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Tracing   Listen
noun
Tracing  n.  
1.
The act of one who traces; especially, the act of copying by marking on thin paper, or other transparent substance, the lines of a pattern placed beneath; also, the copy thus producted.
2.
A regular path or track; a course.
Tracing cloth, Tracing paper, specially prepared transparent cloth or paper, which enables a drawing or print to be clearly seen through it, and so allows the use of a pen or pencil to produce a facsimile by following the lines of the original placed beneath.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Tracing" Quotes from Famous Books



... group of relatives tracing a common lineage to some remote ancestor. This lineage is traced by some tribes through the mother and by others through the father." "The gens is the grand unit of social organization, and for many purposes is the basis of ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley

... said Ermine, who, besides her usual amusement in tracing Rachel's dicta to their source, could only keep ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... mealie dust. No, never mind. It will brush off. And sometimes what is more amusing still than tracing the likeness between man and man, is to trace the analogy there always is between the progress and development of one individual and of a whole nation; or, again, between a single nation and the entire human race. ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner

... midst of his most harassing literary duties, a kind word, a pleasant smile, a graceful and courteous attention. At his desk, beneath the romantic picture of his loved and lost Lenore, he would sit, hour after hour, patient, assiduous, and uncomplaining, tracing, in an exquisitely clear chirography, and with almost superhuman swiftness, the lightning thoughts—the 'rare and radiant' fancies as they flashed through his wonderful and ever-wakeful brain. I recollect, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... 1. The same idea, tracing the arguments to their consequences, is held out in several of the late publications against ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... talking to the distant sky, so that she thought him mad. Her mind, passing from Mary to Denham, from William to Cassandra, and from Denham to herself—if, as she rather doubted, Denham's state of mind was connected with herself—seemed to be tracing out the lines of some symmetrical pattern, some arrangement of life, which invested, if not herself, at least the others, not only with interest, but with a kind of tragic beauty. She had a fantastic picture of them upholding splendid palaces upon their bent ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... puzzles, painting books, tracing slates with large and simple designs cultivate observation and ingenuity. Kaleidoscopes and stereoscopes are excellent, but moving pictures are so trying upon the eyes, and the air of the theaters is so bad, that a deaf child whose eyes are his ...
— What the Mother of a Deaf Child Ought to Know • John Dutton Wright

... Lindgren, one of the greatest of American scientific mining engineers. This work was on the relations of the famous Sierra placer gold deposits to the original gold-bearing veins and lodes, and resulted in tracing those comparatively recent placers back to the old mountain slopes and valleys. It was a fascinating problem successfully carried through. The young geologist's association with Lindgren, whose standards of personal character ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg

... tracing my movements, when they joined my present activities to the fact that only by the skin of my teeth had I escaped a charge of bringing German papers into Italy, there would be the devil to pay. I acknowledged it; then—really, ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... Tracing the history of the world down to later times, we shall find the same state of things in society at large, until a period which it is difficult to fix, but which, we may say, did not fairly begin until the beginning or the middle of the eighteenth century. Down to ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... in the silence of the sacred writers respecting the official proceedings and the personal career of the Twelve and the Seventy. It thus becomes impossible for any one to make out a title to the ministry by tracing his ecclesiastical descent; for no contemporary records enable us to prove a connexion between the inspired founders of our religion, and those who were subsequently entrusted with the government of the Church. At the critical point where, ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... a large selection of literature tracing the origin and development of Bolshevism, and exposing its miseries and horrors, of which samples ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 9, 1919 • Various

... Before tracing the subsequent history of the Cottonian library we will pause and consider some of the most important manuscripts which it contained at the death of ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone

... she was not able to remember any window that needed Arthur's arrangements. So he was left to himself and the rain again; for the drops were falling thickly against the window now. At first he employed himself in tracing their course down the glass, but very soon he was tired of that, and presently Mrs. Estcourt ...
— Left at Home - or, The Heart's Resting Place • Mary L. Code

... in the servants' quarters in the south-east corner of the outer apartments. One of our servants was Shyam, a dark chubby boy with curly locks, hailing from the District of Khulna. He would put me into a selected spot and, tracing a chalk line all round, warn me with solemn face and uplifted finger of the perils of transgressing this ring. Whether the threatened danger was material or spiritual I never fully understood, but a great fear ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore

... came home from office. A hasty inquiry resulted in Imam Din informing Muhammad Din that, by my singular favor, he was permitted to disport himself as he pleased. Whereat the child took heart and fell to tracing the ground-plan of an edifice which was to ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... tracing the figures upon the curtains. They were scenes of the olden time—mailed knights, helmed and mounted, dashing at each other with couched lances, or tumbling from their horses, pierced by the spear. Other scenes there were: noble dames, sitting on Flemish palfreys, and watching the ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid

... latter said. "I should not have believed it possible that men would devote so many years to such a purpose, nor that they could have succeeded in tracing the diamonds in spite of the precaution taken by your uncle, and afterwards by yourself. It would seem that from the time he landed in England he, and after him your father and yourself, must have been watched ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty

... deenergizing emotions of the housewife, we are tracing factors that affect her husband, his work, and Society at large; we trace the things that mold her children, and thus we follow her mood, her emotion, into the ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson

... has corresponded with this great outline. Perfection in our organization could not have been expected in the outset either in the National or State Governments or in tracing the line between their respective powers. But no serious conflict has arisen, nor any contest but such as are managed by argument and by a fair appeal to the good sense of the people, and many ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various

... ornamented with flowers, fruit-trees, &c. (and I would recommend this plan to be invariably adopted,) it not only affords the teacher an opportunity of communicating much knowledge to the children, and of tracing every thing up to the Great First Cause, but it becomes the means of establishing principles of honesty. They should not on any account be allowed to pluck the fruit or flowers; every thing should be considered ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin

... a frozen finger tracing out my spine, I showed him how that this figure must be a deception of his sense of sight; and how that figures, originating in disease of the delicate nerves that minister to the functions of the eye, were known to have often troubled patients, some of whom had become ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... respectfully. "I propose to prove, in the public interest, the difficulty of tracing a missing person. I shall instruct a member of the staff to disappear. I shall publish his description, and his portrait; and I shall offer a prize to the first stranger ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick

... of doctrine. There is a greater difference between the Presbyterian and Episcopalian creeds than between the latter and the Catholic. But in tracing sectarian animosities back to their source, you may always expect to crash up against Vested Interests. For instance, the great Fact of the English Reformation was the confiscation of Church property. Afterward, a Protestant England submitted peaceably ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... I grappled at once with the problem of Induction, postponing that of Reasoning, on the ground that it is necessary to obtain premises before we can reason from them. Now, Induction is mainly a process for finding the causes of effects: and in attempting to fathom the mode of tracing causes and effects in physical science, I soon saw that in the more perfect of the sciences, we ascend, by generalization from particulars, to the tendencies of causes considered singly, and then reason downward from those separate ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill

... considerations of deep interest beyond. It was deducible from what they knew, that to a being of infinite understanding—one to whom the perfection of the algebraic analysis lay unfolded—there could be no difficulty in tracing every impulse given the air—and the ether through the air—to the remotest consequences at any even infinitely remote epoch of time. It is indeed demonstrable that every such impulse given the air, must, in the end, impress every individual thing ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... but there was every reason to believe that the General had not been among them. The inhabitants of Chateau-Gonthier were very favourable to the Vendean cause; Henri received every information which the people could give him, and at last succeeded in tracing Lechelle into a large half-ruined house, in the lower portion of which, a wine shop, for the accommodation of the poorer classes, was kept open. Here they learnt, from the neighbours, that he had ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... corrects the indefatigable Laforgue. 'Il ne savoit que lui dire' becomes 'Dans cet etat de perplexite;' and so forth. It must, therefore, be realized that the Memoirs, as we have them, are only a kind of pale tracing of the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... printer must necessarily be punished before the resentment of the house can be satisfied; if it shall not be thought sufficient to punish him without whose assistance the other could not have offended; let us, at least, confine our animadversion to the present fault, without tracing back his life for past misdemeanours, and charging him with accumulated wickedness; for if a man's whole life is to be the subject of judicial inquiries, when he shall appear at the bar of this house, the most innocent will have reason to ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson

... peoples from Arabia, a country which is favourable for the production of a larger population than it is able to maintain permanently, especially when its natural resources are restricted by a succession of abnormally dry years. In tracing the Akkadians from Arabia, however, we are confronted at the outset with the difficulty that its prehistoric, and many of its present-day, inhabitants are not of the characteristic Semitic type. On the Ancient Egyptian ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... wonder, by the way, if metaphysicians have no hind toes. In 1770 he makes the acquaintance in Sussex of "an old family tortoise," which had then been domesticated for thirty years. It is clear that he fell in love with it at first sight. We have no means of tracing the growth of his passion; but in 1780 we find him eloping with its object in a post-chaise. "The rattle and hurry of the journey so perfectly roused it that, when I turned it out in a border, it walked ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell

... beginning to get the range with their deadly automatic one-pounders. One shot in the right place would sink us. There was a line of splashes in the water, like that made by jumping fish, tracing accurately the length of our vessel, and gradually ...
— Young Peoples' History of the War with Spain • Prescott Holmes

... necessary to treat of the conveyance of goods and passengers from place to place; which, not being universally known, seemed proper to be explained before we examined into its original. There are indeed two different ways of tracing all things used by the historian and the antiquary; these are upwards ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding

... night crept slowly on. Oliver lay awake for some time, counting the little circles of light which the reflection of the rushlight-shade threw upon the ceiling; or tracing with his languid eyes the intricate pattern of the paper on the wall. The darkness and the deep stillness of the room were very solemn; as they brought into the boy's mind the thought that death had been hovering there, for many days and nights, and might yet fill it with the gloom and dread of ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... it all is that I've got it straightened out, about the Powers woodlot. I got track of those missing leaves from the Ashley Town Records. They really were carried away by that uncle of yours. I found them up in Canada. I had a certified copy and tracing made of them. It's been a long complicated business, and the things only came in yesterday's mail, after you'd been called over here. But I'd been in correspondence with Lowder, and when I had my proofs in hand, I telephoned ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... only the first part of the game," said Diana. "Uncle Joe has had us each trace a map of the United States, and then we play we have to live in one of the States that begins with the same letter our first name begins with; then we put the tracing over white cardboard and cut out our State, and we can paint it any color we like. We are going to put in the rivers and big towns by and by. I can't live in any State but Delaware," ...
— Peggy in Her Blue Frock • Eliza Orne White

... Helen returned to Frith Street, and found Mr. Undercliff behind a sort of counter, employed in tracing; a workman was seated at some little distance from him; both ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... tracing the practical details of the Peace which he thought necessary for the power and the security of France, we must go back to the historical causes which had operated during his lifetime. Before the Franco-German war the populations of France and Germany were approximately ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes

... began by teaching Pippity his A B C's. The next step was to instruct Grilly how to hold the pencil. Taking his hand in mine, I guided it in making the letters. He was rather slow at first in comprehending the science or acquiring the knack of tracing the letters; but continued application will accomplish wonders even with a monkey; and in a few weeks' time Grilly would make any letter at command. I got Pippity to call out the alphabet while Grilly wrote. Thus ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various

... we portray? The lineaments were of that order which no painter could faithfully present by tracing their outline correctly, and no writer conjure up before the mind by descriptive language, however minutely the color of eyes, complexion, and hair might be chronicled. Therefore our task must necessarily be an imperfect one, and ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... elsewhere. But in any form the name has a more honorable derivation and meaning than Catholic writers are inclined to give it. It is derived from "Luither," which means as much as "People's Man," ( der Leute Herr). Another well-known form of the same name is Lothar, which some, tracing the derivation still further, derive from the old German Chlotachar, which means as much as "loudly hailed among the army" ( hluit, loud, and chari, army). Respectable scholars to-day so explain ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... process, and so, in the course of a few hours, he concocted a short letter, all the words in which, except three, were facsimiles, only here and there a little shaky; the three odd words he had to imitate by observation of the letters. The signature he got to perfection by tracing. ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... when her eyes were fixed on the lace-pillow, the stove, or the chair on which he had sat; and there was that constant hammering and scratching behind her wall: everywhere she saw those two kind eyes behind the copper rims of his spectacles; and she sometimes caught herself contentedly tracing the good-natured features of his little black face. She had prayed more than ever and evoked quite new saints; and now she let herself drift along at God's pleasure, no longer even thinking of her weakness. Perhaps she was the instrument of a ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels

... whether he had been born a peasant or a peer. 'His poetry, considered abstractedly and without the apologies arising from his situation, seems to me fully entitled to command our feelings and obtain our applause.... The power of genius is not less admirable in tracing the manners, than in painting the passions or in drawing the scenery of nature. That intuitive glance with which a writer like Shakspeare discerns the character of men, with which he catches the many changing hues of life, forms a sort of problem in the science of mind, of which it ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun

... he knew it. At the top he stood half dazed. The mountain rose sheer up to dizzy heights on one side, and a precipice was on the other. He turned his dreadful eyes this way and that. Then he scanned the prospect before him—a haze of dimly-outlined mountains. He glanced back, tracing his uneven tracks until they disappeared in the grey evening light. Then he turned back again to a contemplation of what lay before him. Suddenly his staff slipped from his hand as though he no longer had the strength to grip it. Then, raising his arms aloft, he gave vent to one despairing cry ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum

... abstruse disquisitions, which are the more proper subject of the antiquary, nor satisfied with presenting to his pupils a dry and undigested detail of the laws in their present state, but combining the past state of our legal enactments with the present, and tracing clearly and judiciously the changes which took place, and the causes which ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... interested was concerned; during the day he was kept continually busy by Mr Butler in the preparation of lists of the several instruments, articles, and things—from theodolites, levels, measuring chains, steel tapes, ranging rods, wire lines, sounding chains, drawing and tracing paper, cases of instruments, colour boxes, T-squares, steel straight-edges, and drawing pins, to tents, camp furniture, and saddlery—and procuring the same. The evenings were spent in packing and re-packing his kit as the several articles ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood

... the queen to leave the crown by will, for that would be but the same thing under another form. Following up his purpose, notwithstanding, Gardiner brought out in the House of Lords a pedigree, tracing Philip's descent from John of Gaunt; and he introduced a bill to make offences against his person high treason. But at the second reading the important words were introduced, "during the queen's lifetime;"[314] the bill was read a third time, and ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... the folds of her dress, a small writing-case of satin wood, formed like a scroll. Touching a spring, she opened it, took out implements for writing, and some note-paper, which emitted a faint and very peculiar perfume, as she began to write. After tracing a few hasty lines, she folded the paper, placed it carefully in an envelope, and proceeded to seal it. Taking from her pocket a singular little taper box of gold, covered with antique chasing, she lighted one of the tapers, ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens

... the middle or Nevada branch of the Valley, occupied by the main Merced River, we come within a few miles to the Vernal and Nevada Falls, 400 and 600 feet high, pouring their white, rejoicing waters in the midst of the most novel and sublime rock scenery to be found in all the World. Tracing the river beyond the head of the Nevada Fall we are lead into the Little Yosemite, a valley like the great Yosemite in form, sculpture and vegetation. It is about three miles long, with walls 1500 to 2000 feet high, cascades coming over them, ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir

... scientific views as to chemistry, and a philologist with the object of making that pursuit bear upon his studies with reference to the races of man. He was convinced that by certain admixtures of ammonia and earths he could produce cereal results hitherto unknown to the farming world, and that by tracing out the roots of words he could trace also the wanderings of man since the expulsion of Adam from the garden. As to the latter question his mother was not inclined to contradict him. Seeing that he would sit at ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... reserve all day, and Mac, from his shady altitude, revelled in being just so situated with a great battle in progress, with almost the whole battlefield in view, and him with nothing more to do than sit there in comfort watching it. He surveyed it all through his glasses, tracing the present limits of the advance. The high hills seemed still to be Turkish, for different bodies of white-patched troops made a rough line some distance below the summit, running down laterally towards Suvla Bay. Distant ridges lined by the same white-patched men showed that all ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie

... therefore no longer a child. The scene is Sutton, and therefore it must have been during the holidays, for I am sure I was living at our tutor's at Chewton at the time. I had gone out for a country walk by myself, for I was fond of roaming about the fields, and especially of tracing to their sources the wooded gullies abounding in our Somersetshire country. On such solitary rambles I was always accompanied by a poet, in my pocket. On the occasion I am going to describe, Swinburne in his Poems and Ballads was my ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... of this book to trace the spiritual ascent of man further than to point out the wide gulf between the degrees of consciousness manifested in the lower animals and that of human consciousness; again tracing in the human, the ever-widening area of his cognition of the personal self, and its needs, to the awakening of the soul and its needs; which needs include the welfare of all living things as an ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad

... am tracing the wicked fugitives; I am on their track' (and the handsome, effeminate face looked as ferocious as any demon's). 'They will not escape me; but every minute is a minute of misery to me, till I meet my wife. Madame has sympathy, ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... why I don't open offices here, aren't you? Well, a person can't do two things at once, and I've been pretty busy tracing Virginia Singleton. And when I find her, you know very well I will return ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White

... are in matters of the heart! How quickly they take the scent of any path, virgin though it be, if that path hath been touched by the very feet of love, tracing its devious course ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles

... back to the sunlight, drew himself up, and flung back his sword. With a fierce cry they rushed together and their swords clashed with mighty strokes. Then they both reeled backward two strides to recover. Tracing and traversing again they leapt at each other as noble men who had often been well proved in combat, and neither would stint until they both lacked wind, and they stood a while panting and blowing, each grasping his weapon ready to ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton

... several times on the Orgreaves. He finally left their house about ten o'clock, with some difficulty tracing his way home from gas lamp to gas lamp through the fog. Mr Orgreave himself had escorted him with a lantern round the wilderness of the lawn to the gates. "We shall have a letter in the morning," Mr Orgreave had said. "Bound to!" Edwin had replied. ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... circumstances of her life; steering confidently between the shoals of scrupulous judgment and conscience on the one side, and the hidden rocks of presumption and despair on the other—these very dangers that had baffled and perplexed her so long—and tracing out through them all the clear deep safe channel of God's intention, who had allowed her to emerge at last from the tortuous and baffling intricacies of character and circumstance into the wide open sea of His own ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... hung over the quiet resting-place of the departed. Even the birds seemed imbued with the spirit of the place, for they were silent, either flying noiselessly over the graves, or jumping about in the tall grass. After tracing the various inscriptions that told the characters and conditions of the deceased, and viewing the mounds beneath which the dust of mortality slumbered, he arrived at a secluded spot near where an aged weeping willow bowed ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown

... great khan, and he descended in a direct line through ten generations, so it was said, from a deity. Great sovereigns in those countries and times were very fond of tracing back their descent to some divine origin, by way of establishing more fully in the minds of the people their divine right to the throne. Yezonkai's residence was at a great palace in the country, called by a name, the sound of which, as nearly as it can be represented ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott

... indicating as much; and thirdly, as evincing a serious desire to embrace philosophy for his guide in life, after a conflict with himself as to whether he should give up writing poetry, and a final resolution to indulge his natural taste "seldom and without licentiousness." We can hardly err in tracing this awakened earnestness and its direction upon the Epicurean system to his first acquaintance with the poem of Lucretius. The enthusiasm for philosophy expressed in these lines remained with Virgil all his life. Poet as he was, he would ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... consulted his telephone book; tracing his finger down the "H" column he came to "Ike Hummel, ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... how gray his hair is, and how age is tracing lines on his face. "Are you feeling sick, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various

... and arranged themselves before him. The process of tracing their sequence was all torture, but there was no possibility, no notion, of shirking any detail of the pain. The priest had spoken of his efforts to persuade Celia to go away for a few days, for rest and change of air and scene. He must have known only ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... eyes had wandered to the broad sheet of water below. "Crikey, there she goes!" he cried, and jerked his arm towards an unwieldy battle-ship nosing her way out of the Hamoaze, her low bows tracing a thin line of white. For half a minute they ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... sacrifice, and this trust was his righteousness." (p. 61.) Dr. Williams straightway shews us how we may tread in the steps of faithful Abraham. The perpetual response of our hearts, (he says,) to principles of Reason and Right of our own tracing, is a truer sign of faith than deference to a supposed external authority. (p. 61.) ... According to this writer, therefore, Genesis and Exodus are ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... from her chair toward his, and took his hand, touching it, finding its hard, bony places and the delicate white hollows of flesh between his coarsened yet shapely fingers; tracing a scarce-seen vein on the back; exploring a well-beloved yet ill-known country. Carl was unspeakably disconcerted. He was thinking that, to him, Gertie was set aside from the number of women who could appeal physically, quite as positively as though she ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... bright, and there was a ceaseless pleasure in watching the ripples of the sea as they rose into the cold silvery sunlight and then passed on into the shadow of the ship; or in tracing far away, the broad even track marked by edges of tiny bubbles, where the vessel's course had been. Gradually she became aware through her abstraction of a greater stir and buzz of conversation on the deck behind her; she turned, and seeing everybody looking in one direction, ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill

... clutching in he knows not what: insatiable, insane, a god with a muck-rake. Thus, at least, looking in the bosom of the miser, consideration detects the poet in the full tide of life, with more, indeed, of the poetic fire than usually goes to epics; and tracing that mean man about his cold hearth, and to and fro in his discomfortable house, spies within him a blazing bonfire of delight. And so with others, who do not live by bread alone, but by some cherished and perhaps fantastic pleasure; who are meat salesmen to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... him almost sick to think of it. While he, Tom, would be handing badges to the throng of proud and lucky young men just fresh from registering, while he sat upon the platform and listened to the music and the speeches in their honor, Roscoe Bent would be tracing his lonely way up that distant mountain with the insane notion of camping there. He would try to cheat the government and ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh

... became aware, from where he sat, of a most remarkable goblin shadow on the wall. Tracing it to its source, he discovered it to be caused by a sudden extraordinary rising and stiffening of all the risen and stiff ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... rode along, tracing it as far up as the range, which extended a considerable way to the southward, and would serve as a fence to their station. The country on the other side, further to the south, was more thickly wooded, and consequently ...
— The Young Berringtons - The Boy Explorers • W.H.G. Kingston

... repetition, having being reputed as fabulous by most writers to whom credit can be attached. There is, however, one account of the foundation of Paris which may be cited more for its comic ingenuity than for its veracity, beginning by tracing the Trojans to Samothes, the son of Japhet and grandson of Noah; then following in the same line, they endeavour to prove that at the destruction of Troy, Francus, the son of Hector, fled to Gaul, of which he became king and no doubt bestowed upon it the name ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve

... went into four. The room paled, the dark outside was shot through with damp and chill, and Wessel, cupping his brain in his hands, bent low over his table, tracing through the pattern of knights and fairies and the harrowing distresses of many girls. There were dragons chortling along the narrow street outside; when the sleepy armorer's boy began his work at half-past five the ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... reminds of Solon's warning as we look at the picture: "Count no one happy till he dies." In the gallery at Hatfield are portraits of King Henry VIII. and all six of his wives. In the library, which is rich in historical documents, is the pedigree of Queen Elizabeth, emblazoned in 1559, and tracing her ancestry in a direct line back to Adam! The state bedrooms have been occupied by King James, Cromwell, and Queen Victoria. In the gardens, not far from the house, is the site of the old episcopal palace of Bishops Hatfield, of which one side remains ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... and constructed according to the best authorities. Revised edition. Published in New York, in 1847, by J. Disturnell'; of which map a copy is added to this treaty, bearing the signatures and seals of the undersigned plenipotentiaries. And in order to preclude all difficulty in tracing upon the ground limit separating Upper from Lower California, it is agreed that the said limit shall consist of a straight line drawn from the middle of the Rio Gila, where it unites with the Colorado, to a point on the coast of the Pacific Ocean distant one marine league due south of the ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright

... of the "Century" expedition were nothing in respect of excavation, and the records of the tracing of the route of the Great Ithacan were written out in the Dolomites in the course of the summer. We found that excavation was a matter beyond achievement with the limited funds at my disposal, but Photiades was munificent in promises of support if I wished to return ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman

... without risk of discovery, but our inferiority in number held forth a prospect of escaping with impunity in case of detection. Another circumstance, to which we attributed this alteration in their behaviour, was the presence and encouragement of their chiefs; for, generally tracing the booty into the possession of some men of consequence, we had the strongest reason to suspect that these depredations were ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... For tracing the stages in the development of writing for children consult the books named in the General Bibliography (p. ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... a slow, fatiguing process. A number of the original vendors, Gordon knew, had died, their families were scattered; others had removed from the County; logical substitutes had to be evolved. The mere comparison of the various entries, the tracing of the tracts to the amounts involved, was scarcely ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... sat, in the complete contentment, between Alice and Winifred, with Fred Ferrars on the turf at their feet, living over again the bygone days, laughing over ancient jokes, resuscitating past scrapes, tracing the lot of old companions, or telling mischievous anecdotes of each other, for the very purpose of being contradicted. They were much too light-hearted to note the lapse of time, till Maurice came to take his wife home, thinking she had had fatigue enough. Mrs. Annesley ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Tracing the course of events afterwards, I conclude that I must have been insensible for about two hours. What roused me to consciousness once more was that sharp metallic click which had been the precursor of my terrible ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle

... schoolmaster had purposely abstained from writing his address on it, with the view of escaping all responsibility in the event of his usher's death. In any case, it was manifestly useless, under existing circumstances, to think of tracing the poor wretch's friends, if friends he had. To the inn he had been brought, and, as a matter of common humanity, at the inn he must remain for the present. The difficulty about expenses, if it came to the worst, might possibly be met by charitable contributions from the neighbors, or ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... that, owing to the demoralizing influence of Edward VII., they are in a state of religious, social and economic decadence, but their illusion as to the incomparable superiority of England prevents them from tracing the evil to its true source, and as some one must be to blame for it, the fault must of course lie with the rapidly climbing Germany.—PROF. A. SCHROeER, ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various

... In tracing the development of these schools from unpretentious beginnings to their present high standards of excellence, we see that more and more they have become unified in purpose and similar in curricula. In the early days too, the qualifications for admission, their dynamic government, ...
— The Condition and Tendencies of Technical Education in Germany • Arthur Henry Chamberlain

... is concerned, you don't exist. If any of us drove off with that truck, all they need to do is plot the truck's coordinates and follow the televector patterns of the man who's driving it. Capture is inevitable that way. But if you're aboard the truck, there's no possible way of tracing ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg

... conductor should know the works he conducts so thoroughly that he need not have the score before him. I have done considerable conducting the past few years. Last season I gave a series of historical recitals, tracing the growth of the piano concerto, from Mozart down to the present. I played nineteen works in all, finishing ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower

... of limited size, to find a treatise on "practical" or on "theoretical astronomy," nor a complete "descriptive astronomy," and still less a book on "speculative astronomy." Something of each of these is essential, however, for tracing the progress of thought and knowledge which it is the object of ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes

... Finding of the Cow's Tracks,' represents the cowherd tracing the cow with the sure hope of restoring her, having found her ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya

... colors he thundered in his disdain (Oh, how amused she was at his comical fury!) at these heads of imbeciles, frozen in solemn smiles. That the dear eyes of his Luce should have to apply themselves to reproducing and her hands to tracing the pictures of these mugs seemed to him a profanation. No, it was too revolting! Copies from the museums were more worth while. But one could not count on them any more. The last museums had shut their doors and no longer interested ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland

... Vancouver's boats northward the second week in June through the labyrinthine passageways of cypress-grown islets to Burrard Inlet. To Peter Puget was assigned the work of coasting the mainland side and tracing every inlet to its head waters. Johnstone went ahead in a small boat to reconnoitre the way out of the Pacific. On both sides the shores now rose in beetling precipice and steep mountains, down which foamed cataracts setting the echo of myriad bells tinkling through ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut

... It is in tracing the trend of upper air streams, to whose wayward courses and ever varying conditions we are now to be introduced, that much of our most valuable information has come, affecting the possibility of forecasting British wind and weather. It should need no insisting on ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon

... Glacier on the other side of the bay, seeking to attain the extreme end of the great fiord. We estimated the distance by the tide and our rate of rowing, tracing the shore-line and islands as we went along and getting the points of the compass from ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young

... think he had dropped it while walking. But if he felt that he had dropped it in the house, and he had the best of all reasons for not wishing anyone to know that he had visited Sir Horace that night, he would destroy the remaining glove and our chance of tracing it would be gone. The fact that he had left his stick behind was a minor matter that he could easily account for if he had been a friend of Sir Horace who had been in the habit of visiting Riversbrook. If anything cropped up subsequently about the stick ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson

... rapid glance at the various stages which the civilisation and industry of Man have gone through before arriving at their present condition. To make clear these phases we might either follow the state of civilisation in any given country by tracing back the course of centuries, or else at a given epoch find out in different parts of the earth all the stages of human evolution. The savage men of to-day are not further advanced in their evolution than our own ancestors who have now gone to fossil. However it ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay

... feet on this difficult earth before the machine has unmistakably gone wrong: the machine which was designed to do this work of living, which is capable of doing it thoroughly well, but which has not been put into order! What is the use of consulting the map of life and tracing the itinerary, and getting the machine out of the shed, and making a start, if half the nuts are loose, or the steering pillar is twisted, or there is no petrol in the tank? (Having asked this question, I will drop the mechanico-vehicular ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett

... not occur to her to think if she would be doing wrong in sending these verses to her lodger, and with renewed ardour and happiness she continued her search among her books. There was no question in her mind as to which she would read, and she anticipated hours of delight in tracing resemblances between herself and the lady who used to read Byron and Shelley to her aristocratic lover. She feared at first she had lost this novel, but when it was discovered it was put aside for immediate use. The next that came under her hand was the story of a country doctor. In this ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore

... illusions are simple," the colonel grunted, tracing the black thread with his eye. "As long as there is plenty of flimflam to ...
— Toy Shop • Henry Maxwell Dempsey

... work on the war of Catiline, Sallust reveals especially the corruption of what was called the Roman nobility, by tracing the criminal designs of the conspirators to their sources—avarice, and the love of pleasure. In the history of the Jugurthine war, he particularly exposes and condemns the system of bribery in which the leading men of ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)

... was upon something far different and far away; he thought the latter. He was right. Ellen at the moment had escaped from the company and the noisy sounds of the performer at her side; and while her eye was curiously tracing out the pattern of the carpet, her mind was resting itself in one of the verses she had been reading that same evening. Suddenly, and as it seemed, from no connection with anything in or out of her thoughts, there ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell

... some writers contend for its having taken place as early as the last year of the fourth century, and having been the work of the piety of Saint Victrice, then bishop of Rouen; others, and these the greater number, are content with tracing it from the reign of Clothair. Those who adopt the latter opinion are again divided, as to whether that prince himself was the actual founder, or only ratified by his royal sanction what was really the establishment ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman

... proceedings to the Governor, M. Talon at that time being in France. This duty he had to perform orally, having lost all his papers when shooting the rapids of the St. Lawrence, above Montreal. He afterward drew up a written report, with a tracing of his route, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... took part in the debate. A central spot was fixed on to accommodate the various chieftains. The causes of the accident were then explained; they wept and lamented the fallen chiefs, and finally retired satisfied to their several homes. Surely everyone who is interested in tracing our own form of government, from the present time up to its first rude outline, will perceive the similarity of causes and events, and will anticipate the glorious prospect of beholding a clever, brave, and, I may add, noble race of men, like the New Zealanders, rescued ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle

... system is, of course, of enormous aid in identification, and, as I have said, is a complete safeguard against the possibility of a wrongful conviction. The ordinary detective is most often engaged in tracing a criminal after a breach of the law has been committed. The Criminal Record Office has the more delicate duty of trying to ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot

... sun rose that morning, Mrs. Dalton and the hired man set out on horseback in search of the missing one. Tracing his course through the snow for four miles they at length caught sight of him standing up to his waist in a deep drift, beside his horse. His face was turned toward them. So lifelike and natural ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... every portion of the brain with care and minuteness by the psychometric method, even tracing the convolutions and their anfractuosities, and observing from point to point how beautifully and harmoniously the innumerable functions blend with each other; how the different portions of a convolution ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various

... helpless discontent,—hurling my lance 930 From place to place, and following at chance, At last, by hap, through some young trees it struck, And, plashing among bedded pebbles, stuck In the middle of a brook,—whose silver ramble Down twenty little falls, through reeds and bramble, Tracing along, it brought me to a cave, Whence it ran brightly forth, and white did lave The nether sides of mossy stones and rock,— 'Mong which it gurgled blythe adieus, to mock Its own sweet grief at parting. Overhead, 940 Hung a lush scene of drooping weeds, and spread Thick, as to curtain ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats

... week later, when Katherine and Miles went to the encampment with a sledgeload of provisions it was to find that the whole lot had vanished, leaving the dug-outs, in which they had existed so long, deserted. There was no chance of tracing them, for the very next day it began to snow again, and after two days of uninterrupted snowfall it began to rain, and everyone realized ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant

... is the most expressive of all languages," he observed when Von Bork had stopped from pure exhaustion. "Hullo! Hullo!" he added as he looked hard at the corner of a tracing before putting it in the box. "This should put another bird in the cage. I had no idea that the paymaster was such a rascal, though I have long had an eye upon him. Mister Von Bork, you have a great deal to ...
— His Last Bow - An Epilogue of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle



Words linked to "Tracing" :   find, drafting, tracing routine, tracing paper, drawing, draftsmanship, uncovering



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