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More "Inconspicuous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... voice the profound and conquering note which is so potent an ally of the mind in subduing men. I heard Seward's oration at Plymouth in 1855, a worthy effort which may be read in his works, but I do better here to pick up only the straws, not meddling with the heavy-garnered wheat. I recall an inconspicuous figure, of ordinary stature, and a face whose marked feature was the large nose (Emerson called it "corvine"), but that, as some one has said, is the hook which nature makes salient in the case of men whom fortune is to drag forward into leadership. He spoke in the pulpit of ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... of his experiences, which the Ranger was loth to do. What experiences he did tell them were such as chiefly concerned others than himself. According to his version Captain McKay had played a most inconspicuous part in the splendid work of the Texas Rangers. Not once did he refer to the fact that he was the terror of every evil-doer in ...
— The Pony Rider Boys with the Texas Rangers • Frank Gee Patchin
... several star devices often occupying the field; and here again we see the hook, which is a feature of the entire Daghestan province. There is a good lustre in the Derbent rugs, and the coloring is often quiet and inconspicuous in dark blue, red, yellow, and ivory. Sometimes ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt
... Patty exclaimed. "I didn't see her, either. She's the most abnormally inconspicuous person I ever heard of. What did she look ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... what the pushing adventurer and witty dramatist had to say, but all through the country thousands of plain, inconspicuous men, doctors, lawyers, merchants, farmers, even here and there a peasant or a noble, the best representatives of the deep-rooted civilization of France, of her keen intelligence, of her uprightness, of her ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... decided upon. We all piled into the lorry, and Bish took it to an inconspicuous place on the Second Level and let down. Ramon Llewellyn and the others got out. Then we went up to Main City Level. We passed within a few blocks of Hunters' Hall. There was a lot of noise, but ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... personally Caiaphas, Annas and Pilate, and even Herod and Judas Iscariot, we should have found them very like men we meet every day, very like ourselves, with a great deal in them to interest, admire and attract. And behind them we scan a crowd of inconspicuous and unnamed persons whose collective feelings and opinions and consciences were quite as responsible for this occurrence, as were the men whose names are linked with it; and they impress us as surprisingly like the public of our own day. It was by no means the ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... first in one place and then in another; but in each position the picture predominated and asserted itself so markedly, that Stuart gave up the idea of keeping it inconspicuous, and placed it prominently over the fireplace, where it reigned supreme above every other object in the room. It was not only the most conspicuous object there, but the living quality which it possessed in so marked a degree, and which was due to its naturalness ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... even by loud noises, it is easy to imagine what her feelings must be at harvest, when people are under the sad necessity of cutting down the rice with the knife. At so critical a season every precaution must be used to render the necessary surgical operation of reaping as inconspicuous and as painless as possible. For that reason the reaping of the seed-rice is done with knives of a peculiar pattern, such that the blades are hidden in the reapers' hands and do not frighten the rice-spirit till the very last moment, when her head ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... as to painting the tropics without the palms, he might just as well think of painting the desert without the camels. At eight or ten years old the tree flowers, bearing blossoms of the ordinary palm type, degraded likenesses of the lilies and yuccas, greenish and inconspicuous, but visited by insects for the sake of their pollen. The flower, however, is fertilised by the wind, which carries the pollen grains from one bunch of blossoms to another. Then the nuts gradually swell out to ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... Something is dropped into the gear, and it's usually done by the last man you'd expect to do it. The fellows who are tending the machine are too busy watching that part of the crowd they think is dangerous, and then the inconspicuous chap ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... numerous for me to describe in full detail, though they form a delightful subject for individual study in any small suburban garden. I will only give one more illustrative case, just to show the sort of point an amateur should always be on the look-out for. There is an extremely common, though inconspicuous, English weed, the mouse-ear chickweed, found everywhere in flower-beds or grass-plots, however small, and noticeable for its quaint little horn-shaped capsules. These have a very odd sort of twist or cock-up in the middle, just above the part ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... expands and finally torn so that it clings either as an annulus around the stem, or fragments cling around the margin of the cap. Since the annulus is so frail it shrivels as the plant ages and becomes quite inconspicuous or disappears entirely ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... estimation)—Greatest length, eleven feet; height, six feet; head, erect; nostrils, expansive; eyes, expressive and fierce; teeth, serrated and abundant; tail, horizontal, waving, and slightly feline; feet, large and hairy; talons, long, curvated, dangerous; ears, inconspicuous; horns, elongated, diverging, and formidable; colour, plumbeous-ashy, with fiery spots; voice, sonorous, martial, and appalling; habits, gregarious, carnivorous, fierce, and fearless. There," exclaimed Obed, when he had ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... English nature; and they seem to be of a better class. One day when I was sitting in a penny chair in Green Park, the agent of the company came and collected the rent of me. I thought it a hardship, for I had purposely chosen an inconspicuous situation where I should not be found, and it was long past the end of the season, when no company should have had the heart to collect rent for its chairs. But I met my fate without murmuring, and as the young man who sold me a ticket ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... chairs, a small refrigerator and cookstove. The driver, a lean saturnine man who seemed to be forever chewing gum, began to prepare coffee. The other sat down, whistling tunelessly. He was young and powerfully built, but his right arm ended in a prosthetic claw. All of them were dressed in inconspicuous civilian garb. ...
— Security • Poul William Anderson
... thrust the gag back into position with ungentle paw, kicked the unresisting form in the side to show his displeasure, and rose. Hilary's heart pounded; the guard had not seen the inconspicuous disk under the tunic. He was in an agony of expectation. Had his comrades caught his message? Could they rescue him even if they had? Questions that ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... her broom rest. She is thin and inconspicuous. Her jacket hangs from her shoulders as from a valise. Her face is like cardboard, stiff and without expression. She looks at us and hesitates, then grudgingly leads the way into a very dark little place, made of beaten earth and piled with ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... at the School. It was an absolutely inconspicuous house. There were other houses that were slack or wild or both, but the worst of these did something. Shields' never did anything. It never seemed to want to do anything. This may have been due in some degree ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... spectator can add its own emotion. To Hugh it was much a matter of mood. He would go to a gallery of ancient or modern art, and find that there many pictures had no message or voice for him; and then some inconspicuous picture would suddenly appeal to him with a mysterious force—the pathetic glance of childish eyes, or an old face worn by toil and transfigured by some inner light of hopefulness; or a woodland scene, tree-trunks rising amid a copse; or the dark water of ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... many years to hear the truth about the Mormons; here it is—told with sympathy, with affection, by a man who steadfastly defended and fought for the Mormon people when their present leaders were keeping themselves carefully inconspicuous. The Mormon system of religious communism has long been known as one of the most interesting social experiments of modern civilization; here is an intimate study of it, not only in its success but in the failure that has ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... window, put her right hand on the sill, above which my head and shoulders protruded, and began to speak, turning her head in such a way that I saw now her profile, with the inconspicuous but firm lines of her nose, mouth, and chin, and the heavy braids of her lustrous hair about her neck, now her full face beaming upon me; then, however, I forgot all her other, beauty, in contemplation of the incomprehensibly reposeful and unsullied blue of her ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... by any means, say by either increasing the amplitude of vibration of A or increasing its sensitiveness, the response of A is very greatly enhanced, then the positive effect would be predominant and the negative effect would become inconspicuous. When the two constituent responses are of the same order of magnitude, we shall have a positive response followed by a negative after-vibration; the first twitch will belong to the one which responds earlier. If the response of A is very ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose
... partner—they actually traveled together. But I do want to be just. I'm not sure that Daggett was aware of his partner's dishonesty. That isn't what worries me about the lad. It's his utter impossibility. He's as crude as iron-ore. When he's being careful, he may manage to be inconspicuous, but give ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... went on, the mother watching gravely under a bush where she was inconspicuous, and the cubs, full of zest and inexperience, missing the flying tidbits more often than they swallowed them, until they learned at last to locate all game accurately before chasing or alarming it; and that is the rule, learned from hunting grasshoppers, ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... rough riding-boots under our chairs, to avoid marking the contrast with our host's resplendent jack-boots of patent-leather, and buttoning up our coat collars, we endeavoured to make ourselves as inconspicuous as possible in this brilliant assembly. But in spite of our tramp-like garb, we were always highly ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... cannot, by alteration of the structure performing it, be modified in degree or kind, without modifying the functions of the rest—some appreciably and others inappreciably, according to the directness or indirectness of their relations. Of such inter-dependent changes, the normal ones are naturally inconspicuous; but those which are partially or completely abnormal, sufficiently carry home the general truth. Thus, unusual cerebral excitement affects the excretion through the kidneys in quantity or quality or both. Strong emotions of disagreeable kinds check ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... broad or less, irregular, grouped at end of stem, and upheld by long leaf-like bracts. Calyx of 3 unequal sepals; 3 petals, 1 inconspicuous, 2 showy, rounded. Perfect stamens 3; the anther of 1 incurved stamen largest; 3 insignificant and sterile stamens; 1 pistil. Stem: Fleshy, smooth, branched, mucilaginous. Leaves: Lance-shaped, 3 to 5 in. long, sheathing the stem at base; upper leaves in a ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... Balzac's beloved Tours. The principal staircase was outside, because Balzac, in designing the house, found that a staircase seriously interfered with the symmetry of the rooms. Therefore he placed it in an inconspicuous position in a special construction at the back, and owing to the extremely steep slope the visitor entered by the top floor, and made his way down instead of up. There were three stories, the lowest containing the drawing-room and dining-room, ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... miles before the town of Lathrop Wells, Scotty spotted their turnoff. The sign was small and inconspicuous. It simply read: "Scarlet Lake," and an arrow was painted ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... order-pad might have been seen some hours later going as if from the kitchen to the ninth floor of a Washington hotel. And the same waiter, a few minutes later, was escorting a guest from a rear service-door to an inconspicuous car parked nearby. The waiter slipped ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... mightier than all lightnings. The Spirit, which is the 'Spirit of love,' is therefore 'the Spirit of power.' The true type of Christian character, which the gospel has brought into being, looks modest, inconspicuous and humdrum, by the side of the more brilliant and vulgar beauties of the world's ideals. Just as the iridescent hues on a dove's neck, and the quiet blue of its plumage, look modest and Quaker-like beside gaudy parroquets and other bedizened birds, so the Christian type of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... detective. These little animals are the natural food for many of the larger undersea creatures, so one of their greatest talents is hiding. Approaching danger, whether from octopus, fish or man, arouses caution in a small mollusk and it becomes as inconspicuous as it can. This can be pretty inconspicuous, as the novice conchologist ...
— Let's collect rocks & shells • Shell Oil Company
... the stimulus is sufficient to produce a conscious impression, the degree of the feeling may not represent the degree of the stimulus. To take a very inconspicuous case, it is found by Fechner that a given increase of force in the stimulus produces a less amount of difference in the resulting sensations when the original stimulus is a powerful one than when it is a feeble one. It follows from this, that differences in the degree of our sensations ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... to classify the nobility and to ask just what was the difference, for example, between a duke, a count, and a marquis. Unfortunately there was no fixed classification, at least before the thirteenth century. A count, for instance, might be a very inconspicuous person, having a fief no larger than the county of Charlemagne's time, or he might possess a great many of the older counties and rank in power with a duke. In general, however, it may be said that the ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... shaking its head at such reckless notions. But another part pointed out that they couldn't be much worse off financially than they were right now. So what if they arrived in Manon dead-broke instead of practically? Besides, there was the problem of remaining inconspicuous till they got there. On the Dawn City no one whose wardrobe was limited to one Automatic Sales dress was going ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... building and crossed an alley to another of like size. Down toward its middle was the usual wall of canvas with half-a-dozen men about the opening at one corner. A curious whirring noise came from within. He became an inconspicuous unit of the group and gazed in. The lights were on, revealing a long table elaborately set as for a banquet, but the guests who stood about gave him instant uneasiness. They were in the grossest caricatures of evening dress, both men and women, and ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... but before reaching it they turned down a side street, or, to be more accurate, an inconspicuous path under a fence, so that for some time they had to walk along a steep slope above a ditch where they could not keep their footing without holding the fence. At a dark corner in the slanting fence ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... to claim, in punning right of his Christian name, a place, however small and inconspicuous, among the 'wills,' the varied forms of will (i.e. lust, stubbornness, and willingness to accept others' attentions), which are the constituent elements of the lady's being. The plural 'wills' is twice used in identical sense by Barnabe Barnes in ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... of prudent good manners to treat these reputations tenderly, as if they were merited. But the sad realist knows these fellows at a glance, and they know him; as when in Paris the chief of the police enters a ballroom, so many diamonded pretenders shrink and make themselves as inconspicuous as they can, or give him a supplicating look as they pass. "I had received," said a sybil, "I had received at birth the fatal gift of penetration:"—and these Cassandras ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... nearly ten minutes before the boat left, but the hurry for tickets, the rush to check baggage, the shouts of hackmen and expressmen, the rattle and confusion of the coming and departing street-cars that centered at the ferry, made us inconspicuous among the throng as we stepped ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... gowns, or sometimes white. Inconspicuous aprons and no cap. She's not quite a menial, but yet, ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... matters which are not without significance for the physical well-being of a prospective mother. Neat and comfortable clothing will help her to overcome a natural inclination to become a "stay-at-home," and on this account an inconspicuous way of dressing is often more valuable than medicine. So long as they do not attract attention, most prospective mothers go out in the day time, mingle with their acquaintances, and attend public places of amusement. Deference ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... as though in defense of her suspicions she thrust a newspaper under Robin's nose with an expressive "There, read that!" at the same time pointing to an inconspicuous paragraph. ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... saw a sign yesterday at the roadside that I never saw anywhere before. It was not a large sign—indeed rather inconspicuous—consisting of a single word rather crudely painted in black (as by an amateur) upon a white board. It was nailed to a tree where those in swift passing cars could not ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... farmers and labourers on the estate, it would not have mattered much to anybody if he had not been there. Nobody ever connected any romantic thought with him. There was something in his strong build, pale but healthy aquiline face, his inconspicuous brown eyes and hair, which seemed from the beginning to mark him out as the ordinary earthy dweller in an ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... her name: Mrs. Theodore Lacon. It was not a name likely to be duplicated. In all human probability it was she. As far as he could gather from the list, she was traveling alone, without so much as the companionship of a maid. He, too, was alone; but, fortunately, his name was inconspicuous: Mr. C. Walker. It was just the sort of name to be overlooked. She might read the list half a dozen times without really seeing it. If she were to notice it, she might easily not reflect that the initial stood for Chipman. It was conceivable that if she didn't actually see him she might ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... brigadier. "My advice to you is to keep yourself as inconspicuous as possible until the administrator ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... into the lounge archway. Strange, tense scene. I saw Anita at once. Her robed figure lurked in an inconspicuous corner; her eyes were upon me as Moa and I entered, but she did not move. The thirty-odd passengers were huddled in a group. Solemn, white-faced men, frightened women. Some of them were sobbing. One Earth-woman—a young widow—sat holding her little girl, and wailing with ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... through the branches of the hollow tree. The Chinese lanterns are alight. There is dancing in the house; the music sounds now loud, now soft. MISS BEECH is sitting on the rustic seat in a black bunchy evening dress, whose inconspicuous opening is inlaid with white. She slowly ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... money, don't be niggardly—spend what you like and always carry quite a bit with you for emergencies. Live well, although not extravagantly unless the occasion of your work demands it. Not to save money, but to remain as inconspicuous as possible." ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... the librarian until they are ready to go home. This not only allows the children freedom in play but obviates the possibility of loss of books through their being left on benches and swings. The playground is a place of freedom and fun and good fellowship, and the library's rules should be made as inconspicuous as possible. ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... me good-by with affection, you know there was amusement in the little smile with which you watched me go. I, a modest citizen, accustomed to shrink from publicity, was exposed in broad day in a badly fitting uniform, in color inconspicuous, to be sure, but in pattern evidently military and aggressive. What a guy I felt myself, and how every smile or laugh upon the street seemed to mean Me! The way to the railroad station had never seemed ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... racial impoverishment so extreme as is caused by war, that among gregarious animals other than man direct conflict between major groups such as can lead to the suppression of the less powerful is an inconspicuous phenomenon, and that there is very little fighting within species, for species have usually been too busy fighting their external enemies. Mitchell (10) says that war is not an aspect of the natural struggle for existence, among individuals; ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... gravity of her Camisard lover! It is this difference—the weighty, emotional difference—between a desperate passion and a pure love which has ever been so powerful in twisting the destinies of a moiety of the world to misery, who otherwise would have stayed contented, inconspicuous and good. Angele would have been more than human if she had not felt the spell of the ablest intriguer, of the most fascinating diplomatist ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... street, in plain view from my window, has come to dwell a little brown wren of a woman with her five babies. The house, hitherto inconspicuous among its finer neighbors, at the advent of the Mayo family suddenly bloomed into a home. The lawn blossomed with living flowers and the windows framed faces which shamed, in their dimpling loveliness, the ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... Cowperwood's strong hands, a mere hustling messenger, content to take orders from this swiftest of moving brains. For the present Cowperwood was satisfied to do business under the firm name of Peter Laughlin & Co.—as a matter of fact, he preferred it; for he could thus keep himself sufficiently inconspicuous to avoid undue attention, and gradually work out one or two coups by which he hoped to firmly fix himself in the financial future ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... with an inconspicuous sign down in one corner of the window that said only, "KRUMBEIN—watches," and was probably the most famous shop of its kind in the world. Every spaceman landing on Terra left his watch to be checked by the dusty, little old man ...
— Native Son • T. D. Hamm
... natives, and it thus happened that during several years spent on the coasts of New Guinea and in the Moluccas I was never able to obtain a skin. We are therefore quite ignorant of the habits of this bird, and also of its female, though the latter is no doubt as plain and inconspicuous as in all the other ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... structure was more distinctly visible than elsewhere. Here was a maze of taut brown threads stretching in places across a span of six inches, with here and there a tiny knot. These were actually tie-strings of living ants, their legs stretched almost to the breaking-point, their bodies the inconspicuous knots or nodes. Even at rest and at home, the army ants are always prepared, for every quiescent individual in the swarm was standing as erect as possible, with jaws widespread and ready, whether the great curved mahogany scimitars of the soldiers, or the little black daggers of the smaller ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... time incapable of understanding colonial conditions and aspirations, ignorant of the principles and working of representative institutions, and too ready to apply arbitrary methods to the administration of civil affairs. Then they have had men who were suddenly drawn from some inconspicuous position in the parent state, like Sir Francis Bond Head, and allowed by an apathetic or ignorant colonial office to prove their want of discretion, tact, and even common sense at a very critical stage ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... enabled me to look right out upon the square below, but rendered me inconspicuous ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... passed her acquaintance through a less exclusive sieve, Hester might have had the advantage of hearing all these well-worn sentiments, and of realizing the point of view of a large number of her fellow-creatures before she became an inconspicuous ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... governed her own life, should have known povertyand obscurity and indifference. But she gathered that this had been the case, and felt that it formed the miraculous link between them. For through what medium less revealing than that of sharedmisfortune would he ever have perceived so inconspicuous an object as herself? And she recalled now how gently his eyes had rested on her from the first—the gray eyes that might have seemed mocking if they had ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... is truly wonderful how inconspicuous our khaki is amidst rocks or grass. Riding along on Monday last I almost rode slap over some Guardsmen who were halted and lying or sitting in the grass. I only became aware of their presence when about ten yards from them. And they all want ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... blood! The weapon must still have been there. Some weapon with a short and inconspicuous handle. I think they said there were flowers over and around the place ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... felt his own strength, though he never overrated it; but as a result of this self-consciousness he would not brook depreciation, and when, in May, 1868, the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, of which he was a member, had hung some of his pictures in an inconspicuous and detrimental position in its gallery, he resorted to a novel expedient for showing his displeasure. On "varnishing day," prior to the opening of the exhibition to the public, he used a mixture of beer and porter, combined with a dry light red, for the purpose of "varnishing" his paintings, ...
