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More "Fathom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I angled down the mountain toward the stream. Our arrival coincided with that of the canoe. It was of the Ojibway three-fathom pattern, and contained a half-dozen packs, a sledge-dog, with whom Deuce at once opened guarded negotiations, an old Indian, a squaw, and a child of six or eight. We exchanged brief greetings. Then I sat on a stump and watched ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... the meaning of secession and the Civil War which followed it, we must fathom the thoughts and feelings of the opposing parties. Let us suppose two representative spokesmen to state ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... tell. Travelling eastward by land there is no such descent, and in this Mediterranean sea of ours one can sail as easily from Cadiz to Egypt as from Egypt to Cadiz. There is a divine alchemy in it which I cannot fathom, but the ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... in the highest degree. Possibly she loves you deeply, only you do not believe it. Gauged by a woman's love, many men love, marry, and die, without even approximating the real grand passion themselves, or comprehending that which they have inspired, for no one but a woman can fathom a woman's love." ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... between the English fathom and the French toise, as determined between the first astronomers of both countries, is ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... the stars on high, Nathless we read your fortunes true; The stars may hide in the upper sky, But without glass we fathom you. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... is only discoverable by chance. A day came, however, at length when Julie flashed out before her aunt's astonished eyes into a complete forgetfulness of her marriage; she recovered the wild spirits of careless girlhood. Mme. de Listomere then and there made up her mind to fathom the depths of this soul, for its exceeding simplicity was as inscrutable ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... interested," he said mendaciously, "though I confess I do not quite fathom your intentions. And, by the way, I should like to have a few words with you on another matter, if Mr. Reuben would not mind waiting for me in the square just a ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... pointed to an abandonment of East Tennessee by the enemy, but it was hard for us to believe that the sudden retreat of Longstreet, after his announced intention to attack Knoxville, was not under orders which indicated a plan we ought to fathom. We had heard of his first purpose at many places on our road, for it is almost impossible to keep the people of the country from learning the destination of a moving column, and now the inhabitants who remained at Morristown were aware that Longstreet's ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... that he puzzled them. Even The Sky Pilot, the most astute and intelligent of them all, was at a loss to fathom The Oskaloosa Kid. Innocence and unsophistication flaunted their banners in almost every act and speech of The Oskaloosa Kid. The youth reminded him in some ways of members of a Sunday school which had flourished in the dim vistas of ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... his men, we weighed, but by a sudden squall of wind having split our foresail, we with difficulty cleared the rocks by means of our boats, bore away for a sandy bay on the south side of the lagoon, and anchored in ten fathom. The next morning we got under weigh, but it blowing hard at W. by N. with a great swell, put into a small bay again, well sheltered by a ledge of rocks without us. At this time it was thought necessary to send the barge away back to Cheap's bay for some spare canvas, which was imagined ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... my dear, explicable but unexplained. The most formidable men are her friends, and why? Nobody dares to fathom the mystery. Then is this person the lion ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... know where the rope was got, and doubt if I much cared. It was not that which gravelled me, but whether, now that we had it, it would serve our turn. Its length, indeed, we made a shift to fathom out; but who was to tell us how that length compared with the way we had to go? Day after day, there would be always some of us stolen out to the Devil's Elbow and making estimates of the descent, whether by a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... back in his chair and listened, his face a study of perplexity and interest. Now and then he lifted his drooping lids and shot a quick, searching glance at the witness, as if seeking to fathom the thing that he had covered—the motive for Isom Chase's act. It was such an inadequate story, yet what there was of ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... got no breath to waste in hollering," he panted. "Why, there's a good fathom and a half or two fathom o' water under her keel, and if I slack out down she'll go. Wants a couple o' boats to back in, one on each side, and get a rope under her thwarts. They could get her ashore then. Oh, dear! oh, dear! oh, dear! For him to leave me in charge, and then come back and find I've ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... 'I cannot fathom it,' said the headman at last to the priest. 'How readest thou this talk?' The lama, his tale told, was silently ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... pistols to his bosom and buttoned up. He was mounted in a few moments, and pressing slowly forward in pursuit. He had his own plans which we will not attempt to fathom; but we fear we shall be compelled to admit that he was not sufficiently a gentleman to scruple at turning scout in a time of peace (though, with him, by the way, and thus he justified, he is in pursuit ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... float, he swam for his life, and with such mighty strokes that he felt little of that icy cold. Down he was swept—now the lip of the fall was but three fathoms away on his left, and already the green water boiled beneath him. A fathom from him was the corner of Sheep-saddle. If he may grasp it, all is well; if not, ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... that last remark of Angelica's, twinkled a glance at his Father Confessor which had an effect on the latter that made itself apparent in the severity of his reply: "The ways of the Lord are inscrutable," he said, "and it is presumptuous for mortals, however great their station, to attempt to fathom them." ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Barry; thank God it is all over!" she said, at the end, "and we know," she went on, with one of her rare revelations of the spiritual deeps that lay so close to the surface of her life, "we know that she is safe and satisfied at last, in His care." For a moment her absent eyes seemed to fathom far spaces. Barry abruptly ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... Two things I never did, Mrs. Dr. dear, were write letters and read politics. Yet here I am doing both regular and I find there is something in politics after all. Whatever Woodrow Wilson means I cannot fathom but I am hoping I will puzzle ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... expiring head, in token that His death scattered our darkness and poured day on our sad night. The solemn silence was broken at last by that loud cry, the utterance of strangely blended consciousness of possession of God and of abandonment by Him, the depths of which we can never fathom. But this we know: that our sins, not His, wove the veil which separated Him from His God. Such separation is the real death. Where cold analysis is out of place, reverent gratitude may draw near. Let us adore, for what we can understand ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... and the storm, that cost so many tears, were essential to the harmony of a glorious system, a perfect plan, and that seeming sorrow was at last the occasion of unspeakable joy. Let no man say that this or that law, or operation of nature, were better changed, until he can fathom the designs of God; till he can create a planet, and send it on its everlasting round; till he can place a star in the firmament; till he can breathe upon a statue, the workmanship of his own hands, and be obeyed ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... the composer of four other Shakspearian lyrics, a fact unknown to Mr. Collier, when he wrote the article in the Shakspeare Papers: 'Where the bee sucks,' 'Full fathom five,' 'Lawn as white as driven snow,' and 'From the fair Lavinian shore.' They are all printed in the author's Cheerfull Ayres or Ballads, Oxford, 1660. We have now evidence from this work, that Wilson was the original composer of the music to one of Shakspeare's ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various
... good at the responses, and Sam Buzza, his friend, whom few Trojans excelled in casting glances at the female congregation. Then, most gorgeous and bravest of all, the Admiral: he wore again his gold-laced coat, but the cocked-hat rested underneath the seat, and none could fathom the import of his gaze. By him sat his three daughters, a-row, in straight-backed dresses of like cut and colour, and peeped over their prayer-books; and Mrs. Buzza, timorous, in bright green satin. But of the throng of Trojan men and women, not ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... circles in them where the camping fires have been lit. I did not mind that evidence of life, but I did not like the cast-off clothing, draggled hats, coats, skirts, and boots that lay about. I never can fathom the mystery of tramps' wardrobes. They are never well-dressed exactly, but wherever they encamp they appear to discard clothing enough for two or three persons, clothing which, though I should not personally like to make ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... was enveloped in a drizzling cloud, which arose from a vast cascade that, dashing, thundered against the rocks below my feet. On one side a perpetual torrent opened to my view a yawning abyss, which my eyes could hardly fathom with safety; sometimes I was lost in the obscurity of a hanging wood, and then was greatly astonished with the sudden opening of ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... everlasting life" (John iii. 16). I have never been able to preach from that text. I have often thought I would; but it is so high that I can never climb to its height; I have just quoted it and passed on. Who can fathom the depth of those words: "God so loved the world?" We can never scale the heights of His love or fathom its depths. Paul prayed that he might know the height, the depth, the length, and the breadth, of the love of God; but ...
— The Way to God and How to Find It • Dwight Moody
... each wailing world; weigh well the mighty impulse soon to be given, for out of the myriads of directions, and the myriads of impulsive forces, there comes but a single combination that will secure the perpetuity of your complex scheme. In vain does the bewildered finite spirit attempt to fathom this mighty depth. In vain does it seek to resolve the stupendous problem. It turns away, and while endued with omnipotent power, exclaims, 'Give to me infinite wisdom, or relieve me from the impossible task!'"-0. M. ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... to within a few yards and floated stationary, while some sort of communication was exchanged between the two. I could not fathom the method used, but the commander of our craft clamped what looked like a pair of headphones against his body and plugged the end of a wire leading from them into his instrument board. From time to time various colored lights glowed ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... shrieks of yours—and the delicious Thank God, we are safe, which always followed when the topmost stair, conquered, let in the first light of the whole cheerful theatre down beneath us—I know not the fathom line that ever touched a descent so deep as I would be willing to bury more wealth in than Croesus had, or the great Jew R—— is supposed to have, to purchase it. And now do just look at that merry ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... Another had climbed over the tender and ordered the runner to hold up. All this was regular programme, as I had explained to Miss Cullen, but here had been a variation which I had never heard of being done, and of which I couldn't fathom the object. When the train had been stopped, the man on the tender had ordered the fireman to dump his fire, and now it was lying in the road-bed and threatening to burn through the ties; so my first order was to extinguish ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... Here are found three basins—results of erosion, most likely—that are described as natural bath-tubs. The middle and largest of these pools is partly filled with silt, probably occluding the entrance to a cavern which formerly opened into it, a fathom or so below the water-surface. This cave was the hiding-place of a native woman whose father had discovered her love for one of Ponce de Leon's soldiers. He forbade her to have anything to do with the enemies of his country, ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... to be diminished. My suspicions were beginning to be roused. I began to think that he had told me a falsehood; but he looked up at this instant, and a bright manly smile on his deep purposeful countenance, reassured me. I felt that there was some policy in the business which was not for me then to fathom. The cards were cut. A box of dice was also in ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... they had to pay close attention to get his meaning. Myengeen listened with a face as inscrutable as Imbrie's own. At the end he nodded with an expression of approval, and bent a queer look on Stonor that the trooper was unable to fathom. ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... and pass with the water into a vessel placed below to receive them. This water, now strongly impregnated, is boiled till the salt adheres in a thick crust to the bottom and sides of the vessel. In burning a square fathom of firewood a skilful person procures about five gallons of salt. What is thus made has so considerable a mixture of the salt of the wood that it soon dissolves, and cannot be carried far into the country. The coarsest grain ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... few masqueraders, however, whose fictitious identity was shrouded in mystery. No one could fathom the significance of a certain tall figure, dressed in rags, who stopped short in her tracks at frequent intervals, and, producing a needle and thread, sewed industriously at her tattered garments. A black-robed ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... of the superior knowledge of the sex possessed by Temple, for I could not fathom the meaning of coquette; but he had sisters. Temple and I walked the grounds together, mutually declaring how much we would forfeit for Heriot's sake. By this time my Sunday visits to Julia had been interdicted: I was plunged, as it were, in the pit of the school, and my dreams ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a strange man. The posse thought him unusually queer just then. His eyes seemed dulled with a peculiar faint, bluish film. His manner was over-deliberate. There was something back of it all that they could not fathom. Moreover, the place was darkened. Some one had hung blankets over the windows. The deputies—four of them—followed The ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... deep mystery here that I cannot fathom. In the first place, if they had really meant you to remain ignorant of the place at which the episodes described by you occurred, they would scarcely have dropped you at ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... things, for he is ready to go mad. He would not have given that girl for all Caesar's treasures, and she fled. What kind of love is that which dreads delight and gives pain? Who can understand it? Who can fathom it? Were it not for the hope that he should find her, he would sink a sword in himself. Love surrenders; it does not take away. There were moments at the house of Aulus when he himself believed in near happiness, but now he knows that she hated him, that she hates him, and will die with hatred ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... declared they had seen it in the distance) they would not have been allowed to approach it. This fact was the one point that chiefly dwelt in her mind—a secret of science which she puzzled her brain to fathom. What could be the unseen force that guarded the city?—girding it round with an unbreakable band from all exterior attack? A million bombs could not penetrate it,—so had said the Voice travelling to her ears on the mysterious ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... perfect and the most luminous—being the most persistent and the most inevitable—remains the flimsiest of our ideas and the only one that is backward? How should we know the one power which we never looked in the face? How could it profit by flashes kindled only to help us escape it? To fathom its abysses, we wait until the most enfeebled, the most disordered moments of our life arrive. We do not think of death until we have no longer the strength, I will not say, to think, but even to breathe. A man returning among us from another century ...
— Death • Maurice Maeterlinck
... greeted him. For half an hour after that he cursed himself for not being as clever as Gregson. He knew that there was a change in Eileen Brokaw, a change which nature had not worked alone, as she wished him to believe. Then, and at supper, he tried to fathom her. At times he detected the metallic ring of what was unreal and make-believe in what she said; at other times she seemed stirred by emotions which added immeasurably to the sweetness and truthfulness of her voice. She was nervous. He found her eyes frequently seeking her father's ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... it impossible to fathom the sensations of the man, and their common desire for speed bewildered her more. She was relieved when the train was lightened of him. Soon the skirts of red vapour were visible, and when the guard took poor Braintop's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the Americans was Cyrus Field, the energetic promoter of the Atlantic Telegraph, then making (I think he said) his thirtieth transit within five years. He was certainly entitled to the freedom of the ocean, if intimate acquaintance with every fathom of its depth and breadth could establish a claim. It rather surprised me, afterwards, to see such science and experience yield so easily to the common weakness of seafaring humanity. Mr. Field told ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... Sussex aside to Raleigh. "The devil aids him surely; for all that would sink another ten fathom deep seems but to make him float the more easily. Had a ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... the tempest, and the heavy sea, which broke as high as the fore-yard, death appeared inevitable. There was only one hope left, and that was, that, should the tide change and take us under our lee-beam, it might possibly set us off on the Nine-fathom bank, which is situated at a distance of twelve miles north-northwest, off Boulogne harbor. On the event of reaching this bank, the safety of the ship and lives of the crew depended,—as it was determined there to try the anchors, for there was no possibility of ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... of his extremities. When he was on his feet Droom was more than six feet tall; as he sat in the low-backed, office chair he looked to be less than five feet, over all. What became of that lank expanse of bone and cuticle when he sat down was one of the mysteries that not even James Bansemer could fathom. ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... cannot infer with plainness and certainty the precise means and method by which we can discriminate our friends in heaven need be no obstacle to believing the fact itself; for there are millions of undoubted truths whose conditions and ways of operation we can nowise fathom. Upon the whole, then, we conclude that we cannot by our mere understandings decide with certainty the question concerning future recognition; but we are justified in trusting to the accuracy of that doctrine, since it rests safely with the free ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... dollars, the same having been paid in to your credit. Each year, while the child remains in your charge, the same will in like manner be placed to your credit at the same bank. It may be as well to state, further, that all attempt to fathom whatever of mystery may attach to this affair will ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... may he, when Slid would fain exult, throw up his great arms, or toss with many a fathom of wandering hair the mighty head of Slid, and cry aloud tumultuous dirges of shipwreck, and feel through all his being the crashing might of Slid, and sway the sea. Then doth the Sea, like venturous ...
