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Pier   /pɪr/   Listen
Pier

noun
1.
A platform built out from the shore into the water and supported by piles; provides access to ships and boats.  Synonyms: dock, wharf, wharfage.
2.
(architecture) a vertical supporting structure (as a portion of wall between two doors or windows).
3.
A support for two adjacent bridge spans.



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"Pier" Quotes from Famous Books



... the great calm of the solemn cathedral? The benediction had been given, and the sparse congregation had now risen and was slowly departing, yet he rose not, but seemed to be hiding from view as he crouched behind the form in front of him, and edged his way slowly within the shadow of the heavy pier to ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease

... they rambled about the town until the time drew near for the sailing of the boat. Then they went to the station for the luggage, and having engaged a porter to take it to the boat, they followed him down to the pier till they came to the place where the boat was lying. After seeing the trunk put on board they went on board themselves. A short time afterwards Mr. and Mrs. ...
— Rollo in Holland • Jacob Abbott

... apartment-house. As nearly as the rate of interest on the landlord's investment will allow, the housing of the poor approaches in comfort that of the rich. Their children are still more numerous, and the playgrounds supplied them in every open space and on every pier are visited constantly by the better-to-do children, who exchange with them lessons of form and fashion for the scarcely less valuable instruction in practical life which the poorer little ones are able to give. The rents in the tenement ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells

... has frozen around the uprights the water will lift the ice up and the ice will sometimes pull the piles out of the bottom like a dentist pulls teeth. Nevertheless, piles are much better for a foundation for a camp or pier than any crib of rocks, and that is the reason I have shown the cribs in Figs. 75 and 77, made so as to rest upon the bottom supposedly below the level ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard

... killed by lightning at any one time in America was in an amusement park in Chicago. Eleven people had huddled into a zinc-lined hut under a pier, for protection from the rain. The lightning struck the pier and jumped to the hut. If the hut had touched the wet sand, none of them would have been hurt, but the hut was on posts a couple of inches above the beach. The lightning could not escape to the ground ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler

... with Lula to the North River pier, where her great steamer lies, and see what she intends to carry to Liverpool. Bales of cotton, barrels of flour, of beef, and of petroleum. All very good, so good-by to her. In a few weeks we will see ...
— The Stories Mother Nature Told Her Children • Jane Andrews

... bottle-counter, under the map of the world and the cards of navy officers. In the whole length of the single shoreside street, with its scattered board houses looking to the sea, its grateful shade of palms and green jungle of puraos, no moving figure could be seen. Only, at the end of the rickety pier, that once (in the prosperous days of the American rebellion) was used to groan under the cotton of John Hart, there might have been spied upon a pile of lumber the famous tattooed white man, the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... wood, overhung the edges of the bridge, and afforded their inhabitants an unsafe abode between the sky and the water. At times the river would rise in one of its periodical furies, and sweep away a pier or two with the superincumbent houses; at others the wooden supporters of the structure would catch fire by some untoward event, and the inhabitants had the choice of being fried or drowned, along with their penates and their supellectile property. Such a catastrophe happened in the reign of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... has two windows looking on Queen Anne Street. Between the two is a marble-topped console, with haunched gilt legs ending in sphinx claws. The huge pier-glass which surmounts it is mostly disabled from reflection by elaborate painting on its surface of palms, ferns, lilies, tulips, and sunflowers. The adjoining wall contains the fireplace, with two ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw

... worth recording were it not that it led to the walk and the waiting on Monday.—They found, when they reached the region of steamers, that she had not yet been signalled, but her people were expecting the signal every minute. So Alec and Kate walked out along the pier, to pass the time. This pier runs down the side of the river, and a long way into the sea. It had begun to grow dark, and Alec had to take great care of Kate amongst the tramways, coils of rope, and cables that crossed ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... Beach to see the 11th Division go off. Young Brodrick, who was with us, proved himself much all there on the crowded pier and foreshore; very observant; telling me who or what I had not noticed, etc. First the destroyers were filling up and then the lighters. The young Naval Officers in charge of the lighters were very keen to show me how they had fixed up their reserves of ammunition and water. ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton

... yet a nullity; a legislature for the highest of all purposes, and yet no legislature for the humblest purposes; competent to declare the throne vacant, to change the succession, to fix the landmarks of the constitution, and yet not competent to pass the most trivial Act for the repairing of a pier or the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... numerous, and so were the pier-heads prepared on both sides, for the convenience of embarking and landing. Carriages, horses, palankeens, camels and troops, all passed without the slightest difficulty. The elephants were preparing to cross, some in boats ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... mate and his men sailed away. What became of them we do not know; but the ship, loaded with white servants, sailed to Boston. It landed at the Long Wharf, a pier running far out into the water. The servants were obliged to run up and down this wharf. The people who came to buy watched them to see ...
— Stories of American Life and Adventure • Edward Eggleston

... bridge. All these bridges are alike and similar to the one described at Baramula, but this one is particularly pretty from the fact of large trees having grown from the lower part of every pier. These trees green and flourishing are high above the footway, between which and the water there is a distant vista of fine mountains. Fished here, but only hooked one, which I judged from its run to be large, and ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster

... and the diamond flash of little glass houses in the sun. Or, if details like these escaped her, she might have let her fancy play upon the gold tint of the sea at sunset, and thought how it lapped in coins of gold upon the shingle. Little pleasure boats shoved out into it; the black arm of the pier hoarded it up. The whole city was pink and gold; domed; mist- wreathed; resonant; strident. Banjoes strummed; the parade smelt of tar which stuck to the heels; goats suddenly cantered their carriages through crowds. It was observed how well the Corporation had laid out ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... then: a deep and solid stone foundation is laid in the earth, and a massive pier of masonry is built up on it. A heavy block of granite forms the summit of this pier, and on this block rests the equatorial telescope. Around this structure a circular tower is built, with two or more floors which come close up to the pier, but do not touch it at any point. It ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... of the opening of a new Recreation Pier, and the children were out in force to take possession of ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 49, October 14, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... the saloon while M. Biennais, court watchmaker, showed her Majesty a secret drawer in a portfolio he had made for her. Another time the Emperor was much displeased because the lady on duty was not seated by the side of the Empress while she took her music-lesson with M. Pier. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... time they reached the pier it was six o'clock; the royal yacht was returning; a fact announced by the ships in the harbour firing a salute. The King came ashore with his hat in his hand, and returned the salutations of the well-dressed crowd in his old indiscriminate fashion. While this cheering ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy

... is a somewhat difficult matter, because the success of the enterprise does not depend upon the animal's industry alone. It has to wait until a breeze carries the line to the pier-head in the bushes. Sometimes, a calm prevails; sometimes, the thread catches at an unsuitable point. This involves great expenditure of time, with no certainty of success. And so, when once the suspension-cable is in being, well and solidly placed, the Epeira does not change it, ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre

... marvellously well. All the scruples of an apostle of hygienic dress, all the uneasiness of an economist at the prospect of unpaid bills, disappeared before the pleasure of a young woman face to face with an extremely pretty reflection in a pier-glass. That glass, an oval in a light mahogany frame, of the Regency period, if not earlier, was one of Mildred's finds in the slums of ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods

... Farnese I know not; but crimes of as monstrous a dye occur in the authentic Guicciardini. The story is not yet forgotten, since in the last edition of Haym's Biblioteca Italiana, the best edition is marked as that which at p. 639 contains "la sceleratezza di Pier Lewis Farnese." I am of opinion that Varchi believed the story, by the solemnity of his proposition. Whatever be its truth, the historian's feeling was elevated ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... midst, and with marks of rough handling about the hull. Once a week comes a Cunard steamer, with its red funnel pipe whitened by the salt spray; and, firing off cannon to announce her arrival, she moors to a large iron buoy in the middle of the river, and a few hundred yards from the stone pier of our ferry. Immediately comes poring towards her a little mail-steamer, to take away her mail-bags and such of the passengers as choose to land; and for several hours afterwards the Cunard lies with the smoke and steam coming out of her, as if she were smoking her pipe ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... another. Most obviously they want hints of what to do with themselves. Behind them is a bank of flowers like those in Battersea Park, and another parallel parade, and beyond are bathing-machines. The pier completely cuts the horizon out of the background. There is a stout lady, in dark blue, bathing. The only glances directed seaward are furtive ones at her. Many seem to be doubting whether this is not what they came down for. Others ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... near the Putney Steamboat Pier is a big hotel, the Star and Garter, for long a landmark at Putney, and recently rebuilt in all the splendour of red brick and gilt. Beyond this formerly stood a number of old houses—Clyde House, Riverside House, Thanet Lodge, Laburnum House, ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... time to time out of the corner of her eye in a somewhat stealthy manner. To escape the ordeal of such an examination, and also from an impulse of cunning, which was by no means foreign to my nature, I let my head fall on the book, and the book on the pier-table, and in this posture I remained as if buried in sleep or thought. Then, little by little, their voices grew louder, until I could hear what they were saying ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... came to me and told me a pitiful tale about his "sick squaw" in one of the neighboring camps. I gave him fifty cents "for the squaw," but ascertained later that after leaving me he had gone straight to the bar-room at the end of the pier and filled himself up with whiskey, though he had specially and repeatedly assured me he was "damned good ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... Alabama under the name of the Conrad, of Philadelphia, I communicated the circumstances to the Governor of this Colony, who, concurring in opinion with me that she ought to be retained under Her Majesty's control and jurisdiction until reclaimed by her proper owners, for violation of Pier Majesty's orders for the maintenance of her neutrality, I caused the so-called Tuscaloosa to be taken possession of; informing Lieutenant Low, at the same time, of the ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes

... at Trudy. She had not loosened her clinching hold for an instant, and, before he had realized it, the last warning had been shouted, the plank had been withdrawn, and the Sandy Hook was moving off. And he stood on the pier. ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various

... surveyed himself in the small pier-glass. "Yes," he said, somewhat discontentedly, "I don't look enough like a burglar to ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs

... voluminous instructions, a revolver which she did not know how to handle and declared she would never use for any consideration, and enough money to pay for her accommodation at the Terminus Hotel, near the pier, and for two passages to London. It was agreed that she should secure the steamer booking, lest Kirkwood be ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... course. It's the destiny of every beautiful spot in Britain. There'll be a pier down yonder, and a switchback railway, and leagues of lodging-houses, ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... have shattered his strength. Within the narrow limits of this island were typified also the state and strength of a kingdom, and its religion as it had been, and was,—for neither was the druidical circle uncreated, nor the church of the present establishment; nor the stately pier, emblem of commerce and navigation; nor the fort to deal out thunder upon the approaching invader. The taste of a succeeding proprietor rectified the mistakes as far as was practicable, and has ridded the spot of its puerilities. The church, after having been docked of its steeple, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... weeks after Davis had left Salonika homeward bound, a soldier brought us a note from "Hamlin." He was on a Red Cross lighter down at the pier, and we at once went down to see him. He was lying on a stretcher among scores of men. His face was thin and pale, and in answer to our eager questions he told how he had fared ...
— The Deserter • Richard Harding Davis

... down to Hilo was as dull and monotonous as our upward journey had been. At last we reached the pier, where we found the usual little crowd waiting to see us off. The girls who had followed us when we first landed came forward shyly when they thought they were unobserved, and again encircled me with leis of gay ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... greatest development. Then we find the rectangular cut blocks of stone in parallel courses, and the heavy piers, and the cylindrical column, with its bell-shaped capital, and the bold and massive rectangular architraves extending from pier to pier and column to column, surmounted by a deep covered coping or cornice. But the imposing architecture of Egypt was chiefly owing to the vast proportions of the public buildings. It was not ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... taken on the steamer, and they did not arrive at Avonmouth until half-past one. They were landed in small boats, for there was no pier, and vessels of any considerable size could not cross the harbour bar. Miss Maitland counted up her forty pupils as they stood on the jetty—a precaution that seemed more of a formality than a necessity, as everyone had taken good care not ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil

... would return to the boat, lest Mr Manners should come down before them. The boat had begun to move about a good deal lately, and Ben, on looking round, discovered that a heavy sea was rolling into the harbour. Directly after this she struck with a loud noise against the stone pier. Ben sprang to his feet, and with the boat-hook did his best to fend off the boat, shouting at the same time to the crew to come to his assistance; but they were too much occupied with what was going forward on shore to listen to him. Still he continued to exert himself to ...
— Ben Hadden - or, Do Right Whatever Comes Of It • W.H.G. Kingston

... had gone out one bright Sunday afternoon flashed with the anticipation of his fondest hopes and as he stepped gaily on board the saucy-looking yacht that awaited him at the pier a boisterous shout went ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour

... time to tell you that we have made a discovery which will surprise you. Let me detail it to you circumstantially. Uncle Ogilvy and I were walking on the pier a few days ago, when we overheard a conversation between two sailors, who did not see that we were approaching. We would not have stopped to listen, but the words we heard arrested our attention, so—O what a pity! ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne

... you,—no, I mean it would have been unworthy of a boy we knew of." There was a long pier-glass in these luxurious rooms. She led me to it now. "Look, Bobbie. We have altered a little, haven't we? I at least, am unmistakable. 'Their eyes are different, somehow', you remember. You haven't changed ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al

... an attempt to address the people, but he was soon reduced to silence. So he once more joined Paula, and hand in hand they went on to the pier. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... astern of the coast-service gunboat, and a few hundred yards south of the pier at Lowestoft, awaiting the rise of the tide. At eleven o'clock we moved in, and passing through the dock into the river, anchored there for the night. I gave Madame the choice of passing the night on board and going ashore to the hotel, as it was too late to drive to Hopton. She ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman

... of that body, took a respectful leave of them, and adjourned to Bilton's where I had ordered dinner, and (as I was advised to live low) a bottle of Sneyd's claret. My hours in Dublin were numbered; at eight o'clock on the evening of my arrival I hastened to the Pidgeon House pier, to take my berth in the packet for Liverpool; and here, gentle reader, let me implore you if you have bowels of compassion, to commiserate the condition of a sorry mortal like myself. In the days of which I now speak, steam packets were ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever

... on each side of a gangway from a ship to the pier, to prevent sailors who have been indulging in she-oak (beer) ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... towed up to the landing, and the whole merry party embarked and returned to Joppa together, the band following on another boat and treating them to music all the way. Halloway stood near Gerald in the crowd, but he did not attempt to join her until the raft reached the pier and was made fast. Then he quietly went to her and offered his arm. De Forest stepped up at the same moment. "Miss Vernor, will you condescend to accept of my valuable ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield

... there! I got out of the train, facing what I refrain from calling a hurricane out of deference to local authority. It was all I could do to keep from being blown across the station-platform, and I was drenched with the spray and bewildered by the roaring of the waves that beat against the pier beyond. Inside the station, I questioned the agent. The launch of the van Tuivers had not been in that day; if it had been on the way, it must have sought shelter somewhere. My telegram to Mrs. van Tuiver ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair

... the road bed, till the slow Back-water crept across the rail. And where the ghostly trestle spanned A stretch of marshy bottom-land, The stealthy under current gnawed At sunken pile, and massive pier, And the stout bridge hung airily where She sullen dyke lay ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various

... the level of the ground, which should have the arches turned upon them and should uphold the wooden bridges for sustaining the weight; others said that it was best to make the cupola of sponge-stone, to the end that the weight might be less; and many were agreed that a pier should be built in the centre, and that the cupola should be raised in the shape of a pavilion, like that of S. Giovanni in Florence. Nor were there wanting men who said that it would have been a good thing to fill ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari

... Then the Pier Theatre put forward its claim with a West End comedy. The Royal Marine Band announced that it would play (weather permitting) in the Pergola on the Leas every afternoon, 4.20-6. Other signs of new life were the Skeaton Roller-Skating Rink, The Piccadilly ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... it was pulled sharply. The screw was rather heavy, weighing nearly a quarter of a pound, and the wings were of tin, very broad and thick. This machine, however, was rather too eccentric for parlour use, for its flight was so violent that it was continually breaking the pier glass, if there was one in the room; and, failing this, it next attacked the windows. The ascending force of this machine is so great that I have seen one of them fly over Antwerp Cathedral, which is one of the highest edifices in the world. The air from ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion

... meal was over they got ready to go. They had to go a mile and a half through the woods to reach the pier. Ada got up first: Christophe followed her. They waited on the steps until the others were ready: without speaking, side by side, in the thick mist that was hardly at all lit up by the single lamp hanging by the inn door.—Myrrha was dawdling by ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... family reasons, to spend his summers, and much of his other time, on Long Island, he had been presented with a thirty-foot launch, a shore lot at East Hampton, and a "shack" and pier. Tom Halstead and Joe Dawson, fast friends and both from the same little Kennebec River village, preferring always the broad ocean, had been made the owners of the "Soudan," a fine, sea-going, fifty-five foot motor cruising yacht ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock

... remember, Old Man, I remember — The tracks that we followed are clear — The jovial last nights of December, The solemn first days of the year, Long tramps through the clearings and timber, Short partings on platform and pier. ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson

... in the morning, when returning to the boat along the solitary entrance pier, some one had tried to assassinate him. Hearing footsteps, he fancied that he had seen forms hiding behind a mountain of merchandise. Then there had sounded three reports, three revolver shots. A ball had whistled by one ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... grant now that you could make pans shine like pier-glasses, that you could cook bacon to a turn—although I would have laid an hundred guineas against it some years ago. What then? Are you to be contented with four log walls? With the intellectual companionship ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... of twenty francs, the vehicle went down Broadway to Union Square, took Fourth Ave. to its junction with Bowery St., turned into Katrin St. and halted at Pier 34. There the Katrin ferry transferred men, horses, and carriage to Brooklyn, that great New York annex located on the left bank of the East River, and in a few minutes we arrived at the wharf next to which ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... was 10, 8 and 9 fathoms.* (* The ship passed between the Duke Islands and the maze of reefs and islands lying North-West of Thirsty Sound.) At Noon the North-West point of Thirsty Sound, which I have named Pier head, bore South 36 degrees East, distant 5 Leagues; the East point of the other inlet, which Communicates with the former, as I have before mentioned, bore South by West, distance 2 1/2 Leagues, the Group of Islands ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook

... into the Library. The southern and western sides of the Court were built between 1669 and 1674, some part of the cost being provided from College funds, the rest by donations from members of the College. On the last or southern pier of the arcade, on the west side of the Court, there are the two inscriptions: "Flood, Oct. 27, 1762," "Flood, Feb. 10, 1795," recording what must have been highly inconvenient ...
— St. John's College, Cambridge • Robert Forsyth Scott

... to shout: "Saint-Cloud! Saint-Cloud!" and the little boat glided up alongside the floating pier. Speed rose; I followed him across the gang-plank; and, side by side, we ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

... that stretches out into the lake where the boats are moored; it is the harbor of Aix, and is situated at about half a league from the town. It was midnight, and there were no longer any carriages or donkeys on the pier to convey strangers to the town. The distance was too great for a delicate suffering woman to walk, and after knocking fruitlessly at the doors of one or two cottages in the vicinity of the lake, the boatmen proposed carrying the lady to Aix. They cheerfully ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine

... dome that cover the Hooker telescope 9. Building and revolving dome, 100 feet in diameter, covering the 100-inch Hooker telescope 10. One-hundred-inch mirror, just silvered, rising out of the silvering-room in pier before attachment to lower end of telescope tube. (Seen above) 11. The driving-clock and worm-gear that cause the 100-inch Hooker telescope to follow the stars 12. Large irregular nebula and star cluster in Sagittarius (Duncan) 13. Faint spiral nebula in ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale

... wanderings, because it is the true Italian custom, and Baccio was in that case born in his uncle's house; for it is not till 1480 that we find Paolo retired from trade and set up in a house of his own in Florence at the gate of S. Pier ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)

... this year in Europe, was of a comparatively trifling character. The port and town of Granville were attacked by Sir James Saumarez, on which occasion the pier was demolished, and a number of vessels destroyed; the town and fort of Dieppe were bombarded by Captain Owen; and the Dutch ports, from the Zandvoort, in the vicinity of Haarlem, to Scheveningen, were also severally bombarded, and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... kissed him good-bye very tearfully, and generously forgave Gerald; and comforted herself before she retired by putting on one of her mother's gowns and pinning up her hair and parading before a pier-glass until her nurse announced that her ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... toilsome journey, and moved off from the village pier. He could see nothing, for the brass door was over his head, and all that gleamed through it was the clear gray sky. He had been tilted on to his back, and if he had not been a little mountaineer, used to hanging head downwards over crevasses, and, moreover, seasoned ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee

... in fun, but really, do you know, it has an odd sort of aggressive look to me! We imagine a certain humility in Colonies, but your people are more English than Englishmen. That is your carriage, there on the pier? How kind in you to come for us. And that is your coachman? Now, even he has a look that, on the whole, he is as good ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... a couple of the steamer's men lifting Lawrence carefully along the gangway and settling him in a comfortable part of the deck, which he preferred to going below; and ten minutes later the machinery made the boat quiver, the pier seemed to be running away, and the professor said quietly: ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn

... where the water was slowly flowing away in a river, there came, against stream and wave and wind, a fishing-boat. Its great red sail was spread, and its pennant shone silvery blue in the sun. It came alongside a pier of mossy stones, and cast anchor. From it leapt twelve strong young fishermen, all with bright faces. They took up the little creatures with the glowing lights, and carried them aboard; then back again to other groups, until all were gathered in. ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various

... villages in England, just doing nothing, and enjoying the simple life around me. You would like this village, with its one steep, narrow, picturesque street, the great sea far down below, the little stone pier jutting out and helping to form a small harbour. Then on either side of the village are woods reaching down to the cliffs—beautiful woods, where oaks, and in places heather, are glad to grow. St. Paul says in the lesson to-day that ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson

... deep shadow of the pier that supported the north-west corner of the tower, weighed down with sorrow for the abbot and for the fall of the abbey, and uncertain whether his brother's condemnation would not involve his own ruin. It was December 6, Saint Nicholas' ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner

... throughout Mr. Kipling's work the heavens and the earth are mingled in a most inextricable and astonishing fashion. It is said that not long ago, during the launch of a Chinese battleship at one of our British yards, they were burning papers to the gods in a small joss-house upon the pier, while the great vessel, fitted with all the most modern machinery, was leaving the stocks. There is something about the tale that reminds us of Mr. Kipling. Now he is the prophet of Jehovah, now the Corybantic pagan priest, now the interpreter ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman

... place I am met by the theological world. Have I the right to inquire? They say, "Certainly; it is your duty to inquire." Each church has a recipe for the salvation of this world, but not while you are in this world—afterward. They treat time as a kind of pier—a kind of wharf running out into the great ocean of eternity; and they treat us all as though we were waiting there, sitting on our ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll

... did not know; yet when the balsa rounded the point, there was the bay, and there the stone pier or wharf of ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... the walls were hung with a gray paper strewn with roses and green leaves; at the windows, which looked to the court, were calico curtains edged with a band of some pink material; between the windows and beneath a tall mirror was a pier-table topped with marble, on which stood a Sevres vase in which she put her nosegays; opposite the chimney was a little bureau-desk of charming marquetry. The bed, of chintz, with chintz curtains lined with pink, was one of those duchess beds so common in the eighteenth ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac

... again and finish it. But that is a dream; a creature of the heart, not of the mind—a feeling, a longing, not a mental product; the same that lured Aaron Burr, old, gray, forlorn, forsaken, to the pier day after day, week after week, there to stand in the gloom and the chill of the dawn, gazing seaward through veiling mists and sleet and snow for the ship which he knew was gone down, the ship that ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... thought here is this: This purifying of ourselves is the link or bridge between the present and the future.—'Now are we the sons of God,' says John in the context. That is the pier upon the one side of the gulf. 'It doth not yet appear what we shall be, but when He is made manifest we shall be like Him.' That is the pier on the other. How are the two to be connected? There is only one way by which the present sonship will ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... pier and lingered for a moment to watch the launch speeding back to the yacht. Then he walked slowly down the length of the stage and at the entrance found his rickshaw waiting. The two men who were squatting ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull

... abreast of the end of the pier and saw the white-capped waves rolling in upon us, I put the horizontal rudder hard down and she slid under water. Through my glass portholes I saw its light green change to a dark blue, while the manometer in front ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle

... anxious as the ship neared Valparaiso, because there they would leave the liner from New York, and again ship in the boat they had built. They keenly scanned the pier as the vessel was being ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay

... a hot and tedious journey, she reached Pen-zephyr. She here obtained some refreshment, and then went towards the pier, where she learnt to her surprise that the little steamboat plying between the town and the islands had left at eleven o'clock; the usual hour of departure in the afternoon having been forestalled in consequence of the fogs which had for ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.

... wooded bank, or gazing into the basin of vapors within the cul-de-sac of Fairfield,—the same view which he looked on from his study, as he sat on his sofa, surrounded by books. The neighbors show the little pier at Waterhead whence he watched the morning or the evening light on the lake, the place where he bathed, and the tracks in the mountains which led to his favorite ridges. Everybody has read his "Life and Correspondence," and therefore knows ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various

... a much easier manner than had been possible for Sylvia. She dropped on the further side, just as Sylvia had done, and traced Sylvia's steps to near the landing-place. Then she stopped short. Men were loading boxes on a schooner at the end of the pier, and she could see a tall officer in uniform standing on the ...
— Yankee Girl at Fort Sumter • Alice Turner Curtis

... plainness; calls many things by their mere dictionary names. To him the Upholsterer is no Pontiff, neither is any Drawing-room a Temple, were it never so begilt and overhung: 'a whole immensity of Brussels carpets, and pier-glasses, and or-molu,' as he himself expresses it, 'cannot hide from me that such Drawing-room is simply a section of Infinite Space, where so many God-created Souls do for the time meet together.' To Teufelsdroeckh the highest Duchess is respectable, is venerable; ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... Castle Dare again, and he walked on toward the shore. By-and-by he reached a small stone pier that ran out among some rocks, and by the side of it lay a small sailing launch, with four men in her, and Donald the piper boy perched up at the bow. There was a lamp swinging at her mast, but she had no sail up, for ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black

... rising sun are already reflected upon the glowing waters of the Neva. Barges and row-boats are hurrying toward the city. Carriages are rolling along the shady avenues of the islands. Crowds are gathered at every pier and landing-place awaiting some conveyance homeward. Ladies are waving their handkerchiefs to the little steamer to stop, and gentlemen are flourishing their hats. The captain blows the whistle, and the engineer stops the boat with such a sudden reversion ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... reduced to such a condition; they will inquire, and you can judge of the consequences, if you are fool enough to noise abroad the past. Conceal yourself in some distant place; cause yourself to be forgotten; become Madame Pier re or Madame Jacques, and repent—if you can.' 'And do you think, sir,' said she to me, 'that I shall not claim the advantages secured to me by my marriage contract?' 'Certainly, madame, nothing can be more just; it would be unworthy of M. d'Orbigny not to execute his promises, and ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... the boys had landed the captain at the little pier he had built on his island, and to which his rowboat was attached, and were ready to start ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson

... may be allowed to employ themselves in those manly avocations for which their taste and nature are fitted." In Caulfield's "Portraits of Remarkable Persons," we find a portrait of Anne Mills, styled the female sailor, who is represented as standing on what appears to be the end of a pier and holding in one hand a human head, while the other bears a sword, the instrument doubtless with which the decapitation was effected. In the year 1740, she was serving on board the Maidstone, a frigate, and in an action ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer

... was once more as beautiful as ever I felt as if I must die if I did not hold her in my arms again, and I bought a magnificent pier-glass and a splendid breakfast service in Dresden china, and sent them to her with an amorous epistle which must have made her think me either the most extravagant or the most cowardly of men. She wrote in answer that she would expect me to sup with her in her room, that she might give ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... MOLE. A long pier of massy masonry, covering the entrance of a harbour. Also applied to the harbours formed by them, as those ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... into the drawing-room, and shut the door behind him, he was aware of a respite from alarms. The room was quite dismantled, uncarpeted besides, and strewn with packing cases and incongruous furniture; several great pier-glasses, in which he beheld himself at various angles, like an actor on a stage; many pictures, framed and unframed, standing, with their faces to the wall; a fine Sheraton sideboard, a cabinet of marquetry, and a great old bed, with tapestry hangings. The windows ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... the pier, and foot it briskly along the shore till they have left most of the promenaders behind. On and on they go till they get to the low rocks, and the smooth yellow sands strewn with mussel and cockle shells; and then they sit down to rest, and ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... to this mode of salutation, suddenly plunged, and threw me. My head fell against the pier of the gate. The last sound I heard was the report of a pistol; but I can give no account of what happened afterwards. I was stunned by my fall, and senseless. When I opened my eyes, I found myself stretched ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... would have met with death. Here and there smoke ascended from various fires, on which sausages and other eatables were cooking; but the great attraction was the ox roasting whole, close to the centre pier of the bridge. Although the ice appeared to have fallen at the spot where so many hundreds were assembled, yet as it was now four or five feet thick, there was no danger. Here and there, indeed, were what were called rotten places, where the ice ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... expecting a lay over in an embarkation camp before embarking, therefore the surprise was the greater when the train that left Camp Meade at midnight on the evening of July 13th, deposited its cargo of soldiers on the pier at Port Richmond within a short distance of the ship that was waiting for its cargo of human freight before pulling anchor for the first ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman

... and the height of the whole, inclusive of the cells, is 22 feet 3-1/2 inches at the ends, and 25 feet 6 inches at the centre. The total length of the tube is 412 feet. One end of the tube is fixed to the masonry of the pier; but the other is so arranged as to allow for the expansion of the metal by changes of the temperature of the atmosphere, and it therefore, rests upon eleven rollers of iron, running upon a bed-plate; ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... thought of my friend Dr. Kane. The mercury had fallen to 16 deg., a foot of snow covered the house-roofs, the low, undulating hills all wore the same monotonous no-color, and the yellow-haired people on the pier were buttoned up close, mittened and fur-capped. The captain telegraphed to Calmar, our next port, and received an answer that the sound was full of ice and the harbor frozen up. A custom-house officer, who took supper ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor

... provoked his father's disapproval. In the brilliant group of men of letters who enjoyed his patronage were such writers as Justolo, Sperulo, and that unfortunate poet Serafino Cimino da Aquila, known to fame and posterity as the great Aquilano. And it would be, no doubt, during these months that Pier di Lorenzo painted that portrait of Cesare which Vasari afterwards saw in Florence, but which, unfortunately, is not now known to exist. Bramante, too, was of his Court at this time, as was Michelangelo Buonarroti, whose superb group ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... was fifteen minutes until the schedule time for the "Puritan" of the "Fall River Line" to leave her New York pier. The evening was warm, and the usual crowd filled the decks. Many had come on board to see their friends off for Newport, Bar Harbor and "the Pier." Passengers and their friends sat in groups and chatted, talked about the ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees

... wing our swift scene flies, In motion of no less celerity Than that of thought. Suppose that you have seen The well-appointed king[1] at Hampton pier Embark his royalty;[2] and his brave fleet With silken streamers the young Phoebus fanning: Play with your fancies; and in them behold Upon the hempen tackle ship-boys climbing; Hear the shrill whistle, which doth order give To sounds confus'd; ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare

... the traffic for the Green Cove station came from scattered settlements along the coast. It was a region where people liked to live alone, and they were willing to be some distance from the railroad to secure the isolation that appealed to them. A little pier poked its nose out into the waters of the cove, and beside this pier was a gasoline launch, battered and worn, but amply able, as was soon proved, to carry all the girls and their belongings at a ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the March - Bessie King's Test of Friendship • Jane L. Stewart

... it was felt that a conclusion could be drawn. The Scriptural genealogies connected Asshur with Aran, Pier, and Joktan, the allowed progenitors of the Armaeians or Syrians, the Israelites or Hebrews, and the northern or Joktanian Arabs. The languages, physical type, and moral characteristics of these races were well known: they all belonged evidently to a single family the family known to ethnologists ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson

... the little roads, as boat after boat came ashore from the fleet, tears, hysteric screams and deep-voiced thanks to the Almighty arose from the crowd of men and women massed at the extremity of Newlyn pier beneath the lighthouse. Cheers and many a shake of hand greeted every party as, weary-eyed and worn, it landed and climbed the slippery steps. From such moments even those still in the shadow of terrible fear plucked ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts

... met Monsieur Dupuis, the insurance agent, and then Monsieur Vasse, the Judge of the Tribunal of Commerce, and they took a long walk, going to the pier first of all, where they sat down in a row on the granite parapet, and watched the rising tide, and when the promenaders had sat there for ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... pointed, and below it they could make out the hull of the steamer, which looked tiny at such a distance. And to the southward other wreaths of smoke, numbers of them, could be seen, all converging toward the Havre pier, now scarcely visible as a white streak with the light-house, upright, like a horn, at the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... biographer, "with a dozen candles, some on the floor, some on the table, and some on the chimney-piece, and near the pier-glass, he would act scene after scene: considering the emphasis, the modulation of the verse, and the fluctuations of the character with the greatest care." And this, remember, has relation to one who was presumably ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent

... the number of coal classifications used whenever possible, by the Norfolk and Western Railroad to upgrade its computer capability to quickly inventory its coal cars in its yards, and by the Chessie Railroad which is reactivating Pier 15 in Newport News and has established a berth near its Curtis Bay Pier in Baltimore to decrease delays in vessel berthing, public activities ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... York City for all railroads reaching the west side of the Hudson River, and also for the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad, as well as adequate station facilities in that city. This bridge would have had one clear span of 3,100 ft. between pier heads, landing on the New York side at the foot of West 23d Street, and thence the line would have passed diagonally to the terminus at Sixth Avenue and 25th Street. The location of the terminus was subsequently changed ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • Charles M. Jacobs

... likewise; but on the evening of February 22, he was called to the telephone by the Collector of the Port. "I just wanted to tell you," said the latter, "that the yacht Energon has arrived and gone to anchor in the stream off Pier Seven." ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London

... within his trembled. She said nothing more until they reached the little portico. She paused there, leaning against one of the crumbling columns, looking out into the night. From the distance beyond the great pier that stretched into the lake came the red glare ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... or his mills? Even the good Whig ferryman, Waldron, might be at a loss to make out his bearings, for the green banks of the East River have vanished, and its points become confused. The extent of its contraction he could learn from the builders of the bridge, who have set the New York pier eight hundred feet out from the high-water mark of 1776, and the Brooklyn pier two hundred or more, narrowing the stream at that point to a strait of but ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston

... anything they liked. There were things to do in New York. There were places where he would be welcome even with one foot gone and no cross of war. Thus he mused as the boat drew nearer the shore and the great city loomed close at hand. Then, suddenly, just as the boat was touching the pier and a long murmur of joy went up from the wanderers on board, his eyes dropped idly to the dock and there in her trim little overseas uniform, with the sunlight glancing from the silver letters on the scarlet shield of her trench cap and the smile radiating from ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill

... compelled him to take what he could get. This time it was a leading part; but a leading part in a crude melodrama in a fit-up company. They had played in halls and concert rooms, on pier pavilions, in wretched little towns. It was glorious July Weather and business was bad—so bad that the manager abruptly closed the treasury and disappeared, leaving the company stranded a hundred and fifty miles from London, with a ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... meaning it. The death of Albert Speranza, poet and warrior, had made a newspaper sensation. His resurrection and return furnished material for another. Captain Zelotes was not the only person to meet the transport at the pier; a delegation of reporters was there also. Photographs of Sergeant Speranza appeared once more in print. This time, however, they were snapshots showing him in uniform, likenesses of a still handsome, but less boyish young man, thinner, a scar ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... mind to hate them all because they were none of them a son. More or less the three were like her, lofty brows and shining hair and skin like morning light, the lave of them,—but as for me, I was my father's child. There's a portrait of him now, hangs on the chimney-pier: a slight man, and not tall,—the dark hair waves away on either side the low, clear brow,—the eyes deep-set, and large and dark and starry,—a carmine just flushing beneath the olive of the cheek,—the fine firm mouth just breaking into ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... it the life which is borrowed by all personal appendages, so long as the owner's hand or eye is on them! If it announce the coming of one loved and longed for, how we delight to look at it, to sit down on it, to caress it in our fancies, as a lone exile walking out on a windy pier yearns towards the merchantman lying alongside, with the colors of his own native land at her peak, and the name of the port he sailed from long ago upon her stern! But if it tell the near approach of the undesired, inevitable guest, what sound short of the muffled noises made by the ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... the rock, for it was too small; and they could hardly imagine it to be part of the pier, or a boat ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed

... ivied walls, behind these old green shutters, some further business smoulders, waiting for its hour. The old Hawes Inn at the Queen's Ferry makes a similar call upon my fancy. There it stands, apart from the town, beside the pier, in a climate of its own, half inland, half marine—in front, the ferry bubbling with the tide and the guardship swinging to her anchor; behind, the old garden with the trees. Americans seek it already for the sake of Lovel and ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton

... letter three hours before the Abraham Lincoln left its Brooklyn pier;* the letter ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... wind being south, or directly aft, the lugger's motion was soon light and rapid. As the vessel drew nearer to the entrance, her people made a run with the line and gave her a movement of some three or four knots to the hour, actually threatening to dash her bows against the pier-head. But Raoul Yvard contemplated no such blunder. At the proper moment the line was cut, the helm was put a-port, the lugger's head sheered to starboard, and just as Vito Viti, who witnessed all without comprehending more than half that passed, was shouting his vivas and animating all near ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... driving, energetic, tactful fellow, who would somehow get what we wanted. Chaplain Brown developed great capacity in this line, and so did one of the troopers named Knoblauch, he who had dived after the rifles that had sunk off the pier at Daiquiri. The supplies of food we got in this way had a very beneficial effect, not only upon the men's health, but upon their spirits. To the Red Cross and similar charitable organizations we owe a great deal. We also owed much to Colonel Weston of the Commissary ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt

... truth, I felt a bit ashamed, too, at times. I wouldn't be, now. When I'd get her off on to the wharf I'd be overcome with my feelings, and have to retire to the privacy of the bar to hide my emotions till the boat was going. And she'd stand on the end of the pier and wave her handkerchief and mop her old eyes with it until she was ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson

... recommenced in his ears; there was the sense of strangulation; and then he was steadily swimming on once more, past moored barge with its lights, past steamboat pontoon; and then with a rush he was driven against a stone pier; his hands grasped at the slimy stones without avail, he was turned in an eddy around and around, sucked under, and rose again, to swim on and on, till at last, in the darkness, his hands touched the muddy pebbles of the river shore, his knees struck heavily, and he crawled through a pool, ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn

... said Bunny as he saw the water-front, with many boats tied up along the docks, just as they were at his father's pier ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Aunt Lu's City Home • Laura Lee Hope

... voice of the trumpets so clear As they enter the harbor and make for the pier; See what bright gilded beaks, what finely wrought bows, And what thousands of shields hang out on the prows. Oh! such a staunch fleet never sailed on the sea As this armament anchored ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene

... sail-boat of a superannuated skipper, because to sit talking in the stern and stoop for the vagaries of the boom in tacking was such good exercise. She would join him in fishing from the rotting pier, but with no certainty which was a cunner and which was a sculpin, when she caught it, and with an equal horror of both the nasty, wriggling things. When they went a walk together, her notion of a healthful tramp was to find a nice place among the sweet-fern or the pine-needles, ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells

... one of the lower paths, deliberately avoiding the upper lookouts. They came presently to a grass-grown pier. She stood at the end, her firm, capable fingers clenching the stone wall, ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim



Words linked to "Pier" :   quay, architecture, pier arch, span, bridge, bollard, levee, platform, support, Pier Luigi Nervi, wharf, bitt, shipside, wall



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