— Thirteen Chapters of American History - represented by the Edward Moran series of Thirteen - Historical Marine Paintings • Theodore Sutro
... Individuality of character also became possible at the same time, and for the same reason. All birds and mammals which take care of their young are teachable, though in very various degrees, and all in like manner show individual peculiarities of disposition, though in most cases these are slight and inconspicuous. In dogs, horses, and apes there is marked teachableness, and there are also marked differences ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... upward from this wealthy but inconspicuous substratum was the compact and dominant group which the Mingotts, Newlands, Chiverses and Mansons so actively represented. Most people imagined them to be the very apex of the pyramid; but they themselves (at least those of Mrs. Archer's ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... leaf-sheaths, the corresponding blades, each sometimes 10 ft. in length, forming a spreading crown. A true stem develops at the flowering period; it grows up through the hollow tube formed by the sheaths, emerges above and bears a large number of inconspicuous tubular flowers closely crowded in the axils of large, often brightly-coloured, protecting bracts. The ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... curious the other morning, I recall, respecting my object in borrowing a large brace and bit. My object, Petrie, was to bore a series of holes in the wainscoating of various rooms at the Gables—in inconspicuous positions, of course..." ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... and thing is rapidly brought about. If the objects are in any way interesting, if they arouse or excite attention, their names are eagerly embraced. On the other hand, if objects are but languidly cared for, or if they are inconspicuous or confused with other things, we are indifferent both to the things themselves and to ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... freemasonry among those who have to do with money. Young men of family are given sinecures in banks and trust companies, and paid many times the salaries their services are worth. The inconspicuous lad who graduates from college the same year as one who comes from a socially prominent family will slave in a downtown office eight hours a day for a thousand dollars a year, while his classmate is bowing in the ladies at the Fifth Avenue Branch—from ten to three o'clock—at a salary ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... that afternoon and all the performers were in cheerful humour. Perhaps that was why the two outsiders, who played a very inconspicuous part in the vast show, were so gently treated. Certainly they had approached the Garden in some secret trepidation. They had had visions of dire jests and grievous humiliations: of finding themselves suddenly astride the bare backs of berserk mules, ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... of bill black," said the book. I had not noticed that. But no matter; the bird was a blue grosbeak, for the sufficient reason that it could not be anything else. A black line between the almost black beak and the dark-blue head would be inconspicuous at the best, and quite naturally would escape a glimpse so hasty as mine had been. And yet, while I reasoned in this way, I foresaw plainly enough that, as time passed, doubt would get the better of assurance, as it always does, and I should ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... found an unexplainable entrance into our rooms—I first inquired if the black cloak lined with grey did not offer a solution to some of my previous difficulties. It was a long cloak, enveloping her completely. When worn with the black side out she would present an inconspicuous appearance, but with the grey side out and the effect of this heightened by a long grey veil hung over her hat, she would look like the grey lady I had first seen. Now, a cloak can be turned in an instant, and if she had chosen to do this in flitting through my door I would naturally ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... the company was the redoubtable Tom himself, who, stretched upon the slippery black leather lounge, hoarse as a frog from much addressing of obdurate electors, was endeavoring to sing "Just Before the Battle, Mother," hitting the tune only in the most inconspicuous places! ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... way up to her suite of rooms she met no one. She was quick to take off her hat and ring for her tea. Elizabeth Twitcher brought it to her, and from her Olivia learned that only Mr. Manley had asked for her. She realized that, after all, thanks to her dead husband, she was but an inconspicuous person in the Castle. No one had been used to consult her in any matter. She was glad of it. At the moment all she desired was freedom of action, freedom to be with Antony; and the fact that the life of the Castle moved smoothly along in the capable hands of Mrs. Carruthers ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... steep rocky slopes, and broad shelf-like flats; many more plants grew here than I had expected, in inconspicuous scattered tufts.* [Besides those before mentioned, there were Fescue-grass (Festuca ovina of Scotland), a strong-scented silky wormwood (Artemisia), and round tufts of Oxytropis chiliophylla, a kind of Astralagus that inhabits eastern and western Tibet; this ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... exposure. Should this disease really fasten itself upon him, his condition would be very critical indeed. That Mr. Barslow, the hero of the occasion, was uninjured. And I am ashamed to say that such student of history will find in an inconspicuous part of the same news-story, as if by reason of its lack of importance, the statement that O. Hegvold, fireman, and J. J. Corcoran, conductor of the wrecked train, escaped with slight injuries. And that Julius Schwartz, the engineer, living at 2714 ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... which the regiment divided itself into two, one half riding to the left and the other to the right, and stringing themselves out, single file, close in under the shadows of the overhanging cliffs, where they quickly became so inconspicuous as to be practically invisible. Then, accompanied by a body of twenty picked men, who spread themselves out in open order in our rear, the king and I advanced toward the buffalo at ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... of a large university might be a matter of indifference to a young instructor, inconspicuous among his many colleagues; but to be transferred to a full professorship in a small college was to come into close, daily contact with the ruling power, a contact from which there was no escape, in which instinctive likes and antipathies might make or mar a career. At this ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... odd, fantastic fragments, of ill-fitting parts—physically, mentally, spiritually. It was as if a soul had seen itself in a crooked mirror and had fashioned a form to match the distorted image. Hugh wouldn't, couldn't force himself to be inconspicuous. He would swagger; he would talk loud; his big, beautiful voice would challenge attention, create an audience. He would have some ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... materials, lines and colours are masculine or feminine. They are so merely by association. The modern costuming of man the world over, if he appear in European dress (we except court regalia), is confined to cloth, linen or cotton, in black, white and inconspicuous colours; a prescribed and simple type of neckwear, footwear, hat, stick, ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... accustomed to torture himself in various ingenious ways, nearly always connected with sex. He would burn his skin deeply with red hot wire in inconspicuous places. These and similar acts were generally followed by manual excitation nearly ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... scales, in ancient birds as in the feet of some modern birds the coat probably consisted of both feathers and scales. But in course of time, owing perhaps to the growth of the scales being arrested, the coat of the birds, instead of consisting throughout of well-developed scales and small inconspicuous feathers, was almost entirely made up of a countless number of downy feathers, well-developed scales only persisting below the ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... punctuated his strange sea-lingo with horrid oaths and appalling blasphemies, he made the responses required by the services of his Church with all the superstitious awe and tender piety of a child. Inconspicuous for his thrift or "forehandedness," it was nevertheless a common circumstance with him to have hundreds of pounds, in pay and prize-money, to his credit at his bankers, the Navy Pay-Office; and though during a voyage he earned ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... being at the bottom of a gently sloping ridge which ran between the position and the German lines, it was covered from all except air observation. The two armored cars, containing guns, were hidden away amongst the shattered ruins of a little hamlet; their armor-plated bodies, already rendered as inconspicuous as possible by erratic daubs of bright colors laid on after the most approved Futurist style, were further hidden by untidy wisps of straw, a few casual beams, and any other of the broken rubbish which ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... heaven, the intense experiences of the war, both in the army and out of it, left no man just as he was before. To "them that were exercised thereby" they brought great promotion in the service of the King. The cases are not few nor inconspicuous of men coming forth from the temptations and the discipline of the military service every way stronger and better Christians than they entered it. The whole church gained higher conceptions of the joy and glory of self-sacrifice, and deeper ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... gravely executed change in the proportions of the tableau. They stood, a drooped and huddled group, cowering beneath the tree, in nude dejection, in the suggestion of a wary crouch, uncertain whether to flee precipitously, or freeze to make themselves as small and inconspicuous as possible. ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... He made himself inconspicuous in the bow. His only conscious thought was how to get a gun. He had no idea of what ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... guests good night and a happy Christmas. After seeing her husband safely abed and asleep, she set about making preparations for a project that she had long had in her mind. Going to her room, she put on the plainest and most inconspicuous hat she could find; she also donned a long cloak and concealed face and hair in a thick veil. Unlocking a box, she got out a cross made of holly, which she concealed under her cloak. Then, after listening to see if the house were quiet, she went downstairs in her stockings, and carrying ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... old and as large as one can handle makes good scions. Dr. Morris, with the use of the plane, has succeeded with astonishingly large scions and even branches. Sometimes buds are absent from these large scions or are very inconspicuous. They may be searched for with ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... the daughter of Charles II. by the Duchess of Cleveland, and was created Earl of Sussex, was compelled through his extravagance to alienate the castle and manor of Herstmonceux. Are there any references to either of these peers, who played a not inconspicuous part in the events of their times, in any of the contemporary memoirs? Any information on any of the above points ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 59, December 14, 1850 • Various
... hunting-shirt quite different from the common army blouse. It was made with a broad yoke at the neck, and belt at the waist, the body in plaits. He was without sash or side arms, or any insignia of rank except inconspicuous shoulder-straps. On this day he was going into Washington, and I rode down with him to the bridge. Bodies of troops of the new levies were encamped at different points near the river. In these there seemed to be always some veterans or ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... tempering the sunshine rather than excluding it. The framework of the arbor, as a general thing, is considered secondary to the effect produced by it when the vines we plant about it are developed. But, unlike the Americanized pergola, the arbor is almost always located in a retired or inconspicuous part of the home-grounds, and is seldom found connected with the dwelling. To get the benefit of the arbor, or the summer-house we evolve from it, we must go to it, while the pergola, as adapted by most of us, brings the attractive features of out-door life to the house, thus ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... my friend?" asked the Night-Violet [Footnote: An inconspicuous flower which in Denmark is very fragrant in the evening, the "night-smelling rocket" (Hesperis triatto).], who stood there giving forth fragrance just ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... there will be the difference of opinion as to the wisdom of placing a building of any kind close to the old tower. And this, even though the hard alternative should be to preserve the foundations with a cement covering merely, and to place some inconspicuous ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... decided that he had elements of the unusual, and was a distinct personality. Though rugged, he was not uncouth, and there was nothing of the nouveau riche about him. He did not wear a ring or scarf-pin, his watch-chain was simple and inconspicuous enough for a school-boy—and he was worth three million pounds, with a palace building in Park Lane and a feudal castle in Wales leased for a period of years. There was nothing greatly striking in his carriage; indeed, he did not make enough of his height and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... hands from the scratchy foliage, and also to render himself inconspicuous, he wore a tight-fitting robe of dark brown muslin, which concealed even his face and arms, though eyeholes allowed him to see where ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... grew tired of imitating comedians with noisy clashing of spades and death-blows, Ulysses and the other active lads would propose the game of "Bandits and Bailiffs." But thieves could not go clad in such rich cloths; their attire ought to be inconspicuous. And so they overturned some mountains of dull-colored stuffs that appeared like mere sacking in whose dull woven designs could be dimly discerned legs, arms, heads, and branching ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... they grow cold also by degrees, their parts must necessarily be left at liberty to be condensed, but because of the hardness of the outward crust, the contraction cannot be admitted that way; but there being many very small, and before inconspicuous, bubbles in the substance of the Glass, upon the subsiding of the parts of the Glass, the agil substance contained in them has liberty of expanding it self a little, and thereby those bubbles grow much bigger, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... was in the street before the Lodge Hall, and their number was steadily increased by men from the surrounding farms. The brethren of the opposite faith, the Catholics—more often called "Dogans" or "Papists"—were wisely inconspicuous. Had it been their day, their friends, assembled from far places, would have given them numbers enough for safety and confidence; but now the boys in green were, for the most part, staying at home ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... rude inconspicuous flints, and the accumulated remains of their feasts in the 'mirnyongs,' or native shell-mounds, along our coasts, which only have significance to the careful observer, we have no other visible ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... in Yolande and Peter had not failed to take with some comfort the measure of his aptitude. He judged it to be of the small order, as indeed the part, which was neither that of the virtuous nor that of the villainous hero, restricted him to two or three inconspicuous effects and three or four changes of dress. He represented an ardent but respectful young lover whom the distracted heroine found time to pity a little and even to rail at; but it was impressed upon his critic that he scarcely represented ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... 1617 to 1692, saw many changes, in which he was himself no inconspicuous actor, and for some part of which his Memoirs add considerably to our knowledge. He belonged to a family of some importance, although its political sympathies alienated it from its own class. His father, Sir Henry Ludlow, was a member of ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... when Mrs. Carr, with a small and inconspicuous basket in her hand, had set out on her Sunday visit to the Old Ladies' Home, and Marthy, attired in an apron with an embroidered bib, had taken the jelly and syllabub upstairs to Miss Jemima, Gabriella sat down in her mother's rocking-chair by the window, and tried desperately to be ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... that such men have in them the germ of a life which has no natural end but absolute completeness. The small seed may grow very slowly in the climate and soil which it finds here, and be only a poor little bit of ragged green, very shabby and inconspicuous by the side of the native flowers of earth flaunting around it, but it has a divine germinant virtue within, and waits but being carried to its own clime and 'planted in the house of the Lord' above, to 'flourish in the courts of our God,' when these others with their glorious beauty ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... pregnancy, and had taken in again after the baby was born. Also she was pale and sad-looking, much startled by the sight of the automobile, and the sudden apparition of elegance. She got rid of her armfuls of groceries and bundles, and seated herself in an inconspicuous place, and sat listening while the argument went on. For a full hour she never uttered a word; only once during the controversy over the "Greek lady", Mrs. Channing turned to her and asked, "Don't you agree with me?" But Corydon ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... represented, and, in addition, some stars that can only be seen with optical aid. The latter have been placed in the maps as guide posts in the telescopic field to assist those who are searching for faint and inconspicuous objects referred to in the text. As the book was not written for those who possess the equipment of an observatory, with telescopes driven by clockwork and provided with graduated circles, right ascensions and declinations are not given. All of ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... me from replying to this, too. Was it possible that Mr. Wharton meant to sue the General? I reflected while he paused. I remembered how inconspicuous he had named me, and hope died. Mr. Wharton did not look at me, but stared into the fire, for he was plainly not a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... flat, frondlike branches make a striking feature of the landscapes throughout all the seasons. In midwinter, when most of the other trees are asleep, this cedar puts forth its flowers in millions,—the pistillate pale green and inconspicuous, but the staminate bright yellow, tingeing all the branches and making the trees as they stand in the snow look like gigantic goldenrods. The branches, outspread in flat plumes and, beautifully fronded, sweep gracefully downward and outward, except those near ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... to have hung fire a trifle during the hurly-burly of the London season. And if further inducement were needed, it was to be found in the fact that Lady Arabella herself constituted the most desirable of chaperons, remaining considerately inconspicuous until the moment when her congratulations ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... the range of their experiments is proved by the extraordinary variety of shades of blue, ranging from a sort of greyish robin's-egg to the darkest navy, in which the army is clothed. The result attained is the conviction that no blue is really inconspicuous, and that some of the harsh new slaty tints are no less striking than the deeper shades they have superseded. But to this scale of experimental blues, other colours must be added: the poppy-red of the Spahis' tunics, and various ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... smooth, emerald grass thrived upon its site, while the chief gardener, Thomas, had been promoted to a new aesthetic cottage of the latest approved colors and style. Even the famous well was no more; for a small and inconspicuous pump had been put in its stead, to save unwary children from instituting a too curious search for the "truth" popularly supposed to lie within its depths. The graperies were gone, and in their stead nourished rose-houses,—visiting ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... interesting in appearance. They wear broad- brimmed hats with low crowns. Their clothes are so extremely plain that buttons, universally deemed indispensable, are taboo and their place is filled by the inconspicuous hook-and-eye, which style has brought upon them ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... office-building that afternoon he was closely scrutinized by an inconspicuous man who, just inside the door by the cigar-stand, had been conversing with Tully. Bean saw Tully, but strode by that gentleman with head erect, chest expanded, and waist drawn in. Tully was cut. And Bean did not, of course, notice the inconspicuous man with ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... the necessary aids to a beginner in bird study who desires to start afield properly equipped. To summarize them, all that is really necessary is a field glass, a notebook for memoranda, inconspicuous clothing, and a desire ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... no longer to be seen in India. Four or five inconspicuous railway carriages or motor-cars now take the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... hidden in the seat of the car. The rifles and helmets, to lend color to the invasion, were dropped in the open road, and five minutes later three gentlemen in inconspicuous Harris tweeds, and with golf clubs protruding from every part of their car, turned into the shore road to Cromer. What they saw brought swift terror to their guilty souls and the car to an abrupt halt. Before them was a regiment of regulars advancing in column of fours, at the "double." ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... picked up the professor's luggage and, headed by Holliday, they started for the latter's house. It was a strange and amusing landing of an expedition the results of which have revolutionized the life of the inhabitants of the entire globe. No such inconspicuous event has ever had so momentous a conclusion. And now when Malcolm Holliday makes his yearly trip home to Quebec, to report to the firm of Holliday Brothers, who own all the nets far east of Anticosti, he spends hours at the Club des Voyageurs, ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... cheese I chose to eat: also a handful of olives. Then he displayed the total of his plunder: hats, with brims neither too broad nor too narrow, the best pattern if one was to have only one hat, worn and battered enough to suit us as being inconspicuous, yet nowhere torn, broken or slit; a tunic and cloak apiece, about the oldest and most patched in my villa-farm storage-loft, such as Ofatulena would hand out to newly bought and untried slaves; three ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... south we see a butte in the form of a fallen cross. It is several miles away, but it presents no inconspicuous figure on the landscape and must be many hundreds of feet high, probably more than 2,000. We note its position on our map and name it "The Butte of ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... make sure that the dark-green aircar parked before it was one belonging to Major Wayne Jackson, the Administration Officer and second in command at Fort Roye—another native son and an old acquaintance. He then turned away, dropped to the woods ten miles south and made a second inconspicuous approach under cover of the trees. There might be casual observers in the area, and while his meeting with Jackson and Celia Adams today revealed nothing in itself, it would be better if no one knew ...
— Watch the Sky • James H. Schmitz
... Duke of Northmoreland had been a Miss Mowbray, and there were still several eminently respectable, inconspicuous Mowbray cousins. Among these cousins was a certain Lady Mowbray, widow of a baron of that ilk, and possessing a daughter some years older and innumerable degrees ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... fold, as if it had been the corner of a frieze cape thrown back. It was dark hair, but not black; his neck was very thin. I don't know how he was dressed—I never noticed such things; but in colour he must have been inconspicuous, since I had been looking at him for a good time without seeing him at all. A sleeveless tunic, I think, which may have been brown, or grey, or silver-white. I don't know. But his knees were bare—that I remember; and his arms were ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... fitted to do the work in hand. So the stay-at-homes loyally crushed down their feeling of envy and united in a hearty send-off for their fellows. Every member of the patrol was at the railroad station Friday morning to bid good-bye to their four comrades who were to play no inconspicuous part in the stirring days to come, and who were to make known to the country at large the name of the Camp Brady ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... intended to make the outing with his unwonted wife an inconspicuous one. Uxoriousness was a weakness that the precepts of the Caribs did not countenance. If any of his friends of the track, the billiard cloth or the square circle had wives they had never complained of the fact in public. There were a number of table d'hote places on the cross streets ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... this pretty slender herb is seldom more than five or six inches high, and its blossoms are so inconspicuous as to be often overlooked. The flowers droop gracefully before expansion. In country places it is often called Mill Mountain, and its infusion is an old remedy for rheumatism. If bruised, and applied externally, it reddens the skin, and will ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... moved in soundless assent,—lips as pallid and bloodless as the wan young face beneath the small inconspicuous hat. ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... There were dark stains of suffering or sleeplessness under the low-lidded eyes, heightening their brilliance and their gentle melancholy. The face was very pale, save for the vivid colour of the full lips and the hectic flush on the rather high but inconspicuous cheek-bones. It was something in those lips that marred the perfection of that countenance; a fault, elusive but undeniable, lurked there to belie the fine sensitiveness of those nostrils, the tenderness of those dark, liquid ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... nothing. The benefits I have in mind are of a subtler and more priceless kind. At Yu-ping my office will be that of the keeper of the doors of the yamen, including that of the prison-house. Thus I shall doubtless be able to render you frequent service of an inconspicuous kind. Do not ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... plentiful as might be desired, it appears (pp. 24-28). This acknowledged "lack of recognized evidence" is indeed the weakest feature in the case, though Mr. Spencer would fain attribute this lack of direct proof to insufficient investigation and to the inconspicuous nature of the inheritance of the modification. But there is an almost endless abundance of conspicuous examples of the effects of use and disuse in the individual. How is it that the subsequent inheritance of these effects has not been more satisfactorily observed and investigated? Horse-breeders ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... because they do not know the portion of the locality, say, for instance, a certain township, in which the minerals occur. And if they do succeed in finding this, it is seldom that the portion in which the mineral occurs, which is generally some small inconspicuous vein or fissure, is found; and even in this it is generally difficult to recognize and isolate the mineral from the extraneous matter holding it. As an instance of this I might cite thus: Dana, in his text book on mineralogy, will mention the locality for a certain species, as Bergen Hill—say ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... the meaning of the device struck us. A hundred yards to the right the ground dropped sharp, leaving an edge; here was the real position and the natural cover. We walked over, and found the usual little hollows and inconspicuous stones arranged. Here was where their riflemen had lain, with a view right up the valley. And the meaning of those conspicuous edifices was now plain. Stuck up on the bare brow, plain to be seen at 2000 yards, they were simply meant to draw our fire. The smokeless Mausers would have told no tales, ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... as anything; a petite, brown-haired, inconspicuous little person. You'd never suspect her of being so daring, but I happen to know of one reckless performance of hers ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... dwelling, but it was used also as a storehouse. At Aurora, Dr. Keil's house accommodates a dozen or twenty of the older unmarried people, who live in common with him. At Amana, the houses of the leaders are so inconspicuous and plain that they are not distinguishable from the rest. A Shaker elder sits at the head of the table of his family or commune, and even the highest elder or bishop of the society has not a room to himself, and is expected to work at some manual occupation ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... sheer drop. It was the same impression, the same carriage, straight, slim, with rigid head and the two hands hanging lightly clasped in front—only now a small sunshade was dangling from them. I saw something fateful in that deliberate pacing towards the inconspicuous door with the words ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... have left him a reasonably good one. But, since only a little could be left, allowing him a good car would have been simply an example of conspicuous waste, and the government had always preferred its waste to be inconspicuous. ...
— The Most Sentimental Man • Evelyn E. Smith
... floor by his side. Hilda's diffidence was extreme. Throughout lunch she had scarcely spoken; but as there had been eight people at the table, and George Cannon had chatted with all of them, her taciturnity had passed inconspicuous. Now she would be obliged to talk. And the sensations which she had experienced on first meeting George Cannon in the dining-room were renewed in ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... can tell you, Molly, she is the most utterly comfortable and contented little soul on the face of this earth. She would not change places with a queen." "But Rose is not plain. Rose is the happy medium. And THEY are the lucky ones—the inconspicuous people—the every-day sort—" ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... was now quite normal. The brow and cheeks were of a flesh color, the nose politely inconspicuous. He had fixed his aunt with the bright-yellow eye, giving her that acute and exaggerated attention that young males are accustomed to render to all females who ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... is a matter of taste on which I can offer no advice, except that a lady who requires to wear her habit until it exhibits signs of old age, would do well to select an inconspicuous tint. I have always found dark blue the most serviceable shade, because it does not fade, even in tropical climates, nor does it, like black, turn green and rusty-looking before it is worn out. Besides, it admits of a new skirt or new coat, as the case may be, without ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... some attention, and it only made his pulses quicken. He also saw that Nan was oblivious to everything, but the mere delight of what she was doing, and he did not think it worth while to remind her that this was not the Steamer, and that if she wished to be inconspicuous, as she had suggested, she would better limit herself strictly to a commonplace gait. Instead he bent toward her, and said in a quick, low undertone, "I'll bet a quarter you've forgotten how ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... questions, and before long had a crowd about him—as if he were some sort of government commissioner, conducting an investigation. It was an all day job, apparently; I hung round, trying to keep myself inconspicuous. ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... to test it. Captain after captain, upon being asked to name a selected man, had to confess ignorance; not so my skipper. He knew them all. "What is that man's name?" asked the Brigadier, indicating an inconspicuous and rather terrified private, just that sort of man whose name one would never know or want to know. (It was something rather like Postlethwaite, I believe). "Two paces forward, Private Johnson," ordered my skipper emphatically, fixing an hypnotic eye on the youth, and adding, to prove ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various
... the ground and began to crawl imperceptibly towards the bushes and the engineer followed in as close an imitation of his leader as possible, and about six feet behind him. The grass was four or five inches high and they looked to be only a couple of inconspicuous and inoffensive logs. Jim did not make the mistake of cranching swiftly through the darkness, for motion was the one thing that would attract the attention of even an unwary eye. So much James had learned from his old-time enemies, the ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... live, moreover, in every country of the globe, and their system of intercommunication is so perfect that even birds and flying things can learn from it. They prove their breeding by their perfect taste in dress, the well-bred ever being inconspicuous; and their simplicity conceals enormous, undecipherable wonder. One daisy out of doors is worth a hundred shelves of text- books in the house. Their mischief, moreover, is not revenge, though some might think it so—but a natural desire to be ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... which does the least, which leaves local matters in the hands of localities, and personal matters in the hands of persons, and which is modestly inconspicuous. Good government establishes, or recognizes, conditions which are stable, reliable, and that may be counted on for more than two years, or four years, at a time. It has continuity, it preserves tradition, and it follows custom and common ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... herself, she darted around the rocky point only to meet a charge of B.B.'s from my gun. She was a beautiful bird with a delicate crown of slender feathers, a yellow and blue face patch and a green neck and back, but her plumes were short and inconspicuous when compared with ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... was far from happy, as from a distance he watched Alexander's apotheosis. Bud knew that he was like a gray and inconspicuous moth enamored of a splendidly winged butterfly. She could never be thrilled by the colorless fidelity of a man who was simple almost to stupidity, even though he lived with no thought above his loyalty. One day almost unconquerable thirst came ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... child's jack-in-the-box. It is so different from most of our plants that it has the effect of the joker in a pack of cards. Push back the flap over Jack's face and you will see a club like a policeman's billy. Along this club the inconspicuous flowers are borne. Later, in the fall, the fruit forms, and inside, instead of rather uninteresting flowers, are bright red berries. ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... spiders, two forms of protective modification: the first, including all cases of protective resemblance to vegetable and inorganic things—that is, all modifications of color or of color and form that tend to make them inconspicuous in their natural relations—I shall call direct protection. The second form, which I shall call indirect protection, includes two classes, the spiders which are specially protected themselves and those which mimic other creatures which ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... which had hitherto played but an inconspicuous part, was now to become the scene of the greatest naval battle of the war. A British army of 11,000 men under Sir George Prevost undertook the invasion of New York by advancing up the western bank of Lake Champlain. ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... We know that in certain plants the leaves will always be opposite each other on the stalk, and that in other plants the leaves will alternate; that certain plants will have conspicuous and others inconspicuous flowers; but how can we know what it is in the cells of the plants that determines these things? We can graft the scion of a sour apple tree upon a sweet, and vice versa, and the fruit of the scion will be true to its kind, but no analysis of the ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... churchyard holds an inconspicuous place two tiers east of the Tiffany enclosure. It is the grave of Samuel Griffin, the inn-keeper's child, who died at the Red Lion Tavern. The gravestone is dated 1792, which is ancient for ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... not see &c. (be blind) 442; lose sight of. Adj. invisible, imperceptible; undiscernible[obs3], indiscernible; unapparent, non-apparent; out of sight, not in sight; a perte de vue[French]; behind the scenes, behind the curtain; viewless, sightless; inconspicuous, unconspicuous[obs3]; unseen &c. (see see &c. 441); covert &c. (latent) 526; eclipsed, under an eclipse. dim &c. (faint) 422; mysterious, dark, obscure, confused; indistinct, indistinguishable; shadowy, indefinite, undefined; ill-defined, ill-marked; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... its struggles, privations, and sorrows. And besides, the future historian of that gigantic conflict may perhaps find here some original contribution to the accumulating material upon which he must draw. He will need the humble narratives of inconspicuous participants as well as the pretentious attempts of the partial historians who have preceded him. The river flows into the sea, but the river itself is supplied by ...
