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Flat   Listen
adjective
Flat  adj.  (compar. flatter; superl. flattest)  
1.
Having an even and horizontal surface, or nearly so, without prominences or depressions; level without inclination; plane. "Though sun and moon Were in the flat sea sunk."
2.
Lying at full length, or spread out, upon the ground; level with the ground or earth; prostrate; as, to lie flat on the ground; hence, fallen; laid low; ruined; destroyed. "What ruins kingdoms, and lays cities flat!" "I feel... my hopes all flat."
3.
(Fine Arts) Wanting relief; destitute of variety; without points of prominence and striking interest. "A large part of the work is, to me, very flat."
4.
Tasteless; stale; vapid; insipid; dead; as, fruit or drink flat to the taste.
5.
Unanimated; dull; uninteresting; without point or spirit; monotonous; as, a flat speech or composition. "How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world."
6.
Lacking liveliness of commercial exchange and dealings; depressed; dull; as, the market is flat.
7.
Clear; unmistakable; peremptory; absolute; positive; downright.
Synonyms: flat-out. "Flat burglary as ever was committed." "A great tobacco taker too, that's flat."
8.
(Mus.)
(a)
Below the true pitch; hence, as applied to intervals, minor, or lower by a half step; as, a flat seventh; A flat.
(b)
Not sharp or shrill; not acute; as, a flat sound.
9.
(Phonetics) Sonant; vocal; applied to any one of the sonant or vocal consonants, as distinguished from a nonsonant (or sharp) consonant.
10.
(Golf) Having a head at a very obtuse angle to the shaft; said of a club.
11.
(Gram.) Not having an inflectional ending or sign, as a noun used as an adjective, or an adjective as an adverb, without the addition of a formative suffix, or an infinitive without the sign to. Many flat adverbs, as in run fast, buy cheap, are from AS. adverbs in -e, the loss of this ending having made them like the adjectives. Some having forms in ly, such as exceeding, wonderful, true, are now archaic.
12.
(Hort.) Flattening at the ends; said of certain fruits.
Flat arch. (Arch.) See under Arch, n., 2. (b).
Flat cap, cap paper, not folded. See under Paper.
Flat chasing, in fine art metal working, a mode of ornamenting silverware, etc., producing figures by dots and lines made with a punching tool.
Flat chisel, a sculptor's chisel for smoothing.
Flat file, a file wider than its thickness, and of rectangular section. See File.
Flat nail, a small, sharp-pointed, wrought nail, with a flat, thin head, larger than a tack.
Flat paper, paper which has not been folded.
Flat rail, a railroad rail consisting of a simple flat bar spiked to a longitudinal sleeper.
Flat rods (Mining), horizontal or inclined connecting rods, for transmitting motion to pump rods at a distance.
Flat rope, a rope made by plaiting instead of twisting; gasket; sennit. Note: Some flat hoisting ropes, as for mining shafts, are made by sewing together a number of ropes, making a wide, flat band.
Flat space. (Geom.) See Euclidian space.
Flat stitch, the process of wood engraving. (Obs.) Flat tint (Painting), a coat of water color of one uniform shade.
To fall flat (Fig.), to produce no effect; to fail in the intended effect; as, his speech fell flat. "Of all who fell by saber or by shot, Not one fell half so flat as Walter Scott."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Flat" Quotes from Famous Books



... The artist then made use of a plane of a convex form on its breadth: with this instrument he planed the pannel in an oblique direction, in order to take off very short shavings, and to avoid the grain of the wood: by these means he reduced the pannel to 2/3 of a line in thickness. He then took a flat plane with a toothed iron, whose effect is much like that of a rasp which reduces wood into dust: in this manner he contrived to leave the pannel no thicker ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... ceremonies were over—for other ceremonies there were to be, as all could guess who saw Fred Garson talking eagerly apart with Yaspard, then choose a lovely green spot, and say, "This will do. Our dining hall can be on that flat lower down, but this is exactly what we want. You might get some of the fellows to bring up a few stones, while ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby

... Hal, chatting with the marshal, suddenly felt, rather than heard, a deafening roar; he felt the air about him turn into a living thing which struck him a mighty blow, hurling him flat upon the floor. The windows of the room crashed inward upon him in a shower of glass, and the plaster of the ceiling came down on his head ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair

... laughed a little. "There are quite a few ahead of me, and if you spread my views the barons would put their thumb on you and squeeze you flat," he said. "On the other hand, it wouldn't suit me if you sent them anything I told you ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss

... mine, all mine his. I say to him, How can you give me this pot of oil, or this flagon of wine, when all your oil and wine is mine, which belief of mine this gift seems to deny? Hence the fitness of beautiful, not useful things for gifts. This giving is flat usurpation, and therefore when the beneficiary is ungrateful, as all beneficiaries hate all Timons,[466] not at all considering the value of the gift, but looking back to the greater store it was taken from, I rather sympathize ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... are here, don't you? As soon as night comes on, you shall order fifteen or twenty men, under the command of your sergeant La Place, to be under arms, and to lay themselves flat on the ground, between this place and the head-quarters." "What the devil!" cried Matta, "an ambuscade? God forgive me, I believe you intend to rob the poor Savoyard. If that be your intention, I declare I will have nothing to say to it" "Poor devil!" said the Chevalier, ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton

... it's worth something to eat the way I do here. I'm getting better every day. Why, they tell me no one has died out here in a hundred years. A man can eat anything from cactus to sole leather, and keep hearty. I saw a lot of fellows over there just now, sitting flat on the ground in the sun out in the middle of the street, eating dried beef and canned tomatoes, and they looked so happy that I sat down and took a bite with them. They are just travelling through,—sheriff's party from somewhere, going ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough

... through age or accident. On my arrival, there were presented to my view many horses, cows, and oxen, in one apartment; in another, dogs, sheep, goats, and monkeys, with clean straw for them to repose on. Above stairs were depositories for seeds of many sorts, and flat, broad dishes for water, for the use of birds and insects."—Parson's Travels. It is said that all animals know the Banyans, that the most timid approach them, and that birds will fly nearer to them than ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... upon the motionless beast, whose half-shut eyes he could see winking at him. He lay extended upon the limb, his forward feet spread out at full length, on which rested his small round head, with little ears falling back almost flat, his hind legs drawn up under his body, and his flexible tail hanging a short distance beneath the bough. The dark reddish color of the hair of his skin, dashed with blackish tints, harmonized and blended well with the ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... on the platform and watched the train pull out and waved her hand in farewell, and then returned to the pretty flat in which John Minute had installed her. As she said, her life had been made very smooth for her. There was no need for her to worry about money, and she was able to devote her days to the work she loved best. The East End Provident Society, of which ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace

... mile on the flat pulled them together again, and they plodded on by Bardie's Farm, where the scent became sparse, and on to Steg where, for the first time since leaving Templeton, they came upon ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed

... twenty-five centuries, and with historical and biographical allusions and references of all sorts and things. A word or two, suggesting some apposite allusion, will often greatly enhance the beauty of a composition for the connoisseur, but will fall flat on the ears of those to whom the quotation is unknown. Simple objects in everyday life often receive quaint names, as handed down in literature, with which it is necessary to be familiar. For instance, a "fairy umbrella" means a mushroom; a "gentleman of the beam" is a burglar, because a burglar ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles

... tournaments, criminals were branded, and books condemned by the Parlement, burned. Here Pantagruel loved to stand and cut the stirrup-straps of the fat councillors' mules, and see the gros sufle de conseiller fall flat when he tried to mount; and here the clercs of the Basoche planted the annual May-tree, brought from the forest of Bondy, with much playing of drums ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... the morning, Manuel found himself at noon on the Ronda de Toledo, leaning against the wall of Las Americas, at a loss to know what to do with himself. To one side, likewise seated upon the turf, was a loathsome, terribly ugly, flat-nosed gamin, with a clouded eye, bare feet, and a tattered jacket through whose rents could be glimpsed his dark skin, which had been tanned by the sun and wind. Hanging from his neck was a canister into which he threw the ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja

... twice as grand, The wealth of wealth embarrasses; And yet this is not elfinland But great AUGUSTUS HARRIS's. The blase children vote it flat, When Mister Clown cries, "Here's a go!" Yes, there's the box where erst we sat And laughed ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various

... singular chance, St. Regent, or his servant Francois, had stationed himself in the middle of the Rue Nicaise. A grenadier of the escort, supposing he was really what he appeared to be, a water-carrier, gave him a few blows with the flat of his sabre and drove him off. The cart was turned round, and the machine exploded between the carriages of Napoleon and Josephine. The ladies shrieked on hearing the report; the carriage windows were broken, and Mademoiselle Beauharnais received ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... building. I'm going to have the most expensive house in Long Island, where the oysters come from, and I've bought a lot in Newport twice as big as the swellest fellow's there. I've got a house in London and a flat in Paris, and I make money fly. I think I ought to be a cinch as a ...
— The Climbers - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch

... pet! I can see her now, sitting at my feet on a large flat rock by the seashore, and calling me every minute to look at A, or B, or D, or S. And so by her pretty ways she crept into all our hearts, and we quite dreaded the answer coming to the letter my grandfather had written to the owners of the Victory, which, we found, was ...
— Saved at Sea - A Lighthouse Story • Mrs. O.F. Walton

... 4.30 we came to a group of six or seven low tabular bergs some 15 or 20 feet in height. It was such as these that we saw in King Edward's Land, and they might very well come from that region. Three of these were beautifully uniform, with flat tops and straight perpendicular sides, and others had overhanging cornices, and some sloped towards ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... her chaste drawing-room. But when we consider that it was the First Gentleman in Europe in whose high presence Mrs. Rawdon passed her examination, and as it were, took her degree in reputation, it surely must be flat disloyalty to doubt any more about her virtue. I, for my part, look back with love and awe to that Great Character in history. Ah, what a high and noble appreciation of Gentlewomanhood there must have been in Vanity Fair, when that revered and august being was invested, by ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... three days, the two brothers continued their travels. As the mountain on that side was composed of several shelves of extensive flat, they were five days in descending before they came into the plain. They then discovered a large city, at which they rejoiced: "Brother," said Amgiad to Assad, "are not you of my opinion that you should ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.

... which changed materially the ordinary routine of life in the cabin. Heretofore the two sojourners among the mountain fastnesses had walked and climbed under the escort of a small tow-headed Harney. But one evening as she sat sketching on her favorite flat seat of rock, Miss Noble somewhat alarmed this youth by dropping her paper and ...
— Lodusky • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... grieved," he said. His voice sounded to himself hollow and flat, like an ill-tuned instrument. But he went on speaking painfully and with difficulty, whilst his fingers kept clutching his collar. "As a matter of fact, Otto von Krewesmuehlen committed a crime in marrying at all. ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein

... no common, stupid, bumpkin-looking person. Belonging to the genus Yankee, he had yet a few peculiar traits of his own. He had a smallish, bullet-shaped head, set, with dignified poise, on a pair of wide, flat shoulders. His chest was broad and swelling, his limbs straight, muscular, and strong. His eyes were large, round, and blue. When his mind was in a state of repose and his countenance at rest, they had a solemn, owl-like expression. But when in ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage

... beyond the little bridge where he had fixed me for my fishing. He was soon out of my sight, and his warning to me to stay in that spot went out of my mind before the rumble of his wagon had died away. Had he turned at the bend he would have seen me lying flat on my back on the bridge, unbalanced by the eagerness with which I had answered the first tug ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd

... strange figure of the poor lady, had almost thrown Miss Stewart into hysterics; for the princess of Babylon, after this accident, was quite flat on one side, and immoderately protuberant on the other. All those who had before suppressed their inclinations to laugh, now gave themselves free scope, when they saw that Miss Stewart was ready to split her sides. The poor lady was greatly disconcerted: every person was officious to console her; ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... it should be. It's wus nor nothin'. It puts them wot listens in the blues an' the man wot sings into the stews—an' sarve him right. I wouldn't, no, I wouldn't give the fag-end o' nothin' mixed in bucket o' salt water for a song without a chorus—that's flat; so here goes." ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne

... wrought with beauty. Lo, what bulk is here? Now comes the Course-of-things, shaped like an Ox, Slow browsing, o'er my hillside, ponderously — The huge-brawned, tame, and workful Course-of-things, That hath his grass, if earth be round or flat, And hath his grass, if empires plunge in pain Or faiths flash out. This cool, unasking Ox Comes browsing o'er my hills and vales of Time, And thrusts me out his tongue, and curls it, sharp, And sicklewise, about my poets' heads, And twists them in, all — Dante, Keats, Chopin, Raphael, Lucretius, ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... cold, nay, almost black; but he did not know it, for the Snow Queen had kissed away the icy shiverings, and his heart was little better than a lump of ice. He went about dragging some sharp, flat pieces of ice, which he placed in all sorts of patterns, trying to make something out of them; just as when we at home have little tablets of wood, with which we make patterns, and call them a ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... landscape is low and flat, not tall. There is a vast uniformity in plant forms, a subdued and constrained humility. A month later the leafage will be in glory, but that also will have an aspect of sameness and moderation. Perhaps ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey

... the shape of which it will be useless to describe while portraits of his Majesty exist, was-extremely fine and very light, lined with silk and wadded; and on it he wore neither tassels nor plumes, but simply a narrow, flat band of silk and a little ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... drunk, in a daze. He turned the other direction and looked out where the experimental fields ought to be. They'd cleared that whole area of timber and brush because it was a good, flat land. Only they hadn't, because ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton

... blood upon the sword stood red but never dry, He wiped it slowly, till the blade was blue as the blue sky: But the blue sky split with a thunder-crack, spat down a blinding brand, And all of him lay back and flat as his ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various

... light, when he was discovered by some horse that belonged to the stranger, or strangers, which gave out a loud neigh, as a signal to his friends of the approach of danger. At that moment, Tom dropped flat upon his face, as he had done before at the approach of the Apaches, and the luxuriant grass gathered about his form in such a way that he could not be seen by anyone at a moderate distance. But close upon the heels of the ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne

... Stueremburg's so called Ost-Friesian Dictionary has no more right to call itself Friesian than the Bremen Dictionary. Unless the whole coast has sunk into the sea, who can explain that close behind Husum, in a flat country as monotonous as a Hungarian Pussta, without any natural frontier or division, the traveller, on entering the next inn, may indeed be understood if he speaks High or Low German, nay, may receive to either an answer in pure German, but hears ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... now to cross lots that were cleared and covered with snow, the houses being thick on the road which I was to cross, and for fear of being heard I lay myself flat on my stomach and crept along on the frozen snow. When I come to the fence I climbed over, and walked down the road, near a house where there was music and dancing. At this time one of the guards came out. I immediately ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge

... no politics, I made bold to visit Old Abe at his humstid in Springfield. I found the old feller in his parler, surrounded by a perfeck swarm of orfice seekers. Knowin he had been capting of a flat boat on the roarin Mississippy I thought I'd address him in sailor lingo, so sez I, "Old Abe, ahoy! Let out yer main-suls, reef hum the forecastle & throw yer jib-poop over-board! Shiver my timbers, my harty!" [N.B. This is ginuine mariner langwidge. I ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne

... one also. It was after sunset when we turned back, and before we had got halfway up the mountain, it began to be quite dark. We were often obliged to rest our packs against the trees and take breath, which made our progress slow. Finally a halt was called, beside an immense flat rock which had paused on its slide down the mountain, and we prepared to encamp for the night. A fire was built the rock cleared off, a small ration of bread served out, our accoutrements hung up out of the way of the hedgehogs that were supposed to infest the locality, and ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... of the Eastern Mediterranean, is only vaguely conceived by their author. Where he does not know he imagines, and some of his imaginings have had a most important influence upon the progress of geographical knowledge. Thus he conceives of the world as being a sort of flat shield, with an extremely wide river surrounding it, known as Ocean. The centre of this shield was at Delphi, which was regarded as the "navel" of the inhabited world. According to Hesiod, who is but little later than Homer, up in the far north were ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs

... become dim, through the fretting cares or the surging excitements of life. It is awful when such is the case, when the promise and interest of youth settles into impotence and rigidity, when the type which once had the die of thought fresh upon it is worn flat by overuse, or when the shell, once the home of life and bright with ocean's spray, lies with faded colour and emptied hollowness. This is melancholy, indeed, and many such wrecks of religious life are around us. But with Enoch, ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.

... dogs that resemble and yet cannot be perfectly classed with the greyhound. It should rather be considered as a species in which are included a variety of dogs,—the Albanian, the Danish, the Irish greyhound, and almost the pure British greyhound. The head is elongated and the forehead flat, the ears pendulous towards the tips, and the colour of a yellowish fawn. This is the usual sheep-dog in France, in which country he is also employed as a house-dog. He discharges his duty most faithfully; and, ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... touch? By placing the hand on the body of a 'cello one can distinguish without the use of eye or ear, merely by the way in which the wood vibrates and trembles, whether the sound given out is sharp or flat, whether it is drawn from the treble string or the bass. If our touch were trained to note these differences, no doubt we might in time become so sensitive as to hear a whole tune by means of our fingers. But if we admit this, it is clear that one could easily speak ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... battle would be joined: but that instant never came. There fell a sudden silence; and he, peering down into the grey gloom, chin on paws, and tail twitching eighteen inches behind, saw an astonishing sight. His adversary had broken off in the midst of a long crescendo cry, and was himself crouched flat upon the narrow wall staring now not upwards, but downwards, diagonally, at a certain curtained window eight ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson

... shadow of the smoke-streamers trembled on the familiar floor, the shoes of fellow-passengers, distinctive now, and in some cases irritating, passed and repassed, accompanied, in the air so tremendously "open," that rendered all voices weak and most remarks rather flat, by fragments of opinion on the run of the ship. Vogelstein by this time had finished his little American story and now definitely judged that Pandora Day was not at all like the heroine. She was of quite another ...
— Pandora • Henry James

... him a free hand in the construction of the barge. After six hours of hard labor, the "mover" was finished. It was not the streamlined machine its designer had conceived, but it was effective, in some cases, more so than the designer imagined. A low, flat table roughly three hundred feet square, it moved on sledlike runners and was powered by two dozen rockets. On each of the four sides there was a two-hundred-foot boom which could be swung around in a 360 deg. arc and was capable of lifting three hundred tons. Astro's most outstanding ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell

... one morning threw the good monks into consternation by the arrival at the convent gate of a duly equipped herald and messenger from his kingship, asking for the loan of the relic with about as much ceremony as Mrs. Jones would ask for the loan of a flat-iron or saucepan from her neighbor, Mrs. Smith. The queen, Catherine of France, was of their own country and Henry was too powerful to be put off or refused; there was no room for evasion, as the holy prepuce could ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... these mines did not possess the destructive power of dynamite or gunpowder, they were equally effective and powerful, and never failed to repulse the enemy, especially if reinforced by hand grenades of like ammunition, thrown by squaws and pappooses from the flat roofs of their houses. By some means or other it had become known to the descendants of Montezuma that when an Apache stepped on something out of the ordinary "he scented mischief" and believed himself unclean and befouled with dishonor, and fancied himself disgraced ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann

... over night. It should never be allowed to touch the ground. When it is to be displayed at half-mast only, it should be raised to the tip of the staff and then lowered halfway. It should never be festooned or draped, but always be hung flat. ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway

... over the jelly to reach the cheese, which seemed to tempt my appetite more than anything, my long tail switched the roses out of the bowl in the middle of the table. That confused me slightly, and in trying not to upset anything else I stepped flat into the butter, and dragged my little plaid flannel skirt through the applesauce. Why they persist in dressing me in this ridiculous fashion is more ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston

... edge. As a matter of fact, this error probably turned out a blessing in disguise, because there was no glacis down which the enemy's infantry could fire, and the numerous bluffs, ridges, and broken ground afford good cover to troops once they have passed the forty or fifty yards of flat, sandy beach. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... a later period of my "time," I used to stand about the churchyard on Sunday evenings when night was falling, comparing my own perspective with the windy marsh view, and making out some likeness between them by thinking how flat and low both were, and how on both there came an unknown way and a dark mist and then the sea. I was quite as dejected on the first working-day of my apprenticeship as in that after-time; but I am glad to know that I never ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... lady not at all disturbed, the colonel did not interrupt them for a while. But when the lady at length rose, holding Phil by the hand, the colonel, fearing that the boy, who was a child of strong impulses, prone to sudden friendships, might be proving troublesome, left his seat on the flat-topped tomb of his Revolutionary ancestor and hastened to ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt

... easy place to take. I had been round its fortifications, and had seen the details of elaborate works which even against German guns might prove impregnable. Outside the outer forts the ground was bare and flat, so that not a rabbit could scuttle across without being seen and shot. Sandbag entrenchments and earthworks, not made recently, because grass had clothed them, afforded splendid cover for the French batteries. Bomb-proof shelters were dotted about ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs

... of an aggregation of thick, flat, oval leaves, which are joined together by narrow bands of woody fiber and covered with bundles of fine, sharp needles. Its pulp is nutritious and cattle like the young leaves, but will not eat them after they ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk

... dear Britain of ours would be rid of the evil which seems to be creeping into it, and in place thereof would turn as white as the sheets of snow that now lay over all the fields and ways. As I thought thus, I sank deeper and deeper in my thoughts. Suddenly I felt one strike me on the arm with the flat of his sword. I turned and saw a knight, who asked me why I gaped like a mooncalf at the torn bird. I told him it was my pleasure so to do. He asked if it was my pleasure to have to do with him, but I said I would liefer pursue ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert

... would have fallen flat on her ears and destroyed its own hopes. But she was a woman to the very last drop of her blood. She could not be induced to love Ratcliffe, but she might be deluded into sacrificing herself for him. She atoned for want of devotion to God, by ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams

... both my breaks, and by good fortune the car did not overturn. I guessed what had happened, and there was no need for me to get a light to make sure—my sense of touch informed me that the off back tyre was as flat as a pancake. ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster

... food had been left on some flat rocks a short distance to the rear. So that they might not get too warm, the boys had placed some brushwood over them, along with some wraps which the girls had ...
— The Rover Boys Under Canvas - or The Mystery of the Wrecked Submarine • Arthur M. Winfield

... "That big flat stone over there will be just the very thing to spread the eatables out on," said Grace, "and I guess we can all manage to get around ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope

... She died over at Alex Hazen's place. She come to some of her people's after the War. I think ma come with her. Her own old mistress come sit on a cushion one day. The parrot say, 'Cake under cushion, burn her bottom.' Grandma made the parrot fly on off but the cake was warm and it was mashed flat under the cushion when she got up. She took it to her little children. She said piece of cake was a rarity. They had plenty corn ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration

... is the province of a physician," and the proposal being made that he should go to the sick person blindfolded and in a shuttered carriage, the doctor's prudence and the thought of the famous Torrifino dictated a flat refusal; but the mysterious stranger would not let him off. "Signor," he exclaimed (persistently talking bad Italian), "I respect your doubts; by one word I could dispel them; but it is a secret which would be embarrassing to the possessor. It concerns the interest ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... us a collection of strong, flat stakes, which have various names painted on them in neat black letters. Jack likes that kind of work, and spends most of his time at it; for now that Dr. Paul has bought a hundred acres up here, we are all greatly interested ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... acquaintance of the Pelhams. She doesn't look like their kind, you know. She wears the plainest sort of dresses,—just little straight up and down frocks of brown or drab, or those white cambric things,—they are more like baby-slips than anything; and her hats are just the same,—great flat all-round hats, not a bit of style to them; and she's a girl of fourteen or fifteen certainly. Do you suppose people of the ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry

... not worth while to discuss them. But he was trying to cope with newly revealed military genius, and, so far as can be told, he was only prevented from crushing the adventurous Jackson by a piece of flat disobedience on the part of Fremont. Fremont, having thus appropriately punished Lincoln, was removed, this time finally, from command. Jackson, having successfully kept McDowell from McClellan, had before the end of June ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... The "campus,'' on which stood the four buildings then devoted to instruction, greatly disappointed me. It was a flat, square inclosure of forty acres, unkempt and wretched. Throughout its whole space there were not more than a score of trees outside the building sites allotted to professors; unsightly plank walks connected the buildings, and in every direction were meandering paths, ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... voice, in her face, in her attitude, there were signs of a soft brooding spirit, of a sensibility unblunted and profound, playing over her thoughts and deeds, and investing her manner with an habitual gentleness. The arguments and phrases of Mr. Clacton fell flat against ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... comes the strangest part, sir, my Polly was roused by the sound. You think she escaped the engine by lyin' flat on the ground? No! always a good 'un to run, sir, by jove she must 'ave flown, For she raced the "lightnin' express," sir, till the ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... top of the stool, drew himself into as flat a shape as possible against the wall, and looked, not unconcernedly, down upon the single gentleman, who appeared at the door growling and cursing in a very awful manner, and, with the boots in his ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... the rooms on the ground floor I have mentioned incidentally the verandah outside them, on which they all opened by means of French windows, extending from the cornice to the floor. The top of this verandah was flat, the rain-water being carried off from it by pipes into tanks which helped to supply the house. On the narrow leaden roof, which ran along past the bedrooms, and which was rather less, I should think, ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

... flat to rolling coastal plains rising to rolling plateau and low mountains in northeast lowest point: Atlantic Ocean 0 m highest point: Mount Wuteve ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... Yarmouth had none of the virtues above described. It was on the seashore. Nothing was visible from the site but sand and sea. There were no trees there and nothing green;—neither was there any running water. But there was a long, dry, flat strand; there was an old boat half turned over, under which it was proposed to dine; and in addition to this, benches, boards, and some amount of canvas for shelter were provided by the liberality of Mr Cheesacre. Therefore it ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... steel and the intermingling of blue and white uniforms. The troops were leaving the cars and were forming in line to pass the barricades; the officers marching in front, the compact mass following elbow to elbow, their eyes straight before them, their muskets flat against their shoulders. ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... but I cut him short and sweet, An' "Natty," I said, "I've heard it all an' I don't want to repeat— Jerusalem or Mombasa, Tahiti or Timbuctoo, Or careers an' pioneerin' an' the rest of it all—nah poo! It's no good, Nat, For I tell you flat I've cottoned to India an' that's just that; Bus hogeva; all done—finish; I'm here till the trees turn blue, For I love them early mornings, shiny an' clear an' grey, An' I love the cool o' the evening when ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 31, 1920 • Various

... side, run your tape needle through the loops of mottled silkoline which are around the rod, but do not go around the rod itself with the plain silkoline, since doing so would make a ridge in the rug. Draw the woof strips tightly and firmly, so that the work will lie flat and smooth when removed from the loom. Be sure to weave the center far enough, remembering that the upper woof strips in the border will crowd it down. When the center is finished, remove the extra rods and finish weaving the border to the head piece. In selecting ...
— Hand-Loom Weaving - A Manual for School and Home • Mattie Phipps Todd

... A long, flat, pink gland back of the stomach is called the sweetbread or pancreas. This and a large brown gland, the liver, empty their juices into the intestines. The whole inner surface of the stomach and intestines is lined with tiny tubes, the glands. The juice of these with that of the other ...
— Health Lessons - Book 1 • Alvin Davison

... Coventry did. Having dined, I away, and with my wife and Mercer, set my wife down at the 'Change, and the other at White Hall, and I to St. James's, where we all met, and did our usual weekly business with the Duke of York. But, Lord! methinks both he and we are mighty flat and dull over what we used to be, when Sir W. Coventry was among us. Thence I into St. James's Park, and there met Mr. Povy; and he and I to walk an hour or more in the Pell Mell, talking of the times. He ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... blessings which he bestows. But if a man does not care about pardon, does not fear judgment, does not want to be good, has no taste for righteousness, is not attracted by the pure and calm pleasures which Christ offers, the invitation falls flat upon his ear. Wisdom cries aloud and invites the sons of men to her feast, but the fare she provides is not coarse and high spiced enough, and her table is left unfilled, while the crowd runs to the strong-flavoured ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... buttons, which was laced behind to serve as a belt. The waistcoat, buttoned to the throat, showed off his broad chest, and a black satin stock obliged him to hold his head high, in soldierly fashion. A handsome gold chain hung from a waistcoat pocket, in which the outline of a flat watch was barely seen. He was twisting a watch-key of the kind called a "criquet," which Breguet had ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... burst and the hot yolk flew all over him and in his eye, nearly blinding him. He rushed out to the bath-room to plunge in the tub of cold water, when the wasp flew at him and stung his nose. Slipping down, he fell flat on the floor, when the mortar rolled on him and crushed him to death. Then the whole party congratulated the crab on their victory. Grateful for the friendship thus shown, the whole party, crab, mortar and wasp lived in ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis

... anti-meat eating, anti-breakfast, anti-hats and of course also anti-vaccination. They are anti the usual and the normal that are quite good enough for the most of people. They generally also believe that the earth is flat; they are past praying for, all we can do with them is to look them, like the difficulty of Jonah and the whale, "full in the ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... matter their French playfellows have taught them a good deal. If they play marbles, or hopscotch, or rounders, it is in imitation of the Roumis. And yet they are great little players. Games of chance attract them above all. At these they spend hour after hour, stretched out flat on their stomachs in some shady corner, and they play with an astonishing intensity of passion. All their attention is absorbed in what they are about; they employ on the game all the cunning of their ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... we all set out. To some fair damsel, who, intent to charm, Declares she thinks the weather fine and warm, Such words as these address her trembling ear— "I really think we shall have rain, my dear; Pray do not go, my love," cries soft mama; "You shall not go, that's flat," cries stern papa. A lucky sunbeam shines on the discourse, The parents soften, and Miss mounts her horse. Each tickled with some laugh-inspiring notion, Behold the jocund party all in motion: Some by a rattling buggy are befriended, Some mount the ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr

... low promontory in front now broke into towers and white domes, and great masses of heavy walls. The aspect of Jaffa is exceedingly picturesque. It is built on a hill, and the land for many miles around it being low and flat, its topmost houses overlook all the fields of Sharon. The old harbor, protected by a reef of rocks, is on the north side of the town, but is now so sanded up that large vessels cannot enter. A number of small craft were lying close to the shore. The port ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... precision from the declivities that surround them. Of this, however, I was not aware at the time of first seeing Wales; although the striking effect from the opposite form of the Cumberland and Westmoreland valleys, which almost universally present a flat area at the base of the surrounding hills, level, to use Wordsworth's expression, "as the floor of a temple," would, at any rate, have arrested my eye, as a circumstance of impressive beauty, even though the want of such a feature might not, in any case, have ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... Flat-Dweller The Advantage of a Good Thing The Common Carrier The Heir and the Heiress The Undecided Bachelors The Wonderful Meal of Vittles The Galloping Pilgrim The Progressive Maniac Cognizant of our Shortcomings The Divine ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade

... that experience in other ways, and with just the same result. It was like that when I first began to hear good music. I couldn't make it out—it was nothing but a crash of sounds. I preferred the ditties and dances of a musical comedy; and it was only by degrees that I began to find them flat. Then my ear caught something of the wonderful things in the symphonies that used to bore me. ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King

... into the sea, with precipitous seaward fronts, and defended on the land side by cross dikes; and in the neighbourhood numerous small pits in the earth, of a size to admit of a single person seated. These are covered by flat stones, which were ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various

... down to the lade by Bulldog to wash himself, yet Speug had a healthy contempt for a dirty master. Moossy's clothes, it was believed, had not been renewed since he came to the Seminary, and the cloak which he wore on a winter day was a scandal to the town. His feet were large and flat, and his knees touched as the one passed the other, and the Seminary was honestly ashamed at the sight of him shambling across the North Meadow. He looked so mean, so ill put together, so shabby, so dirty, that the very "Pennies" hooted at him and flung him in our faces. The Rector was also careless ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren

... say, will agree with me that since the time of Lucian all the representations of the infernal regions, which have been attempted by satirical writers, such as 'Fielding's Journey from this World to the Next,' have been feeble and flat. The sketch in "Ada Reis" is commonplace in its observations and altogether insufficient, and it would not do now to come with a decisive failure in an attempt of considerable boldness. I think, if it were thought that anything could be done with ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles

... glories of his uniform, easily recognisable by the bad fit of his civilian clothes, wandering about like a ship without a rudder; and as time goes on he settles down to the inevitable, and passes his days in a fourth-floor flat in the suburbs, eats, drinks, sleeps, reads the Kreuzzeitung and nothing else, plays at cards in the day-time, grows gouty, and worries his wife. It would be difficult to count the number of them that have answered ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim

... He said it was flat; he said it was importunate, like an ill-bred person; he said it mingled inopportunely with everything; he declared it had a spite against him, and would do him an injury if it could; when he was good he said it made him bad, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... and arrow and the knight in armour; the bayonet affixed to the musket superseded the pike; the rifle outranged the musket; the breech-loader and the magazine attachment progressively increased the rate of fire; smokeless powder rendered a firing line almost invisible; the flat trajectory of the small-arms bullet increased the danger-zone in an advance; the increased power, mobility, and accuracy of the field gun[4] rendered certain {22} formations obsolete in the attack; the general advance in the rate and accuracy of fire from rifles, machine guns, and artillery ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous

... the eyes and hesitated. Then I decided to go to room 12 on the second flat and see the thing out. A knock on the door was responded to by a sweet "Come in." Mme. Fabre was seated in an easy chair before ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett

... mimows, and anything we could catch, I happened to see a big moccasin snake hanging in a sumac bush just a swinging his head back and forth. I swung at 'im with a stick and he swelled his head all up big and rared back. Then I hit 'im and knocked him on the ground flat. His belly was very big so we kept hittin' 'im on it until he opened his mouth and a catfish as long as my arm (forearm), jumped out jest a flopping. Well the catfish had a big belly too, so we beat 'em on his belly until he opened his mouth and out came one of these women's ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States, From Interviews with Former Slaves - Virginia Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... off, Dick hit the mate a fair and square blow in the nose which sent Lesher flat on ...
— The Rover Boys on Land and Sea - The Crusoes of Seven Islands • Arthur M. Winfield

... further, lad. Thine office shall be permanent in thee and thy line for ever." Then he struck the boy a light blow on the shoulder with the flat of his sword, exclaiming, "Rise, Humphrey Marlow, Hereditary Grand Whipping-Boy to the Royal House of England! Banish sorrow—I will betake me to my books again, and study so ill that they must in justice treble thy wage, so mightily ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Man of the Notch" His face seemed changing wholly— His lips seemed thick; his nose seemed flat; His misty hair looked woolly; And Coos teamsters, shrieking, fled From the metamorphosed figure. "Look there!" they said, "the Old Stone Head Himself ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... beset man looked to right and left, rage and mortification united. Then, with a remark below his breath, he sang in a very tuneless bass, that wandered at will between flat and sharp, with ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... stood about ten feet from the window. On it was a large brass lamp which cast a brilliant circle of light upon the broad flat top of the desk with its orderly array of letter-trays, its handsome silver-edged blotter and silver and tortoise-shell writing appurtenances. By the light of this lamp Dr. Romain, looking from the doorway, saw that Hartley Parrish's chair was vacant, pushed back a little way from ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine

... (in which two men are on duty night and day), a drill ground 153 ft. long by 40 ft. wide, an engine-room large enough for six engines, good-sized recreation rooms, baths, &c. The residences are erected upon the "flat" system, and have a special interest in the fact that they constitute the first important introduction of that style of building in Birmingham. The advantages and the drawbacks, if any, of the system may here be seen and judged ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... his wishes in a very few words, which were spoken in the Delaware tongue. So soon as Uncas was in possession of the reason why he was summoned, he threw himself flat on the turf; where, to the eyes of Duncan, he appeared to lie quiet and motionless. Surprised at the immovable attitude of the young warrior, and curious to observe the manner in which he employed ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... earth? Well, well, what's that? Come up with a smiling face. It's nothing against you to fall down flat; But to lie ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith

... the case. No barrel-organ mended the matter, and no big drum beat dull care away. Like the chapel bells that were also going here and there, they only seemed to evoke echoes from brick surfaces, and dust from everything. As to the flat wind-instruments, they seemed to have cracked their hearts and souls in ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens

... gallery to the tiled floor, in the midst of which a fountain played beneath a cupola supported by slender columns. On the west the recess beneath the gallery had been deepened to admit a truly ample fireplace, with a flat hearthstone and andirons. Here were screens and rich Turkey rugs, and here the Bayfield household ordinarily had the lamps set after dinner and gathered before the fire, talking little, enjoying the long pauses filled with the hiss of logs and the ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... parts of their best houses, they make smooth glazed bricks, that are very handsome. Their bricklayers and masons are also good workmen, but labour under a great disadvantage, the want of lime. The tiles are flat, of an oblong form, and have two longitudinal grooves, one above and another below, which fit into the adjacent tiles, and the whole are put on ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton

... done at the Government House in Bengal, and prepared a paper of immense length. That paper, if recorded on the consultations of an Indian administration, would have been justly praised as a very able minute. But it was now out of place. It fell flat, as the best written defence must have fallen flat, on an assembly accustomed to the animated and strenuous conflicts of Pitt and Fox. The members, as soon as their curiosity about the face and demeanor of so eminent a stranger was satisfied, walked ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... drew at his cigarette. But for the distant rumble of an approaching vehicle, the spring evening was very still. The river curved away gently towards the left, flowing black and sluggish between its flat banks, on which the pines grew down to the water's edge. It was delightful to stay quiet for a few moments, and Merriman took off his cap and let the cool air blow on his ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts

... creeping now into the land by many creeks and narrow ways. She herself was upon an island, cut off from the dry land by a smoothly flowing tidal way more than twenty yards across. Along it a man in a flat-bottomed boat was punting his way towards her. She stood and waited for him, admiring his height, and the long powerful strokes with which he propelled his clumsy craft. He was very tall, and against the flat background his height ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... do a thing for Christmas this year," she declared, as nearly everybody in the village had intermittently declared, "not a living, breathing thing. I can't, and folks might just as well know it, flat foot. What's the use of buying tinsel and flim-flam when you're eating milk gravy to save butter and using salt sacks for handkerchiefs? I ain't educated up ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale

... holiday can be. I had walked three miles to the town, and there were three miles now between me and my mother's cupboard. When I arrived there I feasted for the remainder of the day and went to bed still hungry. The next few days were flat and languid. In all my boyhood pleasures and excitements I suffered intensely from these reactions. I tormented the family by persistent teasings to go somewhere, or to do something. "Go play, go read your book, go see what Aunt Chloe is doing," they would ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee

... cliffs accumulate by continual falls of snow, and what drifts from the mountains, till they are no longer able to support their own weight; and then large pieces break off, which we call ice-islands. Such as have a flat even surface, must be of the ice formed in the bays, and before the flat vallies; the others, which have a tapering unequal surface, must be formed on, or under, the side of a coast composed of pointed rocks and precipices, or some such uneven surface. For we cannot suppose that snow alone, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... explained. He was a good-hearted chap. "Don't yer know w'ot listenin'-post is? W'y, there's a couple of us fellows hout at intervals all along the line. We get as close to the enemy parapet as is possible. We watch and listen, lyin' flat on the ousey ground hall the while. We are the heyes of the harmy. The Germans raid us on occasions. Were these posts not hout, the raids would be more frequent. They'd come hover and inflict severe casualties on hour men. They can't see the Boche. We can. Should ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat

... and gentleman who lived on the first floor and who had just come home were also reduced to helplessness by the same individual and locked up, each in one of the two empty shops. The third-floor tenant underwent a similar fate, but in his own flat and his own bedroom, which the man was able to enter without being heard. The second floor was unoccupied, and the man took up his quarters there. He was ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc

... knees over the smooth wind-swept summit of the Maiden's Paps, now one immense surface of ice. The last bit was the worst of all, for here the raging elements struck us with full and uninterrupted force. We crossed this inches at a time, lying flat on the smooth rock with our faces downwards. Our feelings of thankfulness to the Almighty may be imagined when we finally reached ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... officer in charge of the train, the march was resumed, and at the close of that day we camped near a small lake about twenty miles from Fort Totten. From Totten we journeyed on to Fort Abercrombie. The country between the two posts is low and flat, and I verily believe was then the favorite abiding-place of the mosquito, no matter where he most loves to dwell now; for myriads of the pests rose up out of the tall rank grass —more than I ever saw before or since—and viciously ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... window in that pediment. The two mighty chimneys of that centre were parallel with the ridge of the roof, and rose nearly from the middle of the two opposite slopes, bespeaking four great fireplaces below, and a flat, low-galleried observatory upon the roof gave views of portions of ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... portage; and below Grange to Bidford, where there is a bridge of many arches carrying the old Roman road called Icknield Street; and from the bridge and grey little town they struck into a long reach that ran straight into the dazzle of the sun—through flat meadows at first, and then, with a turn, under the steep of Marcleeve Hill, that here borders Avon to the south for miles. Here begin the spurs of the Cotswolds—scars of green and red marle dotted with old thorn ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... this young lord belongs to the class which neither gods nor men are said to permit. Indeed we do not recollect to have seen a quantity of verse with so few deviations in either direction for that exact standard. His effusions are spread over a dead flat, and can no more get above or below the level than if they were so much stagnant water.... We desire to counsel him that he forthwith abandon poetry and turn his talents, which are considerable, and his opportunities, which are great, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... said that my touch had grown almost as delicate as that of a blind man; but had it been ever so obtuse, I could have told at that moment, what were the two flat round objects which I held between my fingers. There was no mistaking the "feel" of them. ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid

... citizen seems to have a notion that any Power engaged in strife with the Star Spangled Banner will disembark men from flat-bottomed boats on a convenient beach for the purpose of being shot down by local militia. In his own simple phraseology:—"Not by a ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling

... beautiful monuments of the Catholic and feudal age. Its fortifications, and the halls, church, and cloisters of the chivalrous and monastic fraternities of which it was the seat, rise like an efflorescence from the solitary cone of granite, surrounded at low tide by the vast flat of sand, at high tide by the sea. Gothic architecture, to which we are apt to attach the notion of a sort of infantine unconsciousness, here seems consciously to revel and disport itself in its power, and to exult in investing the sea-girt rock with the playful elegance of a Cellini vase. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various

... in hotel back bedrooms, in shady barrooms, or in the negro quarters of Georgetown, as if the majestic, white-robed Goddess enthroned upon the dome of the Capitol had at last descended among them and was smiting to right and left with the flat and flash of her ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte

... arms were magnificently developed, and his thighs as thick as any athlete's. Still, the most remarkable thing about Mr. Wilde was that a man of his marvellous intelligence and knowledge should have such a head. It was flat and pointed, like the heads of many of those unfortunates whom people imprison in asylums for the weak-minded. Many called him insane, but I knew him to be as ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers

... that no man sees the greatness of the present, unless he regards it as being the vestibule of the future, and that this present life is unintelligible and insignificant unless beyond it, and led up to by it, and shaped through it, there lies the eternal life beyond. The low flat plain is dreary and desolate, featureless and melancholy, when the sky above it is filled with clouds. But sweep away the cloud-rack, and let the blue arch itself above the brown moorland, and all glows into lustre, and every undulation is brought out, and tiny shy forms of beauty are found ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... are sent forth to propound scriptures which say clearly that what we believe or disbelieve is literally a burning question." But those who, with Mr. Lyall, consider love of man founded on love of God, nothing but "flat morality," must have forgotten that a Higher One than they declared, that on these two hang all the law and the commandments. By placing abstruse tenets, the handiwork of Popes and Councils, in the place of Christ's teaching, and ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller

... hands and chattering teeth, all got across, but some of them were so weak and blue with cold that they could not take another step, but fell flat on their faces in the mud. These men were so nearly dead that no fire seemed to warm them. Clark ordered two strong men to lift each of these poor fellows up, hold him between them by the arms, and run him ...
— The Beginner's American History • D. H. Montgomery

... that large flat one has a leak, otherwise it would have held three nicely; but I dare say we can be comfortable in one of the little ones,' I ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... could stay his hand and point out the folly of it, Poore stood up and shot the fat savage through the stomach, and I saw the blood spurt from his side, as the heavy, flat-nosed bullet ploughed its way clean through the man, who, still clutching the two heads in his ensanguined hands, stood upright for a few seconds, and then fell with ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke

... down the mountain-side through groves of evergreen oak, and reached the Plain of Jezreel at the point where the road from Samaria and the south divided into two—its main stem still climbing due north towards Nazareth, while the branch bent back eastward and by south across the flat, arable country to join the Carmel road ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... dealing with a common ordinary pickpocket. [To Baron Sckmettau.] You see it is just as I told you ... the man did not have the slightest idea. ... [To Stroebel.] Did this fellow, Schmuttermaier, see anyone in the flat or did he hear ...
— Moral • Ludwig Thoma

... ten dollars to spare there had been a letter from Langshaw's mother, saying that his sister Ella, whose husband was unfortunately out of a position, had developed flat-foot; and a pair of suitable shoes, costing nine-fifty, had been prescribed by the physician. Was it possible for her dear boy to send the money? Ella was ...
— The Blossoming Rod • Mary Stewart Cutting

... that the enemy had given up the chase. After three hours of the moon, Tancred and his companions rested at a well not far from a village, where they obtained some supplies. An hour before dawn, they again pursued their way over a rich flat country, uninclosed, yet partially cultivated, with, every now and then, a village nestling in a jungle ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli

... Washington to settle some matters with the government, they wanted a certain concession which the Indian commissioner would not allow, and they appealed to the president, who was then Franklin Pierce. Old Flat-mouth, the chief, presented the case. Paul Beaulieu interpreted it so feelingly that the president surrendered without a contest. After informing him as to the ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau

... projectiles are moulded of the same shape, and are fired as they are cast, without planing. One of these bolts, six diameters long and weighing twenty-nine and a half pounds, was fired from a twelve-pounder gun through a four and a half inch armor-plate. The exhibit also shows a flat-fronted Whitworth fluid-pressed steel shell, three diameters long, weighing eight hundred and eight pounds, which was fired at Gavre, France, without a bursting charge, from a Whitworth twelve-inch, thirty-five-ton ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various

... of February he came to a small flat which gradually developed into a channel and ultimately became a creek, running first west, and then south-west. This gave him his desired opening, and he pursued the course of the creek through good open country, finding the water plentiful, though shallow. On February 20th, however, ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc

... a-layin' flat right thar and I seed you comin' down thar. My, but you looked funny to me! You don't now," she added hastily. "You look ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.

... not an outdoor party, the night was too cool to make it even partially such; and to walk the whole evening in the moonlight is one thing, and in the gaslight quite another. Then Kitty Fisher was in a merciless mood,—and Hazel could not head her off with flat denials; because, though not really under orders, she well knew how much Mr. Rollo had to do with what they termed 'her new kink about dancing.' And even worse than the open charge that she was afraid to disobey, were the covert insinuations that ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner

... conspicuous red crosses, were all well and carefully placed—though in such a fight it was a sheer impossibility to dispose them so as to render them absolutely immune from danger, for shells have a knack of falling where least expected, and when they burst he is a wise man who falls flat on his face and leaves the rest to his Creator and the fortune of war. My next move was to secure a position on the top of a kopje, to try to gather some idea concerning the actual strength of the Boer position. It ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales

... coral reefs; relatively flat coralline limestone plateau (source of most fresh water), with steep coastal cliffs and narrow coastal plains in north, low hills in ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... you, gentlemen. Madame Guillaumet was traced to her flat in Paris. Arnaud's Avocat confronted her with the now completed picture. She was ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various

... for a long while at the back of the Exhibition Palace; the yellow walls trimmed with red brick which hardly rose above the edge of the clearing; the flat zinc roofs, shining like dead seas; the central cupola, huge, swollen, cutting the sky with its black curves, like a balloon on the point of rising. From one wing of the Palace came the sound of bugles, prolonging their warlike notes to the accompaniment ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... without further delay, he concluded to start at all hazards, notwithstanding the dangers he apprehended from passing said town by daylight. For safety he endeavored to hide his freight by having them all lie flat down on the bottom of the skiff; covered them with blankets, concealing them from the effulgent beams of the early morning sun, or rather from the "Christian Wolves" who might perchance espy him from the shore ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... upon C. margaritacea. The cells are the largest of any in the Vittate division, and very regular and uniform in size and outline. The more distinctive characters are taken from the comparatively broad vittae, and the flat or cupped upper surface of the avicularia, which are usually continued downwards into a prominent ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... Sacchetti's novelets now: characteristic work for Florence, if somewhat dull elsewhere. Boccaccios can't be expected to spring up with the vines in rows, even in this climate. We got a newly printed addition to Savonarola's poems the other day, very flat and cold, they did not catch fire when he was burnt. The most poetic thing in the book is his face on the first page, with that eager, devouring soul in the eyes of it. You may suppose that I am able sometimes to go over to the gallery and adore the Raphaels, ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... an arrow, the pike darted away, and with him the herring, the gudgeon, the perch, the carp, and all the rest of them. Even the sole swam with them, and hoped to reach the winning-place. All at once, the cry was heard, "The herring is first!" "Who is first?" screamed angrily the flat envious sole, who had been left far behind, "who is first?" "The herring! The herring," was the answer. "The naked herring?" cried the jealous creature, "the naked herring?" Since that time the sole's mouth has been at one ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers

... because of their very flat noses and thick lips; moreover, their shinbone is too prominent, and the knee and foot too long, not so good to look upon as those of the whites; and so also is it with their hand. Howbeit, I have seen some amongst them whose whole bodies have been so well-built ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

... himself bolt upright—shook his clenched fist at his conquerors, and a fearful gurgling howl, which the nature of his wounds did not allow him to syllable into a curse, came from his breast—with that he fell flat ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... of life, had Lady known the meaning of a blow. While the whip-slashes were too light to do more than sting her well-mattressed back, yet the humiliation of them seared deep into her sensitive nature. No sound did she utter. But she cowered flat to the floor; and trembled as if ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... will be necessary that he conform to the usages of his uncle, taking the advice of experienced old soldiers in the emergencies which may present themselves; and not believing, that the knowledge which it takes many years of observation to acquire, can be at once conferred by the slap of the flat of a sword, and the magic words, 'Rise up, Sir Arthur'—or however ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... the picture of the red-haired giant of the sheeplands and that flat-chested, sharp-faced youth drinking beside the sheep-wagon in the night. There was Swan, lofty, cold, unbending; there was Reid, the craft, the knowledge of the world's under places written on his brow, the deceit that he practiced against his host ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden

... would appear plain and sober fact, compared with the theories I have heard him earnestly advance in that grimy den of his. I once ventured to hint something of the sort to him; I suggested that something he had said was in flat contradiction to all science and all experience. 'No, Dyson,' he answered, 'not all experience, for mine counts for something. I am no dealer in unproved theories; what I say I have proved for myself, ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various

... forth, all day. Any one who saw me would think that I was mad. Fighting—fighting—all the time fighting! Sometimes I run—sometimes I don't know what I do. Last night I know that it grew dark, and that I was still lying flat on the dead leaves, striking my hands, that were numb with excitement. I was too weak to move—but I remember panting out, "There is nothing ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair

... ballad learned by heart in a month of hard practice. Incapable though he was of any feeling for poetry, he would boldly ask permission to retire for ten minutes to compose an impromptu, and return with a quatrain, flat as a pancake, wherein rhyme did duty for reason. M. du Chatelet had besides a very pretty talent for filling in the ground of the Princess' worsted work after the flowers had been begun; he held her skeins of silk with ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... like a clean white ribbon from the little group of pastel-colored houses by the water. There was not a breath of wind, not a rustle in the gray-green olive trees that shimmered silver in the sunlight. Little lizards, sunning themselves on warm flat stones, watched him with brilliant eyes, and darted away to safety as he moved. The shadows of the cypress trees barred the white path like rungs of a ladder. And Blagden, drinking deep of the beauty of it ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... Hapgood had said, a cricket pitch (in summer) and a duck pond (more prominent in winter); also, in all seasons, and the survivors of many ages, a clump of elm trees surrounded by a decayed bench; a well surrounded by a decayed paling, so decayed that it had long ago thrown itself flat on the ground into which it continued venerably to decay; and at the southeastern extremity a village pound surrounded by a decayed grey wall and now used by the youth of the village for the purpose of impounding one another in parties or ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson

... whose house I am now visiting, has tried all the owls that are his near neighbours with a pitch-pipe, set at concert-pitch, and finds they all hoot in B flat. He will examine the nightingales ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White

... edge in the longitudinal section, for just as the tiles lie on the roof of a house, or the scales on the back of a fish, so the whole surface of the hair is externally coated with a firmly adhering layer of flat overlying scales, with not very even upper edges, as you see. The upper or free edges of these scales are all directed towards the end of the hair, and away from the root. But when you look at a hair in its natural state you cannot see these scales, so flat do they lie on the hair-shaft. What ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith



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