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Tracing   /trˈeɪsɪŋ/   Listen
Tracing

noun
1.
The act of drawing a plan or diagram or outline.
2.
A drawing created by superimposing a semitransparent sheet of paper on the original image and copying on it the lines of the original image.  Synonym: trace.
3.
The discovery and description of the course of development of something.



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"Tracing" Quotes from Famous Books



... superficial observation of man, but many of them remain inexhaustible funds of successive discovery, perhaps as long as the continued existence of man upon earth. What an unknown world of mind, for example, is yet teeming in the womb of time, to be revealed in tracing the causes of the sympathy between the magnet and the pole—that unseen, immaterial spirit, which walks with us through the most entangled forests, over the most interminable wilderness, and across every ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy

... necessary, and more particularly so during the progress of a revolution, and until right ideas confirm themselves by habit, that we frequently refresh our patriotism by reference to first principles. It is by tracing things to their origin that we learn to understand them: and it is by keeping that line and that origin always in view that ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... prows and gaudy paint common among Pacific tribes, escorted 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 ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut

... impossibility of tracing the history of the Hebrew language must be added its particular nature and composition: these give rise to so many ambiguities that it is impossible to find a method which would enable us to gain a certain knowledge of all the statements in Scripture, [Endnote 7]. (94) In addition to ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza

... the north side of the lake opposite our camp we found an old blaze and a trail leading from it along a ridge and through marshes to a small lake. This was the only trail that we could find anywhere, so we decided to follow it, though it did not bear all the earmarks of the portage trail we had been tracing—it was decidedly more ancient. We started our work with a will. It was a hard portage and we sometimes sank knee deep into the marsh and got mired frequently, but finally ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace

... inquiries as to the progress of affairs, and listened anxiously to the many different prognostics as to the result. Miss Agnes remarked indeed, one day, when Mr. Ellsworth thought he had succeeded in obtaining an all-important clue, in tracing the previous career of Harry's opponent, that his sister seemed much elated—she sent an extremely amiable message to Hazlehurst in her brother's letter. It afterwards appeared, however, on farther inquiry, that this very point turned out entirely in favour of the sailor, actually proving ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... yourself into the hands of a greater power, that of Nature, with the simplicity of a child, and the devotion of an enthusiast—'study with joy her manner, and with rapture taste her style.' The mind is calm, and full at the same time. The hand and eye are equally employed. In tracing the commonest object, a plant or the stump of a tree, you learn something every moment. You perceive unexpected differences, and discover likenesses where you looked for no such thing. You try to set down what you see—find out your error, and correct it. You need not ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... ever visited its shores. It was so far unknown, that it was not even decided whether it formed a part of the southern continent, as Tasman supposed, when he named it Staten Island. To Cook belongs the credit of determining its position and of tracing the coasts of these two large islands, situated between 34 degrees and 48 degrees S. Lat. 180 degrees and 194 ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... Tracing the popular estimates of Walt Whitman through the next five years, expressions of unmeasured disapproval similar to those quoted may be found in periodicals and in the daily press, with here and there grudging ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler

... tracing the relationships of algae is largely due to the inadequacy of our knowledge of the conditions under which they pass through the crucial stages of their life-cycle. Of the thousands of species which have been distinguished, relatively few have been traced from spore to spore, as the flowering plants ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... the 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 Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson

... In tracing the fortunes of men, it is not a little curious to observe, how often the course of a whole life has depended on one single step. Had Lord Byron now persisted in his original purpose of giving this poem to the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... the slightest chance of tracing Berwin's past," said he to the barrister. "We are as ignorant about him as we are of the ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume

... question 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 ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... In each of these cases, if actual movements are not seen, a certain haze which seems to surround the object may be observed. The same can be seen when a tuning-fork is set into action by a bow, a blow, etc. In the case of the fork a graphic tracing (Fig. 36) can be readily taken on smoked paper, thus demonstrating to the eye that vibrations exist, that they occur with perfect regularity and with a frequency that can ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills

... the ancients. No one can expect, in a history of astronomy 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 this History ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes

... depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past tracing out! 34 For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor? 35 or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? 36 For of him and through him, and unto him, are all things. To him be ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther

... to rely only on the experiments in which we can place the most confidence, and, above all, to show how the ideas prevailing at the present day have been formed, by tracing their evolution, and rapidly examining the successive transformations which have brought them to ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare

... continually accumulating obligations; ever manifesting itself in acts of diligent obedience, or of patient suffering. Such was the religion of the holy martyrs of the sixteenth century, the illustrious ornaments of the English church. They realized the theory which we have now been faintly tracing. Look to their writings, and you will find that their thoughts and affections had been much exercised in habitual views of the blessed Jesus. Thus they used the required means. What were the effects? Persecution and ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce

... lost in tracing him to his new residence, and when they got there he was out. The executioner was at the Opera. He had gone to see ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo

... extremes of the world."—G.F.— This gentleman guards against any more particular deductions from such resemblance as he has now noticed, by adverting to the havoc made in history by the modern itch for tracing pedigrees, alluding especially to the affinity imagined betwixt the Egyptians and Chinese. On such subjects, it is certain, human ingenuity has been fruitful of extravagancies, and there is much less risk of absurdity ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr

... logs by hand, skimming the list of URLs for those that are likely to correspond to Web pages containing obscenity or child pornography, as is the practice of Tacoma's David Biek, who testified as a government witness. Under either method, public libraries can assure patrons of their privacy by tracing a given URL to a particular patron only after determining that the URL corresponds to a Web site whose content is illegal. We need not decide whether these less restrictive alternatives would themselves ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

... New England: he did not displease the radical pro-slavery sentiment of the South. There is a type of mind in the East that delights in refined fallacies, in the reconciling of apparent contradictions, in the tracing of distinction and resemblances where less subtle intellects fail to perceive their possibility. There is a certain Orientalism in the mind of Mr. Lamar, strangely admixed with typical Americanism. He is full of reflection, full of imagination; seemingly careless, yet closely observant; ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... proceeded up the river till near noon, when we were fourteen miles within its entrance; and then, finding the face of the country to continue nearly the same, without any alteration in the course of the stream, which we had no hope of tracing to its source, we landed on the west side, to take a view of the lofty trees which every where adorned its banks. They were of a kind that we had seen before, though only at a distance, both in Poverty Bay and Hawke's Bay. Before we had walked an hundred ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... in the wood; the wind had risen, and blew against her skirts, so that her feet moved gently as though yet tracing their phantom paces upon the airy floors. Her head, like a snapped lily, lay forwards and a little to one side, so that her pale cheek rested against the taut white satin of the riband from which she hung. The wind blew the languid meshes of her hair ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse

... duty to remind you that no provision has been made to execute our treaty with Mexico for tracing the boundary line between the two countries. What ever may be the prospect of Mexico's being soon able to execute the treaty on its part, it is proper that we should be in anticipation prepared at all times to perform our ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson

... 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 your route. Get it?" ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg

... several new republics of France, I considered what cement the legislators had provided for them from any extraneous materials. Their confederations, their spectacles, their civic feasts, and their enthusiasm I take no notice of; they are nothing but mere tricks; but tracing their policy through their actions, I think I can distinguish the arrangements by which they propose to hold these republics together. The first is the confiscation, with the compulsory paper currency annexed to it; the second is the supreme power of the city ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... order out of such a chaos, Jurgis soon discovered; and he fell in with the spirit of the thing—there was no reason why he should wear himself out with shouting. If hides and guts were slashed and rendered useless there was no way of tracing it to any one; and if a man lay off and forgot to come back there was nothing to be gained by seeking him, for all the rest would quit in the meantime. Everything went, during the strike, and the packers paid. Before long Jurgis found that the custom of resting ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... brothers were both silent for a little while. Oliver stood frowning, tracing a pattern on the pavement with the toe of his polished boot, and gazing at it. He was evidently considering the situation. Francis stood with his back to the railings, his eyes fixed, with a somewhat crafty look, upon his brother's face. He was not yet sure that his long-cherished ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... 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 vivid ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... In tracing a portrait so much resembling bellicose and conquering Prussia, the sharp eye of Ardant du Picq had recognized clearly the danger which immediately threatened us and which his deluded and trifling fellow citizens did not even suspect. The morning after Sadowa, not a single statesman ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq

... his general studies. Sir Everard had never been himself a student, and, like his sister Miss Rachel Waverley, he held the common doctrine, that idleness is incompatible with reading of any kind, and that the mere tracing the alphabetical characters with the eye is in itself a useful and meritorious task, without scrupulously considering what ideas or doctrines they may happen to convey. With a desire of amusement, therefore, which better discipline might soon have converted ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... the forces that lurk in molecules and atoms, seeing in the cosmic universe, and in the evolution of the earth, only the operation of mechanical and chemical principles; seeing the irrefragable law of the correlation and the conservation of forces; tracing consciousness and all our changes in mental states to changes in the brain substance; drilled in methods of proof by experimentation; knowing that the same number of ultimate atoms may be so combined ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs

... analyzing an object, or tracing its genesis, we are not responding to it as a whole or feeling its beauty and power. The mystery, the spell, vanishes; we cease to thrill when we dissect. But knowledge proceeds by analysis, and ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... In considering the effect of machine-production upon a body of workers engaged in some particular industry we are not confined to tracing the effects of improvements in the arts and methods of that single branch of production. As consumers they share in the improvements introduced into other industries reflected in a fall of retail prices. Insomuch ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson

... being a genius, could not christen it morbid sensibility; but as she had a childish fashion of tracing things to commonplace causes, whenever she felt her face grow hot easily, or her throat choke up as men's do when they swear, she concluded that her liver was inactive, and her soul was tired of sitting at her Master's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... of looking into the vast and stupendous works of creation, of contemplating the wisdom, goodness, and power of the creator, of trying to fathom the great and magnificent plans of his providence, who is in the habit of surveying all mankind with the philosophy of revealed religion, of tracing, through the same unerring channel, the uses and objects of their existence, the design of their different ranks and situations, the nature of their relative duties and the like, could never, in the opinion of the Quakers, have either ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... rich husband. I knew that the Fort was here and thought that I might marry an officer. However, the Professor's position attracted me, and I decided to marry him. I am engaged, and but for your cleverness in tracing that letter I should be Mrs. Braddock within a very short time. I have exhausted all my money. I am deeply, in debt. I ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume

... interesting parallels have long been noted with Babylonian usage. The early system of time-reckoning, for example, was the same in both countries, each year being given an official title from the chief event that occurred in it. And although in Babylonia we are still without material for tracing the process by which this cumbrous method gave place to that of reckoning by regnal years, the Palermo Stele demonstrates the way in which the latter system was evolved in Egypt. For the events from which ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King

... in tracing the cry through the wooded walks, when a female rushed into his arms; alarmed, as it appeared, by Sylvan, who was pursuing her closely. The figure of Hereward, with his axe uplifted, put an instant stop to his career, and with a terrified note of his native cries, he withdrew ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... 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

... interest at the spot where he had disappeared, tracing him for a while through the moving foliage, listening to the crackling of the ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs

... I know not: he hath found it, let him quell it. 390 Must I consume my life—this little life— In guarding against all may make it less? It is not worth so much! It were to die Before my hour, to live in dread of death, Tracing revolt; suspecting all about me, Because they are near; and all who are remote, Because they are far. But if it should be so— If they should sweep me off from Earth and Empire, Why, what is Earth or Empire of the Earth? I have ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... till we reach, at the very base of the series, a primitive form so unlike our perfected animal, that, had we not the intermediate links, few persons would believe that the one was the ancestor of the other. The tracing out of this marvellous history we owe chiefly to Professor Marsh of Yale College, who has himself discovered no less than thirty species of fossil Equidae; and we will allow him to tell the story of the development of the horse from a humble ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... of delight may be imagined when he had ocular evidence that he had at length succeeded in tracing the mysterious Niger down to the ocean, by seeing before him two vessels, one the Spanish slaver, the other the English brig on board which he fully expected to receive the assistance he ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... with Apelles, to which he most tenaciously adhered, never to let any day pass, however busy he might be, without exercising himself by tracing some outline or other,—a practice which has now passed into a proverb.[720-4] It was also a practice with him, when he had completed a work, to exhibit it to the view of the passers-by in his studio, while he himself, concealed behind the picture, would listen ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... the pert assurance of a pretty girl who is only playing the servant "to oblige." The agent looked irritably at the ugly gap in the fine tracing overhead, and ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... in law and journalism? We can only guess, tracing its onset to the man's college days. As a Cornell sophomore, he was the class poet; as a senior, its historian; and on commencement day delivered an oration on "The Perpetuity of the Heroic Element." But whatever the origin of the interest, unquestioned ability ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss

... absolutely certain, but as extremely probable. See the Longueruana, tom. i. p. 194. ——Note: The late Dr. Milner (the Roman Catholic bishop) wrote a tract to vindicate the existence and the orthodoxy of the tutelar saint of England. He succeeds, I think, in tracing the worship of St. George up to a period which makes it improbable that so notorious an Arian could be palmed upon the Catholic church as a saint and a martyr. The Acts rejected by Gelasius may have been of Arian origin, and designed to ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... different materials required for my husband's work of various kinds, and of which he ordered such quantities that their remnants are still to be found in his laboratory as I write. Papers of all sorts of quality and size—for pen-and-ink, crayons, pastel, water-color, etching, tracing; colors dry and moist, brushes, canvases, frames, boards, panels; also the requisites for photography. It was one of my husband's lasting peculiarities that, in his desire to do a great quantity of work, and in the fear of running ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... development of truth; to watch the slow germination of its seed sown in simple obedience to the command of the Great Husbandman, while yet its green promise, as well as its golden fruition, was hidden from the eyes of the sower; to go back to the well-springs and fountain-heads, tracing the small streamlet from its hidden source, and noting the tributaries which swell its waters, as it moves onward, until it becomes a broad river, fertilizing and gladdening our present humanity. To this ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... interest, and especially the one at Washington, published by Mr. Duff Green, dropped Tariff agitation, and commenced upon Slavery, and in two years had the agitation ripe for inauguration, on the Slavery question. And in tracing this agitation to its present stage, and to comprehend its rationale, it is not to be forgotten that it is a mere continuation of old Tariff Disunion, and ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... worth mentioning, and, besides, it was very irregularly paid. Therefore the father and daughter had tried to obtain some means of earning money which could be kept secret from their fellow-citizens. The "Captain" busied himself with tracing coats-of-arms, ornaments, and inscriptions upon tin goblets, mugs, tankards, and dishes. Barbara, when she had finished her exercises in singing, washed fine laces. This was done entirely in secret. A certain ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... burial, my elder wife, his mother, led me to the side of the bier. Uncovering the child's shoulder, she showed me a strange mark, as if branded upon the flesh by a hot iron. In the red, angry lines I had no difficulty in tracing the head of a bull, the sacred mark of Siva. I said nothing, and indeed commanded my wife to ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell

... 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 ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... it might seem most conformable to the natural order of thought that Induction should be treated of before we touch upon Ratiocination. It will, however, be advantageous, in a science which aims at tracing our acquired knowledge to its sources, that the inquirer should commence with the latter rather than with the earlier stages of the process of constructing our knowledge; and should trace derivative truths backward to the truths ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... constitutional antiquities of Castile had been but slightly investigated, would seem to have little authority, therefore, for deriving the establishment of communities from Italy, and still less for tracing their progress through France and Germany to Spain. See his History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V, (London, 1796,) ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... quotation, seem sufficiently to prove the existence in our mental machinery of a sense of present reality more diffused and general than that which our special senses yield. For the psychologists the tracing of the organic seat of such a feeling would form a pretty problem—nothing could be more natural than to connect it with the muscular sense, with the feeling that our muscles were innervating themselves for action. Whatsoever thus innervated our activity, or "made our flesh creep"—our ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... some coldness of heart, or some infirmity of judgment, for being a missionary of religion to the children under his care. At one period early in life we spent many a leisure hour in drawing up a gossiping little history of our native town, and found, in tracing out the memorabilia of its parish school, that the Rev. John Russell, afterwards of Kilmarnock and Stirling, and somewhat famous in Scottish literature as one of the clerical antagonists of Burns, had taught in it for twelve years, and that several of his pupils (now long since departed) still ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... not, madam, fatigue you," he returned, "by tracing the progress of my unfortunate admiration; will endeavour to be more brief, for I see you are already wearied." He stopt a moment, hoping for some little encouragement; but Cecilia, in no humour to give it, assumed an air of unconcern, ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... complicated character than the simple, open-minded, manly mariner of York; a strangely mixed compound of craft and impulse, selfishness and generosity—in short, a thoroughly bad woman, made bad by circumstances. In tracing the vigilant resolution with which she plays upon human weakness, the spasms of compunction which shoot across her wily designs, the selfish afterthoughts which paralyse her generous impulses, her fits of dare-devil courage and uncontrollable ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto

... east to west, is marked, as I have said, by glacial action, in rectilinear scratches and furrows. This westward track of the main glacier is crossed transversely near the centre of the valley by two other glacier-tracks cutting it at right angles. Upon tracing these cross-tracks carefully, I became satisfied, that, after the surrounding ice had begun to yield, after the masses of ice which descended from the northern and southern slopes of the mountains into Glen Spean had begun to retreat, and to form local limited ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... compulsory education department of the Board of Education and the Visiting Nurses Association. The resident, Mrs. Britton, who, having had charge of our children's clubs for many years, knew thousands of children in the neighborhood, made a detailed study of three hundred families tracing back the habitual truancy of the child to economic and social causes. This investigation preceded a most interesting conference on truancy held under a committee of which I was a member from the Chicago ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... Byddell [Transcriber's Note: Byddel], in 8vo., without date; and is placed immediately under an address from Erasmus, to Moline, Bishop of Condome; dated 1524; in which the former complains bitterly of "the pain and grief of the reins of his back." The print is taken from a tracing of the original, made by me, from a neat copy of Byddel's edition, in the collection of Roger Wilbraham, Esq. I am free to confess that it falls a hundred degrees short of Albert Durer's fine print of him, executed ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... marble-white pallor of the flesh, the closed eyes. Sommers stopped to kiss the cold face, and with the movement Alves's head nestled forward against his hot neck. Tears rose to his eyes and fell against her cheek; he started on once more, tracing carefully ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... that any nation could have vaulted to the final stage of the simple alphabetical writing without tracing the devious and difficult way of the pictograph and the syllabary. It is possible, however, for a cultivated nation to build upon the shoulders of its neighbors, and, profiting by the experience of others, to make sudden ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... station, shrubs and poplar sticks set out along the cement sidewalks, in an effort to disguise the rawness of the prairie pancake that the contractors had parcelled into lots. Isabelle found some difficulty in tracing her way along the ingeniously twisted avenues to the Johnston house. But finally she reached the two-story-and-attic wooden box, which was set in a little grove of maple trees. Two other houses were going up across the street, and a trench for ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... shall serve to throw into glorious relief, the glory of that light that is not from reason, or nature; but from Him who is the Father of Lights. Yes, He bids us look on this picture of the wisest of men, tracing man and beast to one end and standing before that awful door through which each has disappeared, confessing his absolute inability to determine if there be any difference between them. Death surely triumphs here. It is true that ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings

... customary patron of every lively lay; Go forth without delay Thy wonted annual way, To meet the ceremonious holy matron: Her grave procession gracing, Thine airy footsteps tracing With unlaborious, light, celestial motion; And here at thy devotion Behold thy faithful choir In pitiful attire: All overworn and ragged, This jerkin old and jagged, These buskins torn and burst, Though sufferers in the fray, May serve us at the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... one can proceed sentence by sentence, examining each statement carefully, looking up new words and references, supplementing, tracing the bearings on one's own life, and doing whatever else is necessary to assimilate each thought. The single sentences can be put together so as to reveal the thoughts of paragraphs; and the central ideas of paragraphs and chapters can likewise be brought together, ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry

... their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous. It would be unfair to follow them to Africa for this investigation. We will consider them ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various

... the works were taken in hand for rubbing the stones smooth with wax, for carving the inscription, and tracing it with vermilion, but without entering into details on these matters too minutely, we will return to the two places, the Yu Huang temple and the Ta Mo monastery. The company of twelve young bonzes and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... daughter of the third Earl of Prolific; our grandmother was the last of her race, so far as human ken can discover; our great-grandmother is said to have had semi-royal blood in her veins, without the aid of the church, and beyond that it would be hopeless to attempt tracing consanguinity on that side of the house. No, Wycherly; it is Sir Reginald who has the best right to the land; Tom, or one of his brothers, an utter stranger, or His Majesty, follow. Remember that estates of L4000 a ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... CHANGE IN SPECIES HAS BEEN A GRADUAL DIFFERENTIATION. Tracing the lines of descent of various animals and plants of the present backward through the divisions of geologic time, we find that these lines of descent converge and unite in simpler and still simpler types. The development of life may be represented ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton

... the laws respected, and this so earnestly and rigidly, that no small wonder was excited among all classes of a population so long accustomed to the licence of a barbarian horde of spoilers. On one occasion one of the Ulemahs could not help smiling at the zeal which he manifested for tracing home the murder of an obscure peasant to the perpetrator. The Mussulman asked if the dead man were anywise related to the blood of the Sultan Kebir? "No," answered Napoleon, sternly—"but he was more than that—he was one ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... sorrayard I'll go—the shinburnt spalpeen, that's always the way with him; whatever he's bid to do, he throws it on me, bekase, indeed, he has no coat; but he'll folly Masther Thomas or Masther Francis through sleet and snow up the mountains when they're fowling or tracing; he doesn't care about a ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... for him a general respect, and gave weight and influence to his counsels. "In 1839, having been named reporter on the proposition relative to the abolition of slavery in the colonies, he succeeded," says his biographer, "not only in tracing with an able and sure hand the great principles of justice and of humanity which should lead on the triumph of this holy cause, but also, by words full of respect for existing interests and acquired rights, in preparing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various

... second daughter. A very proud old lady was this maiden aunt, and over the mantel-piece of her drawing-room ever hung a great diagram, a family tree, which mightily impressed the warm imagination of the delicate child she had taken in charge. It was a lengthy and well-grown family tree, tracing back the Morris family to the days of Charlemagne, and branching out from a stock of "the seven kings of France". Was there ever yet a decayed. Irish family that did not trace itself back to some "kings"? and these "Milesian kings"—who ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant

... among the things left by his father, the boy made a tracing from the plan he had been studying. He followed all the lines of the original carefully, except in one place where the plan was so indistinct that he could not tell exactly where they were intended to go. Being in a hurry, and feeling confident that they should be continued ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe

... was four years old she went to the penager to learn to read and write. In a few months she could outstrip any one in the class in tracing Arabic characters on the sand-sprinkled floor, and she knew whole chapters ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman

... movement of the glowing point. The Central Federated States of Europe were behind him; the point was tracing a course over the vast reaches of the patchwork map that meant the many democracies of Russia. This cruiser of Schwartzmann's was doing five hundred miles an hour—and the watching man cursed under his breath at the slow progress ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... the horror of such a scientific murder and the meagreness of the materials to work on in tracing it out. ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve

... hushed in silence, and seemed to partake of the general melancholy that 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 ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown

... 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 pottery and monuments ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... temperament. Jacopo Bellini cannot conform to it, and his greatest son is ready to follow feeling and emotion, and in his old age is quick to discover the first flavour of the new wine. If Venetian art had gone on upon the lines we have been tracing up to now, there would have been nothing very distinctive about it, for, however interesting and charming Alvise and Carpaccio, Cima and the Bellini may be, it is not of them we think when we speak of the Venetian School and ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps

... the reward is offered, and respecting whom, solely, our agreement has been arranged with the Prefect. We both know this gentleman well. It will not do to trust him too far. If, dating our inquiries from the body found, and thence tracing a murderer, we yet discover this body to be that of some other individual than Marie; or, if starting from the living Marie, we find her, yet find her unassassinated—in either case we lose our labor; since it is Monsieur G—— with whom we have to deal. For our own purpose, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... in your respective situations will have satisfied you of the progressive state of agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation. In tracing their causes you will have remarked with particular pleasure the happy effects of that revival of confidence, public as well as private, to which the Constitution and laws of the United States have so eminently contributed; and you will have observed with no less interest new and ...
— State of the Union Addresses of George Washington • George Washington

... Ambassador Sharp held a little company spellbound, while he related several incidents of his investigations in the devastated region near Roye. One afternoon the captain stopped his military automobile upon the edge of what had once been a village. Surveyors were tracing the road and making measurements in the hope of establishing the former location of the cellar and the house that stood above it. An old gray-haired Frenchman had the matter in charge. He had lost the cellar of his house. Also, the trees that had stood upon his front sidewalk, also his ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis

... endurance. If history were not entitled to insist that the earnest reader should accompany her through good and evil days, through landscapes of winter as well as of spring, the historian might be tempted to shun the cheerless task of tracing the manifold and yet monotonous turns of this struggle between superior power and utter weakness, both in the Spanish provinces already annexed to the Roman empire and in the African, Hellenic, and ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... was then an unusual method of making himself a good lawyer. That was to begin to deal with a legal principle in historic order, going back to the first case where it was announced and tracing it down through the reports, making no use of text-books. That was the way the old lawyers before Blackstone got their training. I have been told, though that happened after I left Cambridge, that he and Professor Langdell, ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... sweeping the poor creatures off the face of the earth. Marsden's writings show how our Australian blacks are destroyed. But I have myself been on the track of such butcheries again and again. A Victorian lady told me the following incident. She heard a child's pitiful cry in the bush. On tracing it, she found a little girl weeping over her younger brother. She said, "The white men poisoned our father and mother. They threaten to shoot me, so that I dare not go near them, I am here, weeping over ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton

... which shortly afterwards expired. The question was what had become of that paper. I examined the Review at the Museum, found no trace of the paper, and wrote back to that effect at the Museum, adding that everything now depended on ascertaining the name of the editor, and tracing his papers: of this I thought there was no chance. I posted this letter on my way home, at a Post Office in the Hampstead Road at the junction with Edward Street, on the opposite side of which is a bookstall. Lounging for a moment over the exposed books, sicut meus est mos,[95] ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... theorist in all his mental processes, and had tried, proved, and rejected free love, anarchy, Christian science, and a dozen other feverish fads, which for a time jangled his mental bells out of tune. A cranky tracing of the lost Ten Tribes of Israel down to the genial scalpers of the American plains had thrown him across the renowned Professor Andrew Fraser, who had, on his part, located these same long mourned Hebrews in Thibet, ignoring the fact that they are really dispersed ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... must write to Mac-Morlan to stir heaven and earth to find her out. I will gladly come to—shire myself to assist at her examination—I am still in the commission of the peace there, though I have ceased to be Sheriff—I never had anything more at heart in my life than tracing that murder, and the fate of the child. I must write to the Sheriff of Roxburghshire too, and to an active ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... necessary articles are a tape measure, cake of wax, pencils or tailor's chalk, tracing wheel, emery, ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson

... the immortal," the Rig-Veda explicitly declares. The making was surely slow. In tracing the genealogy of the divine, it has been found that its root was fear. The root, dispersed by light, ultimately dissolved. But, meanwhile, it founded religion, which, revealed in storm and panic, for prophets had ignorance and dread. ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus

... the unsearchable riches of his grace in the salvation of a sinner. And where can he learn this lesson more instructively than in looking around the fields where his labour is appointed, and there tracing the handiwork of God in all that he beholds? Such meditations have often afforded me both profit and pleasure, and I wish my readers to share ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond

... closely allied to that of the Persians. The remark of Strabo quoted above, and another remark which he cites from Nearchus, imply at once this fact, and also the further fact of a dialectic difference between the two tongues. Did we possess, as some imagine that we do, materials for tracing out this diversity, it would be proper in the present place to enter fully on the subject, and instead of contenting ourselves with asserting, or even proving, the substantial oneness of the languages, it would be our duty to proceed to the far more difficult and more complicated ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson

... and noble but hot-tempered race of the Mohammedan faith inhabiting Afghanistan. The Afghans proper are called PATHANS in India, and call themselves Beni Israel (sons of Israel), tracing their ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... pleasure in the assertion of his contempt for love; but these very entries became links in his destiny. It was through them that he became acquainted with one who inspired him with a feeling which only ended with his life. His biographer has given us the means of tracing the varying moods which preceded his acceptance. They reveal more than the common alternations of light and gloom; at one moment he wishes that his flesh might melt and that he might become nothing; at another he ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... head, like an animal pacing its cage. He stops again at the door, listens, and, placing the palms of hip hands against it with his fingers spread out, leans his forehead against the iron. Turning from it, presently, he moves slowly back towards the window, tracing his way with his finger along the top line of the distemper that runs round the wall. He stops under the window, and, picking up the lid of one of the tins, peers into it. It has grown very nearly dark. Suddenly the lid falls out of his hand with a clatter—the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... nothing better than to be left to his own devices, which, moreover, were innocent enough. He would sit all day in the lane at the front gate pottering with a bit of twig or a case-knife in the soft clay. From time to time passers-by observed that the child was not making mud-pies, but tracing figures, comic or grotesque as might happen, and always quite wonderful for their lack of resemblance to anything human. That patch of reddish-brown clay was his sole resource, his slate, his drawing-book, and woe to anybody who chanced to walk over little Dick's arabesques. ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... be transferred to the canvas, to give the general arrangement and relative position, size, and action of the figures, etc. If the drawing is the same size as the canvas it is done by tracing, if not, then it is "squared up." In this stage of the process mechanical exactness of proportion is the thing required, as well as the saving of time; all things having been planned beforehand, and freedom ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst

... Tracing the pattern of the rug with his toe, Jimmy remained stubbornly oblivious of their attentions. He rearranged the pillows on the couch, and finally, for want of a better occupation, he wound his watch. All to no avail. He could feel ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo

... dandum, that which is to be given to God), in English law, was a personal chattel (any animal or thing) which, on account of its having caused the death of a human being, was forfeited to the king for pious uses. Blackstone, while tracing in the custom an expiatory design, alludes to analogous Jewish and Greek laws,[1] which required that what occasions a man's death should be destroyed. In such usages the notion of the punishment of an animal or thing, or of its being morally affected from having caused the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... is of the other form, where the vibrations are impressed parallel to the surface of the recording material, as was done in the old Scott Phonautograph of 1857, thus forming a groove of uniform depth, but of wavy character, in which the sides of the groove act upon the tracing point instead of the bottom, as is the case in the vertical type. This form we named the zig-zag form, and referred to it in that way in our notes. Its important advantage in guiding the reproducing needle I first called attention to in the note on p. 9-Vol 1-Home Notes ...
— Development of the Phonograph at Alexander Graham Bell's Volta Laboratory • Leslie J. Newville

... Union? But if it be asked what the issue of the struggle is likely to be, it will readily be understood that we are here left to form a very vague surmise of the truth. The human mind may succeed in tracing a wide circle, as it were, which includes the course of future events; but within that circle a thousand various chances and circumstances may direct it in as many different ways; and in every picture ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... inform us, that the blood-hound, or sluith-hound (so called from its quality of tracing the slot, or track, of men and animals), was early used in the pursuit and detection of marauders. Nullus perturbet, aut impediat canem trassantem, aut homines trassantes cum ipso, ad sequendum latrones.—Regiam Majestatem, ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott

... his shoulders before this sophistry. In the doorway, the captain gave some orders to a soldier who soon returned with a bit of chalk which had been used to number the lodging places. Von Hartrott wished to protect his uncle and began tracing on the wall near the door:—"Bitte, nicht plundern. Es sind ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... to misunderstand. He enjoyed the distinction of holding open the door for the transatlantic representative of the line of Offa as he went out, and then made his way through the muddy streets back to his office. There was only one way of tracing a private individual at such short notice—through the pages of the directories, and the gentleman did not flatter himself by a very high estimate of ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah

... who was living over a dream that was fashioning itself in his mind, abandoning himself to the joy or his creation, dwelling longingly upon the details of the building, going over and, as it were, feeling it in every fibre, jealous of the effect of every stone, tracing the trend and subtlety of every curve, seeing how one touch fitted in and enhanced the other and how all carried on ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly

... autoradiography[Bioch], fluorography[Chem], sciagraphy[obs3]. personation, personification; impersonation; drama &c. 599. picture, photo, photograph, daguerreotype, snapshot; X-ray photo; movie film, movie; tracing, scan, TV image, video image, image file, graphics, computer graphics, televideo, closed-circuit TV. copy &c. 21; drawing, sketch, drought, draft; plot, chart, figure, scheme. image, likeness, icon, portrait, striking likeness, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... am sorry to leave the neighborhood without seeing that lovely girl—the one who sent me the gift and to whom the ball was tendered. She is in reality my kinswoman. I have been tracing the relationship and find she is the same kin as my cousins here at Buck Hill—the young people I mean. I am sorry I did not tell ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson

... detected by grasping the horse's leg with the fingers upon one side and the thumb upon the other, and tracing the inner and outer splint bones from their heads downward to their tapering extremities. Any actual enlargement will at once arrest the hand; any rising or irregularity will create suspicion and lead to close examination. Horses, especially young ones which have lately been put to work, ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek

... ideas, and where there is a certain and discoverable connexion between them, yet we are often ignorant, for want of tracing those ideas which we have or may have; and for want of finding out those intermediate ideas, which may show us what habitude of agreement or disagreement they have one with another. And thus many are ignorant of mathematical truths, not out of any ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke

... alive to the stupendous issues that were involved in the discussion. Hamilton was supremely endowed with the faculty of imagining, with all the circumstantial minuteness of concrete reality, political situations different from those directly before him; and he put this rare power to noble use in tracing out the natural and legitimate working of such a Constitution as that which the ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... in tracing the history of Botanic science quotes Pliny for an account of the veneration in which this plant was held by the Druids, who attributed almost divine efficacy to it, and ordained the collecting it with rites and ceremonies not short of the religious strictness which was countenanced by ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury

... at a moment when my friends could render me no assistance. In traveling about from place to place—often alone I was much exposed to this sort of attack. Any one cherishing the design to betray me, could easily do so, by simply tracing my whereabouts through the anti-slavery journals, for my meetings and movements were promptly made known in advance. My true friends, Mr. Garrison and Mr. Phillips, had no faith in the power of Massachusetts to protect me in my right to liberty. ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... candor by Mr. Irving, in his "Life of Columbus." (Appendix, No. 9.) Few will be disposed to contest the author's conclusion respecting their fallacy, though all may not have the same charity as he, in tracing its possible origin to an editorial blunder, instead of wilful fabrication on the part of Vespucci; in which light, indeed, it seems to have been regarded by the two most ancient and honest historians of the ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott

... the most instructive article that could be written on the Academy would be one in which the writer would confine his examination to this and Mr. Clausen's picture of "Mowers", comparing and contrasting the two pictures at every point, showing where they diverge, and tracing their artistic history back to its ultimate source. But to do this thoroughly would be to write the history of the artistic movement in France and England for the last thirty years; and I must limit ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore

... complications of the windings through which he led the expectant cortege; and this course, even when restricted to a single saloon, might be made remarkable by the designing of graceful arabesques, or the involved tracing of enigmatical ciphers. He made good his claim to the place he had solicited, and displayed his skill, by inventing close, complicated and inextricable figures; by describing them with so much certainty and accuracy, that the living ribbon, turned and twisted as it might be, was never broken ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt

... last twenty years, the attention of the best palaeontologists has been withdrawn from the hodman's work of making "new species" of fossils, to the scientific task of completing our knowledge of individual species, and tracing out the succession of the forms presented by any ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley

... it was also keen, that there was after all in it more to soothe nerves than to excite them. Her hand presently came to Wych Hazel's face too, drawing down over the soft cheek and handling the wavy ringlets, and tracing the delicate chin's ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner

... had died away again, from the sheer improbability of the thing, as much as from the convincing proofs offered by Lord Mount Severn. Not but what Miss Carlyle had borne in mind the suspicion, and had been fond of tracing the likeness ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood

... of his earlier books, Prof. Hugo Munsterberg cites the growing love for tracing pedigrees as evidence of a dangerous American tendency toward aristocracy. There are only two little things the matter with this—the fact and the inference from it. In the first place, we Americans have always been proud of our ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick

... information. Indeed the silence of the chronicles as to the topography of Canossa is peculiarly unfortunate for lovers of the picturesque in historic detail, now that there is no possibility of tracing the outlines of the ancient building. Had the author of the 'Vita Mathildis' (Muratori, vol. v.) foreseen that his beloved Canossa would one day be nothing but a mass of native rock, he would undoubtedly have been more explicit on these points; and much that is vague about an event only paralleled ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... that the locality of the property and residence of a person of her position, and who led the way among the victims of such an awful tragedy, should have become wholly obliterated from memory and tradition, in a community of such intelligence, consisting, in so large a degree, of old families, tracing themselves back to the earliest generations, and among whom the innumerable descendants of her seven great-grandchildren have continued to this day. It can only be accounted for by the considerations mentioned in the text. Tradition was stifled by horror and shame. What all desired to forget was ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... 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 been seen to enter the house, and an old woman, who ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... gradual growth of the system—the gradual formation of new sections among the people, the gradual extension of the institution to the families of people engaged in certain trades, belonging to the same group, or sect, or tribe, tracing their ancestry, whether rightly or wrongly, to the same source. All these factors, and others besides, are real factors. But they are phases of the extension and growth, not explanations of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... himself in the best position for observation, he became absorbed in silent contemplation. His hand, tracing vague contours in the air, seemed to be sketching the outlines for some picture, and he would have remained thus for whole hours if Nyssia, soon becoming weary of her role of model, had not reminded him in chill and ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier

... as if there had been a sting in the slender fingers which lay on her arm. She looked at them, and a slight circumstance, long forgotten, rushed back upon her memory,—something she had noticed to her mother the first night that the girl came home. Tracing the beautiful hereditary mould of the Rothesay line, she now knew why Christal's hand ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)

... very powerful scent, I presume, with a view of using my room whilst I was unconscious, if any hitch took place. But you may be sure that these people are under the impression that nobody could possibly identify them with the outrage. There will not be any great difficulty in tracing them." ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White

... five miles, crossing some small undulating or hilly downs of a rich black soil, where the Phonolith frequently cropped out. There were occasional tracts of "devil-devil" land, and patches of scrub, which, at no great distance, united into one mass of Bricklow. Tracing a little creek to its head, I crossed ridges with open forest. Mr. Gilbert and Charley returned, after having found, as I anticipated, a considerable watercourse at the foot of the westerly range. Suttor Creek was afterwards found to join this watercourse, and, as it was its principal tributary, ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt

... grassy openings, one of which, larger than the rest, was the "Watauga Old Fields" of the Pioneers. Some twenty miles away, two small rivers united their currents and flowed together to the west through a gap in the encircling mountains. Tracing their courses up among the hills, the explorers would catch glimpses of numerous smaller streams, which feed the larger ones and water the whole of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various

... gathering even now. Your religion is like a tree that has lain long dead in the forest—firm wood to the eye but dust to the first blow. And this is how it will go—from a laugh—not through the solemn absurdities of the so-called higher criticism, the discussing of this or that miracle, the tracing of this or that myth of fall or deluge or immaculate conception or trinity to its pagan sources; not that way, when before the inquiring mind rises the sheer materialism of the Christian dogma, bristling with absurdities—its vain bungling God of one tribe ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... strikes me that he altogether defeated his own purpose; for if the Annals had been written by Tacitus, that grave historian took such high ground that he would have deemed it beneath him to notice any such trivial amusements, just as Hume and Henry, in tracing the history of the people of England, did not descend to make any inquiry into or mention of the precise time when such popular games were instituted, as the Maypole or country fairs, ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross

... some way of tracing them," she declared. "If they were over on Meadow Street somebody must have seen them after they left Mrs. ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill

... apostolic necessarily led to the assumption that whoever held the apostolic doctrine was also essentially a Christian in the apostolic sense. This assumption, quite apart from the innovations which were legitimised by tracing them to the Apostles, meant the separation of doctrine and conduct, the preference of the former to the latter, and the transformation of a fellowship of faith, hope, and discipline into a communion "eiusdem sacramenti," that is, into ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... ascertained, are for the most part meagre, if not obscure. In the history of Herodotus, we, for the first time, are able to trace the exact state and progress of geographical knowledge; and from his time, our means of tracing it become more accessible, as well as productive of more satisfactory results. Within one hundred years after this historian flourished, geography derived great advantages and improvement from a circumstance which, at first view, would ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... The tracing of the gardens at Fontainebleau, practically as they exist to-day, was one of Francois I's greatest pleasures. In their midst, on the shores of the Etang aux Carpes, was erected a tiny rest-house where ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield

... field having now for some years been no longer called for, he has exchanged his patriotic sword for a patriotic pen—judging rightly that in no way so effectually can Greece be served at this time with Western Europe, as by recording faithfully the course of her revolution, tracing the difficulties which lay or which arose in her path, the heroism with which she surmounted them, and the multiplied errors by which she raised up others to herself. Mr. Gordon, of forty authors who have partially treated this theme, is the first who ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... are generalities. In 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

... student of social niceties, John Mistletoe, in his famous Dictionary of Deplorable Facts—a book which we heartily commend to the curious, for he includes a long and most informing article on cider, tracing its etymology from the old Hebrew word shaker meaning "to quaff deeply"—maintains that cider should only be drunk beside an ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley

... and a star, gliding from the heavens amid the darkness, rushed through space followed by a long train of light; we saw the star,' says AEneas, 'suspended for a moment above the roof, brighten our home with its fires, then, tracing out a brilliant course, disappear in the forests of Ida; then a long train of flame illuminated us, and the place around reeked with the smell of sulphur. Overcome by these startling portents, my father arose, invoked the gods, and worshipped the holy star.' It is ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... feebleness and impaired physical build—what are denominated delicate states of constitution—these and other types of disease are so directly or indirectly connected with the "specific" taint, it becomes impossible to be too careful in tracing it out, or in measuring the degree to which it extends in the field of morbid phenomenon, in our efforts to improve the vitality of the colored people and to enlighten them ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... The folio in question, which consists of 417 unnumbered leaves, is an extremely fine one, and I should say that it is certainly of German origin. Seemiller (i. 117.) refers it to Esslingen, and perhaps an acquaintance with its water-marks would afford some assistance in tracing it. Of these a rose is the most common, and a strigilis may be seen on folio 61. It would be difficult to persuade the proprietor of this volume that it is of so modern a date as 1474, the year in which what is generally called the second ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various

... guidance of William of Orange, revolted against the attempts of Alva and the Spaniards to force upon them the Catholic religion. To a story already of the keenest interest, Mr. Henty has added a special attractiveness for boys in tracing through the historic conflict the adventures and brave deeds of an English boy in the household of the ablest man of his age—William the Silent. Edward Martin; the son of an English sea-captain, after sharing in the excitement of an escape from the Spaniards ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty

... his coat and shoes and lay down on the rude bed. He watched Midget tracing the outlines of a picture with his white finger in a book Miss Nellis had ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness

... promised much, were only followed by explanations as to the debt and announcements of retrenchment in the expenditure. The king, instead of wisely tracing out to the states the course they ought to follow, urged the orders to union, expressed his want of money, his dread of innovations, and complained of the uneasiness of the public mind, without suggesting ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet

... published his Cautio Criminalis as a warning, stating with entire moderation the facts he had observed and the necessity of care. But he did not dare publish it under his own name, nor did he even dare publish it in a Catholic town; he gave it to the world anonymously, and, in order to prevent any tracing of the work to him through the confessional, he secretly caused it to be published in the Protestant ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... the oilcloth table cover as if he had been listening. But the fingers of the paralysed woman were growing weary. They had begun the word more than ten times over, and now, in tracing this word, they wandered to right and left. Michaud and Olivier bent forward, and being unable to read, forced the impotent old lady ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola

... me the animal was at no great distance, and very probably in this meadow. We accordingly advanced a few yards, and there we found the deer lying at the last gasp. The wound was exactly as I had been told. The sagacity of the Saulteurs [Ojibwes] in tracing big wood animals is astonishing. I have frequently witnessed occurrences of this nature; the bend of a leaf or blade of grass is enough to show the hunter the direction the game has taken. Their ability is of equally ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston

... Brahma, succeed by such knowledge of Brahma in paying off the debts (thou speakest of) to the gods (the Rishis, and the Pitris) represented to be so very fond of libations poured in sacrifices.[1244] The very gods become stupefied in tracing the track of that trackless person who constitutes himself the soul of all creatures and who looks upon all creatures with an equal eye. Through instructions received from the preceptor one knows that which dwells within this frame to be ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... Time enameled and embossed This ancient cup at an infinite cost. Its frame he wrought of metal that run Red from the furnace of the sun. Ages on ages slowly rolled Before the glowing mass was cold, And still he toiled at the antique mold,— Turning it fast in his fashioning hand, Tracing circle, layer, and band, Carving figures quaint and strange, Pursuing, through many a wondrous change, The symmetry of a plan divine. At last he poured the lustrous wine, Crowned high the radiant wave with light, And held aloft the goblet bright, Half ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various

... Persian Poetry, published in the "Atlantic Monthly" in 1858, should be studied by all readers who are curious in tracing the influence of Oriental poetry on Emerson's verse. In many of the shorter poems and fragments published since "May-Day," as well as in the "Quatrains" and others of the later poems in that volume, it is sometimes hard to tell what ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... In tracing the witnesses through their eventful history for 1260 years as portrayed in the Apocalypse, and in fixing with precision their continuous identity, I am constrained reluctantly to dissent from the Doctor and agree with Faber. Adopting ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele

... condition, and afterwards pleased him perhaps more by taking all his flowers off his hands, and paying him, at his rate, for them, than if she had embarrassed him by a present, that he would have been puzzled to account for, and might have put others on tracing the motives of. ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland

... almost entirely of granite, and is upwards of seven hundred and thirty feet above the level of the sea. From the highest point of it, he obtained a fine view of the bay, and was thus saved the trouble of tracing its shores. It extends sixteen or eighteen miles to the southward, and contains a number of rocky islands, the highest of them being that on which they encamped. The bay was named Pelly Bay, after the governor of the company; and the group of islands, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan



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



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