had witnessed the whole fight to the end, only keeping well in the background to escape observation, and was just returning from the hospital when he met Fan. Hearing that she was going to see her mother, he ordered her home, saying that at the hospital they would admit no ...

— Fan • Henry Harford

... his opportunities for personal observation. But he has done enough to render us grateful for his labors. By the vivid delineation of scenes and scenery, as they were presented fresh to his own eyes, he has furnished us with a background to the historic picture, - the landscape, as it were, in which the personages of the time might be more fitly portrayed. It would have been impossible to exhibit the ancient topography of the land so faithfully at a subsequent ...

— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott

... the city and deeper into the country, they were dazzled by the beauty of the scenery. The sun struck hot and bright upon the road, while the shrubs and foliage on the outskirts of the woodland seemed outlined in molten gold against the softer background of shadowy green. The river shone and sparkled in the brilliant sun like some great, glistening jewel turned to liquid sunshine. The world ...

— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield

... to get back to our smooth, but still varied landscape. For a permanent residence, it seemed to me that there could be no comparison between this and the wilderness, necessary as the latter is for a resource and a background, the raw material of all our civilization. The wilderness is simple, almost to barrenness. The partially cultivated country it is which chiefly has inspired, and will continue to inspire, the strains of poets, such as compose the mass of any literature. Our woods are sylvan, and their inhabitants ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... thought no more about the father, who had loved ten generations in his son, nor of the aunt, and her almost insane devotion. He was looking forward to Paris with vehement ill-starred longings; in thought he had lived in that fairyland, it had been the background of his brightest dreams. He imagined that he would be first in Paris, as he had been in the town and the department where his father's name was potent; but it was vanity, not pride, that filled his soul, and in his dreams his pleasures were to be ...

— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac

... will hardly walk down a street side by side unless the colors of their costumes harmonize. You find a negress selling oranges or citrons; an Arab boy with red fez and white turban, carrying purple fruit in a basket of leaves—always the right juxtaposition of colors. The sky furnishes them a superb background of deep blue, and the repose of these solemn Orientals, who sit here like bronze statues, save that they smoke incessantly, inspires you with a curious respect. They are men who believe in fate—what need ...

— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... at her best at rehearsals. For the first time, as he watched her, Roland found himself feeling that there was a case to be made out for the managers who had so consistently kept her in the background. Miss Verepoint, to use the technical term, threw her weight about. There were not many good lines in the script of act one of "Pass Along, Please!" but such as there were she reached out for and grabbed away from their owners, who retired into corners, scowling and muttering, like dogs ...

— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill

... the house is not only to be useful, but to be aesthetically a background for the dwellers therein, subordinate to them, not obtrusive. In most of our modern building and furnishing the people are relegated to the background as insignificant figures. This is largely why the home feeling is absent, ...

— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards

... not remain long in the background after they had reached the drawing-room, for Dr Blimber had him out in no time, dancing with Florence. He did not appear to Paul to be particularly happy, or particularly anything but sulky, or to care much what he was about; ...

— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... was quite simple. The retinal vessels stand out slightly in relief, and thus a perfect shadow of the system is cast on the retina. It was this shadow I saw, and the white screen was merely a convenient background for it. I don't know if ...

— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill

... identified and of which some knowledge is essential to an understanding of his acts and character. Others are brought into prominence only as they are associated with the chief actor in the great drama. Many of them are disappearing,—fading into the smoky and lurid background. But that colossal central figure, playing one of the grandest roles ever set upon the stage of human life, becomes more impressive ...

— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... apozem[obs3], moxa[obs3]; acid, aqua fortis[Lat], aqua regia; catheretic[obs3], nitric acid, nitrochloro-hydric acid[ISA:CHEMSUB], nitromuriatic acid[ISA:CHEMSUBPREFIX]; radioactivity, gamma rays, alpha particles, beta rays, X-rays, radiation, cosmic radiation, background radiation, radioactive isotopes, tritium, uranium, plutonium, radon, radium. sunstroke, coup de soleil[Fr]; insolation. [artifacts requiring heat in their manufacture] pottery, ceramics, crockery, porcelain, china; ...

— Roget's Thesaurus

... plan, which far exceeds the above, there being no line, or any peculiarity denoting two exposures. The specimen referred to, was a gentleman represented on one plate by two full length portraits. This was produced by using a black velvet for the background. The plate was exposed sufficient time to produce one impression, and then the gentleman assumed another position, and is repeated as looking at himself. From the fact that the time required to develop black velvet being so much longer than that for producing a portrait, we are ...

— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey

... is very beautiful to trace throughout Peter's writings the echoes of the great facts which he had seen, and which to the end of his days formed the background of all his thoughts. ...

— The Bible in its Making - The most Wonderful Book in the World • Mildred Duff

... applicant has been approved by the psychographs, his background will be thoroughly investigated. We may find criminal types who show the blackest of careers, but who would turn over a new leaf if given the chance and prove to be more valuable than men with the best ...

— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell

... being pleasurable or painful according to the nature of its original components: the chief difference between this developed feeling and the feeling aroused in the infant being, that on bright or dark background forming the body of it, may now be sketched out in thought the particular pleasures or pains which the particular circumstances ...

— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... the purpose of these diversities. We know, for one thing, that out of them come some of the noblest instances of character and of achievement. Ignorance and crime and poverty and vice, stand in fearful contrast to knowledge and integrity and wealth and purity; but they likewise constitute the dark background against which the virtues of human life stand out in radiant relief; virtues developed by the struggle which they create; virtues which seem impossible without their co-existence. For, whence issues any such thing as virtue, ...

— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin

... taken away, a child of seven, her memories of this southern town had grown vague, and it seemed strange to hear Uncle Landor refer to it as her home. He also said it was the sort of a background she needed for the next few years, until she should be ready for college. After that he promised, if she still wished it, she might come ...

— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard

... and wealth of former days. Rare shrubs still grew in the spacious front yard, and gnarled remnants of orchard trees were to be seen in the rear. A dozen other buildings, large and small, occupied the background, some with the roofs partly fallen, ...

— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins

... Elisabetta,"—this to his wife standing silently in the background—"we will go to the Plaza for tonight. At three o'clock tomorrow we shall expect to find this house in readiness for our return. Later, if Mrs. Quintard desires to visit us we shall be pleased to receive her. But"—this to Mrs. ...

— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green

... herself this serious institution, she seemed to be looking into an enchanted grove, with Cupids weaving garlands, and storks bringing little golden-locked angels under their wings; while before a little cabin in the background, which yet was large enough to contain all the bliss in the world, sat the ideal married couple, gazing into the depths of each ...

— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland

... coins fall into your coffee and the finest wines and wittles lie smilingly about your path, with a kind of dissolving view of fine scenery by way of background; and may all speak well of you—and me too for that matter—and generally all things be ordered unto you totally regardless of expense and with a view to nothing in the world but enjoyment, edification, and a portly and honoured age.—Your ...

— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... comparison of Crabbe's poems with Wordsworth's will sufficiently indicate. Both are true painters; but while in the one we see poverty as something gross and degrading, and the Tales of the Village stand out from a background of pauperism and crime; in the other picture poverty means nothing worse than privation, and the poet in the presence of the most tragic ...

— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers

... was certainly a picturesque place, and I was glad that I had come. The colouring was charming: there was red rock in the background, here and there covered with grass, and ablaze with flowers. Wild roses and poppies, pink-thrift and white daisies, all contributed to make the old rock gay. But the yellow ragwort was all over; great patches ...

— Christie, the King's Servant • Mrs. O. F. Walton

... with a couple of hasty strokes of the pencil. But if we take even these few bare words and look at them, feeling that there is a man like ourselves sketched in them, I think we can get a real picture out of them, and that even this dim form crowded into the background of the Apostolic story may have a word or ...

— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... bowling along, my mind has unconsciously been dwelling on Jane Austen. Think of it, sir, only one hundred years ago and no railroads. Have we really lost or gained? Marvelous girl, that, sir. Masterpiece of literature when she was twenty-one, and no background but an untidy English village. You've heard of Jane ...

— Best Short Stories • Various

... and varied landscape unfolds before us in the changing lights of a long summer's day; and at each appropriate artistic moment becomes the background of a mythological, idyllic, or semi-mythical scene. In the early dawn we see Prometheus amidst departing thunders chained to his rock:[131] the glutted, yet still hungering vulture cowering beside him; in the dews of morning, Artemis triumphant in her double character of huntress-queen and ...

— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... of peninsula formed by a deep loop of the river Avon on its way from Stratford-on-Avon to Tewkesbury. The broad vale in which it lies is enclosed by a semicircle of hills, which provide a background to every varied landscape, and give a sense of homeliness and seclusion which those who are familiar with unbroken stretches of level country will at once recognise and appreciate. From the east to the south-west range the Cotswolds, not striking in outline but depending for their beauty in great ...

— Evesham • Edmund H. New

... secretary-general of the league. If the commission report fails to bring satisfactory action, the matter may be taken to a permanent court of international justice for final decision. The chief reliance for securing enforcement of the law will be publicity with a possibility of economic action in the background. ...

— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney

... Charter of Larmenius is to be believed, the newly elected Grand Master of the Temple was the Duc de Bourbon, who had already incurred the Cardinal's displeasure. Obviously, therefore, Templar influence was kept in the background. This is not to imply bad faith on the part of Ramsay, who doubtless held the Order of Templars to be wholly praiseworthy; but he could not expect the King or Cardinal to share his view, and therefore held it more ...

— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... when he began to bethink him of the least among his investments. Like many other wealthy men, my respected connection is troubled more or less, in the background of his consciousness, by a pervading dread that he will die a beggar. To guard against this misfortune—which I am bound to admit nobody else fears for him—he invested, several years ago, a sum of ...

— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen

... Punch. In Newcastle we knew nothing of the kitchen area and the portico. I was filled with joy when, in passing through the Bloomsbury squares, I recognised, as I thought, the very houses, porticoes, and areas that Leech had made the background for his magnificent ...

— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.

... a room, for instance, papered with a paper with a dark background and a light pattern on it. Well, you can manoeuvre your eye about so as either to look at the black background—and then it is all black, with only a little accidental white or gilt to relieve it here and there; or you can focus your eye on the white and gold, and then that ...

— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... Background: Malaysia was created in 1963 through the merging of Malaya (independent in 1957) and the former British Singapore, both of which formed West Malaysia, and Sabah and Sarawak in north Borneo, which composed ...

— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... least, could so establish themselves as not to greatly feel the hotel atmosphere. Carefully chosen colours textures, and appointments formed the background of their days, the food they ate was a thing produced by art, the servants who attended them were completely-trained mechanisms. To sit by a window and watch the kaleidoscopic human tide passing by on its way to its pleasure, to reach its ...

— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... hands raised to their faces in melancholy meditation. In the foreground of the picture, which is painted with all the sumptuous splendor of Venetian art, is a stately vase, around which hangs a festoon of gorgeous flowers, its end dragging upon the pavement. In the background, between the columns, smiles the blue sky of Italy—the only thing Italian not deteriorated by time. The careful student of this picture, if he has been long in Paris, is some day startled by detecting, especially in the faces of ...

— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis

... rose a lovely dark green mountain, and when there was a rainbow, as there frequently was, nothing could have looked more enchanting than it did rising from the opposite bank of the stream with the wet, shadowy mountain for a background. All the Flower family would invariably run to their front windows and their ...

— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... and I, being in the majority as opposed to this autocrat, remain placid. A current of understanding exists between us. Miss Arnold, on the other hand, finds our ignorance a flattering background for her learning and adventures. She is so obviously a woman of the world on the ...

— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst

... in the room situated at the south end of the edifice. The dust of ages was thick upon it and so concealed the characters as to make them well-nigh invisible. With care I washed the slab, then with black crayon darkened its surface until the intaglio letters appeared in white on a dark background. (The photographs of this inscription can be seen at ...

— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.

... traveller, but it stays with him always, and colours his impressions of such other cities as may attract his wandering footsteps. So soon as he has left the plains behind on his way to the coast, the town's defects are relegated to the background of the picture his memory paints. He forgets the dirty lanes that serve for roads, the heaps of refuse at every corner, the pariah curs that howled or snapped at his horse's heels when he rode abroad, the roughness and discomfort of the accommodation, the ...

— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan

... needs of later Hellenic citizens. In time of peace the later Greeks are weaponless men, not surrounded by and entertaining throngs of armed retainers, like the Homeric chief. The women of later Greece, moreover, are in the background of life, dwelling in the women's chambers, behind those of the men, in seclusion. The Homeric women also, at least in the house of Odysseus, have their separate chambers, which the men seem not to enter except on invitation, though ...

— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang

... it; and in an instant she was the centre of a cloud of birds. Peter was at liberty to watch her, to admire the swift grace of her motions, their suggestion of delicate strength, of joy in things physical, and the lithe elasticity of her figure, against the background of satiny lawn, and the further vistas of lofty sunlit trees. She was dressed in white, as always—a frock of I know not what supple fabric, that looked as if you might have passed it through your ring, and fell in multitudes of ...

— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland

... She was very real to him, this woman, and compelling, with her silences, her broken phrases. Rarely, very rarely before in his life, had he had this experience of intimacy without foreknowledge, without background—the sense of dealing with ...

— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... tried to comfort himself again by the thought of all the hours of happy enthusiasm he had spent amongst his papers, working for a great idea with infinite patience. He recalled to mind something that he had always tried to keep in the background of his hopes, the foundation-stone of his life, which he had hidden out of sight. Deep in his heart was the hope that he might one day write a valiant book; he scarcely dared to entertain the aspiration, he felt his incapacity too ...

— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... asked the Mole, waving a paw towards a background of woodland that darkly framed the water-meadows on one side of ...

— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame

... a moment later, peering in cautiously, the sunshine casting a rude outline upon the floor, and his figure to those within showing silhouetted against the background of light, beleggined, befringed, and begloved after the ...

— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough

... lifting his countenance above the horizon that morning, centred his whole attention upon a pair of polished brass-bound hubs. The rest of the scene, grass and flowers "in unrespective same," formed a mere background on the general plane of existence while the sun beamed upon the brass—delighted, no doubt, to find an ...

— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart

... obligingly effaced herself as far as possible by taking the box-seat by the chauffeur as they drove down, and when they arrived, and Michael and his mother strolled about in the warm sunshine before lunch, keeping carefully in the background, just ready to come if she was wanted. But indeed it seemed as if no such precautions were necessary, for never had Lady Ashbridge been more amenable, more blissfully content in her son's companionship. ...

— Michael • E. F. Benson

... comfortable on that porch with its southern exposure, the fireflies dancing to the chirp of the crickets, the span of the railroad trestle looking like a fairy bridge against the background of the sky. Mr. Keeler ...

— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.

... colonial writings of the seventeenth century, those that have lost least of their interest through the lapse of years are narratives of struggles with the Indians. The image of the "bloody savage" has always hovered in the background of the American imagination. Our boys and girls have "played Indian" from the beginning, and the actual Indian is still found, as for three hundred years past, upon the frontier fringe of our civilization. Novelists like Cooper, historians like Parkman, poets like Longfellow, ...

— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry

... He was sure, and reasonably sure, that no other statesman could play the game so well; he therefore claimed the right to play it. Carteret, on the other hand, was far too strong a man to be quietly pushed into the background. He was determined that if he remained in the service of the State he would be a ...

— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... when beginning a printed discussion, What am I looking for? What is the author going to talk about? Often this will be indicated in topical headings. Keep it in the background of your mind while reading, and search for the answer. Then, when you have read the necessary portion, close the book and summarize, to see if the author furnished what you sought. In short, always read for a purpose. Formulate ...

— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson

... by the pensioners who were sent out to assist in founding the colony. Round and about them are other houses and cottages, extending along the shores of the bay, and sprinkled on the sides of a gentle slope. They are generally of light tints, which contrast well with the dark background of the hill beyond, and give the place a pretty appearance. Further up is the church, not a very ecclesiastical-looking building; and beyond again, the cemetery, which has a neat chapel attached to it. The Government House is a long, low cottage edifice, which looks well from the harbour; ...

— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston

... his own employment—it was to be treated as a thing not to be spoken of; but the welfare of the others was inquired after, and especially of Robina—who was the name-child of the eldest sister, the gentlest of the set, and the most in the background, quiet and tearful—pleased to hear that her godchild was at school, and as Felix emphatically said 'a very good girl,' anxious that he should take charge of 'a little ...

— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... them from it."(211) Such is the picture of the divine justice, which the advocates of predestination have presented, from the time of Augustine, the great founder of the doctrine, down to the present day. It surely furnishes a sufficiently dark background on which to display ...

— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe

... again, and as soon as the paint was dry went carefully over the letter part with gum, so delicately that the red colour was not disturbed nor the background smeared. ...

— The King's Sons • George Manville Fenn

... fall from the general in reply; and a volunteer company, doing duty as a guard, pricked ruthlessly with their bayonets at any particularly quiet person among the throng. So Ernest, being of an unobtrusive character, was thrust quite into the background, where he could see no more of Old Blood-and-Thunder's physiognomy than if it had been still blazing on the battle-field. To console himself, he turned toward the Great Stone Face, which, like a faithful and long-remembered ...

— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells

... away like a tug-boat against the tide, and went on. His bright new boots whetted and creaked together, the warm wind lifted the broad brim of his sombrero, and his bright new red shirt was really beautiful, with the green grass and oaks for a background—and so this brave young man climbed the hill to his mine. ...

— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various

... whereby the apex-point of effective thought is blunted and broken. The loss and misery, or the yet more ignoble comfort, of such suppressions of the apex-thought, is however a personal matter. Those "invisible companions," or immortal children of the universe, who are implicitly present as the background of all human discussion, grow constantly more definite and articulate the apprehension of the general human mind by ...

— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... still speaking it—the cloud—mounts higher against the blue background of sky, as also becomes more extended along the line of the horizon. Its colour, too, has sensibly changed, now presenting a dun yellowish appearance, like that mixture of smoke and mist known as a "London fog." But it is ...

— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid

... fangs, ready for the awful word. England and France crouched watchfully over their bones, growling and wary, but gnawing industriously, while the blood of the dark world whetted their greedy appetites. In the background, shut out from the highway to the seven seas, sat Russia and Austria, snarling and snapping at each other and at the last Mediterranean gate to the El Dorado, where the Sick Man enjoyed bad health, and where millions of serfs ...

— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois

... after-dinner doze. The Guard lolls against a post, lantern at his feet, droning a fitful accompaniment to the distant mouth-organ. "The hours I spent wiv thee, dear 'eart, are-Stan' still, Ginger—like a string of pearls ter me-ee ... Grrr, Nellie, stop kickin'!" The range of desolate hills in the background is flickering with gun-flashes and ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug. 22, 1917 • Various

... was superb; the moon was rising behind us; I looked at it over my left shoulder. Brigitte was watching the lines of the wooded hills as they began to design themselves against the background of sky. As the light flooded the copse and threw its halo over sleeping nature, Brigitte's song became more gentle and more melancholy. Then she bent over, and, throwing her arms around ...

— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset

... turned from her and walked in silence back to the shore. In the shadows of the point he stopped to look back at her, standing out like some inspired prophetess against the fiery background of the sunset sky and silver-blue water. The sky overhead was thick-sown with stars; the night breeze was blowing up from its lair in distant, echoing sea caves. On his right the lights of the Cove twinkled ...

— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... likely that they will recognize you. If they do so, I need simply say that as you had shown me such kindness on board ship I had resolved to take you with me to Madrid in order to see if anything could be done to restore you to reason. However, it is better that you should keep in the background as much as possible. I will arrange to start at so early an hour in the morning that none of those who may land with me from the ship, and may put up at the same inn, are ...

— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty

... extraordinary size and loftiness of the buildings, the towers rising in perspective, and the Doric portal of the town-house, answered in some measure the idea Montfaucon gives us of the scene of an ancient tragedy. Whenever a pompous Flemish painter attempts a representation of Troy, and displays in his background those streets of palaces described in the Iliad, Augsburg, or some such city, may easily be traced. Sometimes a corner of Antwerp discovers itself; and generally, above a Corinthian portico, rises a Gothic spire. Just such ...

— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... hoofbeats grew louder. Gale made out a dark moving mass against a background of dull gray. There was a line of horses. He could not discern whether or not all the horses carried riders. The murmur of a voice struck his ear—then a low laugh. It made him tingle, for it sounded ...

— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... Christmas-day, Courvoisier, folding his arms, stood before it and surveyed it, straightly, and without moving a muscle; coolly, criticisingly and very fastidiously. The blase-looking individual in the foreground received, I saw, a share of his attention—the artist, too, in the background; the model, with the white dress, oriental fan, bare arms, and half-bored, half-cynic look. He looked at them all long—attentively—then turned away; the only token of approval or disapproval which he vouchsafed being a slight smile and a slight shrug, both so very slight as ...

— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill

... that, placed as she was in that fierce light with only the sky for background, she must be perfectly visible from the plain below, and that it might be her figure perched like an eagle between heaven and earth which excited their interest. Yes, and not theirs only, for now a white man appeared, who lifted what might have been a gun, or a telescope, towards her. She ...

— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard

... It was just what he had expected it would be. The walls were covered with a garish paper selected by one who had an eye but not a taste for colour: bright pink flowers that looked more or less like chunks of a shattered water melon spilt promiscuously over a background of pearl grey. There was every indication that it had been hung recently. Indeed there was a distinct aroma of fresh flour paste. The bedstead, bureau and washstand were likewise offensively modern. Everything ...

— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon

... of landscape is the loftiest yet known to the world. Nor was man ever dissociated from nature. As early as the 4th century Ku K'ai-chih says that in painting a certain noble character he must give him a fit background of great peaks and deep ravines. Chinese painting, in sum, finely complements rather than poorly supplements that of Europe; where the latter is strong, it is weak; but in certain chosen provinces it long ago found ...

— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... background to this transference of the name of Bel has been dwelt upon in a previous chapter.[767] This "Marduk hymn" is to justify the transference of the role of the older Bel of Nippur to the younger god Marduk. Throughout, the tablet describing ...

— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... in the exercise of an usurped despotism over souls, they had enjoyed. The Borgia combined both impulses toward the illimitable. To describe him as the Genius of Evil, whose sensualities, as unrestrained as Nero's, were relieved against the background of flame and smoke which Christianity had raised for fleshly sins, is justifiable. His spiritual tyranny, that arrogated Jus, by right of which he claimed the hemisphere revealed by Christopher Columbus, and imposed upon the press of Europe the censure of the Church ...

— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... "Dux" over his head, as uniformly is the case in the Bayeux tapestry, and most other pictorial works of the period. The church is, of course, rudely represented, and the two upper stories of it reduced to a small scale in order to form a background to the figures; one of those bold pieces of picture history which we in our pride of perspective, and a thousand things besides, never dare attempt. We should have put in a column or two of the real ...

— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin

... voice fade away and are forever lost. Too often the ideas which the voice proclaimed drift into the background and presently disappear. This is the crowning limitation of public speaking. The lecturer should be, first of all, an educator, and his work should not be "writ in water." The lazy lecturer who imagines that his duties ...

— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis

... that beats everything—she is walking to the hotel, not even taking a carriage. That's just like Susan. Come, Flo, we'll go toward and speak to her; there's no good in having relations and keeping one's self in the background. Follow me, my dear, and pull yourself up and look as nice as you can. Everything depends on your aunt's first impression of you. Just push your hat straight—there, that's better; ...

— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade

... enclosed space sometimes spoken of as the Dutch Garden. This sunk garden, with its turf, its stone walks, that are not walked upon, its small evergreens, cut by topiarian art into the semblance of birds, its low-growing plants rich in varicoloured flowers, its evergreen arbour at the farther end as a background to a statue of Venus, its little fountain in the centre, is a spot that always attracts visitors—attracts and holds them by its ...

— Hampton Court • Walter Jerrold

... the Campagna one is also sure of a good omelet and salad; and, sitting under the vines, after a long walk, I have made as savory a lunch on these two articles as ever I found in the most glittering restaurant in the Palais Royal. If one add the background of exquisite mountains, the middle distance of flowery slopes, where herds of long-haired goats, sheep, and gray oxen are feeding among the skeletons of broken aqueducts, ruined tombs, and shattered mediaeval towers, and the foreground made up of picturesque ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... approached the easel. The picture represented faithfully the living room of his own cottage. All its breadths of light and shade, all its telling contrasts, were used skilfully as a background for Maggie. She was gazing with a white anxious face out of the little window seaward, watching the gathering storm, and the fishing boats trying to make the ...

— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr

... Father Ambrose in the manner of old friend accosting old friend, and nothing in his salutation indicated displeasure of any sort in the background. ...

— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr

... with revolvers, and finding her there before them, in the big vaulted vestibule, "alone with my old men and my Sisters." Soeur Gabrielle Rosnet is a small round active woman, with a shrewd and ruddy face of the type that looks out calmly from the dark background of certain Flemish pictures. Her blue eyes are full of warmth and humour, and she puts as much gaiety as wrath into her tale. She does not spare epithets in talking of "ces satanes Allemands"—these Sisters and nurses of the front have seen ...

— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton

... for the tall, grey-eyed, loitering McCarthy and sometimes sat with him discussing a novel or a poem; Sam in the background listened eagerly. Valmore did not care for the man, shaking his head and declaring that such a fellow could come to ...

— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson

... he thought his eyes the victims of an illusion; then he looked closer. And he saw that it was true; instead of the familiar starry points of light against a velvet background, the arrangement was just the reverse. Every constellation was in its place, just as Chick remembered it from the earth; but instead of stars there were jet-black spots upon ...

— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... word of avowed reference to his own case throughout; and yet from first to last we are aware of young Mary Powell in the background. Inability for "fit and matchable conversation": this is that supreme fault in a wife on which the descant is from first to last, and from which, when it is plainly ingrained and unamendable, the right of divorce is maintained to ...

— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... the bowed figure, but no words. His embracing arms fell away from Doctor West. He knelt there limply, his head bowed upon his bosom. There was a moment of breathless silence. In the background Miss Sherman stood looking on, white, ...

— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott

... already taken several rolls of pictures. None of the films had been developed, so he could not as yet tell how the snapshots would turn out. Now he took a picture of Dave knee-deep in snow, with the turnout and the others in the background. ...

— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer

... jealousies which had so nearly proved fatal to any settlement at Vienna. For the moment, the designs of Russia in Poland, the selfish demands of Prussia, and the half-formed coalition between Great Britain, France, and Austria, were thrust into the background. Austria thought it necessary to repudiate decisively the audaciously false assertion of Napoleon that he was returning with the concurrence of his father-in-law, and would shortly be supported by Austrian troops. Metternich, therefore, assumed the lead in drawing up a solemn manifesto, dated ...

— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... understand it, but I weep because of this white veil, too, because I am weak and the white veil flutters beautifully against the green background of the forest. But in a little while I shall see it ...

— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun

... 53. "The Restoration of Monarchy and King Charles II." A number of cavaliers on horseback, with their conical hats and long tresses, occupy the foreground of this picture; the army appears in the background. This is the last, though the scroll advertises ...

— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various

... subordinate to the main bent of the story as Henry the Fifth's courtship of Katherine is to the battle of Agincourt. Nay, the fortunes of the person who is nominally the subject of the tale are often little more than a background on which grander figures are to be drawn, and deeper fates forth-shadowed. The judgments between the faith and chivalry of Scotland at Drumclog and Bothwell bridge owe little of their interest in the mind of a sensible reader ...

— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... as well now tell the story to the end, though in anticipation of remote dates, for in truth it held a marked place in Mr. Gladstone's whole life, and made a standing background amid the vast throng of varying interests and transient commotions of his great career. Here is his own narrative as told in a letter written to his eldest son for a definite purpose ...

— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... should be made public. Here was our poor Prime Minister's great difficulty. He and his Mentor were at variance. His Mentor was advising that the real naked truth should be told, whereas Telemachus was intent upon keeping the name of the actual culprit in the background. "I will think it all over," said the Prime Minister as the two parted ...

— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... frieze running across the face. In the same bold, realistic style as the other sculpture, there was depicted a hand-to-hand battle between two groups of those half savage, half cultured monstrosities. And in the background was shown a glowing orb, obviously ...

— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint

... and the design must all be outlined with this, using different colors according to the part of it you are working. Then each space is to be filled in with another stitch—you see it here in the tapestry. For the background we will use still another stitch, and when you are covering large spaces the work is to be done in tent-stitch. Every inch of this linen will be covered with embroidery when it ...

— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey

... right-judging personality. It is her intimate and thorough knowledge of big things and small, of literature and damson cheese, enabling her and us to see all round her characters, that provides these characters with their ample background of ...

— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot

... each in its appointed place, under the vast roof; and teachers presently coming to them. A stream of light from the jewelled windows beams slanting down upon each little squad of children, and the tall background of the church retires into a grayer gloom. Pattering little feet of laggards arriving echo through the great nave. They trot in and join their regiments, gathered under the slanting sunbeams. What are they learning? Is it truth? Those ...

— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... raised the portiere, placed her right hand on the key of the door; and, standing against the rich background of the sapphire and ruby-colored folds of the Oriental draperies, she turned her head toward the friend she was leaving, and said, a little mockingly, yet with a touch ...

— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France

... many cases, viewed merely as forms, are defective and unattractive, but portraits of the same faces, upon which the character of the inward mind and heart was so stamped that it threw the mere shape of the features far into the background. ...

— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty

... The sun was setting. Beneath the dark roof of evergreens the eucalyptus boles stood out, like basalt pillars, black against a background of burning flame. The flying foxes shot from tree to tree, and moths as big as sparrows whirred about the trunks, one moment black against the glare beyond, and vanishing the next, like imps of darkness, into their native gloom. There was no sound of living thing around, ...

— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... freight barges. We did not go at a breakneck pace, and had plenty of time for conversation, and to look at the scenery, which consisted of prairies, sloughs, woods, and rivers. The picture lacked background, as there is nothing in Illinois deserving the name of hill. But we passed an ancient monument, a tall pillar, rising out of the bed of the Illinois river. It is called "Starved Rock." Once a number of Indian ...

— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale

... Romanesque chapels, was this morning slightly brightened by the limpid April sunlight, which struck the painted glass of the windows so that they seemed to be a burning of gems, a sacred bursting into blossom of luminous flowers. But the background of the nave particularly blazed with a swarming of wax-tapers, tapers as innumerable as the stars of evening in a summer sky. In the centre, the high altar seemed on fire from them, a true "burning bush," symbolic of the flame that consumes souls; and there were also candles in large candelabra ...

— The Dream • Emile Zola

... is a simple, hexagonal room, with lofty, gold-entrellised window; its whole beauty consists in this, that the walls are inlaid with amethysts, from whose jacinth-hued background shine forth the more lustrous raised arabesques formed by topazes and dalmatines. Precious stones are the delight of the Padishah. Every inch of his garments is resplendent with diamonds, rubies, and pearls, his very fingers are hidden by the rings which sparkle upon them. Pomp is ...

— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai

... Georgie Howard and the stir of preparation for the fishing trip, he forgot that he had taken upon himself the responsibility of watching the obviously harmless movements of Baumberger, or had taken seriously the warnings of Peppajee Jim; or if he did not forget, he at least pushed it far into the background of his mind with the assertion that Peppajee was a meddlesome old fool and Baumberger no more designing than he appeared—which ...

— Good Indian • B. M. Bower

... artificers like "Daisy Daydream" (on whose elaborate style the King, over his signature of "Thunderbolt," was perhaps somewhat too severe) thought to praise London by comparing it to the country—using nature, that is, as a background from which all poetical images had to be drawn—the more robust author of "Hymns on the Hill" praised the country, or nature, by comparing it to the town, and used the town itself as a background. "Take," said the critic, "the typically ...

— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... with the eye of a devout seer, or even critic, but through a pair of mere anti-Catholic spectacles. It is not a mighty drama, enacted on the theatre of infinitude, with suns for lamps and eternity as a background, whose author is God and whose purport leads to the throne of God, but a poor, wearisome debating-club dispute, spun through ten centuries, between the Encyclopedie ...

— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... presence a much happier man for the nonce than he had entered it, his mental vision filled with pictures of ribbons, stars and crosses, with, perhaps, a statue—between the two ancient columns in the Piazza Maggiore would be an excellent site—in the background. ...

— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... whistling a tune, which he would occasionally interrupt to speak a word of friendly encouragement to his horse. As he came to a little bridge across a dry ravine he saw the figure of a man standing upon it, clearly outlined against the gray background of a misty forest. The man had something strapped on his back and carried a heavy stick— obviously an itinerant peddler. His attitude had in it a suggestion of abstraction, like that of a sleepwalker. Mr. Cummings reined in his horse when he arrived ...

— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce

... which the colors come. But that order was for a normal print. Some prints behave differently, and it is in the control of these unavoidable variations with different prints that skill and success come. A print of a half-tone subject against a jet-black background, a portrait, for instance, will hardly follow the normal order in the appearance of colors. This because the half-tones will be brown and even red-brown before the toning solution has changed the ...

— Bromide Printing and Enlarging • John A. Tennant

... own colors. She grinds them with a pestle in the fashion of the old masters, and out of the most strange pigments she produces often only soft neutral tints for background and shadow, kneading a vast deal of bright colors away among the grays and browns; but now and then she takes a palette loaded with strong paint, and a great brush, and splashes a startling full length portrait upon the canvas, without much regard for drawing ...

— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford

... for wood, and as usual scanned the expanse of the lake. The sun shone mistier and warmer, and frost feathers floated in the air. Sky and sun and plain and lake—all were gray. Jones fancied he saw a distant moving mass of darker shade than the gray background. He called the trapper. ...

— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey

... a pity," the old woman said, still watching the white splotch against the background of gray and blue. "Families ought to be ...

— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper

... settled, we'll have to dispose of the pictures. Thaddeus, I wish you'd take down the pictures on the east wall, so that we can put our mind's eye on just how we shall treat the background. The mere hanging of hot-bed covers there will not do. The audience could see directly through the glass, and the wall-paper would ...

— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs

... face, white as a spray of jasmine against a dark background of night, toward him. "Underneath a pergola of roses! I guess it's the roses ...

— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst

... at Gotha, which can only come to pass in the course of the next months; besides this, he has such gigantic plans for his new establishment in Gotha that the affairs of the Neue Zeitschrift might be left somewhat in the background. I entirely agree with you on this point, that you cannot put the Neue Zeitschrift in the market and offer it to just any publisher who has shown himself up to now hostile to our tendencies. To do such a thing as that could never lead to a satisfactory result. I would, however, remark that ...

— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated

... Bridge and Hammersmith is the centre of the fishing section, and this was the background depicted by the artist who drew the wrapper for the first serial issue of "The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club." Putney Church is seen in the distance, with its Henry VIII. Chapel, and in the foreground Mr. Pickwick is found dozing in his traditional punt,—that curious box, or ...

— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun

... I had seen Miss Collett, and the mahogany and ormolu dining-room, with its great gilt mirrors, seemed a fitting background ...

— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley

... some motive that she did not understand, kept himself in the background during the stop; nor did she know how his big heart was filled with wrath and gloom. But as he stood silently at the farthest rim of the circle, he resolved to push his fortunes, which was in accordance with ...

— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... to stand courageously at my side, to remain zealous in my service, and to direct your attention especially to unraveling all the arts and wiles, the plots and schemes of my son and his abettors; to give me always information on these points, to keep nothing in the background, and not to conceal anything from me merely to save me from vexation. Will you promise and swear so to manage ...

— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... he looked on with narrowed eyes. Against a background of velvet black, gold spangled, the slim space-traveler showed. The sun's rays caught her, and she was a tiny silver ...

— The Great Dome on Mercury • Arthur Leo Zagat

... Te-te. "I have made it my business to search out the goings-on of the weasel, who has kept himself in the background of late, suspecting that he was up to no good, and with the aid of my lieutenant, the tree-climber, I have succeeded in discovering his retreat, which he has concealed even ...

— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies

... lying by a fire when he came to, Quonab bending over him with a look of grave concern. When he opened his eyes, the Indian smiled; such a soft, sweet smile, with long, ivory rows in its background. ...

— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... modern bricks and mortar. Beyond was a village street and small houses well closed and apparently deserted. Nearer to us rose the magnificent church, with its towers and spire, all its rich carving fringed against the background of the sky. The longer we looked, the more wonderful seemed its solemn and exquisite tone. The trees beneath which we stood waved and bent and rustled in the strong wind that blew; and beyond all stretched the dreary plain; ...

— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various

... in the rude beginnings of articulate utterance against its hard lot. If only we could have learnt in intimate detail the life of this domestic serf[14]! How interesting and how sordidly picturesque against the background of romantic landscape, of scenic history! I looked long into her sallow, wrinkled face, trying to imagine the thoughts that ruled its expression. In some measure my efforts at kindly speech succeeded, and her "Ah, Cristo!" as she turned to go away, was not ...

— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... velvet, wasn't it, Lady Catheron? You didn't get it, by the way. Permit me to inform you, in my professional capacity, that we have a very chaste and elegant assortment of the article always in stock. Trix, where's your manners? Here's Nellie hovering aloof in the background, waiting to be introduced. Allow me to be master of the ceremonies—Lady ...

— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming

... wooden houses, and, across the bridge, the tops of tall buildings cut against the glow that shimmered about the town. At one end rose the great block of the Hulton factory, which lost something of its utilitarian ugliness at night. Its harsh, rectangular outline faded into the background of forest, and the rows of glimmering windows gave it a curious transparent look. It seemed to overflow with radiance and filled ...

— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss

... the stile, each learning many things in regard to the other. They spoke of the place and its beauty, and Agatha told Melanie of the childhood memories which, for the first time, she had revived in their living background. ...

— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger

... be courteous to call an Eastern Romance,—though it was hard to conceive of the Apostle figuring as the hero of such a theme. It was the old tale retold, that to the life of every man there is a background,—that it is precisely in the unlikeliest cases that the background's darkest. What would that penny-plain- and-twopence-coloured bogey, the Nonconformist Conscience, make of such a story if it were blazoned ...

— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh

... writing and answering letters, and drawing up addresses,—and with the general proneness of the masculine mind to attend to one thing only at a time, he grew so absorbed in his work that his love for Thelma, though all unchanged and deep as ever, fell slightly into the background of his thoughts. Not that he neglected her,—he simply concerned himself more with other things. So it happened that a certain indefinable sense of loss weighed upon her,—a vague, uncomprehended solitude began to encompass her,—a solitude even more keenly felt ...

— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... falsehood, for to me it is incredible—almost as a geometrical absurdity. In that glad company the eyes of a divine artist, following the spiritual lines of the group, would have soon settled on his face as the centre whence radiated all the gladness, where, as I seem to see him, he sat in the background beside his mother. Even the sunny face of the bridegroom would appear less full of light than his. But something is at hand which will change his mood. For no true man had he been if his mood had never changed. His high, holy, obedient ...

— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald

... from what we see them every day. Tough, hard-living, hard-swearing men all hidden up in their Sunday suits, and handing you ceremony as if you were some queen. Then the sense of pleasure in every heart, with all the cares and troubles of life pushed into the background—at least for a while. These things are a glimpse of life to us poor folk who spend all our years in the endless chores of an inhospitable country. You can smile, Steve. You can sneer at Abe's saloon. But I tell you you haven't a right to just because ...

— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... He did not have to make inquiries for the lady, for she stood smilingly at the end of the first class promenade awaiting him. She extended her dainty gloved hand, and the lad, who had braced himself for the ordeal, had shed most of his awkwardness. The brother kept in the background, having been ordered to do so, but he amusedly watched the two from a distance, as did ...

— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis

... the stopping of the automobile had been a signal, the front door swung quietly open and a Chinese butler in white linen appeared against a background of soft ...

— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... clumsy fingers finally dislodged from the box a big, soft blanket-wrapper with an astonishingly strange, blurry pattern of green and red against a somber background of rusty black. With increasing amazement he picked up the accompanying letter and scanned ...

— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... had ceased falling, and the clouds of the last downpour, driven before the wind, were nearing the horizon towards the heights of Pere-Lachaise, which were wrapped in gloom; and against this stormy background Paris, illumined by a uniform clearness, assumed a lonely, melancholy grandeur. It seemed to be uninhabited, like one of those cities seen in a nightmare—the reflex of a world of death. To Jeanne it certainly appeared ...

— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... to the jury of matrons I was able to show pretty clearly that the crime was the work of a gang. I proved that Denys and Joan must have done the bulk of the dirty work, under the tactical direction of the Barkers, who did the rest; while in the background was the sinister figure of Mr. Winthrop, the strategical genius, the ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, October 6, 1920 • Various

... the actress-teacher, who clasped her arms about the shoulders of as many as she could reach. It made a pretty scene in front of the old school-house, with the green trees for a background. The use of the school had been allowed the moving ...

— The Bobbsey Twins at Meadow Brook • Laura Lee Hope

... white against the background of dark foliage, were silently and dexterously manoeuvred by small, yellow, naked men, with long hair piled up on their heads in feminine fashion. Gradually, as we advanced farther up the green channel, the perfumes became more penetrating, ...

— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti

... answer, there are three important elements to be observed. You must create the right mental attitude, following argument and reason with a "do it now" appeal that the reader will find it hard to get away from. Then the cost must be kept in the background, centering attention on the goods, the guarantee, and the free trial offer rather than upon the price. And finally, it is desirable to simplify the actual process—the physical effort ...

— Business Correspondence • Anonymous

... hall was such a collection of furniture that there was but a few clear yards' space. A sideboard, several chairs, a music-stool, and two fenders had evidently been piled up to barricade the door. A frightened maid held the garden squirt, a pail of water by her side, and in the background stood Miss Aleyn, poker in hand, with a grim expression that boded ill for any intruder. Mrs. Leslie regarded ...

— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... made of Laura Fairlie, at an after period, in the place and attitude in which I first saw her, lies on my desk while I write. I look at it, and there dawns upon me brightly, from the dark greenish-brown background of the summer-house, a light, youthful figure, clothed in a simple muslin dress, the pattern of it formed by broad alternate stripes of delicate blue and white. A scarf of the same material sits crisply and closely ...

— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

... story of which Mary Magna was the centre, with T-S and myself for background. The reporter had hunted out the Mexican family with which Carpenter had spent the night, and he drew a touching picture of Carpenter praying over Mary in this humble home, and converting her to a better life. Would the "million dollar vamp," as the "Examiner" called her, now take to playing ...

— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair

... interests of a man of affairs. Each detail of the great room, if there had been an observer of its quiet perfection, had an importance of its own, yet each exquisite belonging fell swiftly into the dimness of the background of a picture when one saw the man who was the master. Among a thousand picked men, his face and figure would have been distinguished. People did not call him old, for the alertness and force of youth radiated from him, and his gray eyes were clear and his color ...

— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... extraordinary and none more widespread than the notion that there are two ways of looking at a war, one the military aspect and the other the governmental or civil aspect, that both are legitimate, and that, as the Government is above the general, in case of a clash the military view must fall into the background. This notion is quite wrong, and the more important the position of the men who have got it into their heads, the more harm it does. There is only one right way of looking at war, and that consists in seeing it as it is. If two men both take a true view of an operation of war, ...

— Lessons of the War • Spenser Wilkinson

... Donnegan became a smaller danger. Besides, as Milligan said, it was undoubtedly luck. And when he called for volunteers, three or four stepped up at once. The others made a general milling, as though each were trying to get forward and each were prevented by the crowd in front. But in the background big Jack Landis was seriously trying to get to the firing line. He was encumbered with the clinging weight ...

— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand

... added inland view. The sight of Lobster Cove brought to mind the many good picnics once enjoyed there. Soon Gale's Point was behind them, and they were driving past the Masconomo, the hotel which gives such a pretty background of human interest to Old Neck beach. This Indian name suggested Indian history to Mrs. Gordon. She was so surprised that her children were ignorant of Masconomo, the ...

— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various

... a ranch and were made welcome by one Timothy Hobbs, owner of the place. The dwelling and the stables were a collection of low brown houses, made of logs and daubed with mud. Fields of shocked grain made a very prosperous-looking background. A belled cow led a bunch of sleek cattle home over the sand dunes. A well in the yard afforded plenty of clear, cold water, which was raised by a windmill. The cattle came and drank at the trough, the bell making a pleasant sound in ...

— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart

... tones, voices thrilling with a note of hope such as they had not known for weeks. He saw the hard muscles of sunburnt arms standing out rope-like with the terrific labor they were engaged in. And in the background of it all he saw the grim spectacle of the blackened hill, frowning down like some evil monster, watching the vermin life eating into a sore ...

— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum

... grateful shade. It is at this point the artist comes to interpret the poet's dream. Amid the varied and luxurious foliage of Eden, in the vague light of the early dawn, Eve is presented, coy and graceful, gazing on her sleeping Lord, while in the background is faintly outlined the mystic form of Him in whose image ...

— The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, Complete • Anonymous

... sweet and fresh in the morning sunlight. She wore a flowered, French print blouse—little sprigs of roses on a white background—and a lace frill round her pretty, white, smooth throat. The buckle of her brown leather belt just gleamed over the edge of the table-cloth. In front of her were a litter of correspondence, a white cup of coffee, and two empty eggshells—for she was a perfectly ...

— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle

... Evidently he had not taken this side of the matter into consideration, and he put up one of his hands to his eyes. Fortunately the bell for the opening of the session broke in upon the conversation, and not only diverted him, but relegated the whole subject to the background for the time being. Nevertheless, the thought of it continued in Mary's mind as she sat listening to the exercises. How could an attractive girl like this take a fancy to such a trickster? It seemed totally incompatible with the teacher's other qualities, for in her attitude toward her pupils ...

— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant

... sweep of purple sage, richer than upon the higher levels. The valley was miles long, several wide, and inclosed by unscalable walls. But it was the background of this valley that so forcibly struck him. Across the sage-flat rose a strange up-flinging of yellow rocks. He could not tell which were close and which were distant. Scrawled mounds of stone, like mountain waves, seemed to roll up to steep ...

— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey

... down). He had so grown into our lives. I can't think of him as having gone out of them. He, with his sufferings and his loneliness, was like a cloudy background to our sunlit happiness. Well, perhaps it is best so. For him, anyway. (Standing still.) And perhaps for us too, Nora. We two are thrown quite upon each other now. (Puts his arms round her.) My darling wife, ...

— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen

... evils receded into the background for the time being, recalled only by the fortifications of New York Island, and the batteries of Stony Point and its sister garrison of Verplanck's Point on the eastern shore. Sometimes the journey led them through fine woods; at others, through well cultivated lands and ...

— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison

... of the sort. Possibly they did not apply the description to themselves. Possibly they considered the appeal a mere formula. Somewhere in the background a gong sounded, and Patsy, from the right, stepped briskly forward to meet Tommy, approaching ...

— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse

... than all, thundering forth a command. It was to desist from their threatening strife and extinguish the flames that still flared up over the waggons. He who spoke was the one with the red cross upon his breast, its bars of bright vermilion gleaming like fire against the sombre background of his skin. He was the chief of the Tenawa Comanches—the Horned Lizard—as ...

— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... lasted the better part of an hour, for Jerry was the recipient of a host of gifts, and insisted upon displaying them, while Hal refused to pose gracefully in the background and absorbed as much of Marjorie's attention as she would give him, secretly wondering if she would be pleased with the box of American Beauty roses he had ordered the florist to deliver at the Deans' residence ...

— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester

... received me in a dainty Louis Quinze room done in rose and French gray, and filled incongruously with delicate chairs and heavy brocaded curtains, a background which instantly you felt precisely suited his Excellency. In the English newspapers, which, by the way, are not barred from Berlin cafes, I had read of his Excellency as the "Iron Fist," or the "Heavy Heel," and I rather expected to see a heavy, ...

— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... real quiet comfort, there was not a club in London equal to it; but his hearers were not aware that in past days he had been blackballed at the T—— and the G——. These were accidents which Lopez had a gift of keeping in the background. His present companion, Everett Wharton, had, as well as himself, been an original member;—and Wharton had been one of those who had hoped to find in the club a stepping-stone to high political life, and who now talked often with idle energy of ...

— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... seen a finer woman, nor one whose features displayed a more heart-rending emotion. This called for respect, and I, for one, endeavored to show it by withdrawing into the background. But I soon stepped forward again. My desire to understand her was too great, the impression made by her bearing too complex, to be passed over lightly by one on the lookout for a key to the remarkable tragedy ...

— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green

... tired. Socrates lay on his back, silent, and looked up at the stars, Euripides chewed a wood-splinter and was morose; Phidias kneaded balls of bread, which in his hand took the shapes of animals; Protagoras whispered to Plato, who, with becoming youthful modesty, kept in the background. ...

— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg

... pardon for holding the reader so long by the button, while Sir Charles Lyell and his book have been kept in the background. These thoughts have been upon our mind for many months, and we have felt impelled to give utterance ...

— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... perfect and harmonious, blended as all the tints were by the all-pervading light of the clear mountain air in the thin, vapoury blue shadows of the old tower. And the rough grey stone was a harmonious background for her beauty and its rugged surface showed more completely the exquisite outlines of her face and figure. Greif saw her beside him, and ...

— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... no doubt," said the mother, quietly. "Other troubles come and go, but there is always Potter's bill in the background. And every little while it crops up ...

— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various

... can account for them only by the supposition of some subtile agency whereby the human will operates upon inert matter. Clairvoyance is a sufficient explanation of the utterances of the Mediums,—at least of those which I have heard; but there is, as I have said before, something in the background,—which I feel too indistinctly to describe, yet which I know to be Evil. I do not wonder at, though I lament, the prevalence of the belief in Spiritualism. In a few individual cases it may have been productive of good, but its general tendency is evil. There ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various

... aimless, account of the wanderings of the MS. of Almayer's Folly, some queer entertaining scraps of the author's family history, a description of the encounters with the original Almayer, and those vignettes of Marseilles which obviously were used as the background of The Arrow of Gold. This record is one of those quiet friendly books that flatter the devotee by a sense of peculiar intimacy with his hero. It is also engagingly characteristic. Mr. CONRAD here unravels the fine threads of his personal history and philosophy with the same ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various

... the Sargento Mayor, were quite as gaily dressed in scarlet coats, with crimson damask waistcoats trimmed with silver lace,*4* red breeches, and black hats adorned with heavy lace. In the bright Paraguayan sunshine, with the primeval forest for a background, or in some mission in the midst of a vast plain beside the Parana, they must have looked as gorgeous as a flight of parrots from the neighbouring woods, and have made a Turneresque effect, ambling along, a blaze ...

— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham

... that they earned their hire. He took it that he was one against the whole ship's company, but the odds did not daunt him. On the contrary, something of his old fighting spirit, which had been of late hustled into the background by snug commercial prosperity, came back to him. And besides, he had always at his call that exquisite pride of race which has so many times given victory to the Anglo-Saxon over the Latin, when all reasonable balances should have made it go ...

— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne

... (Vol. vii., pp. 182. 241.).—At one extremity, the picturesque range of hills which forms the noble background of Dunster Castle, co. Somerset, is terminated by a striking conical eminence, well-wooded, and surmounted by an embattled tower, erected as an object from the castle windows. This eminence bears the name of The Coniger, and is now a pheasant preserve. Mr. Hamper, in an excellent notice of Dunster ...

— Notes and Queries, Number 180, April 9, 1853 • Various

... he had an artist-eye, and could not but note the beauty of the scene before him, a scene he did not need to reproduce on canvas to remember ever after;—the mountains in the background, the narrow path sloping down from the near hill to where, on the gray and moss-covered rock, Cyn sat, her dark eyes mellow with the summer sunshine, and the cherry ribbons of her hat giving the requisite touch of color to make ...

— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer

... this prospect, as evidenced by Three Pretty Men (METHUEN), fills me with some just apprehension. Mr. GILBERT CANNAN has set out to tell how a Scotch family, three brothers, a mother, and some sisters in the background, determines to make its fortune in a South Lancashire city (very recognisable under the name of Thrigsby), and how eventually all but one of them succeed. It is a long book and a close; and the dialogue (which of its kind is good dialogue, crisp and illuminating), ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 16, 1916 • Various

... of Jane Austen will enjoy Waitstill Baxter.... The solution the reader must find out for himself. It is a triumph of ingenuity. The characters are happy in their background of Puritan village life. The drudgery, the flowers, the strictness in morals and the narrowness of outlook all combine to form a harmonious picture."—The ...

— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... brush carefully again, and as soon as the paint was dry went carefully over the letter part with gum, so delicately that the red colour was not disturbed nor the background smeared. ...

— The King's Sons • George Manville Fenn

... sought to go, while right and left, and within a foot of me, were two more burly figures. They were all in motion now, and as the lantern was borne closer it was thrown open, and, in what one of my neighbours would have called an augenblick, I saw in the background on one side the tilt of a wagon, and on the other ...

— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn

... had been different. The pictures were mostly superimposed on it; it was their background. Himself standing on the mountain looking down at it, and his father pointing to it; the tutor who was afraid of horses, sitting at a big table in a great wood-ceiled and wood-paneled room; a long gallery or porch along one side ...

— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... Forsyte being content with less than four per cent. for his money; and this isolation had slowly and surely undermined a spirit perhaps better than commonly endowed with caution. He had become almost a myth—a kind of incarnation of security haunting the background of the Forsyte universe. He had never committed the imprudence of marrying, or encumbering himself in ...

— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... Macys lasted the better part of an hour, for Jerry was the recipient of a host of gifts, and insisted upon displaying them, while Hal refused to pose gracefully in the background and absorbed as much of Marjorie's attention as she would give him, secretly wondering if she would be pleased with the box of American Beauty roses he had ordered the florist to deliver at the Deans' residence at noon ...

— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester

... her own colors. She grinds them with a pestle in the fashion of the old masters, and out of the most strange pigments she produces often only soft neutral tints for background and shadow, kneading a vast deal of bright colors away among the grays and browns; but now and then she takes a palette loaded with strong paint, and a great brush, and splashes a startling full length portrait upon ...

— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford

... island and Curraunmor, or the spies would land on Curraunbeg. The day was clear and bright. Priscilla's eyes were good. She saw on the eastern shore of Curraunbeg a white patch, distinguishable against the green background of the field. It could be nothing else but the tents of the spies' encampment. Flanagan's old boat slipped round the corner of the island and disappeared. Priscilla was satisfied. She knew where the spies ...

— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham

... founder of modern Sweden, was marked by three parallel conflicts of equal intensity and interest: between Swedish and Danish nationalism; between Catholicism and Protestantism; and, finally, between feudalism and a monarchism based more or less on the consent of the governed. Its background was the long struggle for independent national existence in which the country had become involved by its voluntary federation with Denmark and Norway about the end of the fourteenth century. That Struggle—made ...

— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg

... very like what tapestries were so frequently used for in the lavish mural decoration of the time. Every house hung out its best embroideries and tapestries and gaily coloured cloths; and the way in which these windows break into the background of each design represents the very probable result of draping a long piece of tapestry round the window of a house. The Chateau of Blois is known to have contained just such "bergeries" in the rooms of Anne ...

— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook

... great gray tower and granary, once a castle, lifted itself in strong light and shade against the peerless blue sky, while rolling hills beyond, covered with the pale green foliage of rounded olives, formed the characteristic background. Sometimes a contadino, mounted on the crupper of his donkey, would pause in the sun to chat awhile with the women. The children, meanwhile, sprawled and played upon the grass, and the song and chat at the fountain would not unfrequently be interrupted by a shrill scream ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... the streets included representatives of all the Asiatic races, the native Babylonians being recognisable by their graceful dress, consisting of a linen tunic falling to the feet, a fringed shawl, round cap, and heavy staff terminating in a knob. From this ever-changing background stood out many novel features calculated to stimulate Greek curiosity, such as the sick persons exposed at street-corners in order that they might beg the passers-by to prescribe for them, the prostitution of her votaries within the courts of the goddess Mylitta, and the disposal of marriageable ...

— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... especially when he acts as the agent of the prime movers and supporters of the enterprise. One who excites a quarrel originates it; to promote a quarrel is strictly to foment and urge it on, the one who promotes keeping himself in the background. Compare ABET; QUICKEN. ...

— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... picture, though framed in such rude setting, but almost as startling, at first, as the apparition of the fair witch in the forest to Christabelle. Slightly in the background stood a mature dame—the mother, evidently. No need to ask what their crime had been; aid and abetment of the South suggested itself before you detected the ensign of her faith that the demoiselle still wore undauntedly—a pearl solitaire, fashioned as a single star. ...

— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... "I kept in the background, watching the scene. There was something about this child that moved me strangely. True, I tried to pooh-pooh away the sentiment, and said to myself: 'Why bother your head about her? She is one of the "refuse;" she will go down into the dark ditch with the rest, ...

— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly

... through the dense alleys of vegetation, and finally came to an opening which showed them a sandy plain, and across it the strong white stone walls of the fort, facing the wide river, and behind it the blue background of Lake Nicaragua. ...

— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr

... of the seventeenth century, those that have lost least of their interest through the lapse of years are narratives of struggles with the Indians. The image of the "bloody savage" has always hovered in the background of the American imagination. Our boys and girls have "played Indian" from the beginning, and the actual Indian is still found, as for three hundred years past, upon the frontier fringe of our civilization. Novelists like Cooper, ...

— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry

... a series of small engravings of the eleven Apostles (a blank space being left in a conspicuous manner for Judas), which represent each one with his proper emblem, and in the background of each picture a very small illustration of the manner of his death; for instance, St. Peter on a cross, upside down; St. Thomas being killed by the spears of savages; St. Simon being sawn asunder. Near the beginning ...

— Little Gidding and its inmates in the Time of King Charles I. - with an account of the Harmonies • J. E. Acland

... Your Majesty. Especially in handling disturbances. I have complete confidence in him. He's also investigating the background of the affair. I'll give Your Majesty what he's learned, to date. It seems that the head of the physics department, a Professor Nelse Dandrik, had been conducting an experiment, assisted by a Professor Klenn Faress, to establish more accurately ...

— Ministry of Disturbance • Henry Beam Piper

... to come from the Tube itself, and it was a warm, damp smell that could only be imagined as coming from a jungle in the tropics. There were the rich odors of feverishly growing things; the heavy fragrance of unknown tropic blossoms, and a background of some curious blend of scents and smells which was alien and luring, and exotic. The whole was like the smell of another planet of the jungles of a strange world which men had never trod. And then, definitely coming out of the Tube, there was a ...

— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... gold-mines in the colony. His life then, by his own admission, had been disreputable. Who does not know that vices which may be treated with tenderness, almost with complaisance, while they are kept in the background, became monstrous, prodigious, awe-inspiring when they are made public? A gentleman shall casually let slip some profane word, and even some friendly parson standing by will think but little of it; but let the profane word, through some unfortunate accident, find its way into the newspapers, and ...

— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope

... dollars from a convenient Mr. Barton with which to establish myself in a small retail business—preferably a candy store with an ice-cream parlor in the rear. Then I took her to wife, not forgetting to reward Mr. Barton handsomely in the day of his ruin. Dimly, in the background of this hasty dramatization, the distrustful Mr. Hawley, who refused to share the loan with Mr. Barton, figured as a rival for my love's hand; and lived to hear her say that she ...

— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... wrong. They looked so peaceful and so quiet, did those French towns, on that summer's morning! Peaceful, aye, and languorous, after all the bustle and haste we had been seeing. The houses were set in pretty encasements of bright foliage and they looked as though they had been painted against the background of ...

— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder

... comprised six peers, eleven Members of Parliament, and some of the leading public men in Munster was refused a hearing by Mr Birrell. Though the act was the act of Mr Birrell, all the world knew that the sinister figure in the background was Mr Dillon. And they have both paid the penalty since then of their follies, not to say crimes—though a nation still suffers ...

— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... the background beckoning, and all my dream vanished away. Yet to my mind came the thought that it was to the lady who gave the necklace that Death stood near, rather than to him to whom it was given. For surely death was written in ...

— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard

... stream of light on the hand of the conspirator. No. 52. is "The Martyrdom of King Charles I." No. 53. "The Restoration of Monarchy and King Charles II." A number of cavaliers on horseback, with their conical hats and long tresses, occupy the foreground of this picture; the army appears in the background. This is the last, though ...

— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various

... themselves that it was not the Bramble, a relief schooner that was supposed to cruise along the coast. But it assuredly had been the Bramble, and her men had not seen the signals against the gloomy background of scrub and hills. They knew nothing of Kennedy's death, nor of Carron's plight. The agony of this disappointment must have been more bitter than death. Mitchell was the next to die, and the survivors were too weak to give him burial. Then Niblett and Wall departed, but ...

— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc

... indeed, more tuneful in the upper notes. But even while he sings the song of the Sirens, he still hearkens to the barking of the Sphinx. Jarring Byronic notes interrupt the flow of his Horatian humours. His mirth has something of the tragedy of the world for its perpetual background; and he feasts like Don Giovanni to a double orchestra, one lightly sounding for the dance, one pealing Beethoven in the distance. He is not truly reconciled either with life or with himself; and this instant war in his members sometimes divides the man's attention. ...

— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... very comfortable feeling, very much more so than the emotions of some, who, going into others States, are made to blush at the taunts thrown out about our prison management, that "such things will do for you N. H. folks, for those so far on the background." ...

— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby

... be true that, viewed against the background of conditions a century, a generation, a decade ago, government in my own country has advanced, in the intelligent participation of the great mass of the people, in the fidelity and honesty with which they are ...

— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root

... of God as the fundamental datum, the basis of the modern restatement of religious belief. How will this conception help us to {16} such an end? The answer to that question may be given in the words of Dr. Horton, who says, "The intellectual background of our time is Agnosticism, and the reply which faith makes to Agnosticism is couched in terms of the immanence of God." [1] Dr. Horton's meaning will grow clearer to us if we once more glance at our imaginary diagram, letting the smaller figure a, the sphere of immanence, ...

— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... (etched about 1650), which is often called the finest piece of etched work that has ever been produced. It is a combination of pure etching and dry-point, and in the second state, there is an India-ink wash in the background. There are, I think, nine copies of the first state extant; the last one sold at public auction (Christie's, 1893) brought over $8,500. While the Christ here is not so satisfying as the one in "Christ Preaching" ...

— Rembrandt and His Etchings • Louis Arthur Holman

... said, it was undoubtedly luck. And when he called for volunteers, three or four stepped up at once. The others made a general milling, as though each were trying to get forward and each were prevented by the crowd in front. But in the background big Jack Landis was seriously trying to get to the firing line. He was encumbered with the clinging weight ...

— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand

... all our efforts? This something is sin; and the space which sin fills in Hebraism, as compared with Hellenism, is indeed prodigious. This obstacle to perfection fills the whole scene, and perfection appears remote and rising away from earth, in the background. Under the name of sin, the difficulties of knowing oneself and conquering oneself which impede man's passage to perfection, become, for Hebraism, a positive, active entity hostile to man, a mysterious power which I heard Dr. Pusey the other day, ...

— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold

... shut, now opened them, intending gently to rebuke his auditors for their unseasonable expression of delight. He immediately perceived, however, that the fault was to be attributed to neither of the three young men; and, following the direction of their eyes, he saw near the door, in the dim background of the apartment, a figure in a cloak. The hat was flapped forward, the cloak muffled round the lower part of the face; and only the ...

— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... full and the boxes also. The latter were ornamented with mirrors, and on that occasion were all illuminated for some reason or other. It was a magnificent scene, but all this glitter and light put the stage into the background. ...

— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... laid sumptuously, and all enjoyed it the more because of the surroundings, where trees on one side bent over a clear trout-stream, and elsewhere old-fashioned gardens splashed colors over the green background.) ...

— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various

... heathenism though not abolished seems already wonderfully remote. But notwithstanding all this, we cannot treat the subject of Anglo-Saxon literature in any satisfactory manner without some consideration of the heathen period. For, on the one hand, history requires it as a background, and the only appropriate background to our story of the subsequent culture; and, on the other hand, we shall find, by putting the scattered fragments together, that such an impression may be gained as is at least ...

— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle

... Dorchester runs through the heart of that great wild tract that under the general name of Egdon Heath forms a picturesque and often gloomy background to many of Mr. Hardy's romances. These heath-lands are a marked characteristic of the scenery of this part of the county. Repellent at first, their dark beauty, more often than not, will capture the interest and perhaps awe of the ...

— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes

... set ajar; shop doors were darkened by curious figures from within, and the traffic of the tortuous alleys was interrupted by their progress. They could not have said which delighted them more—the houses in the immediate foreground, or the sharp high gables in the perspectives and the background; but all were like the painted scenes of the stage, and they had a pleasant difficulty in realizing that they were not persons ...

— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... character of the valkyrie Brynhild who avenges upon Sigurd his infidelity to her, yet voluntarily unites herself with him in death, as heathen custom demanded, is no longer intelligible. She recedes into the background, and after Siegfried's death, though she is still living, she plays no further part. The Nibelungenlied found its final form on Upper German, doubtless Austrian, territory. Here alone was it possible that that greatest of all transformations could take place, ...

— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler

... upon end in the ground. It appeared gloomy, grim, inhospitable, with its gates tightly closed, and no sign of life anywhere along its dull walls; yet my heart was thrilled at catching the bright colors of the garrison flag as the western breeze rippled its folds against the blue background ...

— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish

... centre of the glacier, with good result. We travelled on up the more or less rounded ridge which I had selected in the morning, and camped at 6.30 with 12 1/2 stat. miles made good. This has put Mount Hope in the background and shows us more of the upper reaches. If we can keep up the pace, we gain on Shackleton, and I don't see any reason why we shouldn't, except that more pressure is showing up ahead. For once one can say 'sufficient for the day is the good thereof.' ...

— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... stopped pumping air into Panta, and pushed him away from the pump. He was certainly more humble than before his accident, for he crept into the background and said nothing more. ...

— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... chair of inlaid ivory and placed it near the foot of the dais at his right hand. In this Sah-luma seated himself, the pages arranging his golden mantle around him in shining, picturesque folds,—while Theos, withdrawing slightly into the background, stood leaning against a piece of tapestry on which the dead figure of a man was depicted lying prone on the sward with a great wound in his heart, and a bird of prey hovering above him expectant of its grim repast. Kneeling on one knee close to Sah-luma, the harp- bearer put the harp in tune, ...

— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... their theocracy. What they desired of tyrannous and forceful in the exercise of an usurped despotism over souls, they had enjoyed. The Borgia combined both impulses toward the illimitable. To describe him as the Genius of Evil, whose sensualities, as unrestrained as Nero's, were relieved against the background of flame and smoke which Christianity had raised for fleshly sins, is justifiable. His spiritual tyranny, that arrogated Jus, by right of which he claimed the hemisphere revealed by Christopher Columbus, ...

— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... would glimmer like a lantern on the very level of their path. They looked again, and it was a hand's-breadth up, and another was shining beneath it. Hour after hour the broad stream flowed sedately across the deep blue background, worlds and systems drifting majestically overhead, and pouring over the dark horizon. In their vastness and their beauty there was a vague consolation to the prisoners; for their own fate, and their own individuality, seemed trivial ...

— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Dorsenne, those two canvases by Pier delta Francesca, which are at Florence, Duc Federigo d'Urbino and his wife Battista Sforza. Did you not see them in the same room with La Calomnie by Botticelli, with a landscape in the background? It is drawn like this," and he made a gesture with his thumb, "and that is what I am trying to obtain, the necessary curve on which all faces depend. There is ...

— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... seen obliquely, so that one of its sides forms the back of the right foreground, and meeting the left background makes an angle with the stage, ...

— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand

... sea dust; a man past middle-age, silent and (as we thought) surly. Therefore something like a sensation was produced when it was announced that the Captain would sing "Mary." I think I see and hear it now. The saloon filled with people; the windows framing faces of deck hands and firemen, with a background of moving blue; the heavy central figure, the kindly (we saw that now) Scotch face; the worn voice, unused to sustained utterance, gasping for breath in the middle of a line, and sometimes failing to be ready in time ("I lost the run of it," he explained to us in the middle of a temporary ...

— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young

... husbands." This would have been epigrammatic, and at the same time it might have quenched dawning interest in the stranger. Neither the brother nor sister was of the sort who favoured flitting ladies with vague male belongings kept in the background. But suddenly a brilliant idea occurred to Miss Dene, who loved ...

— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... The same background, the same half-light tarnishing them as when I first saw them together. Amy and her lover were seated beside each other, not far ...

— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse

... brush has made to pale in sympathy. Between her body and the altar a young priest is leaning in horrified curiosity. Another, upon one knee, perfectly terrified, with fixed gaze and parted lips, holds before the young girl the basin used to receive the blood of the victims. In the background are visible figures of old grey-bearded priests, aghast at the horrible spectacle. Above them the smoke of the temple, the flames, the perfumes, and the incense of the altar mingle with the cloudy sky, a sky of a night of miracles and hell, wild and rolling, a sky ...

— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton

... might be met at the corner of any street in town or village; the very voice, gesture, and language are almost ludicrously familiar. No heroics, not much use of the pathetic; very slight landscape-painting and background; no psychology; there is no systematic attempt to introduce, under the story's disguise, the serious discussion of ...

— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... comfort himself. An affectionate family man, he consented to constantly recurring separation from his wife and children in order to discharge the peculiar functions which were entrusted to him. For he played in the background—contented, nay, resolute to remain there—by the lawful exercise of influence alone, no small part in the destinies of several of the reigning houses in Europe, and through them, of their kingdoms. Like Carlyle, he suffered during his whole life from ...

— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler

... to me. I meet them still in walks and drives where in fancy I had placed them before. I would not have to go very far to find types of the children introduced, but the lovers, and the majority of the others, began as shadows in the background of imagination, and took form and substance with time. Dr. Marvin, however, is a reality and a most valued friend, who has assisted me greatly in my work. Any one who has the good-fortune to meet Dr. E. A. ...

— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... exhibits just such a room as that which was the scene of our tragedietta. The person in the sequins lay glistening like a landed salmon in a quaint chair of enormous nails and tapestry compact. The secretary leaned against an escritoire with huge hinges of beaten metal. The pugilist's own background presented an elaborate scheme of oak and tiles, with inglenooks green from the joiner, and a china cupboard with leaded panes behind his bullet head. And his bloodshot eyes rolled with rich delight from the decanter and glasses on the octagonal table to another decanter in the quaintest and ...

— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung

... her now, of course: remembered her as one of the shadowy sidling presences in the background of that awful house in Chelsea, one of the dumb appendages of the shrieking unescapable Mrs. Murrett, into whose talons he had fallen in the course of his head-long pursuit of Lady Ulrica Crispin. Oh, the taste of stale follies! How insipid it was, ...

— The Reef • Edith Wharton

... furious volcanoes pouring vast clouds of radiant smoke aloft, and spreading a blinding rainbowed noonday to the furthest confines of that valley. In the distance one could see that fellow on the pillar standing rigid against the background of sky, his seesaw stopped for the first time in twenty years. I knew the boys were at the pump now and ready. So I said ...

— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... had been startled by a sound, a movement. Some one was standing before the window. For a second's space the figure seemed as though it was almost one with the purple-gray clouds that were its background. It was a tall young woman, and her dress was of a thin material of exactly their color—dark-gray and purple at once. The wearer held her head high and haughtily. She had a beautiful, stormy face, and the slender, black brows were drawn together by a frown. Tembarom had never seen a ...

— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... monarchs of Christendom, with a taste for royal pomp that could be gratified only by an enormous display of wealth. He wished the distasteful scenes of his early life to be forgotten by his subjects, and decided to build himself a residence that would form a fitting background for his own magnificence. He would no longer live within the walls of Paris, a capital which had shown ...

— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead

... choice of colors she left me to my own taste. I was pleased with an outline of yellow upon a background of dark blue, or a combination of red and myrtle-green. There was another of red with a bluish-gray that was more conventionally used. When I became a little familiar with designing and the various pleasing combinations of color, a harder lesson was given me. ...

— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa

... on what the going will take you from, not on what it will bring you to. It means a lot to a woman, of course, to get away from a life like this." He summed up in a disparaging glance the background of indigent furniture. "The question is how you'll like ...

— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton

... well say at once that it came from Janee who, awaking suddenly, had perceived against the background of the sky, Hans standing over her, looking like a yellow devil with a long knife in his hand, which she thought was about to be used to ...

— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... the autumn landscape was taken from the background of Titian (Lord Ellesmere's 'Ages of Man') Tennyson struck out the passage. If this was the reason he must have been in an unusually scrupulous mood. ...

— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... of those who last entered, was to cast an inquiring glance at each other. The first arrivals wore long cloaks, in whose drapery they were carefully enveloped; one of them, shorter than the rest, remained pertinaciously in the background. ...

— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... accepted for you,' said Mrs. Forsyth quickly and decidedly, 'for General Forsyth wishes you to go. I am afraid you must keep your likes and dislikes in the background whilst with us about matters like this.' And taking up her work she left us and went towards the house, whilst I felt my cheeks burn, as I realized how displeased she was at ...

— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre

... the colors of their costumes harmonize. You find a negress selling oranges or citrons; an Arab boy with red fez and white turban, carrying purple fruit in a basket of leaves—always the right juxtaposition of colors. The sky furnishes them a superb background of deep blue, and the repose of these solemn Orientals, who sit here like bronze statues, save that they smoke incessantly, inspires you with a curious respect. They are men who believe in fate—what need ...

— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... dandelion, and seeks the time of day by blowing the puffy fringe from its stem, or tests the faith of the fair one, who is dearer to him than ever in this hour of separation, by picking the leaves from the yellow-hearted daisy. Tiny little violets, set in a background of black or dark green moss, adorn the hill-sides, and many flowers unknown to warmer zones come bravely forth to flourish for a few weeks only, and wither in the August winds. Very few of the flowers, so refreshing and ...

— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder

... like streamers would have made you want to vote for him for Governor. Ole was the greatest man who ever came to Siwash. Prexy had always been considered some personage by the outside world, but he was only a bump in the background when Ole ...

— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch

... Historic Background of Fatherhood. Purchase and Capture of Wives. The Patriarchal Family. The Three Chief Sources of Influence. Ancient Military Training of Youth. Ancestor-worship. The Double Standard of Morals. Basic Needs for ...

— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer

... matrimonial. Still the unforeseen was surely the probable in Lady Kitty's case. What sort of man ought she to marry—what sort of man could safely take the risks of marrying her—with that mother in the background? ...

— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... of executions at Manila. As a rule, these pictures are not fine productions of art. They are taken under such conditions of light and background that they are somewhat shadowy. This sinister addition to our gallery seems to be the first time the photographs of executions have been reproduced. The photos were not furtively taken. There is no secrecy about the process, no attempts to hide it from the Spaniards. Executions ...

— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... distance now traversed was inconsiderable; but the ups and downs and circuits had quite wearied us. Gradually the rocks decreased in size, and were more widely spread; a plain slightly depressed in the centre, dotted here and there with thinly growing thickets, was reached. In the background there was a clump of firs and a glittering lake, quite a liquid ...

— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart

... valley ends eastwardly, we perceive a dark background lying up against the mountains. We know it is a pine-forest, but we are at too great a distance to distinguish the trees. Out of this forest the stream appears to issue; and upon its banks, near the border of the woods, we perceive ...

— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid

... the wall of rough stones which headed the steep ascent, and we could wind more at leisure beside the foaming "beck" which runs out of Sty Head Tarn. This desolate mountain lake was soon reached, and the noble dark Scawfell Pikes—the highest mountain in England, (3166 feet)—were its majestic background. But that we had been gradually inured to such scenes, this would indeed have been the most impressive we have beheld. On we rode till deep shady Wastdale opened below us, and we found ourselves at the ...

— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall

... black William and Mary chair against gray and speckly-brown volumes of sermons and Biblical commentaries and Palestine geographies upon long pine shelves, her neat black shoes firm on a rag-rug, herself as correct and low-toned as her background, Mrs. Warren listened without comment till Carol was ...

— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... considerable creeks, and changed its course almost abruptly from west to southwest, giving a grand view of its wide bosom for the distance of more than two miles into Maryland; and the prospect was closed in that direction by a whitish-looking something, like lime or shell piles, standing against the background of pale blue ...

— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... assert that, for real quiet comfort, there was not a club in London equal to it; but his hearers were not aware that in past days he had been blackballed at the T—— and the G——. These were accidents which Lopez had a gift of keeping in the background. His present companion, Everett Wharton, had, as well as himself, been an original member;—and Wharton had been one of those who had hoped to find in the club a stepping-stone to high political life, and who now talked often with idle ...

— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... Emma McChesney, mother, was relegated to the background, while Emma McChesney, secretary of the T.A. Buck Featherloom ...

— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber

... pictures only by a very close scrutiny. Mr. Martin has succeeded perfectly in representing the pillars and candelabras of Pandaemonium. But he has forgotten that Milton's Pandaemonium is merely the background to Satan. In the picture, the Archangel is scarcely visible amidst the endless colonnades of his infernal palace. Milton's Paradise, again, is merely the background to his Adam and Eve. But in Mr. Martin's picture the landscape is everything. Adam, Eve, and Raphael ...

— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... steeple-tops of Frankfurt, especially that steeple-top with the grinning skull of the mutinous malefactor on it, warning to mankind what mutiny leads to; this, then, is what we are to see of Frankfurt; and with such a symphony as our thoughts are playing in the background. Unhappy Son, ...

— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle

... on these details that we desire to dwell, but to use the scenes before us as a background and contrast to magnify certain features in the death, grave, and abiding influence of Jesus ...

— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer

... even in his preoccupation he was struck by its grave beauty. The leafless limes and elms in the park grouped themselves as part of the picturesque details of the Hall they encompassed, and the evergreen slope of firs and larches rose as a background to the gray battlements, covered with dark green ivy, whose rich shadows were brought out by the unwonted sunshine. With a half-repugnant curiosity he had tried to identify the garden entrance and the fateful ...

— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... the spirit, which he lived so intensely, and so vividly transfused in the figures of his Saints, must necessarily have abstracted his mind from his surroundings, to which he therefore gave little attention. In this he was faithful to the Giottesque principle of not enriching the background, except by just what was necessary to render the subject intelligible, and this without pretension, or ...

— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino

... others—along the slight trail they had made across the desert. So far as eye could reach nothing moved, nothing apparently existed. Fronting again to the north he looked upon the same grim barrenness, only that far off, against the lighter background of distant sky, there was visible a faint blur, a bluish haze, which he believed to be the distant sand dunes bordering the Arkansas. The intense dreariness of it all left a feeling of depression. His eyes ...

— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish

... the most wonderfully beautiful sky effects on the march with the sun circling low on the southern horizon. Bright pink clouds hovered overhead on a deep grey-blue background. Gleams of bright sunlit mountains appeared ...

— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... which the whole terrace is supported and inclosed is ornamented with those vertical grooves which are such a common motive in Chaldaean architecture. In front of the pavilion, on the balustrade of the staircase, and in the background near a third flight of steps, four isolated columns may be seen, the two former crowned with oval medallions, the two latter with cones. The meaning of these standards—which are copied from the Balawat ...

— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... clattered down the street, and there was a smart rap on the door. It was flung open, and on the threshold stood Dr Price, booted and spurred, the eager white faces of Snip and Snap in the background, with their tongues lolling out thirstily. Poor Becky clutched her kitten ...

— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton

... Hogarth's men and women belong indeed to a later generation than the generation which Bolingbroke dazzled, and Marlborough deceived, and Arbuthnot satirized, and Steele made merry over. But it is only the men and women who are different; the background remains the same. New actors have taken the parts; the costumes are somewhat altered, but the scenes are scarcely changed. There may be a steeple more or a sign-board less in the streets that Hogarth drew than there were when Addison ...

— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... hardly likely to win much favour. The whole tendency of modern science is to thrust the origination of things further and further into the background; and the chief philosophical objection to Adam being, not his oneness, but the hypothesis of his special creation; the multiplication of that objection tenfold is, whatever it may look, an increase, instead of a diminution, of the difficulties of the case. And, as to the second alternative, ...

— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley

... engineers and schoolteachers, who made up her civilian list, took their last look at San Francisco. We swung past Alcatraz Island and heard the army bugles blowing there. The irregular outline of the city with its sky-scrapers printed itself against a background of dazzling blue, with here and there a tufty cloud. The day was symbolic of the spirit which sent young America across the Pacific—hope, brilliant hope, with just a cloud ...

— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee

... survey of the legal lore at our disposal, one cannot help being struck by peculiarities in the distribution of legal subjects. Matters which seem to us of primary importance and occupy a wide place in our law-books are almost entirely absent in Anglo-Saxon laws or relegated to the background. While it is impossible to give here anything like a complete or exact survey of the field—a task rendered almost impossible by the arbitrary manner in which paragraphs are divided, by the difficulty of making ...

— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various

... of the two schools of criminology. The classic school, which looks upon the crime as a juridical problem, occupies itself with its name, its definition, its juridical analysis, leaves the personality of the criminal in the background and remembers it only so far as exceptional circumstances explicitly stated in the law books refer to it: whether he is a minor, a deaf-mute, whether it is a case of insanity, whether he was drunk at the time the crime was committed. Only in these ...

— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri

... for an artist the group would have made, as they stood examining the misty iron, and talking of the unhappy people so ruthlessly sent into banishment! For background, the quaint, unpainted house, black with age, the roof of the "lean-to" so steeply sloping that the eave-trough was on a line Avith the heads of the group Beyond lay the lovely valley, with the winding quille on its ...

— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase

... the next man she meets who is handsomer and lustier. In Bizet's opera the men are the soldier Don Jos, and the bullfighter, Escamillo; in De Lara's Hars, a singer, and Helion, a gladiator. Both operas end with the arena as a background—the Plaza de Toros in Seville, on the one hand, the Roman Circus, on the other. But here the resemblances end unless we pursue the traces of Bizet's music into De Lara's score, and this I shall not do, out of respect ...

— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... a height of fifteen or twenty feet, formed a green palisade. Around the whole stood the taller forest trees; palmate-leaved Cecropiae slender Assai palms, thirty feet high, with their thin feathery heads crowning the gently-curving, smooth stems; small fan-leaved palms; and as a background to all these airy shapes, lay the voluminous masses of ordinary forest trees, with garlands, festoons, and streamers of leafy climbers hanging from their branches. The pool was nowhere more than five feet deep, one foot of which was not water, ...

— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... were all downstairs, about the fire, there was great rejoicing. They had Marietta in; indeed, she had been hovering continuously in the background, to the apparently frightful jeopardy of the breakfast in preparation, upon which, nevertheless, she had managed to ...

— On Christmas Day in the Morning • Grace S. Richmond

... such teams in this country," said Mr. Morton, smiling. "In Italy they are common enough. In the background you notice a priest with a shovel-hat, sitting sideways on a donkey. Such a sight is much more common there than that of a man on horseback. Indeed, this stubborn animal is found very useful in ascending and descending mountains, being much surer-footed than the horse. ...

— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... swept over as suddenly as it had come. And there again was the clear sky, and the weary giant holding it up, and the pleasant sunshine beaming over his vast height, and illuminating it against the background of the sullen thunder clouds. So far above the shower had been his head, that not a hair of it was ...

— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various

... there could be no sunshine for him to-morrow. Nothing but the shadows of toil; and, in the background, that grim figure of uncertainty which never fails to haunt the ...

— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton

... like hell!" he remarked, quite disregarding the presence of Miss Maitland in the background. "What kind of a fairy story are you trying to put across on me? I suppose you're claiming that Pendleton, the automobile man, is your brother-in-law. Well, he moved out about a month ago. The card hasn't been changed yet, but the firm in there now is a bunch of Kikes that make boys' pants—Lipper, ...

— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... Sand Goby, or Spotted Goby, He is common enough in the pools at low tide, but not easy to find. You can look at him, yet not see him! For he takes the same colour as the rocks and sands of his home. Amid the glinting lights and shadows of his rock-pool, with a background of sand, rock, and weed, this little fish is nearly invisible. Of course it is a dodge, and a useful one, to escape ...

— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith

... seventeenth century. The ace of hearts illustrates the proverb "Look before you leap;" a man in a hat turned up at the sides is about to leap from a high bank into the waters, wherein two others are already swimming: in the background is a fifth man looking over the fence of a cottage. The seven of hearts has engraved at the bottom of it, {463} "Patience on force is a medicine for a mad horse;" and it represents the female keeper of a brothel receiving whip-castigation at a cart's tail, a punishment frequently inflicted of ...

— Notes and Queries, Number 58, December 7, 1850 • Various

... silver thread, that reached back, behind, up the stream to where, in the dim perspective, the dome of Saint Paul's, rising proudly above a circlet of other church spires, stood out in relief against the bright background of the crimson sky glowing with the reflection of the setting sun just sinking in the west,—all making me wonder where the people came from who lived and toiled in the vast city, whose outskirts only I saw before me, seemingly boundless though my ...

— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson

... whites through the study of Latin, Greek, mathematics, and sometimes Hebrew, especially in the case of students for the ministry. The attempt was made to take the negro, fresh from slavery and with no cultural background, through the course generally pursued by whites. Numerous "universities" and "colleges" were founded with this end in view. Hampton Institute with its insistence upon fitting education to the needs of the race was ...

— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson

... in rectangular blocks as in Melbourne, and the white stone used for most of the buildings makes the town look particularly bright and lively, showing off the bustle and traffic to advantage. In the background are the hills, while on one side is the suburb of North Adelaide, on an incline divided from the city by a broad sheet of artificial water, running in the bed of the river Torrens through a half-mile deep belt of 'park-lands,' which encircle the square mile forming the ...

— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny

... which so recently had enclosed a sable waste of canvas, now appeared a visible picture—still dark, indeed, in its hues and shadings, but thrown forward in strong relief.... The whole portrait started so distinctly out of the background, that it had the effect of a person looking down from the wall at the astonished and awe-stricken spectators. The expression of the face, if any words can convey an idea of it, was that of a wretch detected in some hideous guilt, and exposed to the ...

— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... her hair, and smiling as if she had never cried in all her life and never could—even then, with Toby at his elbow and his pipe in his mouth, and Miggs (but that perhaps was not much) falling asleep in the background, he could not quite discard his wonder and uneasiness. So in his dreams—still there was Mr Haredale, haggard and careworn, listening in the solitary house to every sound that stirred, with the taper shining ...

— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... of the window across a dull and apparently uninviting prospect of roofs and chimneys, to where in the background a faint line of silver and a wheeling flock of sea gulls became dimly visible through the branches of the distant trees. The window itself was flung wide open, but the slowly moving air had little of freshness in it. Sparrows twittered around the window-sill, and a little patch of ...

— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... old gray trousers, which have already been washed and ripped by Sibylla, to be used for making carpet rags. These, combined with the gray skirt I heard you say had outlived its day of usefulness, will furnish the background of the rug. The six triangles in the centre of the rug, also lighter stripes at each end of the rug, we will make of that old linen chair-cover and your faded linen skirt, which you said I might use for carpet rags; ...

— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas

... took up the mocking cries, to the evident distress of poor Wun Sing, who stood in the background, his face yellower than common and his hands clasping ...

— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond

... she was not to know. She spied him standing there; and in her leisurely approach a strange conceit of reincarnation possessed her, and she smiled at the contrast thus summoned up. Despite the jingling harnesses of Bellevue Avenue and the background of Mr. Chamberlin's palace wall; despite the straw hat and white trousers and blue double-breasted serge coat in which he was conventionally arrayed, he was the sea fighter still—of all the ages. ...

— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... or even thought of complaining, that they should be made as luxurious as heart could wish before many weeks had elapsed. But when, in the gloom of an autumnal evening, I caught my own face and figure reflected in all the mirrors, which showed only a mysterious background in the dim light of the many candles which failed to illuminate the great proportions of the half-furnished salon, I clung to M. de la Tourelle, and begged to be taken to the rooms he had occupied before his marriage, he seemed angry with me, ...

— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... know 'bout this younger generation. It looks like they're puttin' the old folks in the background. But I think it's the old christian people is holdin' the world ...

— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration

... and cape in the carriage stepped somewhat into the background, and the girl who wore them allowed herself once more to think of her individuality, and to wonder at her position. She sat bolt upright on the edge of the soft, gray seat, and gazed about her as well as she could ...

— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden

... at Cyril Scott, who was standing sheepishly in the background, in a very large overcoat, smoking a large pipe. The young man was uncomfortable, but assumed a ...

— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence

... standing at the door—Maudie, Hec and Duke, that is to say, and mother in the background, and farther back still, half the servants of the household. But Hoodie marched in demurely by Martin's side—nay, more, she had taken hold of Martin's hand. And when Mrs. Caryll came forward hurriedly to meet ...

— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth

... Gianbattista grew pale as he laid aside his pencil and shaded his eyes with his hands. The Signora Pandolfi panted with excitement and trembled visibly as she looked at her husband. His dark figure stood out strongly from the background of the shabby blue wall paper, and the petroleum lamp cast deep shadows in ...

— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... knickers were very strong, and another impression that even Victor would not have stood an earthly chance against such a fellow. And it was just then that he was aware of a little grey idea floating in the background of his mind that Victor was a bit of a prig—also a fraud. It annoyed him that any such notion should occur to him that the glory of his hero was an illusion, and he shook his head to get rid of it. Then his brain sent a "wireless" that Victor might be all ...

— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips

... Columbus, richly attired, upon the tropic sands, while over them floats the blood and gold banner of Spain, as the priest clothed in vestments of his office asks the blessings of Almighty God upon the land which Columbus claims in the name of the House of Castile. In the background we see waving palms and dark-skinned men who gaze with awe upon the white discoverers. In another scene we see the cold wintry waves surge and dash around the frail craft fighting its way across dark tempestuous seas from Plymouth, ...

— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis

... in, his nervousness gone or at least controlled. I passed behind him once, and the odour that smote my olfactory sense told me too plainly that he had fortified himself with a stimulant on his way from the apartment to the laboratory. Of course O'Connor and Dr. Leslie were there, though in the background. ...

— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve

... immediately followed Amiel's birth, some signs of decadence began to be visible in this brilliant Genevese society. The generation which had waited for, prepared, and controlled, the Restoration of 1814, was falling into the background, and the younger generation, with all its respectability, wanted energy, above all, wanted leaders. The revolutionary forces in the state, which had made themselves violently felt during the civil turmoils of the period preceding the assembly of the French States General, and had afterward ...

— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... thousands of foreigners, especially the English, visit this winter paradise. On the high background are Roman ruins and an old castle enclosed by bastioned walls; leading to two squares, one of which is surrounded with porticoes, are streets embellished with theater, public library, baths, and handsome homes that are frescoed ...

— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton

... "hold-up" at the third, "V" (or Sedd-el-Bahr) causes me the keenest anxiety—it would never do if we were forced to re-embark at night as has been suggested—we must stick it until our advance from "X" and "W" opens that sally port from the sea. There is always in the background of my mind dread lest help should reach the enemy before we have done with Sedd-el-Bahr. The enveloping attacks on both enemy flanks have come off brilliantly, but have not cut the enemy's line of retreat, or so threatened it that they have to make haste to get back. At "S" (Eski Hissarlick ...

— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton

... the money should be won by the lesser sin of cardplaying, but still behind the scenes. Then I thought it would have a good stage effect if old Damer could just walk once across the stage in the background. His relations might have come into the house to try and make themselves agreeable to him, and he would appear and they would vanish. ... Damer comes in, and contrary to my intention, he begins to find a tongue of his own. He has made his start in the world, and has more than a word to say. How that ...

— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory

... tenderest feeling. When, in half a year's time, she again came forth into the world, a change was noted; her character seemed to have developed a new energy, she exhibited wider interests, and stepped from the background to become a leader in the little ...

— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... supreme sacrifice of his life for the honor of his enemy,—which would have revealed to the audience his possession of a clean white soul in spite of his bad character,—he had been made out a little fiend who would shoot you on the slightest provocation. The girl had been thrust into the background, and the hero had been made into a coward and a paltry villain; they were all desperadoes upon the screen. Never in his life had Bently Brown been made to suffer such an affront. Never had he dreamed that his work would be made ...

— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower

... me as lovely green islands of volcanic outline. The former especially struck me as being exceedingly picturesque, its hills covered with pleasant- looking habitations with the peaks of the Carbet veiled in the dark clouds brought by the trade winds, for background. I had to review the troops on the Savana, the promenade of Fort Royal, but I confess I took more interest in the costume of the beautiful quadroons, or quarterbred mulatto women, than in the review itself. This costume is worth describing. A brilliant-coloured bandanna, knotted round ...

— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville

... in Russia knows, and will ever remember, what passed between the years 1849 and 1861. In my personal life, too, many changes took place, on which, however, there is no need to enlarge. New interests came into it, new cares.... The Baburin couple first fell into the background, then passed out of my mind altogether. Yet I kept up a correspondence with Musa—at very long intervals, however. Sometimes more than a year passed without any tidings of her or of her husband. I heard that soon after 1855 he received permission to return to Russia; but that he preferred to remain ...

— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... was changed in a moment. Her lictors chased the importunate crowd away, making room for the masters of Rome who desired speech with their mistress. The rough and sombre garments of the slaves showed in the background now, and all round the litter tunics and mantles of fleecy wool gorgeously embroidered in crimson and gold, or stripes of ...

— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... were trees. Of the faces which came out fresh and vivid as though painted in yellow and red, the most prominent was a girl's face. By a trick of the firelight she seemed to have no body. The oval of the face and hair hung beside the fire with a dark vacuum for background. As if dazed by the glare, her green-blue eyes stared at the flames. Every muscle of her face was taut. There was something tragic in her thus staring—her age between ...

— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... the direction from which they came. And Tom saw against the dark woods, for a background, thick flying sparks from the cabin chimney made themselves visible for miles across ...

— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson

... Carpi's! I turned sharp round, as white, I think, as the ghost I expected to see. On the wall opposite the mirror, just a pace or two behind where I had been standing, hung a portrait. And such a portrait!—Bronzino never painted a grander one. Against a background of harsh, dark blue, there stands out the figure of the Duchess (for it is Medea, the real Medea, a thousand times more real, individual, and powerful than in the other portraits), seated stiffly in a high-backed chair, sustained, as ...

— Hauntings • Vernon Lee

... became familiar. It was a perfect mixture of flavors; oilskins, stale tobacco-smoke, brine, burned grease, tar, and, as a background, fish. His ears almost immediately detected water noises running close by, and he could feel the pull of stout oak timber that formed the inner wall of ...

— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams

... fairies scampering over moor and hill and the remembrance of them teases her memory. Katherine is not so faithless as her ways might lead you to believe. Laura without dark eyes would be impossible, and her predestined Petrarch would never deliver his sonnets. Helen may be seen only against a background of Trojan wall. Gertrude must be tall and fair and ready with ballads in the winter twilight. Julia's reserve and discretion commend her to you; but she has a heart of laughter. Anne is to be found in the rose garden with clipping-shears ...

— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson

... through the verdant masses. Great clusters of magnificent orange-tinted orchids gleamed like galaxies of golden stars between the mangrove trunks at frequent intervals; clumps of feathery bamboo swayed gently in the soft warm breeze; the dense background of bush displayed every conceivable tint of foliage, from brilliant gold to deepest purple bronze; and magnificent forest trees towered in stately majesty over all, rearing their superb heads a hundred and fifty feet ...

— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood

... of John's father, dated a generation back, is just the man and little else, phantomly the man. His brown coat struggles out of the obscurity of the background, but it is chiefly background clothing him. His features are distinguishable and delicate: you would suppose him appearing to you under the beams of a common candle, or cottage coalfire—ferruginously opaque. The object of the artist (apart from the triumph ...

— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... a place so replete with money and the enterprise of youth, little difficulty was anticipated, especially when the old bait of 'a name' being all that was wanted, 'an ample subscription,' to defray all expenses figuring in the background, was held out. ...

— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... always been broadminded, not objecting to light skin or immigrant background, he invited Bowie to dinner ...

— Remember the Alamo • R. R. Fehrenbach

... above a window-seat forms the background to his figure; and through its lattice panes are seen the outer gate and yew-trees of a churchyard and the porch of a church, bathed in May sunlight. The front door at right angles to the window-seat, leads to the village green, and a door on ...

— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... upper edge of the fragrant woods was reached. There they tied the horses and climbed on foot to the upland. The grass among the rocks was yellow now, and high gentians seized on the rare moment to flaunt their wondrous blue against that perfect background. A flock of autumn birds rose up and flew on, as the climbers, reaching the Spirit Rock, paused and turned to look out over the golden plains to the east, over the blue hills to the north, and into the purple glow that the waning sunlight left on ...

— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton

... beams. Close to us we saw a ridge of hills, of gentler ascent, but wooded like the first, and pleasantly intermixed with green and brown tints; below, a plain adorned with breadfruit-trees, and a quantity of palms in the background, overshadowing the delightful groves. All seemed still asleep. Dawn was but just breaking, and the country was wrapped in peaceful darkness. Yet we could perceive the houses amid the trees, and the pirogues on the shore. Half a mile from the beach, the waves broke over a reach of rocks level ...

— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... reason which she thrust into the background, seeking to keep it hidden behind the serried ranks of its brothers-in-arms. And yet it insisted in mutinous fashion on pushing to the fore. Seeking to consider the Packards en masse, as a curse rather than as ...

— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory

... seventy-four guns), and the management, as a condition of engaging Mr. Orlando B. Sturge (who was exacting in details), had mounted it, at great expense, with a couple of lifelike guns, R. and L., and for background the overhang of the quarter-deck, with rails and a mizzen-mast of real timber against a painted cloth representing ...

— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... produced a disk of white paper, an inch and a half in diameter, gummed on one side. Raising the mask slightly, he moistened the disk, and applied it to the clock's case, almost at the bottom of the reservoir. Against the green background the mark showed very distinctly. For a moment or two he regarded it critically, then went to the door and turned the key. He stepped briskly up the room, halting at the heavy brown curtains drawn across ...

— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell

... awaiting him was an unusually large man, and bestrode an enormous horse. The two were as if they had been carved from ebony, as they stood silent and absolutely still, outlined sharply against the dazzlingly white background. ...

— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor

... its top, looking down into the basin below. From their feet ran a great semicircle of marble seats, descending tier below tier to a marble pavement, and facing a great ruined wall of pillars and arches which in the past had formed the background for the actors. From the height on which they stood above the city they could see the green country stretching out for miles on every side and swimming in the warm sunlight, the dark groves of myrtle on the hills, the silver ribbon of the inland water, and the dark blue ...

— The Princess Aline • Richard Harding Davis

... hundred and fifty feet thick at its base, was shaped like a negro's head and face, whereon was stamped a most fiendish and terrifying expression. There was no doubt about it; there were the thick lips, the fat cheeks, and the squat nose standing out with startling clearness against the flaming background. There, too, was the round skull, washed into shape perhaps by thousands of years of wind and weather, and, to complete the resemblance, there was a scrubby growth of weeds or lichen upon it, which ...

— She • H. Rider Haggard

... instance, papered with a paper with a dark background and a light pattern on it. Well, you can manoeuvre your eye about so as either to look at the black background—and then it is all black, with only a little accidental white or gilt to relieve it here and there; or you can focus your eye on the white and gold, and then that ...

— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... of these Memoirs is as exciting as any tale of imaginary adventure, with the real horrors of a brutal civil war for background. Byrne is no half-hearted partisan; he hates well, but is not unjust, admitting alike the errors committed by his comrades and the decencies of his ...

— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell

... beautiful and sacred mystery. The tree, the rose and all plant life are equally as mysterious and beautiful in their reproductive life. Does not this alone prove to us, conclusively, that there is a Divinity in the background governing, controlling and influencing our lives? Nature has no secrets, and why should we? None at all. The only care we should experience ...

— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... relation between the two, or in fact of preserving the lighter lines at all, without over-emphasizing the darker portions, will not be very great. Delicate drawings can seldom be reproduced without giving a background tint all over, and this usually destroys the life and snap of the original. This is especially true of drawings upon reddish or yellowish paper, which on this account should be avoided if possible. It should be borne in mind that yellow and red photograph dark; ...

— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Vol. 1, No. 7, - July, 1895 • Various

... outline, of the object and the decorative design with the nut pick so as to make a V-shaped groove in the leather. (5.) Take the paper off and working on the leather directly make the grooves deeper. (6.) With the cup-pointed nail set stamp the background promiscuously. This is done by making an effort to hold the point of the set about 1/4 in. above the surface, at the same time striking light, rapid blows on the top with a hammer ...

— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... had been granted the wardship of her son, and the little party waiting in the hall also numbered Elizabeth and William Cavendish, the Countess's youngest children, and many dependants mustered in the background, ready for the reception. Indeed, the castle and manor-house, with their offices, lodges, and outbuildings, were an absolute little city in themselves. The castle was still kept in perfect repair, for the battle of Bosworth was not quite beyond the memory of living men's ...

— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... two feet during the night, and the stump of the tree to which I had moored my boat was submerged. The river was wide and the banks covered with heavy forests, with clearings here and there, which afforded attractive vistas of prairies in the background. I passed a bold, stratified crag, covered with a little growth of cedars. These adventurous trees, growing out of the crevices of the rock, formed a picturesque covering for its rough surface. A cavern, about thirty feet in width, penetrated a short distance into the rock. This natural curiosity ...

— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop