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Sweep   /swip/   Listen
Sweep

verb
(past & past part. swept; pres. part. sweeping)
1.
Sweep across or over.  Synonym: brush.  "A gasp swept cross the audience"
2.
Move with sweeping, effortless, gliding motions.  Synonym: sail.  "Shreds of paper sailed through the air" , "The searchlights swept across the sky"
3.
Sweep with a broom or as if with a broom.  Synonym: broom.  "Sweep under the bed"
4.
Force into some kind of situation, condition, or course of action.  Synonyms: drag, drag in, embroil, sweep up, tangle.  "Don't drag me into this business"
5.
To cover or extend over an area or time period.  Synonyms: cross, span, traverse.  "The parking lot spans 3 acres" , "The novel spans three centuries"
6.
Clean by sweeping.
7.
Win an overwhelming victory in or on.
8.
Cover the entire range of.
9.
Make a big sweeping gesture or movement.  Synonyms: swing, swing out.



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"Sweep" Quotes from Famous Books



... much too sleepy at dawn after a long night's hunting to begin to sweep and dust,' answered the owl. And they both made up their minds that wives they ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang

... the gun in a convenient position about twenty yards from the margin of the river, on a piece of hard, flat ground, exactly opposite the centre of the line of vessels. This would sweep the approach in front ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... redeem the vineyard which thou hast planted, And sweep thence the strangers, and save us now! O regard the covenant which thou hast sealed in us! O remember for us the father who knew thee, To whom thou, too, didst make known thy love, And ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams

... of the shrouds left, also, and the backstay; but, of everything else, as far as we could judge at that distance, a clean sweep had been made fore and aft and the vessel seemed to ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson

... Mr. Chetwynd," Gibbons growled, "is that the best thing to do would be to put a score of soldiers at the end of all these lanes, and then to burn the whole place down, and make a clean sweep of it. I never saw such a villainous looking crew in all my life. I have been in hopes all along that some of them would resist; it would have been a real pleasure to have let fly ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty

... and the three sportsmen returned to the fishery to find that the storm had made an almost clean sweep of the nets. It had carried most of them away; torn others to pieces, and almost ruined the whole colony of fishermen; the ruin being all the more complete that most of the nets had been received on credit, and were to be paid for chiefly by the ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne

... Moreover, the first sweep of royal fury being past, his Majesty's stern regulations at Custrin began to relax in fulfilment; to be obeyed only by those immediately responsible, and in letter rather than in spirit even by those. President von Munchow who is head of the Domain-Kammer, chief representative ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle

... in the doorway calling out "goodbye" as they went down the path to the gate, Miss Prudence's "old man" had been there early to sweep off the piazzas and shovel paths; he was one of her beneficiaries with a history. Marjorie said they all had histories: she believed he had lost some money in a bank years ago, some that he had hoarded by ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin

... became an admirer of the beauties of nature. His garden, which he sedulously cultivated, and from a piece of wild moorland made a very productive spot, was his pride and his delight; but he was also an admirer of more natural beauty: the soft sweep of the green hill, the bubbling of a clear fountain, or the complexities of a wild thicket, were scenes on which he often gazed for hours, and, as he said, with inexpressible delight. It was perhaps for this reason that he was fond of Shenstone's pastorals, and ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott

... the plain within a few miles of Gath, are full of "extensive excavations," and there, no doubt, we are to look for the rocky hold, where he felt himself safer from pursuit, and whence he could look down over the vast sweep of the rich Philistine country. Gath lay at his feet, close by was the valley where he had killed Goliath, the scenes of Samson's exploits were all about him. Thither fled to him his whole family, from fear, no doubt, ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren

... for a moment. With an active swing of his athletic body, Dorothy's adorer collected his hat, gloves and cane in one sweep, spun on his heel with gleeful ease, smiled his sudden sunny smile, and waved a ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford

... tears of sorrow; instead, they seemed to Julia infinitely soothing and refreshing. They seemed to carry her along with the restful sweep of a river. She cried, hardly knowing that she cried, and with no effort to stop the steady ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris

... that go from the nose to the mouth-corners, causing the cheeks to make a smile—and without them the smile is incomplete—merely a grin. And as for height, I have often begun by drawing the dear creature little, and found that by one sweep of the pen (adding a few inches to the bottom of her skirt) I have improved her so much that it has been impossible to resist the temptation—the thing is so easy, and the ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... Nine captains of the Greeks he slew in the first onset. Now their ranks would have been broken, and the Greeks would have fled back to their ships if Odysseus had not been on that wing of the battle with Diomedes, the great horseman. Odysseus cried out, "Come hither, Diomedes, or verily Hector will sweep us across the plain and bring the battle ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum

... laying to anchor. "If I weren't such a hand for skylarkin' she'd be lay-in' there now with Tim Lacy standin' by the old six-pounder, and she loaded to the muzzle with nails and one thing and another, ready to sweep the beach of 'em." And somewhat sadly he waited for the mob; and, waiting, wondered how Bess was making out, for the squalls were chasing each other off the hills, and out beyond the little harbor, all ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly

... accomplish this feat, and twice, in so doing, did it sweep Captain Bunting off his legs and roll him along bodily, in a turmoil of mud and stones and dirty water, roaring, as it gushed forth, as if in savage triumph. On the second occasion, Bill Jones shared ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne

... due west, with houses, gardens, orchards, bordering it and spotting the country generally. A fair country—level and rich—all the range west and northwest was uninterrupted smooth fields; the eye had full sweep to the wide horizon; the dotting of trees, barns and houses, only enriched it, giving the sweet air ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner

... March, Hungarian "MORIAMUR PRO REGE" begins to show itself. Clouds of Hungarian Insurgents, of the Tolpatch, Pandour sort, mount over the Carpathians on us, all round the east, from south to north; and threaten to penetrate Silesia itself. So that we have to sweep laboriously the Morawa-Taya Valleys; and undertake first one and then another outroad, or sharp swift sally, against ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... To travel on a cake of ice Except in Summer when it's hot; But in the Winter, when it's not And icy winds blow in my face I like an open fireplace Where I can watch the glowing flames Or play upon the floor with games. So let us say a fervent prayer That Jackie Tar may land somewhere Beyond the sweep of wind and storm Where he may find it ...
— Kernel Cob And Little Miss Sweetclover • George Mitchel

... certain she had not gone that way. After perhaps an hour she came upon a flat surface where soil had formed, where grass and wild flowers and several little trees gave shade and a place to sleep. And from her eyrie she commanded a vast sweep of country—hills and valleys, fields, creeks, here and there lonely farmhouses, and far away to the east the glint ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... Tower and Rolandseck and the Seven Mountains. She noted the peasants, in their picturesque costumes, carrying baskets of soil to the steep vineyard terraces: the ruined keeps of robber barons on the heights, and the dark sweep of the romantic valleys, bringing in their tributary streams ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... powers, in order each of you to be the first in his way. If any man shall be master of such a transcendant, commanding, and ductile genius, as to enable him to rise to the highest, and to stoop to the lowest flights of art, and to sweep over all of them unobstructed and secure, he is fitter to give example than ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds

... now of a strange sound which had affected him even in the preoccupation of his vision. It was a gentle brushing of some yielding substance like that made by a soft broom on sand, or the sweep of a gown. But to his mountain ears, attuned to every woodland sound, it was not like the gnawing of gopher or squirrel, the scratching of wildcat, nor the hairy rubbing of bear. Nor was it human; the long, deep respirations of his sleeping companions were distinct from that monotonous ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte

... xebeque frigate of thirty-two guns, was not allowed to be bought into the navy, but was sold for a small sum to one of the piratical Barbary States, notwithstanding that Lord Cochrane had said that if he were allowed to have her in place of the Speedy, then in a very dilapidated condition, he would sweep the Mediterranean of the enemy's cruisers and privateers. His capacity so to do may be judged from what he effected with the ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald

... grassy mead, What time the timorous hare limps forth to feed; Then be the time to steal adown the vale, And listen to the vagrant** cuckoo's tale, To hear the clamorous*** curlew call his mate, Or the soft quail his tender pain relate; To see the swallow sweep the dark'ning plain Belated, to support her infant train; To mark the swift in rapid giddy ring Dash round the steeple, unsubdu'd of wing: Amusive birds!—say where your hid retreat When the frost rages and the tempests beat; Whence your return, by such nice instinct led, When spring, soft ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White

... concerning She Stoops to Conquer—"the incidents are so prepared as not to seem improbable." There is no better example of this than the admirable tale of "The Mimic," in which the most unlooked-for occurrences succeed each other in the most natural way, while the disappearance at the end of the little sweep, who has levanted up the chimney in Frederick's new blue coat and buff waistcoat, is a master-stroke. Everybody has forgotten everything about him until the precise moment when he is needed to supply the fitting surprise of the finish,—a surprise ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson

... to discuss the question any further," she said loftily, and giving a wide sweep to her skirts ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein

... the cattle disease is a very disagreeable addition to one's knowledge. They are afraid it will last for many years, and sweep off a great portion of the cattle in the kingdom.... You'll think I have got the rinderpest myself to write ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton

... nave is striking in its immensity. Curiously enough, in this instance, this effect of immensity is not due to an unbroken stretch of nave-aisles or to a lengthy procession of pier-arches, but to the magnificent sweep of the unencumbered vaulting in the roof. An organ screen intercepts the line of vision at the entrance to the choir. This, however, is the sole obstruction which the eye encounters. Above, the great roof, with its unbroken 300 feet of interlacing lines, rises like some mighty ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various

... influence through agents. There were men among them who thought of Louisiana "as the highroad to the conquest of Mexico." Twenty or thirty thousand of these westerners on flatboats could come down the river and sweep everything before them. To be sure, they were an undisciplined horde with slender Military equipment—a striking contrast to the French legions; but, added the Frenchman, "a great deal of skill in shooting, the habit of being in the woods and of enduring fatigue—this ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson

... the first to rebuke kings to their faces and to set forth the spiritual aims of politics—to preach Righteousness and Mercy as against Power and Ambition and Self-interest. Their soaring imagination, less systematic than the Greek intellect, was wider in its sweep and more farseeing in its predictions. 'As the earth bringeth forth her bud and as the garden causeth the things sown in it to spring forth', says Isaiah, in magnificent anticipation of the doctrine of Natural Law, 'so ...
— Progress and History • Various

... a detour, winding, through the greater part of it, among and over the swelling heights north of the Pannikin. On each hilltop the vast sweep of the inter-mountain wilderness came into view, and from the highest point in the trail, reached when the sun was dipping toward the western horizon, the eye-sweep took in the broken country lying between the Pannikin and the path of the Transcontinental ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde

... corridor, in the Roman style, alone reached the height on which stood the triangular Forum and the Greek temple. Thus, you can step directly from the level of the street to the highest galleries, from which your gaze, ranging above the stage, can sweep the country and the sea, and at the same moment plunge far below you into that sort of regularly-shaped ravine in which once sat five thousand Pompeians eager for ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier

... these festivities, for Arthur was very aristocratic in his feelings, and with two or three exceptions, held himself aloof from the people of Shannondale. It was said, however, that sometimes, when he and his friend were alone, there was the sweep of a white dress and the gleam of golden hair in the parlor, where sweet Amy Crawford, daughter of the housekeeper, played and sang her simple ballads to the two gentlemen, who always treated her with as much deference as if she had been a queen, instead of a poor young girl dependent ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes

... in all its summer glory, and she was lying on a couch in her own room near the window, whence she could gaze on the expanse of sea below, this morning streaked with the most delicate gradations of distance, sweep beyond sweep, line and band and ribbon of softly, often but slightly varied hue, leading the eyes on and on into the infinite. There may have been some atmospheric illusion ending off the show, for the last reaches ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald

... before in one man's hands. Harald had thrice come in for the palace-sweeping (Polotasvarf) while he was in Micklegarth. It is the law there that when the Greek king dies, the Varangians shall have a sweep of the palace; they go over all the king's palaces where his treasures are, and every man shall have for his own what falls to his hand" (Fornmanna Sgur, ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker

... that a war would be a good thing if only for the inevitable clean sweep of all the present governing people which ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley

... collected. Round shot and shell are carried up from the boats. Fugitives who have lost their regiments are put to work. Pork-barrels are rolled up and placed in a line. Men go to work with spades, and throw up a rude embankment. The heavy guns are wheeled into position to sweep the ravine and all the ground beyond. Everything is done quickly. There is no time for delay. Men work as never before. Unless they can check the enemy, all is lost. Energy, activity, determination, ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin

... light so intensified the colours that they seemed to stand above the surface of the earth and float in mid-air like an exhalation of red. In the minor valleys, between the hillocks and ridges which diversified the contour of the basin, but did not disturb its general sweep, she marked brakes of tall, heavy-stemmed ferns, five or six feet high, in a brilliant light-green dress—a broad riband of them with the path in their midst winding like a stream along the little ravine that reached to the foot of ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... life, and which in its immensity of contradictions, delight, dread, exultation and despair could not be faced and yet was not to be evaded. There was no peace in it. But who wanted peace? Surrender was better, the dreadful ease of slack limbs in the sweep of an enormous tide and in a divine emptiness of mind. If this was existence then he knew that he existed. And he knew that the woman existed, too, in the sweep of the tide, without speech, without movement, without heat! ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad

... men. On thy bosom, Royal River, silent sped the birch canoe, Bearing brave with bow and quiver, on his way to war or woo; Now with flaunting flags and streamers—mighty monsters of the deep— Lo the puffing, panting steamers, through thy foaming waters sweep; And behold the grain-fields golden, where the bison grazed of eld; See the fanes of forests olden by the ruthless Saxon felled,— Plumed pines that spread their shadows ere Columbus spread his sails. Firs that fringed the mossy meadows ere the Mayflower ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon

... "you still here? Jove! but I'm glad to see you. I thought Sir John had made a clean sweep of ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile

... mile across; but the distance is increased to one who follows the path which winds through the furze and fern along the ridge. Their tutor had been unable to find lodgings in the village; and, while the two young men lived on one extremity of the sweep we have been describing, Mr. Carlton, who was not above three years older than they, had planted himself at a farmhouse upon the other. Besides, the farmhouse suited him better, as being nearer to a hamlet which he was serving during ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman

... quiet, and not be chivied any more," falters Jo, after he has been assisted to his bed and given medicine; "and be so kind any person as is a-passing nigh where I used fur to sweep, as to say to Mr. Snagsby that Jo, wot he knowed wunst, is a-movin' on right forards with his duty, and I'll be ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... merely by the caprices of idle plutocrats. It promises a world where all men and women shall be kept sane by work, and where all work shall be of value to the community, not only to a few wealthy vampires. It is to sweep away listlessness and pessimism and weariness and all the complicated miseries of those whose circumstances allow idleness and whose energies are not sufficient to force activity. In place of palaces and hovels, futile vice and useless misery, there is ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell

... my friend, what miracles were wrought Beyond the pow'r of constancy and courage? Did unresisted lightning aid their cannon? Did roaring whirlwinds sweep us from the ramparts? 'Twas vice that shook our nerves, 'twas vice, Leontius, That froze our veins, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... soon the injured hand was swathed in a neat and snowy bandage that smelled of iodine. She was aware that Roger's eyes not only followed the movements of her fingers, but dwelt as well on her cheek, her mouth, the downward sweep of her lashes. It was a pleasant moment, ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell

... stone for the grubs, beetles, and scorpions which lurked beneath it, he would send it flying with a savage sweep of his paw. When he caught a rabbit, he smashed it flat in sheer fury, as if he cared more ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts

... his hand to take hers to lift her off her horse. But she put her hand in her pocket and pulled out a tiny knife, only as long as her hand was broad, and this knife unfolded itself in one instant till it was such a length! and then Laili made a great sweep with her arm and her long, long knife, and off came Chumman Basa's ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous

... ruined rigging in a kind of sobbing way, as if all the elements were joining in a requiem for our foredoomed lives. There was never a moment when we could be sure that the next might not be our last; never a moment when we could not tell that the next wave might not sweep the ship with riven timbers into hopeless wreck, and plunge us poor wretches into the stormy seas to struggle for a few seconds desperately ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... the valley [14]. Then the ruins of the high buildings in these cities will throw up a great dust, rising up in shape like smoke or wreathed clouds against the falling rain; But the swollen waters will sweep round the pool which contains them striking in eddying whirlpools against the different obstacles, and leaping into the air in muddy foam; then, falling back, the beaten water will again be dashed into the air. And the whirling waves which fly from the place ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... was Christian taken with the courtesy and the kindness of Goodwill, that had it not been for his crushing burden, he would have offered to remain in Goodwill's house to run his errands, to light his fires, and to sweep his floors. So much was he taken captive with Goodwill's extraordinary kindness and unwearied attention. And since he could not remain at the gate, but must go on to the city of all goodwill itself, our pilgrim set himself all his days to copy ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte

... have allowed," returned the Minor Poet; "the gradient is somewhat steep. Just now, maybe, we are traversing a backward curve. I gain my faith by pausing now and then to look behind. I see the weary way with many a downward sweep. But we are climbing, my friend, we ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome

... vividness, often of impressive weight, of a lofty style, seeming to be the expression of a like personality, of a mastery of rhythm and metre and imaginative diction, of a profoundly Hellenic spirit modified by an unmistakable individuality, above all of a certain sweep and swiftness as of the flight of an eagle's wing—to say all this would be to suggest some of the most obvious features of these triumphal odes; and each of these qualities, and many more requiring exacter delineation, might be illustrated with ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar

... on his self-created throne, as legitimate cipher-kings think proper to do. But this Cinna had been elevated to power not by his will, but by pure accident; was there any wonder that he remained where the storm-wave of revolution had washed him up, till a second wave came to sweep ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... century. For the fundamental fact of early Victorian history was this: the decision of the middle classes to employ their new wealth in backing up a sort of aristocratical compromise, and not (like the middle class in the French Revolution) insisting on a clean sweep and a clear democratic programme. It went along with the decision of the aristocracy to recruit itself more freely from the middle class. It was then also that Victorian "prudery" began: the great lords yielded on this as on Free Trade. These two decisions ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... art, a fragment on the exercise of young Russians, an elaborate plan of studies for a proposed Russian University,—no less panurgic and less encyclopaedic a critic than Diderot himself could undertake to sweep with ever so light a wing over this vast area. Everybody can find something to say about the collection of tales, in which Diderot thought that he was satirising the manners of his time, after the fashion of Rabelais, Montaigne, La Mothe-le-Vayer, and Swift. But not everybody ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... the Past, thousands of ages ago," went on the Voice—"the world we call the Sorrowful Star was a perfect note in a perfect scale. It was in tune with the Divine Symphony. But with the sweep of centuries it has lagged behind; it has fallen from Light into Shadow. And rather than rise to Light again, it has made of itself a discord opposed to the eternal Harmony. It has chosen for its keynote Hate,—not ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... Sweep a drag-net across the pages of contemporary drama, and it is unquestionable that in her heyday no name on the list stood out, in respect of adventure and romance, with greater prominence than did that of Lola Montez. Everything she did (or was credited with ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... Just where these boxes of eggs are I do not know. The Chinaman has spirited them off to some place where they will not freeze. He cannot understand all this ranking out of quarters, particularly after he had put the house in perfect order. When I told him to sweep the rooms after everything had been carried out, he said: "What for? You cleanee house nuff for him; he no care," and off he went. I am inclined to think that the little man was ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe

... song, as we sweep along In pathless realms afloat, Rings on the air and trembles there, From out ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

... science has increased the need for world peace and international co-operation because the territories of all nations are now subject to swift and terrible invasion by modern instruments of destruction, while the future submarine may sweep commerce from ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... Sabbath-breaking, gambling, intemperance and licentiousness. These must be fought all the time, like the great plagues that attack the body, tuberculosis, leprosy and small pox. The gospel will save any one from all of them; and some day it will sweep them from the earth, as they ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger

... many things that life is very great. It is incomparably great in its material aspects, in its body of wealth, in the diversity and sweep of its energy, in the industries which have been conceived and built up by the genius of individual men and the limitless enterprise of groups of men. It is great, also, very great, in its moral force. Nowhere else in the world have noble men and women exhibited in more striking ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various

... hear her pounding along, but we didn't see her good till she was close. She aimed right for us. Often they do that and try to see how close they can come without touching; sometimes the wheel bites off a sweep, and then the pilot sticks his head out and laughs, and thinks he's mighty smart. Well, here she comes, and we said she was going to try and shave us; but she didn't seem to be sheering off a bit. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... levee day, no business was transacted. The king's gait in retiring was intended to be very majestic, but did not succeed in conveying to me that impression. It was the traditional walk of his race, founded on the step of the lion; but the outward sweep of the legs, intended to represent the stride of the noble beast, appeared to me only to realise a very ludicrous kind of waddle, which made me ask Bombay if anything serious was the matter with the ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... over, it was his turn to sweep up. But there was almost a struggle for the broom and the privilege of saving him that trouble. It comforted him and restored him; it would have been even better but for the presence of Slade, sitting aloft in his bunk, smiling over his pipe with ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon

... to say what happened with still worse conductors than water, as oil, or oil of turpentine; the fluid itself was then spun out into threads and carried off, not only because the air rushing over its surface helped to sweep it away, but also because its insulating particles assumed the same charged state as the particles of air, and, not being able to discharge to them in a much greater decree than the air particles themselves ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday

... tower, 300 feet high, and a landmark all over the surrounding fen-lands and even out at sea. It seems strangely slight when one is standing within the tower and notices that no floor breaks the great sweep of walls for a great height. The large perpendicular windows also help to give an impression of frailty. The foundation stone, however, was laid as long ago as 1309, and the structure is not ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home

... Maria alluded to the reflections, that had haunted her during the night to the exclusion of sleep. She spoke with energy of Jemima's unmerited sufferings, and of the fate of a number of deserted females, placed within the sweep of a whirlwind, from which it was next to impossible to escape. Perceiving the effect her conversation produced on the countenance of her guard, she grasped the arm of Jemima with that irresistible warmth which defies repulse, exclaiming—"With your heart, and such dreadful experience, can you ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft

... her and Grace not to come further, lest the seas, which occasionally washed up, might sweep them away. Oliver, however, clambered ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... wounded in face, arms, and legs, yet still his heavy sword swept right and left, still men fell before his vigorous blows. His horse, mortally wounded, sank under him, dragging him down. In an instant he was up again, laying about him shrewdly. Two Spaniards who pressed him closely fell before the sweep of that great blade. Alone among his foes he fought on, a crowd of hostile soldiers around him. Who he was they knew not, but his size, strength, and courage, the golden lilies which studded his coat of mail, the plume of costly feathers which waved from his helmet, told them that this ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris

... glared at the board. Then with one sweep he threw all the chessmen on the floor. As Tillie said later, it would be a pity to spoil two houses with Mr. von Inwald and Mr. Jennings If they were in the same family, they could work ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... Dolon, with a fearful look: (Still, as he spoke, his limbs with horror shook:) "Hither I came, by Hector's words deceived; Much did he promise, rashly I believed: No less a bribe than great Achilles' car, And those swift steeds that sweep the ranks of war, Urged me, unwilling, this attempt to make; To learn what counsels, what resolves you take: If now subdued, you fix your hopes on flight, And, tired with toils, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... forces of madness; I have shown you that I make allowance for them. But they are only dangerous so long as privilege allies itself with hypocrisy. The task of the modern civiliser is to sweep away sham idealisms.' ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... lieutenant standing with his face to the wall playing pat- a-cake with it. Gave him three-parts of a tumbler of brandy. Said he felt better and went upstairs. Arrived in his bed-room, he looked about him carefully, and then, with a superb sweep of his left arm, swept the best Chippendale looking-glass in the family off the dressing table and dived face down-wards to the floor, missing death and the corner of the chest of drawers by ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs

... as I rode on. Now I felt as a sheep being led to the slaughter; now as an adventurer on a quest; and, again, of a sudden there would sweep over me a great anxiety as to His Majesty's safety. The thought of Dolly, too, came upon me continually and affected me now in this way, now in that. Now I longed to be free and safe back at Hare Street; now I knew that I could never look her in the face again ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson

... expence of their understanding; for, unless there be a ballast of understanding, they will never become either virtuous or free: an aristocracy, founded on property, or sterling talents, will ever sweep before it, the alternately timid and ferocious ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]

... ought to. I may never see him again. At any rate, I may never have another chance. He may have meant something else. He may not have been serious...." The skin of her face prickled, and a physical wave of emotion seemed to sweep downwards through her whole body. The thrill was ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... that the Frenchmen had, unconsciously, offended against some of their superstitious rites. Certainly they had not knowingly been provoked. They had peacefully bartered their fruits and nuts for beads, and had been treated in a friendly fashion throughout. But the currents of passion that sweep through the minds of savage peoples baffle analysis. Something had disturbed them; what it was can hardly be surmised. One of the officers believed that the gift of some beads to a few, excited the envy of the others. It may be so; mere envy plays such a large part in the affairs even ...
— Laperouse • Ernest Scott

... its profile, rather carefully drawn at the top, to show the tulip and turkscap lily leaves. Underneath there is a plate of iron beaten into broad thin leaves, which gives the centre of the balcony a gradual sweep outwards, like the side of a ship of war. The central profile is of the greatest importance in ironwork, as the flow of it affects the curves of the whole design, not merely in surface, as in marble carving, but ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

... had foreseen the anger of the Slav nation at its sovereign's timorous scruples, and looked forward to revolutionary outbreaks which would cripple the Government for years to come and make it unable to think of war, if indeed they did not sweep the Romanoffs from the throne. I would answer that this Machiavellian scheme could never have entered the head of such a ruler as William II, with his deep sense of monarchial solidarity, and his instinctive horror of anarchist outrages ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various

... directly to the Dunker Church. [Footnote: Id., p. 505.] The two brigades with thinned ranks barely filled this space, and Crawford's division connected with them as well as it could. Batteries came forward on Greene's left and right, and helped to sweep the grove around the church. Hill attempted to hold him back, and a bold dash was made at Greene, probably by Hill's left brigades which were ordered forward to support Hood. Greene's men lay on the ground just under the ridge above the burning house till the enemy were within a few rods of them, ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... But for the ordinary frequenters of a winter resort the chief attractions of the place will naturally lie in the warmth and shelter of San Remo itself. Protected as it is on every side but that of the sea, it is free from the dreaded mistral of Cannes and from the sharp frost winds that sweep down the torrent-bed of Nizza. In the earlier part of the first winter I spent there the snow, which lay thick in the streets of Genoa and beneath even the palms of Bordighera, only whitened the distant hilltops at San Remo. Christmas brought at last a real snowfall, but every trace of it ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... looked her sorrow at this, and Mr. Van Brunt whistled his thoughts; but that either made nothing, or made Miss Fortune more determined. Off she went with her old mother under her arm. While she was gone Ellen brought the broom to sweep up the hearth, but Mr. Van ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner

... me with a tendency to break in scale-sounding, and with a nasal or catarrhal color to all his tones above E. I found attached above and back of the soft palate a mass as large as a hickory nut and completely blocking up the dome of the pharynx. A little cocaine was applied, and with a single sweep of the curette he was minus an adenoid on the third tonsil, a tonsil of Luscha. Within ten days his ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller

... new-tried rein, Still fiercest in the weakest thing of all, Which sophism is—for absolute will alone, When left to its motions in perverted minds, Is worse than null for strength! Behold and see, Unless my words persuade thee, what a blast And whirlwind of inevitable woe Must sweep persuasion through thee! For at first The Father will split up this jut of rock With the great thunder and the bolted flame, And hide thy body where the hinge of stone Shall catch it like an arm! and when thou hast passed A long ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... have been better for me, at all events. Oh, how pleasant 't would have been to spend my life wandering in the woods, smelling the pines and the hemlock all day, and fresh things of all kinds, and no kitchen work to do,—not to rake up the fire, nor sweep the room, nor make the beds,—but to sleep on fresh boughs in a wigwam, with the leaves still on the branches that made the roof! And then to see the deer brought in by the red hunter, and the blood streaming from the arrow-dart! ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... not of humour, of a shrewdness which was akin to it, and expressed itself in many pithy sayings. "If two angels came down from heaven to execute a divine command, and one was appointed to conduct an empire and the other to sweep a street in it, they would feel no inclination to change employments." "A Christian should never plead spirituality for being a sloven; if he be but a shoe-cleaner, he should be the best in the parish." "My principal method for defeating heresy is by establishing ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith

... Ciceronian Latin. Shake not thy head—'tis a compliment to myself, not to thee. What if thou art sometimes more exact than elegant—fancy what a coil of Hebrew cobwebs I had to sweep out of that brain-pan of thine ere I transformed thee ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... overthrown? and shall I not Master this little mansion of myself? Give me an armour of eternal steel; I go to conquer kings. And shall I then Subdue myself, and be my enemy's friend? It must not be.—Come, boy, forward, advance! Let's with our colours sweep ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... leader born to the great Cause. It would need new leaders. She herself was conscious of a side drift to the great current, that threatened to leave her in a backwater. Or, as she put it to herself, that threatened to sweep over the banks of righteousness and decorum, and inundate, ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... but them. At this point, although we had now travelled a long way from Martinville, I turned my head and caught sight of them again, quite black this time, for the sun had meanwhile set. Every few minutes a turn in the road would sweep them out of sight; then they shewed themselves for the last time, and so I saw ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... Friend, with thy great eye, round like the hole through which the oarsman passes his sweep, you have the air of a galley doubling a cape ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... the sweep of the conductor's baton, with the rise and surge of one of the greatest of the symphonies, ran the triumphant words of the singer of old time: "Thou hast set my feet in a ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond

... arrow, that not only pierces, but inflames,—a dull knife, that not only cuts, but tears,—a cowardly little cur, that snaps occasionally, but snarls unceasingly; whom, which, and that, it becomes the duty of all good citizens to sweep from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... huts or working in factories and mines; the cries of the old and the children, wounded by bombs from Zeppelins; the wails of the mothers for their sons; the very rustling of the air as the souls of the ten million dead sweep to another world,—why must all these horrors come upon a fair green earth, where we believed that love and help and friendship, genius and science and commerce, religion ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard

... lies athwart, and when you set your foot down, it sinks into the decaying substance,—into the heart of oak or pine. The leafy boughs and twigs of the underbrush enlace themselves before you, so that you must stoop your head to pass under, or thrust yourself through amain, while they sweep against your face, and perhaps knock off your hat. There are rocks mossy and slippery; sometimes you stagger, with a great rustling of branches, against a clump of bushes, and into the midst of it. From end to end of all this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various

... that," he said, laying a hand on the excited man's arm. "Remember, that Wales would never dare breathe a word of it; Carmen has no reputation or standing whatsoever now in this city; and Ames would make out a case of blackmail against you so quickly that it would sweep you right into the Tombs. Go easy. And first, let us get the girl herself ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... Four Winds, the Wrestlers, strive with the Sun, When the Sun is slain in the dark; When the stars burn out, and the night cries To the blind sea-reapers, and they rise, And the water-ways are stark— God save us when the reapers reap! When the ships sweep in with the tide to the shore, And the little white boats return no more; When the reapers reap, Lord, give Thy sailors sleep, If Thou cast us not upon the shore, To bless Thee evermore To walk in Thy sight as heretofore, Though the way of the Lord ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... table to Fortune, or enshrine Mammon above her altars, if her commerce become dishonest, and her press debased, and her society frivolous, and her religion a mere twilight of wilful and self-induced delusion—she in her turn shall fall like Lucifer, son of the morning, and the double oceans which sweep her illimitable shores shall only plash to future empires a more sad, a more desolate, and a more ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various

... definitely to sweep away the last obstacle in the path of the conspirators. The office of acting governor now devolved upon the secretary of the Territory, Daniel Woodson, a man who shared their views and was allied to their schemes. With him ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... all the house. Ventilation is, indeed, the first and most important method of disinfection. Chloride of lime and other disinfecting fluids will decompose the offensive and noxious odours, but pure air will sweep the organisms of disease themselves away. Fresh air kills the microbes of certain diseases, e.g., consumption, and is hostile to all disease. The stools of typhoid patients should be disinfected, and great care taken that no water or other fluid is contaminated ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk

... was an old woman went up in a basket, Seventy times as high as the moon; What she did there I could not but ask it, For in her hand she carried a broom. "Old woman, old woman, old woman," said I, "Whither, oh whither, oh whither so high?" "Only to sweep the cobwebs off the sky, And I shall be back again by ...
— Traditional Nursery Songs of England - With Pictures by Eminent Modern Artists • Various

... Several business men seemed to have eaten there—careless men, their minds perhaps on business while they ate. A moody waiter took his order, feebly affecting to efface all stains from the tablecloth by one magic sweep of an ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson

... to the gods, the clothes of the patient are carefully weighed; a procession is then formed in which one of the sorcerers holds a mirror directed backwards, others, wearing scarlet aprons, carry brooms and with slow and mystic movements sweep widely on either side with the intent of gathering up the wandering soul. Meanwhile crackers are fired to the weird sound of a minor, falsetto lilting. After a considerable journey over the countryside they return to prove ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable

... feature never yet made a lovely face. This lawn feature is beautified and magnified by keeping it open from shrub border to shrub border, saving it, above all things, from the gaudy barbarism of pattern-bedding; and by giving it swing and sweep of graceful contours. And lastly, all ground lines of the house are clothed with shrubberies whose deciduous growths are companioned with broad-leafed evergreens and varied conifers, in whatever proportions will secure the best midwinter effects without such abatement ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable

... encouraged as a matter of duty. The results of this international charity have not justified the effort nor repaid the generosity to which it appealed. In the first place, no effort was made to prevent the recurrence of the disaster; in the second place, philanthropy of this type attempts to sweep back the tide of miseries created by unrestricted propagation, with the feeble broom of sentiment. As one of the most observant and impartial of authorities on the Far East, J. O. P. Bland, has pointed out: "So long as China maintains a birth-rate that is estimated at fifty-five per ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger

... Brock—emphasizing his parting words with a gesture of his hand—"why, Detroit taken, I shall return here, batter Fort Niagara—providing Prevost consents—and then by a sudden movement I could sweep the frontier from Buffalo to Fort Niagara and complete the salvation of Canada by the occupation of Sackett's Harbor. Good-night, gentlemen. ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey

... silk dress, and had tied the gay bow round her baby's frock, who was quite old enough to be astonished and charmed by the unusual finery in which he was apparelled. Then she sat herself at the window of a bedroom which looked out on to the gravel sweep, with her boy on her lap, and there she was determined to wait ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope

... a careful mark on the setting circle, Jason turned the receiving antenna through one hundred eighty degrees of arc. As the ship kept to its circle, he made a slow collecting sweep of any signals beamed at the city. They were halfway around before he got a ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison

... had finished her bread they gave her a broom and told her to sweep away the snow from the back door. As soon as she left the room to do so, the three little men consulted what they should give her as a reward for being so sweet and good, and for sharing ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various

... which had been changed, for a moment, by the despatches of October the 22nd. And though small checks and stops, like Logan's pretended embassy, may be thrown in the way, from time to time, and may a little retard its motion, yet the tide is already turned and will sweep before it all the feeble obstacles of art. The unquestionable republicanism of the American mind will break through the mist under which it has been clouded, and will oblige its agents to reform the principles and ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... masonry, the boys could see it spread below the barrier, half as high as the dam itself. It would sweep the narrow valley clean of every small structure and of every living thing that could not ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson

... first Tom is a real boy, a little grimy, ignorant chimney sweep, next a water baby or eft, in which character, under the tutelage of the fairies, he gains his education. Briefly at the end he is a man, an engineer, but all that is delightfully vague, for he has ceased to be the little Tom ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... meat is over, clear the table: 1. cover the salt, 2. have a tray by you to carry things off on, 3. put the trenchers, &c., in one Voider, 4. sweep the crumbs into another, 5. set a clean trencher before every one, 6. put on Cheese, Fruit, Biscuits, and 7. serve ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various

... be more s'prised," ventured Katy after a few moments, as the trio watched Mrs. Morton sweep down the front walk to the gate, the shimmering folds of her gray silk ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie

... with a sweep of his left hand, and standing upon the bottom shelf of the case, craned forward into the room, looking all about him. A purple shaded lamp burnt above the bed as in the adjoining apartment which he himself had occupied. There were dainty feminine trifles littered in the big armchair, and ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer

... he had not yet thought of demanding an explanation. Nastasia, who had to cook and clean for the whole house, was not sorry to see the lodger in this state of mind, as it diminished her labors: she had quite given up tidying and dusting his room; the utmost she did was to come and sweep it once a week. She it was who was arousing him at ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various

... dexterously availed herself of this state of affairs to obtain his assent to her great project, which, it would appear, might not only amuse him, but, in its unprecedented magnificence and novelty, must sweep away all discontents, and ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... these the blind bard sang, because song was his nature—was within, and must out—not bound by laws, or measured by pedantic rules, but free, unfettered, and spontaneous as the billows, which in its wild and many-cadenced sweep it most resembles." ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... thrusts presumptuously forward, amidst the calmness of the universe, the confusion of its own petty interests and groveling imaginations, and stands up with the insolence of a moment, amid the majesty of all time, to build baby fortifications upon the bones of the world, or to sweep the copse from the corrie, and the shadow from the shore, that fools may risk, and gamblers gather, the ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin

... and indulge in merry gambols up and down the trunks of the trees, skipping from bough to bough, and frolicking over the hard crisp snow, which scarcely showed on its surface the delicate print of their tiny feet, and the sweep of their fine light feathery tails. Sometimes they met with some little shrewmice, running on the snow. These very tiny things are so small, they hardly look bigger than a large black beetle; they lived on the seeds of the tall weeds, which they, might be seen climbing and clinging to, ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill

... you this!" exclaimed my wife. "He was a great deal more than a spirit. He was a man engaged to be married at twelve o'clock this day. You may think there is no law that will sweep down on you, but I tell you there is; and before the clock strikes twelve you shall know it. Do you imagine you have come upon a people who will endure the presence of an ogre? a wretch, who reduces to nothing a fellow human being, and calls it an experiment? When we tell what you have done—my ...
— Amos Kilbright; His Adscititious Experiences • Frank R. Stockton

... the little chandler's shops which they passed. At the further end of the village, and tolerably disengaged from the rest of it, stood the parsonage, a new-built substantial stone house, with its semicircular sweep and green gates; and, as they drove up to the door, Henry, with the friends of his solitude, a large Newfoundland puppy and two or three terriers, was ready to receive and make ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... dazzled; he who hears the thunder is deafened." i.e., do not come too near the powerful; "Prevention is better than cure;" "Wine and good dinners make abundance of friends, but in adversity not one of them is to be found." "Let every man sweep the snow from before his own door, and not trouble himself about the frost on his neighbor's tiles." The following one is a gem of moral wisdom: "Only correct yourself on the same principle that you correct others, and excuse others on ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... if he's doing what I think he is...." Topham paused. When he continued he had changed the subject. "Last night Nye rode up from the Range. Said that Kitchell made a raid, almost a clean sweep. Among other stock he gathered up was ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton

... angry with the partner of his thoughtlessness, nor could he be entirely cold. Her beautiful eyes, her despairing attitude would haunt him he knew for many a day. She had ceased weeping and stood quietly awaiting his departure. Amherst felt all the force of a strong and novel passion sweep along his frame as he looked at her. Was she happy, was she a loved and loving wife? Somehow the conviction forced itself upon him that she was not. Yet he could not ask her, it must remain ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison

... construction of a railway across Asia. This railway had to be carried along the northern bank of the Amur where engineering and economic difficulties abound. Moreover, the river makes a huge semicircular sweep northward, and a railway following its northern bank to Vladivostok must make the same detour. If, on the contrary, the road could be carried south of the river along the diameter of the semicircle, it would be a straight, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... had the time of our lives. I rode my pony up the front stairs and tried to teach my father's high-stepping barouche-horses to jump—crashing their knees into the hurdles in the field—and climbed our incredibly dangerous roof, sitting on the sweep's ladder by moonlight in my nightgown. I had scrambled up every tree, walked on every wall and knew every turret at Glen. I ran along the narrow ledges of the slates in rubber shoes at terrific heights. This alarmed other people so much that my father sent ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith

... his responsibility caused him to sweep his eyes beyond the sight of the village to where their spaceship should be in its hangar, always ready for instant escape if anything should go wrong, real wrong, that is. This ship wasn't there. The hangar wasn't ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton

... cars and several locomotives, 35,000 bales of cotton, etc. etc. And Gen. Foster says the inhabitants (20,000) were "quiet, and well disposed." Most people believe Charleston will fall next, to be followed by a sweep of the entire sea-board; and grave men fear that the impetus thus given the invader cannot be ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... full of gardens and fountains and public places—which owed their independence to being too near a pair of rival states to be worth either's conquering. There were some score of these strewn over Southern Emilia and Romagna in those days, and the time was almost at hand, and with it the man, to sweep them all into one common net of wretchedness. But Amilcare had no clear thought of that. For the moment Nona was as peaceful as Forli, or Rimini, or Pesaro, or Faenza, thanks to him and his "Centaurs"—that famous band ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... would never have to sweep and dust and make beds, but would have plenty of servants to do these ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various

... opinion of the mob may be judged by his remarks on the 20th June, 1792, when, disgusted at seeing the King appear with the red cap on his head, he exclaimed, "Che coglione! Why have they let in all that rabble? Why don't they sweep off 400 or 500 of them with the cannon? The rest would then set off." ("Bourrienne," vol. i., p.13, Bentley, London, 1836.) Bonaparte carried out his own plan against a far stronger force of assailants on the Jour des ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... asked. 'And are you not above doing it cheap?' The prospect of having something to do, and some human creature to speak a word to, tempted me, and I did a day's dirty work in the book-seller's warehouse for a shilling. More work followed at the same rate. In a week I was promoted to sweep out the shop and put up the shutters. In no very long time after, I was trusted to carry the books out; and when quarter-day came, and the shop-man left, I took his place. Wonderful luck! you will ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... great stretch of unlovely sage and lava rock and sand for mile upon mile, to where the distant mountain ridges reached out and halted peremptorily the ugly sweep of it. The railroad gashed it boldly, after the manner of the iron trail of modern industry; but the trails of the desert dwellers wound through it diffidently, avoiding the rough crest of lava rock where ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower

... towards the East just then, for the rising sun, tearing with one gigantic sweep the banks of cloud asunder, now displayed his magnificence in a gorgeous immensity of flaming crimson. The sea, in response, turned to liquid fire beneath the glow, whilst the whole sky was irradiated with ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... without officers or orders—they scatter to the rear. The enemy kept close to our heels, just as we were rising one hill their batteries would be placed on the one behind, then grape and cannister would sweep the field. There were no thickets, no ravines, no fences to shield or protect us. Everything seemed to have been swept from off the face of the earth, with the exception of a lone farm house here and there. Every man ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... the West: Not one, but many nations with thee weep; Cherish thy martyr on thy wounded breast, And lay him with thy Washington to sleep. Earth holds no fitter sepulcher to keep His royal heart—one of thy kings to be Who reign even from the grave; whose scepters sweep More potent over human destiny Than all ambition's pride and ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various

... year was the most unsuitable that could have been selected for the voyage; for it was the rainy season, when the navigation to the south, impeded by contrary winds, is made doubly dangerous by the tempests that sweep over the coast. But this was not understood by the adventurers. After touching at the Isle of Pearls, the frequent resort of navigators, at a few leagues' distance from Panama, Pizarro held his way across the Gulf of St. Michael, and steered almost due south for the ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott

... down, so his feelings mayn't be hurt. He sometimes remarks on our being the "cleanis' gentlemun in de wueld," but we contrive that no whisper of the real state of the case ever reaches his ear, and he is allowed to sweep and dust a little to ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various

... and weaponless. The Subaltern looked at them curiously. They struck him as on the whole taller than the English, and their faces were not brown, but grey. He admired their coats, there was a martial air in the long sweep of them. And he confessed that one looked far more of a soldier in a helmet. There is a ferocity about the things, a grimness well suited to a soldier.... Not ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"

... often fresh and cool; but the middle of the day is almost always hot, and from March to November the temperature at noon ranges from 90 deg. to 100 deg. of Fahrenheit. Occasionally it reaches 125 deg., and is then fearfully oppressive. Fierce gusts laden with sand sweep over the plain, causing vegetation to droop or disappear, and the animal world to hide itself. Man with difficulty retains life at these trying times, feeling a languor and a depression of spirits which are barely supportable.10 All who can do so quit the plains and betake ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson

... keen-sighted Indians were not slow in recognizing his superiority of rank, and all considered him invested with supernatural powers. Often, when it rained as they were wishing to go hunting, they would entreat him to sweep away the clouds. His invariable reply was, pointing to the skies, "The Great Spirit there controls all things. I have no such ability." They stood in awe of his spiritual power, and their good feelings were won by his invariable serenity and kindness. They contributed beaver skins, to the ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott

... All you have to do is wash windows, and sweep de sidewalk, and scrub off de steps and porch and hoe up de weeds and rake up de leaves and dig a few holes now and then with a spade—to plant some trees and things like that. ...
— De Turkey and De Law - A Comedy in Three Acts • Zora Neale Hurston

... fighting burning strong in his eyes, watched them sweep nearer and nearer, splendid examples of their type and seeming to be a part of their mounts. Then two shots rang out in quick succession and a cloud of pungent smoke arose lazily from the edge of the arroyo as the warriors fell from their ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford

... to make up the beds, and wash the dishes; but because she was in a hurry she could not work quickly, and when she took the broom to sweep the floor it was almost time for the dwarfs to ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe

... sound through the tale, we find it in Flea, beer, scream, creak, weeps, sweep, reason, heap, Tree, leaves, and Streamlet. This repetition of the one sound puts music into the tale and creates a center of the harmony of sound. But if we examine the next part of the tale we find a variety of sounds of o ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready

... began to praise the tooth-powder and cure for toothache he had invented. Next he passed to the head, and described in vivid colors, its various pains. But they too were to be cured, people need only buy his arcanum. It was to be had for a trifle, and whoever bought it could sweep away every headache, even the worst, as with ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... have not yet caught thee and scalded thee with oil, or burned thee in quicklime?" jeered the boy, as he watched a coolie sweep out ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie

... succeed in pushing non-co-operation to the extreme limit, I do compel the Government to choose between India and the usurpation. I have faith enough in England to know that at that moment England will expel her present jaded ministers and put in others who will make a clean sweep of the terms in consultation with an awakened India, draft terms that will be honourable to her, to Turkey and acceptable to India. But I hear my critics say "India has not the strength of purpose and the capacity for the sacrifice to achieve such a noble end. They are partly ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi

... filled with dreadful apprehensions, I passed out on to the carriage sweep. Sir Lionel was ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... of there, you dog!" cried his father, and with one sweep of his powerful arm, half dragged, half hurled him from the chair. He fell on the floor, and in weakness mixed with cowardice lay where he fell. The devil—I am sorry to have to refer to the person so often, but ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... year by year, As time progresses with resistless sweep, Sever'd from life, the patriots disappear, Who bore St George's standards ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... prisoner had been committed to a cell so damp, as the witnesses described it, that they could sweep the water from the wall like dew from the grass. A feather-bed happened by some odd accident to be in the place, and the prisoner tore it up, and, for warmth, buried himself in the contents. Being covered with cutaneous sores, the feathers stuck to him, as if he had been subject ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various

... had been hauled high up on land, because at high tide the sea would sweep the beach. Several sailors, sheltered behind the curved bottoms of their boats, were watching this battle of the ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... run on errands, to sweep the rooms, the courtyard, the street, to wash the dishes, to even carry burdens. The Thenardiers considered themselves all the more authorized to behave in this manner, since the mother, who was still at M. sur M., had ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... a little over 40,000 men, as brave as ever shouldered muskets, fighting on their own soil, and, as they believed, for homes and liberty, resting for the night at about two miles from the invading army, and all prepared to attack at dawn, and sweep the invaders of their country back into the Tennessee river. Upon the favoring breeze, the sound of our drums at evening parade came floating to their ears. They heard the bugle note enjoying quiet and repose in the camp of their unsuspecting foe. They, themselves, were crouching in the thick ...
— "Shiloh" as Seen by a Private Soldier - With Some Personal Reminiscences • Warren Olney

... "There wouldn't be much to say, would there? But she won't come back; I know that. Even if she leaves him she won't. Rhoda's horribly proud really, you know. She'd sooner sweep a crossing, or trim hats or something, than come near us again. I don't know what to hope about it. I suppose one must hope they'll go on together, as Rhoda seems to like him as he is; but it's an awful thought.... She's right that we never understood each other. I couldn't, ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay

... my dear," remarked Mrs Latrobe, sipping her tea, "'twould be better if you said Madam.—Why, Phoebe, what old-fashioned china! Sure it cannot have been new these forty years. I shall sweep away all that rubbish.—Whom are you going to marry? Is he well off?—Phoebe, those shoe-buckles of yours are quite shabby. I cannot have you wear such trumpery. You must remember what is due to ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt

... to the ground by wriggling little insects climbing cheerfully out of their winter quarters and hopping about in a vain search for something green to live upon. Often, in sheer desperation, the harassed settler would sweep the hatching brood into the fire, remarking as he did so, "Burnin's too good for such pests," and always fear gripped the heart. If the crops in spring were eaten, other homes must be sought, and all knew that the weakened horses ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger



Words linked to "Sweep" :   running play, make clean, bridge, wipe, extend, American football game, sweeping, involve, grand slam, cover, little slam, win, embroil, range, scope, pass over, American football, continue, clean, sweep over, motility, manage, small slam, reach, running, sail, ambit, motion, handle, sweep under the rug, run, swan, movement, sweep oar, running game, wield, victory, move, triumph, cleaner, oar, rake, span, orbit, compass, drag in



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