Mile

“ As men and horses were fresh, we rapidly put mile after mile behind us in the cool morning hours. A hurried breakfast as the sun came up from behind the distant Dragoons, and then began the dreary ride across the desolate stretch of hill and plain which lay between us and Hanging Rock, the point at which I hoped to bag our game. Mile after mile we jogged under the blazing Arizona sun, the rear of the little column hidden in the blinding alkali dust, which rose in clouds from the dry, parched earth. ”

“ For mile after mile, far as the eye can see, the earth is overlaid by a thick stratum of jagged limestone, so rough that no horse could traverse it, so sharp and flinty that a quarter of an hour's walking across it would cut to pieces the stoutest pair of boots. ”

“ Six miles, when every bend, every mile, may be the last. Turning and twisting between piles of rocks, running down like precipices to the water’s side, from which one could feel the drops of water as they splashed over our little craft, or when a great wave struck it and threw a volume of water into our laps. We felt almost inclined to shriek at the speed with which we were flying those rapids. ”

“ Most gaily. Like some sweep of beachway, blown
Empty by west-born winds, the tapering line
Of path and drive swelled up the rising ground
Toward the Arch, deserted, and I found
The most majestic mile in Europe mine! ”

“ On we sailed over the ocean of land for mile upon mile, each mile like the one before it and the one that followed, save only when we passed a little fleet of houses, like fishing boats at sea, or crossed an inconsequential wagon road, resembling the faintly discernible wake of some ship, long since out of sight. ”

“ The short English miles are delightful for walking. You are always pleased to find, every now and then, in how short a time you have walked a mile, though, no doubt, a mile is everywhere a mile, I walk but a moderate pace, and can accomplish four English miles in an hour. It used to take me pretty nearly the same time for one German mile. Now it is a pleasing exchange to find that in two hours I can walk eight miles. ”

“ A mile stood on end ceases to be a mile and becomes a nightmare. Trail miles, or those that stretch across the mountain tops, are not even related to the miles of straight, smooth highway of the lower levels. ”

“ If I am motoring and ask how far it is to my destination, I curse as an unmitigated booby the man who tells me it is three miles, and does not mention a six mile detour. It does me no good to be told that it is three miles if you walk. ”

“ A mile is a long way to run when the course is over a heavily wooded ridge and through a valley of poplar thickets. Hugh covered it in extraordinarily short time, although it seemed to him unnumbered hours. He was just coming, panting, up the last slope, when he met Dick, equally breathless, running toward him. ”

“ Mile after mile drags its slow length along, uncheered by any sign of human habitation. When now and then a solitary native, armed with gun or spear, is seen striding along the edge of the desert, he only seems to make the general solitude more apparent. ”

“ If we have never become acquainted with a mile by actually walking a mile, running a mile, riding a bicycle a mile, driving a horse a mile, or traveling a mile on a train, we might listen for a long time to someone tell how far a mile is, or state the distance from Chicago to Denver, without knowing much about it in any way except word definitions. ”

“ Mile after mile might one sit when roads were good, careful only to keep the pace at twelve miles an hour; by no means to alter the pull on the reins lest they should translate it into an order for full speed. With heads held high at the same angle, with legs rising from the ground at the same second of time, alike their extravagant action, their eager courage. ”

“ At a distance of a mile it halted and throwing out horns or wings surrounded the mountain, up the slopes of which it advanced in a thin circle, much as beaters do who are driving game to a certain point. ”

“ For long distances the units in the yard and metrical systems are respectively the mile and the kilomètre.
The mile has a definite meaning in our minds, being associated, from the days of youth, with the measured distances in race-courses, speed in walking, railway and steamer travel, length of surveyed lots—the same being in use among about 100,000,000 people.
For mechanical structures, the units are respectively the foot and the mètre. ”

“ Let it be supposed, that a computed mile contains a mile and a half, as was commonly found true in the mensuration of the English roads, and we shall then allot nearly twelve to a mile, which agrees much better with ocular observation. ”

“ Vast cane-fields of waving green stretched mile after mile on the right and on the left, making it seem incredible that a Food Commissioner need beg the sweet tooth to deny itself in the midst of such riotous plenty. ”

