"Conflagration" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... broke out suddenly at Barbados on Easter Sunday, the 14th of April, 1816. "The revolt broke out in St. Philip's parish, shortly after sunset, and it extended, in the two following days, to the parishes of Christ Church, St. John and St. George. A conflagration upon a high ridge of copse-wood called Bishop's Hill, in the parish of St. Philip's, was the first signal. Shortly after, the canes upon eight or nine of the surrounding estates were set on fire. Some few of the rebels were furnished ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... restore the rare and costly Shakespearean treasures of the Birmingham Free Library, or the unique and priceless manuscripts that went up in flames in the city library of Strasburg, in 1870, or the many precious and irreplaceable manuscript archives of so many of our States, burned in the conflagration of ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... blows, and once he got a deadly wrestler's hold on the tall man and would have killed him if the free accomplice had not torn his locked fingers apart by main strength. But it was two against one; and when it was over, the conflagration light reddening the southern windows sufficed for the knotting of the piece of hemp lashing with which the two masked garroters were binding their ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... There seemed quite a conflagration above the domes of the giant trees and the foliage appeared on fire against the sky, like the fine network of a ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... be the state of highest felicity! First an impossible thing is asked; and next impossible consequences deduced. One tyrant generates a nation of tyrants. His own mistakes communicate themselves east, west, north, and south; and what appeared to be but a spark becomes a conflagration. ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... fire is not, as people often call it, the 'final conflagration.' Rather is it a regenerating baptism of fire, from which 'the heavens and the earth that now are'—like the old man in the fable, made young in the flame—shall emerge renewed and purified. The lesson from that prospect is the words of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... the Cardinal, "But you yourself—why have you made a name which is like a firebrand to start a conflagration of discord in Europe?—why do you use your gifts of language and expression to awaken a national danger which even the strongest Government may find itself unable to stand against? I do not blame you till I hear,—till I know;—but your writings,—your appeals ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... to his brother, who was unequal to it; and in confiding to Prince Schwarzenberg a duty which that general could not perform with the devotedness of a Frenchman. I do not speak now of his error in remaining in Moscow after the conflagration, since then there was no remedy for the misfortune; although it would not have been so great if the retreat had taken place immediately. He has also been accused of having too much despised distances, difficulties, and men, in pushing on as far as the Kremlin. Before passing ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... suspended in the midst of an almost equally shapeless conglomeration of flame and smoke. Then he slowly vanished from view; the flaming, smoky western sky seemed to blaze up for a few moments into a still fiercer conflagration, the hues deepened until they became a mingling of blood and soot, when with startling suddenness they died out and an inky blackness enveloped the ship. At the same time the small remains of the wind died away, leaving the yacht rolling and lurching ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... you cannot tell what your powers of resistance are. Unfortunately, many of the world's noblest characters have had nerves so finely wrought and brain so vivid that a single drop of stimulant started a perfect conflagration within them. One of the ablest men this country has ever known, when questioned by a friend as to what had been the greatest pleasure of his life, said: "The greatest 'pleasure' of my life is the ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... metaphysician, a politician, and a disciple of Alchemy. As is not unfrequent with versatile and inflammable people, he caught fire at the first spark of a new medical discovery, and no sooner got home to England than he began to spread the conflagration. ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... carriages. They then drew them out into the open street, and, after they had stripped them of their ornaments and decorations, piled them up in a great heap and set them on fire, in order to add to the fright and terror of the bewildered citizens by the threatening danger of conflagration. ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... were gone, the marksman sowed the seed of conflagration. And all the while, from the rifles along the parapet, death went spitting at ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... saw the fire-marks around the city, where wood houses and granaries for winter supplies now stand as of old; but there appears no marks of conflagration within the city." ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... buildings nearly opposite the Cross still enveloped in flame from ground-floor to roof-tree, passed our work-shed, a little after two o'clock, and, telling us what he had seen, remarked that, if the conflagration went on as it was doing, we would have, as our next season's employment, the Old Town of Edinburgh to rebuild. And as the evening closed over our labours, we went in to town in a body, to see the fires that promised to do so ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... heroes shall be sung, Manning the towers, while o'er their heads the air Swart as the smoke from raging furnace hung; Now thicker darkening where the mine was sprung, Now briefly lightened by the cannon's flare, Now arched with fire-sparks as the bomb was flung, And reddening now with conflagration's glare, While by the fatal light the foes for ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... far from the scene of that awful conflagration, and we rushed forward, as men do at such times, carried out of themselves often and ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... history and politics who has not predicted the "Great European War." Indeed, it required no special powers of prophecy to foresee that this constantly smoldering, and sometimes blazing corner of Europe, would one day burst into a sweeping conflagration. The chief cause of this constant turmoil and conflict in the Balkans lay in its geographical relation to the expansion plan of Austria and Germany and all the other European states, the Balkans being the gate and roadway to the Orient. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... to these terms, and to the humiliation of making overtures to a party whose voice was only the other day designated by John Russell as 'the whisper of a faction,' shows plainly how deeply alarmed they are at the general state of the country, and how the conflagration of Bristol has suddenly illuminated their minds. That incident, the language of the associations, the domiciliary visits to Lord Grey at midnight of Place and his rabble, and the licentiousness of the press, have opened their eyes, and convinced them that ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... burned San Francisco to the ground. This fire occurred on December 4, 1849. It was customary in the saloons to give negroes a free drink and tell them not to come again. One did come again to Dennison's; he was flogged, and knocked over a lamp. Thus there started a conflagration that consumed over a million dollars' worth of property. The valuable part of the property, it must be confessed, was in the form of goods, is the light canvas and wooden shacks were of little worth. Possibly the fire consumed enough germs ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... "I think the time is come when the elements shall melt with fervent heat. It seems like the conflagration of the world; not indeed as we have always fancied it, with flames and visible fire, but not the less on that account the action of heat. It is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... about to get the supreme rottenness, the supreme filth, the mixture of such foul products brewing poison, when the greed was beginning to irritate, in its folly hastening to seize whatever came to hand, like an old woman caught in a conflagration, here you come with your cries of Hispanism, with chants of confidence in the government, in what cannot come to pass, here you have a body palpitating with heat and life, young, pure, vigorous, throbbing with blood, with enthusiasm, suddenly come forth ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... along after him and his men as they rode back to camp beyond Melle. We walked for a quarter mile. At our right a barn was burning brightly. On our left the homes of the peasants of Melle were burning, twenty-six little yellow brick houses, each with a separate fire. It was not a conflagration, by one house burning and gradually lighting the next. The fires were well started and at equal intensity in each house. The walls between the houses were still intact. The twenty-six fires burned slowly and ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... war, dealt only with the attempts of these nations to prevent the war. None of the nations has as yet published white books to show how it prepared for war, and still, every nation in Europe had been expecting and preparing for a European conflagration. Winston Churchill, when he was First Lord of the Admiralty, stated at the beginning of the war that England's fleet was mobilised. France had contributed millions of francs to fortify the Russian border in Poland, although Germany ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... emotion which these reports excited in the bosom of the emperor, was superadded an alarming consideration. The conflagration of Smolensk was no longer, he saw, the effect of a fatal and unforeseen accident of war, nor even the result of an act of despair: it was the result of cool determination. The Russians had studied the time and means, and taken as great ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... much effect as a trickle of water upon a conflagration. They made no attempt to dislodge Ambrose from in front, but swarmed into the water on either side, and putting their backs under the boat, lifted her off the stones. Scrambling over the sides, they shouldered Ambrose and the breed ashore ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... it would have been the same. He was always in love with some pretty girl, but hitherto with only one at a time. But when he now saw all those beautiful ladies together, it was no longer a single fire, which laid waste his sixteen-year-old heart; it was a whole conflagration. ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... popery, on the other, on a similar plea of religious zeal. A Presbyterian meetinghouse was pulled down, and cries of "An Ormond!" "A Bolingbroke!" "Down with the Roundheads!" "No Hanover!" "A new Restoration!" accompanied the conflagration. On the same day similar exclamations were again heard in the streets of London; and all windows not illuminated were broken to pieces. The tenth of June, the anniversary of the Chevalier's birthday, was the signal for ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... and willing hands push it out through the door. There is always more or less of a feud between the hook-and-ladder boys and the hose-cart boys, because the former get the second team and rarely arrive at the fire in time to hoist the beautiful blue ladders before the hose-cart gang puts the conflagration out. Indeed, the feeling has gotten so strong at times that the hook-and-ladder gang has threatened to double the prize-money by private subscription and get their rig out first, but patriotism has thus ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... driven by 61 degrees of frost (-34.7 C.), such magnificent tones again vibrate over the strings that we stay until noses and ears are frozen. For a finale, there is a wild display of fireworks in every tint of flame—such a conflagration that one expects every minute to have it down on the ice, because there is not room for it in the sky. But I can hold out no longer. Thinly dressed, without a proper cap and without gloves, I have no feeling left in body or limbs, and I crawl ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... prejudice or favor, but Marshall, in his "Life of Washington," gave the fair and reasonable view of their position when he said that "men of property and intelligence who had contributed to kindle the flame, under the common error of being able to regulate its heat, trembled at the extent of the conflagration. But it had passed the limits assigned to it, and was no longer subject ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... And, after all, the burglary dodge was the only dodge, absolutely the only conceivable practical method of disposing of the portrait—except burning down the castle. And surely it was preferable to a conflagration, to arson! Moreover, in case of fire at the castle some blundering fool would be sure to cry; 'The portrait! The