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Leveling   Listen
noun
Leveling  n.  
1.
The act or operation of making level.
2.
(Surveying) The art or operation of using a leveling instrument for finding a horizontal line, for ascertaining the differences of level between different points of the earth's surface included in a survey, for establishing grades, etc., as in finding the descent of a river, or locating a line of railroad.
Leveling instrument. See Surveyor's level, under Level, n.
Leveling staff, a graduated rod or staff used in connection with a leveling instrument for measuring differences of level between points.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Leveling" Quotes from Famous Books



... branches heavy with the unwholesome fruit of the flood, in wisps of hay and straw, rakes and pitchforks, or pathetically sheltering some shivering and forgotten household pet. But everywhere the same dull, expressionless, placid tranquillity of destruction,—a horrible leveling of all things in one bland smiling equality of surface, beneath which agony, despair, and ruin were deeply buried and forgotten; a catastrophe without convulsion,—a ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte

... report. My horse jumped forward, followed by a fusillade of shots behind me, when the hireling deputies turned and plunged into the river. Tolleston had wheeled his horse, joining the retreat, and as I brought my six-shooter into action and was in the act of leveling on him, he reeled from the saddle, but clung to the neck of his mount as the animal dashed into the water. I held my fire in the hope that he would right in the saddle and afford me a shot, but he struck a swift current, ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams

... strong Federal program in the field of resource development. Its major projects should be timed, where possible to assist in leveling off peaks and valleys in our economic life. Soundly planned projects already initiated should be carried out. New ones will ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... rally her scattered faculties. The dreamlike quality of the scene at once dissolved. Utter and bewildering surprise is never an emotion that can long endure; its very quality makes for brevity. Already some leveling, cool sense within her had begun to accept the fact ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall

... rapid population growth, industrial expansion, and increased water pollution. Private investment is critical to the modernization of the agricultural, energy, and export sectors. Oil production is leveling off, and the efforts of the nonoil sector to penetrate international markets have fallen short. Syria's inadequate infrastructure, outmoded technological base, and weak educational system make it vulnerable to future shocks and hamper competition with neighbors ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... I took my gun from the corner, ran downstairs, and out of the house in such a hurry that I imprudently struck my face against the doorpost. Fire flew out of my eyes, but it did not prevent my intention; I soon came within shot, when, leveling my piece, I observed to my sorrow, that even the flint had sprung from the cock by the violence of the shock I had just received. There was no time to be lost. I presently remembered the effect it had on my eyes, therefore opened the pan, leveled ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... homely language with the pleasing certainty of an appreciative audience. But times have sadly changed within the past few years. A trip to Iceland nowadays is little more than a pleasant summer excursion, brought within the capacity of every tyro in travel through the leveling agency of steam. When a Parisian lady of rank visits Spitzbergen, and makes the overland journey from the North Cape to the Gulf of Bothnia, of what avail is it for any gentleman of elegant leisure to leave his comfortable fireside? We tourists ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... these various operations going on. The crackling of branches draws attention to yonder tree which comes tumbling to the ground with a crash—others follow rapidly and the axmen's blows resound on every side. On yonder knoll a company of mowers are rapidly leveling the tall wheat. Here inside the fort an artillery officer is drilling a squad in artillery firing: and there a gang of contrabands, now for the first time, very likely, receiving wages for their labor ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood

... that vast land of untrameled freedom. So Father Holland was cared for in the Protestant home with a tenderness which Mr. Sutherland would have repudiated. For my part, I have always thanked God for that leveling influence of the west. It pulls the fools from high places and awards ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... materials and of people, and, through its inland position, as an unwise choice for an Exposition on the Pacific Coast, in its nature supposed to be maritime. The use of the park, it was argued, would desecrate the peoples recreation ground and entail a heavy cost in leveling ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry

... with God" is always ready for the Master's call. His loins are girded about and his lights burning. He "lies down with the Kings of the earth," and that leveling process which is thus intimated and begun in death he feels is the order of a higher plane of life to come, when all the abuses and incongruities of human government will be swept away, and the light of omniscient wisdom will ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern

... lumber company sometimes bought as much as seventy thousand acres of forest. Woodsmen were brought in to work along with the mountain men. Portable sawmills were set up and busy hands—sawyers, choppers—set to work leveling ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas

... gauge being supported by a semicircular piece of thick pasteboard fitted with two corks into the top of the cylinder. This seemingly awkward proceeding has in no case been attended with the slightest accident, and owing to the presence of the four leveling-screws, the pump when righted returns, as shown by the telescope of the cathetometer, almost exactly to its original place. In the inclined position the exhaustion of the vacuum bulb is accomplished along with that of the rest of the pump. The exhaustion of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various

... excavated, the labor of transporting the fresh and water-soaked material is greatly reduced. The drying-frames are built up into houses as fast as they are filled from the machine. They can be set up anywhere without difficulty, require no leveling of the ground, and, once filled, no labor in turning or stacking the peats is necessary; while the latter are insured against damage from rain. These advantages, Gysser claims, more than ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson

... the gradually advancing republicanism of the age, which is dressing all men alike, bodily and mentally, the rollicking democracy of these old-fashioned festivals, in which the peasant bonneted the peer without ceremony, and rustic maids ran races en chemise for a pound of tea, is entirely too leveling for culture. There are still, however, numbers of village fairs, quietly conducted, in which there is much that is pleasant and picturesque, and this at Cobham was as pretty a bit of its kind as I ever saw. These are old-fashioned and gay in their little retired nooks, and there the ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland

... Roman ax, for the policy of Roman warfare was that the first step in subduing a rebellious province was to starve it. The vineyards had suffered the same end. The enriched soil of these inclosures, made one now with the wild at the leveling of their hedges, produced acres of profitless weeds, green against the rising brown bosom of the hill-fronts. Here and there were the fallen walls of isolated homes—wastes of masonry already losing all domestic signs. There were no gardens; it ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller

... long been well cleared of timber, and the rolling surface presented so few obstacles to the movement of armies that they could march over the country in any direction almost as well as on the roads, the creeks and rivers being everywhere fordable, with little or no difficulty beyond that of leveling ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... of America, and in that very region whence had come forth a glorious band of orators, statesmen and soldiers to plead the cause and fight the battles of Independence—lo! the volcanic fires of rebellion burst forth upon the heads of the faithful, and the militia were leveling the guns of the Revolution, against the breasts of their brethren. "What, gracious God! is man?" Washington exclaimed: "It was but the other day that we were shedding our blood to obtain the constitutions under which we live, and now ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various

... At the same time it has its domestic hearth, its national sanctuary; it has its sphere of original work and its self-consciousness, its national interests and spiritual ideals rooted in the past of the Jew. By the side of a Lassalle, a Lasker, and a Marx towers a Riesser, a Geiger, a Graetz. The leveling process unavoidably connected with widespread culture, so far from causing spiritual desolation in German Judaism, has, on the contrary, furnished redundant proof that even under present conditions, so unfavorable to what is individual and original, ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow

... location; and did considerable damage to our men with their artillery, spears, and other missile weapons. On that account it was deemed better to withdraw the men from the hill and to abandon the undertaking for the time, and to employ the army in burning the villages and leveling the fields round about. In doing that there were many frays with the enemy, and many of the people were killed, so that it is thought that they are severely punished. The weather did not allow the enterprise to be carried ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various

... and the shock he was giving to the constitution of his country. He was like Mirabeau, that other aristocratic reformer, who voted for the spoliation of the church property of France, on the ground, which that leveling sentimentalist Rousseau had advanced, that the church property belonged to the nation. But this plea, in both cases, was sophistical. It was, doubtless, a great evil that the property of the State had fallen into the hands of ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... which I have in mind, a drizzling rain comes softly, though steadily, down. A number of soldiers, hardly distinguishable from the mud in which they are working, are busy leveling off the ground around a flagpole which stands in the center of the cemetery. Presently they stop 15 work and stand listening to the drumbeats which can be heard faintly in the distance. The little group gathers about ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... In leveling the site, and gently sloping the sides of the ground for good drainage purposes, I had gathered together two large baskets of human bones. I said to a Chief in Tannese, "How do these ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton

... Sometimes they went perfectly smoothly along without jolts or jerks, and sometimes on the contrary, the plateau would reel and roll like a ship in a storm, coasting past abysses in which fragments of the mountain were falling, tearing up trees by the roots, and leveling, as if with the keen edge of an immense scythe, every projection ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... leveling their pikes, advanced under cover of the smoke, and were soon hotly engaged with the opposite files of spearmen. Then came the charge of the cavalry, which—notwithstanding they were thrown into some disorder by the fire of ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... yoke of Popery in religion; for you is reserved the honor of leveling the popery of politics. They opened the Bible to all, and maintained the capacity of every man to judge for himself in religion. Are we sufficient for the comprehension of the sublimest spiritual truths, and unequal to material and ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... spoke the truth," he said, returning the pistol to his belt, and again leveling the shot-gun. "Now, Mr. Thomson Tuttle, you've been a gentleman so far, and as long as you keep up that play you'll be all right. You won't be hurt if you don't make any breaks. Take down your hands and we'll go into camp ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly

... Court of the Inventions Exhibition, London, we find a leveling machine for sheet metals exhibited by Mr. J.W. Britton, of Cleveland, Ohio, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 514, November 7, 1885 • Various

... their undertakings were always opposed by men of the greatest influence. On the other side, those things which were first attempted by Agis, and afterwards consummated by Cleomenes, were supported by the great and glorious precedent of those ancient laws concerning frugality and leveling which they had themselves received upon the authority of Lycurgus, and he had instituted on that of Apollo. It is also further observable, that from the actions of the Gracchi, Rome received no additions to her former greatness; ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... this bizarre tribe is perhaps not untimely; the leveling process progresses fast, over Basque-land as in all the world; steam and lightning are the genii of the age, but they destroy while they build. As a significant straw, the French government enforces here, in the public schools, the teaching and speaking ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... neither Mr. This nor Mr. That any longer, but a priest of the Church of England, as by law established. My poor Helen! She has thrown herself away upon a charlatan! And what will become of her money in the hands of a man with such leveling notions, I dread ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald

... line of leveling was carried by one of the parties of Major Graham's division, by means of two spirit levels checking one another, from tide water at Calais, in Maine, to the monument at the source of the St. Croix, and thence along the true meridian line to its intersection with the river St. John. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... themselves to bravely leveling with road-scrapers and teams the hummocks where the sagebrush grew, bringing in surveyors to strike the level for them in the river-shore, plotting ditches to carry the water to their fields. Many of them would falter before the fight was done; many would ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... the scene of their continuous work, and the centre from which their ascents of the neighboring summits would be made. Here, on the great median moraine, stood a huge boulder of micaceous schist. Its upper surface projected so as to form a roof, and by closing it in on one side with a stone wall, leveling the floor by a judicious arrangement of flat slabs, and rigging a blanket in front to serve as a curtain across the entrance, the whole was presently transformed into a rude hut, where six persons could find sleeping-room. A recess, sheltered by the rock outside, served as kitchen and dining-room; ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz

... spices are to be used, measure them carefully. Mix the leavening agent, the salt, the sugar, and the other dry ingredients with the flour by sifting them together once or twice. Measure the butter or other fat by packing it in the spoon and then leveling it with a knife. Be particular in measuring the liquid, using neither more nor less than is called for. Regarding this ingredient, it should always be remembered that when a cupful is required, a half-pint cup full to the brim is meant and that any fraction ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... the grantee whom he derives from was that of being a prompt and greedy instrument of a leveling tyrant, who opprest all descriptions of his people, but who fell with particular fury on everything that was great and noble. Mine has been in endeavoring to screen every man, in every class, from oppression, and particularly in defending the high and eminent, who in the bad times of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various

... a week after the storming of the Kaiserbagh—by which time everything had settled down, order was restored, and the inhabitants were, under the direction of the military authorities, engaged in clearing away rubbish, leveling barricades, and razing to the ground a considerable portion of the city—that Colonel Warrener and his sons met. The troops were now all comfortably under canvas in the cantonments, and were enjoying a well-earned ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty

... at first have acted as you dreamed they did," she replied. "Perhaps they would not at once have liked the idea of economic equality, fearing that it might mean a leveling down for them, and not understanding that it would presently mean a leveling up of all together to a vastly higher plane of life and happiness, of material welfare and moral dignity than the most fortunate ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy

... your tracks, Bill, or I'll sure bore you!" Shorty thundered, drawing and leveling two Colt's forty-fours. "Step another step in your steps an' I let eleven holes through your danged ornery ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... in the South Central District continued steadily with no delay through lack of help, and when the canal was finished and the water ready, the men who had built it turned to making the ditches on their own claims, leveling their land for irrigation, preparing for the first crops and making what other improvements they could. Meanwhile the new townsite was laid out on the ground already occupied by the headquarters camp and the camp itself ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright

... times and talked of war, still the town kept a thriving aspect. Men were at work leveling Beacon Hill. Boylston Street was being made something better than a lane, and Common Street was improved. Uncle Winthrop said next thing he supposed they would begin to improve him and order him to take up his house and walk. For houses were moved even ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas

... economical system of preparing the land for irrigation. My neighbors tell me that it will be necessary for me to have the land leveled; at a cost of $6 to $10 per acre. Now I am informed that in Alberta, and some places in California, they do not go to the expense of leveling land, but use a system of preparing land for irrigation at a cost of about ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson

... effigy mounds of Wisconsin, and the other few examples mentioned, are among the most interesting objects of aboriginal work. Except in a few favored instances, they are rapidly disappearing. To the leveling influence of time is added the assistance of man, and our knowledge of them will soon be confined to existing descriptions, unless something is at once done to preserve them from destruction. Interesting mementos of a vanished race, we turn from their contemplation with a sigh of ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen

... ridge has thus been explored, but it will remain to trace the limits of the valley of the Rimouski, which will form a deep indenture in the boundary line. This line having been explored, a party was formed, after the assemblage of the several divisions at Temiscouata, for the purpose of leveling it with the barometer; but the expedition was frustrated by a heavy snowstorm, which set in on the 12th October. This, the most important part of the whole northern line, therefore remains for future ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson

... excursion, Landseer was stationed on a runway, gun in hand, with a gillie in attendance. The dogs started a fine buck, which ran close to them, but instead of leveling his gun, Landseer shoved the weapon into the hands of the astonished gillie with the hurried whispered request, "Here, you, hold this for me!" and seizing his pencil, made a hasty sketch of the gallant buck ere the vision ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard

... miscellaneous articles she knocked out of its place, so that it fell with a tinkling crash, throwing its contents in all directions. Her fingers closed on the stock of the pistol, and she faced Chavis, who was a few feet away, leveling the big weapon at him. Her voice came firmly; she was surprised at her ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer

... glided into the sea-green wilderness. Leveling off in sight of the ocean floor, they tried their drive jets. The effect was thrilling! Zip ... Whoosh! They darted to and fro like ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton

... exclaimed, leveling his arm at a shadow that darted out of the darkness and passed between them and the launch. The Governor saw it and ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson

... came up, leveling a gun, Menesee was half out of his chair, hands raised in alarmed protest. ...
— Oneness • James H. Schmitz

... straight away from the cavern, without a turn. Its walls were the roughest I had seen, and often a boulder which lay across our path presented a serrated face that looked as though it had but just been broken from the wall above. Still the stone was comparatively soft—time had not yet worked its leveling finger on the surfaces that ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout

... 16 are what are known as "bent chisels"; they are used principally for leveling the ground (or background), and are therefore also called "grounders." These tools are made with various curves or bends in their length, but for our present uses one with a bend like that shown to tool No. 23, Fig. 2, and at a in Fig. 3, will ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack

... between with the fleece. Then he set to and dug another hole higher up with a channel leading into the emptied pit of Ashmedia, by means of which the pit was filled with the wine he had brought. After leveling the ground so as not to rouse suspicion, he withdrew to a tree close by, so as to watch the result and wait his opportunity. After a while Ashmedai came, and examined the seal, when, seeing it all right, he raised the stone, and to his surprise found wine in the pit. For a time he stood ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... Men with shovels, leveling the sand-hills, piled the wagons high with shimmering grains which were ... dumped into pile-surrounded bogs. San Francisco reached farther and farther out into ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... which I have developed it, as a controlling principle of society, utters no cry which separates and makes hostile to another the classes of society. He utters, rather, a cry of reconciliation, a cry which includes all society, a cry for the leveling of all hostilities among the social strata, a cry of accord, in which all should join who do not wish privilege and the oppression of the people by privileged classes, a cry of love, which, ever since it spoke for the first time from the heart of the people, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... moment with a loud imprecation, and then leveling a revolver, fired. Vincent felt a moment's pain in the cheek, but before he could level his rifle his companion fired, and Pearson fell forward dead. A minute later the sheriff ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty

... noblest and most beautiful wing of the great palace. This edifice, known to contemporaries as the great new palace, comprised a spacious Chapel and Hall of Justice; and in August 9, 1344, contracts were made for cutting away and leveling the rock above the present Rue Peyrolerie, whereon, by October 21, 1351, the masons had raised ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... as junior rodman if, at the age of fourteen, I could perform the duties requed,— which Colonel Curtis doubted. The work was not to commence until the spring, when I was to be given a trial. I worked hard that winter, for hard work, I thought, was the way to fortune. I studied the mode of leveling. I saw a man on the Hocking canal operate his instrument, take the rear sight from the level of the water in the canal, then by a succession of levels backwards and forwards carry his level to the objective point. Then the man was kind enough to show me ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... the light, and he saw that the watchman held a drawn revolver, and was leveling it at Bill. The motion of the fight was all that prevented the shot, as Mathews leaped to and fro. A dozen men were between Dick and the watchman; but almost under his hand, at the edge of the bar, stood a whisky bottle. He dove for ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton

... L'Isle literally and figuratively in the dark, grew impatient, and announced his intention to commence a pistol practice on them that would draw out some demonstration. He rode down to the water's edge, and was leveling a long pistol at the middle of the dark mass, when some epithet of Hatton's more stinging than any he had yet invented, proved too much for Goring's gravity. He began to laugh, and the contagion seized every dragoon of the party. The mask of hostility fell off, and they were instantly ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen

... appearance of a mound in any sense, due probably both to the fact that the sandy soil will not heap up to such a height over a honeycomb of tunnels as will a firmer or rocky soil, and also to its greater exposure to the leveling action of rains and the trampling of animals. These mounds are in themselves large enough to attract some attention, but their conspicuousness is enhanced by the fact that they are more or less completely denuded of vegetation and are ...
— Life History of the Kangaroo Rat • Charles T. Vorhies and Walter P. Taylor

... said Farnsworth apathetically turning to a small loop-hole and leveling a field glass through it. "We might make a rush from the gates and stampede them," he presently added. Then he uttered an exclamation of ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... practical operations, the elements of history (a required subject after 1867) and geography, notions of the physical sciences and of natural history applicable to the ordinary purposes of life, elementary instruction in agriculture, trade, and hygiene; and surveying, leveling, linear drawing, ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... dispensations of Providence, I have been protected beyond all human probability and expectations; for I had four bullets through my coat and two horses shot under me; yet I escaped unhurt, although death was leveling my ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various

... and swearing down the road, spattering the gravel under the big hoofs of the gray. Close at his heels rode two officers in Confederate gray uniforms, and a motley crowd of riders closed up the road behind. In an instant the guide and I were surrounded, the whole cavalcade leveling their guns at the thicket and calling on our companions, who could be plainly heard crashing through the bushes, to halt. The dress of but few of our captors could be seen, nearly all being covered with rubber talmas; but their mounts, including mules as well as horses, were ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various

... exhaustion he would have killed Joseph Brecht if at the last moment the latter had not drawn his revolver. After all is said and done, gentlemen, can a woman love but once? Joseph Brecht fired. In that infinitesimal moment between the leveling of the gun and the firing of the shot Marie Beauvais found answer to that question. Who was it she loved? She sprang to her husband's breast, sheltering him with the body that had been disloyal to its soul, and she died there—with a ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood

... better, say I. Although I am no man of war, and love looking after my falcons or giving food to my dogs far more than exchanging hard blows, yet would I gladly don the buff and steel coat to aid in leveling the keep of that robber and tyrant, Sir ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty

... his turn, and those sons also will have sons and grandsons. With all this posterity my line will not die out; while on the other hand the mountains will receive no increment or addition. Why then should I despair of leveling them to the ground at last?"—The Wise Old Man of the River-bend had nothing to say ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... produced that are exactly the opposite of those ascribed to water erosion. Instead of the running water cutting deeper into the earth it has partly filled the canon with alluvium, thereby demonstrating nature's universal leveling process. Even the floods of water which pour through them during every rainy season with an almost irresistible force carry in more soil than they wash out and every freshet only adds new soil to the old deposits. If these canons were all originally made by water erosion as is claimed, ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk

... fracture, it is to be destroyed by the use of the hermodactyl. When the external wound is healed, the cicatrix is to be dressed with the apostolicon cyrurgicum, an ointment very valuable for the consolidation of bones, the leveling ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson

... be granted us to work intelligently, effectively, tirelessly for world-wide peace and service. not by the suppression of racial and national diversities, the leveling of the mass to a deadly sameness, but through steadily increasing appreciation of racial and national traits. May the world, even sooner than we dare to hope, be ruled by sympathy ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... under the deep pollution. Fronto and Aurelian—the last at least sincere—aim at a restoration of religion. They would lift it up to the highest place, and make it the sovereign law of Rome. In this attempt, they are unconsciously digging away her very foundations; they are leveling her proud walls with the earth. Suppose Rome were made what Fronto would have her? Every Roman were then another Fronto—or another Aurelian. Were that a world to live in? or to endure? These, lady, are the enemies of Rome, Aurelian and Fronto. The only ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... magistrate, leveling a pudgy finger at Blount. "This here co't is already cognizant of certain facts bearing on that p'int. The boy was left with Bob Yancy mainly because nobody else would take him. Them's the facts. Now ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester

... their turn exactly alike at the polling place. Each ballot has exactly the same weight in the election, and the ballot of the poorest man counts just as much as the ballot of the most influential citizen. The voting place is the leveling place, and when women realize that the exercise of suffrage gives not only the equal right to vote, but also allows equal expression of opinion, then the better purpose of woman suffrage will have been accomplished. This equality is not a condescension ...
— Citizenship - A Manual for Voters • Emma Guy Cromwell

... be taught in the nine universities of the land, and to deprive it of its rights is a most cruel innovation and usurpation, tending to destroy all just subordination in the world, making all universities superfluous, leveling vice-chancellors, doctors, and proctors, masters, bachelors, and scholars, to the mean and contemptible state of butchers and tallow-chandlers, bricklayers and chimney-sweepers, who, if it were not for these learned mysteries, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... had! Curse them! The brats would have grown up to oppose the vested privileges of the rich! They, too, would have become anarchists and rioters, bent on leveling the huge industrial fabric which such as he had so laboriously erected under the legal protection afforded their sacred rights! He had done well to remove them now! And the great captains of industry would thank him for the example he had ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... qualified to do the same thing with a kitchen stove, or that the method he had acquired as office boy, copying letters in the letterpress, would have stood him in good stead if he suddenly had been called upon to make up his own bed. What he did realize was that the leveling process which goes hand in hand with the mingling of sexes in a workday world was setting in. And he resented it. He wanted to coddle illusion ... he had no wish for a world practical to the point ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie

... covered by later sediments. The conditions in the Ray, Miami, and Jerome copper camps of Arizona (pp. 203-205) likewise indicate maximum oxidation at an early period. The Lake Superior iron ore deposits (pp. 167-170) were mainly concentrated before Cambrian time, during the base-leveling of a mountainous country in an arid or semi-arid climate. The oxide zone of these deposits has no close relation to the present topography or to the present ground-water level. In the Kennecott (Alaska) copper deposits all oxidation has been stopped since glacial time by the freezing ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith

... treasure to be gained by human toil; and that the little ant-hill, where the best of us creep to and fro, bears to angelic eyes, in the patientest gathering of its galleries, only the aspect of a little heap of dust; while for the worst of us, the heap, still lower by the leveling of those winged surveyors, is high enough, nevertheless, to overhang, and at last to close in judgment, on the seventh day, over the journeyers to the fortunate Islands; while to their dying eyes, through the mirage, "the city sparkles like a grain ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... that very morning to intercept a band of robbers who had infested the roadways of this neighborhood, and who had rendered the highways impassable because of their depredations. Near Tarrytown, three of this party confronted a passing traveler, and leveling their muskets at him, ordered him to halt. They were obeyed on the instant, and because of the suspicious manner of the stranger, a complete search of him was made. The set of papers was found in their hiding place, and he was placed under arrest, ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett

... I said? Now listen. How could the fact that the world was turned into a military camp, officers commanding, privates obeying, rank, rank, rank everywhere throughout mankind, how could that fail to hinder democracy, which is in its essence the leveling of ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... passing boats for news of the rise and fall of the water above, always trusting the house would stand—"and it would," the mother said, "for it was a good, strong house, but for the storm." The winds came, and the terrible gale that swept the valley like a tornado, with the water at its height, leveling whole towns, descended and beat upon that house, and it fell. In the morning there was no house there, and the waves in their fury rushed madly on. Then these little children "stood and wept on the banks of the river," and the desolation and fear in the careful mother's ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton

... Courtesy is an obligation on the part of a gentleman and a Christian. I'd as soon be rude to my tailor as eat with my knife. But a man must respect his own rank or others won't respect it, especially in these nasty, radical, leveling times. You must stand by your class. There's a vulgar proverb about the bird that fouls its own nest, you know. Well, I never did that. I've always stood by my own class. Helped my poor brother Archibald—you can't remember ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... life is only a simple balance of forces, the expenditure and nourishment corresponding exactly to demand and supply in the Science of Political Economy.[2] They tend continually to level themselves. Have we not the right to decide in which way the leveling shall be effected—the equation be formed? This is a simple solution of the difficulty. I suggest that this experiment be tried: let the girl study her extra time in the evening, if she desires, only being cautious that she do not infringe upon her sleep hours; then ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett

... celestial hemisphere, the sound as of approaching torrents of rain, the frightful sight of incessant lightning, and a slow quaking of the earth accompanied the furious wind. The tearing up of trees, the lifting of roofs, smashing of windows, and leveling of everything added terror-striking noises to the scene. The tempest raged with the same fury in the capital till after one o'clock in the morning. In other parts of the island it began about the same hour, but without any serious effect till ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk

... for long distances; in other instances it will seem to act like a cannon-ball that plows up the earth on striking, then rises and strikes again, leaving the space between untouched. Sometimes it will go through a forest leveling the trees as though a gang of axemen had plied their tools on lines laid out by surveyors, nothing outside the track being touched; but again in similar windfalls there will be found occasional pockets ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis

... has acted like a prudent commandant of a fortress, the first display of whose talents always consists in leveling about the building, and a plantation can be made again any spring day. Carry off the wood to the farm-yard," cried he to the men; "tear down the wooden inclosure of the well, bring the boards to the yard, and hide the ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... know that "ye have the poor always with you," I know that there is much suffering in the world—I have suffered myself—but I cannot see that living among the poor is going to help vitally. Should we not all live on the highest level possible? Level up instead of leveling down. Ignorance, dirt, and sickness do not attract me ... and now here among the hills the terrible city seems like a fading nightmare. It would be better if people lived in the country. I feel that the city is a mistake. But of one thing I am sure. I understand that you cannot ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim

... world's history, this race movement that has built up the United States and is now building up Canada. Other great race movements have been a tearing down of high places, the upward scramble of one class on the {xiv} backs of the deposed class. Instead of leveling down, Canada's nation building ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... found Captain Egan with a company of the Second Cavalry and a wagon train loaded with tents, grain, provisions, etc. The men were leveling off the ground and were making preparations to put up large wall tents for the Grand Duke Alexis and his suite, and for General Sheridan, his staff and other officers, and invited guests of the party. Proceeding to Fort McPherson I reported what had been ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody

... largely a matter of education. You have, perhaps unconsciously, voiced the usual argument against the equity of equality, which is made by the champions of the competitive system. Our people have learned from experience, that the co-operative farm movement is a leveling up process, which purposes to raise the weaker units, to the condition of the higher. They have learned, that society is a purely co-operative institution. They have learned, that the wants of society, create value ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... kind is most essential, however small. It can be used as a try-square, and has this advantage, that the head can be made to slide along the rule and be clamped at any point. It has a beveling and a leveling device, as well. ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe

... command was not obeyed, for Hamilton and Ellen were already beyond reach when the order was given; but the second one led to the discharge of two guns without effect, and the leveling of a third by Ramsey, with a coolness and steadiness of nerve and aim which gave assurance of success. His finger was on the trigger, when Durant himself threw up the muzzle of the rifle, and sent the ball whizzing through the air, some ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison

... the deposition of these Algonkian strata, the Laurentian rocks (the granite) upon which they rest were subject to a long period of "planation,"—as the grinding down and leveling of rock surfaces is termed. After this planation was complete, a subsidence occurred; the whole area became the bed of an inland sea, and upon the planed-down granite, the debris that formed ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James

... of their supporters have reached is that if only enough of the small dams could be built throughout the headwater areas of a river basin, they would eliminate the need for most other forms of water management, leveling out flood and drought flows and holding a great aggregate amount of water on tap for use anywhere down the line. At times in the past, the controversy between supporters of big dams and supporters of little dams achieved the proportions of a bloodless ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior

... LEVELING. The art of finding how much higher or lower horizontally any given point on the earth's surface is, than another point on the same; practised in ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... Dilly's debts. He sat humped over the saddle-horn like an old man and stared at the trail and at the forefeet of Barney coming down pluck, pluck with leisurely regularity in the dust. Just so was Charming Billy Boyle trampling down the dreams that had been so sweet in the dreaming, and leveling ruthlessly the very foundations of the fair castle he had builded in the air for Dill and himself—and one other, with the fairest, highest, most secret chambers for that Other. And as he rode, the face of him was worn and the blue eyes of him sombre and dull; and his mouth, that had ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower

... plant, but because of greater porosity of the loosened soil which enables the cold to strike to a greater depth. These two objections to fall planting can be overcome largely by mounding up the earth so as practically to cover the vines, leveling the mound in early spring; but this extra work more than offsets the labor saving in ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick

... his retelling of Arthurian romance a moral sense, so Lowell, also a moralist in his poetic apprehension, made a parable of his tale, and, in the broadest interpretation of democracy, sang of the leveling of all ranks in a common divine humanity. There is a subterranean passage connecting the Biglow Papers with Sir Launfal; it is the holy zeal which attacks slavery issuing in this fable of a beautiful charity, Christ in ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... traveled round the circle of faces, keenly scrutinizing each in turn. When he came to Eagle Feather he paused, gazed fixedly at him, took a single step in his direction, and, suddenly leveling an accusing finger at him, cried ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor

... had burned through the roof. The Metropolitan opera company from New York had just opened its season there and all the expensive scenery and costumes were soon reduced to ashes. From the opera house the fire leaped from building to building, leveling them almost to ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... born in New England, two were graduates of Yale College, and one was a Congregationalist, while Samuel Blair, an alumnus of the new institution, was not thought unworthy to be minister of the Old South Church of Boston. These are but isolated instances of the leveling of religious barriers between Protestant sects in the Northern colonies. In the decades following the Great Awakening New England religious solidarity was already a thing of the past. While cultivated and tolerant liberals ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker

... his to Caermaen and its neighborhood had a peculiar object; he was gradually leveling to the dust the squalid kraals of modern times, and rebuilding the splendid and golden city of Siluria. All this mystic town was for the delight of his sweetheart and himself; for her the wonderful ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... Italy worse . . . vulgarity and commonness everywhere. What an absolutely dreary outlook wherever one turns one's eyes! There is no corner of the modern world that is not vulgar and common. Democracy has done its horrible leveling down with ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... seen to raise the muzzle of his gun again, and crouch over it, leveling it straight at Donnegan. He, at least, would send his bullet straight to the mark when that first chime went humming through the ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand

... thyme, then add twice its volume of fresh bread crumbs (which have been dipped in water and squeezed out). When the bread has been well mixed add the yolk of one egg and mix again well, spread this mixture all over the surface of the beef, leveling it off with a knife. Then sprinkle on a few raisins, and then roll up the meat like a cigar, but bigger in the middle than at the ends. Tie it up then, crosswise and lengthwise, and brown it in a saucepan with a little lard and some ham. As soon as it colors add some chopped-up ...
— Simple Italian Cookery • Antonia Isola

... get back. I have never talked seriously to you before; I may never do it again. The essence, the distinctive finesse, of breeding, lies in a trained gaiety and an implied sincerity. But what I must say to you is this: Even in this leveling age there are a few of us who look with terror upon an incipient socialism; who believe money as money to be despicable and food and clothing, incidental; who abhor equality, cherish sorrow and suffering and ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain

... His dunnage was on his back, his paddle in his hand. And Cassidy, smiling grimly, a dangerous humor in his eyes, was leveling an automatic at his breast. It was, in that instant, a tableau which no man could ever forget. Cassidy was bareheaded, and the sun burned hotly in his red hair. And his face was red, and in the pale blue of his Irish eyes was ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood

... the affair the Englishman drew two arguments from under his coat, and leveling one of them at the head of the padre, suggested to him the propriety of not interposing any obstacle to the return of himself and wife to their home. This was a poser; an act of open impiety; a Kentucky argument. But there was no remedy. The Inquisition was ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... and a moment later a pistol was fired, and the ball went through his hat. By the light of the lamps Mark saw the other man raise his hand, and, leveling his pistol, fired on the instant; then, as there was no reply to his shot, he discharged the second barrel at the first who had fired, and who had at once drawn another pistol. The two reports rang out almost at the same moment, but Mark's was a little ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty

... reliability. Of the graduates, some are in responsible positions in this state, while others are pursuing courses of study in higher institutions at the North, or have already entered upon professional work. The great work of such a school is in its "leveling up." Who shall measure this? When a boy on retiring at night folds and carefully lays away the sheets and pillow slips from his bed, to "keep them clean," or when he thinks, on entering the dining-room, that he has "reached heaven," evidently ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 2, April, 1900 • Various

... surrender," said an officer to a Texas cowboy, who had spurred an excitable horse until it was rearing and plunging in the street, leveling meanwhile a double-barreled ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams

... when he fell, which certainly was not a threatning posture. It may be supposd that he had as good Right to carry a Stick, even a Bludgeon, as the Soldier who shot him had, to be armd with Musquet & ball; & if he at any time lifted up his Weapon of Defence, it was surely not more than a Soldiers leveling his Gun at the Multitude chargd with Death - If he had killed a Soldier, he might have been hangd for it, & as a traitor too, for to attack a Soldier upon his post, was declared Treason; But the Soldier shot Attucks & killed him, & he ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams

... nation brought them forth; we call upon you who know all this as witnesses, whether it can be true what our enemies report that the German Army is a horde of barbarians and a band of incendiaries who take pleasure in leveling defenseless cities to the ground and in destroying venerable monuments of history and art. If you wish to pay honor to the cause of truth you will be as firmly convinced as we are that German troops, wherever ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various



Words linked to "Leveling" :   act, human action, demolishing, equalization, tearing down, razing, destruction, equation, building, grading, balancing, construction, equalisation, human activity, equating, reconciliation, deed



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