United States or Tanzania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Genoa invented sky-scrapers long before Columbus had discovered America, or America had invented steel frames for high building; but although many of the houses in the Vico Dritto di Ponticello are seven and eight storeys high, the width of the street from house-wall to house-wall does not average more than nine feet.
The author tells how they all look, with a fine sense of their charm in her words, but one would know how they looked from their names; and when you call them over they at once transplant themselves to the depths of the dells between our sky-scrapers, and find a brief sojourn in the cavernous excavations whence other sky-scrapers are to rise.
Down town the upper altitudes of the sky-scrapers were lost in a vague mist of swirling snow that eddied through the chasm-like clefts between them there were gaps where other gigantic iron frames were rising up to the rattling Maxim-gun-like sound of the steam riveters.
It was uncommonly rich, and its citizens, always sanguine of its future, had been seized with a very fever of faith; they were selling out their interests everywhere else and buying and building, tearing down and rebuilding, until San Francisco threatened to lose its oddly patched and wholly individual appearance and become the Western city of sky-scrapers.
"Yes, Burke is a good-natured, poetic old soul who has a horror of spiders, snakes, and sky-scrapers. He said to me: 'Greggy, go and seek nature in some quiet, secluded place, and forget everything for a fortnight or two except your clothes and half a dozen cases of beer. Rest! Nature! Beer!
At first, he was full of enthusiasm about America and New York, and American writers; he was tremendously impressed by the sky-scrapers, by the intense activity of the people, and by the Hudson River, which, as he regarded from his hotel windows, reminded him of the Volga.
A breeze was crying down the streets, whisking along battered newspapers and pieces of things, and little lights were pricking out all the windows it was so desolate that one was sorry for the tops of sky-scrapers lost up there in the dark green and gray heaven, and felt that now surely the farce was to close, and presently all the buildings would collapse like card houses, and pile up in a dusty, sardonic heap upon all the millions who presumed to wind in and out of them.
I've got the krect bearin's just now, so w'en the stars come out we'll be able to fix on one layin' in the right direction, and clap on all sail, slow and aloft stu'n s'ls, sky-scrapers, an' all the rest on it." "A good plan, Jack," said Armstrong, "but what if it should come cloudy and blot out the stars?"
"The man that mends the boats says I'll have an air-ship before I die, Aunt Kate." She gave Worth a sudden little squeeze, curiously jubilant at the possibility of his having an air-ship before he died. And she viewed the city of sky-scrapers adoringly tenderly mistily. "Oh Worthie," she whispered, "isn't it lovely to be getting home?"
Straight off I heard him sing out "Below there, ahoy! Shake her up, shake her up! Heave on a hundred million billion tons of brimstone!" "Ay-ay, sir!" "Pipe the stabboard watch! All hands on deck!" "Ay-ay, sir!" "Send two hundred thousand million men aloft to shake out royals and sky-scrapers!" "Ay-ay, sir!" "Hand the stuns'ls! Hang out every rag you've got! Clothe her from stem to rudder-post!"
Word Of The Day