It is therefore necessary that some exceptionally powerful cause should have intervened to transfigure reality in such a way as to make it appear under an aspect that is not really its own. — from The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life by Émile Durkheim
Pacific coast stretch he
Of them standing among them, one lifts to the light a west-bred face, To him the hereditary countenance bequeath'd both mother's and father's, His first parts substances, earth, water, animals, trees, Built of the common stock, having room for far and near, Used to dispense with other lands, incarnating this land, Attracting it body and soul to himself, hanging on its neck with incomparable love, Plunging his seminal muscle into its merits and demerits, Making its cities, beginnings, events, diversities, wars, vocal in him, Making its rivers, lakes, bays, embouchure in him, Mississippi with yearly freshets and changing chutes, Columbia, Niagara, Hudson, spending themselves lovingly in him, If the Atlantic coast stretch or the Pacific coast stretch, he stretching with them North or South, Spanning between them East and West, and touching whatever is between them, Growths growing from him to offset the growths of pine, cedar, hemlock, live-oak, locust, chestnut, hickory, cottonwood, orange, magnolia, Tangles as tangled in him as any canebrake or swamp, He likening sides and peaks of mountains, forests coated with northern transparent ice, Off him pasturage sweet and natural as savanna, upland, prairie, Through him flights, whirls, screams, answering those of the fish-hawk, mocking-bird, night-heron, and eagle, His spirit surrounding his country's spirit, unclosed to good and evil, Surrounding the essences of real things, old times and present times, Surrounding just found shores, islands, tribes of red aborigines, Weather-beaten vessels, landings, settlements, embryo stature and muscle, The haughty defiance of the Year One, war, peace, the formation of the Constitution, The separate States, the simple elastic scheme, the immigrants, The Union always swarming with blatherers and always sure and impregnable, The unsurvey'd interior, log-houses, clearings, wild animals, hunters, trappers, Surrounding the multiform agriculture, mines, temperature, the gestation of new States, Congress convening every Twelfth-month, the members duly coming up from the uttermost parts, Surrounding the noble character of mechanics and farmers, especially the young men, Responding their manners, speech, dress, friendships, the gait they have of persons who never knew how it felt to stand in the presence of superiors, The freshness and candor of their physiognomy, the copiousness and decision of their phrenology, The picturesque looseness of their carriage, their fierceness when wrong'd, The fluency of their speech, their delight in music, their curiosity, good temper and open-handedness, the whole composite make, The prevailing ardor and enterprise, the large amativeness, The perfect equality of the female with the male, the fluid movement of the population, The superior marine, free commerce, fisheries, whaling, gold-digging, Wharf-hemm'd cities, railroad and steamboat lines intersecting all points, Factories, mercantile life, labor-saving machinery, the Northeast, Northwest, Southwest, Manhattan firemen, the Yankee swap, southern plantation life, Slavery—the murderous, treacherous conspiracy to raise it upon the ruins of all the rest, On and on to the grapple with it—Assassin! — from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
panic could shake his
I knew well that Mr. Lucas was worth two or three million dollars in the best real estate, and inferred from the large balances to their credit with me that no mere panic could shake his credit; but, early on the morning of October 7th, my cousin, James M. Hoyt, came to me in bed, and read me a paragraph in the morning paper, to the effect that James H. Lucas & Co., of St. Louis, had suspended. — from Memoirs of General William T. Sherman — Complete by William T. (William Tecumseh) Sherman
present calculation still he
For, while he considered within himself that this was an old fellow of rare simplicity, that this was an opportunity to be improved, and that here might be money to be got beyond present calculation, still he compromised himself by no admission that his new engagement was at all out of his way, or involved the least element of the ridiculous. — from Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
poor country Shall have
But for all this, When I shall tread upon the tyrant's head, Or wear it on my sword, yet my poor country Shall have more vices than it had before, More suffer and more sundry ways than ever, By him that shall succeed. — from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
picturesque costume she had
Perhaps the strongest effect she made was as the voice of the Purity Association, when she delivered an address, in the picturesque costume she had abandoned, attacking measures contemplated by Government for the protection of the health of the Army in India. — from The Path of a Star by Sara Jeannette Duncan
pledge could she have
She would have felt justified in breaking that pledge could she have believed there was any hope of helping her father, but she knew there was none. — from Wyoming by Edward Sylvester Ellis
“Man Hob,” he said, speaking just the plain country speech he used to do at Ardarroch, before ever he went to the college of Edinburgh, “it’s an awfu’ thing that a man should care mair for the guid word of a lass than about the grace o’ God and the Covenanted Kirk of Scotland!” — from The Standard Bearer by S. R. (Samuel Rutherford) Crockett
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?