— Reminiscences of a Rebel • Wayland Fuller Dunaway
... stranger was available for the purpose. He asked many questions, and before long had a crowd about him—as if he were some sort of government commissioner, conducting an investigation. It was an all day job, apparently; I hung round, trying to keep myself inconspicuous. ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... quite near this time, everything else was forgotten, and after a few moments' eager suspense we saw our bird. He was little and inconspicuous in shades of brown, with tail stuck pertly up, wren fashion, foraging among the dead leaves and on old logs, entirely unconscious that he was one of the three distinguished singers of the wood; none but the hermit thrush and the veery being ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... over such difficulties as the fact that bright colours in flowers do not attract insects in many cases, but much more inconspicuous flowers if they have a scent (mignonette, for example) do; passing over such a fact as that afforded by the violet, which (as some may not be aware) has two kinds of flower, one scented and of a beautiful colour, the other green and inconspicuous, and it is the latter, not the former ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... Cleveland, and was created Earl of Sussex, was compelled through his extravagance to alienate the castle and manor of Herstmonceux. Are there any references to either of these peers, who played a not inconspicuous part in the events of their times, in any of the contemporary memoirs? Any information on any of the above ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 59, December 14, 1850 • Various
... what was the difference, for example, between a duke, a count, and a marquis. Unfortunately there was no fixed classification, at least before the thirteenth century. A count, for instance, might be a very inconspicuous person, having a fief no larger than the county of Charlemagne's time, or he might possess a great many of the older counties and rank in power with a duke. In general, however, it may be said that the dukes, counts, bishops, and abbots who held directly from the king were of the highest ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... are clothed with green foliage to the topmost crags, wild pear-trees being no inconspicuous feature; charming little valleys wind about between the mountain-spurs, and last night's downpour has imparted a freshness to the whole scene that perhaps it would not be one's good fortune to see every day, even were ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... colours are masculine or feminine. They are so merely by association. The modern costuming of man the world over, if he appear in European dress (we except court regalia), is confined to cloth, linen or cotton, in black, white and inconspicuous colours; a prescribed and simple type of neckwear, footwear, hat, stick, ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... irritant and repellent to the touch; some platter-shaped and cobalt-blue; some as living vases with the opalescent tints of Venetian glass, which, abhorring the hand of man, retreat into the sand until only an inconspicuous fringe of neutral tint is visible. Sea-slugs in almost endless form and variety of hue, and many other strange sea things, were among the inhabitants of the reef—a closely packed arena ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... in. broad or less, irregular, grouped at end of stem, and upheld by long leaf-like bracts. Calyx of 3 unequal sepals; 3 petals, 1 inconspicuous, 2 showy, rounded. Perfect stamens 3; the anther of 1 incurved stamen largest; 3 insignificant and sterile stamens; 1 pistil. Stem: Fleshy, smooth, branched, mucilaginous. Leaves: Lance-shaped, 3 to 5 in. long, sheathing the stem at base; upper leaves in a spathe-like bract folding ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... has also been granted me to know the nature of the most crafty sensuous men. Their hell is deep down at the back, and they want to be inconspicuous. Therefore they appear to hover about there like spectres, which are their fantasies, and they are called genii. Some were sent out from that hell once for me to learn what they are like. They immediately addressed themselves to my neck below the occiput and ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... recent acres of field daisies made it too common, so they changed their minds and proceeded to grow steadily for two months. When they were pinched in on top, they simply expanded sidewise; ordinary and inconspicuous staking failed to restrain them, and they even pulled away at different angles from poles of silver birch with stout rope between, like a festive company of bacchantes eluding the embraces of the police. A heavy wind storm in late September snapped and twisted their ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... a man; we kept passing men as we went along; and sometimes as we looked from a high perch over the interior of one of the great sheds, we would be vaguely conscious of men scattered about the place. But they were very small and gray and inconspicuous dots upon the surface of great things going on—going on, seemingly by themselves, with a sort of mad, mechanical, majestic, ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... thirty he was a handsome, well-groomed, rather bored personage, with sleekly-brushed blond hair and a short mustache. He looked important, and one suspected that he must have been at some pains to keep his waist line so inconspicuous. For the rest, he was as really cultivated and pleasing a pagan as one may find, and so wittily ironical he might have ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... walls for a space of two feet, and this has the effect of apparently enlarging the room, since the added mass of light tint seems to broaden it. There still remain two feet of space between the picture moulding and ceiling-line which may be treated as a ceiling-border in inconspicuous design upon the same cream ground, the design to be in darker, but of the same tint ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... question made for a door which gave upon the rear terrace. Just as he was about to insert the key the door was opened from the outside and Wesley's wooley head was outlined in the moonlight. The spooks darted behind the refreshment table and the three watchers dropped into inconspicuous heaps ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... of Fifth Avenue, were lost with a different life. She saw, however, the open door to another room full of clear light, and her self-possession rapidly returned. Judith—as she had threatened—at once deserted her; and Linda found an inconspicuous corner of a divan. ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... "I do feel so inconspicuous and quiet and lady-like," remarked Billie when some time later they left the motor car in charge of Komatsu and went in to visit Shiba Temple in Shiba Park. These chapels are mostly the tombs of the Shoguns who for many years ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... the great building and crossed an alley to another of like size. Down toward its middle was the usual wall of canvas with half-a-dozen men about the opening at one corner. A curious whirring noise came from within. He became an inconspicuous unit of the group and gazed in. The lights were on, revealing a long table elaborately set as for a banquet, but the guests who stood about gave him instant uneasiness. They were in the grossest caricatures of evening dress, both men and women, and they were not beautiful. ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... carried safely into Alsace on a sudden snowslide. That man now lay among the trees on the crag's edge looking down into the terrific chasm below. He and the girl who crouched in the thicket of alpine roses behind him seemed a part of the light-flecked forest—so inconspicuous were they among dead leaves and trees in their ragged ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... the Dhu Heartach; no pleasant assemblage of shelves, and pools, and creeks, about which a child might play for a whole summer without weariness, like the Bell Rock or the Skerryvore, but one oval nodule of black-trap, sparsely bedabbled with an inconspicuous fucus, and alive in every crevice with a dingy insect between a slater and a bug. No other life was there but that of sea-birds, and of the sea itself, that here ran like a mill-race and growled about the outer reef for ever, and ever and again, in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... against the calm wisdom and quiet restrained humor of these women, with only that blessed Jeff and my inconspicuous self to compare with, Terry did ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... the true force. Light, which is silent, is mightier than all lightnings. The Spirit, which is the 'Spirit of love,' is therefore 'the Spirit of power.' The true type of Christian character, which the gospel has brought into being, looks modest, inconspicuous and humdrum, by the side of the more brilliant and vulgar beauties of the world's ideals. Just as the iridescent hues on a dove's neck, and the quiet blue of its plumage, look modest and Quaker-like beside gaudy parroquets and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... ninety-foot sheer drop. It was the same impression, the same carriage, straight, slim, with rigid head and the two hands hanging lightly clasped in front—only now a small sunshade was dangling from them. I saw something fateful in that deliberate pacing towards the inconspicuous door with the words Hotel Entrance ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... supreme, fearing nothing but feared by all; the same was true in the pantenales. Where the interlocking branches of the trees formed a canopy that shut out the moonlight he moved like a specter in the blackness. In the open country his shadowy form was equally inconspicuous. Quick and terrible were his attacks. Like an avalanche he descended upon his victims, seemingly from nowhere, but with a violence and ferocity that bore down and crushed and rent all at the same time, and with a suddenness that prevented ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... avoiding these places. The meetings of the two were taking place in accordance with what she had read in the love stories of Paris. She was going in search of Julio, fearing to be recognized, tremulous with emotion, selecting her most inconspicuous suit, and covering her face with a close veil—"the veil of adultery," as her friends called it. They had their trysts in the least-frequented squares of the district, frequently changing the places, like timid birds that at the slightest ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... other. Basil Dashwood played a part in Yolande and Peter had not failed to take with some comfort the measure of his aptitude. He judged it to be of the small order, as indeed the part, which was neither that of the virtuous nor that of the villainous hero, restricted him to two or three inconspicuous effects and three or four changes of dress. He represented an ardent but respectful young lover whom the distracted heroine found time to pity a little and even to rail at; but it was impressed upon his ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... were furious with her for letting him talk to her so long at his aunt's garden-party, that he awoke to the exiguity of his surroundings; and then it was with a touch of irritation that he noticed Mr. Carstyle's inconspicuous profile bent above a newspaper in one of the lower windows. Vibart had an idea that Mr. Carstyle, while ostensibly reading the paper, had kept count of the number of times that his daughter had led her companion up and down between ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... into the house in such a way as nearly to poison us. The landlord sent several plumbers down, and one after the other suggested drastic remedies,—a new chimney, a new furnace, etc. Finally the landlord and I investigated for ourselves. At the bottom of the chimney we found an inconspicuous loose brick which allowed air to enter the chimney beneath the entrance of the pipe from the stove. We got ten cents' worth of lime and fastened the brick in firmly. A complete cure, ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... took again with me into the foreign Republic in time for the evening train. But he seemed even more anxious than I to attract no attention, and once in Empire requested that we take the shortest and most inconspicuous route to the police station; and my responsibility ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... ranks, as they sway the men above them; and the education which fails to make the last consult public good rather than private good, will fail to make the first do it. The benefits of political purity are so general and remote, and the profit to each individual is so inconspicuous, that the common citizen, educate him as you like, will habitually occupy himself with his personal affairs, and hold it not worth his while to fight against each abuse as soon as it appears. Not lack of information, but lack of certain moral sentiment, is ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... incompleteness, namely, the fact that such men have in them the germ of a life which has no natural end but absolute completeness. The small seed may grow very slowly in the climate and soil which it finds here, and be only a poor little bit of ragged green, very shabby and inconspicuous by the side of the native flowers of earth flaunting around it, but it has a divine germinant virtue within, and waits but being carried to its own clime and 'planted in the house of the Lord' above, to 'flourish in the courts of our God,' when these others with ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... proved to be as long as I could bring myself to stay, and then I meekly retired to the furthest corner of the field, where I made myself as inconspicuous as possible, and hoped I might be allowed to remain. Kingbird and robins accepted the compromise and returned to their own affairs; but the veeries by turns fed the babies and reviled me from a tree near ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... at one of the more inconspicuous of the little round tables. On a stage, at one side, a girl was singing one of the latest ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... up carefully and used on the parapet for concealment or on the berm to make a square back wall for the dirt of the parapet. If possible this should be done with the parados wall, so as to make it as inconspicuous as ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... both feathers and scales. But in course of time, owing perhaps to the growth of the scales being arrested, the coat of the birds, instead of consisting throughout of well-developed scales and small inconspicuous feathers, was almost entirely made up of a countless number of downy feathers, well-developed scales only persisting below ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... A rarely seen, deciduous climber, bearing rather inconspicuous greenish-yellow flowers, succeeded by attractive, violet-tinted berries. The foliage is neat and pretty, the individual leaves being ovate in shape and slightly undulated or wavy. It is a twining shrub that ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... insignificant compared with that from a cross with a distinct plant, and especially with one of a fresh stock. Should this suspicion be hereafter verified, it would throw light, as we shall see in the next chapter, on the existence of plants bearing small and inconspicuous flowers which are rarely visited by insects, and therefore are ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... one belonging to Major Wayne Jackson, the Administration Officer and second in command at Fort Roye—another native son and an old acquaintance. He then turned away, dropped to the woods ten miles south and made a second inconspicuous approach under cover of the trees. There might be casual observers in the area, and while his meeting with Jackson and Celia Adams today revealed nothing in itself, it would be better if no one ...
— Watch the Sky • James H. Schmitz
... good-by with affection, you know there was amusement in the little smile with which you watched me go. I, a modest citizen, accustomed to shrink from publicity, was exposed in broad day in a badly fitting uniform, in color inconspicuous, to be sure, but in pattern evidently military and aggressive. What a guy I felt myself, and how every smile or laugh upon the street seemed to mean Me! The way to the railroad station had never seemed so long, nor so thronged with curious folk. I ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... not uncommon (Cereocarpus parvifolius, Nutt.) and though its green flowers are inconspicuous, its long, solitary plumes at ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... himself, who, stretched upon the slippery black leather lounge, hoarse as a frog from much addressing of obdurate electors, was endeavoring to sing "Just Before the Battle, Mother," hitting the tune only in the most inconspicuous places! ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... as a part of the universal strangeness that was in her erect bearing, her proud head, her deep eyes that looked so straight into their own—a strangeness that was in that belt and those stockings and those shoes, inconspicuous as they were, to which she saw every eye in time covertly wandering as to tangible symbols of a mystery that was beyond their ken. Old Hon and the step-mother alone talked at first, and the others, even Loretta, ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... is the epic of the exhilaration of the shy man. As such it is of incalculable value in our time, of which the curse is that it does not take joy reverently because it does not take it fearfully. The shabby and inconspicuous governess of Charlotte Bronte, with the small outlook and the small creed, had more commerce with the awful and elemental forces which drive the world than a legion of lawless minor poets. She approached ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... manner, notwithstanding her plain, inconspicuous clothes, commanded attention. Francis Ledsam was a little puzzled. Small things meant much to him in life, and he had been looking forward almost with the zest of a schoolboy to that hour of relaxation at his club. He was impatient of even ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... spectacle is no longer to be seen in India. Four or five inconspicuous railway carriages or motor-cars now take the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... as an interesting example of the value which the painter put upon color only; another composer would have thought it necessary to exalt the future apostle by some peculiar dignity of action or expression. The posture of the figure is indeed grand, but inconspicuous; Tintoret does not depend upon it, and thinks that the figure is quite ennobled enough by being ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... wealthy but inconspicuous substratum was the compact and dominant group which the Mingotts, Newlands, Chiverses and Mansons so actively represented. Most people imagined them to be the very apex of the pyramid; but they themselves (at ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... This interesting, though inconspicuous object, then, was chosen by Bessel to be put to the question with his heliometer, while Struve made a similar and somewhat earlier trial with the bright gem of the Lyre, whose Arabic title of the "Falling Eagle" survives as a time-worn remnant in ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... at the same time incapable of understanding colonial conditions and aspirations, ignorant of the principles and working of representative institutions, and too ready to apply arbitrary methods to the administration of civil affairs. Then they have had men who were suddenly drawn from some inconspicuous position in the parent state, like Sir Francis Bond Head, and allowed by an apathetic or ignorant colonial office to prove their want of discretion, tact, and even common sense at a very critical stage of Canadian affairs. Again there have been governors of the highest rank ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... two of 1898 and 1899, and certainly three more in the autumns of 1900, 1901, 1902. The Islanders liked him but were a little puzzled by him. He was an unassertive, unassuming man, with a genius for being inconspicuous. He has told us that his usual method in a poor man's cabin was to make them forget that he was there, but in Aran on these visits he always tried to add to the fun, and to his personal prestige with conjuring tricks, fiddling, piping, taking photographs, etc. Some of the Islanders were much attached ...
— John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes • John Masefield
... asked the Night-Violet [Footnote: An inconspicuous flower which in Denmark is very fragrant in the evening, the "night-smelling rocket" (Hesperis triatto).], who stood there giving forth fragrance just to ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... had made himself as inconspicuous as possible while in Okar, waiting for the train, and he was certain that none of Dale's ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... nearest I propose to get to it: but under the majestic image of pure wind marching in a movement wholly circular I seem to see, as in a vision, something of your mind. But the grand isolation of your thoughts leads you to express them in such words as are gratifying to yourself, and have an inconspicuous or even an unfortunate effect upon others. If anything were really to be made of your moral campaign against the English nation, it was clearly necessary that somebody, if it were only an Englishman, ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... usually his companion. He wore a blue flannel hunting-shirt quite different from the common army blouse. It was made with a broad yoke at the neck, and belt at the waist, the body in plaits. He was without sash or side arms, or any insignia of rank except inconspicuous shoulder-straps. On this day he was going into Washington, and I rode down with him to the bridge. Bodies of troops of the new levies were encamped at different points near the river. In these there seemed to ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... inconspicuous book called The New Party, edited by Andrew Reid and containing selections from many "labor" leaders, these words occur: "We have had politics for politics' sake, religion for religion's sake, science for science's ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... other animals, especially when as often happens he balances cleverly on his hind legs. By means of it also he can, with his body completely concealed, look over the top of ordinary cover and see you long before you have made out his inconspicuous little head. Then he departs. He seems to have a lamentable lack of healthy curiosity about you. In that respect he should take lessons from the kongoni. After that you can follow him as far as you please; you will get only glimpses at three or four ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... songs, the smoking, and the lazy fun, Rosy-Lilly would slip from one big woodsman to another, an inconspicuous little figure in the smoke-gloomed light of the two oil-lamps. Man after man would snatch her up to his knee, lay by his pipe, twist her silky, yellow curls about his great blunt fingers, and whisper wood-folk tales or baby nonsense into her ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... genuine unadulterated tropics.' But as to painting the tropics without the palms, he might just as well think of painting the desert without the camels. At eight or ten years old the tree flowers, bearing blossoms of the ordinary palm type, degraded likenesses of the lilies and yuccas, greenish and inconspicuous, but visited by insects for the sake of their pollen. The flower, however, is fertilised by the wind, which carries the pollen grains from one bunch of blossoms to another. Then the nuts gradually swell out to ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... surface. They live, moreover, in every country of the globe, and their system of intercommunication is so perfect that even birds and flying things can learn from it. They prove their breeding by their perfect taste in dress, the well-bred ever being inconspicuous; and their simplicity conceals enormous, undecipherable wonder. One daisy out of doors is worth a hundred shelves of text- books in the house. Their mischief, moreover, is not revenge, though some might think it so—but a natural desire to be recognised and thought and ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... president of a large university might be a matter of indifference to a young instructor, inconspicuous among his many colleagues; but to be transferred to a full professorship in a small college was to come into close, daily contact with the ruling power, a contact from which there was no escape, in which instinctive likes and antipathies might make or mar ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... for the same reason. All birds and mammals which take care of their young are teachable, though in very various degrees, and all in like manner show individual peculiarities of disposition, though in most cases these are slight and inconspicuous. In dogs, horses, and apes there is marked teachableness, and there are also marked differences ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... flower-buds and their peduncles (which are elongated apparently through the principle of compensation) are brightly coloured, but so is the upper part of the spike—all, no doubt, for the sake of guiding insects to the inconspicuous perfect flowers. From such cases as these we may pass on to certain Labiatae, for instance, Salvia Horminum in which (as I hear from Mr. Thiselton Dyer) the upper bracts are enlarged and brightly coloured, no doubt for the ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin
... line effects in the furniture heights and in the wall-paper, which, if in pronounced patterns, must balance in conspicuous wall members and show the broken junctures or bad matchings in inconspicuous or ...
