"Climax" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I realized suddenly that I was hungry—commonly, coarsely hungry. My whole attention, I was going to say my whole soul, shifted to the thought of ham and eggs! This may seem a tremendous anti-climax, but it is, nevertheless, a sober report of what happened. At the first onset of this new mood, the ham-and-eggs mood, let us call it, I was a little ashamed or abashed at the remembrance of my wild flights, and had a laugh at the thought ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... penetrated, especially in Tolstoy and Dostoievsky, with an intensity of moral conviction beside which the ethical fervour of George Eliot seems an ineffectual fire, was one of the roots of the Russian Novel; which also reached its climax in the third quarter of the century. But though it concurred with analogous movements in the West, it drew little of moment from them; even Turgenjev, a greater Maupassant in artistry, drew his inner inspiration ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... stood, looking at her helplessly, while the slapped cheek grew red and red. Priss burst into tears, stamped her foot, called him names she did not mean, and as a climax, darted into her own cabin, and swung the door, and ...
— All the Brothers Were Valiant • Ben Ames Williams
... Sudden horror came now to temper his bewilderment. Was there to be no end to these astounding revelations? Had they reached the climax yet, he wondered, or was there still more to come? "You married that infamous villain?" he asked, and his voice ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... be otherwise helped out, so some kindly champion of orthodoxy put in a fairy-story climax,—Job got well of his boils, had more sheep and oxen than ever, had other children born to him. And so ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... general bearings and will teach the sex aspect of literature on a basis of high ideals of life and love, we need have no fear as to the culmination of the instruction which properly begins with study of the biological facts of life in its sexual aspects and leads on and on to its climax in the ethical aspects of the individual's sex life in relation to other individuals, that is, ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... effort at self-emendation has two bristling impossibilities in it: one, how to annihilate the past; one, how to extirpate the evil that is part of my very self, and yet to keep the self entire. The very terms of the problem show it to be insoluble, and the climax of all honest efforts at making a clean thing of an unclean by means within reach of the unclean thing itself, is the despairing cry, 'O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Renaissance epoch—a combination very frequent in this district. The mullioned windows and the graceful balustrade, carried along a high archway, are in strong contrast to the stern and dark masonry of the feudal stronghold. This picturesque incongruity reaches its climax in the lofty round tower upon which a dovecot has been grafted, whose extinguisher-roof, with long drooping eaves, is quite out of keeping with the machicolations which remain a little below the line of the embattled parapet that has disappeared. The ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... devoured would be the climax of misfortune. I wished to know what animals would be likely to stop my wayfaring in this ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... it was plain the climax had passed. The others' interest was now polite, and he went on as fast as possible. He had begun to see a light and wanted to finish and get away. He did not, however, see that while he told his artless tale he had drawn his character. When he ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... might balk him of his prey seemed to move Cashel. He took a step forward. The excitement of the crowd rose to a climax; and a little man near Lydia cut a frenzied caper and ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... fatherhood or the gardener's. But the matter has been hushed up by a payment of twenty pounds and the girl is now married and respectable and ought to give no further trouble. I suppose that was a climax of naughtiness on my part and the main reason why I was sent away. The two people who matter most have received me without doubt or question, but the one to be wary about is the old nurse, whose very affection ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... made the most awful mistakes, and, in consequence, was continually warned of his probable dismissal. The Princess, with her invariable kindness, had been the cause of his staying so long as he had; but one Sunday the climax was reached and the Royal patience fairly exhausted. Mr. Gladstone (then in office) was on a visit, and his solemn, grim countenance as he stood in the church quite frightened the poor man, inasmuch as he lost his ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... insight, power of reflection, power of analysis, power of presentation.... 'Tis a very well made book—not a set of independent episodes strung on the thread of a name or two, but closely interwoven to the climax." Sydney Bulletin. ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... would, from that alone, even if he understood them not, come to the conclusion that their respective languages were formed on the same principles. In both occur periods seemingly interminable, during which the voice gradually ascends to a climax, and then gradually ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... The climax came on February 1, 1917, when Count von Bernstorff, German Ambassador at Washington, handed to Secretary Lansing a note from Germany on the U-boat policy, supplemented by the "order" and declaration that the Imperial Government proposed to stop sea traffic in the "zones" ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... thing, and it might have been the risk encountered by her lover, and the share he had borne in the mysterious occurrence, that now caused her to lapse from her wonted inaccessibility to impressions of the sort. As the climax of the narrative approached, her interest became deeper, and her absorption more profound. An involuntary shudder passed over her form, and a slight contraction of the nerves of her face was perceptible, when Gerald described to his attentive and shocked auditory, the raising of the arm ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... an atmosphere of poverty, but a poverty made radiant by unselfish love. The plot of one main incident—Della's sacrifice of her hair in order to get a Christmas present for her husband—takes place in the short space of a few hours, and works out to a half-humorous, half-pathetic climax, when Della and Jim display their Christmas gifts for each other. This story has a conclusion of one paragraph in length where the author reflects upon what makes a ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... temptation had been too strong for him, but I was none the less bitter against him, and my wrath reached its climax soon ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... hundred and fifty years, from being isolated wandering tribes, each constantly warring against the other, to a well-ordered Christian kingdom, which led to the establishment of the French monarchy. The climax of this period of transition came in the reign of Clovis, with whom commences the real history of France. Under his strong hand the various tribes were gradually brought under his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... fell like an explosion; and there was the climax of horrified astonishment in those ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... the charge of being bombastic proves nothing; or rather, proves our case. For what is bombast but a force of expression too great for the magnitude of the ideas embodied? All that may rightly be inferred is, that only in very rare cases, and then only to produce a climax, should all the conditions ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer
... of the XXth Corps which resulted in the surrender of Jerusalem were a fitting climax to the ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... one circumstance will not fail to strike the reader as a strange omission in these frequent enumerations of the exports of Ceylon. I have traced them from their earliest notices by the Greeks and Romans to the period when the commerce of the East had reached its climax in the hands of the Persians and Arabians; the survey extends over fifteen centuries, during which Ceylon and its productions were familiarly known to the traders of all countries, and yet in the pages of no author, European or ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... occasion came. The evening's entertainment rose, minute by minute, to its climax of glory, on which the curtain fell, amidst an enthusiasm so intense that only the controlled good breeding of the invited audience prevented demonstrations of a noisy character. Christine had been previously seen by very few of them, ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... Heaven had bestowed shrewdness to an extraordinary degree, perceived in the plan proposed to him higher, more artistic possibilities than had been perceived in it by its inventor. There was a dramatic instinct, an appreciation of surprise, of climax, in this man's mind that he proceeded to apply to the existing situation. With a wave of his hand he banished the suggested sign on the walking advertiser's back, and the suggested silken banner. His plan ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... many hours in tears, her faith and pride in her daughter sustaining her through the hours of preparation. The day of the wedding she dreaded, and she doubted if she would bear up when the climax of the strain came. Firmness prompted by kindness, the wife and mother understood to be necessary in dealing with the irascible head of the family, and she therefore quietly acquiesced in this policy when administered by their only child. ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... that he will have appreciated the metrical duration of every syllable before it shall have dared to show itself upon paper. The art of the orator is the same. He knows beforehand how each sound which he is about to utter will affect the force of his climax. If a writer will do so he will charm his readers, though his readers will probably not know how they ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... out a better organisation. As matters grow worse, this passion for wholesale change becomes more fervidly manifested. The jacqueries of the middle ages are renewed. Various districts of country, in which poverty has reached its climax, break into universal insurrection. It is a war levied by those who have nothing against those who have something. To have coin in the pocket, is to be the enemy. The cry is: Down with the rich; take all they have got, and divide the plunder amongst us. Such are the avowed principles of the Socialists. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... and looking over his shoulder, smiled—and added a climax. "Jacobs attached your account at the Garfield Bank to-day on ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... spiritual and individual being, created in the eternal Science of being—to be conscious of aught but good. God's image and likeness can never be less than a good man; and for man to be more than God's likeness is impossible. Man is the climax of creation; and God is not without an ever-present witness, testifying of Himself. Matter, or any mode of mortal mind, is neither part nor parcel of divine consciousness ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... idea, which is consonant to, and the climax of, a municipal system, is absent from the story ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... work, for he found the marks of their feet in a dozen different places. The accumulated bad humor of weeks of futile labor found vent in his disappointment and anger. At last he had found something tangible to curse. The failure of his poison baits he accepted as a sort of climax to his general bad luck. Everything was against him, he believed, and he made up his mind to return to Red Gold City. Early in the afternoon he launched his canoe and drifted down-stream with the current. He was content to let the current ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... the first two long years of the war glided by-years that seemed to calendar twenty-four, instead of twelve months each. The strife hadn't yet reached its climax, but blood was flowing fearfully. From Maine to the Gulf was one vast beleaguered sea-coast, for at every sea-port city, grim monsters of war stood guarding the entrance to the harbor. Already the central, ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... this affair," she said, with no apparent resentment, "you're clever enough to become famous some day. I'm going to take your advice about the letter and if that climax you're predicting arrives on schedule time I'll not be sorry to quit this dreary, dragging case and pick up a ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... will send you the new copies of my Mass (which I think I have considerably improved in the last revision, especially by the concluding Fugue of the Gloria and a heavenward-soaring climax of the subject. ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... between the phagocytes and Nature's antitoxins on the one hand, and the poisons and microorganisms of disease on the other hand, gradually progresses, accompanied by a corresponding increase of fever and inflammation, until it reaches its climax, marked by the greatest intensity ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... all manner of scrapes." added the captain, by way of climax. "However, I shall see you or hear of you every day, either at the ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... pigeon-wings, slaps his heels with his hands, shouts and twists his lank body into grotesque shapes. The little dwarf, madly hilarious, rushes about with her head down, swings her long dress in the air, whirls and "makes cheeses," and in the climax of her efforts kicks her partner squarely in the back ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... of the pass we had reached at this period of our decadence, this stage of our trial by fire, the conduct of the crowds in Western London during those dreadful nights, impressed me more forcibly