portrait must be saved!' And the ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... but found none. They had probably been burned; and she doubted not that the ones she had ferreted out would have shared the same fate if Mr. Hawkins had not been a dreamer, void of method, whose mind was perhaps in a state of conflagration over some bright new speculation ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... conflagration. Golden maples and amber-hued cherries, crimson dog-woods and scarlet oaks shook out their flame-foliage and waved their glowing boughs, all dashed and speckled, flecked and rimmed with orange and blood, ghastly green, and tawny brown. The smoky atmosphere, which had hung all day in purple folds ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Louis XV. on the marriage festivities at Paris are generally known. The conflagration of the scaffolds intended for the fireworks, the want of foresight of the authorities, the avidity of robbers, the murderous career of the coaches, brought about and aggravated the disasters of that day; and the young Dauphiness, coming from Versailles, ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... being driven back again and yet again, at length he thought of fire, and ordered blazing brands to be cast into the building from all sides. These finding soon a proper fuel, ceased not to rage, till spreading to a mighty conflagration, they burned down the tower and Vortigern ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... to note the progress of rehabilitation in the burned area. It was less than a fortnight since he had stood there feverishly passing buckets of water in a fight against the flames, but already most of the evidences of conflagration were hidden behind the framework of new buildings. The Eldorado announced a grand opening in the "near future"; Maguire's Jenny Lind Theater notified one in conspicuous letters, "We Will Soon Be Ready for Our Patrons, Bigger ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... this scene, to see on one side of the stair-case the conflagration well executed; on the other, strong marks of the very fire which burnt so many ages ago; for there can be no doubt, but that the Bronze plate then stood in the Roman Hotel de Ville, and was burnt down with it, because it was dug ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... a spectacle no less gloomy. A great part of Kingston was destroyed, some years ago, by an extensive conflagration: yet multitudes of the houses which escaped that visitation are standing empty, though the population is little, if at all, diminished. The explanation is obvious. Persons who have nothing, and can no longer keep up their domestic establishments, take refuge in the abodes ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... Napoleon; particularly when contrasted with the mean and dastardly conduct of those in power in this country. On a similar occasion, when the fire took place in this gaol, the other day, [Footnote: Alluding to the partial conflagration of Ilchester Gaol, Thursday, November 15th, 1821.] twenty-five of the prisoners, with myself, exerted ourselves, as was represented by the keeper to the Magistrates, in the most exemplary and praiseworthy manner; but our rulers do not know how to perform ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... of a valley, forming a semicircle round a small gulf of the sea. On the land side it is defended by mountains; and on the other, by several fortifications. This city is chiefly constructed of wood, and has been many times destroyed by fire. So dreadful was the last conflagration, in 1771, that it is said the flames were visible in the Isles of Shetland, or at least the red lurid glare ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... death a great conflagration broke out in Copenhagen, and ruined large portions of the city. The successor to Roemer, Horrebow by name, fled from his house, with such valuables as he possessed, to the observatory, and there went on with his ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... their knowing it. All at once the sun cast a golden beam into the room, and all that was in it floated transfigured in its light. They started up in alarm at the unexpected light, which almost seemed to come from a sudden conflagration. But the hostess bade them to be at ease; that was only the sunlight; the sun always shone in there in the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... and are overhung with barberries, mountain ash, and mountain elder with their brilliant scarlet berries—sometimes, again, with dwarf oaks, or alder, or nut, whose leaves have just so far begun to be tinged as to increase the variety of the colouring. The first sparks of autumn's yearly conflagration have been kindled, but the fire is not yet raging as in October; soon after which, indeed, it will have burnt itself out, leaving the trees it were charred, with here and there a live coal of a red leaf or ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... at least always ready to fight. As soon as the Americans could believe that the English were really abandoning their enterprize at the moment that it was all but completed, they rushed back to stop the conflagration: they were too late to save the stores which had been brought from York, the navy barracks, or the brig, but the frigate on the stocks, being built of green wood, would not easily burn, and was found but little injured. If the destruction at Sackett's Harbour had been ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... take care of your constitution, and, having ascertained the best habits for it, keep to them like clockwork." Mr. Mivers would not have missed his constitutional walk in the Park before breakfast if, by going in a cab to St. Giles's, he could have saved the city of London from conflagration. ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... where we can make this little fire. In the midst of this wood it is impossible—we should have a conflagration to finish the picture. Can ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... very distinguished member of the London Fire Brigade—the dog Chance. It proves that the fascinations of fires (and who that has witnessed a fire cannot own this fascination?) extends even to the brute creation. In old Egypt, Herodotus tells us, the cats used on the occasion of a conflagration to rush forth from their burning homes, and then madly attempt to return again; and the Egyptians, who worshipped the animals, had to form a ring round to prevent their dashing past and sacrificing themselves to the flames. ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... disadvantage of keeping it in order and of accidental breakage and overturning. The kerosene lantern is widely used to-day, but the danger due to accident is ever-present. The consequences of such accidents are often serious and are exemplified in the terrible conflagration in Chicago in 1871, when Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicked over a lantern and started a fire which burned the city. Modern developments in lighting are gradually encroaching upon the territory in which the oil-lamp has reigned ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... burst forth in a dozen places along the shore of the lake, sending up huge volumes of black smoke riven by lurid tongues of flame. O'Grady and his canoe became less and less distinct. Finally they disappeared entirely in the lowering clouds of the conflagration. Jan's eyes searched the water as they approached shore, and at last he saw what he had expected to find—O'Grady's empty canoe drifting slowly away from the beach. O'Grady ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... now came running with another bucket, and proved herself a woman in a thousand by assisting the new addition to the family put out the last of the conflagration. ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... another sort of energy in us. It will know how to declare itself and make itself effective should occasion arise. And especially when half the world is on fire we shall be careful to make our moral insurance against the spread of the conflagration very definite and certain and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... follow the letting loose of nine thousand Rebel prisoners upon a sleeping city, all unconscious of the coming avalanche? With arms and ammunition stored at convenient locations, with confederates distributed here and there, ready for the signal of conflagration, the horrors of the scene could scarcely be paralleled in savage history. One hour of such a catastrophe would destroy the creations of a quarter of a century, and expose the homes of nearly two hundred thousand souls to every ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... reason is asked, they say: 'when his head came out of the chimney the country folks would think it was fire, and would ring the bells, assemble from every direction, and cause all the riot and trouble incident to a conflagration.' ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... reassured as to the need of beating out the fire and trampling down a place to isolate it, as in the bush-fires of her experience; and Rosamond related the achievements of the regiment in quenching many a conflagration in inflammable ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... up there;" and Lucy Eastman pointed to the higher ramparts, on the edge of which the long grass wavered in the wind with the glancing uncertainty of a conflagration. "The last time I was here I remember saying that that looked like ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... the hilltops. It swept over forest and plain, it howled through canyon and crevasse in its eager haste to reach the centre of the battle of elements. It pounced upon the blinding smoke-cloud and swept it from its path and plunged to the heart of the conflagration with a shriek and roar of cruel delight. One breath, like the breath of a tornado, and its boisterous lungs had sent its mischief broadcast in the flash of an eye. With a howl of delight it tore out the ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... Mr. Warburton, the painful collector, but ah! the too careless custodier, of the largest collection of ancient plays ever known—of most of which the titles only are left to gladden the Prolegomena of the Variorum Shakspeare. Yes, stranger, it was these ill-fated hands That consigned to grease and conflagration the scores of small quartos, which, did they now exist, would drive the whole Roxburghe Club out of their senses—it was these unhappy pickers and stealers that singed fat fowls and wiped dirty trenchers with the lost works of Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, Jonson, Webster—what ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... not a tree was spared, all was reduced to ashes; and the unfortunate inhabitants, who had not perished amid the ruin of their dwellings, were shot or stabbed; while attempting to save themselves from the common conflagration. On the 22d of January, 1794, he wrote to the Committee of Public Safety of the National Convention: "Citizen Representatives!—A country of sixty leagues extent, I have the happiness to inform you, is now a perfect desert; not ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... tail ablaze As through the cloud red lightning plays, He scaled the palaces and spread The conflagration where he sped. From house to house he hurried on, And the wild flames behind him shone. Each mansion of the foe he scaled, And furious fire its roof assailed Till all the common ruin shared: Vibhishan's house alone was spared. From blazing pile to pile he sprang, And loud his shout of triumph ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... dun yellowish appearance, like that mixture of smoke and mist known as a "London fog." But it is somewhat brighter, as though it hung over, half-concealing and smothering, the flames of some grand conflagration. ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... great confusion out of shot-range. Munnich gives himself up for lost. And indeed, says Mannstein, had the Turks sallied out in pursuit at that moment, they might have chased us back to Russia. But the Turks did not sally. And the internal conflagration is not quenched, far from it;—and about nine A.M. their Powder-Magazine, conflagration reaching it, roared aloft into the air, and killed seven thousand of them," [Mannstein, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... first sight of the conflagration, for ourselves we had nothing to fear. The bottom on which we stood was a sward of short buffalo-grass; it was not likely to catch fire, and even if it did, we could easily escape from it. There is not much danger in a burning ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... late as 1682, as appears by an authentic record (proces-verbal) of the conflagration, this steep road was but fourteen feet wide. It was built of branches, covered with earth. Having been rendered unserviceable by the fire, the inhabitants had it widened six feet, as they had to travel three miles, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... left the Inn they saw to it that every spark of the fire was extinguished, for the dreadful conflagration of the summer season had taught them a useful lesson. They also placed their matches in a tin can, so that they might remain dry and also to keep them from being lit by ...
— Guns And Snowshoes • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... and drifted alongside a sister ship. The flames spread to her rigging, and in a few minutes both were ablaze; and before the affrighted and bewildered crews could do anything to prevent it, a third vessel had become involved in the conflagration, and the town was illumined by the pillars of flame which shot up from the ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... directed from the gates below, against the catholic church; and unless every one had had a shield in his hand to receive the fiery darts, and unless the foundation stone had been too strong for any thing to make an impression upon it, you would have seen the whole in conflagration. But alas! this was but the prologue, or a foretaste of what was to follow; for the darkness speedily became seven times blacker, and Belial himself appeared upon the densest cloud, and around him were his choicest ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... that, in the intervals long or short between my sprees, I abstained totally from the use of ardent spirits. I never could and never did drink in moderation. One drink would always kindle such a fire in my blood that it was out of my power to prevent its spreading into a conflagration. I have very many times been accused of "drinking on the sly," as they say, but every such accusation is false. I have also been accused of using opium. I know the pitiable wretch that started that lie—for it is a lie—and the poor dupe that repeated it. For five years my appetite has ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... might be in rapid motion is reasonable to assume from the already known movements of bright stars. Two dark bodies might, indeed, collide together, or a collision might take place between a dark star and a star too faint to be seen even with the most powerful telescope. The conflagration produced by the impact would thus appear where nothing had been seen previously. Again, a similar effect might be produced by a dark body, or a star too faint to be seen, being heated to incandescence by plunging in its course through a ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... however, and imagination did not remain unkindled in this general conflagration (the French Revolution); and I confess I should be more inclined to be ashamed than proud of myself if they had. I was a sharer in the general vortex, though my little world described the path of its revolution in an orbit of ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... could not but prevail. Therefore does he complain, being blind to the true cause of the disorder, that "democratic ideas, transported from America to Europe, were spread and cherished in the midst of the monarchical system—ready materials for a conflagration far more formidable than their authors had anticipated, should a burning spark unhappily light upon them. Others had already taken care to profane the religion of the people; and what remains sacred to the people when religion and ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... flame like magic. Some of the guards had yet the courage to dash forward; but the smoke and the glare drove them back, blinded and dizzy. Isabel herself had scarcely time for escape, so rapid was the conflagration. Alarmed for her husband, she rushed to his tent—to find him already awakened by the noise, and issuing from its entrance, his drawn sword in his hand. The wind, which had a few minutes before but curled the triumphant banners, now circulated the destroying flame. It spread from tent ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book IV. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the havoc did not slack, Till a feeble cheer the Dane To our cheering sent us back; Their shots along the deep slowly boom— Then ceased—and all is wail, As they strike the shattered sail, Or in conflagration ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... boots nearly burned off. But what are cuts, bruises, fatigue, and singed eyelashes, in comparison with the awful sublimities I have witnessed to-day? The activity of Kilauea on Jan. 31 was as child's play to its activity to-day: as a display of fireworks compared to the conflagration of a metropolis. THEN, the sense of awe gave way speedily to that of admiration of the dancing fire fountains of a fiery lake; NOW, it was all terror, horror, and sublimity, blackness, suffocating gases, scorching heat, crashings, surgings, detonations; half ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... groups of villagers were still occupied in doing all they could to keep down the conflagration, which was not much. They were all tinged orange, and backed up by shadows of varying pattern. Round the corner of the largest stack, out of the direct rays of the fire, stood a pony, bearing a young woman on its back. By ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... York, in 1844, a plan was concerted and organized by "a large Irish society with divisions throughout the city," by which, "in case a single church was attacked, buildings should be fired in all quarters and the great city should be involved in a general conflagration."[321:1] ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... sharp and piercing like a cat's, lamenting, and relating with sobs the terrible misfortune of last night. At about three in the morning the inhabitants of the rue St. Victor had been startled out of their sleep by the cry of "Fire, fire!" A conflagration had burst forth in Derues' cellar, and though its progress had been arrested and the house saved from destruction, all the goods stored therein had perished. It apparently meant a considerable loss in barrels of oil, casks of brandy, boxes of soap, etc., ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... of Raphael, are exceedingly characteristic. Julius, bent and emaciated, has the nervous glance of a passionate and energetic temperament; though the brand is hoar with ashes and more than half burned out, it glows and can inflame a conflagration. Leo, heavy jawed, dull-eyed, with thick lips and a brawny jowl, betrays the coarser fiber of ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... on rapidly, and as they went, the brooding cloud-curtain seemed to advance to meet them, spreading ominously across the sky as if it were indeed the smoke from some immense conflagration. ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... knife nor axe could penetrate its hide, so they tried to consume it with fire. After a time it became red-hot, and then it leaped out from amid the flames, and dashed about setting fire to all manner of things. The conflagration spread and was followed by famine, so that the whole ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... in antagonism with virtuous purposes; and now that I am shivering under the icy wind and dull sky of the North,—that I must needs listen to discussions on Erie, Prairie du Chien, Harlem, and Cumberland,—that I read in the papers the lists of the killed and wounded,—that havoc and conflagration, violence and murder, are perpetrated all around me,—I find myself excusing the half-civilized inhabitant of the savanna, who prefers his poetical barbarism to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... seriously discussing the propriety of enslaving the free negroes of that State. Such a proceeding would resemble a physician who should order a dose of arsenic to cure a patient who had taken strychnine, or attempt to extinguish a conflagration by throwing ...
