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Pedestal   Listen
noun
Pedestal  n.  
1.
(Arch.) The base or foot of a column, statue, vase, lamp, or the like; the part on which an upright work stands. It consists of three parts, the base, the die or dado, and the cornice or surbase molding. "Build him a pedestal, and say, "Stand there!""
2.
Hence: A short free-standing column or column-like object designed to support a work of art or other object; a column serving the same function as the base of a statue. It may be made of wood, marble, or other suitable material.
3.
(Furniture) A part of a desk which contains a frame and drawers, stands on the floor, and provides support for the desk surface. There may be zero, one, or two such pedestals in a desk.
4.
(a)
(Railroad Cars) A casting secured to the frame of a truck and forming a jaw for holding a journal box.
(b)
(Mach.) A pillow block; a low housing.
(c)
(Bridge Building) An iron socket, or support, for the foot of a brace at the end of a truss where it rests on a pier.
Pedestal coil (steam Heating), a group of connected straight pipes arranged side by side and one above another, used in a radiator.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Pedestal" Quotes from Famous Books



... for the boy, and would risk it again if necessary, risk it cheerfully, but as an abstract proposition he cared little whether the Dauphin lived or died. Next after Ursula came Commines. There had been a bitter moment when Commines had tottered on his pedestal, but Ursula's hand had steadied him just when the touch was needed. Ursula again! It was marvellous how the whole of Amboise had its orbit round Ursula. In the end Commines had justified himself, and in that belief the loyal heart of Stephen La Mothe found the early ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond

... of his own conscience. Had his attitude toward Flamby changed? It had done so. What was the nature of the change? His keen personal interest had given place to one impersonal, although sincere in its way. What was the explanation of this? He had enshrined her, set her upon a fairy pedestal, only to learn that she was humanly frail. Had this discovery hurt him? Intensely. How and why? It had shattered his belief in his omniscience. Yes, that was the unpalatable truth, brought to light at last. Frailty in woman he looked for, and because he knew it to be an offshoot ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer

... before, but now the thought of it gave me a sharp pang. He was the first of our little confederacy to go. But what an ending he had made, and how happy he had been in that mad time when he had come down from his pedestal and become one of the crowd! He had found himself at the last, and who could grudge him such happiness? If the best were to be taken, he would be chosen first, for he was a big man, before whom I uncovered my head. The thought of him made me very humble. ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan

... was re-echoed by Mrs. Curtis, who had erected dear Alexander to a pedestal of infallibility, and was always treated by him with a considerate kindness that made her pity Fanny for the number of years that must pass before Stephana could give her the supreme blessing of a son-in-law. Fanny, on her side, had sufficient present ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... left hand he politely took off his old-fashioned top-hat; with his right he caught Prince Saradine so ringing a crack across the face that the white top hat rolled down the steps and one of the blue flower-pots rocked upon its pedestal. ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... would have been over—exploded! Instead of this, he became fascinated by her, she refused him; and then, to make it ever so much worse for me, Lord Selsey, whom he's so fond of and thinks such a lot of, goes and puts her upon a pedestal, constantly in sight, yet completely out ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson

... unnecessary precaution, for the passages had become more complex and tortuous than ever, with a perfect network of intersecting corridors. But these all ended in one large circular hall with a square pedestal of tufa topped with a slab of marble at one ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle

... trees. Amongst its public buildings may be mentioned the new House of Assembly, of which Sir John Akerman is Speaker. It is a handsome edifice, well arranged, and economically constructed at a cost of L20,000. A life-size statue of Her Majesty is to be erected in the front of the building, the pedestal of ...
— A Winter Tour in South Africa • Frederick Young

... polished jewels he gave sight to the sightless eyes. The hyacinth-like curls grew crisp beneath his graver. And when, in some dim frescoed fane, or pillared sunlit portico, the child of Leto stood upon his pedestal, those who passed by, [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], became conscious of a new influence that had come across their lives, and dreamily, or with a sense of strange and quickening joy, went to their homes or daily labour, or wandered, ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde

... made of concrete. The pedestal and basin are made of two separate pieces, and are cast in a form or mold. A more difficult concrete bath is shown in Fig. 63. This project is made in four pieces. The base consists of two parts, the bottom being cast in a form made of 1/2" or 7/8" stock. ...
— Bird Houses Boys Can Build • Albert F. Siepert

... were only a few papers; a telephone stood on the right-hand side of the blotter. There were some maps on the walls, nothing more. On a mahogany stand against the wall in the centre of the room, near his desk, stood the ticker, like a sacred image on a pedestal. Strange little god, mysterious little oracle—I don't think I would have felt surprised if on entering he had knelt down before it and said a short prayer. Instead, he seated himself at his desk and commenced speaking into the telephone. ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch

... Titian, the Christ between St. Andrew and St. Catherine in the Church of SS. Ermagora and Fortunato (commonly called S. Marcuola) at Venice. Here the head of the infant Christ, who stands on a pedestal holding the Orb, between the two saints above mentioned, is strangely out of proportion to the rest. Crowe and Cavalcaselle had refused to accept this picture as a genuine Titian (vol. ii. p. 432), but Morelli restored it to its rightful place ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips

... disaster on politicians, and abuses them. How ungrateful. His too lofty pedestal is almost exclusively the work of politicians. I heard very, very few military men in America consider Scott a man of transcendent military capacity. Years ago, during the Crimean campaign, I spent some time at West Point in the society ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski

... 15, 1673, and all Haarlem gathered to do honour to the black tulip. Boxtel was in the crowd, feasting his eyes on the sacred flower, which was born aloft in a litter. The procession stopped, and the flower was placed on a pedestal, while the people cheered with wild enthusiasm. At the solemn moment when the Prince of Orange was to acclaim the triumphant owner of the black tulip and present the prize of 100,000 guilders, the coach with the unhappy prisoner ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... was commissioned to supply two statues, each on a cubical pedestal. It is with these pedestals that we are concerned. They were of unequal sizes, as will be seen in the illustration, and when the time arrived for payment a dispute arose as to whether the agreement was based on lineal or cubical measurement. But ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... who had refused to relieve the burden of desire even with a kiss, had been killed by a seemingly miraculous interposition of Love, who, angered at the sight of the unhappy lover hanging from the neck by the lintel of the doorpost, fell from his pedestal upon the beloved, while he stood heart-set watching the ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore

... period preceding that of Rameses II. After the battle of Actium, Augustus transported it to Rome, and it was first placed in the Circus Maximus, but during the reign of Valentinian it fell from its pedestal and lay buried in the earth, until in the sixteenth century Pope Sixtus V had it placed in the centre of the Piazza del Popolo, and consecrated it to the cross. The two inscriptions are on ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting

... sole, heel, splint, lap, bar, rod, boom, sprit[obs3], outrigger; ratlings[obs3]. staff, stick, crutch, alpenstock, baton, staddle[obs3]; bourdon[obs3], cowlstaff[obs3], lathi[obs3], mahlstick[obs3]. post, pillar, shaft, thill[obs3], column, pilaster; pediment, pedicle; pedestal; plinth, shank, leg, socle[obs3], zocle[obs3]; buttress, jamb, mullion, abutment; baluster, banister, stanchion; balustrade; headstone; upright; door post, jamb, door jamb. frame, framework; scaffold, skeleton, beam, rafter, girder, lintel, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... heeded them not. I saw Aurore, only Aurore, standing upon the dais like a statue upon its pedestal—the type of sadness and beauty. The sooner I could take her thence, the happier for me; and with that object in view I had ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid

... used to throw a piece of calcium carbonate into them. Well, it was almost like that, but in the midst of the desert, in the midst of obscurity. The white waters rushed into the depths of the black hole, and rose and rose towards the pedestal on which we stood. And there was the uninterrupted noise of thunder, and still louder, the sound of whole walls of rock, undermined by the flood, collapsing in a heap and dissolving in a few seconds of time in the midst of the ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit

... spotting a trail in this forest maze remarkably lucid, and went again on my wanderings, my last backward glimpse of the mouse-gray cabin under its pink and white geysers of blossom still showing the six little tow-headed, barefooted youngsters standing like six little patiences on a pedestal, staring after me. But when I had disappeared down the trail I heard from far off, mingling with the murmur of the brook, the shrill sound of childish glee, as they resumed their search for wild flowers. Then it was ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton

... with the central pier of the eastern aisle is the most important monument in the north transept, viz.:—the pedestal of the celebrated shrine of St. Thomas de Cantilupe, 1282, who died at Civita Vecchia, near Florence, on his way to Rome, August 25th, 1282. His heart was sent to Ashridge in Buckinghamshire, part of the body was buried near Orvieto; and the bones ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Hereford, A Description - Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • A. Hugh Fisher

... instance we cut a hole through the floor of the dark-room, and sledged in some heavy boulders of kenyte lava: these were frozen solidly into the rock upon which the hut was built by the simple method of pouring hot water over them, and the pedestal so formed was used by Wright for his pendulum observations. I was able to skin a number of birds in the hut; which, incidentally, was a very much colder place in consequence of the reduction ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... their union, and became more and more satisfied that the person whom she now beheld was Elizabeth herself, she stood with one foot advanced and one withdrawn, her arms, head, and hands perfectly motionless, and her cheek as pallid as the alabaster pedestal against which she leaned. Her dress was of pale sea-green silk, little distinguished in that imperfect light, and somewhat resembled the drapery of a Grecian Nymph, such an antique disguise having been thought the most secure, where so many maskers and revellers were ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... disgrace his apotheosis of him." "It is the merit and preservation of friendship that it takes place on a level higher than the actual characters of the parties would seem to warrant." This is to put friendship on a pedestal indeed; and yet the root of the matter is there; and the last sentence, in particular, is like a light in a dark place, and makes many mysteries plain. We are different with different friends; yet if we look closely we shall find that every such relation reposes ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... appearance. We ascended the Simonbong spur of Tonglo, so called from a small village and Lama temple of that name on its summit; where we arrived at noon, and passing some chaits* [The chait of Sikkim, borrowed from Tibet, is a square pedestal, surmounted with a hemisphere, the convex end downwards, and on it is placed a cone, with a crescent on the top. These are erected as tombs to Lamas, and as monuments to illustrious persons, and are venerated accordingly, the people always passing ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... the library of John Faust, a large handsome room panelled in dark oak and lined with rows of books in open book-shelves. On the right is a carved white stone fireplace, with deep chairs before it. In the far left corner of the room, on a pedestal, stands a stiff bust of George Washington. Near it hangs a wonderful Titian portrait, a thing of another world. The furniture looks as if it were, and probably is, plunder from the palace of ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke

... be, she lacks nothing in the way of chivalry, and it rests with herself whether she remains an outsider or becomes just One of Us. Just One of Us," he repeated, unconsciously pleading hard for the bushman and his greatest need—"not a goddess on a pedestal, but just a comrade to share our ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... conviction is forced home upon the 'good' women," the writer remarks, "that their place of honor and privilege rests upon the degradation of others as its basis, they will never rest till they have either abandoned it or sought for it some other pedestal. If our inflexible marriage system has for its essential condition the existence side by side with it of prostitution, then one of two things follows: either prostitution must be shown to be compatible with the well-being, moral and physical, of the women who practice it, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... painter called Masaccio (born in 1401), each of whom was destined, taking fire no doubt from Ghiberti and his fine free way, to be a powerful innovator—Donatello (apart from other and rarer achievements) being the first sculptor since antiquity to place a statue on a pedestal around which observers could walk; Masaccio being the first painter to make pictures in the modern use of the term, with men and women of flesh and blood in them, as distinguished from decorative saints, and to be by example ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

... beautiful pedestal in the garden attracted him first. It proved to be the statue of a centaur. An inscription informed the unlearned visitor that it exactly represented Chiron, the beloved of Apollo and Diana, instructed by them in the mysteries of hunting, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... the public areas of the town of Como stands a statue with no inscription on its pedestal, save that of a single name, 'Volta.' The bearer of that name occupies a place for ever memorable in the history of science. To him we owe the discovery of the voltaic pile, to which for a brief interval we must ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall

... black marble, inlaid with red onyx and lapis lazuli, which formed a miniature zodiac similar to that at Denderah, while in the middle of this table sat a small Murano hour-glass, filled with sand from the dreary valley of El Ghor. A huge plaster Trimurti stood close to the wall, on a triangular pedestal of black rock, and the Siva-face and the writhing cobra confronted all who entered. Just opposite grinned a red granite slab with a quaint basso-relievo taken from the ruins of Elora. Near the door were ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... and Athenian sculptor of the age of Phidias, and said to have been his favourite pupil. His most noted work was the statue at Rhamnus of Nemesis, by some attributed to Phidias himself. Of this statue part of the head is in the British Museum; some fragments of the reliefs which adorned the pedestal are in the museum ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... devised for Jews or Moors, whom the Christianity of the age did not regard as human beings, but who could not be banished without depopulating certain districts. It was soon, however, extended from pagans to heretics. The Dominican Torquemada was the first Moloch to be placed upon this pedestal of blood and fire, and from that day forward the "holy office" was almost exclusively in the hands of that band of brothers. In the eighteen years of Torquemada's administration; ten thousand two hundred and twenty individuals ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... and square, there was 'standing-room at the top,' as some wag observed, and I pressed forward, meaning to mount with the aid of the iron handrail; as I reached the pedestal on the left, near which the brunette had halted beside the two women before mentioned, and who I began to think were in her company, the wag at the top bent down and put out ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch

... expansive, as they are apt to be at table. That blessed clairvoyance which sees into things without opening them,— that glorious license, which, having shut the door and driven the reporter from its key-hole, calls upon Truth, majestic virgin! to get off from her pedestal and drop her academic poses, and take a festive garland and the vacant place on the medius lectus,—that carnival-shower of questions and replies and comments, large axioms bowled over the mahogany like ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... and erected a small pedestal upon which to rest his compass while he ran his westerly line. Loose stones of proper size were hard to find. The smaller ones were frozen fast to the ground, and the larger ones were too heavy for him to move. But presently he collected a sufficient number of small stones to ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace

... and the earnest pleading of her admirer, Alice Page had, on that summer afternoon by the mill-pond, stepped a little from her pedestal of pride. In a way, too, her feelings were touched, at least enough to give her many an hour's heartache afterwards while she was resolutely putting the sweet illusion out of her mind. But no one, ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn

... did not sit down at once. He stood looking about him, at the sun-dial, and the whale's jaw lying bleached on a granite pedestal, and at the fine old houses rising up around us. "It is enchanting. Do you know, I have been thinking myself very fortunate since you spoke to me in ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey

... and, between us, set it up on a solid pedestal of casks. Then Smith mounted to this observation platform and I scrambled up beside him, and looked down upon ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... this marriage, more indeed than any of his comrades. It was to be the first step of the pedestal in the building up of a throne. It was to establish in Europe a party for James Stuart as strong as the party of Hanover. But so much was known to everyone in that room; to Wogan the marriage meant more. For even while he found himself muttering over and over with dry ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason

... see in the market A pedestal standing, 130 A peasant upon it, He's just like Savyeli, And all made of brass: It's Susanin's memorial. While crossing the market I'm suddenly startled— A heavy grey drake From a cook is escaping; The fellow pursues With a knife. It is shrieking. 140 My God, what a ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov

... ensured her a severe scolding and some oppressive penance; perhaps to lie flat on the threshold of the chapel and let every one pass over her, perhaps to lick the dust all round the base of the Virgin's pedestal. And Maude's own private conviction was that penances of this kind never did her the least good. Father Dominic told her that they humbled her. It was true they made her feel humiliated; but was that the same as feeling humble? ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt

... Oriental alabaster, destined to support the neck without deranging the head-dress, was hollowed out in the shape of a half moon. In the centre a table of precious wood carved with exceeding care, stood upon a richly carved pedestal. A number of objects were placed upon it: a pot of lotus flowers, a mirror of polished bronze on an ivory stand, a vase of moss agate filled with antimony powder, a perfume spatula of sycamore wood in the shape ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier

... evening until rather a late hour with the alchymist in this favourite resort. It was a delightful night after a sultry day, and the balmy air of the garden was peculiarly reviving. The old man was seated on a fragment of a pedestal, looking like a part of the ruin on which he sat. He was edifying his pupil by long lessons of wisdom from the stars, as they shone out with brilliant lustre in the dark-blue vault of a southern sky; for he was deeply versed in Behmen, and other of the Rosicrucians, and talked ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... I stopped before the pedestal from which the cross rose. On one side of it, on the side nearest to me, the newly-cut inscription met my eyes—the hard, clear, cruel black letters which told the story of her life and death. I tried to read ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

... grave, clear-cut face, which had a look of Charles. The long, beautifully modelled hands, clasped over the battered steel sword-hilt, were like Charles's too. Ruth read the inscription on the low marble pedestal, relating how he had fallen in the taking of the Redan, and then looked again. And gradually a great feeling of pity rose in her heart for the family which had lived here for so many generations, and which seemed now so likely to die out. Providence does not seem ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... their present positions, and the Germans pursued and tried to surround them. That was a lapse into the pre-Bloch style. Now the Russians are again entrenched, their supplies are restored, the Germans have a lengthened line of supplies, and Bloch is back upon his pedestal so far as the Eastern ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells

... statues, many of them life-sized and all of clay coated with a lustreless paint to make them look like marble, were disposed about the place with an eye to artistic effect, and near to an angle where stood on a pedestal, half concealed, half revealed by artistically arranged draperies, the life-size figure of a Roman senator, in toga and sandals, there was the one untidy spot, the one utterly inartistic ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew

... Mythe, pl. 18), we see a representation of this lion, which is standing over the bodies of slain enemies upon a rectangular pedestal, or block. ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge

... edifices which directly contemplate the river, and ornamented with marble images of Francois Rabelais and Rene Descartes. The former, erected a few years since, is a very honourable production; the pedestal of the latter could, as a matter of course, only be inscribed with the Cogito ergo Sum. The two statues mark the two opposite poles to which the wondrous French mind has travelled; and if there ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... of a shrine a statue representing Cupid is installed; a Parisian Cupid, so blistered and disfigured that he looks like a candidate for one of the adjacent hospitals, and might suggest an allegory to lovers of symbolism. The half-obliterated inscription on the pedestal beneath determines the date of this work of art, for it bears witness to the widespread enthusiasm felt for Voltaire on his return to Paris ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac

... mirrors, and intelligent flies," might be omitted, or explained to advantage. Recreation the 5th, "To tell by the dial of a watch at what hour any person intends to rise;" Recreation the 12th, "To produce the appearance of a phantom on a pedestal placed on the middle of a table;" and Recreation the 30th, "To write several letters which contain no meaning, upon cards; to make them, after they have been twice shuffled, give an answer to a question that shall be proposed;" as for example, "What is love?" scarcely come under the denomination ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

... electric lamp gold-shaded to set off the yellow-tinted marble and the Turkey carpets of gold and of richest blue. In one corner stood a Mongolian monster, a green and gold dragon of porcelain resting on a valuable faience pedestal—a bit of ancient Cathay set down in ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux

... of answer Monk bent over and quietly opened a false door, made to resemble the fronts of three drawers, in a pedestal of his desk. Lanyard couldn't see the face of the built-in safe, but he could hear the spinning of the combination manipulated by Monk's long and bony fingers. And presently he saw Monk straighten up with a sizable steel dispatch-box in his hands, place this ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... revised statute of Hercules; that he had become weary of standing on his pedestal during the hot weather, and had started out for fresh air. I give this as I remember it. The story ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... dethroned the gods from the pedestal, and has replaced, not an empty idol, but an ideal, the ideal of a man who ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... a contented mien among the long grass, finding odds and ends of nourishment, and here and there eking out their livelihood with a dart at a passing fly. Their long, comic, tufted legs, which seemed to form a sort of monumental pedestal whereon the bird itself was elevated, stalked and scratched about with an air ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... were cracking nuts. All these conversations, especially the joking with the girls, were such as might have had a particular charm for Petya at his age, but they did not interest him now. He sat on his elevation—the pedestal of the cannon—still agitated as before by the thought of the Emperor and by his love for him. The feeling of pain and fear he had experienced when he was being crushed, together with that of rapture, still further intensified his sense of the ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... with the richest sculpture and most brilliant mosaic. The volcanic mass on which the town is built is over seven hundred feet high, and nearly half as much in circumference: it would be a fitting pedestal for this gorgeous duomo if it stood there alone. But it is almost wedged in among the crooked streets, a few paces of grass-grown stones allowing less than space enough to embrace the whole result of proportion and color: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various

... for an insufficient display of romantic devotion at dances and tennis parties, she eventually marries him. Soon afterwards she discovers that he is not a chivalrous wind-bag, but a Man, whereupon she shatters his pedestal, and abandons herself to misery amidst ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, May 3, 1890. • Various

... her opinion of young Smith was not different from that of other young ladies of her age. Also that Crawford himself was not entirely unconscious of that opinion. At eighteen, to be set upon a pedestal and worshiped, to have one's feeblest joke hailed as a masterpiece of wit, is dangerous for the idol; the effort of sustaining the elevated position entails the risk of a fall. Crawford was but eighteen and a good fellow, but he had been ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln

... franc." And it was thus that for ages the priceless jewel of the soul lay unheeded and despised of men. Before Christ came, men honoured the rich, and the great, and the wise, as we honour them now; but man as man was of little or no account. If one had, or could get, a pedestal by which to lift himself above the common crowd, he might count for something; but if he had nothing save his own feet to stand upon, he was a mere nobody, for whom nobody cared. We turn to the teaching of Jesus, and what a contrast! "Of how much more value," He said, "are ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson

... his future destinies now urged him to acquire it, as the basis for the free marauding life he planned. The headland of Musso lies about halfway between Gravedona and Menaggio, on the right shore of the Lake of Como. Planted on a pedestal of rock, and surmounted by a sheer cliff, there then stood a very ancient tower, commanding this promontory on the side of the land. Between it and the water the Visconti, in more recent days, had built a square fort; and the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... statue of William Loyd Garrison will be placed, but it will either be in West Chester Park or Commonwealth avenue, with a preference for the latter. The city engineer is now engaged in making plans for the pedestal, which is to be of hammed Quincy granite, about ten feet in height. In the statue Mr. Garrison is represented sitting in an easy chair apparently at peace with all the world, the great struggle in which ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various

... genius. Without the smallest real reverence for genius—without the smallest capacity of distinguishing the poetaster it always adores from the true poet it always ignores—the public can still fall down before the pedestal upon which genius has been placed by the select few—fall down with its long ears wide open for gossip about genius, or anything else that ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... faded from the British sailorman's eyes. He stepped back, resting one hand on a light gun mounted on a swivel pedestal. ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock

... reached its edge, he caught sight of the reflection in the pool of a woman's white dress; and, glancing up, saw Agnes Maine standing a little above him, on a sort of natural pedestal, in a rude niche at one side. She looked so like a statue that she smiled slightly at the confused thought of it which she saw for an instant in his face, but she turned grave then as their eyes met for a moment ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various

... to the great heart of nature, had stilled the fierce throbbing, and banished the gloomy forebodings of her own; and she walked on, through the iron gate, where the bronze mastiffs glared warningly from their granite pedestal—on into the large undulating park, which stretched away to meet the line of primitive pines. There was no straight avenue, but a broad smooth carriage road curved gently up a hillside, and on both margins of the graveled way, ancient elm ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... is not easily shaken off at fifty-five, and more often than not she was quite unaware of crossness, from which all around were suffering severely. On the very rare occasions that she did realize it, she went back to the self she had been as a child, descended from the pedestal of her age and generation, and said she ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor

... with his triangles and T-squares and things, succeeded in making an imaginary scale-drawing of her heart (up to that time a virgin forest, an unmapped territory), which enabled him to enter in and set up a pedestal there, on which he has remained ever since. He has been only a memory for many years, to be sure, for he died at the age of twenty-six, before he had had time to build anything but a livery stable and a country hotel. This is fortunate, on the whole, because aunt Celia thinks he was destined ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... a small Pedestal, such as is describ'd in the fifth Figure of the first Scheme on the small Pillar AB, of which were two movable Armes CD, which by means of the Screws EF, I could fix in any part of the Pillar; on the undermost of these I plac'd a pretty large Globe of Glass G, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... which they alighted at the gate. What is now the Place de la Concorde was then the Place Louis Quinze, with an equestrian statue of that "well-beloved" monarch where the obelisk stands. Not far from the pedestal of that statue overturned,—not far from the entrance of the street called Royal,—near the place where many people had been crushed to death in the crowd assembled to see the fireworks in honor of the marriage of the Dauphin and the Princess Marie Antoinette of Austria,—was ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... view, this humaner prospect, there is no living writer to whom we owe more for it than Mr. Carlyle. The same principle which revealed the valour and godliness of Puritanism, has proved its most efficacious solvent, for it places character on the pedestal where Puritanism places dogma. ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley

... bent its petals into the light. Opposite the fire-place, within the shade of the bed-curtains, stood a white figure from the Venice Accademia, an allegory representing Truth. We could not see the mirror which she holds nor the details that surround her. The pedestal that raises her above mankind was also invisible; only the nude body of the woman invited and ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc

... place. Since her acquaintance with Dr. Grey, he had been her sole Melek Taous, adored with Yezidi fervor; but to-day she overturned, and strove to revile and desecrate the idol, to whose vacant pedestal she lifted a colossal vanity. Her bruised, numb heart, seemed incapable of loving any one, or anything, and a hatred and contempt of her race took possession ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... a poor man's church, visited by strangers for its early Titian and a "Last Supper" by Tintoretto. The Titian, which is dark and grimy, is quite pleasing, the infant Christ, who stands between S. Andrew and S. Catherine on a little pedestal, being very real and Venetian. There are, however, who deny Titian's authorship; Mr. Ricketts, for example, gives the picture to Francesco Vecellio, the painter's son. Tintoretto's "Last Supper," on the left ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... gentleman a gorgeously embroidered general's uniform, with a quantity of stars and orders, and the ribbon of the Grand Cross. In another life-sized picture this personage figured in the robes of some unknown military order, and appeared a third time as a bronze bust in a corner, on a black marble pedestal. The chimney-piece was adorned by a strange and wonderful clock, a painfully accurate copy in gilt and colored enamel of the Mihrab of the Mosque in Cordova. Between the windows, on a high buhl cabinet, ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... lay below us, with the weird city of sapphire cylinders on its floor. I got the glasses upon Mildred's white form. Soon she dived from the turquoise pedestal, swam swiftly ashore and vanished in the vivid fungous jungle. The wavering green antennae vanished below the water; I watched the crabs swimming away. Some of them climbed out of the water and lumbered off ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various

... in the year 1707, and was buried in Westminster-Abbey, where a fine monument is erected over him, with the following inscription upon the pedestal; ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber

... canvas at an apparently dangerous angle, seemed sailing directly at the spectator. Pugilists, naked to the waists, held their clinched fists in menacing attitudes. Race-horses, in states of activity and at rest, were interspersed here and there. In the centre of the room stood a pedestal of black marble, and upon it rested a huge silver vase encrusted with ornamentation. The old man did not know that this elaborate specimen of the silversmith's art was referred to as the "Cup." Some one had hung a placard ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr

... The general effect of the Church is very fine, though there is much inelegance in the sculptured details. At the extremity is a half-dome of massive stone, over the place of the altar, and just in front of this formerly stood the pedestal whereon, according to tradition, St. Simeon Stylites commenced his pillar-life. I found a recent excavation at the spot, but no pedestal, which has probably been carried off by the Greek monks. Beside the Church stands a large building, with an upper and lower balcony, supported by square ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... the following year (1832), there was also erected by his Lordship a small monument on the battle-field to indicate the spot where WOLFE expired, which structure, having become injured, has since given place to a pedestal and column about thirty-five feet high, surmounted by a Roman helmet wreathed with a laurel, and sword; both ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... the room, under a gilded canopy of intricate wood-carving, stood upon his pedestal of many-petalled lotus a great statue of Amida Buddha in the yogi attitude of contemplation, and at intervals against the other walls other smaller images stood or sat: Buddha, in many incarnations; Kwannon, goddess of mercy; Jizo Bosatzu Hotei, pot-bellied, god of contentment; Jingo-Kano, ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman

... Then he returned to Melbourne, and made preparations for their removal and subsequent burial. They rest now in that beautiful city near the sea, beneath the great bronze monument. There are two figures, rather larger than life, Burke standing, Wills in a sitting posture. On the pedestal are three bass-reliefs, one showing the return to Cooper's Creek, another the death of Burke, and the third the finding of his remains. This is a fitting tribute to the memory of the brave explorers, but ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various

... pedestal and I find you have feet of clay. You have blurred the image which I formed of you. I can never think of you again without picturing you as you stood in ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... Paulina to Leontes, "and let me draw the curtain or prepare yourself for more amazement. I can make the statue move indeed; aye, and descend from off the pedestal and take you by the hand. But then you will think, which I protest I am not, that I am assisted by ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... issued in the name of his son Crispus during the reign of Constantine, we see two Victories holding a shield upon a pedestal marked with a cross of four ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons

... Why, I think that's awfully romantic of you; like Chateaubriand, you know." Then, dreamily, "He used to go out and lean on a pedestal and let the moon shine down on him through the trees. I think Nancy is a ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis

... said, since the holder was a non-conductor of dimple-waves, and not even the Snimmy could detect their presence when they were inside of it. "Still," said Schlorge, "I'll feel safer about 'em when they're on the pedestal out of his reach," and with that he took the globe from Sara's hands and fastened it deftly on the pedestal. Sara had never enjoyed herself more than she did as she sat by the amber waters in the fading light, watching the ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker

... the impression made by Gordon's disinterestedness on the Chinese people, who elevated him for his courage and military prowess to the pedestal of a national god of war. The cane which he carried when leading his men to the charge became known as "Gordon's wand of victory"; and the troops whom he trained, and converted by success from a rabble into an army, formed ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... have been brought many a mile down from the mountains, and preserved on account of some fanciful resemblance to bird, reptile, or animal. Artificial lakes, islands, waterfalls, bridges, temples, and groves abound; and at occasional intervals a large figure of the Buddha squats serenely on a pedestal, smiling in happy contemplation of the peace, happiness, prosperity, and beauty of everything and everybody around. Happy people! happy country. Are the Japs acting wisely or are they acting foolishly in permitting European notions of life to creep in and revolutionize it ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... eying the rusty stove enthroned upon its sawdust platform, in the middle of the store. Every man in The Hollow had his own particular chair or box when the circle, known as the County Club, formed for recreation or business. No one presumed to occupy another's place: Tod Greeley's pedestal was a cracker box and its sides were well battered from the blows his heels gave it when emotions ran high or his sentiments differed from his neighbour's. Greeley was not a Hollow man; he had been selected ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock

... he spoke words of comfort, with the vision of Carmen always before him. At the altar in the empty church, where he offered the Mass in fulfillment of his promise to the people, her fair form glowed with heavenly radiance from the pedestal where before had stood the dilapidated image of the Virgin. He prepared the sacred wafer and left a part of it on the altar for the people to carry in their procession to Santa Barbara. The other portion he took to the sick ones who had asked ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... large drawing-room, empty and silent, the figures of the tapestries, vague as shadows, showed pallid among their antique games and dying graces. Like them, the terra-cotta statuettes on slender columns, the groups of old Saxony, and the paintings of Sevres, spoke of past glories. On a pedestal ornamented with precious bronzes, the marble bust of some princess royal disguised as Diana appeared about to fly out of her turbulent drapery, while on the ceiling a figure of Night, powdered like a marquise and surrounded by cupids, sowed flowers. Everything was asleep, and only the crackling ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France

... balance without being aware what had threatened it, while his elbow, apparently of its own volition, groped for its former pedestal. Noble evaded it, and ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington

... of Charles the Second, executed by Strada, at the expense of Tobias Rustat, formerly housekeeper at Hampton Court, was placed in the centre of the upper ward. It now stands at the lower end of the same court. The sculptures on the pedestal were designed by Grinling Gibbons; and Horace Walpole pleasantly declared that the statue had no other merit than to attract ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth

... no heed, but ran straight for the door of the tunnel, and vanished. Thence leisurely climbing to the temple of the winds, she looked down from a height of safety upon the shore and the retreating figure of Mrs. Catanach. Seating herself by the pedestal of the trumpet blowing Wind, she assayed her reading again, but was again startled—this time by a rough salute from Demon. Presently her father appeared, and Lady Florimel felt something like a pang of relief at being found there, and not on the farther side ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... a Tuscan column on a rustic pedestal, with a pedestal for a statue; the diameter of the base of the column was seventeen feet six inches, and the abacus of the capital was surrounded with an iron railing. The centre shaft, containing the spiral wooden staircase, ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper

... that a great man is not as others; that he may quite conceivably eat mustard with mutton, or peas with a spoon; that his conversation will be of things the ordinary man knows nothing about; that he is unapproachable; that he is, in short, on a glorified pedestal. This love of the personal is demonstrated in the absurd wish people have to know about the private doings of Royalty, it is shown in the remarkable fact that thousands will hang about a church door to see the wedding of ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke

... on every side, were filled with statues; and the centre of the forum was occupied by a lofty column, of which a mutilated fragment is now degraded by the appellation of the "burnt pillar." This column was erected on a pedestal of white marble twenty feet high, and was composed of ten pieces of porphyry, each of which measured about ten feet in height and about thirty-three in circumference. On the summit of the pillar, above one hundred and twenty ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... a glandular secretion of the Chinese swamp-adder is also beyond price. Again-the case upon the pedestal yonder contains five perfect bulbs, three already in flower, as you observe, of an orchid discovered by our chief chemist in certain forests of Burma. It only occurs at extremely rare intervals—eighty years or more—and under ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer

... and gazed at it. "This is a lovely lookout, sir," he said, after a second's silence, as if to apologize for his intrusion, turning round to the stranger, who still stood poised like a statue on the natural pedestal of lichen- covered rock beside him. "A lovely lookout and a wonderful ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen

... towards the east and facing the door of the pagoda, has some structures like verandahs, small and low, where sit some JOGIS;[385] and inside this enclosure, which has other little pagodas of a reddish colour, there is a stone like the mast of a ship, with its pedestal four-sided, and from thence to the top eight-sided, standing in the open air. I was not astonished at it, because I have seen the needle of St. Peters at Rome, which is as ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell

... belief. I would not have listened to a word against him. But when he thought I'd discovered something, the whole story came out. If I hadn't loved him so much to begin with, and put him on such a high pedestal, the fall wouldn't have been so great—wouldn't have broken my ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... that one I'm compelled to admit that it can't. No doubt it's the artist's fault, but I'm willing to admit that a young girl would be rather apt to credit a man with a face like that with qualities he didn't possess." She sat down again with a thoughtful expression. "The fact is, you set him up on a pedestal and burned incense to him when you were not old enough to know any better, and when he came home for a few weeks four years ago you promised to marry him. Now it seems he's ready at last, and wants you to go out to the new country. Perhaps it doesn't affect the question, but if I'd promised ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss

... alcove in one of the inner apartments. Buddhist mortuary-tablets (with some exceptions) are called ihai,—a term signifying "soul-commemoration." They are lacquered and gilded, usually having a carved lotos-flower as pedestal; and they do not, as a rule, bear the real, but only the religious and posthumous name of the dead. Now it is important to observe that, in either cult, the mortuary tablet actually suggests a miniature tombstone—which is a fact of some evolutional interest, though the evolution itself should ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn

... suo tempore transibunt in Hiberniam.' When I read this, I could not but indulge the pleasant fancy that in the days when the Dublin University shall arise in material splendour, an allusion to this prophecy might form a poetic element in the inscription on the pedestal of the statue which ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... the Piazza, arriving on the 18th at the hour of twelve. More than forty men were employed to make it go, and there were fourteen logs to go beneath it, which were changed from hand to hand. Afterwards they worked until June 8, 1504, to place it on a pedestal where the Judith used to stand. The Judith was removed and set upon the ground within the palace. The said giant was the work of Michael Angelo Buonarroti."(81) The great marble David stood in the Piazza three hundred and sixty-nine years; it was removed to the hall of the Accademia delle Belle ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd

... the downward trip until he found himself floating upward. Then, frantically, he hauled himself back down to the control box, ignoring the stabbing pain in his stomach as he bent over again, one leg wrapped around the small pedestal ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin

... and seven, was deliciously bright and balmy. The seat by the sundial was screened on every side by the clipped yew hedge, dense and tall, surrounding the circular, gravelled space, in the centre of which stood the old granite dial, with its octagonal pedestal and moss-grown steps. There, as in a closely-shaded arbour, Lady Mary and her old friend were alone and unobserved. The yew-tree boundary was at least eight feet high, and Mary and her companion ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... world, forget how to govern themselves,—then nations choke and die. But when the blood of youth is rich and pure, pulsating through the veins of the universe with strong, resistless surge; when fathers teach anew the angel's message of good will and peace, and sons build high their goal upon a pedestal of service and of truth,—then nations breathe and live. What hope, then, asks the world, finds the doctrine of peace in the ideals and aspirations of ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association

... we passed by a stone cross, on the pedestal of which was an inscription commemorating a horrible murder of a native of Lisbon, which had occurred on that spot; it looked ancient, and was covered with moss, and the greater part of the inscription was illegible, at least it was to me, who could not bestow much time on its deciphering. ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... arbitrary an act as the issue of a lettre de cachet. But it was also very stupid. It was stupid of the Government because it put them for a time under the thumb of Boulanger. It was stupid of Boulanger, because it put the Comte de Paris at once on a pedestal and forced him before France and Europe into the position of a saviour of society, for whom all the conservative forces of French society must henceforth inevitably work. Whatever becomes of Boulanger in the next elections, he has condemned the Opportunists irretrievably either to hew wood ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... the sacrifice of brothers;—if we desire that these, and such as these,—the elements, to an incredible extent, of the literature of the Old World,—should be the elements of our literature; then, but then only, let us hurl from its pedestal the majestic statue of our Union, and scatter its ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... pleasantly. Helen recovered her good temper and ventured a remark about the fountain which graced the center of the campus. It was a huge marble figure of a sitting female, in graceful draperies and with a harp, or lyre, on the figure's knee. The clear water bubbled out all around the pedestal, and the statue and bowl were sunk a little below the level of the greensward, like ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson

... speck of dust was anywhere to be observed. Over the large outer coffin a pall of fine linen was laid, not rotting and falling to pieces like the cloth of mediaeval times we see in our museums, but soft and strong like the sheets of our beds. In the clear space before the coffin stood a wooden pedestal in the form of a miniature lotus column. On the top of this, resting on three wooden prongs, was a small copper dish, in which were the ashes of incense, and the little stick used for stirring them. One asked oneself in bewilderment ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall

... of the Prince d'Avranche, Duc de Bercy, was set upon a vast rock, and the town of Bercy huddled round the foot of it and on great granite ledges some distance up. With fifty defenders the castle, on its lofty pedestal, might have resisted as many thousands; and, indeed, it had done so more times than there were rubies in the rings of the present Duke, who had rescued Captain Philip d'Avranche from the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... eighteenth century, materialistic as were for the most part the tendencies of its leaders, seemed to revere man as a being apart, concerning whom laws might be formulated a priori. To bring him down from his pedestal there was needed the marked predominance of positive researches wherein no account was taken of the "pride of man." There can be no doubt that Darwin has done much to familiarise us with this attitude. ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... Hungarian and a musician—with such loneliness and unrest. He knew that, so far as he was concerned, she was as distant as the Venus in the Louvre; she was, for him, a beautiful, unapproachable statue, placed, by some social convention, upon a pedestal. ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis

... the present day, among the ruins of Alexandria, a beautiful column, about one hundred feet high, which has been known in all modern times as POMPEY'S PILLAR. It is formed of stone, and is in three parts. One stone forms the pedestal, another the shaft, and a third the capital. The beauty of this column, the perfection of its workmanship, which still continues in excellent preservation, and its antiquity, so great that all distinct record of its origin is lost, have combined to make it ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott

... be difficult to replace, anyway," said Ronnie, with what he imagined was a becoming modesty; "there are lots of boys standing round ready to be fed and flattered and put on an imaginary pedestal, most of them more or less good-looking and well turned out and ...
— When William Came • Saki

... at this, and saw Ernanton standing in the doorway, looking very pale. He descended from the step, as the statue of the commander from his pedestal, and walked straight up to St. ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas

... quarter of a mile from the highway, and leaving their vehicle at the nearest point, they followed a path leading through open fields till they came to the monument. They found it a blue clouded marble pedestal, surmounted by a white marble pyramid, standing over the broad grave in which lie the remains of the fifty-three Americans found in that field the morning after the massacre, and buried by ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley

... Tarawali after all, and what has she done to herself, for she has changed, somehow or other, into the incarnation of some deity exactly like her, and she looks like an image of the wife of Wishnu[28] that has somehow or other come down from its pedestal on a temple wall? For she was clothed in some strange colour that hovered between pallid yellow and deep red, seeming to have been borrowed from the setting sun and the rising moon. And it was all pulled forward, ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain

... the effect of our art is merely to make this low state comfortable and that higher state to be forgotten. There is actually no place in this village for a work of fine art, if any had come down to us, to stand, for our lives, our houses and streets, furnish no proper pedestal for it. There is not a nail to hang a picture on, nor a shelf to receive the bust of a hero or a saint. When I consider how our houses are built and paid for, or not paid for, and their internal economy managed and sustained, I wonder that the floor does not give way under the ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... loyal sentiments, might always feel assured of his protection." A few days after this Beckford died, and the city voted that he should be honoured with a statue in Guildhall, and that the speech he had delivered to the king should be engraved on the pedestal. His death was considered a serious blow to the opposition, as no one could be found possessing the weight which he derived from his wealth and munificence, or who could ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... most exquisitely engraved and ornamented, also four gold drinking-cups, of quaint and massive construction. Other valuables and curious trifles there were, such as an ivory statuette of Psyche on a silver pedestal, a waistband of coins linked together, a painted fan with a handle set in amber and turquois, a fine steel dagger in a jeweled sheath, and a mirror framed in old pearls. Last, but not least, at the very bottom of the chest ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... this may turn up on the cards, here. In the course of events the bronze idol to which our PHILLIPSES and SUMNERS used to bend the knee, has been prostrated from his pedestal by the Fifteenth Amendment. Coolie labor, with its possible abuses, may engage the attention of the philanthropists, next, and we may yet behold JOHN PIGTAIL on a pedestal, in the character ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various

... the fight raged fiercely. Even Tomlins forgot his sufferings, and watched every fluctuation of the struggle with an intense longing to see the school tyrant effectually mastered and dragged down from the pedestal whence he had so long dominated ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn

... the great London hospital, built by Thomas Guy, a relative, and endowed by him with over a million dollars, Mr. Vassar read these words on the pedestal of ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton

... and the pedestal on which she stands is thirty feet above water. There is a stairway inside which you can climb one of these ...
— Elsie at the World's Fair • Martha Finley

... no idea of quietly standing there as a tin target for his enemy to fire at. There was, he noted, a small marble bust on a pedestal near the top of the staircase. This he seized in his iron grasp and hurled it at the elfish figure in the hall below. Now James was "quite some" thrower as they say in the state of Jersey. The dwarf was marvelously quick, too, but the white flash of stone came near getting him ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt

... man's experience concerning his own well-being—and this, though not infallible, is still the least fallible thing we have. A system which cannot stand without a better foundation than this must have something so unstable within itself that it will topple over on whatever pedestal ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... is a curious ornament, in the shape of an elephant, of massive gold, standing on a pedestal formed of enormous pearls placed side by side. There is also a table, thickly inlaid with Oriental topazes, presented by the Empress Catherine of Russia to the Vizier Baltadji Mustapha, together with a very remarkable collection of ancient costumes, trimmed with rare ...
— Harper's Young People, February 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... hardly say I did not express this feeling to him: could anything be more insulting to a "fatal" hero than to be an object of pity? And Tyeglev, on his side, was well-disposed to me; with me he felt at ease, with me he used to talk—in my presence he ventured to leave the strange pedestal on which he had been placed either by his own efforts or by chance. Agonisingly, morbidly vain as he was, yet he was probably aware in the depths of his soul that there was nothing to justify his vanity, and that others might perhaps look down on him ... but I, a boy of nineteen, put no constraint ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... an incrustation white as snow; and in many parts appear stalactites suspended from point to point, like light festoons of ice, which, if struck, return all the notes of musical glasses. In the midst of this recess arises from a pedestal, clear almost as glass, an amber altar. Beneath, but still in the roof of the cavern, is another circular excavation resembling an immense helmet, which seems to be lined with rich satin, and is fringed with rows of yellow stalactite ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various

... step known as dos a dos, and here her good luck forsook her; for, in stepping back, she struck with full force her companion, a slim young man with shell eyeglasses, and sent him forward with an impetus which was only checked by his coming in collision with a plaster-of-Paris pedestal, on which stood a bust of General Zachary Taylor; his head penetrated the column, and the bust came down on his back with a thump that nearly knocked the breath out of his body. His eyeglasses were ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... of heath-clad land, an outlying spur of the moor, lay in front of us. On the summit, hard and clear like an equestrian statue upon its pedestal, was a mounted soldier, dark and stern, his rifle poised ready over his forearm. He was watching the road ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle

... in their seats at the table. Judas succeeded in gaining the seat of honor next to the Master. Jesus startled the company by insisting upon washing the feet of the Twelve, an act which placed them on a pedestal above Him. This occult ceremony, which was not comprehended by the Twelve, apparently was one which the Hierophants of the Occult Brotherhoods performed for their associates when the latter had been chosen to carry out some important office or mission, or when a successor was about ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka

... in his bed, and that the statue of Ptah, the Creator, descended from the pedestal by the temple gate and came to him, towering over him like a giant. Then he dreamed that he awoke, and prostrating himself before the God, asked the meaning of his coming. Thereon the ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang

... the figure was neither intended to be considered as an idol nor as a monumental statue. There was no pedestal of any sort on which it could stand, and the disposition of the limbs and their contortions were not such as any sculptor would dream of in a figure to be set up for adoration. That it was intended to be taken as a fossilized giant was indicated by the fact that ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... I have taken my leave of that stage, and henceforth will mountebank it no longer." He had already—Journal, April 8 (Letters, 1898, ii. 408)—heard a rumour "that his poor little pagod, Napoleon" was "pushed off his pedestal," and before or after he began his letter to Moore he must have read an announcement in the Gazette Extraordinary (April 9, 1814—the abdication was signed April 11) that Napoleon had abdicated the "throne of the ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... her. His passion had to be stimulated. His business called him away often, and his absences were unmistakably necessary to the maintenance of his devotion. The sunshine of her new life was therefore not entirely unclouded. She was by degrees obliged to lower the high pedestal on which she had placed her lover, and to admit to herself that he was not much above the level of ordinary men. This discovery did not lessen her affection, though it made her occasionally melancholy. But she ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... The beautiful carpet lays the foundation of its charms, and the oak woodwork harmonizes with the tint in which Endymion is painted. At last I have Endymion where I always wanted it—in my husband's Study, and it occupies one whole division of the wall. In the corner on that side stands the pedestal with Apollo on it, and there is a fountain-shaped vase of damask and yellow roses. Between the windows is the Transfiguration [given by Mr. Emerson]. (The drawing-room is to be redeemed with one picture only,—Correggio's ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... strength and probity of character, great big-hearted Nevada looks down from her lofty pedestal and freely pardons all who may have misjudged her. This is Nevada's record. ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton

... the curtain fall, Death in the transformation scene Steps forward from her pedestal, Apparent, as the ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson

... big house of Chaldicotes; and though the woods were all green with their early leaves, and the garden thick with flowers, they also were melancholy and dreary. The lawns were untrimmed and weeds were growing through the gravel, and here and there a cracked Dryad, tumbled from her pedestal and sprawling in the grass, gave a look of disorder to the whole place. The wooden trellis-work was shattered here and bending there, the standard rose-trees were stooping to the ground, and the leaves of the winter still encumbered the borders. Late in the evening of the second day Mr. Sowerby ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... monks by-standing, one and all, Of this wondrous scene beholders, To this kind promise listened content, And couldn't contain their astonishment, When Saint Sophia moved and went Down from her wooden pedestal, And twisted her legs, sure as eggs is eggs, Round ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray

... his eyes; he was blind—he could see nothing. He groped to feel his eyeballs with his hands; but his fingers were frozen—they could feel nothing. He rose to his feet in panic and stood there swaying, as though he had been set upon a dizzy pedestal which had grown to be part of himself, so that he could not move, but could ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson

... element that sometimes steals into high places, and which has so often interfered with the true interests of America within her own borders, as well as touching her foreign relations. These and many either untoward influences it has surmounted; until, now, it stands upon a pedestal beyond the reach of danger; not only from its great inherent strength and virtue, but from its all but incomprehensible ubiquity, and positive existence in every land and clime. How futile, then, the efforts of its enemies to crush it either by ungenerous legislation, ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh



Words linked to "Pedestal" :   plinth, socle, status, support, trivet, pillar, column



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