— Color Value • C. R. Clifford
... reply. I saw him stare at her, and then I saw his glance take me in. I sat in a corner as inconspicuous as I could make myself. I wondered whether I was a sempstress or a tutor, and whether either of these functionaries were introduced, and whether they shook hands ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... upon. We all piled into the lorry, and Bish took it to an inconspicuous place on the Second Level and let down. Ramon Llewellyn and the others got out. Then we went up to Main City Level. We passed within a few blocks of Hunters' Hall. There was a lot of noise, but ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... in countless millions of lessons of success and failure, his perfectly powerful claws and execution methods; and, living in the same jungle, and with him as one of the conditions of life, are small deer, alert, swift, light of build, inconspicuous of colour, sharp of hearing, keen-eyed, keen-scented— because any downward variation from these attributes means swift and certain death. To capture the deer is a condition, of the tiger's life, to escape the tiger a condition of the deer's; and they play a great contest under these conditions, ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... rode to the S.P. depot feeling like a criminal trying to escape. He took his luggage and sneaked into the waiting room, sought an inconspicuous place and waited, his whole head and shoulders hidden behind a newspaper which he was not reading. Cliff Lowell could have found nothing to criticize in Johnny's manner of screening his presence there; ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... Greenbackers, and issued a call for a National Greenback Labour Reform convention to assemble at Syracuse on July 25. This sudden extension of the movement attracted widespread attention, and although the convention was marked by great turbulence and guided by inconspicuous leaders, it seemed as if by magic to take possession of a popular issue which gathered about its standard thousands of earnest men. Gideon J. Tucker, a former Democratic secretary of state, who had led the Americans in 1859, was nominated for judge of ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... late to the farmers and labourers on the estate, it would not have mattered much to anybody if he had not been there. Nobody ever connected any romantic thought with him. There was something in his strong build, pale but healthy aquiline face, his inconspicuous brown eyes and hair, which seemed from the beginning to mark him out as the ordinary earthy dweller in an ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... aboord. 'Twud hurt business. 'Boys,' says he to th' rayporthers, 'th' King's on me yacht. D'ye hear me? Th' King's on me yacht. But don't say annything about it. I don't want to have it known. Don't print it onless ye have to, an' thin put it in an inconspicuous place, like th' first page. He's here sure enough, boys. Th' mast just fell on his Majesty. It nearly kilt him. I'm not sure it didn't kill him. He remained perfectly cool throughout. So did I. I was almost cold. ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... means, say by either increasing the amplitude of vibration of A or increasing its sensitiveness, the response of A is very greatly enhanced, then the positive effect would be predominant and the negative effect would become inconspicuous. When the two constituent responses are of the same order of magnitude, we shall have a positive response followed by a negative after-vibration; the first twitch will belong to the one which responds earlier. If the response of A is very much ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose
... such as the tapeworms and the trichina, there is a direct interchange of disease with animals, certain phases of the life cycle of the organisms are passed in man and others in various of the domestic animals. A small inconspicuous tapeworm inhabits the intestine of dogs and seems to produce no ill effects. The eggs are passed from the dog, taken into man, and result in the formation of large cystic tumors which not infrequently cause death. Where the companionship between ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... to stop talking, since they must walk in single file. Presently Benita looked up and saw that she was under the thorn which grew in the cleft of the rock. Also, with some trouble she found the bunch of reeds that she had bent down, to mark the inconspicuous hole through which she had crept, and by it her lantern. It seemed weeks since she had ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... inopportune times. The half-hour which followed Captain Polkington's coming down-stairs was a trying one. The Captain went to the back door to look out; Mr. Gillat followed him, though scarcely like his shadow; he was not inconspicuous, and neither he nor his motive were easy to overlook. The Captain said something approbious about the weather and the high wind and occasional heavy swishes of rain; then he went to the sitting-room which lay behind the kitchen, ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... prosecutor is bound to bring him to trial. Public attention demands it. He may know him to be insane, but he must still prosecute him. The jury declare him insane. After years he is released from the asylum, the public thinks it a miscarriage of justice, forgetting in the meanwhile the inconspicuous poor man who unnoticed has gone through the same experience, and been ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... suddenly dropped to earth. A man's figure was stumbling along the little path which led diagonally from the back of the Birch premises through a gateway and off toward a back street, the route by which Lanse was accustomed to take an inconspicuous short cut toward the locomotive shops, ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... sincere nature-lover, and gives a soft hint to which the soul of the spectator can add its own emotion. To Hugh it was much a matter of mood. He would go to a gallery of ancient or modern art, and find that there many pictures had no message or voice for him; and then some inconspicuous picture would suddenly appeal to him with a mysterious force—the pathetic glance of childish eyes, or an old face worn by toil and transfigured by some inner light of hopefulness; or a woodland scene, tree-trunks rising amid a copse; or the dark water of a sea-cave, lapping, ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... children freedom in play but obviates the possibility of loss of books through their being left on benches and swings. The playground is a place of freedom and fun and good fellowship, and the library's rules should be made as inconspicuous as possible. ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... of this feeling, for not only did he take care to proceed to the Quai d'Orsay in as inconspicuous a manner as possible, but he also applied to the authorities to detail a policeman to accompany him in ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... impatiently, the rancher went toward the house, shoulders low, making himself as inconspicuous as possible. The distance between the house and where Dick was waiting was not far, but it was all open, and with the moon lighting up the scene almost like day, a person crossing might ...
— The Boy Ranchers on Roaring River - or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers • Willard F. Baker
... long gaberdine and his hat, buttoning the former loosely about the pump, which it almost concealed, and hanging the latter upon the summit of the structure. The handle of the pump, when depressed, curved outwardly between the coat-skirts, singularly like a tail, but with this inconspicuous exception, any unprejudiced observer would have pronounced the thing ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... incongruous as it was in that neighbourhood, few people that he passed paid any attention to him, none gave him more than a casual glance—Jimmie Dale swung along, upright, with no attempt to make himself inconspicuous, hurrying a little, as one intent upon a definite errand. As he neared his house he slowed his pace a little until a couple, who were passing in front of it, had gone on; then he went up the steps, but noiselessly as a shadow now, to the front door, opened ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... by Jullien's Band in 1853. Also a "Grand Symphony" in 1855 and "The Pilgrims' Cantata" by C. C. Perkins, were performed in Boston, and we have record of an oratorio, "The Cities of the Plains," by Dawley, in 1855. Apart from these efforts the American composer seems to have been inconspicuous. In fact there were no facilities for the study of music or for the hearing of music which could be compared, as a training school for composers, with the musical centres of Europe, so that the efforts of these earlier composers may ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... near Barilloche, out on the bare Patagonian plains. They behaved like pipits or longspurs, running actively over the ground in the same manner and showing the same restlessness and the same kind of flight. But whereas pipits are inconspicuous, the red-backs at once attracted attention by the contrast between their bold coloring and the grayish or yellowish tones of the ground along which they ran. The silver-bill tyrant, however, is much more conspicuous; I saw it in the same neighborhood as the red-back and ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... meekly across the hall, hardly daring to lift her eyes; and when the man threw open the drawing-room door and ushered her in, Fanny unconsciously moderated her usual hearty footstep and endeavoured to make her entry as inconspicuous ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... fell back a step, and dropped easily into the sonorous declamation that made the stalwart Judge no inconspicuous figure on the floor of the Legislature. The newspapers, of course, were responsible for his language—as for the rest of his education; but such as it was, he used it fluently, and the declamatory manner was, to his constituency, quite an essential of eloquence—the prime difference, in fact, between ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... test it. Captain after captain, upon being asked to name a selected man, had to confess ignorance; not so my skipper. He knew them all. "What is that man's name?" asked the Brigadier, indicating an inconspicuous and rather terrified private, just that sort of man whose name one would never know or want to know. (It was something rather like Postlethwaite, I believe). "Two paces forward, Private Johnson," ordered my skipper emphatically, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various
... habit is a matter of taste on which I can offer no advice, except that a lady who requires to wear her habit until it exhibits signs of old age, would do well to select an inconspicuous tint. I have always found dark blue the most serviceable shade, because it does not fade, even in tropical climates, nor does it, like black, turn green and rusty-looking before it is worn out. Besides, it admits of a new skirt or new coat, as the case may be, ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... was an ambitious woman, though one with definite limitations. Among different surroundings and in an atmosphere less sordidly striving and commonplace, she was fitted to have become, with some encouragement, an admirable and utterly inconspicuous wife and mother. But here, in this narrow, money-getting environment, many things prevented; among them, primarily, the way in which she had been brought up. For her father, too, had been driven by this lust for riches; and though he had failed, to the last he had ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... countries. He divides the Macedonian Slavs into pure Slavs, Slavized Bulgars and pure Slavs influenced by Slavized Bulgars: "all three categories," he says, "have been subjected to a strong and often continuous Greek influence, to say nothing of the Turks and the inconspicuous Vlachs," so that in his opinion it is rash to make sharp divisions among a people who have thus acted and reacted on one another. A large proportion of the Macedonians[53] have no knowledge of the race to which their ancestors belonged; and one is brought to the conclusion that it is much ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... It starts with Christ's ancestors, beginning with the story of Anna and Joachim, and giving the legend in minute images. Out of deference perhaps to the Inspired Books, this history creeps along the wall, making itself small so as to be inconspicuous, and narrates, as if in secret, by artless mimicry, poor Joachim's despair when a scribe of the Temple named Reuben reproves him for being childless, and rejects his offerings in the name of the Lord who has not blessed him; then Joachim, in sorrow, separates from his wife and ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... said that coffee shared with bread and bacon the distinction of being one of the three nutritive essentials that helped win the World War for the Allies. So this symbol of human brotherhood has played a not inconspicuous part in "making the world safe for democracy." The new age, ushered in by the Peace of Versailles and the Washington Conference, has for its hand-maidens temperance and self-control. It is to be a world democracy of right-living and clear thinking; and among its most ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... and during a momentary lull in the amiable siege of which he was the distressed object, he whispered tragically to me: "Can't we get out of this?—Do you know the way to the back door?" I said I did, and led him through an inconspicuous doorway into a comparatively deserted corridor behind the staircase. I procured for him, through the strategic employment of a passing servant, something to eat, and we staid in concealment there until the function had come to an end, and his wife had begun to search for him. He was ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... the rocky point only to meet a charge of B.B.'s from my gun. She was a beautiful bird with a delicate crown of slender feathers, a yellow and blue face patch and a green neck and back, but her plumes were short and inconspicuous when compared with ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... no reasons for believing, that, as a schoolmaster, he was particularly well qualified. He did very well however, and satisfied the entire township, so that, had he been content with that that very honorable, but somewhat inconspicuous life, he might doubtless have remained there until this day. Up to this period he had been a strict temperance man. No intoxicating drink had as yet passed his lips; and an early experiment with a pipe had so sickened him, that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... sail next Saturday on the Jupiter I think. We haven't got our suite, but Mr. Bliss says he is sure he can arrange it for me. If we can't get one on the Jupiter, we'll take some other boat that is just as inconspicuous. You see, I want to go on a ship that isn't likely to be packed with people I know, for it is my intention to travel incog, as they say in the books. No one shall stare at me and say: 'There is that Maud Blithers we were reading about ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... o'clock he approached the palace; and although a host of showy people were about him, moving in the same direction, he was not inconspicuous—his costume took care of that. He watched these people's faces narrowly, hoping to find a charitable one whose possessor might be willing to carry his name to the old lieutenant—as to trying to get into the palace himself, that was simply ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... two spies in the night of terror after the defeat and retreat to the ships. The Trojan spy, Dolon, also wears a leather cap. The three spies put on no corslets, as far as we can affirm, their object being to remain inconspicuous and unburdened with glittering bronze greaves and corslets. The Trojan camp was brilliantly lit up with fires, and there may have been a moon, so the less bronze the better. In these circumstances alone the heroes of the Iliad are unequipped, certainly, ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... simply tacking them together with a large needle and coarse thread—will not answer at all in this new development of rug making. The filling must be smooth, without lumps or rag ends, and the joinings absolutely fast and fairly inconspicuous. Some of the new rags from cotton or woolen mills come in pieces from a quarter to a half-yard in length and the usual width of the cloth. These can be sewed together on the sewing machine, lapping and basting them ...
— How to make rugs • Candace Wheeler
... something almost great in this ravenous thirst for knowledge, combined with incredulity of all tradition. It is a model such as this that the poets should have had for their naive characters. In Goethe's Roman Elegies, the Roman woman's figure is very inconspicuous; she is not drawn as a genuine woman of the people, she is not naive. He knew a Faustina, but one feels that he afterwards slipped a German model into her place. Filomena has the uncompromising honesty and straightforwardness of an unspoilt soul. Her glance is not exactly pure, ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... journey up-country from Madras, some twelve years ago, that I first met Dr. Paru. She and I shared the long seat of the small second-class compartment, and in that close neighborliness I soon fell to wondering. From her dress I knew her to be a Hindu, yet her jewels were few and inconspicuous. She was most evidently of good family, yet she was ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... But in the Oblonskys' household, as in all families indeed, there was one inconspicuous but most valuable and useful person, Marya Philimonovna. She soothed her mistress, assured her that everything would come round (it was her expression, and Matvey had borrowed it from her), and without fuss or hurry proceeded to set to work herself. She had immediately ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... to where it belonged. "Yes, I know. But we're talkin' about Texas. Still, I reckon you ought not to have any trouble on this trip. Don't let anybody know why you are at the fort. Don't gamble or drink. Get the money from Major Ponsford and melt away inconspicuous into the brush. Hit the trail hard. A day and a night ought to ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... exception of their rude inconspicuous flints, and the accumulated remains of their feasts in the 'mirnyongs,' or native shell-mounds, along our coasts, which only have significance to the careful observer, we have no other visible evidence ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... a popular exposition of an inconspicuous but very beautiful phenomenon of the rocks. Minute darkened spheres—a microscopic detail—appear everywhere in certain of the rock minerals. What are they? The discoveries of recent radioactive research—chiefly due to Rutherford—give the answer. ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... to drive back over the neutral territory the rock of Gibraltar suddenly bulked up before us, in a sheer ascent that left the familiar Prudential view in utterly inconspicuous unimpressive-ness. Till one has seen it from this point one has not truly seen it. The vast stone shows like a half from which the other half has been sharply cleft and removed, that the sense of its precipitous magnitude may unrelievedly strike the eye; and it seems to have in that moment the ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... an excitable mood to-night," said the lieutenant; "we had therefore better make ourselves as inconspicuous as possible. I wonder what has occurred? Possibly there may have been some battle, in which the Bolivians have been defeated. I would not have come ashore had I thought that the city was likely to be in this state of unrest. However, as we are here we may as well go forward; ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... their experiments is proved by the extraordinary variety of shades of blue, ranging from a sort of greyish robin's-egg to the darkest navy, in which the army is clothed. The result attained is the conviction that no blue is really inconspicuous, and that some of the harsh new slaty tints are no less striking than the deeper shades they have superseded. But to this scale of experimental blues, other colours must be added: the poppy-red of the Spahis' tunics, and various other less familiar colours—grey, and a certain greenish khaki—the ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... instincts. And this takes us a stage further. The extreme claim is that all instincts, in fact all thoughts and operations, are in the last analysis chemical or chemico-physical. Let us examine this claim for a moment. The adrenals are two inconspicuous ductless bodies situated immediately above the kidneys. Not many years ago, when the present writer was a medical student, all that was known about these organs was that when stricken with a certain ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... novelty is alexandrae, in honour of that Princess who, we may reasonably hope, is destined at some future time to be the Queen of these realms and their dependencies, of which Australia is by no means the most inconspicuous. ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... we see a butte in the form of a fallen cross. It is several miles away, but it presents no inconspicuous figure on the landscape and must be many hundreds of feet high, probably more than 2,000. We note its position on our map and name it "The Butte of ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... to remember all about it, a whole swarm of disqualifying details arrived on the ground: the town would have known of the circumstance, Mary would have known of it, it would glare like a limelight in his own memory instead of being an inconspicuous service which he had possibly rendered "without knowing its full value." And at this point he remembered that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Gas-Engines! The sign was as inconspicuous as the firm was famous in the middle West. Roger, after two days of waiting, was staring at the faded gilt letters until the moment of his interview with Mr. Haskell arrived. He was a little uncertain about ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... finely. On one side of this old palace—for he was sure it could be nothing short of a palace—was a flight of steps which led up to a small door. This entrance was an inconspicuous one, which could not be said of the several porticoed entrances. Beside the steps, in the angle made by the meeting of the wall with them, was conveniently set a small, pine box. Johnnie had hunted a vacant building with the intention of entering it. But ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... exhaustion comes, and the tiny form falls in its tracks, how small an object it is to detect in the great world of outdoors! A little bundle of dusty garments in a ditch, in a wayside hollow, in tall grass, or among the tufts and hummocks of a marsh—how easy it is for so inconspicuous an object to escape the eye of the most zealous searcher! A young animal lost cries incessantly; the lost child cries out his pitiful little cry, finds itself lifted to no tender bosom, soothed by no gentle voice, ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... Mont-rouge and the road to Orleans, which led also to Balzac's beloved Tours. The principal staircase was outside, because Balzac, in designing the house, found that a staircase seriously interfered with the symmetry of the rooms. Therefore he placed it in an inconspicuous position in a special construction at the back, and owing to the extremely steep slope the visitor entered by the top floor, and made his way down instead of up. There were three stories, the lowest containing the drawing-room and dining-room, the second a bedroom ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... as the prevailing styles are not harmful. Odd as it may seem, these are matters which are not without significance for the physical well-being of a prospective mother. Neat and comfortable clothing will help her to overcome a natural inclination to become a "stay-at-home," and on this account an inconspicuous way of dressing is often more valuable than medicine. So long as they do not attract attention, most prospective mothers go out in the day time, mingle with their acquaintances, and attend public places of amusement. Deference to fashion, therefore, may contribute ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... their left and the Mount of Olives on their right. From the bottom of the valley he saw the place where the Temple had been, but no Temple was there now—only the dome of the Muhammedan mosque. Of the Holy Sepulchre there was nothing visible, for it lay within the City and was inconspicuous. He came to Gethsemane, where Christ had suffered, and he climbed the Mount of Olives, from whence he could look over Jerusalem. He did so, and wept. After he had paid his devotions in the ruins of the Church of the Resurrection, he went on northwards ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... closely akin to it; it no doubt exists in the minds of many really successful people, and if it is not flagrantly betrayed, it is often an important constituent of their success. But the happy part of it is that the dramatic sense is often freely bestowed upon the most inconspicuous and unintelligent persons, and fills their lives with a consciousness of romance and joy. It concerns itself mostly with public appearances, upon however minute a scale, and thus it is a rich source of consolation and self-congratulation. ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... binary names. One is the typical V. tricolor, with broad flowers, variously colored and veined with yellow, purple and white. It occurs in waste places on sandy soil. The second is called V. arvensis or the field-pansy; it has small inconspicuous flowers, with pale-yellowish petals which are shorter than the sepals. It pollinates itself without the [40] aid of insects, and is widely dispersed in cultivated fields. The third form, V. alpestris, ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... has waited many years to hear the truth about the Mormons; here it is—told with sympathy, with affection, by a man who steadfastly defended and fought for the Mormon people when their present leaders were keeping themselves carefully inconspicuous. The Mormon system of religious communism has long been known as one of the most interesting social experiments of modern civilization; here is an intimate study of it, not only in its success but in the failure that has come ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... his face and hands from the scratchy foliage, and also to render himself inconspicuous, he wore a tight-fitting robe of dark brown muslin, which concealed even his face and arms, though eyeholes allowed him to see where ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... describes his people in a way that shows that he has them in the eye of his imagination; as in this portrait of a Mrs. Tappelmine: "With face, hair, eyes, and garments of the same color, the color itself being neutral; small, thin, faded, inconspicuous, poorly clad, bent with labors which had yielded no return, as dead to the world as saints strive to be, yet remaining in the world for the sake of those whom she had often wished out of it," etc. The book is in every way clever, and its purpose is admirable—the lesson which it is written ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... Abe Kauffman and his black satchel. For it grew dark early at this time of year, and already the brief twilight was fading. So the girl hastened to her room and exchanged her gray walking suit for a darker one that was inconspicuous and allowed free movement. Then she slipped her little pearl-mounted revolver—her father's gift—into her handbag and decided she ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... Troopers drew bridles in the yellowing October forest. Their smart drab uniforms touched with purple blended harmoniously with the autumn woods. They were as inconspicuous as two deer in the dappled shadow. There was a sunny clearing just ahead. The wood road they had been travelling entered it. Beyond ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... little hunt went on, the mother watching gravely under a bush where she was inconspicuous, and the cubs, full of zest and inexperience, missing the flying tidbits more often than they swallowed them, until they learned at last to locate all game accurately before chasing or alarming it; and that is the rule, learned from hunting grasshoppers, which a wolf follows ever afterward. ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... finishing nothing; that his artistic tastes are the extravagant dreams of a Nero; that he loves publicity as a worn and obese soprano loves the centre of the stage; that his indiscretions would bring about the discharge of the most inconspicuous petty official. Others speak and write of him as a hero of mythology, as a mystic and a dreamer, looking for guidance to the traditions of mediaeval knighthood; while others, again, dub him a modernist, insist that he is a commercial traveller, ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... become naturalized much more readily than large ones; they are volatile, and can more quickly find suitable feeding-ground, and safe roosting and nesting places; their food is also more abundant and easily found; their small size, which renders them inconspicuous, gives them safety; and, finally, they are very much more adaptive ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... red, but which has been known to cause the more discriminating to draw heavily on the dictionary for adjectives. My face is small and heart-shaped, with features strictly for use and not for ornament, but fortunately inconspicuous. As for my eyes, I think tawny quite the nicest word, though Aunt Jane calls them hazel and I have even ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... telegram or Dick's letter. Things were looking up. It might be Amelia had been elected to some new and absorbing organization for putting the social edifice still more irretrievably into the disorder it seemed bent for, in which case she might forget the inner wobblings of such an inconspicuous nomad as a brother in metaphysical pangs. He became recklessly optimistic, as the train climbed higher into the hills, and luxuriated in it, conscious all the time that it was altitude that was intoxicating him, not any real hope of hoodwinking Amelia. You ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... branches of the hollow tree. The Chinese lanterns are alight. There is dancing in the house; the music sounds now loud, now soft. MISS BEECH is sitting on the rustic seat in a black bunchy evening dress, whose inconspicuous opening is inlaid with white. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... coasts of New Guinea and in the Moluccas I was never able to obtain a skin. We are therefore quite ignorant of the habits of this bird, and also of its female, though the latter is no doubt as plain and inconspicuous as in all the other ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Leo the inconspicuous constellation of the Crab may be found; the most striking object it contains is the misty patch called Praesepe or the Bee-Hive, which the smallest opera-glass will resolve into its ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... worker in his particular occupation. His arsenal is the kitchen shelf, the trash pile, his own usual kit of tools and supplies. The targets of his sabotage are usually objects to which he has normal and inconspicuous ...
— Simple Sabotage Field Manual • Strategic Services
... his friend were familiar with the manners of the country, so that they felt at home among the narrow adobe streets, the lounging, good-natured peons, and the imitation Moorish architecture. They found rooms at a quiet, inconspicuous hotel, and began making their plans for an immediate departure in the event that they succeeded in ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... lying to the north of Greece, for a long time had been an inconspicuous part of the ancient world. Its people, though only partially civilized, were Greeks in blood and language. No doubt they formed an offshoot of those northern invaders who had entered the Balkan peninsula before the dawn of history. The Macedonian kings, from the era of the ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... station by the tall library mantel and wandered across the room to an inconspicuous corner, where he propped his manly form up against the wall and followed Arethusa with his eyes, totally unregardful of anything else in their line of vision, as she swayed and dipped like a snow fairy in her airy white gown, about the room. He was no great adept in the concealment ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... see for a short distance, but when they stopped at the edge of the channel the punt was not about. She was, however, painted an inconspicuous gray, and Jim thought she was not far off. While he hesitated, wondering which way to turn, a heavy report came out of the ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... Fort Wrigley, and are boarded by priests and Indians all interested in the new steamer and impressed with its size. One asks if it is a boat or an island, and another declares it is "just like a town." Fort Wrigley is an inconspicuous post with a dreary enough record of hunger and hardship. We find it rich in flowers and will always remember it as the one place in the North in which we gathered the fringed gentian (Gentiana crinata) with its lance-shaped leaves, ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... a volunteer in the person of Tobias Dramm came forward. Until then he had been an inconspicuous unit in the life of the community. He was a live-stock dealer on a small scale, making his headquarters at one of the town livery stables. He was a person of steady habits, with a reputation for sobriety and frugality among his neighbours. ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... that I left. As I was listening to the Dowager's parting remarks about being inconspicuous and reflecting credit on the school by my nice manners, Martin sent in word that Princess was lame and couldn't be driven. So instead of going to the station in the hearse, I went with Mam'selle in the trolley car. When we got in, it was cram full of men. The entire Yale ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... all of these somewhat inconspicuous galleries is most satisfactory. They contain in well-arranged fashion the real art of the people, the things that people who cannot afford to buy paintings can easily afford to own. Original etchings, mezzotints, and wood block prints and other process work often more truly contain ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... which have come down to us, even in their crudest forms (eoliths), are very far from representing the earliest achievements of man in the accumulation of culture. Those dim, remote cycles must have been full of great, but inconspicuous, originators who laid the foundations of civilization in discoveries and achievements so long taken for granted that we do not realize that they ever had to be made ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... huge reddish-brown head with bulging cheeks; his blotched body, adorned with wicked spines, tapered slimly off to an inconspicuous tail. ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
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