— An Account of Some of the Principal Slave Insurrections, • Joshua Coffin
... nation for supremacy on the ocean; but it is due not only to the honor but to the security of the people of the United States that no nation should be permitted to invade our waters at pleasure and subject our towns and villages to conflagration or pillage. Economy in all branches of the public service is due from all the public agents to the people, but parsimony alone would suggest the withholding of the necessary means for the protection of our domestic firesides ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... with the idea of the conflagration of the world, and there is much plausibility in the conjecture that, as they gazed on the burning city, they may have given utterance to expressions which were misunderstood, and which awakened suspicion. "Some," says Dean Milman, "in the first instance, ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... heard by all present. "He shall have a caning then for his impertinence." And he called loudly to the post-boy for his whip. But at that insult Garnache's brain seemed to take fire, and his cautious resolutions were reduced to ashes by the conflagration. He stepped forward, and, virulent of tone and terrific of mien, he announced that since Monsieur Sanguinetti took that tone with him, he would cut his throat for him at once and wherever they ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... was profitably destroyed; and in any other sense, whether for health or for the conveniences of polished life, or for architectural magnificence, there never was a doubt that the Roman people gained infinitely by this conflagration. For, like London, it arose from its ashes with a splendor proportioned to its vast expansion of wealth and population; and marble took the place of wood. For the moment, however, this event must have been felt by the people as ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... opposite side of the street was on fire, and that in the adjacent building the tongues of flame had caught the wooden pillars of the verandah. There was no doubt but that the hotel would, within a few minutes, be involved in the conflagration. ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... his eyes, and present to his senses. Thus Cicero, in his fourth oration against Cataline: 'I seem to myself to behold this city, the ornament of the earth, and the capital of all nations, suddenly involved in one conflagration. I see before me the slaughtered heaps of citizens lying unburied in the midst of their ruined country. The furious countenance of Ceth[e]'gus rises to my view, while with savage joy he is triumphing in your miseries.'"—Dr. Blair ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... great, may permeate the air With the fierce hot—if but, perchance, the air Be of condition and so tempered then As to be kindled, even when beat upon Only by little particles of heat— Just as we sometimes see the standing grain Or stubble straw in conflagration all From one lone spark. And possibly the sun, Agleam on high with rosy lampion, Possesses about him with invisible heats A plenteous fire, by no effulgence marked, So that he maketh, he, the Fraught-with-fire, Increase to such degree ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... conflagration in the sky is ended; the city is destroyed; the unknown land is in ruins. There are no longer any walls or falling towers; a heap of pale blue gigantic shapes have fallen silently into the abyss of the ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... by the Emperor Alexander after the great conflagration of 1812, the most remarkable apartment is that of the Emperors containing a bed with a straw mattress, half a dozen leather-covered chairs, and a small looking-glass, making up ...
— A Journey in Russia in 1858 • Robert Heywood
... why. And then the light allusion to the danger of death in which she had stood had been the spark in the powder train of his love, his words exploded from the seething consciousness newly awakened, fires long smouldering unsuspected in his heart burst forth in a mighty conflagration of emotion. ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... sudden and violent conflagration lighted up from the Pont Neuf over the whole city," says De Retz. "Everybody without exception took up arms. Children of five and six years of age were seen dagger in hand, and the mothers themselves carried them. In less than two hours there were in Paris more than two hundred barricades, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... insect, nor verdant plant; even the hardy fire-weed has not yet ventured to intrude on this scene of desolation, and the woodpecker, afraid of the atmosphere which charcoal has deprived of vitality, shrinks back in terror when he approaches it. Poor Dechamps, had you remained to witness this awful conflagration, you would have observed in those impenetrable boulders of granite a type of the hard, cold, unfeeling world around you, and in that withered and blackened forest, a fitting emblem of your blighted ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... the one that Calyste finally composed and which he read aloud to his poor, astonished mother. To her the old mansion seemed to have taken fire; this love of her son flamed up in it like the glare of a conflagration. ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... the party now found itself was down in a little depression, or swale, and the wind was blowing away from them and toward the main conflagration. ...
— Cowboy Dave • Frank V. Webster
... Duma said: We did something no other State has done up till now. We proclaimed to the Whole world that we are not in a position to make war, but we shall consider any attempt to coerce Serbia as the beginning of a European conflagration, in which we cannot at present join. But it will flame up in the future when we are in a position to have our way." (Telegram xvi, Bogitchevitch). Russia thus very clearly told Serbia so early as 1909 that so soon as Russia was ready, Serbia had but to provoke Austria ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... than eight hundred leguas of coasts which that empire possesses. This, to the great injury of the empire, left demolished and razed to the ground innumerable settlements and cities, enough to compose several kingdoms. This was the greatest conflagration and havoc that the world has seen, ... and only populous China could be the fit theater for such a tragedy, and only the cruel barbarity of the Tartars [could make them the] inventors and executors of such destruction. The upheaval which the execution of this so unexampled cruelty ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... subjects which, withdrawing the mind from objects of sense, seem to give it new dignity; but here I was treading on live ashes. The sufferers were still under the pressure of the misery occasioned by this dreadful conflagration. I could not take refuge in the thought: they suffered, but they are no more! a reflection I frequently summon to calm my mind when sympathy rises to anguish. I therefore desired the driver to hasten to the hotel recommended to me, that I might avert my eyes and snap ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... two powerful chiefs, of the race of the ancient kings, [20] asserted their own rights and the national freedom; their daemoniac impostors proclaimed to the crowd, that their glorious patron St. Demetrius had forever deserted the cause of the Greeks; and the conflagration spread from the banks of the Danube to the hills of Macedonia and Thrace. After some faint efforts, Isaac Angelus and his brother acquiesced in their independence; and the Imperial troops were soon discouraged by the bones of their fellow-soldiers, that were scattered along the passes of Mount ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... the next line but one; and, as it now stands, the conclusion of the paragraph, 'worthy him (Shakspeare) and you,' appears to apply the 'you' to those only who were out of bed and in Covent Garden Market on the night of conflagration, instead of the audience or the discerning public at large, all of whom are intended to be comprised in that comprehensive ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... field-glass, but making no sign. Then he noted that the ambulance, with its escort, was coming on fast; and soon, after a little inquiry, he came upon the sergeant, busy with the men, every one with his rifle slung, linking wagons together with tent-cloth poles and wood boxes and barrels so that the conflagration might be sure to spread when once it was started, to which end the men worked with a will; but they did not hesitate to cram their wallets and pockets with eatables in ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... whittles. Well, they make bayonets there now, just as sharp and just as well-tempered. When we can stand tyranny no longer, it will be seen whether good bayonets in Saxon hands will not be more than a match for a mace and a majority." All the fuel for a conflagration was ready. There was race hatred, there was party hostility, there was commercial depression and there was a sincere, though exaggerated, loyalty, which regarded rebellion as the unforgivable sin, and which was in constant dread of the spread of ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... twenty-five, had been an habitual drunkard for many years. One evening at about eleven o'clock he went to a blacksmith's shop: he was then full of liquor, though not thoroughly drunk. The blacksmith, who had just crossed the road, was suddenly alarmed by the breaking forth of a brilliant conflagration in his shop. He rushed across, and threw open the door, and there stood the man, erect, in the midst of a widely-extended silver-coloured flame, bearing, as he described it, exactly the appearance ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 184, May 7, 1853 • Various
... stork. Some of the people among whom they sojourn during the warm summer days regard the presence of the bird as a kind of safeguard against fire. And as an illustration of their love for their young, a story is told of a stork which, rather than desert its helpless offspring during a conflagration in Delft, in Holland, remained heroically by their side and perished with ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... has never been discovered. Marauding parties now commenced on the part of the Indians, who took summary vengeance on those who had robbed and maltreated them. The whole country from Fort Brooke to Fort King was in a state of conflagration, and the whites were compelled to abandon everything, and seek protection under the forts. At the outbreak of hostilities the American force in the department did not amount to five hundred men. The militia were called out, but military ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... buying and selling, the business of the day, and in some houses there were weary pain-racked bodies that slipped out of life gently without waiting for the general conflagration. ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... homeless, 17,500 buildings consumed, and $192,000,000 worth of property destroyed. The main business portion of the city was included in the tract burned. Thirteen months later the most destructive conflagration that had ever visited Boston swept the district below Washington Street from Summer nearly to State, and eastward to the water's edge, being the most solid business portion of the city. The loss ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... enlivened the ennui of our existence; the huts were littered deep with straw, and the inmates, intoxicated, frequently fell asleep with their huge pipes alight, which, falling in the dry straw, at once occasioned a conflagration. In such cases the flames spread from hut to hut with immense rapidity, and frequently four or five hundred huts in Kamrasi's large camp were destroyed by fire, and rebuilt in a few days. I was anxious concerning my powder, as, in the event of fire, the blaze of the straw ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... about in all directions "and were nearly of the same size and in the same progress towards decay; from whence it would seem that they had not fallen from age nor yet been thrown down in a gale of wind. Some general conflagration, and there were marks apparently of fire on many of them, is perhaps the sole cause which can be reasonably assigned; but whence came the woods on fire? There were no inhabitants upon the island, and that the natives of ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... her bower high, The fire so hastily it blazed; How well she loved to all she proved Who on that conflagration gazed. ...