“ You may climb peaks in a railroad coach and see things as wonderful. But you are doing this thing yourself. Every mile is an achievement. And, after all, it is miraculously easy. The trails are good. The horses are steady and sure-footed. It is a triumph of endurance rather than of courage. ”

“ In other words, we accomplish two miles in fifteen seconds. Each of the eight cars, moving at the rate of a mile a minute, has contributed a quarter of a mile to our journey, and has done its work in fifteen seconds. ”

“ In a very natural fury they ran, shouting, to the end of their breath, before they grasped the fact that the car must be a good mile ahead of them, and adding at least three hundred yards a minute to that distance. ”

“ Each of such days is a mile-stone on the road of life, reminding us of the rapid rate at which we have been advancing on its journey, and approaching its close. It is true that in life's morning, these mile-stones appear to be farther apart than they do in later years ”

“ You will hear a delicate young man, who has just returned from a pedestrian tour, boast of having walked his "two thousand miles," just as if he had trailed a pedometer behind him, and had measured every inch of the road. Panoramas also, have a very elastic method of stretching out a mile, which cab-drivers would doubtlessly not object to adopt as their own particular standard of measurement. They talk very glibly of being "three miles long," whereas, if the distance came to be measured, it would probably turn out to be—like cabmen's distances generally—not more than half. ”

“ We shall fix the position of that spot by applying two factors, the distance that you traveled and the direction in which you were moving. The direction is given by the compass; and, as the horse seems to have kept up a remarkably even pace, we can take time as representing distance. You seem to have been traveling at about eight miles an hour, that is, roughly, a seventh of a mile in one minute. So if, on our chart, we take one inch as representing one minute, we shall be working with a scale of about seven inches to the mile. ”

“ What the deuce do you mean by a sea mile and a skilling? And how am I to compare two things neither of which I know anything about?”
“A regular traveller’s fault,” said the Parson. “There is not a book written that does not abound with these absurdities. Well, a skilling is a halfpenny in our money, and a sea mile is four of our miles, and a land mile eight, nearly.” ”

“ Sometimes the rate of inclination is expressed by stating the number of feet of rise or fall in a mile. In this way a gradient would be described as falling at the rate of 30 feet in a mile, rising at the rate of 20 feet in a mile, etc. Twenty feet to a mile is equal to 1 in 264. ”

“ The velocity attained of three and a half miles in three minutes may seem nothing to a locomotive engineer who is making up time; it might seem slow to a lover whose sweetheart was at the foot of the slide; to ordinary mortals a mile a minute is quite enough on such an incline. ”

“ Sometimes, when aflame with thirst, they toiled mile after mile, cheered by the expectation of reaching some spring, they found the Apaches had been there ahead of them and befouled it beyond all use for man or beast. ”

“ Solution.—A level mile takes 1⁄4 of an hour, up hill 1⁄3, down hill 1⁄6. Hence to go and return over the same mile, whether on the level or on the hill-side, takes 1⁄2 an hour. Hence in 6 hours they went 12 miles out and 12 back. If the 12 miles out had been nearly all level, they would have taken a little over 3 hours; if nearly all up hill, a little under 4. Hence 31⁄2 hours must be within 1⁄2 an hour of the time taken in reaching the peak; thus, as they started at 3, they got there within 1⁄2 an hour of 1⁄2 past 6.
[78]
Twenty-seven answers have come in. ”

“ But, finally, the proper situation was discovered, and after the title had been searched — whether for smuggled goods or concealed weapons I have not the most remote idea — I found myself in a position to become proprietor of three acres of land, of which, to my thinking, the most dazzling attraction was the fact that the nearest neighbour was a mile away. However, I may make a note, in passing, of a paradox which I was very shortly to discover. It is this. A mile is the most elastic measurement in existence. ”

“ More than once he stumbled and fell, and it was all he could do at times to regain his feet. "It's no fun to be afoot on the long range," he soliloquized. "A mile seems three times as long as when on horseback." ”

