Mrs. Fisher said nothing at the moment; but presently in the drawing-room, when they were gathered round the wood fire—she had discovered there was no fireplace in her own sitting-room, and therefore she would after all be forced, so long as the evenings remained cool, to spend them in the other room—presently, while Francesca was handing coffee round and Lady Caroline was poisoning the air with smoke, Mrs. Wilkins, looking relieved and pleased, said: "Well, if nobody really wants that room, and wouldn't use it anyhow, I shall be very glad if Mellersh may have it." — from The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim
CHAPTER XXXI—'SHOULD AULD ACQUAINTANCE BE FORGOT?' 'Show not that manner, and these features all, The serpent's cunning, and the sinner's fall?' C RABBE . — from North and South by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
aboard a big fine steamboat
When he stepped aboard a big fine steamboat, he entered a new and marvelous world: chimney-tops cut to counterfeit a spraying crown of plumes—and maybe painted red; pilot-house, hurricane deck, boiler-deck guards, all garnished with white wooden filigree work of fanciful patterns; gilt acorns topping the derricks; gilt deer-horns over the big bell; gaudy symbolical picture on the paddle-box, possibly; big roomy boiler-deck, painted blue, and furnished with Windsor armchairs; inside, a far-receding snow-white 'cabin;' porcelain knob and oil-picture on every stateroom door; curving patterns of filigree-work touched up with gilding, stretching overhead all down the converging vista; big chandeliers every little way, each an April shower of glittering glass-drops; lovely rainbow-light falling everywhere from the colored glazing of the skylights; the whole a long-drawn, resplendent tunnel, a bewildering and soul-satisfying spectacle! — from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain
When I, as a boy, first saw the mouth of the Missouri River, it was twenty-two or twenty-three miles above St. Louis, according to the estimate of pilots; the wear and tear of the banks have moved it down eight miles since then; and the pilots say that within five years the river will cut through and move the mouth down five miles more, which will bring it within ten miles of St. Louis. — from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain
across a ballroom floor swinging
Don't hang on anyone for support, and don't stand or walk with your chest held in, and your hips forward, in imitation of a reversed letter S. Don't walk across a ballroom floor swinging your arms. — from Etiquette by Emily Post
And as by fury stirred
He flung from the magician suddenly, And, as by fury stirred and jealous pain, He after mighty plaint and mighty woe Resolved anew to eastern realms to go. — from Orlando Furioso by Lodovico Ariosto
In Central Africa, it is said that often have wedge-shaped, highly polished objects of stone, described as "axes," been found sticking in trees that have been struck by lightning—or by what seemed to be lightning. — from The Book of the Damned by Charles Fort
After a few days of the warm, moist greenhouse temperature which, influenced by the Gulf Stream, comes from the south-west up the Severn and Avon valleys, between the Malverns and the Cotswolds, and which brings out the plum blossom on thousands of acres, a bitter frost sometimes occurs, when the destruction of the tender bloom is a tragedy in the Vale, while the Hills escape owing to their more backward development. — from Grain and Chaff from an English Manor by Arthur Herbert Savory
This tab, called Hiding in Plain Sight,
shows you passages from notable books where your word is accidentally (or perhaps deliberately?)
spelled out by the first letters of consecutive words.
Why would you care to know such a thing? It's not entirely clear to us, either, but
it's fun to explore! What's the longest hidden word you can find? Where is your name hiding?