than the disaster which Martin considers the climax and pivot of the ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... "I've an idea he's a sort of Jack-of-all-trades there, writing up news, setting type in an emergency, and even helping turn off the limited edition of about five hundred copies of the paper that are run every week. So, as Friday night is the climax to their week's work, we're likely to find Jim there with his coat off, and ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... The climax of the story is the battle on the Somme where so many dear friends have perished. The name is taken from a spot where a small party of the 7th N.F. did something long afterwards ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... in Sandusky, Ohio, and spent an evening at a lecture given by Trask, the great anti-tobacconist. In his discourse he had reached the climax of his argument, proving as he thought that tobacco shortened life, when a well dressed man in the audience rose and said, 'Mr. Trask, will you pardon me if I say ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... of the 28th found Thomas ready to start the move which was to bring the campaign to a climax. McCook and Crittenden were slowly but surely concentrating at Manchester. Thomas's first movement was to send Colonel Wilder to Dechard, where this command destroyed about three hundred yards of the railroad which the Confederates ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... foremost in setting a merry holiday tone, which, passing from one to another, grew stronger and reached its climax when they all came out into the frost and got into the sleighs, talking, calling to one another, laughing, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... anathema; the ludicrous change of sex and sentiment—all marked this record as the work of one who must have been at least as much demented as bereaved. I felt that any further disclosure would be a paltry anti-climax, and with an unconscious regard for dramatic effect turned squarely about and walked away. Nor did I return to that part of ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... thinking, feeling a year ago. And Gertrude was playing with young Mr. Janes exactly as she had played with young Mr. Armstrong. Mr. Janes took a good deal of coaxing—more than Paul had done—but the trained coquette was equal to the task, and she brought him to the climax just as she had brought his predecessor. And there was the one little embrace granted, and there was a rustle of skirts, and the click of a door-latch, and Gertrude's voice said, 'You will stay now Ricardo?' and Ricardo groaned. Then the door ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... a sweet soft tune—like her voice—her face wore a tender expression. Then the music swelled, became louder and louder till it reached its climax; the bow bounded over the strings, the fingers of the left hand rose and fell in quick succession, her expression was now animated, her ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... Mr. Caryll felt that the climax was about to be presented, and he leaned farther forward that he might obtain a better view of the awaited personage. In the silence he caught a rustle of silk. A flowered petticoat appeared—as ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... from the student corps at Upsala and Helsingborg, from the St. Petersburg Geographical Society, from women in Northern Russia (the address accompanied by a laurel wreath in silver), &c. In a word, the Stockholm fetes formed the climax of the remarkable triumphal procession from Japan to Stockholm, which stands unique in the history of festivities. Even after the Expedition was broken up in Stockholm, and the Vega had sailed on the 9th May for Karlskrona and Gothenburg, where she was again taken over by the whaling company ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... themselves to exercise the reader's sympathies for him; but these feelings would have languished from weariness, however intensely the sequel might have been wrought, had attention been claimed for a solitary wanderer to the end of the journey. Here then the history, which had probably reached its climax in the preceding scenes, revives, by taking a new form, and exciting a fresh interest, rather doubled than divided, though two have thenceforward to share it instead of one. Besides, the individual experience of one man, however varied, would not ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... aides-de-camp galloped at the top of their speed to bring Daun and the cavalry back again, and Austrian battalions from the centre were hurried down to aid Nadasti's, but were impeded by the retreating troops; and the confusion thickened, until it was brought to a climax by Ziethen's horse, which had been unable to act until now. But fir wood, quagmire, and abattis had all been passed by the Prussians, and they dashed into the mass, sabring and trampling down, and taking whole ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... stage of labor are of a bearing down character, and constantly increase in force and frequency; the climax being reached as the head ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... expected, nor did they find or produce in quantities any valuable commodities. They were not even self-supporting. The colony held on because constantly fed with men and provisions by the "Supplies." There was dissatisfaction in London; in James Towne misery and often despair. The climax of disappointment and suffering was reached in the spring of 1610, ever since known as the "Starving Time." In that season of horror, the settlement almost passed ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... if I was just a little more effeminate and pale, with a nice retreating under-jaw and a drooping lip, and a meek, peaking simper, like your starved Romish saints, I should be "so spiritual!" And if, again, to complete the climax, I did but shave my head like a Chinese, I should be a model ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... not to be denied. He had told the story a score of times during the last three days, and had assured himself by every evidence that he could tell it effectively. He was something of an egoist, too, and the climax he had in mind was that of his own emotions in recrossing the fatal couloir ropeless, with shaking knees, haunted by ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... He has solved the problem, he has fixed the seat of the soul, he has determined the medium through which the soul communicates with the body.[3113]—In the higher sciences, those treating of nature generally, or of human society, he reaches the climax. "I believe that I have exhausted every combination of the human intellect in relation to morals, philosophy and political science."[3114] Not only has he discovered the true theory of government, but he is a statesman, a practical expert, able to forecast the future ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... away. She has spoiled my climax. For I was to have told you that Bohemia is nothing more than the little country in which you do not live. If you try to obtain citizenship in it, at once the court and retinue pack the royal archives ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... his sect. His two hired men were gone, without having served one eighth of the two years they had agreed to work for the money advanced to them; both his sisters, pious things, yielding to temptation, were in a fair road to disgrace; and, to cap the climax of the unfortunate man's guilt and remorse, Eugene O'Clery, neglected in his prison in the old house, on the morning of All Saints' day, first of November, was found dead on its damp floor! Yes, this spotless, innocent, and ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... has ever experienced in a like degree—in which connection the lately much-disputed question as to whether the complete decay dates from the time of the Thirty Years' War or the latter merely marks the climax of a long period of decadence may be left to take care of itself. In any event, about the year 1700 the literature of Germany stood lower than that of any other nation, once in possession of a great civilization and literature, has ever ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... nationality, its wealth, territories, factories, population, products, trade, and military and naval strength, and breathing breath of life into all these, and more, must be its moral civilization—the formulation, expression, and aidancy whereof, is the very highest height of literature. The climax of this loftiest range of civilization, rising above all the gorgeous shows and results of wealth, intellect, power, and art, as such—above even theology and religious fervor—is to be its development, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... the notion that an escort were needed in a neighbourhood of such propriety and peace, had not refused his offer to accompany her. And Hodder felt instinctively, as he took his place beside her, a sense of climax. This situation, like those of the past, was not of his own making. It was here; confronting him, and a certain inevitable intoxication at being once, more alone with her prevented him from forming any policy with which to deal with it. He ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... his heart thumping, soldier though he was. He began to step back toward the wagons with his friends. A confused and threatening uproar arose among the Indians, who now began to crowd forward. It was an edged instant. Any second might bring on the climax. ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... splendid trains of artillery to the frontier. "Never was seen in France, and perhaps never will be seen there again, artillery more complete and better furnished," said the Duke, thinking probably that artillery had reached the climax of perfect destructiveness in the first decade of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... stronghold. In fact, Elam was not signally defeated in the reign of Kudur-mabug, but in that of his son Rim-Sin. From the date-formulae of Hammurabi's reign we learn that the struggle between Elam and Babylon was brought to a climax in the thirtieth year of his reign, when it is recorded in the formulas that he defeated the Elamite army and overthrew Rim-Sin, while in the following year we gather that he added the land of E'mutbal, that is, the western district of Elam, to ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... a spectacle that would beat everything for scenery. In the end her divine voice would crack, screaming to foreign ears and antipodal barbarians, and her clever manner would lose all quality, simplified to a few unmistakable knock-down dodges. Then she would be at the fine climax of life and glory, still young and insatiate, but already coarse, hard, and raddled, with nothing left to do and nothing left to do it with, the remaining years all before her and the raison d'etre all behind. It would ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... a man might feel, but the merry singing and howling served to guide the new-comer to the chamber of the mysterious Nabob, who went by the name of Master Jock; why, we shall find out later on. The fun there had by this time reached its frantic climax. The heydukes had raised into the air by its four legs the table on which the jester lay, and were carrying it round the room, amidst the bellowing of long-drawn-out dirges; behind them marched the poet, with the table-cloth tied round his neck by way of mantle, declaiming d—d bad Alexandrine ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... of God reaches for us in this life its permanent climax, when He who 'at sundry times and in divers manner spake unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by a Son.' Jesus is the personal 'word of God' though that name by which He is designated in the New Testament is a different expression from that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... and is apt to strive for emphasis by the simple method of repetition. Frank always "cwied and cwied" till some interruption came to the rescue and furnished a climax. ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... the ladies," said the baron, and soon the baroness clasped her son in her arms. This was the climax of happiness at the castle. Both parents' eyes glistened whenever they rested on their son. True, some of his expressions and gestures savored of the riding-school, but the baroness only smiled at them all. From time immemorial, ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... capped the climax of Maurice's misery. A deep, rumbling noise had for some time been audible in the distance; it was the artillery, that had been the last to leave the camp and whose leading guns now wheeled into sight around a bend in the road, barely giving the footsore infantrymen time to seek safety in the ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... dashing tale of love and adventure as habitual fiction readers have learned to expect from Mr. Scott. A well told tale with relieving touches of dry humor and a climax ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... instant, there was confusion at the stage-door, the climax of which was the re-entrance of Hart into ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... that there was warmth, passion, a disturbed feeling on the stranger's part; while, on that of the Master, it was a calm, serious, earnest representation of whatever view he was endeavoring to impress on the other. At last, the interview appeared to come toward a climax, the Master addressing some words to his guest, still with undisturbed calmness, to which the latter replied by a violent and even fierce gesture, as it should seem of menace, not towards the Master, but some unknown party; and then hastily turning, he left the garden and was soon heard riding away. ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... military protection to the mail route, it must have been disheartening to Sumner and the loyalists to see this force ordered into service outside the state. For now, late in the summer of 1861, the time of national crisis—the Californian trouble was approaching its climax. On July 20, the Union army had been beaten at Bull Run and driven back, a rabble of fugitives, into the panic stricken capital. Then came weeks and months of delay and uncertainty while the overcautious McClellan sought to build up a new military machine. The entire North was overspread ...
— The Story of the Pony Express • Glenn D. Bradley
... cause. Dicky insinuated himself with difficulty into Mr. Mafferton's vacant place opposite Mrs. Portheris, and even before the carriages started I saw that he was going to have a bad time. His own version of the experience was painful in the extreme, and he represented the climax as having occurred just as they arrived at the hotel. The unfortunate youth must have been goaded to his fate, for his general attitude toward matters of orthodoxy ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... three together,—were on the point of adding another incident to the annals of the house, with a bolder relief of wrong and sorrow, which would cause it to stand out from all the rest. Thus it is that the grief of the passing moment takes upon itself an individuality, and a character of climax, which it is destined to lose after a while, and to fade into the dark gray tissue common to the grave or glad events of many years ago. It is but for a moment, comparatively, that anything looks strange or startling,—a truth that has the bitter and ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... eschew; but which Mr. Bond believed the very perfection of elegance. It was composed of loops of muslin disposed on each side over a profusion of brown curls which distended the head to an enormous width, and upon the top was visible a high back-comb which quite "capped the climax." The dress of the lady was black silk, sleeves "a la mouton," and a collar of muslin with a deep frill that reached nearly to the elbows. This was fastened with a yellow glass pin, the gift of Mr. Bond on his promised possession of the fair maiden who was to adorn herself ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... dreadful. But being a prudent old gentleman he refrained from uttering these words at Podgorica, where the Skup[vs]tina had met; a better plan was to communicate with the Press Association, in the hope that many editors would print his words. If it was a final anti-climax for a mediaeval prince—ah well, what is life but one long anti-climax? He would protest against the constitution of the Skup[vs]tina. He had by no means given his approval to the new election laws; and if, contrary ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... Restoration, he was obliged to conceal himself for a time; and to cap the climax, the conduct of his son, who was still in Paris, caused ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... you'd get golf into it. I suppose you were working up to your climax. Poor old Bob is about eighteen ...
— First Plays • A. A. Milne
... you are the most ridiculous donkey who ever put on apron. First you come here and want to break everything to pieces like an uncultivated giant; then you bellow in such a way as to make our ears tingle; and, as a fitting climax to all your foolishness, you take my little daughter Rose for a lady of rank and act like a love-smitten Junker." Conrad replied, coolly, "Your lovely daughter I know very well, my worthy Master Martin; but I tell you ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... "The climax came when a posse of officers and detectives cornered Laramie Dave, and some lead was pumped into him. Colonel King was a gray-haired, respectable-looking man, while Laramie Dave wore long black hair and a drooping ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... matters came to a climax, when Van Luck ordered me to set about some menial work which I did not consider compatible with my position as the captain's secretary, and which, therefore, I declined to perform. In his rage at my refusal Van Luck came at me with a belaying pin in his hand, but I had fought ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... exit to the left. It is an artistic feat to make a good exit. It requires not only specialized training, but also practical experience in front of an audience. It may be a vocal exit, a dramatic or spoken exit, or a dancing exit, and one must reach a decided climax at the exit. If the dance consists of eight steps, properly spaced, the most effective steps are put in where they will provoke applause. The last or finish step must get the most applause or the dancer fails. So we put a climactic "trick" step in for a finish, and then we top that with the exit, ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... secret, of romance, she was as little disposed to ask poor Lily's advice as she would have been to close that rare volume forever. But Lily knew nothing of these discriminations, and could only pronounce her sister's career a strange anti-climax—an impression confirmed by the fact that Isabel's silence about Mr. Osmond, for instance, was in direct proportion to the frequency with which he occupied her thoughts. As this happened very often it sometimes appeared to Mrs. Ludlow that ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... tell me all about it," he commanded, "You are having plenty of trouble; your face says that much. Begin back a bit and let it lead up to Mr. Zadoc Haddon as a climax, if ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... his command of Hebrew being masterly. But his most conspicuous claim to high rank lies in his origination of that blending of grim irony with bright wit which became characteristic of all Jewish humorists, and reached its climax in Heine. But Charizi himself felt that his art as a Hebrew poet was decadent. Great poets of Jewish race have risen since, but the songs they have sung have not been songs of Zion, and the language of their muse has not been the language ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... would sit as one listening yet dreading to hear. Her husband's name never passed her lips, and Curtis never made the vaguest reference to him. He knew that sooner or later a change would come, that the long suffering that lined her face must draw at last to a climax; but he would do nothing to hasten it. He believed that Nature would eventually find ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... her voice like a person coming to the frightening climax of a ghost story. "Miss Abigail, they ain't any ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... these words, keenly watching all round for danger, as well as beyond the bounding black in the full expectation of catching sight at any moment of the plumed heads of a party of his companions rising above the ridge, when, as if in a final effort or an attempt at a climax to the weirdly absurd performance, the black warrior proceeded to finish off with the slaying of about a dozen invisible enemies around him. Bang went his stabbing assagai against his shield, and then stab, stab, stab, when he turned ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... traditionalists, whose sole authorities in all matters of theology and related topics were the words of Scripture and Rabbinic literature as tradition had interpreted them. On the other hand, the rationalistic development during the past three centuries, which we have traced thus far, and the climax of that progress as capped by Maimonides was not without its influence on another class of the Jewish community, particularly in Spain and southern France; and these regarded Maimonides as the ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... fascinating and ambiguous, can not arise in the soul of an unbeliever. It does not merely consist in sinking oneself in the excesses of the flesh, excited by outrageous blasphemies, for in such a case it would be no more than a case of satyriasis that had reached its climax. Before all, it consists in sacrilegious practice, in moral rebellion, in spiritual debauchery, in a wholly ideal aberration, and in this it is exemplarily Christian. It also is founded upon a joy tempered by fear, a joy analogous to the satisfaction of children who disobey their parents and ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... The climax of magnificence was reached when the approaching surface came so close as to appear concave, and our little ark floated above a hemisphere of dazzling brightness under a hemisphere of appalling darkness faintly ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... heard from till the end of the week. Friday, Saturday came and not a word. That was the climax! When the consignment of cash, hitherto carried by Clarence to the Bank of England, was committed to another clerk, the very office boy sniggered, and the manager demonstratively waited ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... rejoiced together; who had parted in sorrow, and looked forward to a reunion with joy; who but a short time since had desired nothing so much as the sight of each other; this was their meeting and thus it took place, at the very climax of that new and more passionate love which had been ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... Bragg's intrenchments in front of Stone River were very strong, and there seems no reason why he should not have used his plain advantage as explained, but instead he allowed us to gain time, intrench, and recover a confidence that at first was badly shaken. Finally, to cap the climax of his errors, he directed Breckenridge to make the assault from his right flank on January 2, with small chance for anything but disaster, when the real purpose in view could have been accomplished without the necessity of ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... while all the beholders held their breath. Montjoie, for one, was struck dumb. His commonplace countenance changed altogether. He looked at her with his face growing longer, his jaw dropping. It was more than a sensation, it was such a climax of excitement and surprise as does not happen above once or twice in a lifetime. The whole company were moved by similar feelings, all except the Contessa, lying back in her chair, and Lucy, who stood rather troubled, moving from one foot to another, ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... more clearly illustrated than in the joy and pride which the wisest statesman feels in the wearing of a ribbon or a star. In the next year the King made Walpole a Knight of the Garter; after this honor all other mark of dignity {253} would be but an anti-climax. From the time of his introduction to the Order of the Bath, the great minister ceased to be plain Mr. Walpole, and became Sir ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... of the other men. They had worked and planned a long time for this single moment, the realization of a long pursued dream. Colonel Meadows was rubbing his hands together gleefully. The voice was reaching its climax. Success was assured. History ...