“ The Scotch wee bit is nearly equal to their mile, and a mile with them is almost double the distance of an English measured mile. However, I enquired at the village, and was told it was not so much as one mile; nearly which I walked, and met a man with a cart loaded with hay; the driver told me he believed it might be a mile and a wee bit; another Highlandman soon came in my way. "How far is it to the fall of the Lochy?" ”

“ There’s nothing very spectacular about a mile race. It is rather a test of endurance than of speed when compared to the middle distances and sprints, and as the time for the distance is likely to be somewhere around five minutes the pace is not fast enough to be inspiring to the spectators. ”

“ Whether the road be one mile or one hundred miles in length, the effect of diurnal rotation is the same; and, whether the road be long or short, the tendency to run off, as you cross a given parallel at a stated rate of speed, is the same; for the tendency to fly off the track is in proportion to the speed of the train, and not at all in proportion to the length of the road. ”

“ A mile in four minutes is too fast, [67] and if you go a mile in three minutes and ten seconds you become liable for all consequences. [68] Even where a man was driving at only a smartish pace and ran over a donkey he had to pay for it. [69] But one may drive rapidly on an open country road where the chance of collision is slight.”
“Look out, Eldon!” cried my gentle spouse. ”

“ Five thousand five hundred—"
"Are you squatting there and trying to tell me that this lake is over a mile deep!"
"Look for yourself!" he said in an unsteady voice. "Here is the tape! You can read, can't you? Six thousand feet—and running evenly. Six thousand five hundred!... Seven thousand! Seven thousand five—"
"It can't be!" I protested.
But it was true. Astounded, I continued to adjust the hydroscope to a range incredible, turning the screw to focus at a mile and a half, at two miles, at two and a quarter, a half, three-quarters, three miles, three miles and a quarter—click! ”

“ For what reason have I this vast range and circuit, some square miles of unfrequented forest, for my privacy, abandoned to me by men? My nearest neighbor is a mile distant, and no house is visible from any place but the hill-tops within half a mile of my own. I have my horizon bounded by woods all to myself; a distant view of the railroad where it touches the pond on the one hand, and of the fence which skirts the woodland road on the other. But for the most part it is as solitary where I live as on the prairies. It is as much Asia or Africa as New England. ”

“ It is my opinion that nothing in the world is more enjoyable than an automobile roadside luncheon. [Pg 41] One does not need to lug a heavy basket mile after mile until a suitable place is found, and compromise at last because the flesh rebels. With a car, a mile, two miles, five miles, are matters of a few minutes. You run along leisurely until you reach the brook, the shade, the seclusion that invites you. ”

“ Thus, half a mile below the Stone Bridge is Lewis's Ford; half a mile below that, Ball's Ford; half a mile below that, Island Ford; one and one-half miles below that, Mitchell's Ford—one mile below that. ”

“ If the diameter of the sun were to shrink by one mile all round, this would mean that all the millions of tons in the [Pg 27] outer one-mile thickness would have a straight drop of one mile towards the centre. ”

“ A mile and a half could easily be covered in that time, and, by a strong walker, even two, while the dinner would taste twice as good for the exercise. Another mile, or even half a mile, might be walked at supper-time, the pace always being kept up. ”

“ A person travelling may ascertain his rate of walking by the aid of a slight string with a piece of lead at one end, and the use of a seconds watch; the string being knotted at distances of 44 feet, the 120th part of an English mile, and bearing the same proportion to a mile that half a minute bears to an hour. If the traveller, when going at his usual rate, drops the lead, and suffers the string to slip through his hand, the number of knots which pass in half a minute indicate the number of miles he walks in an hour. ”

“ Till 'e broke the ten-mile record, same as I already said.
Ten mile in twenty minutes! 'E done it, sir. That's true.
The only time we ever found what that 'ere 'orse could do.
Some say it wasn't 'ardly fair, and the papers made a fuss,
But 'e broke the ten-mile record, and that's good enough for us.
You see that 'orse's tail, sir? You don't! no more do we,
Which really ain't surprisin', for 'e 'as no tail to see;
That engine wore it off 'im before master made it stop,
And all the road was litter'd like a bloomin' barber's shop. ”