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It was an unlucky Friday morning; "and, what's more," the chief officer stopped on the gangway to call down to me on the quay, "a black cat crossed my path when I left home this morning, and a very nice black cat it was." The gangway was hauled up. The tugs began to move the big steamer away from us, a process so slow that the daylight between us and the ship increased imperceptibly.

The marabout, meanwhile, glided on gradually and imperceptibly, serpent-like, or rather snail-like, till he was about ten yards distant from Richard's person, when, starting on his feet, he sprung forward with the bound of a tiger, stood at the King's back in less than an instant, and brandished aloft the cangiar, or poniard, which he had hidden in his sleeve.

They sought to ingratiate themselves with the middle class, to strip the nobility of its political influence, and to enlist the church in their service. The Cortes were more or less regularly convened, but their functions were almost imperceptibly transferred to royal commissions and officers of state. Privileges granted to towns in earlier times were now gradually revoked.

It is upon an eminence which you ascend imperceptibly, and upon which you see endless deserts on three sides; but it is backed, as it were, by the mountain of Guadarama, which encircles Madrid on three sides, at a distance of several leagues, more or less. There is no village at the Escurial; the lodging of their Catholic Majesties forms the handle of the gridiron.

Agricola reconciled the Britons to the Roman government by reconciling them to the Roman manners. He moulded that fierce nation by degrees to soft and social customs, leading them imperceptibly into a fondness for baths, for gardens, for grand houses, and all the commodious elegancies of a cultivated life. He diffused a grace and dignity over this new luxury by the introduction of literature.

Eleven o'clock slipped by, and twelve and one; and while the earth slept, watched by a million glistening eyes, and nature moved imperceptibly one step nearer to maturity, this boy and girl made plans for the discovery of a world out of which so many similar explorers have crept with wounds and bitterness. They were wonderful and memorable hours, not ever to be lived again.

No Red Indian of the prairie ever sat with more statuesque rigidity, watching his foe, than did these two friends sit watching that rat. They were sportsmen, both by nature and practice, to the backbone. The idiotic owl at their elbow was not more still than they one point only excepted: Phil's right hand moved imperceptibly, like the hour-hand of a watch, towards a book which lay on the counter.

We have talked about the heart feelings of a child, so it is only necessary to refer to them again, not for the joy they may bring to mothers, but because loyalty, fidelity, consideration for others, growing out of affection, may merge imperceptibly with feelings which are essentially moral and spiritual, to the immense advantage of both.

It fares, indeed, with us on this occasion as with the unwary traveller in some parts of Arabia the desert, whom the treacherous sands imperceptibly betray till he is overwhelmed and lost. In both cases the only safety is by withdrawing our feet the very first moment we perceive them sliding.

Very far off, almost visionary, like blacknesses held partly by the water, and partly by the vapours that muffled the sky, were two or three of the clumsy boats of the wild, almost savage natives who live on the fish of the lake. Almost imperceptibly they moved about their eerie business. "Just look at the duck, Ruby!" said Nigel, as she came out. "What a place for sport!"