United States or Serbia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Though both were much more distant than the snowy ranges, being respectively eighty and ninety miles off, they raised their gigantic heads above, seeming what they really were, by far the loftiest peaks next to Kinchinjunga; and the perspective of snow is so deceptive, that though 40 to 60 miles beyond, they appeared as though almost in the same line with the ridges they overtopped.
A great grass-grown park-wall, overtopped with mighty trees; but still on and on we came at a canter that seemed almost a gallop. The old grey park-wall flanking us at one side, and a pretty pastoral hedgerow of ash-trees, irregularly on the other.
This pillar had often served them for a signal at sea. It was composed of red granite, beautifully polished, and standing 114 feet high, overtopped the town. But how to get up? They sent for a kite, to be sure; and the men, women, and children of Alexandria, wondering what they were going to do with it, followed the toy in crowds.
Stone by stone, month by month, the tower rose. Higher, higher; snail-like in pace, but torch or rocket in its pride. After the masons would depart, the builder, standing alone upon its ever-ascending summit, at close of every day, saw that he overtopped still higher walls and trees. He would tarry till a late hour there, wrapped in schemes of other and still loftier piles.
Polkinghorne was beginning to feel worried, because seen together it was plain that the big Doughty overtopped Ishmael by nearly a head. Suddenly he had an inspiration and threw himself between them as Doughty swung out at the younger boy, thereby incidentally getting the blow himself. "I'll lick you for that later, Doughty," he ejaculated. "Meanwhile, kindly shut up while I say something.
At length he succeeded in scrambling to the summit of a precipice; but it was covered by a dense forest. Wherever he could gain a look-out between the trees, he saw that the coast rose in heights and cliffs, one rising beyond another, until huge mountains overtopped the whole. There were no signs of cultivation, nor any smoke curling amongst the trees, to indicate a human residence.
Now when this mercantile class saw itself being far overtopped and outclassed in the only measurement to which it attached any value that of property by men with vast riches and power, it began to feel its relegation.
I saw from a distance his long, lank figure writhing like a sapling in a storm, as it overtopped the crowd; but his words were lost on my ear, and I sat leaning back against the bulwark with folded hands, absorbed in my own thoughts, when a young girl, bursting from the throng, came and threw herself down before me, and buried her face in my lap, convulsed with sobs.
"You beastly, little, supercilious snob!" exclaimed Monty, who was easily the rudest man I have ever met. I didn't mind him calling me "little," for he so overtopped me intellectually that in his presence I never realised that I had grown tall. I felt about fourteen. "You beastly, little, intolerant, mediæval humbug. I suppose you think 'C. of E. is the only respectable thing to be.
And then the landscape, what a picture was there. Bold conical hills, swelling one over another like waves of the sea, overtopped and looked down upon a succession of valleys, each more striking, both for richness and beauty, than the first; and forming altogether such a scene as must be witnessed to be felt, or even understood.
Word Of The Day