— The Second Voice • Mann Rubin
... with their own nature, and yet immortal! It is a natural instinct, this yearning of the heart for offspring; and yet little is said upon this subject, in which so much is experienced. All that is beautiful and lovely in woman, finds its climax in motherhood. What earthly being do we love so ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... the climax. Why ever did you buy a baby's cot—and how came Mr. Greenaway to trust you? You are only a ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... We have suffered great misfortunes, and greater may befall us. Since the days of Jena and Auerstadt our sorrows have increased. We are constantly experiencing some new humiliation; even the treaty of Tilsit is not the climax of our calamities. They come as an avalanche, and sometimes I wish to be buried ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... rhapsody of the valor of her lover, such as only a romantic child could picture. But, alas! As the dream comes to the grand climax and Little Ellie, "Her smile not yet ended," goes to see what more eggs were with the two in the swan's nest, ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... near the turbulent Mexican border of the present day. A New York society girl buys a ranch which becomes the center of frontier warfare. Her loyal cowboys defend her property from bandits, and her superintendent rescues her when she is captured by them. A surprising climax brings the story to ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... is, further, true that Jesus Christ pronounced this benediction; that He bade His followers seek after peace, and that He commended them, in the very climax of His exaltation, to the Peace which ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... that lapse—forebodings that follow the hour of climax as rooks follow the plough—haunted them now, though they found no words for what they felt, but only knew a sense of the pressure of night. It appeared to stoop nearer, blind, impassive, but intensely aware of them under their dark canopy of leaves. Some Being, it ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... hardy, resolute boy would not have cried in such a place for anything, "not," he said afterwards, in confidence, to Agnes, "not if he had a tooth pulled out!" and that, in Bertie's idea, was the climax of human misery, the height of human endurance. But Eddie's sobs continued for a long time without either Agnes or Bertie attempting to offer any consolation, for the simple reason that they did not know in the least what was the matter with him. Once, indeed, ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... fictitious courage. He slashed into the situation with what weapons he had at hand—and he held a reserve weapon, so he thought, in the big wallet that thrust its bulk reassuringly against his breast. "This thing seems to have come to a climax; and it ain't through any fault of mine. I've never yet been afraid to talk for myself, in a climax, and I ain't afraid now. The time to do business is when you've got your interested parties assembled—and the five folks in this room—the ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... at this period that the art reaches its climax. The monumental grandeur of the Shang specimens is often allied to clumsiness; the later work, if more elaborate, is always less powerful. Nevertheless, it is to a later period that ninety-nine out of a hundred Chinese bronzes must be referred, and the great majority belong either ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... always to be writing sermons," was his only answer, and I guessed that his rage had reached its climax. I tried to lower the flood on his table by means of ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... inopportune times and unsuitable places, creating the inevitable commotion which the blunder and tactless are born to make. As it whisks aimlessly around, it may hit the clergyman's nose in the most pathetic sentence of his sermon, or drop into the soprano's mouth at the supreme climax of her trill. Satan himself could scarcely produce a more complete absence of devotion than is often caused ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... signifies "Son of the Moon." This in no way suggests lunacy; but the young Arab had happened to enter this world on the day of the new moon, which was considered to be a particularly fortunate and brilliant omen at his birth. Whether the climax of his good fortune had arrived at the moment he entered my service I know not; but, if so, there was a cloud over his happiness in his subjection to Mahomet, the dragoman, who rejoiced in the opportunity of bullying the two inferiors. ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... this way in one day they are said to have skimmed the problems of Spitzbergen, Morocco, Dantzig, and the feeding of the enemy populations, leaving each problem where they had found it. The moment the discussion of a contentious question approached a climax, the specter of disagreement deterred them from pursuing it to a conclusion, and they passed on quickly to some other question. And when, after months had been spent in these Penelopean labors, definite decisions respecting the peace ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... dramatist in a charming, reminiscent vein. The present Editor is privileged to make use of one, describing the evolution of "In Mizzoura," and this inclusion removes from him the necessity of commenting too lengthily on that play, for fear of creating an anti-climax. ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: In Mizzoura • Augustus Thomas
... The agitation reached its climax in the uproar over the reference which Mr. Chamberlain made to the war of 1870 in his speech at Edinburgh. In this speech Mr. Chamberlain very justly remarked that we could find precedents for any severe measures which we might be compelled to take ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... practical union between one's self and the divine object of one's contemplation, is a totally different thing from any sort of substantial identity. Still the object God and the subject I are two. Still I simply come upon him, and find his existence given to me; and the climax of my practical union with what is given, forms at the same time the climax of my perception that as a numerical fact of existence I am something radically other than the Divinity with whose ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... what is called historical painting, which it is the fashion among connoisseurs to treat as the climax of the pictorial art. That it is the most difficult branch of the art we do not doubt, because, in its perfection, it includes the perfection of all the other branches: as in like manner an epic poem, though in so far as it is epic (i. e. narrative) it is not poetry ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... involved for calm scientific contemplation. As if a Martian should suddenly become visible to an astronomer, I found that one of the egg planets was inhabited. Perched upon the summit—quite near the north pole—was an insect, a wasp, much smaller than the egg itself. And as I looked, I saw it at the climax of its diminutive life; for it reared up, resting on the tips of two legs and the iridescent wings, and sunk its ovipositor deep into the crystalline surface. As I watched, an egg was deposited, about the latitude of New York, ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... they already practically knew—that the Marquis, the lady, and the captain of the schooner were working together. If they were responsible for Nancy's disappearance, as Dan was convinced, he had not succeeded in getting a scrap of evidence against them. And to cap the climax, he had stupidly allowed himself to be captured. The method of his capture seemed to him quite ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... among the Arabs, and, as the centuries go on, what they do becomes more and more trivial, and their writing has less significance. Just the opposite happened in Europe. There, there was noteworthy progressive development until the magnificent climax of thirteenth century accomplishment was reached. It is often said that Europe owed much to the Arabs for this, but careful analysis of the factors in that progress shows that very little came from the Arabs that ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... blacksmith's shop. Here, having brought his Phoenix to ashes, our comprehensive historian brings his narrative to an abrupt end. This is at page 304. Then follows the "appendix," an invariable feature of city histories, which makes of every one of them a huge anti-climax. In this instance, one hundred and thirty-nine pages of appendix contain, according to the author, "for the purpose of preservation, a mass of papers not absolutely necessary to the elucidation of the history contained in the body of the work. Most of them ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... act began. The audience was sympathetic, but impatient. However, the author knew his public, knew when to spring his surprises, how to hold the emotion in reserve until a climax of applause ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... place," said Mr. Fox, thinking to begin with the least important exaction, and gradually reach, a climax in his extortion, "I wish permission to pay my addresses to ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... said Nyoda from her seat on the piano stool, after they had sung it through a couple of times, "I believe that the last verse of that song should be sung first. The climax seems be in the first verse, and the rest, beginning with the last, merely lead up to it. Try it that ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... Henry reached about noon. It was fordable, but the army had not crossed. It had stopped abruptly at the brink and then had marched almost due north. Henry read this chapter easily and he read it joyfully. The dissatisfaction among the Indian chiefs had reached a climax, and the river, no real obstacle in itself, had served as the straw to turn them into a new course. Timmendiquas had boldly led the way northward and from Kentucky. He, Red Eagle, Yellow Panther and the rest were going to the Indian villages, and Caldwell and the other white ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... it is service of man, done for God's sake, it is so, and only then. The old motto, 'Work is worship,' may preach a great truth or a most dangerous error. But there is no possibility of error or danger in maintaining this: that the climax and crown of all worship, whether for us footsore servants upon earth, or for these winged attendants on the throne of the King in the heavens, is activity in obedience. And that is what is set before ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... complete illusion of a monster thirsting for blood, even his mother’s! When striking her as she struck his father, he answers her despairing query, “Thou wouldst not slay thy mother?” “Woman, thou hast ceased to be a mother!” Dudlay (as Cassandra) reaches a splendid climax when she prophesies the misfortune hanging over her family, which ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... questions of truth or falsehood. In later life they more frequently accept their creed as a working hypothesis of life; as a consolation in innumerable calamities; as the one supposition under which life is not a melancholy anti-climax; as the indispensable sanction of moral obligation; as the gratification and reflection of needs, instincts and longings which are planted in the deepest recesses of human nature; as one of the chief pillars ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... happened, Sir Lewis had for his part in Sir Walter Ralegh's death come to be an object of execration throughout the land, and to be commonly known as "Sir Judas." At Whitehall he suffered rebuffs and insults that found a climax in the words addressed to him by the Lord Admiral, to whom he went to give an ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... direct failure in the event, as understood to have been predicted by the Oracle, not unfrequently accompanied by tragical catastrophes to the parties misled by this erroneous construction of the Oracle; 4. (which is, perhaps, the climax of the exposures possible under the superstitions of Paganism), A public detection of known oracular temples doing business on a considerable ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... inflicted upon me by noisy and musical neighbours began to increase in intensity. Apart from the tinker, whom I hated with a deadly hatred, and with whom I had a terrible scene about once a week, the number of pianos in the house where I lived was augmented. The climax came with the arrival of a certain Herr Stockar, who played the flute in the room under mine every Sunday, whereupon I gave up all hope of composing any more. One day my friends the Wesendoncks, who had returned from wintering in Paris, unfolded to me a most welcome prospect of the fulfilment ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... However, the climax of Cappy's indignation over the disaster to the Valkyrie was not attained until a few months later when, in conversation on the floor of the Merchants' Exchange with the skipper of the schooner Tarus, who happened to have been in Papeete at the bombardment, he learned he had ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... in his relationship to notorious malignants. "He is the son of that desperado Colonel Evellin," said Henley—Bellingham trembled as he uttered that name—"and the nephew of Dr. Eusebius Beaumont," continued the Chaplain. The horrors and fears of Bellingham were wrought to a climax by this information. Those apprehensions which the likeness of Eustace to his injured father, and the similitude of their names excited, were now confirmed beyond all doubt, by his claiming kindred with Dr. Beaumont. Allan Neville was therefore ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West |