— The Gods of Pegana • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... but been his plaything, he reverently discovered the mother in his little wife; and "when he saw the big pupils looking at the baby so intently that they seemed to be looking into the future", he realised that there were depths in her eyes after all; depths more profound than he could fathom for all his drama and religion. And now all his old love, his dear old love, burst into fresh flames, and there was something new added to it, which he had dimly divined, but ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... his pipe in silence for a few minutes, blew the smoke out in clouds, and looked at it as though searching for something, and there was a serious look on his face, as though he was trying to fathom some mystery, while the redheaded boy was looking at himself in a hand mirror to see if the freckles on his nose were any smaller since he had been using some of his mother's toilet powder to remove them. Finally ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... another and up and down, and they wondered. For the ways of elephants are beyond the wit of any man, black or white, to fathom. ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... resolution, Badang said to the hantou, "Give me the gift of physical strength; let me be strong enough to tear down and to uproot the trees; that is, that I may tear down, with one hand, great trees, a fathom ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... mystery, La Corne; I cannot fathom it. But there is one more danger to guard against," said the Governor meditatively, "and we have sorrow enough ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Ralph could not fathom the possible motive of the stranger, who apparently was somehow interested in his doings. When they started out on their regular run, he told Fogg what Torchy had imparted to him. The fireman reflected speculatively over ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... his side, to judge by his pale cheeks, expected a rude handling, and when he found that I made no movement towards him, a look of relief crossed his countenance, followed by an expression which at the moment I was unable to fathom. Then, as by mutual consent, and without having exchanged a word, we turned our backs on each other and ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... She liked it better because her very own brother had planned it for her. She looked over some of the books and above his name he had written—"For my Sister Marguerite." And she was glad with a sense of mystery she did not care to fathom that her mother's room was between her ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... is not given to a humble man like myself, occupying a position of no authority, to fathom what may be in the minds of those great Princes of the Church, the Archbishops. In effect they rule the country, and it is possible that they prefer to place on the throne a drunken nonentity who will offer no impediment to their ambitions, rather than to elect a moral young man who might ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... "blunder" or "crime" was which had aroused the anger of Augustus, and every effort to bring into high relief the innocence of Ovid's personal life and his loyalty to the imperial family simply made them more cognisant of a mystery they could not fathom. Access to Caesar was easy to some of them, and through Marcia, Maximus's wife, they had hoped to reach Livia. But these high personages remained inscrutable and relentless. At times it seemed as if even Tiberius, although ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... had shown no signs of having profited by the telepathic powers of Fran and his companions. No spies were seized. A submarine installation that could lob missiles into New York from the edge of the hundred-fathom line was not depth-bombed. There were other failures to act on information obtained through the children. No nation could imagine another allowing spies to operate ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster
... burden is a broken nose and a facial appearance strangely inferior to the look of David Lockwin, the orator. Robert Chalmers need not disguise himself. He will never be identified. That broken nose is a distortion that no detective could fathom. Those scarlet fimbrications under the skin proclaim the toper. Those missing teeth complete a picture ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... tide current, as in the southern anchorage, we should never have found her more, or found her stranded beyond help. As it was, there was little amiss, beyond the wreck of the mainsail. Another anchor was got ready, and dropped in a fathom and a half of water. We all pulled round again to Rum Cove, the nearest point for Ben Gunn's treasure-house; and then Gray, single-handed, returned with the gig to the Hispaniola, where he was to ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... custom of the country to eat off the floor and sit upon nothing. A pot to cook victuals in is about all we need in that way. But how we are to get anything to cook in it is one mystery, and" (clacking his tongue) "what we are going to drink is another, neither of which I can fathom. For, look you, Senor, if one may judge of men's characters by their faces or of their means by their habitations, we may dance our legs off ere ever these Moors will bestow a penny piece upon us, and as for their sour milk, I'd as lief drink ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... time—I might have pretended to be ill, but my brain was so weary with work and sorrow, and so occupied, what was left of it, in trying to fathom Merchison's meaning, that I let the precious moment slip. At length he was standing close by me, and to me his face was like the face of an avenging angel, and his eyes shone like ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... young mind no manner of harm, but gave it a healthy impetus and stirred it up to prophetic activity. For what does it matter if the child, when it hears of original sin, or of death and the devil, forms a conception or a fantastic image of those profound symbols? To fathom them is the task of our whole lifetime, but the developing man is warned at the very beginning of an all-disposing higher power, and I doubt if the same end could be reached by early initiation into the mysteries of the rule of three ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... sloop cautiously for this opening. One of the men constantly heaved the lead and cried the soundings as the ship progressed. The pirate chief kept to the left of the channel and finally passed through into a wide lagoon, with a scant fathom to spare at the shallowest place. The Fortune entered without difficulty, but the deeply-laden Francis grounded midway in and had to wait several hours for ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... perhaps of heterodoxy, and perilous to be adopted by such as can not fathom it thoroughly. But if there be no germ of truth therein, it were better for some of us that we had ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... of the thoughts that surged through Van's mind as he and Bob settled themselves into their places on the train and began the attempt to fathom the reams of directions Mr. Blake had sent them; pages and pages there were of what to do and what not to do on the long trip, the letter closing with ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... But she wasted no time, throwing off her jacket with a quick twist of her wrist. Later she might fathom the tortuosities of her tyrant's mind. All she knew now was that she might dance. With whom was a ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... over the Republic during the winter of 1860-'61. The impending danger was that war would break out before Lincoln could be inaugurated. Such secrecy was observed by the Republican leaders that even Horace Greeley could not fathom their intentions. Late in December John A. Andrew and George L. Stearns went to Washington to survey the ground for themselves, and the latter wrote to William Robinson, "The watchword is, keep quiet." He probably ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... Ethiopian tribes have been the enemies and oppressors of that Israel whom they at last acknowledge for the dwelling-place of God, and enemies of that Jehovah before whom they finally bow down, he feels that he has no measuring-line to fathom the divine purposes, and bows his face to the ground in reverent contemplation with that word upon his lips: 'Verily Thou art a God that hidest Thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour.' It is a parallel to the apostolic words, 'O the depths ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... citizen. The judge, Ward Hunt, did not promise well, for he had only recently been appointed to the bench through the influence of his friend and townsman, Roscoe Conkling, the undisputed leader of the Republican party in New York and a bitter opponent of woman suffrage. She tried to fathom this small, white-haired, colorless judge upon whose fairness so much depended. Prim and stolid, he sat before her, faultlessly dressed in a suit of black broadcloth, his neck wound with an immaculate white neckcloth. He ruled against her at once, refusing to let her ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... rubbish with which they were stocked. All the while I was innocently plagiarising that fateful walk of Browning's round the Riccardi Palace in Florence, the day when he bought for a lira the Romana homocidiorum. The world knows what was the outcome of Browning's purchase, but it will probably never fathom the full effect of mine. ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... mile, in order to avoid a small shoal of coral rocks, on which there is but two fathoms and a half of water. The best anchoring is on the eastern side of the bay, where there is sixteen and fourteen fathom upon an oosy bottom. The shore of the bay is a fine sandy beach, behind which runs a river of fresh water, so that any number of ships may water here without incommoding each other; but the only wood for firing, upon the whole island, is that of fruit-trees, which must be purchased of the natives, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... his face as plainly as if it had been painted on a sign-board. I knew something which he did not know; I was trying to get something which was to be kept a secret from him. If I could be put out of the way he probably thought he might have some sort of a chance. I could not fathom the man's mind, but that's the way it looked ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... commander as to be able to see through the intentions and designs of his adversary. And because it is hard to come at this knowledge directly, the more credit is due to him who reaches it by conjecture. Yet sometimes it is easier to fathom an enemy's designs than to construe his actions; and not so much those actions which are done at a distance from us, as those done in our presence and under our very eyes. For instance, it has often happened that when a battle has lasted till nightfall, the winner has ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... return on the following day to see it finished: or absolutely know that unseen damsel to be Rose Jocelyn. And if he waited, it was only to hear her sweet voice once again, and go for ever. As far as he could fathom his hopes, they were that Rose would not see him: but the hopes of youth ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... think we have seen the last of our troubles, though why he should take a gloomy view of the situation is more than I can fathom, since every one else on board considers that we have had a miraculous escape, and are sure now to reach the ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... believe we are able to fathom some of the ideas which passed through our heroine's mind that bright morning. We can take it for granted that she was very happy; that the future looked very promising, though she was impressed by the responsibility of becoming a ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... was one of those apparently insane remarks of the doctor's which no sane nor sober man could fathom or see a reason for—except ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... Nightmare did; till the Soul is nigh choked out of him, and only a kind of Digestive, Mechanic life remains. In Earth and in Heaven he can see nothing but Mechanism; has fear for nothing else, hope in nothing else: the world would indeed grind him to pieces; but cannot he fathom the Doctrine of Motives, and cunningly compute these, and mechanise them to grind ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... lies a land, A wonderful land that the winds blow over, And none may fathom nor understand The charm it holds for the restless rover; A great grey chaos — a land half made, Where endless space is and no life stirreth; And the soul of a man will recoil afraid From the sphinx-like visage that Nature weareth. But old Dame Nature, though scornful, craves Her ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... be off, Mother," said Anthony, who although vaguely aware that she was endeavouring to create an atmosphere of vacuity, could not fathom ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... Baalbec ever plunge into its forests—or, if they do, they never come back. Indeed, so great is the terror caused by the evil reputation of the mountain that fathers, on their death-beds, pray their sons never to try to fathom its mysteries. But in spite of its ill-fame, a certain number of young men every year announce their intention of visiting it and, as we have said, are never ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... to yourself," she whispered, "the dearest treasure of your soul." And she looked at him with eyes full of passions which he could not fathom, but among them he saw terror. And with great tenderness he drew her once more to his heart, putting his strong and steady arms around her like a shield, and ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... wait, ah! forever I can wait; Forever? I am brave: Time can not fathom a love so great— It waits beyond ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... and Count Fathom are both equally admirable in their way. Perhaps the former is the most pleasant gossiping novel that ever was written; that which gives the most pleasure with the least effort to the reader. It is quite as amusing as going the journey could have been; and we have just as good an idea of what happened ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... of so much money. He had learned of Mrs. Amos purchasing the ranch and paying for it in gold, and wondered at the time. Then he thought that perhaps Amos was trying to throw him off the purchase of the mine in order to secure the property himself. There was a mystery somewhere he could not fathom. ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... to joke," answered Hedin bitterly. "That's a thing I've never been able to fathom, why you always joke in the face of a serious situation, and then turn around and raise hell over some trivial matter that don't amount to a ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... Where could she have got that name? Well, I make no doubt, Ursula, that you are quite as good as she, and she of her namesake of ancient Rome; but there is a mystery in this same virtue, Ursula, which I cannot fathom! how a thief and a liar should be able, or indeed willing, to preserve her virtue is what I don't understand. You confess that you are very fond of gold. Now, how is it that you don't barter your virtue for gold sometimes? I am a philosopher, Ursula, and like to know ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... this, but try to fathom it. The more he thought of it, the clearer it became: ABSALOM'S HISTORY WAS HIS OWN. He began with rebellion. Naturally rebellion is the first step in a course which leads one from the highway—leads to passion and its ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... the fury of the wind as for the vehemence of Martin Luther." The Psalmist calls upon the forces of nature: "Praise the Lord, fire, and hail; snow and vapors; stormy wind fulfilling His word." (Ps. 148, 7. 8.) God has a mission that our philosophy does not fathom for the mad hurry and destruction of the whirlwind. How silly it would be to criticize a cyclone because it is not a zephyr! We can imagine a scene like this: The battle of Gettysburg is in progress and a gentle lady is permitted to ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... Lest ye chance murder one of God's high priests, Spare his thrice-wretched tribe! Believe me, sirs, Who have seen various lands, searched various hearts, I have yet to touch that undiscovered shore, Have yet to fathom that impossible soul, Where a true benefit's forgot; where one Slight deed of common kindness sown yields not As now, as here, abundant crop of love. Every good act of man, our Talmud says, Creates an angel, hovering by his side. Oh! what a shining host, great Duke, shall guard Thy ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... 6 1/2 feet long, all of which may be readily connected, forming in a short space of time a ladder of any required height; a canvas sheet, with 10 or 12 handles of rope round the edge of it for the purpose of a fire-escape; one 10-fathom and one 14-fathom piece of 2 1/2-inch rope; six lengths of hose, each 40 feet long, 2 branch-pipes, one 2 1/2 feet, and the other from 4 to 6 feet long, with one spare nose-pipe; two 6-feet lengths of suction-pipe, a flat rose, stand-cock, ...
— Fires and Firemen • Anon.
... before; and his servant was waiting for him. In less than no time he had changed his clothes. Immediately he went back to his carriage, and went in search of the man, who, he thought, was most likely to be able to fathom this mystery. ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... by, one of my corrections in the fair copy sent yesterday has dived into the bathos some sixty fathom— ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... care, took a seat, although not invited to do so. He looked cold and calm, but there was an excited gleam in his large eyes which showed that his calmness masked some emotion, the cause of which Cuthbert could not fathom. "I have come to see you about young ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... as it was then! So transparent that we saw great fish swimming about, full fathom five under us. A monstrous shark drifted lazily past, his dorsal fin now and then cutting the surface like a knife and glistening like polished steel, his brace of pilot-fish darting hither and thither, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... powerless to lift the veil biding the early history of humanity. Will it ever be so? Or will the day yet dawn when the veil will be rent asunder at last? Time alone can solve this question, which is one of those secrets of the future as difficult to fathom as those ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... the one measure, which was kept at Winchester, should be observed throughout the realm. Most nations have regulated the standard of measures of length by comparison with the parts of the human body; as the palm, the hand, the span, the foot, the cubit, the ell, (ulna, or arm) the pace, and the fathom. But, as these are of different dimensions in men of different proportions, our antient historians[r] inform us, that a new standard of longitudinal measure was ascertained by king Henry the first; who commanded ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... forces in this world, Mr. Warren, that science cannot fathom, and some of them are manifested in that castle now. A priest might call it a demon or a fiend; a psychologist, perhaps a returning spirit. I can't say—but I know there is something real, a malignant force ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Melodramatic Farce in Four Acts • Paul Dickey
... very little way from the horizontal, scarcely more than two inches in a fathom, and the stream ran gently murmuring at our feet. I compared it to a friendly genius guiding us underground, and caressed with my hand the soft naiad, whose comforting voice accompanied our steps. With my reviving spirits these mythological notions ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... at what had passed,—at the flight of Maltravers, the success of Lumley,—unable to account for it, to extort explanation from Vargrave or from Evelyn, was distracted by the fear of some villanous deceit which she could not fathom. To escape herself she plunged yet more eagerly into the gay vortex. Vargrave, suspicious, and fearful of trusting to what she might say in her nervous and excited temper if removed from his watchful eye, deemed himself compelled to hover round ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book X • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... was well known to the Portuguese Prince. A mysterious voyage of a certain wandering saint, called St. Brendan, was not without its influence upon an enthusiastic mind. Moreover, there were many sound motives urging the Prince to maritime discovery; among which, a desire to fathom the power of the Moors, a wish to find a new outlet for traffic, and a longing to spread the blessings of the faith may be enumerated. The especial reason which impelled Prince Henry to take the burden of discovery on himself ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... her, not in the least understanding what she would be at, yet fascinated by the sympathy—which she read plainly enough—and held by the beauty. By something besides beauty, too, which she saw without being able to fathom it. For in Esther's eyes there was the intense look of love and the fire of joy, and on her lips the loveliest lines of tenderness were trembling. Mrs. Blumenfeld gazed at her, but would almost as soon have addressed an angel, if one had stood beside her with wings ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... problem of the formation of coral reefs would never have been a difficult one. Nothing can be easier than to understand how there must have been a time when the coral polypes came and settled on the shores of this island, everywhere within the 20 to 25 fathom line, and how, having perched there, they gradually grew until they ...
— Coral and Coral Reefs • Thomas H. Huxley
... down the lantern and dug a hole between four tombs, the length and breadth of the chest, Kafour plying the spade and Sewab clearing away the earth by basketsful, till they had reached a depth of half a fathom, when they laid the chest in the hole and threw back the earth over it: then went out and shutting the door, disappeared from Ghanim's sight. When he was sure that they were indeed gone and that he was alone in the place, his heart was concerned to know what was in the chest and he said to ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... understand herself. She knew that she was behaving rather indiscreetly, though she did not fathom the cause of the restlessness that drove her to Clay Lindsay. The truth is that she was longing for an escape from the empty life she was leading, had been seeking one for years without knowing it. Her existence ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... Pemberton was a real scholar in his special line of study,—as all D. D.'s are supposed to be, or they would not have been honored with that distinguished title. But Mr. Byles Gridley not only had more learning than the deep-sea line of the bucolic intelligence could fathom; he had more wisdom also than they gave him credit for, even those among them who thought most of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... still busy trying to fathom the cause of Pete's untimely mirth, the long-drawn howl of the big timber wolf floated over the valley and sent a new lot of shivers down my back. It was the rallying call used by the wolves to call the band together when game is in sight. The sound increased in volume ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... Jean spoken to her of Father Austin; she loved him already, but she had yet to fathom the nobleness of his soul. His single-heartedness and abnegation of self, his tenderness and quick sympathy (virtues tempering his fierce abhorrence of Paganism), his stern reprobation of the evil, and his yearning for the good, in the untutored barbarians among ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... singing. The lichi tree by the tank looked like a smudge of ink on a background a shade less deep. The south wind was blindly roaming about in the darkness like a sleep-walker. The stars in the sky with vigilant unblinking eyes were trying to penetrate the darkness, in their effort to fathom some profound mystery. ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... The iron plating was taken off the Ozark, and the sides of our old friends the Eads gunboats, the four survivors of which were here, as ever where danger was. This iron, for want of wagons, could not be hauled round, so the boats ran up the river and dumped it overboard in a five-fathom hole, where the shifting sand would soon swallow it up. Iron plating was then too scarce and valuable to the Confederates to let it fall into their hands. Eleven old 32-pounders were ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... "Who can fathom human enmity, or the ingenious cunning of the evil-doer?" asked the grey-faced rector quite calmly. "Have you never stopped to wonder at the marvellous subtlety ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... suspect in these words an attempt at that insidious American humor he had often vainly endeavored to fathom? Mr. Heatherbloom gazed at him now with seemingly innocent but really very ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... ever, and for ever! When thine aking eye shall look forward to the end that is far distant, and when behind thou shalt find no retreat; when thy steps shall faulter, and thou shalt tremble at the depth beneath, which thought itself is not able to fathom; then shall the angel of distribution lift his inexorable hand against thee: from the irremeable way shall thy feet be smitten; thou shalt plunge in the burning flood; and though thou shalt live for ever, thou ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... a sign indicating that he wished to remain neutral. He felt that there was an intrigue at the bottom of it, whether comedy or tragedy; he was at his wit's end at not being able to fathom it, but in the meanwhile ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... Breed knew of this danger was one day when he lay with Shady on a high point of ground. There were many things about Shady which he could not fathom. From the first he had found much of mystery in her. She insisted on traveling in broad daylight whenever the notion seized her and she seemed not to share his fear of horsemen, often rising incautiously from her bed for a better view of them, careless of the risk ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... raise! For the tidings of thy might, By the festal cities blaze, Whilst the wine-cup shines in light; And yet amidst that joy and uproar, Let us think of them that sleep, Full many a fathom deep, By thy wild and ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... close to the side of Gerwazy, until he caught sight of his son Buzzard in the press. Buzzard with his right hand was aiming a blunderbuss, and with his left was pulling after him a great club, a fathom long, armed with flints and knobs and knots.163 (No one could have lifted it except Baptist.) Baptist, when he saw his darling weapon, his sprinkling-brush, seized it, kissed it, jumped into the air for joy, whirled it over his head and straightway ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... "'Full fathom five thy father lies, Of his bones are coral made, Those are pearls that were his eyes. Nothing of him that doth fade But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... the deep shadow, Kazan tried to fathom the meaning of these strange things that were happening. Why had his master and McCready gone out into the forest? Why had not his master returned? It was his master, and not McCready, who belonged in that tent. Then why was McCready there? He watched McCready as he entered, and suddenly the ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... World. Hear him: "The Gods love not deeds of violence; they honor justice and the rightful works of men." Such is his faith; still this faith is passing through the ordeal of fire: why should the Gods, being good, keep the good Ulysses away from his Return? The simple swineherd cannot fathom the ways of Providence, still he believes in that Providence; he is divinely loyal. His allegiance does not depend upon prosperity, not even upon insight. Zeus may rule the world as he pleases, I shall still have faith: "Though he slay me, ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... flight, and, in the surging smoke Uplifted, spurns the ground; thence many a league, As in a cloudy chair, ascending rides Audacious; but, that seat soon failing, meets A vast vacuity. All unawares, Fluttering his pennons vain, plumb-down he drops Ten thousand fathom deep, and to this hour Down had been falling, had not, by ill chance, The strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud, Instinct with fire and nitre, hurried him As many miles aloft. That fury stayed— Quenched ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... mark the silent lapse of flitting time Are not for thee; thine awful empire stands From age to age, unchangeable, sublime; Thy domes are spread where thought can never climb, In clouds and darkness where vast pillars rest. I may not fathom thee: 't would seem a crime Thy being of its mystery to divest Or boldly lift thine awful veil ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... the face of the world, ye ask straightway: 'What is the use of this?' It is clear that ye are frightened lest the investigator might ask a handful of barley for a thing the sense of which your mind does not fathom." ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... compelled to dispute of things ineffable and incomprehensible which only necessity can excuse, (n. 25.) He then proves the eternal generation of the Son, the procession of the Holy Ghost, and their consubstantiality in one nature, (l. 2 and 3.) He checks their presumption in pretending to fathom the Trinity, by showing that they cannot understand many miracles of Christ or corporeal things, which yet they confess to be most certain, (l. 3, n. 19, 20, 24.) He detects and confutes the subtilties of the Arians, in their various confessions ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... But hospitable treats did most commend Wise Issachar, his wealthy western friend. This moving court, that caught the people's eyes, And seem'd but pomp, did other ends disguise: 740 Achitophel had form'd it, with intent To sound the depths, and fathom where it went, The people's hearts, distinguish friends from foes, And try their strength, before they came to blows. Yet all was colour'd with a smooth pretence Of specious love, and duty to their prince. Religion, and ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... long after this Robert's early tutor Murdoch returned to Ayr, and lent him Pope's Works; a bookish friend of his father's obtained for him the reading of two volumes of Richardson's 'Pamela' and another friendly soul the reading of Smollett's 'Ferdinand Count Fathom,' and 'Peregrine Pickle.' The book which most delighted him, however, was a collection of English songs called ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... etiquette, rose, and, bowing to the king, retired. The queen followed with her ladies of honor. The queen-mother remained: the king's gayety was a mystery that she wished to fathom. ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... Hetty had so much reverence for, and faith in, the virtues of the Bible, her intellect was too shallow to enable her fully to appreciate its beauties, or to fathom its profound and sometimes mysterious wisdom. That instinctive sense of right which appeared to shield her from the commission of wrong, and even cast a mantle of moral loveliness and truth around her character, could not penetrate abstrusities, or trace the nice affinities ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... speak of the ether as a newly-known environment. On this environment our organic existence depends as absolutely as on the material environment, although less obviously. In ways which we cannot fathom, the ether is at the foundation of our physical being. Perceiving heat, light, electricity, we do but recognise in certain conspicuous ways,—as in perceiving the "X rays" we recognise in a way less conspicuous,—the pervading influence of ethereal vibrations which ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... humorous good-nature, and he baffled the old gentleman as one is baffled by the play of sunshine over a rippling pool. Marshall would ask himself whether the depth of the pool was a finger-length or a fathom, and would speculate on what there might be lying at the bottom of it—strange deposits, perhaps, representing the social and business developments of another age, or at least another civilization. He sometimes questioned his daughter's capacity ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... I am not untroubled. For I cannot fathom you, and that troubles me. I am very fond of you—and yet I do not ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... doors I stood shuddering over the blue fire. Whatever logicians may say, we do not reason life's conclusions out. Clouds blacken the heavens till there comes the lightning-flash. So do our intuitions leap unwarned from the dark. 'Twas thus I seemed to fathom the mystery of those interlopers. Ben Gillam had been chosen to bring the pirate ship north because his father, of the Hudson's Bay Company, could screen him from English spies. Mr. Stocking, of Boston, was another partner to the venture, who could shield Ben from punishment in New England. ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... may foretell with confidence—that the riddle of man's nature will remain unsolved. There will be that in him yet which physical laws will fail to explain—that something, whatever it be, in himself and in the world, which science cannot fathom, and which suggests the unknown possibilities of his origin and his destiny. There ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... at him again and again while he spoke, and it seemed to her that she saw in him such great knowledge and tenderness as made her glad; and how he could understand the follies that men had done, and fathom what real meaning was in them, and disentangle all the threads. He smiled as she gazed at him, and answered as ...
— A Little Pilgrim • Mrs. Oliphant
... rather necessary to have some at home to look out for the women and children, and to raise food for the army and the people," replied the colonel with a smile, as he began to fathom ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... Heneage accepted a chair and spoke of the performance. The conversation became general and of stereotyped form. Yet Wrayson was uneasily conscious of something underneath it all which he could not fathom. The atmosphere of the box was charged with some electrical disturbance. Heneage alone seemed thoroughly at his ease. He kept his seat until the close of the performance, and even then seemed in no hurry to depart. Wrayson, however, took his ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a very cruel beast, with a great and thick body after the fashion of a horse; it hath for a weapon a great horn, half a fathom in length, so sharp and so hard that there is nothing it cannot pierce.... When men need to take it they bring a virgin maid to the place where they know that it has its abode. When the unicorn sees her and knows ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... "She's not one of those hard-faced children; she's lovely—and I've come to the conclusion that she's pathetic. I'm beginning to rather hate this man Pollen. Back of it all are subtleties of personality difficult to fathom. You should know Blais Rochefort. I imagine a woman going about things the wrong way could break her heart on him like waves on a crystal rock. I think it has been a question of fire meeting crystal, and, when it ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... before you turned to shut it. Can you deny that, or that you stepped aside while I ran in and gave my mother another hug? If you can and do, then you are a dangerous and lying woman, or I——But I won't admit that I'm not all right. It is you, base and untruthful woman, who for some end I cannot fathom persist in denying facts on which my honour, if not my life, depends. Why, gentlemen, you, one of you at least, have heard me describe the very room in which I saw my mother. It is imprinted on my mind. I didn't know at the time that I took especial notice of it, but hardly ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... his house. He had sent a telegram the day before; and his servant was waiting for him. In less than no time he had changed his clothes. Immediately he went back to his carriage, and went in search of the man, who, he thought, was most likely to be able to fathom this mystery. ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... that the Creator made man to leave him in an endless struggle with the intellectual miseries which surround us: God destines a calmer and a more certain future to the communities of Europe; I am unacquainted with his designs, but I shall not cease to believe in them because I cannot fathom them, and I had rather mistrust my own capacity than ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... whole face darkening with an expression I could not fathom. "What was done at that time cannot be undone. For you and me there is no future. Yes," he said turning towards her as she made a slight fluttering move of dissent, "no future; we can bury the past, but we ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... surely fathom all the cunning wiles of Satan; for though many said Sidonia's power is now broken by Wolde's death, and indeed the poor sheriff was the only one who still played the hare, and kept the roaring ox safe up in the stall—still, so strange ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... was intended as a hint to Kennedy, it was unnecessary. He was working as fast and as surely as he could, going over in hours what others had failed to fathom ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... that Mr. Fenelby could not fathom Kitty laughed merrily at this, and then they all went in to dinner. It was a very good dinner, of the kind that Bridget could prepare when she was in the humor, and they sat rather longer over it than usual, and then Mr. Fenelby proposed that he ...
— The Cheerful Smugglers • Ellis Parker Butler
... chin of an old man plunged into a situation which he could not fathom. "Would it not be better to consult the police first?" ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... same superior degree of interest attaching to the study of wild species that the ethnologist finds in the study of savage races of men that have been unspoiled by civilization. Obviously, it is more interesting to fathom the mind of a creature in an absolute state of nature than of one whose ancestors have been bred and reared in the trammels of domestication and for many successive generations have bowed to the will of man. The natural fury ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... total result is one in which pity and terror, carried perhaps to the extreme limits of art, are so blended with a sense of law and beauty that we feel at last, not depression and much less despair, but a consciousness of greatness in pain, and of solemnity in the mystery we cannot fathom. ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... himself had acted as almoner—the bank-notes to poverty, the Sandeman's port and the evaporated turtle-soup to sickness. And the pity of it that such a man should so misjudge his Claudia! 'Voluptuous ice-woman.' He could fathom the meaning of the phrase, but the wave it would fain have spouted over his Claudia left her angel raiment dry. Neither one nor the other of the far-parted spumings of the wave touched her. Was that ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... at their doings, never spoke of them in terms other than honorable to himself and to them. He persistently praised John Brown for his bravery and his endurance; and he was just as firm in declaring him the victim of shrewd and designing men, whose schemes he would yet fathom. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... Jean. There was something about these things that presented to his understanding a wall of insurmountable height. Then, he recalled his last interview with Jean and the suspicions that had been cast upon himself, suspicions he had vainly endeavored to fathom. What was in the wind, anyhow? he asked himself. There seemed to be forces at work over which he had no control, forces big with portent, heavy with menace. Like a towering thunder-cloud that casts its sickly ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... comfort or enjoyment. It is too subtle for that! A supreme effort, even a supreme agony, may have more real living worth than years of "normal" existence. The youths whose graves now dot so plentifully the pleasant fields of France have drunk deeper than we can fathom of ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... the probability of his falling, and always thought that the odds were in favour of his falling. And to be perfectly frank (my object in writing this book is to tell the truth), nobody regretted the probability! If we had really known what kind of a man he was, if we had been able then to fathom beneath the forbidding externals, we might have felt very differently about it. But it is not given to man to know the future or even to discern the heart of his most intimate acquaintance! We only saw in him a man who was as unscrupulous as his ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... not believe it. Gauged by a woman's love, many men love, marry, and die, without even approximating the real grand passion themselves, or comprehending that which they have inspired, for no one but a woman can fathom a woman's love." ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... batteries on the waterside, to prevent the approach of ships; and they had raised a bar or sand-bank, that rendered the approach of our largest ships of war impracticable, and of the smaller craft difficult and dangerous. Within the bar, however, there was a place called Five Fathom Hole, with a sufficient depth of water to float second-rate ships; and here nine American ships were moored, under the American commodore Whipple. Behind the bar and Whipple's squadron there was Fort Moultrie, upon ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... may be called the paternal relation, there may seem no special Law—no Law except the highest of all, that Law of which all other Laws are parts, that Law which neither Nature can wholly reflect nor the mind begin to fathom—the Law of Love. He adds nothing to that, however, who loses sight of all other Laws in that, nor does he take from it who finds specific Laws everywhere ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... brother. That Ken was tinkering at the Flying Dutchman (as he had immediately called the power-boat, on account of its ghostly associations) was evident to his brother and sister, but why he should be doing so they could not fathom. ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... whirled hurriedly; and not a fathom's length away rode a second small boat; and standing forward were two men, their revolvers levelled directly at ...
— The Boy Allies Under the Sea • Robert L. Drake
... behind this, a secret that none is wise enough to fathom. The infinite fund of disinterested humane kindliness that is adrift in the world is part of the riddle, the insoluble riddle of life that is born in our blood and tissue. It is agreeable to think that no man, save by his own gross fault, ever ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... on our way. For the last few months she has been zealously corresponding with her brother; she evidently has some secret projects, but what they are—God knows! I am sick of trying to fathom her underhand schemes! But we're going, not to the country, but to Yalta and afterwards to the Caucasus. She can only exist now at watering-places, and if you knew how I hate all these watering-places, how ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Nor have you in your speech; your eyes now veiled, Where the light leaped to hear me voice his fame, Your blushes and your pallor have betrayed That which should lie uncounted fathom deep— The secret of a ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... (in view of these Sokratic thinkers) an essential part of divine government; indispensable to satisfy their ideas of the benevolence of the gods; since rational and scientific prediction was so habitually at fault and unable to fathom the phenomena ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... It was a long point, and I knew I could touch bottom with my pole. I took my pole and just hardly got ashore. (Grand Lake runs nearly east and west, is over 40 miles long, and from 1 to 4 miles wide, and very deep, up to sixty fathom of water, and for the least wind makes a ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... Generosity was boundless, as his Love, for no Man ever truly loved, that was not generous. He thought his Estate, like his Passion, was a sort of a Pontick Ocean, it could never know an Ebb; But now he found it could be fathom'd, and that the Tide was turning, therefore he sollicits with more impatience the consummation of their Joys, that both might go like Martyrs from their Flames immediately to Heaven; and now at last it was agreed between them, that ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... found the Variation to be 4 degrees 49 minutes East. At 6 Sounded and had 32 fathoms Water; the Bottom Coral Rocks, fine Sand and Shells, which Soundings we carried upon a South-West 1/2 West Course 9 or 10 leagues, and then had no ground with 100 fathom. We were by our account and per run afterwards 54 Leagues East from the Coast of Brazil and to the Southward of the Shoals called Abrollos, as they are laid down in Most Charts. Wind South-East to North-East; course South 58 degrees West; distance 68 miles; latitude 19 degrees 46 ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... notion incredulously; for though Kinlay knew the coast very well, yet the idea of his starting with his limited experience as an Orkney pilot was droll to one who, like my uncle, had been all his life at the work, and knew every fathom of the waters. ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... and forgave him with unvarying regularity. In the end we came to be quite friendly over the affair. I found him diverting at a time when I was in need of diversion, though just what attraction he found in me, I have never been able to fathom. It was certainly not that he saw a future source of "stories," for he frankly regarded corporation law as a pursuit devoid of interest. Criminal law was the one branch of the profession for which ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... laws of peace they rule the happy land; While reason's page their statute codes unfold, And rites and charters flame in figured gold. All rights that Britons know they here transfuse, Their sense invigorate and expand their views, Dare every height of human soul to scan, Find, fathom, scope the moral breadth of man, Learn how his social powers may still dilate, And tone their tension to a ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... has said "While the story may have for a plot a subject involving complication, or mystery, each scene must be easily understood, or the audience, taxed by trying to fathom motives or emotions with which it is unfamiliar, or with which it is not in sympathy, loses the thread of the story, and consequently pronounces the photoplay lacking in interest. Remembering the brevity of the film drama, ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... things in books; were there such things actually in the family, and she had never known of them? A few hours ago and she had been unable to think of anything but her first ball, her new dress, her flowers; but she was seized now with the most intense desire to fathom this mystery. That it bid fair to be a sad mystery only made her more eager and curious. She was so young, so ignorant, there was still a halo of romance about those ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... The lichi tree by the tank looked like a smudge of ink on a background a shade less deep. The south wind was blindly roaming about in the darkness like a sleep-walker. The stars in the sky with vigilant unblinking eyes were trying to penetrate the darkness, in their effort to fathom some profound mystery. ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... had heard them tearing along the avenue back to the stables, and had made a memorandum mentally that I must speak of it. It seemed to me that the best thing I could do was to go to the stables now and make a few inquiries. It is impossible to fathom the minds of rustics; there might be some devilry of practical joking, for anything I knew; or they might have some interest in getting up a bad reputation for the Brentwood avenue. It was getting dark by the time I went out, and nobody who knows the country will need to be told how ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... such big bands of sheep and they are moving about I should not think the markers would be in the same place twice," persisted Donald, determined to fathom this puzzling problem. ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... house; but my distress was much increased upon finding the snow so deep upon the ground, that it was impossible for me to attempt to stir, as upon stepping one foot out to try, I found it far too deep for me to fathom the bottom. This greatly distressed me. 'Alas!' said I to myself, 'what shall I do now? To proceed is impossible; and to return is very melancholy, without any tidings of my dear, dear Longtail.' But I was interrupted in the midst ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... observances, wealth, pleasure, and final release; and recognising that the Vedas—which teach the truth about his own nature, his glorious manifestations, the means of rendering him propitious and the fruits of such endeavour—are difficult to fathom by all beings other than himself, whether gods or men, since those Vedas are divided into Rik, Yajus, Sman, and Atharvan; and being animated by infinite pity, tenderness, and magnanimity; with a view to enable his devotees to grasp the ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... significant expectation with her brother, but it was at their uncle they looked the moment after, because of the strange and sudden sound that issued from his lips. For it was like a cry, and his face wore a flushed and curious expression they could not fathom. The face and the cry were signs of something utterly unusual. He was startled—out of himself. A marvellous idea had evidently struck him. "It's either something," thought Judy, "or else he's got a pain." But Tim's mind was quicker. "He's got it," ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... had a grudge against the Lookouts before ever she met them. Leila and I were always suspicious of the way Natalie Weyman acted about meeting you at the station. We could not fathom the object of such a performance. We both thought there was more to it than appeared on the surface." Vera ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... of replying when she pressed him to go to Fern Torr, and his absolute avoidance of it, struck and puzzled her much as well as grieved her. She knew his loneliness, and could understand that he might be melancholy, but why he should shrink from the home he so loved was beyond what she could fathom. ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... hopeless task, my dear Andreas. Not even you can fathom all the ramifications of the intrigues in which I find myself an indispensable puppet. Those who control my movements will never let go the strings by which they hold me, and ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... diligent toil thy master is the bee; In craft mechanical, the worm that creeps Through earth its dexterous way, may tutor thee; In knowledge, couldst thou fathom all its depths, All to the seraph are already known: But thine, o Man, is ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... meeting Lorne had been "all worked up." She watched him with furtive anxious looks, was solicitous about his food, expressed relief when she knew him to be safely in bed and asleep. He himself observed himself with discontent, unable to fathom his extraordinary lapse from self-control on the night of his final address. He charged it to the strain of unavoidable office work on top of the business of the campaign, abused his nerves, talked of a few days' rest when they had settled Winter. He could think of nothing but ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... a surprise, and she emerged from her retreat to find her room-mates already filing towards the door. Thomasina led the way, staring at Rhoda's locks with an amusement which the girl found it hard to fathom. She had brushed out the curling mane with even greater care than usual, and was conscious that it was as tidy as nature had intended it should be. Then why stare and smile? She could not understand, but ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... wandered over the world for many years, from one mining camp to another. He invariably got drunk on Saturdays, and, whenever he could afford it, on other days as well. For some reason, which I could never fathom, this strange being took a fancy to me, and used to inflict on me long homilies on the dangers to which youth was exposed. He continually urged me never to get drunk on anything but beer. When I suggested the application of his principles to himself, he would say ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... little reluctance that Solomon Mahaffy accompanied Yancy and Cavendish to Belle Plain; he would have preferred to remain in Raleigh in attendance upon judge Price. Intimately acquainted with the judge's mental processes, he could follow all the devious workings of that magnificent mind; he could fathom the simply hellish ingenuity he was capable of putting forth to accomplish temporary benefits. Permitting his thoughts to dwell upon the mingled strength and weakness which was so curiously blended in Slocum Price's character, ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... cliff; for otherwhere was a litter of great rocks and small, hard to be threaded even by those who knew the passes well; so that men had to tread along the very verge of the Shivering Flood, and wary must they be, for the water ran swift and deep betwixt banks of sheer rock half a fathom below their very foot-soles, which had but bare space to go on the narrow a way. So it held on for a while, and then got safer, and there was more space for going betwixt cliff and flood; albeit it was toilsome enough, since for some way yet there was a drift of stones to ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... sea, which struck down poor Wilds with such force, the lifeboat stood straight up on her stern and reared, as the men expressed it, 'like a vicious horse'; and so much did the cable spring, that the lifeboat was driven to within a fathom, or six feet, of the wreck, and was withdrawn the next instant to fifteen fathoms distance by the ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... edges of human nature, there was something unspeakably restful in the atmosphere of that quiet home; something soothing in the silent, steadfast affection, the depth of which he was only beginning to fathom. ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... or some still less refined mode of torture. One day, some of us, while walking the poop, had our attention directed to a sucking-fish, about two and a half feet in length, which had been made fast by the tail to a billet of wood, by a fathom or so of spun-yarn, and turned adrift. An immense striped shark, apparently about fourteen feet in length, which had been cruising about the ship all the morning, sailed slowly up, and turning slightly on one side, attempted to seize the seemingly helpless fish; but the sucker, with great ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... granted that you would welcome a chance to brush Landis out of your path. It appears that I am wrong. I admit my error. Only fools cling to convictions; wise men are ready to meet new viewpoints. Very well. You wish to spare Landis for reasons of your own which I do not pretend to fathom. Perhaps, you pity him; I cannot tell. Now, you wonder why I wish to have Landis in my care if I do not intend to put an end to him and thereby become owner of his mines? I shall tell you frankly. I intend to own the mines, if not through the death of Jack, then ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... marked into lengths of six feet, called fathoms, by knots, or pieces of leather, or old sail-cloth. In narrow or intricate channels, it is sometimes needful to place a man in the chains on each side of the ship, as the depth will vary a fathom or more even in the breadth of the vessel, and it is of great consequence that the leadsmen give the depth correctly, as a wrong report might cause the ship to run aground. The time that the leadsman is employed in taking soundings is often a period of deep anxiety to the crew and passengers, especially ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... dupe of the two sisters; she guessed into whose hands that money was to go, and she was delighted to oblige the countess; moreover, she felt a deep compassion for all such embarrassments. Rastignac, so placed that he was able to fathom the manoeuvres of the two bankers, came to breakfast that morning ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... with that aggravating, meaning smile; that smile which he could by no means fathom and of which she scarcely knew the meaning. "No," she said, "I don't want your money. You couldn't hire me to leave the bluegrass till I've ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... your letter, to hear you have not been well, and that you partly attribute it to want of exercise. I wish you were here amongst the green plains; we would take walks which would rival the Dolgelly ones, and you should tell stories, which I would believe, even to a CUBIC FATHOM OF PUDDING. Instead I must take my solitary ramble, think of Cambridge days, and pick up snakes, beetles and toads. Excuse this short letter (you know I never studied 'The Complete Letter-writer'), and believe ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... see," he said, gloomily. "In a short time we shall know why Montezuma thus tamely suhmitted to be made a prisoner. He may have some motives which we cannot fathom. I cannot believe him to be a coward. No Aztec monarch, yet, has ever shown want ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... it's made of?" asked Bill. "Why, sheets and blankets and ticking," replied Jack. "Yes," said Bill, "you are right; and with those selfsame sheets and blankets, and maybe a fathom or two of rope besides, underneath, I intend that we shall try to lower ourselves down to the ground; and when we are once outside, it will be our own fault if we do not get back to the harbour, and when there, that ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... responses, and Sam Buzza, his friend, whom few Trojans excelled in casting glances at the female congregation. Then, most gorgeous and bravest of all, the Admiral: he wore again his gold-laced coat, but the cocked-hat rested underneath the seat, and none could fathom the import of his gaze. By him sat his three daughters, a-row, in straight-backed dresses of like cut and colour, and peeped over their prayer-books; and Mrs. Buzza, timorous, in bright green satin. But of the throng of Trojan men and ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... this sleep? Was it connected with the papers? No, not that, for they had not sought to take them, and had not made any remark about their being gone. This showed their unconcern on that point. She could not fathom the mystery, but the suspicion of something irregular deepened. Her father could have no reason for injuring Sergeant Tom; but Pretty Pierre—that was another matter. Yet she remembered too that her father had appeared the more anxious of the two about the Sergeant's sleep. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... flying. Lord Chesterfield directed a letter to the late Lord Pembroke, who was always swimming, "To the Earl of Pembroke in the Thames, over against Whitehall." That was sure of finding him within a certain number of fathom; but your ladyship's longitude varies so rapidly, that one must be a good bowler indeed, to take one's ground so judiciously that by casting wide of the mark one may come in near to ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... fathom the pleasure of that precious memory throughout those four lives, as the story of Great Heart and Christiana followed Christian along the path that "shineth more and more unto the perfect day." While the father and sister were delighted with the crackle, sparkle and ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... sixty-four fathom a conger may come, And nose at the bones of a drowned submarine; But late in the evening Kilmeny came home, And nobody knew where ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... it. If these beastly fellows hadn't been led by him to come after our money, we would not have had this schooner, and how we should have got those bags away without her,—to say nothing of ourselves,—is more than I can fathom. It is my belief that no craft ever comes within twenty miles of this coast, if she can help it. So I vote for letting him off. He didn't intend to do us any harm, and he didn't intend to do us any good, ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... yet—and yet. She was not cold, but was she unearthly? Was she, perhaps, some straying angel—some fervid, bright spirit, flame-coloured and intangible, a being of the elfin race? As they stood together looking at the distant coastline a depression which he could neither fathom nor control came over him. His bride seemed so much younger than he had ever realised. She cared for him—how could he doubt it? But was the ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... our circle of discovery, the wider our wonder; the more startling our conclusions, the more perplexing our questions. We have not exhausted the universe;—we have just begun to see its harmony of proportion and of relations, without penetrating a fathom into its real life. How and what is that power that works in the shooting of a crystal, and binds the obedience of a star; that shimmers in the northern Aurora, and connects by its attraction the aggregated universe; that by ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... which alone receives the salvation proffered to all; that the reason why the gift of faith is not bestowed upon all men, though Christ seriously invites all to come to Him, is a mystery known to God alone, which human reason cannot fathom; that the will of God proposed in Christ and revealed in the Bible, to which all men are directed, and in which it is most safe to acquiesce, is not contradictory of the hidden will of God. (Loescher, Hist Mot. 2, 229; Frank 4, 126. ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... half-pitying admiration at the sight of her; between real disapproval of an illicit and underhand business (what else was it, after all?) and some dim perception that here was something he did not begin to be able to fathom—something that perhaps no one but those two themselves could deal with—between these various extremes he was lost indeed. And he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... could fill that up and forget it," he ventured in a valorously timid tone which made it hard, for reasons I couldn't quite fathom, to keep my throat from tightening. But I sat there, shaking my head from ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... resist this emotion; the understanding of things must be based, not on sentiment, but on reason. There must be justice, not charity. Kindness is solitary. Compassion becomes one with him whom we pity; it allows us to fathom him, to understand him alone amongst the rest; but it blurs and befogs the laws of the whole. I must set off with a clear idea, like the beam of a lighthouse through the deformities and temptations ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... and read about Brutus, one of those mysterious men whose history we could not fathom, for as far north as York we read in a book there that "Brutus settled in this country when the Prophet Eli governed Israel and the Ark was taken from the Philistines, about 1140 B.C., or a century and a half later ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... of the day the old chief had several private consultations with the guide, and showed evident signs of being occupied with some mysterious matter of mighty import. What it was, Captain Bonneville could not fathom, nor did he make much effort to do so. From some casual sentences that he overheard, he perceived that it was something from which the old man promised himself much satisfaction, and to which he attached a little vainglory but which he wished to keep a secret; so he ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... children, remember—intellectual children—ignorant as babies because, poor souls, they had had neither books nor teaching. Savages are, you know, terrified at a thing they cannot fathom and these persons were as yet little more. Well, at any rate, clocks began to make their appearance. By 1286 one of these faceless mechanisms was put up on St. Paul's Cathedral in London; and before 1300, others were, by order of the clergy, ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... you saw, you conquered," flourished Gordon, in high good humour with his own wit and grace. "We toasted you, madam, in the carriage, in an excellent good glass of wine; toasted you fathom deep; the finest woman, with, begad, the finest eyes in Gruenewald. I never saw the like of them but once, in my own country, when I was a young fool at College: Thomasina Haig her name was. I give you my word of honour, she was as like you as ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Nature he went on to read mystic meanings into her, seeking, psychologically in his novels and mystically in his fairy tales, to fathom the connection between natural phenomena and elementary human feeling. Blond Egbert was ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... it were an easy leap To pluck bright honour from the pale faced moon, Or dive into the bottom of the deep, Where fathom-line could never touch the ground, And pluck up drowned honour by the locks, So he that doth redeem her thence, might wear Without corrival all ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... Haeckel, Tyndall, Meyer, and other renowned scientists, have tried to find the missing link between man and animal; they have also exhausted their genius in trying to fathom the mysteries of the beginning of life, or find where the animal and mineral kingdoms unite to form life; but they have added to the vast accumulation of theories only, and the world is but little wiser on this ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... trees, and again pour seawater on them till the particles of salt are well separated, and pass with the water into a vessel placed below to receive them. This water, now strongly impregnated, is boiled till the salt adheres in a thick crust to the bottom and sides of the vessel. In burning a square fathom of firewood a skilful person procures about five gallons of salt. What is thus made has so considerable a mixture of the salt of the wood that it soon dissolves, and cannot be carried far into the country. The coarsest grain ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... keenly at him, as one weighing his words, and trying to fathom their meaning, but the taller man broke in ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... meantime remained silent, offering no comment to relieve his anxiety. What he was thinking under the shabby visor cap pulled so low over his brows it was impossible to fathom. His hand was now unscrewing the top of ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... you no more. But he won't. He'll tell you everything I've told you. He couldn't say different, for he's truthful and straight. And if it was anything less than the whole of my future life I wouldn't have come. But I feel there are things hidden in his mind I can't fathom—else after what I told him yesterday, he never, never could have been cruel to me, or changed his mind about coming to see you. And please forgive me for taking up your time. Only knowing that you cared for him so much made me ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... The man who had made so much fuss over the matter gave it up when he found that I wished to be quarantined, and sent for an all-important half-white, who soon came alongside, starched from clue to earing. He stood in the boat as straight up and down as a fathom of pump-water—a marvel of importance. "Charts!" cried I, as soon as his shirt-collar appeared over the sloop's rail; "have you any charts?" "No, sah," he replied with much-stiffened dignity; "no, sah; cha'ts ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... this world too much is overclear, Immortal Ministrant to many lands, From whose ice-altars flow to fainting sands Rivers that each libation poured expands. Too much is known, O Ganges-giving sire; Thy people fathom life and find it dire, Thy people fathom death, and, in it, fire To live again, tho in Illusion's sphere, Behold concealed as Grief is in ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice
... sides and when Wilde said: 'Mr. Bernard Shaw has no enemies but is intensely disliked by all his friends,' I knew it to be a phrase I should never forget, and felt revenged upon a notorious hater of romance, whose generosity and courage I could not fathom. ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... time it was," says his biographer, "that the philanthropist Howard, led by his benevolent enthusiasm to fathom dungeons, vindicate the wrongs, and alleviate the sufferings of the lonely and forgotten victim of vice and crime, arrived at Cork. A society had for some years existed in that city 'for the relief and discharge of persons confined for small debts,' of which O'Leary was an active and conspicuous ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... to fathom the motives which induced John Wilford to tell his wife and son that the money had been restored to the owner. Perhaps he had some plan by which he hoped to escape detection and punishment for his crime; or it may be that he told the falsehood to satisfy Lawry for the present moment. His ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... vaguely conscious of being the guardian of a woman's instinct for safety, an instinct which arrives with the cradle and only goes with the grave, and that made me feel somewhat helpless; a man in depths he cannot fathom, for such is the uncharted sea ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... too; to see Hermon, we must go to Calvary; to discern how the fashion of His countenance was altered, we must witness that other time in the garden, when "His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down on the ground"; to fathom how the three disciples slept through the glory, we must remember how they slept ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... Sea-king called all the crocodiles, and said: "His Highness Prince Fire-fade is going to the upper world; which of you will take him there quickly, and bring me back word?" And one crocodile a fathom long, answered: "I will take him to the upper world, and come back in ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... up at her; she stood with her pretty face turned away, a troubled look in her bright eyes, the usually smiling lips compressed with determination. The boy's quick wits began to fathom the drift of her intention and the cause thereof; he must know more to determine ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... see what Fielding proposed to himself by a picture of complete vice, unrelieved by anything of human feeling. ..."]. Some other critics have been neither more friendly than Sir Walter, nor more discriminating, in speaking of Jonathan Wild and Smollett's Count Fathom in the same breath, as if they were similar either in purpose or in merit. Fathom is a romantic picaresque novel, with a possibly edifying, but most unnatural reformation of the villainous hero at the last; Jonathan Wild is a pretty consistent ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... declarations. That connection and faction are equivalent terms, is an opinion which has been carefully inculcated at all times by unconstitutional Statesmen. The reason is evident. Whilst men are linked together, they easily and speedily communicate the alarm of an evil design. They are enabled to fathom it with common counsel, and to oppose it with united strength. Whereas, when they lie dispersed, without concert, order, or discipline, communication is uncertain, counsel difficult, and resistance impracticable. Where men are not acquainted with ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... the men all gone to stables, dared to burst into that magnate's own room in search of his arms and clothing, and thereby roused a heavily sleeping soldier, who damned him savagely until, through wild raving, he gathered that some grave danger menaced Captain Ray. Even his befuddled senses could fathom that! And while guards and nurses bore the patient, shrieking and struggling, back to hospital, Kennedy soused his hot head in the cooling waters of their frontier lavatory and was off like ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... remember your wife very well. I could pick her out from ten thousand, but I have never seen her yet in the City of Light. You may, my dear friend, cherish only an illusion, and yet I am half willing to agree with you; such intuitive feelings have a deeper philosophy of truth than we can fathom, and no laughing skepticism, no mere frivolous doubt can expel them. Wait, my friend; it may yet be meant for you to meet her. And now I do recall some accounts told me of occasional visitants to Mars entering its life at different points; many indeed ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... conclude. I should not ask so much of others. You, Svanhild, I've learnt to fathom thro' and thro'; You are too sensible to play the prude. I watched expand, unfold, your little life; A perfect woman I divined within you, But long I only saw a daughter in you;— Now I ask of you—will you be my wife? ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... to the eastern breakers, they were obliged to let go an anchor to save them from destruction. They could see nothing of the buoy, and no doubt was entertained that it was washed away by the current. Their anchorage was in three and a half fathom water, and the ground swell, which then set in, heaved the vessel up and down in such a frightful manner, that they expected every moment to see the chain cable break. As soon as they dropped their anchor, the tide rushed past the vessel at the rate of eight miles an hour. After the ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... sunbonnet to view, and all the while the pan was still held against her side by the other hand. Fleming noticed that the hands, though tawny and not over clean, were almost childlike in size, and that the forefinger was much too small for the ring. He tried to fathom the depths of the sun-bonnet, but it was dented on one side, and he could discern only a single pale blue eye and a ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... before you rolls the large wheel, and above your head runs living wire—long heavy wire! There is a hammering and buzzing, and if you look around in the large open yard, amongst great up-turned copper boilers, for steam-boats and locomotives, Bloodless also here stretches out one of his fathom-long fingers, and hauls away. Everything is living; man alone ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... asked me which was the narrowest part of the Channel, and I told him. Then he asked how Silly [sic] bore, if I had 75 fathom, red sand and gravel. I said, 'About N.W.,' and the old man said, 'Well, yes,—rather West of N.W., is not it so, Sir Richard?' And Sir Richard did not know what they were talking about, and they pulled out ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... "Heaven help us both, Parson! That young hair brained fellow has sent us a brace of petticoats aboard; and these the profane reprobate calls his divinities! One may easily guess where he has picked up such quality; but cheer up, Doctor; one may honestly forget the cloth in five fathom water, you know." ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... golden Wings; he only valued the smiling Babies in Belvira's Eyes. His Generosity was boundless, as his Love, for no Man ever truly loved, that was not generous. He thought his Estate, like his Passion, was a sort of a Pontick Ocean, it could never know an Ebb; But now he found it could be fathom'd, and that the Tide was turning, therefore he sollicits with more impatience the consummation of their Joys, that both might go like Martyrs from their Flames immediately to Heaven; and now at last it was agreed between them, that they should both be one, but not without some Reluctancy ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... the Church by acknowledging his son to all men,—and lo!—the son he was ashamed of all these years, turns out a prodigy! The fault once confessed, brings a blessing! Angela, there is something more than chance in this, if we could only fathom it!" ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... of England were cold. She, Hollyhock, could not understand them, could not attempt to fathom them. She crept softly downstairs, gathering ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... she said slowly: "You mean that it will not do to send to find out if Alessandro is dead, because it will look as if I wished him to marry me whether he wished it or not?" and she fixed her eyes on Felipe's, with an expression he could not fathom. ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... of her uncle, that "they wish better bread than is made of wheat," or when they look within their own hearts, and assert, as the poet Young said in 1759, long before the English romantic movement had begun, "there is more in the spirit of man than mere prose-reason can fathom." ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... had not come out hastily at that moment. He had been looking for her everywhere, he declared with some asperity. Her mother could not sleep, and wished to see her; otherwise it was time they were all in bed, and what there was to talk about till all hours was more than he could fathom. So he saw the pair before him through the lighted rooms, a heavy man with a flaming neck and a smouldering eye. Horace would be heavy, too, when his bowling days were over. The girl was on finer lines; but she looked like a woman at her worst; tired, exasperated, and clearly ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... subscribe her name and local address. So she wrote, "Iris Yorke, steamship Unser Fritz, Maceio harbor." Hozier was standing by her side as she printed the words legibly. She looked up at him with a curiously tense expression that he did not fathom immediately. They were in the busy main street again ere its meaning occurred to him. The cable committed her irrevocably. She felt that she was ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... drew out of the roar and commotion with a look of dumb terror on his countenance. He was defeated, puzzled, discomfited, frightened. Other cities had been to him as long primer to read; as country maidens quickly to fathom; as send-price-of-subscription-with-answer refuses to solve; as oyster cocktails to swallow; but here was one as cold, glittering, serene, impossible as a four-carat diamond in a window to a lover outside fingering damply in his ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... untroubled. For I cannot fathom you, and that troubles me. I am very fond of you—and yet ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... George's wharf-head the water was deep—deeper than Donald could fathom at low tide—and it was cold, and covered a rocky bottom, upon which a multitude of starfish and prickly sea-eggs lay in clusters. It was green, smooth and clear, too; sight carried straight down to where the purple-shelled mussels gripped ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... pyramid that Julius Caesar brought forth of Africa; it stood in Faustus's time leaning against the church-wall of St. Peter's; but Pope Sixtus hath erected it in the middle of St. Peter's churchyard. It is fourteen fathom long, and at the lower end five fathom four square, and so forth smaller upwards. On the top is a crucifix of beaten gold, the stone standing on four lions of brass. Then he visited the seven churches of Rome, that were St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Sebastian, St. John Lateran, St. Laurence, ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... possible opportunity; but, when the return of spring found the hope unfulfilled, it was plainly idle to look to the summer to afford what winter had denied. The frigates were lightened over a three-fathom bar, and thence, in April, 1814, removed up the Thames fourteen miles, as far as the depth of water would permit. Being there wholly out of reach of the enemy's heavy vessels, they were dismantled, and left to the protection of the shore batteries ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... a flight!—O, outraged Heaven, How could'st thou, since, have smiled? A fathom deep the frozen snow Lay horrid on the wild, Where fled to perish youth and age, And ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... went on and John had come to a better insight of the character of the eccentric person whom Dick had failed to fathom, his half-formed prejudices had fallen away, it must be admitted that he ofttimes found him a good deal of a puzzle. The domains of the serious and the facetious in David's mind seemed to have ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... grieved at the pain she had given. If Robert had been set before her with full consent of friends, she would have let her whole heart go out to him, loved him, and trusted him for ever, treating whatever opinions were unlike hers as manly idiosyncrasies beyond her power to fathom. But she was no Lydia Languish to need opposition as a stimulus. It rather gave her tender and dutiful spirit a sense of shame, terror, and disobedience; and she thankfully accepted the mandate that sent her on a visit to her married ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... unconcealed admiration of most, and the ill-concealed envy of a few of the boys, of his mental and physical abilities, he began, as time went on, to suspect—then to be sure—that for some reason that baffled all his ingenuity to fathom, he was not accorded the position in the school that was the natural reward for superiority of endowment and performance. This place was filled instead by Nat Howard, a boy who, he told himself, he was without the slightest vanity bound to see was distinctly ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... twinkling like stars; rows of little fires marking the margin of the lowest level of the crater; fire molten in deep crevasses; fire in wavy lines; fire, calm, stationary, and restful: an incandescent lake two miles in length beneath a deceptive crust of darkness, and whose depth one dare not fathom even in thought. Broad in the glare, giving light enough to read by at a distance of three-quarters of a mile, making the moon look as blue as an ordinary English sky, its golden gleam changed to a vivid rose colour, lighting up the whole of the vast precipices of that part ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... now looking at her, silent, trying to fathom the vastness of what she said, trying to understand at all their worth the motives which impelled her. The largeness of her plan, yes, that could be seen. The largeness of her heart and brain, yes, that also. Then, slowly, I saw yet more. At last I understood. What I saw was ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... plaintive and sweet-toned songs. Three or four of his countrymen occasionally came up from below. Then they, too, sang more plaintive songs; or played a strange game with especial cards which none of us "gringos" could ever fathom; or perhaps stepped a grave, formal sort of dance. Senora Morena, the only woman, would sometimes join in this. She was a large woman, but extraordinarily light on her feet. In fact, as she swayed and balanced opposite her partner she reminded me of nothing so much as a balloon tugging gently ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... Kenneth. He knows. Many a time he has had to go behind a door to roar hilariously at the old lady. He has thought of her as a lark to tell his mates about by and by; but for some reason that he cannot fathom, he knows now that ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... commotion in the back of the court-room. He lifted his gavel for silence, his gaze falling upon a dripping, shivering, red-haired girl, who raised to his face a pair of copper-colored eyes in which shone a soul, the magnitude of which the judge could not fathom ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... wit could not fathom the mystery of Toni's new joy in life. When interrogated concerning her employers, Toni was always vague. That there were two of them Fanny knew; but from Toni's extremely colourless description, Miss ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... understand life, and his own place in life. And when you do not see your place, and are unable to appraise your own value, it seems that you are the only, the inimitable cucumber on the face of the earth, and that no one can measure, no one can fathom your worth, and that all are eager only to eat you up. After a while you'll find out that the hearts in other people's breasts are no worse than a good part of your own heart, and you'll begin to feel better. ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... other side of Gideon Vetch—of that man of ignoble circumstances and infinite magnanimity! How could any one understand him? How, above all, could any one judge him? How could one fathom his power for good or for evil? She beheld him suddenly as a man who was inspired by an exalted illusion—the illusion of human perfectibility. In the changing world about her, the breaking up and the renewing, the dissolution and ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... whole sad story. Can it be possible that there is some quixotic notion in your head that it is for you to heal a wound for which one of your family was responsible? Oh, surely not! And yet, you women are so fond of anything like self-sacrifice that it is impossible to fathom the motives that drive you into folly: generous, well-meant folly, but folly all the same. You have no one here to advise you, and I beg you to be guided by me. You are not really called upon to do this thing. It ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... God is a conception so wonderful, so sublime, that none but Himself can fathom its depths. Human intelligence is too finite to penetrate or comprehend a system so complex, and yet so uniform. The mind of man can only form a just idea of a cause when the effect has been made manifest to his understanding. There might have ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... not for thee; thine awful empire stands From age to age, unchangeable, sublime; Thy domes are spread where thought can never climb, In clouds and darkness where vast pillars rest. I may not fathom thee: 't would seem a crime Thy being of its mystery to divest Or boldly lift thine awful ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... apparently unexceptional proceeding was looked on by many with grave offence. The Afghan officers muttered that this was mere braggadocio on the part of the sahibs; that the sport was only to show how they would spit and cut down the sons of the Prophet, if they had the chance! To fathom such depths of bigotry as this incident reveals is one of the many difficulties which face ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... did," returned Joe warmly. "It was very good of you to go to that trouble. And, after the experience I had with Shalleg, I shouldn't wonder but what there was something in it. Though why he should be vindictive toward me is more than I can fathom. I certainly never did anything to him, except to refuse to lend him money, and I actually had ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... interesting to note that whenever one of the others addressed him directly, or turned to him when speaking, it was with a curious expression, not of fear, but partly amusement and partly something else which I could not fathom. Now, one might think that this was natural enough purely on account of the man's extraordinary appearance. I do not think that a sufficient explanation; for however strange a man's appearance may be, his intimate friends ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... not care for out-door things?" Then get a bit of wood and a few carving tools, and see what dainty wonders you can make at home. Or lose your cares in "illuminating"; or bury them fathom deep in German. From any of these, well begun and carried on, you will come back re-created for your work: made over "as good as new." Not poisoned with bad air, nor wearied by late hours; not singed and jaded with chagrin, ...
— Tired Church Members • Anne Warner
... and knew that, to match a ship against a fort with success, it was necessary to get as close as possible, and overpower it with weight of metal. After taking the necessary soundings, on the 2nd April he stood in to four-fathom water, taking with him the Viper and Triumph, and bombarded Severndroog fort. The Mahratta fleet gave no assistance, so the Swallow was detached to guard the southern entrance. All day long the cannonade continued, till a heavy swell setting ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... completely parching up everything and benumbing the men. One of the augurs, in consequence, advised that they should sacrifice to the wind; and a sacrifice was accordingly offered, when the vehemence of the wind appeared to every one manifestly to abate. The depth of the snow was a fathom; so that many of the baggage-cattle and slaves perished, with about thirty of the soldiers. They continued to burn fires through the whole night, for there was plenty of wood at the place of encampment. But ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... their bearing. Having acquired some notoriety and a reputation for sanctity, her prophesyings before long took the form of denunciation of the divorce, at that time in its earlier stages. She was exploited by sundry fanatical persons honest or otherwise—in such cases it is seldom possible to fathom the extent to which mania, intentional deception, conscious or unconscious suggestion, and mere credulity, are mingled. In those days, there were few people who would venture to attribute such phenomena to purely natural causes. Such a man as Thomas More, who was eminently ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... to have received particular marks of distinction from the Emperor Alexander; but what may have been the particular tittle tattle which led up to the caricature we shall next describe, we are now unable to fathom. That it grew out of the event which we have attempted to describe will be sufficiently obvious. It is entitled, A Russian Dandy at Home; a scene at Aix-la-Chapelle, and was published by Fores in December, 1818. In ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... dark, Mackay and those of his men who could handle an oar rowed unceasingly. Again and again he threw out his twenty-fathom line, but in vain. He made out a dim line of precipitous cliffs, yet the water seemed fathomless—the only map in existence was a rough one that Stanley had made. At last the lead touched bottom at fourteen fathoms. In the dim light of dawn they rowed and sailed toward a shady ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... religion rose to the level of the highest thought, had from the earliest times to endure all the blessing and curse of an aristocracy of intellect. The Latin religion like every other had its origin in the effort of faith to fathom the infinite; it is only to a superficial view, which is deceived as to the depth of the stream because it is clear, that its transparent spirit-world can appear to be shallow. This fervid faith disappeared with the progress of time as necessarily as ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Blanco thus describes the tobacco of the Philippines: "It is an annual, growing to the height of a fathom, and furnishes the tobacco for the estancos (licensed shops). General opinion prefers the tobacco of Gapan, but that of the Pasy districts, Laglag and Lambunao, in Iloilo, of Maasin or Leyte, is appreciated ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... the dun green light was shed Heavily round his head That through the veil of sea falls fathom-deep, Blurred like a lamp's that when the night drops dead Dies; and his eyes gat grace of sleep to see The deep divine dark dayshine of the sea, Dense water-walls and clear dusk water-ways, Broad-based, or branching as a sea-flower sprays That ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... as she endeavored to persuade him to do—and that for two reasons: the first, because by this means he should escape reproaches, recriminations, and prayers; the second, because he was not sorry to have an opportunity of reading his own thoughts and endeavoring, if possible, to fathom those of ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... each man. Five million men killed means an economic loss to the countries concerned of $15,000,000,000. But the economic value of the lives destroyed represents only a small fraction of their potentiality—socially, morally, and spiritually. No human brain can calculate, no heart can fathom the cost or ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... thankful for Gevrol's blunder. Had it not been for that, how would he ever have found an opportunity of investigating an affair that grew more and more mysterious as his search proceeded, but which he hoped to fathom finally. ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... adequate realization of the problems presented by life, are manifest, though in various degree, in all these records of French officers killed in the months which preceded Christmas 1914. These Frenchmen did not go out light-heartedly, nor with a pathetic inability to fathom the purpose for which they so generously went, but they had given the matter a study which seemed beyond their years. They marched to the blood-baths of Belgium and Lorraine with solemnity, as though to ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... composed of several ledges, shipping much water. Up to this point the Loquilocun flowed in a rocky bed, with (for the most part) steep banks, and sometimes for a long distance under a thick canopy of boughs, from which powerful tendrils and ferns, more than a fathom in length, were suspended. Here the country was to some extent open; flat hillocks, with low underwood, came to view, and, on the north-west, loftier wooded mountains. The last two hours were notable for a heavy fall of rain, and, about half past five, we reached a solitary house occupied ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... correct that composition," observed Shirley, as Moore concluded. "Your censor-pencil scored it with condemnatory lines, whose signification I strove vainly to fathom." ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... he felt he had solved the reason that he rode always with closed helm, he was for the first time anxious himself to hide his face from the sight of men. Not from fear, for he knew not fear, but from some inward impulse which he did not attempt to fathom. ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... adamant, and oxen that from tawny jaws breathed flame of blazing fire, and with bronze hoofs smote the earth in alternate steps, and had led them and yoked them single-handed, he marked out in a line straight furrows, and for a fathom's length clave the back of the loamy earth; then he spake thus: 'This work let your king, whosoever he be that hath command of the ship, accomplish me, and then let him bear away with him the imperishable coverlet, the fleece glittering with tufts ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... the darkness, I found myself at a loss to fathom the mentality of men like Jeeves's Uncle Cyril. What on earth he could see funny in a disaster which had apparently involved the complete extinction of a human creature—or, at any rate, of half a human creature and ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... preceded it, surging in at that moment and making a clean breach over the wreck, washed me off my feet, and would have swept me overboard had I not chanced to have in my hand the rope by which I had secured the boat. It lifted the wreck, slued her nearly half round, and swept her a good fathom nearer that danger point, the inner edge of the reef; and I began to realise that the peril was imminent, and momentarily growing more so, and that immediate action ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... she could not ask them from that bowed head, nor yet from those clasped hands. And yet, somehow, it seemed that something of the man's soul was revealed to her at this moment, though she could not as yet fathom the meaning of this strange answer ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... connects the highways of several tribes, but is impassable from December to April from the snow and the storms which rage among the cliffs. We are still four thousand feet above the plain, whose depth the swimming eye tries in vain to fathom, yet the snowy peaks above us are inaccessible. Descending chains of rocks mingled with flint and lime, we attain a more clement landscape. Kabyle girls crowd around a well called the Mosquitoes' Fountain, a naked boy plays melancholy tunes on a reed, and the signs of a lower ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... Lady Rylton, who does not understand him, who could not, if she tried, fathom the depths of self-contempt that he endures, when he thinks of this evening's work, of his permitting this child to marry him, and give him her wealth—for nothing—nothing! What can he give her in return? An old name. She had not seemed to care for that—to know the importance of it. "Now it ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... cabbage and other kitchen plants; and here and there the gardens cannot be seen at all, for the great elder trees that spread themselves out by the bank, and hang far out over the streaming waters, which are deeper here and there than an oar can fathom. Opposite the old nunnery is the deepest place, which is called the "bell-deep," and there dwells the old water spirit, the "Au-mann." This spirit sleeps through the day while the sun shines down upon the water; but in starry and moonlit nights he shows himself. ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... his well-merited reward and his liberty. The shark was dissected and the skeleton sent to Spanish Town, where a few years afterwards it fell to pieces for want of care. This unfortunate town has been twice destroyed by an earthquake; the ruins on a clear day may be seen in three-fathom water. ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... of necessity good confidential agents, or whether a fire-proof man was as a matter of course trustworthy, Frederick Trent threw himself into a chair, and, burying his head in his hands, endeavoured to fathom the motives which had led Quilp to insinuate himself into Richard Swiveller's confidence;—for that the disclosure was of his seeking, and had not been spontaneously revealed by Dick, was sufficiently plain from Quilp's seeking his company and ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... East Tennessee by the enemy, but it was hard for us to believe that the sudden retreat of Longstreet, after his announced intention to attack Knoxville, was not under orders which indicated a plan we ought to fathom. We had heard of his first purpose at many places on our road, for it is almost impossible to keep the people of the country from learning the destination of a moving column, and now the inhabitants who remained at Morristown ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... attempted to fathom the depths of the Shaksperian ocean of thought, have only rounded the rim or skimmed over the surface of its illimitable magnificence. Tossed about by the billows of Shakspere's brain, for three hundred ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... which this shall be your Order. Dated on board his Majesty's ship Bristol, in Five-fathom Hole, off Charlestown, the 11th day ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... to my mind, I feel that the lonely wretched existence I lead is just as much an oppressive burden now as it was then, and that it is vain for me to try and shake it off. All my thinking and all my inquiries are fruitless; I cannot fathom what this glorious thing is which formerly happened in my life. Its mysterious and alas! to me, unintelligible echo, as it were, fills me with such great happiness; but will not this happiness pass over into the most agonising pain, and torture me to death, when I am obliged to ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... everything but what fear constrain them to keep; crafty, timorous, quick of apprehension, ingenious enough in their own works, as may testify their weirs in which they take their fish, which are certain enclosures made of reeds and framed in the fashion of a labyrinth or maze set a fathom deep in the water with divers chambers or beds out of which the entangled fish cannot return or get out, being once in. Well may a great one by chance break the reeds and so escape, otherwise he remains a prey to the fishermen the next low water ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... the company. Fear, surprise, anger, and curiosity, ruled them by turns and kept them incessantly upon the rack. There was something mysterious in the visiter who had just left them—something which they could not fathom—something unaccountable. 'Who could he be?' This was the question that each put to the other, but no one could give any thing like a rational answer. Meanwhile the evening wore on apace, and though the bell of the parish church hard by sounded the tenth hour, no one ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 402, Supplementary Number (1829) • Various
... some in dreams assured were Of the spirit that plagued us so: Nine fathom deep he had followed us From the ...
— The Rime of the Ancient Mariner • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... conflict of two arrows, Bringing death unto the maiden, Was a deep and darksome myst'ry Which his ignorance could not fathom. All the cause of his undoing Saw he in the silver arrow; So with true love's tireless effort, Quick he strove ...
— The White Doe - The Fate of Virginia Dare • Sallie Southall Cotten
... must bide a bit 'fore you can fathom their deepness," replied Joan; "and while you'm waitin' I wouldn't advise 'ee to take it for granted that the world's made up o' Reuben Mays—nor Adam Pascals neither;" and she ran to the door to welcome a cousin ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... heart, Knight of the Table Round, Pray for his soul, lords, of your part; A true knight he was found.' Ah! me, I cannot fathom ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... one living has been able to fathom the whole power of this ring, and no one can completely explain the secret signs engraved upon it. But, even with the imperfect knowledge of its properties which I possess, I can perform many wonders which no other creature can accomplish. If I put the ring ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... sail into the Gulf; and, having arrived at the oyster banks, cast anchor and commence business. The divers are first called to duty. They plunge to the bottom in four or five fathom water, dig up with sharpened sticks as many oysters as they are able, rise to the surface, and deposit them in sacks hung to receive them at the vessel's side. And thus they continue to do till the sacks are filled, or the hours allotted to this ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... are said to be just, and they behave like a father who disinherits his son because, as a man, he notes his parent's weakness. With tears and anguish have I striven for truth and knowledge. There is not a province of thought whose deepest depths I have not tried to fathom; and when I recognized that it is not given to mortals to apprehend the essence of the divinity because the organs bestowed on us are too small and feeble; when I refused to pronounce whether that which I ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... began when my play failed so dismally. A woman never can forgive failure. I have burnt the manuscript to the last page. Oh, if you could only fathom my unhappiness! Your estrangement is to me terrible, incredible; it is as if I had suddenly waked to find this lake dried up and sunk into the earth. You say you are too simple to understand me; but, oh, what is there to understand? You disliked my play, you have no faith ...
— The Sea-Gull • Anton Checkov
... horse; while in his mouth he held a jewel as large as a goose's egg, which shone like fire, and which, in the opinion of Sagean, was a carbuncle. Another of these images was that of a woman mounted on a golden unicorn, with a horn more than a fathom long. After passing, pursues the story, between these idols, which stand on platforms of gold, each thirty feet square, one enters a magnificent vestibule, conducting to the apartment of the king. At the four corners of this vestibule are stationed bands of music, ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... distasteful in American hotels that I cannot bring myself to use it in writing of them—she has been carried off to a lady's waiting room, and there remains in august wretchedness till the great man at the bar shall have decided on her fate. I have never been quite able to fathom the mystery of these delays. I think they must have originated in the necessity of waiting to see what might be the influx of travelers at the moment, and then have become exaggerated and brought to their present normal state by the gratified feeling of almost divine ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... him there, and glancing upwards from the street as the carriage drove off, I waved my hand to the slim black figure at the window, whose wan, weary eyes watched our departure with an expression which at the time I could not fathom. It was not until I was actually in the train that I remembered what Lady Delahaye's silent departure might ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Checco mio. Your mind is so quick to fathom matters of this kind. Think you, now, it might have been the ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... he remarked after a time, a slight twinkle in his eye of appreciation of the bull. But the twinkle quickly disappeared and the blue eyes took on a bleak and wintry look. "What dud he do ot Voloparaiso but land sux hundred fathom o' chain cable an' take never a receipt from the lighter-mon. I was gettun' my clearance ot the time. When we got tull sea, I found he hod no receipt ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... great semicircle in front of them. For some time the White Cloud continued to gaze at them in silent scrutiny, his large, dark, piercing eyes roving from Chiquita's face to the Captain's, in the seeming effort to fathom their thoughts and the very depths of their souls, as though to reassure himself of the ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... difference to me, their bein' there. I don't know 'em." For some reason that Lucy could not fathom, the woman's temper seemed to be rising, and being a person of tact ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... steamer on which I was did not draw much water, being built specially for river navigation, careful soundings had to be taken continually. I well recollect the cries of the man at the lead. When the man cried out "Una braca!" (one fathom), there was great excitement on board, and we had to slow down to half speed or dead slow. In the distance on the left bank in the haze could be distinguished high hills, at the foot of which white ribbon-like streaks were visible ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... breakers, and the howling of the tempest, and the heavy sea, which broke as high as the fore-yard, death appeared inevitable. There was only one hope left, and that was, that, should the tide change and take us under our lee-beam, it might possibly set us off on the Nine-fathom bank, which is situated at a distance of twelve miles north-northwest, off Boulogne harbor. On the event of reaching this bank, the safety of the ship and lives of the crew depended,—as it was determined there to try the anchors, for there was no possibility of keeping off shore ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... fellow's always got a decent sister to take about, anyway," he replied enigmatically, a remark over which Ingred pondered, but could not fathom. ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... present she is altogether undeveloped. She is two and twenty in years, but a child, or rather a piquant, amusing young girl, in manner, and perhaps in disposition. She is an enigma of which I should be sorry to have to undertake the solution. As she seems, I like her immensely, but when I try to fathom what she ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... in a series of Italian dialogues and Latin poems will not discourage those of his admirers who estimate the conspicuous failure made by all elaborate system-builders from Aristotle to Hegel. To fathom the mystery of the world, and to express that mystery in terms of logic, is clearly beyond the faculty of man. Philosophies that aim at universe-embracing, God-explaining, nature-elucidating, man-illuminating, comprehensiveness, have justly, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... subject alane, dominie. It will tak a jury o' rich men to judge rich men. A poor man isna competent. The rich hae straits the poor canna fathom." ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... came down stairs to find the Colonel pacing the length of the dining-room, his head bent, a worried frown upon his brow. He came to a sudden halt at my appearance and regarded me a moment without speaking. I could see that something of moment had happened, but I could fathom nothing of its nature from ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... (twelvemonth), but never had she been intil that cave, an' kenned no more nor the bairn unborn what there was in 't. An' sae whan the airemite, as the auld minister ca'd him—though what for he ca'd a muckle block like yon an airy mite, I'm sure I never cud fathom—whan he gat up, as I was sayin', an' cam' foret wi' his han' oot, she gae a scraich 'at jist garred my lugs dirl, an' doon she drappit; an' there, whan I ran up, was she lyin' i' the markis his airms, as white's a cauk eemage; an' it was lang or he broucht her till hersel', ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... was the Anita, and she was the second barge in a tow of two. Ahead of her, at the end of a ninety-fathom steel tow-line, was the sister barge Champion, and at an equal distance farther ahead was the steamer Proserpine. Each barge carried stump spars and mutton-leg canvas—which was why Scotty, weary of the endless work in the deep-water windjammers, had gone "tow-barging"—and ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... conceivable ground," I concluded, "you must let me help you." "You can't," he said very simply and gently, and holding fast to some deep idea which I could detect shimmering like a pool of water in the dark, but which I despaired of ever approaching near enough to fathom. I surveyed his well-proportioned bulk. "At any rate," I said, "I am able to help what I can see of you. I don't pretend to do more." He shook his head sceptically without looking at me. I got very warm. "But I can," I insisted. "I can do even more. I am doing more. ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... plainly saw that each one of the three was conscious that Wolf was the midnight visitor, and that two of the three were in possession of knowledge with regard to the mysterious soldier which he could not fathom. He took to studying Wolf; sent for him frequently; had long talks with him ostensibly as to his duties with recruits, but began to "draw him out" as to his past. All he could learn was that he had come to this ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... small space in the fore and after parts to work the vessel. There was also a platform made in the hold for a further number. Took leave of our friends at Old Calabar, and dropped down the river just below seven fathom point, where we anchored for the night. Had a slight tornado ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... their Wits, open their Eyes, and let their Ears hear, and learn such a thing out of my Advice, which was never taken notice of, or learn'd before, and is to be found in this Spirit of Copper, internal and external. He that doth not observe, or truly understand my Writings, will not fathom many Secrets, nor search out to purpose and in truth, nor learn to advantage without me, therefore no Man can direct me, as concerning the Spirit of Copper, except he hath beforehand inverted and turned the Copper inside outwards, and truly learned all the Mysteries of its internal ...
— Of Natural and Supernatural Things • Basilius Valentinus
... she lifts her eyes,—dark eyes, of preternatural largeness; brilliant, too, but not with the sparkle of the diamond; brilliant as deep clear wells are, in which the mellow moonlight sleeps fathom-deep between black walls of rock; and round them, and round the wide-opened lips, and arching eyebrow, and slightly wrinkled forehead, hangs an air of melancholy thought, vague doubt, almost of startled fear; then that expression passes, and the whole face collapses into a languor of patient sadness, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... chair, and was sitting opposite her. Peter was still standing, his great bulk shutting the glare of the lamplight out of her eyes. She looked long and earnestly into the man's face, as though she would fathom the meaning of his visit before she in any way committed herself. But she ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... me. I must be growing in wickedness, to fathom that of others, I who so short a time ago disbelieved in the very existence of such a thing. I remembered having heard that the young lady and her family were extremely anxious to form his acquaintance, ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... are these. We have large and deep caves of several depths: the deepest are sunk six hundred fathom: and some of them are digged and made under great hills and mountains: so that if you reckon together the depth of the hill and the depth of the cave, they are (some of them) above three miles deep. For we find, that the depth of a hill, and the depth of a cave from the flat, is ...
— The New Atlantis • Francis Bacon
... towards the zenith. And then he was aware of a huge mass flying through the air towards him, and turned upwards just in time to escape the charge—if it was a charge—of a second aeroplane. It whirled by below, sucked him down a fathom, and nearly turned him over in the ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... just, But how can finite measure infinite? Reason! alas, it does not know itself! Yet man, vain man, would with his short-lined plummet Fathom the vast abyss of heavenly justice. Whatever is, is in its causes just, Since all things are by fate. But purblind man Sees but a part o' th' chain, the nearest links, His eyes not carrying to that equal ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... the Variation to be 4 degrees 49 minutes East. At 6 Sounded and had 32 fathoms Water; the Bottom Coral Rocks, fine Sand and Shells, which Soundings we carried upon a South-West 1/2 West Course 9 or 10 leagues, and then had no ground with 100 fathom. We were by our account and per run afterwards 54 Leagues East from the Coast of Brazil and to the Southward of the Shoals called Abrollos, as they are laid down in Most Charts. Wind South-East to North-East; course South 58 degrees ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... exactly, Pinch,' he rejoined, with a slight frown; 'because she has some girlish notions about duty and gratitude, and all the rest of it, which are rather hard to fathom; but in the main you are right. Her heart was ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... terminated a series of 402 measures in March 1840.[72] The resulting parallax of 0.3483" (corresponding to a distance about 600,000 times that of the earth from the sun), seemed to be ascertained beyond the possibility of cavil, and is memorable as the first published instance of the fathom-line, so industriously thrown into celestial space, having really and indubitably touched bottom. It was confirmed in 1842-43 with curious exactness by C. A. F. Peters at Pulkowa; but later researches showed that it required increase to nearly ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... face darkening with an expression I could not fathom. "What was done at that time cannot be undone. For you and me there is no future. Yes," he said turning towards her as she made a slight fluttering move of dissent, "no future; we can bury the past, but we can not resurrect it. I doubt if you would wish to if we could; as we cannot, of course ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... a significant fact, and probably, could we fathom all the profundities and unravel all the entanglements of the relations between the sexes, as deep and as intricate as significant, that no woman thinks a man can pay her a higher compliment than to wish to make ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... considerable value was destroyed by them, and the temple of Fortune opened of its own accord. In addition to this, blood issuing from a bake-shop flowed to another temple of Fortune, whose statue on account of the fact that the goddess necessarily oversees and can fathom everything that is before us as well as behind and does not forget from what beginnings any great man came they had set up and named in a way not easy for Greeks to describe.[77] Also some infants were born ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... of her character; he believed her to be too profound for shallow people to read all in a moment: he even intimated that he himself had experienced no little difficulty in understanding her at odd times. "And so," said he, "they turn round upon you, and instead of saying, 'We are too shallow to fathom you,' they pretend ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... that of Reasoning, on the ground that it is necessary to obtain premises before we can reason from them. Now, Induction is mainly a process for finding the causes of effects: and in attempting to fathom the mode of tracing causes and effects in physical science, I soon saw that in the more perfect of the sciences, we ascend, by generalization from particulars, to the tendencies of causes considered singly, and then reason downward from those ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... shoals on each side, and having the Lady Nelson and a boat ahead; but on approaching the end of the channel, our passage into the sound was blocked up by a bank running across, upon which there was not water enough for the ship by a fathom, and we therefore anchored. At nine the tide had risen a fathom. and we passed over into the open sound; the depth immediately increasing to 4 and 7 fathoms, reduced to low water. So long as the flood ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... water and cliff; for otherwhere was a litter of great rocks and small, hard to be threaded even by those who knew the passes well; so that men had to tread along the very verge of the Shivering Flood, and wary must they be, for the water ran swift and deep betwixt banks of sheer rock half a fathom below their very foot-soles, which had but bare space to go on the narrow a way. So it held on for a while, and then got safer, and there was more space for going betwixt cliff and flood; albeit it was toilsome enough, since for some ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... the general belief, claimed by some whites as well as blacks, that I would sell at cost, "was bound" to do so, etc. It did not occur to those who so believed that I could have any good or disinterested reasons for selling for more than cost. It may be difficult to fathom one's own motives in such cases, but I can say honestly that I do not believe in the success of a system of selling to any people any property whatever for less than its market value, with a view to confer a lasting benefit upon them. That is, I think the immediate ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... reason I could not fathom, her good nature had returned. It was relief, perhaps, that ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... fermentation, a conflicting tumult in his soul. Veronica handed him a glass of punch; and in taking it, he gently touched her hand. "Serpentina! Veronica!" sighed he to himself. He sank into deep dreams; but Registrator Heerbrand cried quite aloud: "A strange old gentleman, whom nobody can fathom, he is and will be, this Archivarius Lindhorst. Well, long life to him! Your ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... o'er and o'er; It was his full heart's only lore; A prophet on the Sabbath day Had touched his sightless eyes with clay, And made him see who had been blind, Their words passed by him like the wind Which raves and howls, but cannot shock The hundred-fathom-rooted rock. ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... by the awful waste and stupidity of human life such as any great city unbares. But the Rector used the many instances to illustrate the requirements of wide sympathy, and to teach us to reverence the qualities of personality even when we could not fathom the reasons for apparent foolishness. He would say things like this: "Never forget that the development of our free will is what God wants. Love may make mistakes, but they are not failures. There are times ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... the church was painted ful of images. The chiefe image was of our Ladie, which was garnished with gold, rubies, saphirs and other rich stones abundantly. In the midst of the church stood 12. waxe tapers of two yards long, and a fathom about in bignesse, and there stands a kettle full of waxe with about 100. weight, wherein there is alwayes the wicke of a candle burning, as it were a lampe which goeth not ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... ideal life she had seen a lover with whom she could walk down through the years, whose life would touch hers at all points, who could fathom the depths of the nature that so puzzled herself, who could measure and supply the yearning reaches of intellect; who could awake in her soul a love, strong, deep, and unquestioning, so fervent, indeed, that she would turn from all other dreams and desires ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... Savage," replied the boatswain, "I consider it to be in a state which may be called precarious, and not at all permanent; but, with a little human exertion, four fathom of three-inch, and half-a-dozen tenpenny nails, it may last, for all I know, until it is time for ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... this,—a mystery that I cannot fathom," he said. "And now I would I knew what measures it would be ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... power of prayer, was adored. Thirty-three gods in all were invoked. The bodies of the dead were consumed on the funeral-pile. The soul survived the body, but the later doctrine of transmigration was unknown. All the attributes of sovereign power and majesty were collected in Varuna. No one can fathom him, but he sees and knows all. He is the upholder of order; just, yet the dispenser of grace, and merciful to the penitent. Worship is made up of oblations and prayers. It must be sincere. The gods will not tolerate deceit. They require faith. Of the last things and the last times the Rig-Veda ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... caustic manners, his coming in, and his going out; how long he was absent; how profoundly secret he kept himself, his doings, his whereabouts, and his mode of life. 'And,' said he, in conclusion, 'I know nothing of him. He's a queer dog, a wonderfully queer one. It would take a long time to fathom him, I can tell you. I've been with him for a long time; and am his confidential adviser, his lawyer, and all that sort of thing; and yet I've never done ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... other, the better side. But, deep down within him, that other side lived and grew strong, until it was strong enough to take possession of his body and cast him out. He is gone!" Gordon's voice rose again into triumphal tones. "He has dropped into an oblivion man's thought cannot fathom nor man's brain understand. He ordained his own destiny, he worked out his own fate. Let him have the end ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... confused and uncertain. Cady did not know whether to throw the ball or hold it, and the general exhibition of speed on the bases which was made by New York was characteristic of the team's dash in the race for the championship of the National League, and a system which the Boston players could not fathom. ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster
... Euclid. Some men find the modern English boy stimulating, and the old Egyptian humorous. Such are the born schoolmasters, and schoolmasters, like poets, nascuntur non fiunt. What I was born passes my ingenuity to fathom. Certainly not a schoolmaster—and my many years of apprenticeship did not make me one. They only turned me into an automaton, feared by myself, bantered by my colleagues, and sometimes good-humouredly ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... said the cardinal; "but none can fathom the mysteries of Divine interposition. This coming council may save society, and on that I would speak to you most earnestly. His holiness has resolved to invite the schismatic priesthoods to attend it, and labor to bring ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... the Hat Mountain, to avoid the Flerrys and Eddy Winds under the high Land. The Course in is first N.W. till you open the upper Part of the Harbour, then N.N.W. half W. The best Place for great Ships to Anchor, and the best Ground is before a Cove on the East-side of the Harbour in 13 Fathom Water. A little above Blue Beach Point, which is the first Point on the West-side; here you lie only two Points open: You may Anchor any where between this Point and the Point of Low Beach, on the same Side near the Head of the Harbour, observing that close to the ...
— Directions for Navigating on Part of the South Coast of Newfoundland, with a Chart Thereof, Including the Islands of St. Peter's and Miquelon • James Cook
... English artillery, loaded with round, bar, and chain shot, musket balls, spike nails, and every kind of missile that the men had been able to lay hands upon, were discharged when the two vessels were scarcely a fathom apart, and the Spanish ship's upper deck instantly became a shambles, scarcely a man remaining uninjured ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... island, I had a second crow over Charmian. A big fella marster belong Suava (which means the high chief of Suava) came on board. But first he sent an emissary to Captain Jansen for a fathom of calico with which to cover his royal nakedness. Meanwhile he lingered in the canoe alongside. The regal dirt on his chest I swear was half an inch thick, while it was a good wager that the underneath layers ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... Ask me not how her course she knows. He from Whom every instinct flows Hath breathed into His creatures power, Giving to each its needful dower; And strive and question as we will, We cannot trace the inborn skill, Nor fathom how, where'er she roam, The cat ne'er ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... been carefully inculcated at all times by unconstitutional statesmen. The reason is evident. Whilst men are linked together, they easily and speedily communicate the alarm of any evil design. They are enabled to fathom it with common counsel, and to oppose it with united strength. Whereas, when they lie dispersed, without concert, order, or discipline, communication is uncertain, counsel difficult, and resistance impracticable. Where men are not acquainted with each other's ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... but it was at their uncle they looked the moment after, because of the strange and sudden sound that issued from his lips. For it was like a cry, and his face wore a flushed and curious expression they could not fathom. The face and the cry were signs of something utterly unusual. He was startled—out of himself. A marvellous idea had evidently struck him. "It's either something," thought Judy, "or else he's got a pain." But Tim's mind was quicker. "He's got it," the boy decided, meaning, "We've got it out ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... had died and been buried in the ground was till fresh in his memory, and from the oaths and unkind language of his mother he had come to the conclusion that all must die and be buried in the same manner. What became of them after death he could not fathom, but he concluded that the frost in the winter-time was a sort of cold vapor arising from the bodies of those who were dead and that such things were all governed by the great ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... moment's silence, during which Benassis followed his own thoughts, careless of the keen glance by which his guest friend tried to fathom him. ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... she fathom the cause until upon a certain day which fell upon the end of a week's wearisome traverse of the hardest country yet encountered. Up and up and still higher he bore into a range of beetling crags, and always his gaze ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... suit; And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's tail, Tickling a parson's nose as 'a lies asleep, Then dreams he of another benefice: Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck, And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades, Of healths five fathom deep; and then anon Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes; And, being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two, And sleeps again. This is that very Mab That plats the manes of horses in the night; And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs, Which, once untangled, much ...
— Romeo and Juliet • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... rested only between him and the doctor, he might have made a private communication under pledge of secrecy, and so induced his principal to let the matter drop. But the matter did not rest solely between him and the doctor. Mr Bickers and Felgate, by some means which he was unable to fathom, appeared to have learned the secret, and were not likely to let it drop. Indeed, it was evident that, so far from that, they would like if possible to fix a charge of actual complicity in ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... usurped the place of the old society, refined, subtle and perhaps too studied, which formed the environment of the last Sung emperors. Despite their naive efforts and good will, these barbarians could not fathom an art so austere, enlightened and balanced. They were utterly ignorant of such a masterly conception of nature as was evoked in Chinese painting. Monochrome to them was dull. They could admire on trust, but they could not understand. On the other hand, the Northern style with its ...
— Chinese Painters - A Critical Study • Raphael Petrucci
... Relations, acquaintances, strangers, even enemies, could be found who would do so. But who will so love me as to carry my crushing burden of sin? Who can fully understand its exceeding sinfulness I Who can fathom the depths into which I have fallen, or enter the body of death which imprisons my spirit. One only, the truest, the best, the most loving of all, my Saviour! And His hatred of my sin, and His sorrow for it, is just ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... auction-room, and it became a by-word that a visit from the great book-hunter was as bad as a storm in the book-shops. He boasted in his epigrams of exploits in Flanders, in Switzerland, and among the Venetian book-stalls. At Rome he bought books by the fathom; he skimmed the German shelves, and passed over into England to relieve the islanders of their riches. At Lyons he met Marshal Villeroi, who gave him a great portion of the books which Cardinal de Tournon had bequeathed to the Jesuits. We trace the result of his travels ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... was "as filthy rags," that man's only hope for victory over sin must come from the God-ward side. He, therefore, made kingly provision so rich, so sufficient, so exceeding abundant, that as we study it, we feel we have tapped a mine of wealth, too deep to fathom. Just a ...
— How I Know God Answers Prayer - The Personal Testimony of One Life-Time • Rosalind Goforth
... the contemptuous tone in her voice, and he gave her a keen, searching look as if he were trying to read her thoughts and fathom the reason for her very ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... advantage, a great advantage, for me to observe the Count of Ferroll in this intimate society," said the prince, speaking slowly, "perhaps even to fathom him. But I am not come to that yet. He is a man neither to love nor to detest. He has himself an intelligence superior to all passion, I might say all feeling; and if, in dealing with such a being, we ourselves have either, we give ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... thou but thus long from thine, Restrained the beams of thy beloved shine, At thy return, if so thou could'st or durst Behold a Chaos blacker than the first. Tell him here's worse than a confused matter, His little world's a fathom under water, Nought but the fervor of his ardent beams Hath power to dry the torrent of these streams Tell him I would say more but cannot well, Oppressed minds, abruptest tales do tell. Now post with double speed, mark what I says By ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... had Jean spoken to her of Father Austin; she loved him already, but she had yet to fathom the nobleness of his soul. His single-heartedness and abnegation of self, his tenderness and quick sympathy (virtues tempering his fierce abhorrence of Paganism), his stern reprobation of the evil, and his yearning for the good, in the untutored barbarians among whom he laboured, ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... three hundred leagues of the river Saint Lawrence when the ship struck with amazing force against (as we supposed) a rock; however, upon heaving the lead, we could find no bottom, even with three hundred fathom. What made this circumstance the more wonderful, and indeed beyond all comprehension, was, that the violence of the shock was such that we lost our rudder, broke our bow-sprit in the middle, and split all our masts from top to bottom, two of which went by the board; a poor fellow, who ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... into the pool at this spot,' he said. 'Search the rock with your hands as you descend, and, about a fathom and a half down, you will find a hole. Enter it, head-first, but going slowly, for the lava rock is sharp and may ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... faith has nothing to do with the intellect; neither therefore ought the sceptic to be quite beyond the pale of your charity. Nay, his intellect being a rasa tabula in these matters, I should think he is in more favorable circumstances than they can be. But, seriously, let me try, if possible, to fathom this curious dogma,—I beg your pardon,—sentiment, I mean. Belief without faith in an intelligible sense (if by this last we mean a condition of the emotions or affections), I can understand; though if the truth believed be of a nature to excite to ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... opposite corner the doll sat staring at them with eyes of blank blue and her vacuous smile. A vague sense of injury was over Ellen, in spite of her delight and her gratitude—a sense of injury which she could not fathom, and for which she chided herself. However, ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... hundreds. They subdivided the unit, moreover, into sixty equal parts, and each of these parts into sixty further equal subdivisions, and this system of fractions was used in all kinds of quantitive measurements. The fathom, the foot and its square, talents and bushels, the complete system of Chaldaean weights and measures, were based on the intimate alliance and parallel use of the decimal and duodecimal systems of notation. The sixtieth was more frequently employed than the hundredth when large quantities ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... less, and spoke never a word, although in the earlier part of our journey he had proved himself a most unrivalled chatterer. He seemed ill at ease in the presence of our guest, and a sort of mutual distrust, the cause of which I could not exactly fathom, seemed ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... really mean so, Philip?" she inquired, looking at me earnestly, as if to fathom the trick I was playing ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... of Baltimore, whose business it was to prosecute the African slave trade, was jealous of the Society and tried to undermine it. In addition, the trials and hardships incidental to founding the colony had reduced many of the settlers to want.[88] The most ignorant could thus fathom their condition: "We suffer: if the Society have means and does not apply them to our relief, it is without benevolence; if it have not means, it wants power and in either case ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... often heard and read about Brutus, one of those mysterious men whose history we could not fathom, for as far north as York we read in a book there that "Brutus settled in this country when the Prophet Eli governed Israel and the Ark was taken from the Philistines, about 1140 B.C., or a century and a half later than when David was singing Psalms in Jerusalem"; ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... the Invisible is! We cannot fathom it with our miserable senses, with our eyes which are unable to perceive what is either too small or too great, too near to, or too far from us; neither the inhabitants of a star nor of a drop of water ... ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... S. H. The Prince of Monaco, from the Institut Oceanographique of Monaco. Dr. W. S. Bruce made similar donations and supervised the construction of our largest deep-sea dredge. The three-thousand fathom tapered steel cables and mountings, designed to work the deep-water dredges, were supplied by Messrs. Bullivant. Appliances were also loaned by Mr. J. T. Buchanan of the 'Challenger' Expedition and by the Commonwealth Fisheries Department. The self-recording tide-gauges we employed were ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... scribbled words in the front of each Diana could see that they had all been sent to the Arab by the author himself—one even was dedicated to "My friend, Ahmed Ben Hassan, Sheik of the Desert." She put the books back with a puzzled frown. She wished, with a feeling that she could not fathom, that they had been rather what she had imagined. The evidence of education and unlooked-for tastes in the man they belonged to troubled her. It was an unexpected glimpse into the personality of the Arab that had captured her was vaguely disquieting, for it suggested possibilities ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... friend of my heart! Is that silken dress for thee? For the love of God, let me but touch it. Four dollars a fathom it be priced at. Thy husband is indeed the king of generosity. Art thou ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... thou dost light the skyes. O Phoebus, hadst thou but thus long from thine, Restrained the beams of thy beloved shine, At thy return, if so thou could'st or durst Behold a Chaos blacker than the first. Tell him here's worse than a confused matter, His little world's a fathom under water, Nought but the fervor of his ardent beams Hath power to dry the torrent of these streams Tell him I would say more but cannot well, Oppressed minds, abruptest tales do tell. Now post with double speed, mark what I says By ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... "Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange, Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Hark, ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... "it is better for both you and him that you were not the bride of Death. There are deeper things hidden in the events of life than our reason can fathom. We die when it is best for ourselves and best for others that we should die—never before. And the fact that we live is in itself conclusive that we are yet needed in the world by all who can be affected ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... the boat lost considerable way, I was unwilling to discourage the men, and reluctantly gave up my intention of ascertaining the depth and the character of the bed. There was a general shout in the boat when we found ourselves in one fathom, and we soon after landed on a low point of mud, immediately under the butte of the peninsula, where we unloaded the boat, and carried the baggage about a quarter of a mile to firmer ground. We arrived just in time for meridian observation, and carried the barometer to the summit ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... jolly enough, and she is brave enough. Why, she let me strike her on the cheek as hard as ever I could, and didn't utter a word. I wanted her to lock the door, and she had some queer notions about it that I couldn't fathom; and when I struck her on her cheek, she only just offered me the other, and said, 'You may do what you like, but I will ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... "you have got hold of a thought which no man has ever yet been able to fathom. Free will is a great mystery, nevertheless every child knows that it is a ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... express agent. Another had climbed over the tender and ordered the runner to hold up. All this was regular programme, as I had explained to Miss Cullen, but here had been a variation which I had never heard of being done, and of which I couldn't fathom the object. When the train had been stopped, the man on the tender had ordered the fireman to dump his fire, and now it was lying in the road-bed and threatening to burn through the ties; so my first order was to extinguish it, ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford
... well enough that the presence of the loyal Imperialist with the baleful eye meant a reversal in his own case too. But the recent and very definite animus of Lopez against him he could in no way fathom. The blackmailer testified again. The prisoner, this Americano, had waylaid him in the wood two days before, and had robbed him ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... accurately, horribly, true. I know what the Swiss lakes were; no pool of Alpine fountain at its source was clearer. This morning, on the Lake of Geneva, at half a mile from the beach, I could scarcely see my oar-blade a fathom deep. ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... he puzzled them. Even The Sky Pilot, the most astute and intelligent of them all, was at a loss to fathom The Oskaloosa Kid. Innocence and unsophistication flaunted their banners in almost every act and speech of The Oskaloosa Kid. The youth reminded him in some ways of members of a Sunday school which had flourished in the dim vistas of his past when, as an ordained minister of the Gospel, he ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... is extremely various, and in many places wholly beyond the power of man to fathom. The greatest depth that has ever been reached, was effected by Captain Scoresby in the sea near Greenland, in the year 1817, and was 7,200 feet. Many parts of the Atlantic are thought to be three times this depth. How much is ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... satisfactory reply to this argument: he therefore changed the subject by saying, "I wish I could fathom this last business. 'Tis a good deal out o' the course o' plain sailing. So far as I know by, there wasn't a living soul but Jonathan who could have said what ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... and half the dingles have little grey circles in them where the camping fires have been lit. I did not mind that evidence of life, but I did not like the cast-off clothing, draggled hats, coats, skirts, and boots that lay about. I never can fathom the mystery of tramps' wardrobes. They are never well-dressed exactly, but wherever they encamp they appear to discard clothing enough for two or three persons, clothing which, though I should not personally like to make use of it, still appears ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... outraged Heaven, How could'st thou, since, have smiled? A fathom deep the frozen snow Lay horrid on the wild, Where fled to perish youth and age, And wife and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... "Three fathom o' water here, my lad," whispered Josh, as with his companion he leaned over the side and gazed down at ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... was called to suffer on account of sex. The vote by which this injustice was perpetrated, was due to the overwhelming majority of the clergy, who, with Bible in hand, swept all before them. No man can fathom the depths of rebellion in woman's soul when insult is heaped upon her sex, and this is intensified when done under the hypocritical assumption of divine authority. This fresh baptism into woman's degradation impelled the current of her ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... with charming and sympathetic studies of child life and character.... A striking revelation of power to observe and fathom the proceedings of children, and is written with genuine ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... lovely sunshine-day, The house and the yard couldn't hold me; A meadow I found, on my back I lay, And sang what my spirit told me; Then snakes came crawling, a fathom long, To bask in the ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... necessary for the perfection of his lower human sympathy, prevented him from ever rendering with any force the feelings of the mountain anchorite, or indicating in any of his monks the deep spirit of monasticism. Worldly cardinals or nuncios he can fathom to the uttermost; but where, in all his thoughts, do we find St. Francis, or Abbot Samson? The "Friar" of Shakespere's plays is almost the only stage conventionalism which he admitted; generally nothing ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... sleeping: now she could not ask them from that bowed head, nor yet from those clasped hands. And yet, somehow, it seemed that something of the man's soul was revealed to her at this moment, though she could not as yet fathom the meaning of this ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the King,—"And it is more than he will himself explain. Nevertheless, he is there nearly every day,—some attraction draws him, but what, I cannot discover. If Humphry were of the soul of me, as he is of the body of me, I should not even try to fathom his secret,—but he is the nation's child—heir to its throne—and as such, it is necessary that we, for the nation's sake, should guard him in the nation's interests. If you chance to learn anything of the object of ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... too. And love covers a multitude of sins. He had often had occasion to discourse upon various sorts of love—fatherly love and brotherly love and maternal affection and so on. But this flare of passionate tenderness focussing upon one slender bit of a girl was something he could not quite fathom. He would have contradicted with swift anger any suggestion that perhaps it was merely wise old Nature's ancient method efficiently at work for an appointed end. He had been so thoroughly grounded in the convention of decrying ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... of bob-wood there is a line of ten or twelve fathoms wound neatly about, the end of the line made fast to it. The other end of the line is made fast to the harpoon, and the Mosquito man keeps about a fathom of it ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... feet, caused it—confined as it was only at the extremities—to dip, with an alarming inclination towards the centre; while the motion given it by the passenger created an oscillation frightful to one whose eye glanced down into the dark abyss of waters, that foamed and tumbled many a fathom beneath. ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... Pierre Fatio. Mrs. Blair was paying a very long call, and I could not understand it. All the time I was haunted with a vague and ever present idea that she meant to sell me. The more I tortured my brain to consider how, the less I was able to fathom ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... quixotic notion in your head that it is for you to heal a wound for which one of your family was responsible? Oh, surely not! And yet, you women are so fond of anything like self-sacrifice that it is impossible to fathom the motives that drive you into folly: generous, well-meant folly, but folly all the same. You have no one here to advise you, and I beg you to be guided by me. You are not really called upon to do this thing. It is ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... sent Margaret to a ball with a long tear in her skirt; she let her go out, open in the back, both in blouse and in placket; she upset a cup of hot cafe au lait on her arm; finally she tore a strap off a shoe as she was fastening it on Margaret's foot. Though no one has been able to fathom it, there must be a reason for the perversity whereby our outbursts of anger against any seriously-offending fellow-being always break on some trivial offense, never on one of the real and deep causes of wrath. Margaret, though ignorant of her maid's ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... seating himself on the only two deal chairs, laughed immoderately at my doleful complaints. The gaunt Norwegian, the owner of this humble dwelling, made such comical grimaces, and winked his little eyes so frequently and eruditely, in endeavouring to fathom their mirth, that I could not restrain myself, and took a conspicuous part in the joke. After arranging, through King, who had come with us, as forming one of the boat's crew, where and how we should sleep, we went into the open air, and R—— and P——, lighting ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... certain that his silent unknown foe held the clue to the mystery he was trying to fathom. He fought on, silently, grimly. The cold creatoid fabric was slippery, but a sudden jerk of an arm, a certain quick twist that Grant was familiar with, and his enemy went limp. Grant's breath was coming in quick, labored ...
— Pirates of the Gorm • Nat Schachner
... to both doors I stood shuddering over the blue fire. Whatever logicians may say, we do not reason life's conclusions out. Clouds blacken the heavens till there comes the lightning-flash. So do our intuitions leap unwarned from the dark. 'Twas thus I seemed to fathom the mystery of those interlopers. Ben Gillam had been chosen to bring the pirate ship north because his father, of the Hudson's Bay Company, could screen him from English spies. Mr. Stocking, of Boston, was another partner to the venture, who could shield Ben from punishment ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... along the shore, and see for a harbour to put into, which they did, and soon brought us an account that there was a deep bay, with a very good road, and several little islands, under which they found good riding, in ten to seventeen fathom water, and accordingly there we ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... hostile mercenaries; his captains in the field were watched and thwarted by commissioners appointed to check them at the point of successful ambition or magnificent victory. The historian has a hard task when he tries to fathom the Visconti's schemes, or to understand his motives. Half the duke's time seems to have been spent in unravelling the webs that he had woven, in undoing his own work, and weakening the hands of his chosen ministers. Conscious that his power was artificial, ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... now taken the helm, headed the sloop cautiously for this opening. One of the men constantly heaved the lead and cried the soundings as the ship progressed. The pirate chief kept to the left of the channel and finally passed through into a wide lagoon, with a scant fathom to spare at the shallowest place. The Fortune entered without difficulty, but the deeply-laden Francis grounded midway in and had to wait several hours for the tide ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... nothing but your proverbial courtesy can conceal the fact that they must really think they are appealing to a natural enemy. I have the misfortune to be a critic [laughter], but in this assembly I must say I am not an art critic. Friends have made a presumptuous attempt to fathom the depth of my ignorance upon artistic subjects, and they have thought that in some respects I must be admirably qualified ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... Eyes. His Generosity was boundless, as his Love, for no Man ever truly loved, that was not generous. He thought his Estate, like his Passion, was a sort of a Pontick Ocean, it could never know an Ebb; But now he found it could be fathom'd, and that the Tide was turning, therefore he sollicits with more impatience the consummation of their Joys, that both might go like Martyrs from their Flames immediately to Heaven; and now at last it was agreed between them, that they should both be one, but not without some ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... life of him Herrick could not fathom her tone. "But since Toni is a free agent and not a slave, I expect she's gone out on business of ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... was caught up in a palace intrigue I could not fathom. I could catch the drift of it, no more, against Chong Mong- ju, the princely cousin of the Lady Om. Beyond my guessing there were cliques and cliques within cliques that made a labyrinth of the palace and extended to all the Seven Coasts. But I did not worry. I left that to ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... been received into the Lodge, Pierre was sitting at home reading a book and trying to fathom the significance of the Square, one side of which symbolized God, another moral things, a third physical things, and the fourth a combination of these. Now and then his attention wandered from the ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... evening Max Schurz found Ernest alone in a quiet corner. 'One moment, my dear Le Breton,' he said; 'you know I always like to find out all about people's political antecedents; it helps one to fathom the potentialities of their characters. From what social stratum, now, do we get your clever friend, ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... length when Julie flashed out before her aunt's astonished eyes into a complete forgetfulness of her marriage; she recovered the wild spirits of careless girlhood. Mme. de Listomere then and there made up her mind to fathom the depths of this soul, for its exceeding simplicity was ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... England, raise For the tidings of thy might, By the festal cities' blaze, Whilst the wine-cup shines in light; And yet amidst that joy and uproar, Let us think of them that sleep Full many a fathom deep By thy wild and ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... those apparently insane remarks of the doctor's which no sane nor sober man could fathom or see a reason ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... the story is, it is before you. If in its perusal you fathom my intentions, my hopes, my desires, I shall have been repaid for the pain its writing has brought me. At least you will find the history of a colossal business affair involving millions of dollars and manned by the financial leaders of the moment. It is a fair representation of financial methods ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... writes] we always found more shallow water, and the sea thick, black, and very muddy, and came at length into five fathom water; and seeing this we determined to pass over to the land which we had seen on the other side, and here likewise we found as little depth or less, whereupon we rode all night in five fathom water, and we perceived the sea to run with so great a rage into the land that ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... with an entire change of tone that startled me into renewed interest, "I haven't any doubt that you have always regarded me as a queer sort of chap, more or less shrouded by a mystery you could not fathom. ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... upon her: she was not perhaps so sure now that it was all "nonsense." She wanted, it might be, a closer alliance with him, which she could not have because she had once rejected the chance of it. Martin did not know; he was aware that there was a great deal going on in the house that he did not fathom. Amy, his sister, knew. There was an alliance between his mother and his sister deep and strong, as he could see—he did not yet know that it was founded very largely on dislike and ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... on which I was did not draw much water, being built specially for river navigation, careful soundings had to be taken continually. I well recollect the cries of the man at the lead. When the man cried out "Una braca!" (one fathom), there was great excitement on board, and we had to slow down to half speed or dead slow. In the distance on the left bank in the haze could be distinguished high hills, at the foot of which white ribbon-like streaks were ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... had once more surprised her, and she had supposed herself altogether beyond surprise. A license! Her quick glance could fathom no deceit, no ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... causes which give rise to all that we see of outward phenomenal manifestation. There are continual allusions in his works to the life behind the veil, and it is to this suggestion of some mystery underlying his words that we owe the many attempts to fathom his meaning expressed through Browning Societies and the like—attempts which fail or succeed according as they are made from "the without" or from "the within." No one was better qualified than the ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... on behalf of my team after the game was over. To this she turned a deaf ear and a stony glance was her only answer. After the game we returned to the Pyramids and the Sphinx, looking them over more at our leisure and trying to fathom the mystery of how they were built that has been a puzzle for so ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... her chair so that her clothes covered the charmed stone, underneath which lay the secret treasures of the peddler, unable to refrain from speaking of what she would have been very unwilling to reveal; "but a rough outside often holds a smooth inside." Caesar stared around the building, unable to fathom the hidden meaning of his companion, when his roving eyes suddenly became fixed, and his teeth chattered with affright. The change in the countenance of the black was instantly perceived by Katy, and turning her face, she saw the peddler himself, standing ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... highways of several tribes, but is impassable from December to April from the snow and the storms which rage among the cliffs. We are still four thousand feet above the plain, whose depth the swimming eye tries in vain to fathom, yet the snowy peaks above us are inaccessible. Descending chains of rocks mingled with flint and lime, we attain a more clement landscape. Kabyle girls crowd around a well called the Mosquitoes' Fountain, a naked boy plays melancholy tunes on a reed, and the signs of a lower ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... no mortal can fathom, To rejoice in the smile of God! To be first in the light Of His Holy sight, And freed from His chastening rod. Faithful, indeed, that soul, to ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... pledge of secrecy, and so induced his principal to let the matter drop. But the matter did not rest solely between him and the doctor. Mr Bickers and Felgate, by some means which he was unable to fathom, appeared to have learned the secret, and were not likely to let it drop. Indeed, it was evident that, so far from that, they would like if possible to fix a charge of actual complicity in ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... child that ever gave a kiss for the asking (you could kiss her as soon as look at her), but she was also the very devil to deal with if she saw fit to take a distaste of you. I saw her once smack a fathom of able- bodied youth on both sides of the head with a lusty vigor that constrained the sufferer to howl. And I have seen her come to meet a man—well, me, with the readiest lips and the friendliest hand in the world. Oh, Katje was like a blotch of ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... smiling. For some reason she could not fathom, Evelyn never seemed willing to claim the full relationship; always assumed it to be but a hazy and distant connection. It was as if in her success the modiste wished to recognize no element but her own worth; no wealthy or influential ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... descended an irregular stair composed of several ledges, shipping much water. Up to this point the Loquilocun flowed in a rocky bed, with (for the most part) steep banks, and sometimes for a long distance under a thick canopy of boughs, from which powerful tendrils and ferns, more than a fathom in length, were suspended. Here the country was to some extent open; flat hillocks, with low underwood, came to view, and, on the north-west, loftier wooded mountains. The last two hours were notable for a heavy fall of rain, and, about half past five, we reached a solitary ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... they took together Steve asked Miss Grace how she happened to come from her home way up in New York down to Kentucky to teach mountain boys and girls, and she was silent a moment, a look which he could not fathom coming over her bright face. At last she said, "I was very foolish; I threw away happiness. Then I heard of this work and came here that I might redeem my life by ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... something about these things that presented to his understanding a wall of insurmountable height. Then, he recalled his last interview with Jean and the suspicions that had been cast upon himself, suspicions he had vainly endeavored to fathom. What was in the wind, anyhow? he asked himself. There seemed to be forces at work over which he had no control, forces big with portent, heavy with menace. Like a towering thunder-cloud that casts its sickly green over all about, so these ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... ever, and her eyes seemed larger, darker, and brighter. Nicholas shuddered slightly as she approached, and even Potts felt a thrill of apprehension pass through his frame. He scarcely, indeed, ventured a look at her, for he dreaded her mysterious power, and feared she could fathom the designs he secretly entertained against her. But she took no notice whatever of him. Acknowledging Sir Ralph's salutation, she motioned Richard to follow her to the further end of ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... opinion went with the decree, and was in a great measure satisfied by it. But this fight had really only just begun; it would go on in the higher courts, with new resources and infinite devices, which the public would be unable to fathom or follow, until by-and-by it would come out that a compromise had been made, and the easy public would not understand that this compromise gave the looters of the railway substantially all they ever expected to get. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... be difficult to fathom the motives which induced John Wilford to tell his wife and son that the money had been restored to the owner. Perhaps he had some plan by which he hoped to escape detection and punishment for his crime; or it may be that he told the falsehood to satisfy Lawry for the present moment. ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... compelled all my life to center my thought upon books and music, friends, travel, and devotion to Uncle Tom. I have developed this power of concentration and self-denial; but would you bring me to live over again what I lived with Uncle Tom? Oh, my friend, no man can understand and fathom the maternal desire in a woman. It is a mystery which ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... with a kind of stone knife, and a war-club of hard wood, fastened to a girth of deer-skin. In addition to this, some carried the ancient sheemaugun or Indian lance, consisting of a smooth pole above one fathom in length, with a spear of flint firmly tied on with splints of hard wood, bound down with deer's sinews. Thus equipped, and each warrior painted in a manner to suit his fancy, and ornamented with appropriate feathers, they repaired to the spot ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... enjoyment would not bring her nature peace, and that such was not the love she needed. Keith alone could give her true love. And she was in Keith's arms, puzzled and lethargic with something that was only not despair because she could not fathom her own feelings. ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... the departure of the Guarda Costa without firing a shot, and the exultation of the officers who boarded us, and which they tried in vain to conceal, all convinced me there was some mystery which it was not in my power to fathom. ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... here and there the gardens cannot be seen at all, for the great elder trees that spread themselves out by the bank, and hang far out over the streaming waters, which are deeper here and there than an oar can fathom. Opposite the old nunnery is the deepest place, which is called the "bell-deep," and there dwells the old water spirit, the "Au-mann." This spirit sleeps through the day while the sun shines down upon the water; but in starry and moonlit nights he shows himself. He is ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... complimentary name for Germany. Hans Wurst - Merry Andrew; Zani; Jack Pudding - the latter word being a literal translation of the German Hans Wurst; the pudding in either case referring to the sausages, or the pretended sausage, which the Merry Andrew always appeared to be swallowing by the yard or fathom. See Blackley's "Word Gossip." Harmlos,(Ger.) - Harmless. Haul de pot - Take the stakes. Hause - House. Hegel - Name of the German philosopher. Heine, Heinrich - German poet. Heini von Steier - Heinrich von Ofterdingen. Heldenbuch - Is the title of a collection of epic poems, belonging to the cycle ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... become conscious of "that something" which transcends thought and which uses thought as a medium for expression. Many have glimpses of "that something," but few ever reach the state where the mind is steady enough to fathom these depths. Silent, concentrated thought is more potent than spoken words, for speech distracts from the focusing power of the mind by drawing more and more attention to ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... say will not, and excuse me when I add, that you greatly mistake your duty to give way to this apathy, and thus retard your recovery," he said kindly. "I do not seek to fathom your trouble, but I do know that it was excessive mental anguish that caused you to break a blood-vessel, and I would remind you that this is not the right way to brood over and nurse your grief, refusing to make any ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... your humble writer. For the western country, as a hardy and profitable stock of thrifty hogs, the Berkshire mixed or crossed with the Poland China, would be my choice, but every man has his own notions concerning the breed of his stock. The main point is to keep them healthy. Please fathom these instructions, which will cost ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... amazed at what had passed,—at the flight of Maltravers, the success of Lumley,—unable to account for it, to extort explanation from Vargrave or from Evelyn, was distracted by the fear of some villanous deceit which she could not fathom. To escape herself she plunged yet more eagerly into the gay vortex. Vargrave, suspicious, and fearful of trusting to what she might say in her nervous and excited temper if removed from his watchful eye, ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book X • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... came about that Dick and Nort, by the exercise of their wits, with which our American youth are so richly endowed, had outwitted their enemies. Though why they should have been detained as prisoners they could not fathom. ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... eminent sort, and illustrious Antecessors, to explain in self- consistency the differing functions of the Roman Csar, and in what sense he was legibus solutus. The origin of this difficulty we shall soon understand.] wit could as little fathom as the fleets of Csar could traverse the Polar basin, or unlock the gates of the Pacific, are best symbolized, and find their most appropriate exponent, in the illimitable city itself—that Rome, whose centre, the Capitol, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... thus solely with surfaces. It can name the thickness of reality, but it cannot fathom it, and its insufficiency here is essential and permanent, ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... Take an opportunity of going unnoticed to a "bear-stack," and fathom it three times round. The last fathom of the last time you will catch in your arms the appearance of ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... on the trial, or that the accused was in a state of mind, when committing the offense, that rendered him irresponsible for the crime alleged, which plea Pike would ever make to me, sometimes alluding to the great injustice of his being hung. But as Mr. Holman had undertaken to fathom that, I never pressed him with any particular ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... long wrapt by such ideas; but the soul wearies of a pauseless flight; and, stooping from its wheeling circuits round and round this spot, suddenly it fell ten thousand fathom deep, into the abyss of the present— into self-knowledge—into tenfold sadness. I roused myself—I cast off my waking dreams; and I, who just now could almost hear the shouts of the Roman throng, and ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... with that young lady,' I observe; 'and I have never yet been able to fathom it. Can you ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... death a real want of mankind was met, in whose death a real sacrifice was offered, in whose death an angry God was not indeed propitiated, but in whose death the loving Father of our souls Himself provided the Lamb for the offering, without which, for reasons deeper than we can wholly fathom, it was impossible ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Jones Minor and the First Book of Euclid. Some men find the modern English boy stimulating, and the old Egyptian humorous. Such are the born schoolmasters, and schoolmasters, like poets, nascuntur non fiunt. What I was born passes my ingenuity to fathom. Certainly not a schoolmaster—and my many years of apprenticeship did not make me one. They only turned me into an automaton, feared by myself, bantered by my colleagues, and sometimes good-humouredly tolerated ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... is a habit of mine," responded Dr. Dean, calmly. "But in the present case, it doesn't need much perspicuity to fathom your mystery. The dullest clod-hopper will tell you he can see through a millstone when there's a hole in it. And I was always a good hand at putting two and two together and making four out of them. You ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... breast a broad shield, and he grasped in his hand a spear that was most strong, and spurred his horse with all his main, and hit the admiral with a smart blow under the breast, that the burny gan to burst, so that the spear pierced through there behind him full a fathom; the wretch fell to the ground! That saw soon the admiral's son, who is named Gecron; and grasped his spear anon, and smote Leir the earl sore on the left side, throughout the heart,—the earl down fell. ...
— Brut • Layamon
... ourselves to be led without anxiety, because we feel confusedly that we can always get out of them if we like: all that we have to do, in fact, is to give up the cinematographical habits of our intellect. When we say "The child becomes a man," let us take care not to fathom too deeply the literal meaning of the expression, or we shall find that, when we posit the subject "child," the attribute "man" does not yet apply to it, and that, when we express the attribute "man," it applies no more to the subject "child." The reality, which ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... Mackay and those of his men who could handle an oar rowed unceasingly. Again and again he threw out his twenty-fathom line, but in vain. He made out a dim line of precipitous cliffs, yet the water seemed fathomless—the only map in existence was a rough one that Stanley had made. At last the lead touched bottom at fourteen fathoms. In the dim light of dawn they rowed and sailed toward a shady ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... in the big woods you may be on the lookout for Mooween; you may be eager and even anxious to meet him; but when you double the point or push into the blueberry patch and, suddenly, there he is, blocking the path ahead, looking intently into your eyes to fathom at a glance your intentions, then, I fancy, the experience is like that of people who have the inquisitive habit of looking under their beds nightly for a burglar, and at last find him there, stowed away snugly, just where they ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... of the Invisible is! We cannot fathom it with our miserable senses, with our eyes which are unable to perceive what is either too small or too great, too near to, or too far from us; neither the inhabitants of a star nor of a drop of water ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... he had fallen under the influence of drink. Jim had never cared for liquor, which virtue was about the only one he possessed. Remembering his kisses, she knew he had not been drinking. There was a strangeness about him, though, that she could not fathom. Had he guessed his kisses would have that power? If he dared again—! She trembled, and it was not only rage. But she would teach ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... thought that the odds were in favour of his falling. And to be perfectly frank (my object in writing this book is to tell the truth), nobody regretted the probability! If we had really known what kind of a man he was, if we had been able then to fathom beneath the forbidding externals, we might have felt very differently about it. But it is not given to man to know the future or even to discern the heart of his most intimate acquaintance! We only saw in him a man ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... Malwood came; His heart with wine was all aflame, His eyne were shotten, red as blood, He rated and swore, wherever he rode. They roused a hart, that grimly brace, A hart of ten, a hart of grease, Fled over against the kinges place. The sun it blinded the kinges ee, A fathom behind his hocks shot he: 'Shoot thou,' quod he, 'in the fiendes name, To lose such a quarry were seven years' shame.' And he hove up his hand to mark the game. Tyrrel he shot full light, God wot; For whether the saints ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... In my opinion, she is the subject of an insane delusion. In your opinion, she is in possession of her senses, and has some mysterious motive which neither you nor I can fathom. Either way, there can be no harm in putting Mrs. Lecount's description to the test, not only as a matter of curiosity, but for our own private satisfaction on both sides. It is of course impossible ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... overtake the earth and strike it, the velocity of impact would be about eight miles per second; but if it should meet the earth in a head-on collision, the speed, when it struck, would be forty-five miles per second, a momentum beyond the power of the brain to fathom—indeed, man can not think of sixty miles per minute. Let a solid nucleous collide with the earth and imagination would reel ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... below. Let us try to conform to them and follow them, and let us be persuaded that the less we let our feeble human minds roam, the better we shall please God, who rejects all knowledge that does not come from Him; and the less we seek to fathom what He has been pleased to conceal from us, the sooner will He vouchsafe its revelation to us ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... that his twenty-foot telescope was of power sufficient to fathom the Milky Way, that is, to see through it and beyond it, and to reduce all its nebulosities ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... shoulder, he chuckled: "Why, my town is just across the lake from Fort Consolation. A mere five-mile paddle, old chap, and remember, I extend to you the freedom of Spearhead in the name of its future mayor. And, man alive, I'm leaving for there to-morrow morning in a big four-fathom birch bark, with four Indian canoe-men. Be my guest. It won't cost you a farthing, and ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... shortly to describe or define the ultimate relations between these two sets of fact and conviction. It is plain that Religion is the deeper and richer of the two terms; and that we have here, above all, to attempt to fathom the chief elements and forces of Religion as such, and then to see whether Progress is really traceable in Religion at all. And again it is clear that strongly religious souls will, as such, hold that Religion answers to, and ...
— Progress and History • Various
... other faculties, shows us how little we can know; and it is the very function of reason to perceive how finite, vague, and feeble all our conceptions of the Almighty must be; how utterly futile all our attempts to fathom His purposes, whose ways are assuredly not our ways, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... approached the side of the younger fish, and the harpooner buried his tremendous weapon deep in the ribs. The moment it felt the wound, the poor animal darted from us, taking out a hundred fathom of line; but a young fish is soon conquered when once well struck: such was the case in this instance; it was no sooner checked with the line than it turned on its back, and, displaying its white belly on the surface of the water, floated a lifeless corpse. The unhappy parent, with ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... crusades, was well known to the Portuguese Prince. A mysterious voyage of a certain wandering saint, called St. Brendan, was not without its influence upon an enthusiastic mind. Moreover, there were many sound motives urging the Prince to maritime discovery; among which, a desire to fathom the power of the Moors, a wish to find a new outlet for traffic, and a longing to spread the blessings of the faith may be enumerated. The especial reason which impelled Prince Henry to take the burden of discovery on himself was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... been looking for her everywhere, he declared with some asperity. Her mother could not sleep, and wished to see her; otherwise it was time they were all in bed, and what there was to talk about till all hours was more than he could fathom. So he saw the pair before him through the lighted rooms, a heavy man with a flaming neck and a smouldering eye. Horace would be heavy, too, when his bowling days were over. The girl was on finer lines; but she looked like a ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... light came into his eyes. Turning, he went away to the barn where, still holding Phebe with one hand, with the other he rolled an empty barrel into the middle of the floor and brought out a bushel basket. Then, before his astonished sister could fathom his intention or rebel, he had popped her into the barrel, covered her with the basket which made a firm, close lid, and walked ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... and plan? Does what he says of this plan correspond with the effects, which we see? No. He informs them solely, that he is what he is; that he is a hidden God; that his ways are unspeakable; that he is exasperated against all who have the temerity to fathom his decrees, or to consult reason in judging ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... too grand For our short sight to understand; We catch but broken strokes, and try To fathom all the mystery Of withered hopes, of death, of life, The endless war, the useless strife,— But there, with larger, clearer sight, We shall ...
— 'All's Well!' • John Oxenham
... of finding the philosophy of religion, not, as Leibnitz attempted, objectively in a theodicee, but subjectively, by the analysis of the religious faculties; learning the length of the sounding-line before attempting to fathom the ocean. ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... childhood up to the time of his Illumination Tolstoi indulged in seriousness of thought. Like Mohammed, great and overpowering desire to fathom the mystery of death took possession of him. He was ever haunted by an excessive dread of the "darkness of the grave," and in his essay, "Childhood," he describes with that wonderful realism, which characterizes all his works, the effect on a child's ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... Peter, "I understand the condition better, and can see what I could not fathom before, why the city delegates want Catlin. But my own ward has come out strong for Porter. We've come to the conclusion that his views on the license question are those which are best for us, and besides, he's said that ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... looking; that he may or may not have the habit of biting his nails; that he is crafty, and that if he were to do murder it is almost certain his methods would be novel and surprising, as well as extremely difficult to fathom—in short, that suspicion points unmistakably to Rama Ragobah. That is easily said, but to bring the deed home to him is quite another thing. I shall analyse the poison of the wound and microscopically examine the nature of the abrasion this afternoon. To-night I take the midnight ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... salutes. He shows the back of his hand." Secretly, they were proud of him. Standish came of a long chain of soldiers, and that the weakest link in the chain had proved to be himself was a sorrow no one else but himself could fathom. Since he was three years old he had been trained to be a soldier, as carefully, with the same singleness of purpose, as the crown prince is trained to be a king. And when, after three happy, glorious years at West Point, he was found ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... 'Full fathom five thy father lies. Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Hark! now I hear them, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... flounders and sculpins, was tied into each trap. About 50 traps were used by each fisherman, and they were hauled once a day. The warps or buoy lines, by which the traps were lowered and hauled, were cut in 12-fathom lengths. Lobsters were so abundant at the Muscle Ridges, at this period, that four men could fully supply Captain Oakes with lobsters every trip. In the course of ten days each man would obtain between 1,200 and 1,500 marketable lobsters. In Captain Oakes' opinion, ...
— The Lobster Fishery of Maine - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission, Vol. 19, Pages 241-265, 1899 • John N. Cobb
... many a fathom deep Below earth's smiling face; By night, high through the troubled air, They speed ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... gives the stars at noon-day clear — Up the pass that packs the scud beneath our wheel — Round the bluff that sinks her thousand fathom sheer — Down the valley with our guttering brakes asqueal: Where the trestle groans and quivers in the snow, Where the many-shedded levels loop and twine, So I lead my reckless children from below ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... did not appear as an active figure; yet the dreamer seemed somehow to be aware of her, to know faintly that she was involved in unhappy circumstances, that she was the victim of distresses he could not fathom. And these distresses weighed upon him like a burden, as things weigh upon us in dreams, softly and heavily, and with a sort of cloudy awfulness. He wanted to strive against them for his mother, but he was held back from action, and Dion seemed ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... rather a piquant, amusing young girl, in manner, and perhaps in disposition. She is an enigma of which I should be sorry to have to undertake the solution. As she seems, I like her immensely, but when I try to fathom what she ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... about the end of the seventeenth century in Russia, the "dumb silent centuries" gradually became articulate in expressing their opposition to all things western. This is the heart of Slavophilism, and no one can truly fathom the Russian soul before understanding its philosophy. It is the Muscovite theory of the simple life, still crying out against the Great Peter's work and recalling the devotees of western culture to its idealization of medieval, ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... whispers "Peace, be still;" Cradling to rest the mountain wave at will; Who for our souls his Son a ransom gave, And guards "his fold" from childhood to the grave. Confess, proud man, all his known ways are just, And what thou canst not fathom "learn to trust." ...
— Heart Utterances at Various Periods of a Chequered Life. • Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney
... is very true; and just there is represented to us a mystery, not ours to fathom! We are the Manitous of the Great Spirit, and what he bids be done, he bids uncounseled, and would have done unquestioned. They, who reared this boy to be the false young self we find him, should and shall be made to suffer, also; and even more than he, though the fond love ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... the island for and against me. The man who had made so much fuss over the matter gave it up when he found that I wished to be quarantined, and sent for an all-important half-white, who soon came alongside, starched from clue to earing. He stood in the boat as straight up and down as a fathom of pump-water—a marvel of importance. "Charts!" cried I, as soon as his shirt-collar appeared over the sloop's rail; "have you any charts?" "No, sah," he replied with much-stiffened dignity; "no, ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... tall; as he sat in the low-backed, office chair he looked to be less than five feet, over all. What became of that lank expanse of bone and cuticle when he sat down was one of the mysteries that not even James Bansemer could fathom. ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... taste and care, took a seat, although not invited to do so. He looked cold and calm, but there was an excited gleam in his large eyes which showed that his calmness masked some emotion, the cause of which Cuthbert could not fathom. "I have come to see you about young ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... FATHOM, a measure of 6 ft. used in taking marine soundings, originally an Anglo-Saxon term for the distance stretched by a man's extended arms; is ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... look very well now, sur," replied the miner, "but wan can never tell. I did work for weeks in the level under the say without success, so I guv it up an went to Wheal Hazard, and on the back o' the fifty-fathom level I did strike 'pon a small lode of tin 'bout so thick as my finger. It may get better, or it may take the bit in its teeth and ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... wore, instead of coat and waistcoat, over his ragged shirt. He was long unshaved; but what most distressed and even daunted me, he would neither take his eyes away from me nor look me fairly in the face. What he was, whether by trade or birth, was more than I could fathom; but he seemed most like an old, unprofitable serving-man, who should have been left in charge of that big ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mouth, they came to a certain peninsula, an island at high water. Two or three miles long, less than a mile and a half in breadth, at its widest place composed of marsh and woodland, it ran into the river, into six fathom water, where the ships might be moored to the trees. It was this convenient deep water that determined matters. Here came to anchor the Susan Constant, the Goodspeed, and the Discovery. Here the colonists went ashore. Here the members of the Council were sworn, ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... too deep for Mr. Smithers, who could not fathom the idea of a midnight malefactor becoming jubilant over his arrest. So he gave no ear to the torrent of excited explanations that burst upon him, but silently took the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... entirely given over to sculpture, with one exception which is notable so far as the dear public is concerned - a painting, "The Arch of Septimius Severus," by Luigi Bazzani. I cannot fathom why Luigi Bazzani should go to all this trouble in trying to imitate a photograph when the result over which he so painfully laboured could be done by any good photographer for less than five dollars. ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... low that the water reaches up to our knees as the ship settles down again, only to rise for a plunge heavier than before. We have just got the jib half-stowed, 'after a fashion,' when our messmate sings out: 'Hold hard, Jack!' and we cling for dear life. The next instant, a wave rolls a fathom high over our head, and we emerge, spluttering and gasping from a genuine cold salt-water bath, such as the hydropathists have no idea of. Before our nice little job is completed, we get two or three ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... joke," answered Hedin bitterly. "That's a thing I've never been able to fathom, why you always joke in the face of a serious situation, and then turn around and raise hell over some trivial matter that don't amount to ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... to—secrets of dark places down, fur down, where the sun doesn't shine; secrets of joy and happiness, and hope that had gone down, and wuz carried under the depths—under the depths that we hadn't no lines to fathom. ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... furious with him. He had said, "I know that I was," and she, "If that is all your memory brings you—" and off she went. He smoked hard—lifted his hand and dropped it smartly to his mantelpiece. No; that was a thing no man could fathom. A Lucyism—quite clear to herself, no doubt. Well, he'd leave that alone. The more one tried to bottom those waters, the less one fished up. But he would make peace ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... had nothing, and was just as poor as his wife. He was clerk in a store, and received not more than 150 rubles in notes yearly, which were worth in current money scarcely one-third their face value. Yes, they were both poor, but God's mercy is great and no one can fathom his purposes! In the same year the merchant whom he served suddenly died after making over to Sarkis the whole store and all that was in it, on condition that a certain sum should be paid every year to ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... Northward there lies a land, A wonderful land that the winds blow over, And none may fathom nor understand The charm it holds for the restless rover; A great grey chaos — a land half made, Where endless space is and no life stirreth; And the soul of a man will recoil afraid From the sphinx-like visage that Nature weareth. But old Dame Nature, though scornful, ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... of June, when in latitude 42 deg. and longitude 201 deg., and consequently opposite the coast of Japan, we descried a red stripe in the water, about a mile long and a fathom broad. In passing over it we drew up a pail-full, and found that its colour was occasioned by an infinite number of crabs, so small as to be scarcely distinguishable by ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... of the swamps in the great Nor'-west; on the bold flights of its maturer years over the northern wilderness into those mysterious regions round the pole, which man, with all his vaunted power and wisdom, has failed to fathom, and on the sad—I may even say inglorious—termination of its course in a hunter's pot, to say nothing of a ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... child for her breath is dangerous, or urinate on plants for she will kill them.[206] The mystery has somewhat changed its form; it still remains. The future of the race is bound up with our efforts to fathom the mystery of pregnancy. "The early days of human life," it has been truly said, "are entirely one with the mother. On her manner of life—eating, drinking, sleeping, and thinking—what greatness ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Philip did not fathom Annie's mind: Scarce could the woman when he came upon her, Out of full heart and boundless gratitude Light on a broken word to thank him with. But Philip was her children's all-in-all; From distant corners of the street they ran To greet his hearty welcome heartily; ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... south shore, where both ships had nearly been wrecked. The Unity lay with her side to the cliffs, yet still kept afloat, and gradually slid down towards the deep water as the tide fell. But the Horn stuck fast aground, so that at last her keel was above a fathom out of the water, and a man might have walked under it at low water. For some time, the N.W. wind blowing hard on one side, kept her from falling over; but, that dying away, she at length fell over on her bends, when she ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... were abysses in Bigot's mind which Angelique could not fathom, as little did Bigot suspect that, when Angelique seemed to flatter him by yielding to his suggestions, she was following out a course she had already decided upon in her own mind from the moment she had learned that Cecile Tourangeau was to be at the festival of Belmont, with unlimited ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... flat. Some journalist, probably Claude Vignon, remarked in the foyer: 'It is hard to lose fame and mistress at the same moment,' and the speech cut him in all his vanities. Love based on petty sentiments is always pitiless. I have questioned him; but who can fathom a nature so false and deceiving? He appeared to be weary of his troubles and his love,—in short, disgusted with life. He regrets having allied himself so publicly with the marquise, and made me, in speaking of his past happiness, a melancholy ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... since his identity had been revealed, she had seemed more puzzling to him than ever. When he had sought her glance, her look had told him nothing. It was as though with the doffing of the motley she had discarded its recollections. In a tentative mood, he had striven to fathom her, but found himself at a loss. She had been neither reserved, nor had she avoided him; to her the past seemed a page, lightly read and turned. Had Caillette truly said "now she ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... I pray that I may not neglect my soul in trying to fathom immortal life. If I may be hesitating between comfort and work, remind me of the greatness of the place which I started to reach. May I not grow weary of climbing and falter on the stair. Breathe upon me thy inspiration and ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... pleased and proud of their sea terms, and would not give them up for anything—not even if the soldiers of the King do not fathom their meaning. ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... logic generally. I grappled at once with the problem of Induction, postponing that of Reasoning, on the ground that it is necessary to obtain premises before we can reason from them. Now, Induction is mainly a process for finding the causes of effects: and in attempting to fathom the mode of tracing causes and effects in physical science, I soon saw that in the more perfect of the sciences, we ascend, by generalization from particulars, to the tendencies of causes considered singly, and then reason ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... so that I have no greater wish than to be able always to live with you; and that is the truth. Even supposing there was a hidden meaning in it, the most holy friendship can often have secrets, but on that account to misinterpret the secret of a friend because one cannot at once fathom it—that you ought not to do. Dear Bigot, dear Marie, never, never will you find me ignoble. From childhood onwards I learnt to love virtue—and all that is beautiful and good. You have deeply pained me; but it shall ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... that we had got upon the edge of a reef of coral rocks, which lay to the N.W. of us, having in some places round the ship 3 or 4 fathoms, and in others about as many feet; but about 100 feet from her starboard side, she laying with her head to the N.E., were 7, 8, and 10 fathom. Carried out the stream anchor and two hawsers on the starboard bow and the coasting anchor and cable upon the starboard quarters, got down yards and topmasts, and hove taught upon the hawser and cable; but as we had gone ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... polite; she really was grateful for what I had done for her. She gave me no chance to work on her feelings. But beyond all this there was something strange about Rosa, something I have never been able to fathom. She isn't a child like most of 'em. She's as strong-headed as ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... inside an hour. Even though some of the essentials of his plan were written in a code of his own devising, Flint paled before the possible results should the book fall into the hands of anybody intelligent enough to fathom its meaning. ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... scarcely an intermission of open country, for a full thousand miles from the beginning of its entombment, the entrance of Flaming Gorge, at the foot of the historical Green River Valley. Some few attempts had been made to fathom the mystery of this long series of chasms, but with such small success that the exploration of the river was given up as too difficult and too dangerous. Ashley had gone through Red Canyon in 1825 and in one of the succeeding winters ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... set forth in the local and London and provincial journals. Widely as it was discussed, and many as were the theories offered, no one could fathom the mystery. But all agreed that the failure of the police to find a clue was inexplicable. It was difficult enough to understand how the assassin could have murdered Bolton and opened the packing case, and removed the mummy to replace it by the body of ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... till I conclude. I should not ask so much of others. You, Svanhild, I've learnt to fathom thro' and thro'; You are too sensible to play the prude. I watched expand, unfold, your little life; A perfect woman I divined within you, But long I only saw a daughter in you;— Now I ask of you—will you be my wife? [SVANHILD ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... wound through fields of branching coral trees of luxuriant growth, among which, numbers of large fish were moving sluggishly about, as if they had got up too early, and were more than half inclined to indulge in another nap. As we passed over a sort of bar, where there was not more than a fathom and a half of water, we espied an immense green turtle at the bottom, quietly pursuing his way across our track, and though by no means a beautiful creature, looking infinitely happier and more lively than the dull-eyed wretches of his race, which I have seen lying on their ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... tell her. "Could you bear Miss Margaret's death as well," she said, "if Maggie, instead of being bright and playful as she is, were weak and sick like Hester?" and her eyes fastened themselves upon Madam Conway with an agonizing intensity which that lady could not fathom. "Say, would you bear it as well—could you love her as much—would you change with me, take Hester for your own, and give me little Maggie?" she persisted, and Madam Conway, surprised at her excited manner, which she attributed in ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... essential to the harmony of a glorious system, a perfect plan, and that seeming sorrow was at last the occasion of unspeakable joy. Let no man say that this or that law, or operation of nature, were better changed, until he can fathom the designs of God; till he can create a planet, and send it on its everlasting round; till he can place a star in the firmament; till he can breathe upon a statue, the workmanship of his own hands, and be obeyed when he commands it to walk forth a thing of life; till he can dip his hand into chaos ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... um navio a monte," to beach or ground a vessel. The translator went entirely astray in this passage. See Thacher's Columbus, II. 388. The figure here given and the use of word pasos, normally, a land measure of length, instead of braza, "fathom," would seem to indicate that the 65 paces refers to the extent of shore laid bare, and not to the height of the tide. The corresponding passage in the Historie reads: "so that it seemed a rapid river both day and night and at all hours, ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... our first letter from the count about the third of June. The writing was all over the plate like a biled dinner, and the English looked like it had been shook up in a bag, but it was signed with a nine fathom, toggle-jinted name that would give a pollparrot the lockjaw, and had the word "Count" on the bow ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... where religion rose to the level of the highest thought, had from the earliest times to endure all the blessing and curse of an aristocracy of intellect. The Latin religion like every other had its origin in the effort of faith to fathom the infinite; it is only to a superficial view, which is deceived as to the depth of the stream because it is clear, that its transparent spirit-world can appear to be shallow. This fervid faith disappeared with the progress ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... contemplated railroad line came down from the north to his property, he knew the Chokohatchee River must be his means of communication with the outer world. The four men on the boat were natives of the section. He had not yet been able to fathom just what nature of men they were or what their business was, but he suspected the latter to be something illegal, and despite the poor showing they had made in the fight on the boat it was apparent that there was in them at least ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
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