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Sweeping   /swˈipɪŋ/   Listen
Sweeping

noun
1.
The act of cleaning with a broom.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Sweeping" Quotes from Famous Books



... suppliant. But now the scene has changed. The strength of the red man has become weakness. As his neighbors increased in numbers, his power became less and less, and now, of the many and powerful tribes who once covered the United States, only a few are to be seen—a few whom a sweeping pestilence had left. The northern tribes, who were once so numerous and powerful, are now nearly extinct. Thus it has happened to the red man of America. Shall we, who are ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... was hailed by the knowing ones aboard as Point Pinos (Pines Point), guardian of the harbor of Monterey. Gradually the steamer turned in; another harbor opened, with a cluster of white, red-roofed houses behind it, at the foot of the hills. Sweeping in past the pine-ridged point the California, with boom of gun, dropped anchor in ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin

... glide towards the anchorage two features attract my attention: the Morro or hill-ridge on the mainland, and the narrow strip which forms the harbour. The escarpment, sweeping from a meridian to a parallel, juts westward in the bluff Cape Lagostas (Lobsters), a many-coloured face, in places not unlike the white cliffs of Dover; it then trends from north-east to south-west, bending at last in a picturesque bow, with a ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... But no one who knew the two men could have doubted that in the shaping of a measure involving so wide a range of detail, the leading part must have been taken by the Irish Civil Servant who in India had acquired most of his fame from a sweeping measure of land reform. ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn

... bounds to what was said in the greenroom. One night I remember gathering up my skirts (we were, I think, playing "The Rivals" at the time), making a curtsey, as Mr. Chippendale, one of the best actors in old comedy I ever knew, had taught me, and sweeping out of the room with the famous line from another Sheridan play: "Ladies and gentlemen, I ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... a perfect base for the Grand Fleet, because it was well placed to watch the way out of the North Sea through the two-hundred-mile gap between Norway and the Shetlands, and also because the tremendous tidal currents sweeping through it prevented submarines from sneaking about too close. Six hundred miles south-east was the German Fleet, near the North Sea end of the Kiel Canal. Between lay a hundred and twenty-five thousand square miles of water on which, taking one day with another the whole year round, you ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood

... is generally anchored to a boat and left to float with the tide; often results in an over harvesting and waste of large populations of non- commercial marine species (by-catch) by its effect of "sweeping the ocean clean." ecosystems - ecological units comprised of complex communities of organisms and their specific environments. effluents - waste materials, such as smoke, sewage, or industrial waste which are released into the environment, subsequently polluting it. endangered species - a species ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... a siesta of two hours, the heron has changed his place. I looked up just in season to see him sweeping over the grass, into which he dropped the next instant. The tide is falling. The distant sand-hills are winking in the heat, but the breeze is deliciously cool, the very perfection of temperature, if a man is to sit still in the shade. It is eleven o'clock. I have ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey

... of face always to be noted in the newly embarked and which, as directed to the receding land, resembles that of a person who begins to perceive himself the victim of a trick. Earth and ocean, in such glances, are made the subject of a sweeping objection, and many travellers, in the general plight, have an air at once duped and superior, which seems to say that they could easily ...
— Pandora • Henry James

... against the wall and a glass of whisky in front of him, sat a sufficiently strange specimen of humanity. He was a man of about fifty years, large boned and gaunt. Dressed in fringed buckskin trousers and a silver-laced Mexican sombrero, he affected the long hair, the sweeping mustache, and the ferocious aspect that are the custom of the pseudo-Westerners who do business in the East with fake medical remedies. Around his waist was a belt garnished with knives by the dozen. These were long and pointed, sharpened to a razor edge. One of them was in his ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine

... ate Sister Westhaven's egg! Grand row! Wardmaid clearly to blame! Inattention in such important matters cannot be too highly censured. Mop and pail again! How are the mighty fallen! Ninth month: Promoted to sweeping out wards, where I found a friend of my childhood in Lieutenant Thomas Beresford (bow, Tommy!), whom I had not seen for five long years. The meeting was affecting! Tenth month: Reproved by matron for visiting the pictures in company ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie

... fight from this time to the end was consequently above-decks. Jones abandoned any attempt at great gun fire, except by the three small pieces on the quarter-deck, drew practically his entire remaining crew from below to the upper deck and the tops, and devoted his attention to sweeping the decks of the enemy by the musketry of his French marines from the quarter and poop decks, and of the American sailors in the tops. The crew of the Serapis, on the other hand, were forced mainly to take refuge in their well-protected ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood

... frost-tints upon the leaves, I look through the bare branches of the trees better than I could in spring, summer and autumn, and lo, how beautiful are the stars that spangle the heavens and twinkle in the pale light of the moon, with maiden face sweeping through the heavens, veiled with fleecy clouds, like the bridesmaid of heaven, to direct our thoughts to the celestial city to meet the great Author of our creation. For the spirit came from God, and to God it must return, it being that part of ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes

... mentioned by Bertram, in 1764, and is still used. It is made by tying three hooks back to back, invested with a piece of deer's tail somewhat in the manner of a large hackle, studded with scarlet feathers, forming a tassel or tuft similar to that used on the trolling spoon. If this be thrown with a sweeping surface draw under trees or bushes, it ...
— Black Bass - Where to catch them in quantity within an hour's ride from New York • Charles Barker Bradford

... in encouragement and then ceased altogether. Gabriel leaned his ten trembling fingers on the tablecloth and smiled nervously at the company. Meeting a row of upturned faces he raised his eyes to the chandelier. The piano was playing a waltz tune and he could hear the skirts sweeping against the drawing-room door. People, perhaps, were standing in the snow on the quay outside, gazing up at the lighted windows and listening to the waltz music. The air was pure there. In the distance lay ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce

... was no little satisfaction to me. It was a fine sight to see the noble ship sweeping by, her white canvas looking whiter amid the dark clouds and the sheets of foam which surrounded her, as, pressed by the gale, she heeled over, till her lee guns dipped in the water as she plunged on through the heaving seas which she majestically cast aside in her course. I longed to be on board ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston

... said he; 'my wife had a particular reverence for cleanliness, and desired the praise of neatness in her dress and furniture, as many ladies do, till they become troublesome to their best friends, slaves to their own besoms, and only sigh for the hour of sweeping their husbands out of the house as dirt and useless lumber. A clean floor is so comfortable, she would say sometimes by way of twitting; till at last I told her that I thought we had had talk enough about the floor, we would now have a touch at the ceiling.' I asked him if he ever huffed ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... thought was to reach the hotel, which we did finally, sending the volante back to its owner by a sweeping wave of the hand in the direction of the quay, which the black Jehu ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone

... name, he said: "I have no name. I am the ape who came out of the stone." So the master said: "Then I will give you a name. I name you Sun Wu Kung." The Ape King thanked him, full of joy, and thereafter he was called Sun Wu Kung. The master ordered his oldest disciple to instruct Sun Wu Kung in sweeping and cleaning, in going in and out, in good manners, how to labor in the field and how to water the gardens. In the course of time he learned to write, to burn incense and read the sutras. And in this way some six or seven ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various

... the hillside sweeping, came the stately cavalcade, Bringing revel to vaquero, joy and ...
— California, Romantic and Resourceful • John F. Davis

... it was, it appeared as if a sort of black wall was sweeping along the water right towards us. The moaning gradually increased to a stunning roar, and then at once it broke upon us with a noise to which no thunder can bear a comparison. The oars were caught by the wind with such force that ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... this time the Romans were not content with driving them away, they came on with them; some of them even reached the gate before them. Up the marble steps poured friend and foe together; together they passed the open gate, in their mad rush sweeping away those who had stayed to guard it, and burst into the Court of Israel. Then leaving some to hold the gate and reinforced continually by fresh companies from the camps within and without the Temple ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard

... strong wind it had spread both ways, had caught everything in the north slope of the Capitol between it and Trajan's Forum: the silver-smiths' shops were all ablaze; to the south it had crept between the slope of the Capitol and the theatre of Marcellus and was sweeping over the booths of ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White

... February, in weather cold enough to seal the entrance with ice, and smother the bees. I assisted to remove the combs, and found young brood in abundance, from the perfect bee, through all stages of growth. This stock had been in the cold all winter. I have further noticed, when sweeping out the litter under the hives early in spring, say the first of March, that young bees would often be found under the best stocks. Hence it appears there is but little time, and perhaps none, when our best stocks have no broods. Yet stocks, when very weak, do not commence till warm ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby

... broke out that terrible cry; and we could now hear the sweeping of leaves, and the crackling of branches, as if some huge animal was tearing its way through the bushes. The birds flew up from the thicket, terrified and screaming—the horse neighed wildly—the dogs sent ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... arose in the soul of Samuel Block that this man might have fallen overboard and floated under the ice, but he was not allowed to entertain this pleasant thought. Mr. Marcy had seized a glass, and with it was sweeping the icy plain in ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton

... about sweeping out offices and going to work," Steve insisted. "If you want to break the hoodoo you have just brought on yourself by smashing up wedding cake—let me talk and act as ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley

... evidently a sense, larger than that one purely academic, in which her use of the word could claim its pertinence. The strong feeling that had seized her as she put the question was sweeping the ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins

... whole argument applicable to B and C; not as any debt that rested particularly upon him to public justice; but as a debt to the integrity of his own book. That book is now a fragment; admirable as regards A; but (by omitting B and C) not sweeping the whole area of the problem. There yet remains, therefore, the dissatisfaction which is always likely to arise— not from the smallest allegatio falsi, but from the large suppressio veri. B, which, on any other solution than the one I have proposed, is perfectly unintelligible, ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... all went out on to the broad balcony which opened from the drawing- room. There was a strong wind blowing that night, and I remember well the vague, disquieted feeling of unreality that possessed me,— sweeping through me, as it were, with each gust of wind. Then, suddenly, a servant stood behind me, saying that the lady had come for me, and was in the drawing-room. Shocked that my aunt should have troubled herself to come so far, I turned quickly, stepped back ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... force of Dyaks was, contrary to the assurance given to me, sweeping up the river, I had just finished a late dinner. I was angry enough, and resolved instanter to leave the house, when who should come in, as if by pure accident, but Pangeran Budrudeen, the rajah's ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... mean warmth is not coincident with the equator, but falls to the north of it. This line at 160 deg. W. Long, from Greenwich is 4 deg. below the geographical equator; at 80 deg. it is about 6 deg. north, sweeping along the coast of New Granada; at 20 deg. it comes down and touches the equator; at 40 deg. E. Long., it crosses the Red Sea about 16 deg. north of the equator, and at 120 deg. it falls at Borneo, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... paused and looked back at them. Brought from Verona generations ago, they were a perfect example of a perfect period. Richly decorative, various in design, light and flowing in form, the delicate curves broke into actual leafage, sweeping and free as nature's own. The Ffolliots were proud ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker

... do not be too sweeping in your denunciation of him. I know that Mr. Trenton showed the ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr

... change my figure of speech. You are sweeping back the waves of the sea while the tide is falling, and the wide-mouthed public looks on, and whispers about that your broom makes all the waves obey, and drives them back at will. Just when you begin to believe it yourself the tide may turn, and neither ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass

... as the boy stopped, a slight motion broke the even white surface that stretched away silent and lifeless on every side,—a motion so faint and natural that Noel's keen eyes, sweeping the plain and the edges of the distant woods, never noticed it. A vagrant wind, which had been wandering and moaning all morning as if lost, seemed to stir the snow and settle to rest again. But now, where ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long

... in the uttermost spirit-circles, wiped from his brow drops of perspiration which some dream had loosened from his brain. He felt the tide of psychic force beating upon the high shores of his heart. He was conscious of a constitutional change sweeping like a tempest over his protoplastic tissue. He felt that the secret fountains of his being were troubled by the angel of spirit-rapping, and that his gross, unbelieving nature stepped down, bathed, and was healed. The Moses of the spirit-wilderness ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay

... Neither in the figures—the magnificently classic yet living archangel Raphael and the more naive and realistic Tobias—nor in the rich landscape with St. John the Baptist praying is there anything left of the early Giorgionesque manner. In the sweeping breadth of the execution, the summarising power of the brush, the glow from within of the colour, we have so many evidences of a style in its fullest maturity. It will be safe, therefore, to place the picture well ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips

... proceeded along the bank. It ruffled its breast feathers, arched back its neck till the head rested between the erect wings, and drove through the water with a speed which shivered the pictures in it as a sweeping ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... and opened the French window on to the verandah. Already Beni-Mora was bathed in golden beams and full of gentle activities. A flock of goats pattered by towards the edge of the oasis. The Arab gardeners were lazily sweeping small leaves from the narrow paths under the mimosa and pepper trees. Soldiers in loose white suits, dark blue sashes and the fez, were hastening from the Fort towards the market. A distant bugle rang out ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... pleasantly mingled a certain motherly sympathy with an unconventional habit of manner and speech. There was an address or lecture during the evening by a middle-aged woman of great fluency, who rather astounded Claudia by the freest possible assumption, and by the most sweeping criticism of the established order of things as it affected women. The general conversation of the members seemed, however, no less frivolous, though much less restrained, than she had ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various

... sun broke out from behind the sweeping clouds, it flashed on a sword in his hand, and I concluded this must be an English soldier placed there to keep the road inland against ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed

... I carry this consideration?" she laughed, with a sweeping motion to her narrow lingerie gown that could not so ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott

... lightning; but there is no friendly sail to which wrecked man may fly and be safe. His ship will founder in mid ocean, while not a single form appears to lend the helping hand, and not an eye is seen flowing with tears of pity; nothing is heard but the moan of ocean; nothing is seen but the sweeping surge, as it passes on, leaving no track of the ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy

... constructions of the Constitution. In his argument to Washington in favor of the Bank, Hamilton presented his famous theory of implied powers, while Jefferson contended that the Constitution should be strictly construed, and that the "sweeping clause"—"words subsidiary to limited powers"—should not be so construed as to give unlimited powers. Madison and Giles in the House presented notable arguments in support of the Jeffersonian view. For twenty years after 1791 our financial questions were ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various

... In the cold hut, as it is called—to the right of the outer room—two other women were still busily at work; they were carrying out all the rubbish, empty tubs, sheepskins stiff as boards, greasy pots, a cradle with a heap of dish-clouts and a baby covered with spots, and sweeping out the dirt with bathbrooms. Arkady Pavlitch sent them away, and installed himself on a bench under the holy pictures. The coachmen began bringing in the trunks, bags, and other conveniences, trying each time to subdue the noise of their ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev

... watch as she reached the bottom of the stairs. She had breakfasted early, and it still wanted a few minutes to ten o'clock. The lobby of the hotel was deserted, and through the glass doors leading to the breakfast-room she could see a few guests still at their morning meal. A porter was sweeping the front entrance, and of him she enquired the way to the police station, ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees

... speed of your thoroughbred steed, You may laugh with delight as you ride the ocean, You may rush afar in your touring car, Leaping, sweeping, by things that are creeping - But you never will know the joy of motion Till you rise up over the earth some day, And soar like an ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... these regiments were almost perfectly fresh, and of full strength, the Greys having been in reserve in the morning, and having lost but a small number of men in sweeping back that part of the attack which had proved successful in breaking the line of defence, on the occasion when I charged with them and was stunned for my pains. As for the Buffaloes, they had formed the third line of ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard

... the event will shew us what we were; For, like a blazing meteor hence he shot, And drew a sweeping fiery train along.— O Paris, Paris, once my seat of triumph, But now the scene of all thy king's misfortunes; Ungrateful, perjured, and disloyal town, Which by my royal presence I have warmed So long, that now the serpent hisses out, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... the west-wind, Blowing stronger, growing cooler, Bringing in protecting fog-banks, Sweeping landward o'er gray waters, Flooding through the Golden Gateway, Rolling over ...
— The Legends of San Francisco • George W. Caldwell

... quickly opened another door which led into a shabby living room at the front of the building. Standing just within this room, Alora glanced around with the first real sensation of suspicion she had yet experienced. Janet raised her lids for a sweeping view of the girl's face and then with a light laugh began to remove her own cloak and cap, which she hung in ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum

... recruiting itself from the intermediate ranks, till there be none left to enlist on either side. Those Dandiacal Manicheans, with the host of Dandyising Christians, will form one body: the Drudges, gathering round them whosoever is Drudgical, be he Christian or Infidel Pagan; sweeping-up likewise all manner of Utilitarians, Radicals, refractory Potwallopers, and so forth, into their general mass, will form another. I could liken Dandyism and Drudgism to two bottomless boiling Whirlpools that had broken-out on opposite quarters of the firm land: as yet they appear only disquieted, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... trunks of cocoa-nut trees, and in that direction it was resolved that they should tow the raft. The breakfast had been served out, and the men had taken to the oars, when they discovered a proa, full of men, sweeping after them from one of the islands to windward. That it was a pirate vessel there could be no doubt; but Philip and Krantz considered that their force was more than sufficient to repel them, should an attack be made. ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat

... six or seven hundred tons burthen, standing high out of water, in ballast trim, with a black hull, bright waist, and wales painted white. Her bows flare very much, and are sharp and symmetrical; the cut-water stretches, with a graceful curve, far out beyond them toward the long sweeping martingal, and is surmounted by a gilt scroll, or, as the sailors call it, a fiddle-head. The black stern is ornamented by a group of white figures in bas relief, which give a lively air to the otherwise sombre and vacant expression, and beneath the cabin-windows ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... air. It isn't exactly either flying or floating or running—it's more like shooting. I get to the tops of mountains, and see the wonderfullest places. And another night I was riding on the waves. There was a great storm, and I came sweeping in with the tide into the bay. I wish I ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... brass tablet that commemorate the battle of Long Island. At these historic points for half an hour they made a stand against a Bavarian regiment that advanced slowly under cover of artillery fire, not realising that they were sweeping to death a ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett

... his coat collar up over his unshaved neck, he departed for the mission across the street, where one of his derelicts, in his shirtsleeves, was sweeping the pavement. There, mindful of the fact that he had come from the contagious pavilion, the minister brushed his shabby smoking-coat with a ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... clouds, the wind blowing freshly, and the mists sweeping past, obscuring every object below. In this wind lay our hope, and scarcely less in the mists, for they might be the means of dispersing the haze. There went a rift, a patch of blue sky—and there a bit of green mountain! ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... unparalleled to the present time. This has made his name familiar all over Christendom, and honored among the world's benefactors. Never, before him, did a farm-stead become such a centre and have such a wide-sweeping radius as his. None ever possessed such centripetal attractions, or exerted such centrifugal influences for the material well-being of different and distant countries. Indeed, those most remote are most specially indebted to his large and generous ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt

... temples Thor and Odin Lay in dust and ashes trodden, As King Olaf, onward sweeping, Preached the Gospel with ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... is dry, he goes to work to brush his head with two hard brushes at once, to that unmerciful degree that Phil, shouldering his way round the gallery in the act of sweeping it, winks with sympathy. This chafing over, the ornamental part of Mr. George's toilet is soon performed. He fills his pipe, lights it, and marches up and down smoking, as his custom is, while Phil, raising ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... recovery of his voice, his fear lest "1000 out of the 2000 won't hear" was very near realisation. The Sheldonian Theatre was thronged before he appeared on the platform, a striking presence in his D.C.L. robes, and looking very leonine with his silvery gray hair sweeping back in one long wave from his forehead, and the rugged squareness of his features tempered by the benignity of an old age which has seen much and overcome much. He read the lecture from a printed copy, not venturing, as he would have liked, upon the severe task of speaking it from memory, considering ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley

... with a width of shoulder rarely seen in an Arab, standing well over six foot, in spotless white robes sweeping to his feet, a cloak of finest black cloth falling over all in swinging folds, failing, however, to hide that look of tremendous strength which impresses one so in some of the long-limbed, lean, muscular inhabitants ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest

... subordinate to this—even the instructor's mastery of the language. No doubt, in theory it would be most desirable that German be the exclusive language of instruction throughout; but in literary courses practical considerations will so often speak against this, that no sweeping answer to this question seems possible. For the chief aim must not be overshadowed by any other. If poor preparation on the part of the students or a deficient command of the language on the part ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... contact of saloons and smoking rooms. It was Sunday night and the ship's concert had ended, but there were many hundreds up and moving among the gay lights, and many on deck with their eyes strained toward the mysterious west, where home lay. And in one jarring, breath-sweeping moment all of these, asleep or awake, were at the mercy of chance. Few among the more than 2000 aboard could have had a thought of danger. The man who had stood up in the smoking room to say that the Titanic was vulnerable or that in a few minutes ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various

... marry you—never! Mr. Carruthers," I said, "unless I get into an old maid soon and no one else asks me! Then if you go on your knees I may put out the tip of my fingers, perhaps!" and I moved towards the door, making him a sweeping and polite courtesy. ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn

... and just within the entrance-gate of the vicarage drive, I happened on old Trewoon, who works at odd jobs under the gardener, and was just now busy with a besom, sweeping up the first fall of autumn leaves. Old Trewoon, I should tell you, is a Wesleyan, and a Radical of the sardonic sort; and, as a jobbing man, holds himself free to ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... everything that was of value locked safely away; a cook to stand behind her chair, once a day, to render the bazaar accounts; visits of inspection to the kitchen, an eagle eye kept on the dusting and sweeping, and the laundry-man's weekly wash duly checked; for Meredith's head bearer, who had assumed responsibilities in his master's bachelor days and was too valuable to be deprived of his office, continued to keep accounts ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi

... it in another room. Dust bric-a-brac and put on the bed if you are sweeping a sleeping room, if another room put them on the table, or in an adjoining room. Brush the draperies, take down and lay on the bed or table. Cover these and bric-a-brac with a sheet. Wet a newspaper, tear into small pieces and spread on the rug ...
— Things Mother Used To Make • Lydia Maria Gurney

... last, then, the Blessed Virgin was intervening in favour of those who despaired, forcing that unkind mother, Nature, to be just and charitable. This was divine omnipotence returning to reign on earth, sweeping the laws of the world aside in order to work the happiness of the suffering and the poor. The miracles multiplied, blazed forth, from day to day more and more extraordinary, like unimpeachable proof of Bernadette's veracity. And she was, indeed, the rose of the divine ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... unfamiliar name makes me love it. Perhaps I might have found a cruel-hearted lord to sell me for money, the sister of Hector; I might have had the burden of making bread, sweeping the house and weaving at the loom in a life of sorrow. A slave marriage would degrade me, once thought ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb

... a caller; and after that I—I could not go." The words were spoken almost in a whisper. Her trembling fingers were picking again at the short young grass; she was looking far away beyond the sweeping line of blue. One foot had slipped a little from under the protecting shelter of the blue skirt. He saw with a flush of anger that the shoe was very shabby. The skirt, too, showed unmistakable signs of wear. He controlled himself with ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright

... beheld four horsemen speeding along at a rapid gallop; they were armed, and conversing loudly—their oaths were heard jarringly and distinctly amidst all the more solemn and terrific sounds of the night. They came on, sweeping by the Student, whose hand was on his pistol, for he recognised in one of the riders the man who had escaped unwounded from Lester's house. He and his comrades were evidently, then, Houseman's desperate associates; and they too, though they ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... concierges sweeping the white footpaths; half-dressed merchants taking down their shutters with great noise; and groups of ostlers, in Scotch caps, smoking and fraternizing on ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet

... their forges Worked the red Saint George's Cannoneers; And the "villainous saltpetre" Rung a fierce, discordant metre Round their ears; As the swift Storm-drift, With hot sweeping anger, came the horseguards' clangor On our flanks. Then higher, higher, higher, burned the old-fashioned fire Through ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... which is not probable, his afternoon ride being merely a sort of reconnaissance. The journals of the Hotel de Ville still attest the anxiety of the court—of Catherine and her fellow-conspirator—that the massacre should be sweeping and complete. "Very late in the evening"—it must have been after dark, for the King went to lie down at eight, and did not rise until ten—the provost was sent for. At the Louvre he found Charles, the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... which there was a shelf for water-pails, tin wash-basins, and a towel on a clumsy roller. A slender woman, with harsh, sharp features, older-looking than her thirty years would have justified, and a stiff figure disguised by few attempts at adornment, was sweeping the veranda floor, and in chairs propped back against the weather-boarding sat an old man and an old woman in ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben

... has cracked off from the main body. I hear a song sparrow singing from the bushes on the shore—olit, olit, olit—chip, chip, chip, che char—che wiss, wiss, wiss. He too is helping to crack it. How handsome the great sweeping curves in the edge of the ice, answering somewhat to those of the shore, but more regular! It is unusually hard, owing to the recent severe but transient cold, and all watered or waved like a palace floor. But the wind slides eastward over ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... facts of the case to say "had been drained some time in the past," for this is now such an arid, semi-desert country that the majority of the streams are dry, or have but scattered pools of water in them, during a large portion of the year; and yet, at times, great volumes of water go sweeping through them. This whole plateau is cut up with long, canyoned valleys, presenting, in effect, the same surface features that we have already described in New Mexico. Yet this precipitous, canyon-marked section of country is literally filled with the crumbling ruins of a former people. The ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen

... palms grew high in Aves, and fruits that shone like gold, And the colibris and parrots they were gorgeous to behold; And the negro maids to Aves from bondage fast did flee, To welcome gallant sailors, a-sweeping in from sea. ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various

... loss of sight, and not quite dormant in the general mass of mankind. A faint gleam was soon perceptible, like the first blush of morning, apparently on the opposite side of the chamber. Becoming brighter, flashes of a dim, rainbow-coloured light crept slowly by, like the aurora sweeping over an illuminated cloud. Suddenly he saw, or his eyes deceived him, a female form shaping itself from these chaotic elements. But it was observed only during the short intervals when the beams seemed to kindle with unusual brightness. Every flash, however, rendered the appearance more distinct. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... beside their mothers, while on the slight mounds the great bulls moaned and muttered and pawed the dust. Towards nightfall the herds filed down in endless lines to drink at the river, walking at a quick, shuffling pace, with heads held low and beards almost sweeping the ground. When Pike reached the country the herds were going south from the Platte towards their wintering grounds below the Arkansas. At first he passed through nothing but droves of bulls. It was not until he was well towards ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt

... palpably ludicrous that the Gov.-General did not give it effect. He had sufficient common sense to foresee in its application the extinction of all European prestige and moral influence over the natives if Spanish and foreign gentlemen of good family were seen sweeping the streets, lighting the lamps, road-mending, guiding buffalo-carts loaded with stones, and so on. This measure, therefore, regarded by some as a practical joke, by others as the conception of a lunatic theorist—was withdrawn, or at least allowed ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... in my face; it was bitter cold too, though the thermometer was at 43 deg., but the wind was like that of an English December thaw. I got to the base of the aiguille, however, one of the most grand and sweeping bits of granite I have ever seen; a small gurgling streamlet, escaping from a fissure not wide enough to let in my hand, made a strange hollow ringing in the compact rock, and came welling out over its ledges with the sound, and successive ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... other groups), yet this must be said, for it is true. By experience and science the nations which by name are Christian have reached ways which are better fitted, on the whole, for well living than those of the Mohammedan nations, although this superiority is not by any means so complete and sweeping as current opinion in Christian countries believes. If Christians and Mohammedans come together and argue, they never make the slightest impression on each other. During the crusades, in Andalusia, and in cities of the near East where they live side by side, ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... events which the most far-seeing at the time could not possibly have imagined. I write simply as an observer, included, indeed, in the great movement, but not, strictly speaking, a working part of it. A time was coming, as we now know, when a flood of people was suddenly to overflow our city, sweeping onward to and over the mainland like a tidal wave from the great ocean of life; but whether it was by some fortunate chance decree of an overruling Providence, it did not come till the city was better than of old and prepared to deal ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett

... What is forgiveness? The sweeping aside of penalties? the shutting up of some more or less material hell? By no means: penalties are often left; when sins are crimes they are generally left; when sins are vices they are always left, thank God! But in so far as sin is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... definite conclusions. The outlines of their ideas are that one of the great waves of emigration which, in a remote age, emerged from the cradle of the human race in central Asia, made its way eastward with a constantly expanding front, and, sweeping up the Tarim basin, emerged in the region of the Yellow River and in Manchuria. These wanderers, being an agricultural, not a maritime, race, did not contribute much to the peopling of the oversea islands of Japan. But in a later—or an earlier—era, another exodus ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... the instincts of Connecticut—that peculiar development of men who have eked out existence on a rocky soil, banking their houses against grim Winter or grimmer savage foes. With this Yankee shrewdness went a subtle and sweeping imagination, and a fine appreciation of the excellent things that men have said and done. But he was never so foolish as to imitate the heroic—he, simply admired it from afar. He advised others to work their poetry up into life, but he did not do ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard

... been appreciated, immensely respected and admired, from the day that he published his first book; but his lack of reputation abroad is indicated by the remark of Mr. Baring in 1910, "the work of Gogol may be said to be totally unknown in England." This statement is altogether too sweeping, but it counts ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps

... what I was born with," answered Mistress Clorinda. "They came from him that begot me, and he has not since improved them. But now"—making a great sweeping curtsey, her impudent bright beauty almost dazzling his eyes—"now, after my birth-night, they will be bettered; but this one night I ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... individual houseworker, who is wont to scrub, sweep and dust in the intervals between marketing, cooking, laundry-work or sewing, and by whom it is performed well or ill, but always according to the standards of the individual household, which means that there are no accepted standards in sweeping, scrubbing and dusting. House-cleaning is becoming a specialized, skilled trade, performed by the visiting expert and his staff of professionally trained employes. Even if as yet these skilled and paid workers enter an ordinary home only at long intervals, when ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry

... of them thoughtlessly throws away a lighted cigarette, which falls upon some dry pine needles. In a few moments the pine needles are ablaze. The fire spreads with incredible rapidity and a great column of smoke rises above the treetops. Before any one can reach it, the fire is sweeping up the mountain side, and it may not be stopped before it has destroyed thousands of acres of valuable timber. All this terrible loss is due to one careless man who, in the first place, should not have been ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks

... charge 780 Had sate too deeply were he left at large? The general rumour ignorantly loud, The mystery dearest to the curious crowd; The seeming friendliness of him who strove To win no confidence, and wake no love; The sweeping fierceness which his soul betrayed, The skill with which he wielded his keen blade; Where had his arm unwarlike caught that art? Where had that fierceness grown upon his heart? For it was not the blind capricious rage[kl] ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... She rang the bell, sweeping across the room in her haughtiest manner, and drawing herself up to her full height. The summons ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley

... by a handsome French adventurer. In an attempt to elope, the wife and her lover are wrecked, and clinging to a spar, are overtaken by the "terrible South Breaker—plunging and rearing and swelling, a monstrous billow, sweeping and swooping and rocking in." Dan in later life, marries Georgia, his first love.—Harriet Prescott ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... I am," she said, her manner changing to deep humility with wonderful rapidity. With such alternations of feeling as this sweeping over her like great waves, no wonder she ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson

... exclaimed Alexia Rhys, waving her big ostrich fan contentedly, and sweeping the audience with a long gaze. "Everybody is ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney

... there. This was but for an instant, yet such is the peculiar effect of lightning that in the following blackness each detail of the scene remained photographed upon my retinae. I saw the turbulent waters apparently sweeping, as a mill race, out to sea; I saw a lone palm, that had formerly stood in dignified solitude upon a nearby point of land, now bent in the wildest agony, its leafy top resembling an umbrella turned inside out. I saw the Whim, greenish white in a greenish ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... Dares, unabash'd, in every place appear, And nothing fears, but what he ought to fear: Him Fashion cannot tempt, him abject Need Cannot compel, him Pride cannot mislead To be the slave of Greatness, to strike sail When, sweeping onward with her peacock's tail, Quality in full plumage passes by; He views her with a fix'd, contemptuous eye, 10 And mocks the puppet, keeps his own due state, And is above conversing with the great. Perish those slaves, those minions of the quill, Who have conspired to seize that sacred ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... wild rocks rising out of it above the foaming waters. Midway between them and the land was a large boat, surrounded by people, some on the reef, others clinging to the boat; while several were at that moment being carried away by the sea, which, sweeping round the rocks, beat with violence against the shattered boat. The men with frantic efforts were attempting to drag her up farther on the reef, as the only hope of saving their lives. Now one poor fellow, now another, ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston

... somebody else standing at her elbow. She had been quite alone when she looked out; she was alone no longer; there had been no noise, yet soma one had entered, and was standing beside her. A tall figure, all in black, with its sweeping velvet robes spangled with stars of golden rubies, a perfect figure of incomparable grace and beauty. It had worn a cloak that had dropped lightly from its shoulders, and lay on the floor and the long hair streamed ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming

... attractive pair, possessors of one of the world's great fortunes, yet not nearly so elaborately dressed, nor so insistent upon their "position," as the Jumpkinson-Joneses. By raising the brim of her hat a trifle Mrs. H.S. Jumpkinson-Jones may see, sweeping in glorious circles above the yacht, the hydroplane which, when it left the edge of the beach a few minutes since, blew back with its propeller a stinging storm of sand, and caused skirts to snap like flags in a hundred-mile-an-hour ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street



Words linked to "Sweeping" :   indiscriminate, cleanup, sweep, cleaning, broad, wide, cleansing



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