— Hafbur and Signe - a ballad • Thomas J. Wise
... of the officers, the mess houses of the troops, and all the buildings between the native lines and Meerut were fired, and the whole became a roaring conflagration, whose glare at night was visible ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... all, the rare, the ripe As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse, 30 —Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone, deg. deg.31 Put me where I may look at him! True peach, Rosy and flawless: how I earned the prize! Draw close: that conflagration of my church —What then? So much was saved if aught were missed! My sons, ye would not be my death? Go dig The white-grape vineyard where the oil-press stood, Drop water gently till the surface sink, And if ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... had free shows and pay shows, also moving pictures. The pay show got to be so amusing that we made a bonfire out of it one bright September night, and found it more entertaining as a conflagration than it ever had been as an entertainment. At all events, that was how one of the boys of the Fifteenth ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... beheaded thirty Portuguese officers, prisoners of war; and in the third and last act, Muley, mad with his wives, set fire with his own hand to a detached palace, in which they were shut up, and reduced them all to ashes.... This conflagration, accompanied with a thousand shrieks, closed the piece in a very diverting manner.—Lesage, Gil ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Babylon. This lofty column was ordered by the Commons, in commemoration of the extinction of the great fire and the rebuilding of the city: it stands on the site of the old church of St. Margaret, and within a hundred feet of the spot where the conflagration began. It is of the Doric order, and rises from the pavement to the height of two hundred and two feet, containing within its shaft a spiral stair of black marble of three hundred and forty-five steps. The plinth is twenty-one feet square, and ornamented with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... were already leaping out at the port-holes of the gigantic ship. The sides of the L'Orient had been recently painted, and the paint-buckets and oil-jars which stood on the poop soon caught, and added brilliancy to the great conflagration which speedily followed the first outbreak of fire. It was about nine o'clock when the fire was first observed. Before this the gallant French Admiral had perished. Although three times wounded, Brueys refused to quit ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne
... the strange phenomenon, endeavouring to account for it in various ways. It seemed to be rising higher against the blue sky—now resembling dust, now like the smoke of a widely-spread conflagration, and now like a reddish cloud. It was in the west, and already the setting sun was obscured by it. It had passed over the sun's disc like a screen, and his light no longer fell upon the plain. Was it the forerunner of ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... Arago steamed into Charleston Bay, where he had before seen the heaviest artillery duel then known in the history of the world, and the abandonment of the attack by the floating fortresses. Now a new glory rose above the fort, while in the distance rolled black clouds of smoke, from the conflagration of the city. He penned this ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... the long neglect with which these provinces had been treated, the Gauls, having no assistance on which to rely, had borne cruel massacres, with plunder and conflagration, from barbarians who raged throughout their land with impunity. Silvanus, the commander of the infantry, being a man well suited to correct these evils, went thither at the command of the emperor, Arbetio at the same time urging with all his power that this task should be undertaken without ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... the World Displayed, Dr Johnson remarks on this story, that "green wood is not very apt to burn; and the heavy rains which fall in these countries must surely have extinguished the conflagration were it ever so violent." Yet in 1800 Radnor forest presented a conflagration of nearly twenty miles circumference, which continued to spread for a considerable time, in spite of every effort to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... my dear. Let us have that in comfort I beg, for upon my soul we shall need it," panted Mr. Stuart, sinking into a chair exhausted with the vigorous measures which had quenched the conflagration. ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... the affair of Nicholas; it belongs to him, it is a piece of experience that enters his life and enriches our sense of it. Many of the wonderful chapters, again, which deal with the abandonment and the conflagration of Moscow, are seen through the lives of the irrepressible Rostov household, or of Peter in his squalid imprisonment; the scene is framed in their consciousness. Prince Andrew, too—nobody can forget how much of the battle in which he is mortally wounded is transformed into an emotion of his; ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... the door of the schoolroom open. There are some spectacles which a man never forgets. The burning of Troy probably seemed a large-sized conflagration to the pious Aeneas, and made an impression on him which he carried away with ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... literary effort was history; but even their early history was a simple record of facts, not of ideas or sentiments, and valuable only for its truth and accuracy. Their original documents, mere records of memorable events anterior to the capture of Rome by the Gauls, perished in the conflagration of ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta |
