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Shelf   Listen
noun
Shelf  n.  (pl. shelves)  
1.
(Arch.) A flat tablet or ledge of any material set horizontally at a distance from the floor, to hold objects of use or ornament.
2.
A sand bank in the sea, or a rock, or ledge of rocks, rendering the water shallow, and dangerous to ships. "On the tawny sands and shelves." "On the secret shelves with fury cast."
3.
(Mining) A stratum lying in a very even manner; a flat, projecting layer of rock.
4.
(Naut.) A piece of timber running the whole length of a vessel inside the timberheads.
To lay on the shelf, to lay aside as unnecessary or useless; to dismiss; to discard.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Shelf" Quotes from Famous Books



... dark now except for a few dull embers in the fireplace, he lighted a candle and crossed to the corner beneath the high shelf of books. He drew aside a large hair-seal wall-pocket of Indian make, and fumbled a moment. A small door swung open revealing a hollow ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... the same tomb, was a coffin covered with mould, and just ready to drop from the shelf upon which it was placed, and the shrunken boards had separated, and it was perforated with large cracks where it had been joined together. The lid was always unscrewed, and was often raised by the hand of a fond mother, who looked upon the ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna

... his wife, a shrewd, sharp-eyed, little old dame, with whom * * * * fell into a confabulation, while I went into the next room with the labourer himself. The house was neatly furnished—with little ornaments and photographs on the mantel-shelf, and nothing of the happy-go-lucky look so common about the houses of the working people in Ireland, as well as about the houses ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert

... morning the dragoness took hold of the young man and reached down from the shelf a sharp knife with which to kill him. But as she untied the cords the better to get hold of him, the prisoner caught her by the legs, threw her to the ground, seized her and speedily cut her throat, just as she had been about to do for him, ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various

... floor. Suddenly my attention was called to the fact that two penknives, which no one had hitherto noticed, were produced. They belonged, not to the prisoners, but to the deceased man, and were usually placed on the shelf in the kitchen. But it came out in evidence, quite, as it seemed, accidentally, that they had been taken from that place, and were found on the floor where the cutting up of the tablecover had been performed, at some little distance from one another; but each knife ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton

... was done. Old Principle put it carefully by and then mounted on some wooden steps, and took down a tin saucepan. The boys knew the shelf well; as though apparently it was just a row of tinware for sale, many a pot and pan held treasures that geologists would have given a ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre

... Roy could have been of any use to you—I merely scribbled what came uppermost. I made one great oversight, as you would perceive. I forgot the Glacier theory: if a glacier most gradually disappeared from mouth of Spean Valley [this] would account for buttresses of shingle below lowest shelf. The difficulty I put about the ice-barrier of the middle Glen Roy shelf keeping so long at exactly same level does certainly appear to me insuperable. (499/5. For a description of the shelves or parallel roads in Glen Roy see Darwin's "Observations on the Parallel Roads of ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... to a shelf and took down a heavy quarto, bound in black leather, and inscribed, in red letters, MY FAULTS. This she threw irreverently on a desk, and tossed its pages over until she came to one only partly covered ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw

... was delay, so they asked all sorts of questions as they walked along, hoping that their captors would pause to answer them. However, the fellows plugged steadily along toward the opposite side of the ridge, and finally drew up on a shelf of rock from which the caverns to the west could be plainly seen. Here the officials sat down to ...
— Boy Scouts on the Great Divide - or, The Ending of the Trail • Archibald Lee Fletcher

... distinction as a college student had a wide shelf fitted up on one side of his room at which he stood in the preparation of all his lessons. His theory was that the attitude of the body conditions the attitude of the mind. Professor James gives assent to this theory and avers that ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson

... ken much about poetry," she answered, trying to speak English. "There's an old book o't on my father's shelf; but the letters o't are auld-fashioned, an' I dinna care ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... fearful recollection shot through his brain. Marechal was fair—fair like Jean. He now remembered a little miniature portrait he had seen formerly in Paris, on the drawing-room chimney-shelf, and which had since disappeared. Where was it? Lost, or hidden away? Oh, if he could but have it in his hands for one minute! His mother kept it perhaps in the unconfessed ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... heights whose serrated edges cut sharply into the sky certainly marked the supreme summit. Our winding trail up steep, rocky ascents pointed true; an hour's toil would carry us over. But the hour passed and the crossing of the shelf disclosed, not the glowing valley of the South Fork across the pass, but still a vaster, nobler cirque above, ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... Northamericans on their civilized, low fiber, poorly combined diets suffer widely from constipation. One proof of this is the fact that chemical laxatives, with their own set of dangers and liabilities, occupy many feet of drug store shelf space and are widely advertised. Is the medical profession's disapproval of the enema related to the fact that once the initial purchase of an enema bag has been made there are no further expenses for laxatives? Or perhaps it might be that once a person discovers ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon

... a funny man, Harry was a hatter; He ate his lunch at breakfast time and said it didn't matter. He made a pot of melon jam and put it on a shelf, For he was fond of sugar things and living by himself. He built a fire of bracken and a blue-gum log, And he sat all night beside it with ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis

... partly in triumph over his weaker fellow-creatures, partly to snuff up the smell of coming pleasure, and scent it from afar; in those bag-cheeks, hanging like half-filled wine-skins, still able to contain more; in that coarsely protruded shelf mouth, that fat dewlapped chin; in all this, who sees not sensuality, pretension, boisterous imbecility enough; much that could not have been ornamental in the temper of a great man's overfed great man (what the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various

... bottles of coloured liquids, other bottles of coloured powders, mortars, retorts, gas-burners, and huge dusty books. There appeared to be no outlet from the room, but the young man pressed his finger on a spot behind one of the bottles on a shelf, and a circular door, like the one by which they had entered, swung slowly open in the ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen

... there were three wooden chairs, a table, and an inkstand; on the shelf by the door a few books—the London Directory, an English Dictionary, a French Dictionary—the titles of the remaining books did not catch the eye. As they waited, for no "pages" would be ready for them for some time, Mike glanced ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore

... Frank had made the big centre-table of plank, and the book-shelves as well. "He likes to tinker at such things," she said. "Whenever he gets blue or cross I set him to shifting the dresser or making a book-shelf, and he cheers up like mad. He's a regular kid anyway—always doing the things ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... some time since; the night Lance and I met Jim at the telegraph shack. We talked about England and Jim asked if we knew Langrigg. There was an old French romance on a shelf and Lance read a passage. He studied the book when Jim left the shack, and I found out afterwards that Franklin Dearham's name was written across the front page. You see what this ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss

... of the "drum ecclesiastic" beating up for recruits in worldly warfare in our country. It has since been called into frequent use. A cunning politician often lurks under the clerical robe; things spiritual and things temporal are strangely jumbled together, like drugs on an apothecary's shelf; and instead of a peaceful sermon, the simple seeker after righteousness has often a political pamphlet thrust down his throat, labeled with ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... glad to do it, Sol," said Jim. "Take off your clothes, you an' Tom, hang 'em on the shelf thar to dry, an' now set to. The steaks an' the turkey are the finest I ever cooked, an' they're all fur you two. An' I kin tell you fellers that the sight uv you ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler

... His wife carried him off to the lumber room again and, very indignant both with her husband and with the visitor, owing to whom her husband had been drinking, lay down herself in the room on the shelf under the ceiling.... But when she woke up early, as her habit was, and glanced at the stove, Akim was not there. The second cock had not crowed and the night was still so dark that the sky hardly ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... labored successfully to instill into Helen's mind some of his own peculiar views, as well as to awaken in Mrs. Lennox's heart the professions which had lain dormant for as long a time as the little black-bound book had lain on the cupboard shelf, forgotten and unread. ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... them in the half pan of water and poured a high heap of beans on them. Then he rolled the tortillas up, making a monster cylindrical bean sandwich. A soiled newspaper, with a look almost of antiquity to it, he found on a shelf and wrapped about his sandwich which he thrust into the bosom of his shirt. All of this had required about two minutes and in the meantime his eyes ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory

... said, "My cakes that seem too small When I eat of them myself, Are yet too large to give away." So she put them on the shelf. ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... it.... Pancaldi's luck! Why, it's known to all the neighbourhood, among all the dealers! I proclaim it from the house-tops: 'I'm a lucky man!' I even made so bold as to take the god of luck, Mercury, as my patron! He too protects me. See, I've got Mercuries all over my shop! Look up there, on that shelf, a whole row of statuettes, like the one over the front-door, proofs signed by a great sculptor who went smash and sold them to me.... Would you like one, my dear sir? It will bring you luck too. Take your pick! A ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc

... The old darkey says it used to lie on a little shelf at the turning of the cabin-stair. I've looked there, but no log-book. As you say, it's enough to make one believe the Fates were against us. If so, we may never reach Panama, ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid

... nothing more. She went into the pantry, and there was a clatter of dishes. The boy got his cap from a nail behind the door, took an old arithmetic from the shelf, and started for school. He was lightly built, but clumsy. He went out of the yard with a curious spring in the hips, that made his loose home-made jacket tilt up in ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... need of further knowledge of the man. The very power which had defended her, unless in the control of a still higher power, might turn against her. The match flickered feebly in the damp air, revealing scantily a small room which looked like a laundry. It was enough, however, to disclose a shelf upon which rested a bit of candle. He ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... These hemlock boughs, and the straw upon this raised platform, were his bed, and this broken dish held his drink. But he has not been here this season, for the phoebes built their nest upon this shelf last summer. I find some embers left, as if he had but just gone out, where he baked his pot of beans; and while at evening he smoked his pipe, whose stemless bowl lies in the ashes, chatted with ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau

... a pocket for his goggles. He could not find them. He felt in another pocket, and repeated the search, but they were not to be found. Then he remembered that he had laid them on the shelf beside the clock, at Double Up Cove, at the time he had taken off his adikey the previous day, and he had no recollection of having removed them from ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace

... at one time, there had been a bunk. The flat shelf still projected out from the wall. Donald entered with an armful of spruce boughs, and threw them on the bunk. While he was arranging them to a semblance of smoothness for the blankets, his hand struck ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams

... the bathroom and surveyed it from the doorway. I followed him. It was as orderly as the other room. On a glass shelf over the wash-stand were his razors, a safety and, beside it, in a black case, an assortment of the long-bladed variety, one for each day of ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... it will perhaps be remembered, is enclosed in a little gorge opening by a broken, ragged fissure at the back to the east. Leading to this opening there is on one side a narrow, jagged shelf which runs half-way round the pool. Sinfi's movements now were an exact repetition of everything she did on that first morning of our ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... one Good, one Bad; The first was mournfulness itself, The second, happy as a lad,— And both are dust upon a shelf. ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer

... he stuffed the book into a pocket, completed his scrutiny of the safe, examined the bottles on the shelf labeled "poisons," and took a sample of the colorless contents ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy

... head. The shell which struck this house was evidently nearly spent, and the broken door is just like the back entrance of your aunt's house opposite Carlton church. It went clean through this; then turned to the right through a thick wall and landed in a cupboard on a shelf, smashing the doors, but ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie

... master, saying such things to him that the remembrance of them made her catch her breath even now. From that time forth the Rector was allowed to hold forth on symptoms to his heart's content, to take down from his library shelf a stout misguided book of medical short-cuts to the ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman

... Humpty was about to perform, a short "talk" was usually given before the curtain rose, explaining the way in which the Sheep put the egg on the shelf at the back of the little shop, and how Alice went groping along to it. And then, just as the explanation had reached the opening of the chapter on Humpty Dumpty, the curtain rose, and Humpty was discovered, sitting on the wall, and gazing into vacancy. As soon as the audience had had time to recover, ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood

... "there is nothing more but books. I will pass them to you. Pile them up in a corner until I can have a book-shelf made." ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit

... nature have condemned to weakness. By the position, that a straight line will bear nothing, is meant, that it receives no strength from straightness; for that many bodies, laid in straight lines, will support weight by the cohesion of their parts, every one has found, who has seen dishes on a shelf, or a thief upon the gallows. It is not denied, that stones may be so crushed together by enormous pressure on each side, that a heavy mass may safely be laid upon them; but the strength must be derived merely from the lateral resistance; and the line, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... large and lofty, with whitewashed walls and a floor of bare boards. A row of wooden tables and forms ran down the centre, above which was a hanging shelf for the men's plates and basins. Around the room were sixteen small iron bedsteads, each made in such a fashion that one half closed up under the other, the mattress when not in use being rolled up and secured by a strap, with ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery

... mantel-piece, of which I knew by heart the pearls about the high and powdered "heads;" the velvets circling the white throats; the swell of the full muslin kerchiefs: the pattern of the lace sleeve-ruffles. Upon the mantel- shelf there were two china vases, some relics of a diminutive tea- service, as smooth as enamel and as thin as egg-shell, and a white centre ornament, a classic group in alabaster, preserved under glass. Of all these things I could have told ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... to depart, she yet wandered aimlessly about the room, putting the bottles on the shelf, trying to fit with trembling hands the covers on cardboard boxes. Whenever the real sense of what she had heard emerged for a second from the haze of her thoughts she would fancy that something had exploded ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad

... one instinctively craves for something of that uniformity which one instinctively deprecates as an ideal for New York. The buildings on the main streets are too haphazard, like the books on an ill-arranged shelf: folios, quartos, and duodecimos huddled pell-mell together. But when some approach to a definite style is achieved, how noble will be the radiating vistas of this spacious city! The plan of the avenues and streets, as has been aptly said, suggests ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer

... spring of 1888, on his return from photographing the statues at Varallo, he found, to his disgust, that the authorities of the British Museum had removed Frost's Lives of Eminent Christians from its accustomed shelf in the Reading Room. Soon afterwards Harry Quilter asked him to write for the Universal Review and he responded with "Quis Desiderio . . . ?" In this essay he compares himself to Wordsworth and dwells on the points of resemblance between Lucy and the book of whose assistance he had now ...
— Samuel Butler: A Sketch • Henry Festing Jones

... morning, poor old Mother Flaherty suffered a sad accident when quite alone in her cottage. Trying to balance herself on an uncertain chair, in her effort to reach a bottle of medicine on the top shelf of her cupboard, her rickety support gave way and let her down with cruel celerity. Her poor old bones were brittle and snapped with the concussion. When she tried to raise herself, after her momentary groans ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... one of the most valuable volumes published within recent years. The admirable volume should stand upon the shelf of every soldier, and of every thinker upon ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi

... everything's a platitude that springs not from my mind: I've studied entomology, astronomy, conchology, And every other 'ology that anyone can find. I am a man of science, with my bottles on the shelf, I'm game to make a little world, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various

... his fingers thoughtfully on the mantel-shelf, the smile lingering yet on his face. The woman's woollen sewing fell from her hand, and she spoke for the first time. Her tone had a harsh, metallic twang in it: Yarrow turned curiously, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... orange in twilight sky. Colours, as such, are ABSOLUTELY inexpressive respecting distance. It is their quality (as depth, delicacy, &c.) which expresses distance, not their tint. A blue bandbox set on the same shelf with a yellow one will not look an inch farther off, but a red or orange cloud, in the upper sky, will always appear to be beyond a blue cloud close to us, as it is in reality. It is quite true that in certain objects, blue is a sign of distance; but that is ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... on mischief, truth to say, Like any little elf, Within the pantry hides to taste The "goodies" on the shelf? Who bothers cook, where'er she goes, And makes her scold, you may ...
— Harper's Young People, February 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... refreshment. It was a chill, blustering day, and although the rain held off, the heavens were black with the promise of more to come. There was a fire burning in the general-room of the hostelry, and Garnache went to warm him at its cheerful blaze. Moodily he stood there, one hand on the high mantel shelf, one foot upon an andiron, his eyes ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini

... few toys and playthings in a closet, which was full of old plunder. As he reached for his ball something fell at his feet from a shelf above. He picked it up, and ran excitedly into ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun

... was comparatively cool, and a soft moist air fanned our heated cheeks. The roar of the falls grew louder, and at any moment we felt that we might come upon the sight, but we had to travel on nearly half a mile along what seemed to be a steep slope. It was no longer arid and barren here, for every shelf and crevice was full of growth of the most vivid green. For a long time we had not seen a tree, but here tall forest trees had wedged their roots in the cracks and crevices, curved out, and then shot straight ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn

... and delight, his eyes alert with interest and cunning. After a moment's hesitation he stole cautiously to the window, and seeing Frost was engaged in conversation with Jesse, he sprang back with quick steps to the cabinet. He hastily ran the tips of his fingers along the beveled edges of the wide shelf from end to end several times, each time the expression of alertness deepening into one of disappointment. He stopped for a moment and listened. All was quiet. Again with quick motions he felt beneath the edges. ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold

... more of this nonsense," said Mrs. Elwell, taking a bottle from the shelf above her with the air of one who closes a discussion. "Here, run down to the Bridge and get me this bottle full of vinegar at Jacob's store. Be smart, too, d'ye hear! I ain't going to have you idling around ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... pop-guns," said the old man, slipping more cookies into the oven and setting a pan of biscuits on a shelf by the hearth. ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody

... had been sent with the DUTY-FOWL as a present to the under-agent's lady. While he was eating his supper, which he ate with the better appetite, as he had had no dinner, the good woman took down from the shelf a pocket-book, which she gave him: 'Is not that your book?' said she. 'My boy Brian found it after you in the potato ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth

... containing a jug of water, and several empty tumblers. An open stove stood opposite the counter; and in it were massive dog-irons in brass, highly polished. A square Connecticut clock ticked on a little shelf between two front windows; and suspended upon the walls were pictures of horses and bulls that had won prizes at the Worcester Cattle Show. Certain parts of the bar room were much distained with tobacco ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... after dinner; but before we left the house I slipped into du Bruel's room, and on a shelf among a pile of waste papers found the copy of the Petites-Affiches, in which, agreeably to the reformed law, notice of the purchase of the house was inserted. The words stared me in the face—'At the request of Jean Francois du Bruel and Claudine Chaffaroux, his wife——' Here was the ...
— A Prince of Bohemia • Honore de Balzac

... establishment which you rashly disparage.' With that, taking up a candle, he conducted his chum into the fourth room of the set of chambers—a little narrow room—which was very completely and neatly fitted as a kitchen. 'See!' said Eugene, 'miniature flour-barrel, rolling-pin, spice-box, shelf of brown jars, chopping-board, coffee-mill, dresser elegantly furnished with crockery, saucepans and pans, roasting jack, a charming kettle, an armoury of dish-covers. The moral influence of these objects, in forming the domestic virtues, may have an immense influence upon me; not upon you, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... when last I met him in Copenhagen. They told there how beggars used to waylay him on his daily walks until the police threatened them with arrest. Then they stood at a distance making sorrowful gestures; and the King, who understood, laid a silver coin upon the palace window shelf and went his way. The King must obey the law, but he can forget the principles of alms-giving, as may the rest of us at Christmas, ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis

... gone home, as described in the last chapter, and after she herself had undressed the children and put them to bed, and had finished all the other labors and duties of the day, she took the bible down from its shelf, and seating herself upon the settle, so as to see by the light of the fire, as Albert had been accustomed to do, she opened the book, and then began to repeat such verses as she could remember. At length she closed the ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott

... divine encounters, and night with intimation of demonic ambushes, is something quite other, as the material for thought and poetry, from one that we take down from our bookshelves, as sapless as the shelf it stood on, as remote from all present sympathy with man or nature as a town history with its genealogies of ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... had thrown up its hands he climbed right in and led a new campaign. We had to admire the scientific way in which he went about it, too. For a man whose most violent exercise consisted of lugging books off a top shelf, and who had learned all he knew about football from the Literary Pepsin or the Bi-Weekly Review, he got onto the game in wonderful style. Somehow he managed to learn just who were our star players—what they played ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch

... have been in camp since Sunday, the 29th of September. Our tents are pitched upon abroad shelf half-way down a considerable hill. Behind us the hill rises a hundred feet or more, shutting us in from the south; in front, to the north, the hill inclines to a ravine which separates us from other less lofty hills. Our camp is upon open ground, but there is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... Julius and Skirrl, the draw-in test was made by putting food on a shelf outside the cage, beyond the reach of the animal, and placing in the cage with the animal one or two sticks long enough to be used ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes

... oldest Broadwood in England. You can see for yourself the date—1795." Downstairs he showed me a beautiful model of a steam engine, upon which he was enabled to ride, and which he could drive himself. "I thoroughly understand locomotives," said he, as he pointed to a shelf full of all the works upon the subject which he had been ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various

... dropped to the shelves of books which ran about the room and rose almost to meet it. They came to a startled halt on a vase of ferns on a high shelf. A vase of ferns. There must have been water in it. Perhaps there was water in it now! He was so weak that it was a tremendous effort for him to drag himself out of his chair and across the room, to climb up on the book ladder and reach for it. He grew so dizzy that it seemed as if he must drop ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... "My dear boy, don't you see we are up against a situation that calls on us to bluff to the limit, or lay down? In such a case, luxury becomes a duty, and lavishness the truest economy. Not to spend is to go broke. Lay your Poor Richard on the shelf, and put a weight on him. Stimulate the outgo, and the income'll take care of itself. A thousand spent is five figures to the good. No, while we've as many boom-irons in the fire as we're heating now, to be modest is ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick

... the mill. Maggie stood motionless, except from her sobs, for a minute or two; then she turned round and ran into the house, and up to her attic, where she sat on the floor and laid her head against the worm-eaten shelf, with a crushing sense of misery. Tom was come home, and she had thought how happy she should be; and now he was cruel to her. What use was anything if Tom didn't love her? Oh, he was very cruel! Hadn't she wanted to give him the money, and said how very sorry she was? ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... foreign grammars and dictionaries were before you. Every kind of musical instrument seems to have met with a companion in this tiny apartment. Here are a violin, violoncello, horn, and cornopean; there an old Welsh harp and unstrung guitar. On this shelf are pipes of all sorts and sizes, forms, and nations—the straight English, the short German, and the long Turkish; on that are cigar-boxes, snuff-boxes, and tobacco-boxes of various kinds and appearances. Scattered about the room are play-books without number, from Shakspeare to the dramatists ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale

... hard yaller soap, 'case it makes it weigh, an' yer folks is up ter them doin's," and he looked at me and gave a sly laugh. I could not deny the "hard" impeachment, and said nothing. Taking a specimen of very clear light-colored rosin from a shelf in the still-house, I asked him what that quality ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore

... exclaimed the vice president. "Pull out that table, Mack; and you, there, bear a 'and to 'elp 'im, 'Enery. Set hup the little chair, Williams! Easy with Saint Paul, you, Tommy, or you'll crack him sure—and lay the whole caboodlum on the shelf, hout ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... the volume from a shelf, and Manston retired with it to the window-bench. He turned to the county, and then to the parish of Tolchurch. At the end of the historical and topographical description ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... garret, sir, I have to trouble you and your wife to come and slumber. Not now, however: with manly hospitality, I choke off any sudden impulse. Because first, my wife and my mother are gone (a note for the latter, strongly suspected to be in the hand of your talented wife, now sits silent on the mantel shelf), one to Niagara and t'other to Indianapolis. Because, second, we are not yet installed. And because third, I won't have you till I have a buffalo robe and leggings, lest you should want to paint me as ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... fixed in a large copper flat candlestick, and graced with a heavy fluting of grease from its guttering. She answered with a slight bow, carried the flat candlestick into the ante-room, came back, and after placing the lamp on the chimney shelf, seated herself by her mother, a little behind the painter, so as to be able to look at him at her ease, while apparently much interested in the burning of the lamp; the flame, checked by the damp in a dingy chimney, sputtered as it struggled ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac

... with the appropriate bearing for such an occasion. His handshake was a perfect thing, studied, rehearsed, just as all his life was studied and rehearsed. He had in stock a manner and a handshake and a demeanor which could be instantly taken off the shelf and used for any situation which might arise. Richmond was a ready man, an able man. On the whole, he was a good man, as men go, but cut ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland

... gnawed my moustache, I tore my gloves off and then put them on again, I walked up and down the little drawing-room, I shifted the clock, which stood on the mantel-shelf; I could not keep still. I had already experienced such sensations on the morning of the assault on the Malakoff. Suddenly the General, who was still going on with his eternal game at ecarte with the prefect, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... there was no time to go anywhere; in fact, it was time for John to come home from Colebyville, where he had gone to hunt for a hired man before the cleaning was really finished. Glancing up at the clock on the lambrequined shelf in the sitting room, the girl was surprised to see that it was already four o'clock. The cleaning was finished and she ran to the kitchen to put up the rag in her hand, and then went hurriedly into her bedroom to comb her hair and get her dress ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger

... good purpose, that shortly they were clambering, rather breathless, up the steeps of the Meadow Trail. This led to a flat, upper shelf or bench in which, as the name implied, was situated a small meadow. At the upper end were grouped twenty-five men, ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... the horseman had halted, was the bare trace of a trail, winding around the edge of an overhanging rock by a shelf that was not a yard in width and which only a man could tread whose head was cool and ...
— Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer - The Stranger in Camp • Colonel Prentiss Ingraham

... Wade that the Doctor was out on a call, but would be back presently. She led the way into the study, turned up the lamp and left him. The study was office and library and living-room in one, a large, untidy room with books lining two sides of it, and a third devoted to shelf on shelf of bottles and jars and boxes. Near the bottle end of the apartment the Doctor had his desk and his few appliances. At the other end was a big oak table covered with a debris of books, magazines, newspapers, ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour

... up a trembling hand and took from that shelf a piece of twisted paper, which he opened absently only to find it inscribed with a true ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton

... raised above its head, is charming. Another in the form of a Hermes holds a kid in its arms; the she-goat trying to get a glimpse of her little one, is raising her fore-feet as though to clamber up on the spoiler. These odds and ends make up a pretty collection of toys, a shelf, as it were, on an ancient ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier

... no single suitable text is found the students are asked to contribute a small sum, from twenty-five to fifty cents, for the purpose of purchasing duplicates. These books are placed on the reserve shelf, and this makes it possible for large classes to be accommodated with a relatively small number of books. Ordinarily there should be one book for every four or five students, if all are expected to read the same assignment. If options are allowed, the proportion ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... church, and was as usual attentive. The subject of the sermon was on the duty of searching the Scriptures: all I knew of them was from the liturgy. I now, however, determined to read them, and perfect the good work which I had begun. My father's Bible was upon the shelf, and on that evening I took it with me to my chamber. I placed it on the table, and sat down. My heart was filled with pleasing anticipation. I opened the book at random, and began to read; the first passage on which my eyes lighted ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... instead. Prince Karl withdrew to his Government of the Netherlands; and with the aid of generous liquors, and what natural magnanimity he had, spent a noiseless life thenceforth; Sword laid entirely on the shelf; and immortal Glory, as of Alexander and the like, quite making its exit from the scene, convivial or other. 'The first General in the world,' so he used to be ten years ago, in Austria, in England, Holland, the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle

... to stuff his pipe out of Mr. Day's tobacco sack that he had appropriated from the shelf ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long

... a bachelor, I lived by myself, And all the bread and cheese I got, I put upon the shelf. The rats and the mice they made such a strife, I was forced to go to London to buy me a wife: The roads were so bad, and the lanes were so narrow, I was forced to bring my wife home in a wheelbarrow. The wheelbarrow broke, and my wife had a fall, Down came ...
— Harry's Ladder to Learning - Horn-Book, Picture-Book, Nursery Songs, Nursery Tales, - Harry's Simple Stories, Country Walks • Anonymous

... the better part of a week's work—a displayed dissection of a snail, beautifully done—and hurled it across the room, to smash resoundingly upon the cemented floor under the bookcase; then, without either haste or pause, he swept his arm along a shelf of re-agents and sent them to mingle with the debris on the floor. They fell in a diapason of smashes. "H'm!" he said, regarding the wreckage with a calmer visage. "Silly!" he remarked after a pause. "One hardly ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... said my wife, "I believe in best china, to be kept carefully on an upper shelf, and taken down for high-days and holidays; it may be a superstition, but I believe in it. It must never be taken out except when the mistress herself can see that it is safely cared for. My mother always washed her china herself; ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... withdraw his subscription on account of the black-beetles; a Swedish sea-captain smashed nine panes of glass—just by way of a friendly demonstration, he said—because the great Upsala journal, the UTAN STAFVEL, was missing from its shelf; a muscular Japanese made himself distinctly offensive about the NICHI-NICHI-SHIN-BUM being out of date, and was going to twist everybody's head off, if it occurred again; the excellent Vice-President, Mr. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... looked all round to see that no one was watching her, and then she set to work to peck at a piece of meat that lay on the edge of a shelf, till at last it fell down. The dog seized it ravenously, and ran with it to a dark corner where he gobbled it up in ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various

... of the protruding or squeezed ones. This estimate includes in the latter about 10,000,000 sq. m. now covered with shallow water. The volume of the hydrosphere is a little too great for the true basins, and it runs over, covering the borders of the continents" (see Continental Shelf). Several theories have been advanced to account for the roughly triangular shape of the continents, but that presenting the least difficulty is the one expressed above, "since in a spherical surface divided into larger and smaller segments the major part should ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various

... aided by prose-comment, I do seriously believe and profess, that I owe full two-thirds of whatever reputation and publicity I happen to possess. For when the name of an individual has occurred so frequently, in so many works, for so great a length of time, the readers of these works—(which with a shelf or two of beauties, elegant Extracts and Anas, form nine-tenths of the reading of the reading Public [14])—cannot but be familiar with the name, without distinctly remembering whether it was introduced for eulogy or for censure. And this ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... the position in which they were at the beginning of the session. They stated then that they would place their existence as ministers on the fate of the Irish corporation bill. What had become of that bill? It was laid on the shelf till the lords knew what that house was about. The other house virtually said, "If you do not what we like, we will not pass your bill." What good could be got from playing over the farce of discussing the Irish tithe bill? Did they not know that if it passed that house, defeat awaited it ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... friendship of his neighbors was better even than the highest flavored cup of tea; and so he formally acknowledged his error, begged the pardon of the committee, and promised that thereafter he would act in accordance with their rules and regulations; and his family teapot was put away upon a high top shelf. ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton

... of 'em!— Two? A quintette at least. Mosquito chorus! A—ah! my cheek! And oh! again, my eyelid! I gave myself a stunning cuff on the ear And all in vain. Flap we our handkerchief; Flap, flap! (A smash.) Quick, quick, bring in a lamp! I've switched a flower-vase from the shelf. Ah me! Splash on my head, and then upon my feet, The water poured;—I'm drowned! my slipper's full! My dickey—ah! 't is cruel! Flowers are nonsense! I'd have them amaranths all, or made of paper. Here, wring my neckcloth, and rub down my hair! Now Mr. ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various

... into his damp little hut, where the light was dim on the crucifix hanging opposite the door against the clay-daubed wall. It was a bare, unsightly, clammy room; a rude bed on one side, a shelf for table and two or three wooden stools constituting the furniture, while the uneven puncheons of the floor wabbled and clattered under the ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... possessed of was perfectly inconceivable, and the most vulgar abuse of this country was decidedly at a premium. But their language was of itself so penny-a-liny, that they might have lain for weeks on the book-shelf at an ordinary railway-station in England—price, gratis—and nobody but a trunkmaker or a grocer would have been at the trouble of ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... see why the great Regent himself Should in times such as these stay at home on the shelf: Tho' thro' narrow defiles he's not fitted to pass, Yet who could resist, if he bore down en masse? And tho' oft of an evening perhaps he might prove, Like our Spanish confederates, "unable to move,"[1] Yet there's one thing in war of advantage unbounded, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... Guillette's hearth. The great spit was twisted like a screw beneath the strong fists which fought for it A pistol-shot set fire to a small quantity of hemp arranged in sheaves and laid on a wicker shelf near the ceiling. This incident created a diversion, and while some of the company crowded about to extinguish the sparks, the grave-digger, who had climbed unbeknown into the garret, came down the chimney and seized the spit, at the very moment when the ox-driver, who was defending it near ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand

... will put sparks in your blood. Just a second, and I'll get you an ash tray." I went into the kitchen and got one of the ash trays from the top shelf and brought it back into the living room. Just as I put it down on the arm of the couch next to His Grace, the buzzer announced that there was someone at the ...
— Nor Iron Bars a Cage.... • Gordon Randall Garrett

... no continuity, we hope that they will give you some idea of the style in which the books are written and perhaps the character of the subject from which you may form an opinion as to its place on your personal book shelf. ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... his head and shoulders buried in a clothes- sack wherein were stored winter socks and underwear. "I say, Kink, don't forget the saleratus on the corner shelf ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London

... Helen" said her father. "I am going to disclose all the secrets of this safe to you. Do you perceive that the top shelf is faced in by a thin wire gauze with a handle ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford

... tried to see the difference between a cellar and a basement and had little difficulty, for nothing could have been more different from the little Mifflin cellar with its swinging shelf for preserves and pickles, its dark closet for vegetables, than Aunt Kate's basement apartment. The sun streamed into the windows, only half of which were below the level of the street, and the rooms looked very bright and pleasant ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett

... standard works in stout gilt bindings. The "Annual Register," the "Gentleman's Magazine," "Blair's Sermons," and "Hume and Smollett." From year's end to year's end he never took one of these volumes from the shelf; but there was no member of the family that would dare for his life to touch one of the books, except upon those rare Sunday evenings when there was no dinner-party, and when the great scarlet Bible and Prayer-book were taken out from ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... later on some chicken-feed that they found in Sidney's quiet barn, a pail of buttermilk out of the dairy, and a quantity of onions from a shelf in the back-kitchen. ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling

... mean?" he asked, rising suddenly from his seat as pale as ashes, and clinging to the mantel-shelf for support as he ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... more, this time to replace the glass upon the shelf, his thin blond hair falling over his eyes as he did so. Markheim moved a little nearer, with one hand in the pocket of his greatcoat; he drew himself up and filled his lungs; at the same time many different emotions were depicted together on his face—terror, ...
— Short-Stories • Various

... the men from a little distance, "this 'ere shelf by the spring's the spot you marked ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard

... Epic from the shelf, Engravings rare surveyed— The Artist seemed a higher self, Who knew and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various

... Edward Everett and Robert C. Winthrop were often under my immature gaze. Men much alike in views, endowments, and accomplishments, they had played out their parts in public life and had been consigned to their Boston shelf. In the perspective they are statuettes rather than statues, of Parian spotlessness, ribboned and gilt-edged through an elegant culture, well appointed according to the best taste, companion Sevres pieces, highly ornamental, and ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer

... the empire and the rule, That from a shelf the precious diadem stole, And put it ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... in case he might come home by any chance," said the gray old miner, and he placed the cup on a shelf against ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels

... shelves, S, then through the channel, C, into the drum, D, which contains the concentrated chloride of magnesium. When the latter has solidified, but before being to any extent decomposed, it is removed from the drum and placed on the top shelf of the furnace. It is then gradually removed one shelf lower as the decomposition increases, until it arrives at the bottom shelf, where it is completely decomposed in the state of magnesia, which is emptied through, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various

... beginning made for the future minister's comfort. One shelf was already completely stocked with pies, and another shewed a quantity of cake, and biscuits enough to last a good-sized ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... stream, he turned sadly on his heel and led the way back to the pub. He invited the boys to "pisen themselves"; after they were served he ordered out the longest tumbler on the premises, poured a drop into it from nearly every bottle on the shelf, added a lump of ice, ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson

... had been frescoed (in candle-smoke). Still drifting along and talking, they scarcely noticed that they were now in a part of the cave whose walls were not frescoed. They smoked their own names under an overhanging shelf and moved on. Presently they came to a place where a little stream of water, trickling over a ledge and carrying a limestone sediment with it, had, in the slow-dragging ages, formed a laced and ruffled Niagara in gleaming and imperishable stone. Tom squeezed his small ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... spelled them both with capitals, they were so dear to her. Sometimes she told herself she hardly knew which one she loved the better. But there came a time when she must choose between them, and then she knew. Of course it was the Brother. She put the Ambition away on a high shelf where she could not go to it too often and cry over it. 'Stay there awhile,' she said. 'Some day I shall come and take you down and live with you again. Just now I must take ...
— Glory and the Other Girl • Annie Hamilton Donnell

... all be in the home and ready, as the seventh month of pregnancy draws near. In the first place, select the drawer or closet shelf where the supplies are to remain, untouched, until your physician orders them brought out. The supplies requiring special ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... the few books carefully covered on a corner shelf, took down an old hand-tooled volume and lifted his eyebrows at the ancient coat of arms on the book plate. He tiptoed across to the bench and pointed to the script beneath the plate. "Edward Winslow (7) to his dear ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various

... showed him the thing he sought. Lying in solitary state upon the highest shelf was a heavy book bound in white leather. The edges of the cover were worn yellow with time and use, and from the centre of the binding gleamed the familiar octagonal symbol exquisitely wrought in gold and jewels. With hands ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... any longer any doubt that we had seen a man, or that this must be his abode, and that he must be a white man, but whether English or not was doubtful. Miles Soper examined the matting, and as he was looking about he found a knife on a shelf close to the bed. Taking it up, he examined it with a curious eye, opening and shutting it, and turning it ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston

... was standing supporting himself against the larder shelf, with his elbow on the cold sirloin of beef; the footman, in his shirt and breeches, was in a corner; and Captain Belton and his brother, with their clothes half torn-off their backs, were seated on the bare floor, staring angrily at ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn

... to the closet and took a long flat box from the upper shelf. As she carried it over to Sary, ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... the furrin names that me and Jerry used to go to sleep. That made him mad, and he said, liter'ry tone be durned; he wa'n't goin' to waste his breath readin' us to sleep; so they've been on the shelf ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... the basement and borrowed a broom from the janitor. Then she went back for clean papers which she folded neatly and spread on the pantry shelves which Mrs. Merrill with the good help of the janitor's wife had cleaned and ready. Then she put papers on the shelf of the closet she and Alice were to share and papers in the drawers near the floor of that same closet. By that time—it takes pretty long to fold papers neatly and get every bit of the shelf covered, you know—the door bell ...
— Mary Jane's City Home • Clara Ingram Judson

... feet to disengage, Nor lime his wings, whom Love has made a prize; For love, in fine, is nought but phrensied rage, By universal suffrage of the wise: And albeit some may show themselves more sage Than Roland, they but sin in other guise. For, what proves folly more than on this shelf, Thus, for ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... I couldn't help it this time, for how did I know that the can of mustard, standing there on the shelf as big as you ...
— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill

... grown dear from association, and teeming with memories of precious communings. She had one, of course—a nice, proper-looking Bible—and if it chanced to be convenient when she was ready to read, she used it; if not, she took Sadie's, or picked up Julia's from under the table, or the old one on a shelf in the corner, with one cover and part of Revelation missing—it mattered not one whit to her which—for there were no pencil marks, and no leaves turned down, and no special verses to find. She thought the idea of marking certain verses an excellent one, and deciding to ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)

... seven by eleven inches in size. The normal entry gives the name of the author (for perhaps three-fourths of the entries), the short title, the format, the place and date of publication, and sometimes the publisher. And finally, after most of the items appears the "Theca" or shelf number—one of 33 shelves on which Congreve arranged his books at his lodgings in Surrey ...
— The Library of William Congreve • John C. Hodges

... the only one in Suez that had been neither sacked nor burned. In its drug department there had always been kept on sale a single unreplenished, undiminished shelf of books. Most of them were standard English works that took no notice of such trifles as children. But one was an exception, and this world-renowned volume, though entirely unillustrated, had charmed the eyes of ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable

... gazed—till lo! I was aware A fisherman had joined her there— A weary man, with halting gait, Who toiled beneath a basket's weight: Her father, as I guessed, for she Had run to meet him gleefully And ta'en his burden to herself, That perched upon her shoulder's shelf So lightly that she, tripping, neared A jutting crag and disappeared; But she left the echo of a song That thrills me yet, and will as long As I have ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley

... is because you have stood so long upon the shelf without moving," Raggedy Andy suggested. ...
— Raggedy Andy Stories • Johnny Gruelle

... not the same appearance of opulence in the dwellings. We were shown the chamber in which the Emperor of Russia lodged, and the hole in the wall where he slept, for in the old Dutch houses, as in the modern ones of the farmers, the bed is a sort of high closet, or, more properly speaking, a shelf within the wall, from which a door opens into the room. I should have mentioned that, in going to Broek, I stopped to look at one of the farm-houses of the country, and at Saardam I visited another. They were dairy houses, in which the milk of large herds is made into ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant

... go so far as to make their visits to bookshops a kind of chivalrous errantry at large. They go in not because they need any certain volume, but because they feel that there may be some book that needs them. Some wistful, little forgotten sheaf of loveliness, long pining away on an upper shelf—why not ride up, fling her across your charger (or your charge account), and gallop away. Be ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley

... brains anew for some means of gaining further time; and, as I looked about the place, the shopman very patiently awaiting my departure, I observed an open case at the back of the counter. The three lower shelves were empty, but upon the fourth shelf squatted ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... her as she limped away. Poor girl! That's why she's left on the shelf and the others did a sprint. Thought something was wrong by the cut of her jib. Jilted beauty. A defect is ten times worse in a woman. But makes them polite. Glad I didn't know it when she was on show. Hot little devil ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... oil and natural gas on federal lands, particularly the outer continental shelf, has been accelerated at the same time as the Administration has reformed leasing procedures through the 1978 amendments to the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act. In 1979 the Interior Department held six OCS lease sales, the greatest number ever, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Jimmy Carter • Jimmy Carter

... happened that his head was not far removed from that of Phil, when the latter stretched himself out on his shelf, with his ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne

... with Errington had cut deep into a mind which had hitherto reflected nothing beyond the simple happenings of a girlhood passed at a country rectory, and the romantic flair of youth had given their memory a certain sacred niche in her heart. Some day Fate would come along and take them down from that shelf where they were stored, and dust them and present them to her afresh with a ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler

... rheumatism that she had been left to her murky gloom. Now, with a few gaily coloured pictures of the Saints and Irish patriots on the walls, the dresser filled with bright crockery, including a whole shelf of lustre jugs, the pots and pans set out to advantage, to say nothing of the cans, a clean scrubbed table, a few chairs, a strip of matting in front of the fireplace, flowers in a jug on the table which also bore Susan's few implements of sewing ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan

... sent them all over Europe—to London, Paris, Vienna! You may have observed some little specimens in Paris, on the Boulevard, in a shop of which they constitute the specialty. There is always a crowd about the window. They form a very pleasing ornament for the mantel-shelf of a gay young bachelor, for the boudoir of a pretty woman. You couldn't make a prettier present to a person with whom you wished to exchange a harmless joke. It is not classic art, signore, of course; but, between ourselves, isn't classic art ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James

... to a halt on the shelf of a high cliff that towered above their heads. It was a wide and safe road they had emerged upon, and it could be seen winding on and up, until it was lost in the mist which was rapidly being driven ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young

... opened the cellar door and went down a flight of stone steps into the first cellar. He looked all about him, and there was nothing at all there but a switch made of brier lying on a shelf behind the door. "That is not much for the Master to have made such a fuss about," said the lad. "I could see as much as that any day without coming into a cellar for it;" and he went upstairs again and shut ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle

... specimen of the Portuguese race in Brazil took his stand with his back to the fire, in an attitude that showed familiarity with Paris manners; holding his hat in one hand, his elbow resting on the velvet-covered shelf, he bent over Madame Marneffe, talking to her in an undertone, and troubling himself very little about the dreadful people who, in his opinion, were so very much ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... she had taken from its neat oak shelf a box of summer wraps and placed it on the counter behind which she stood. Now, not knowing what she did, she lifted the cardboard cover and seemed to peep in at the folds of ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson

... answer, still bending over her knitting-she was prodigal of terms like this and applied them indiscriminately, for Jane Anne resembled the animal in question even less than did her father—'I saw it last on the geranium shelf—you know, where the fuchsias and the-' She hesitated, she was not sure herself. 'I'll get it, my duckie, for you,' she added, and began to rise. She was a voluminous, very stately woman. The operation ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... daylight before I left the bedside, and as the dying still showed that the soul was delaying his journey, I went into the spacious, handsome library. Seeing a rare book in costly binding among the volumes on a lower shelf, I opened the door and took it out My hands were black with dust. I glanced then along the rows and rows of valuable books, and noticed the dust of months or years. The family were not students or readers. One son was in the Albany Penitentiary; another a fugitive in Canada. At the ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr

... word, the boys slipped away. Mr. Hardy then placed on a round shelf nailed to the flag-staff, at about eight feet from the ground, a blue-light, fitting into a socket on the shelf. The shelf was made just so large that it threw a shadow over the top of the tower, so that those standing there were in comparative ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty

... of one of Crabbe's tales, who was "by nature negatively good," is a portrait after Miss Austen's own heart. Languidly reclining on her sofa with "half a shelf of circulating books" on a table at her elbow, Belinda tosses wearily aside a half-read volume of Clarissa, commended by her maid, "who had Clarissa for her heart's ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... I was born! And there was the selfsame clock that ticked From the close of dusk to the burst of morn, When life-warm hands plucked the golden corn And helped when the apples were picked. And the "chany dog" on the mantel-shelf, With the gilded collar and yellow eyes, Looked just as at first, when I hugged myself Sound asleep ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley

... with its lovely bloom, and some in the low, dagger-like plant close to the ground. Above them, on the right side rose the rocky wall of the mountain, not altogether sheer in its ascent, but curving in and then out at the top, the upper ridge forming a shelf. Mesquite grew seemingly out of ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall

... in the oven, usually on the lower shelf, to get an under heat first, then toward the last of the cooking, set it on the top shelf ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Management • Ministry of Education

... away to wither? But not a few of the gifted—near and afar—have called on us with other voices—reminding us that long ago we were elected, on sight of our credentials—not indeed without a few black balls—into the Brotherhood. The shelf marked with our initials exhibits some half-dozen volumes only, and has room for scores. It may not be easily found in that vast Library; but, humble member as we are, we feel it now to be a point of honour to make an occasional contribution to the Club. So here is the FIRST SERIES ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... easily in the lock. Hans entered, half frightened at what he was doing, and the first thing he beheld was a heap of bones. That was not very cheerful; and he was just going out again when his eye fell on a shelf of books. Here was a good way of passing the time, he thought, for he was fond of reading, and he took one of the books from the shelf. It was all about magic, and told you how you could change yourself into anything in the world you liked. Could anything be more exciting ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang

... to plaster my wound. Then she put me into a little bedroom on one of the upper floors, and told me to stay there till she called me. There were one or two books upon the shelf, including a funny one with woodcuts, a collection of tales and ballads, such as the pedlers used to sell in those days. With this book, and with a piece of paper and a pencil, I passed the morning more ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield

... There was a shelf in one corner, with books on it, perhaps a score in all. Quarles took down every one of them, and ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner

... were going for a walk on Big Beach Mr. Keytel asked us to call on our way back. This we did and found tea awaiting us. He has made his house look so well. Facing the door there is a book-shelf on the wall with a good supply of books. There are also shelves and tables for his photographic apparatus. And, last of all, he has made little red blinds for his windows, which give the house a very cheerful appearance. ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow

... is the nature of an Italian opera-house to have its shelf poorly furnished. It cannot, however, be denied that the managers of the Opera Buffa take every pains to vary and increase their stock. The following are the pieces which I have seen at ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... most solemn oath is taken with the Koran placed on the head. Formerly the sacred book could only be touched by a Saiyad or a Mulla, and an assembly always rose when it was brought to them. The book is kept on a high shelf in the house, so as to avoid any risk of contamination, and nothing is placed over it. Every chapter in the Koran except one begins with the invocation, 'Bismillah-nirrahman-nirrahim,' or 'In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful'; and ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... theft the night I showed you the cigar case, and after I had carelessly thrown it in that drawer. You were sitting in that chair, and I had arisen to take something from that shelf. In that instant you secured your booty without rising. Silence! Do you remember when I helped you on with your overcoat the other night? I was particular about fitting your arm in. While doing so I ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte

... he had an excellent way of his own in dealing with annoyances and persecutions, which turned them to the best account. At the back of a shelf, in one of the cupboards in his "Surgery," he kept a small box, on the lid of which he had written the word "Pills." When some word or act of special unkindness or bitterness had been his lot, he would scrupulously avoid all mention of it to his wife or ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson



Words linked to "Shelf" :   bookcase, ledge, etagere, mantle, food market, chimneypiece, shelf life, mantelpiece, dresser, bureau, off-the-shelf, shelf ice, berm, ridge, grocery store, support, market



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