"Fathom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... golden Wings; he only valued the smiling Babies in Belvira's Eyes. His Generosity was boundless, as his Love, for no Man ever truly loved, that was not generous. He thought his Estate, like his Passion, was a sort of a Pontick Ocean, it could never know an Ebb; But now he found it could be fathom'd, and that the Tide was turning, therefore he sollicits with more impatience the consummation of their Joys, that both might go like Martyrs from their Flames immediately to Heaven; and now at last it was agreed between them, that they should both be one, but not without some Reluctancy ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... the Church by acknowledging his son to all men,—and lo!—the son he was ashamed of all these years, turns out a prodigy! The fault once confessed, brings a blessing! Angela, there is something more than chance in this, if we could only fathom it!" ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... of England were cold. She, Hollyhock, could not understand them, could not attempt to fathom them. She crept softly downstairs, gathering ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... she said slowly: "You mean that it will not do to send to find out if Alessandro is dead, because it will look as if I wished him to marry me whether he wished it or not?" and she fixed her eyes on Felipe's, with an expression he could not fathom. ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... of her uncle, that "they wish better bread than is made of wheat," or when they look within their own hearts, and assert, as the poet Young said in 1759, long before the English romantic movement had begun, "there is more in the spirit of man than mere prose-reason can fathom." ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... had not come out hastily at that moment. He had been looking for her everywhere, he declared with some asperity. Her mother could not sleep, and wished to see her; otherwise it was time they were all in bed, and what there was to talk about till all hours was more than he could fathom. So he saw the pair before him through the lighted rooms, a heavy man with a flaming neck and a smouldering eye. Horace would be heavy, too, when his bowling days were over. The girl was on finer lines; but she looked like a woman at her worst; tired, exasperated, and clearly ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... subscribe her name and local address. So she wrote, "Iris Yorke, steamship Unser Fritz, Maceio harbor." Hozier was standing by her side as she printed the words legibly. She looked up at him with a curiously tense expression that he did not fathom immediately. They were in the busy main street again ere its meaning occurred to him. The cable committed her irrevocably. She felt that she was ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... drew out of the roar and commotion with a look of dumb terror on his countenance. He was defeated, puzzled, discomfited, frightened. Other cities had been to him as long primer to read; as country maidens quickly to fathom; as send-price-of-subscription-with-answer refuses to solve; as oyster cocktails to swallow; but here was one as cold, glittering, serene, impossible as a four-carat diamond in a window to a lover outside fingering damply in his ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... untroubled. For I cannot fathom you, and that troubles me. I am very fond of you—and yet ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... George's wharf-head the water was deep—deeper than Donald could fathom at low tide—and it was cold, and covered a rocky bottom, upon which a multitude of starfish and prickly sea-eggs lay in clusters. It was green, smooth and clear, too; sight carried straight down to where the purple-shelled mussels gripped ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... pyramid that Julius Caesar brought forth of Africa; it stood in Faustus's time leaning against the church-wall of St. Peter's; but Pope Sixtus hath erected it in the middle of St. Peter's churchyard. It is fourteen fathom long, and at the lower end five fathom four square, and so forth smaller upwards. On the top is a crucifix of beaten gold, the stone standing on four lions of brass. Then he visited the seven churches of Rome, that were St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Sebastian, St. John Lateran, St. Laurence, ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... possible opportunity; but, when the return of spring found the hope unfulfilled, it was plainly idle to look to the summer to afford what winter had denied. The frigates were lightened over a three-fathom bar, and thence, in April, 1814, removed up the Thames fourteen miles, as far as the depth of water would permit. Being there wholly out of reach of the enemy's heavy vessels, they were dismantled, and left to the protection of the shore batteries ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... a flight!—O, outraged Heaven, How could'st thou, since, have smiled? A fathom deep the frozen snow Lay horrid on the wild, Where fled to perish youth and age, And ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... between the English fathom and the French toise, as determined between the first astronomers of both countries, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... went on and John had come to a better insight of the character of the eccentric person whom Dick had failed to fathom, his half-formed prejudices had fallen away, it must be admitted that he ofttimes found him a good deal of a puzzle. The domains of the serious and the facetious in David's mind seemed to have ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... grieved at the pain she had given. If Robert had been set before her with full consent of friends, she would have let her whole heart go out to him, loved him, and trusted him for ever, treating whatever opinions were unlike hers as manly idiosyncrasies beyond her power to fathom. But she was no Lydia Languish to need opposition as a stimulus. It rather gave her tender and dutiful spirit a sense of shame, terror, and disobedience; and she thankfully accepted the mandate that sent her on a visit to her married ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... unconcealed admiration of most, and the ill-concealed envy of a few of the boys, of his mental and physical abilities, he began, as time went on, to suspect—then to be sure—that for some reason that baffled all his ingenuity to fathom, he was not accorded the position in the school that was the natural reward for superiority of endowment and performance. This place was filled instead by Nat Howard, a boy who, he told himself, he was without the slightest vanity bound to see was distinctly ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... twinkling like stars; rows of little fires marking the margin of the lowest level of the crater; fire molten in deep crevasses; fire in wavy lines; fire, calm, stationary, and restful: an incandescent lake two miles in length beneath a deceptive crust of darkness, and whose depth one dare not fathom even in thought. Broad in the glare, giving light enough to read by at a distance of three-quarters of a mile, making the moon look as blue as an ordinary English sky, its golden gleam changed to a vivid rose colour, lighting up the whole of the vast precipices of that part ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... now looking at her, silent, trying to fathom the vastness of what she said, trying to understand at all their worth the motives which impelled her. The largeness of her plan, yes, that could be seen. The largeness of her heart and brain, yes, that also. Then, slowly, I saw yet more. At last I understood. What I saw was ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... plaintive and sweet-toned songs. Three or four of his countrymen occasionally came up from below. Then they, too, sang more plaintive songs; or played a strange game with especial cards which none of us "gringos" could ever fathom; or perhaps stepped a grave, formal sort of dance. Senora Morena, the only woman, would sometimes join in this. She was a large woman, but extraordinarily light on her feet. In fact, as she swayed and balanced opposite her partner she reminded me of nothing so much as a balloon tugging gently ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... Kenneth. He knows. Many a time he has had to go behind a door to roar hilariously at the old lady. He has thought of her as a lark to tell his mates about by and by; but for some reason that he cannot fathom, he knows now that ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... commotion in the back of the court-room. He lifted his gavel for silence, his gaze falling upon a dripping, shivering, red-haired girl, who raised to his face a pair of copper-colored eyes in which shone a soul, the magnitude of which the judge could not fathom ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... wit could not fathom the mystery of Toni's new joy in life. When interrogated concerning her employers, Toni was always vague. That there were two of them Fanny knew; but from Toni's extremely colourless description, Miss ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... understand life, and his own place in life. And when you do not see your place, and are unable to appraise your own value, it seems that you are the only, the inimitable cucumber on the face of the earth, and that no one can measure, no one can fathom your worth, and that all are eager only to eat you up. After a while you'll find out that the hearts in other people's breasts are no worse than a good part of your own heart, and you'll begin to feel better. ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... other side of Gideon Vetch—of that man of ignoble circumstances and infinite magnanimity! How could any one understand him? How, above all, could any one judge him? How could one fathom his power for good or for evil? She beheld him suddenly as a man who was inspired by an exalted illusion—the illusion of human perfectibility. In the changing world about her, the breaking up and the renewing, the dissolution and ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... whole sad story. Can it be possible that there is some quixotic notion in your head that it is for you to heal a wound for which one of your family was responsible? Oh, surely not! And yet, you women are so fond of anything like self-sacrifice that it is impossible to fathom the motives that drive you into folly: generous, well-meant folly, but folly all the same. You have no one here to advise you, and I beg you to be guided by me. You are not really called upon to do this thing. It ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... God is a conception so wonderful, so sublime, that none but Himself can fathom its depths. Human intelligence is too finite to penetrate or comprehend a system so complex, and yet so uniform. The mind of man can only form a just idea of a cause when the effect has been made manifest to his understanding. There might have ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... not for thee; thine awful empire stands From age to age, unchangeable, sublime; Thy domes are spread where thought can never climb, In clouds and darkness where vast pillars rest. I may not fathom thee: 't would seem a crime Thy being of its mystery to divest Or boldly lift thine awful ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... apparently unexceptional proceeding was looked on by many with grave offence. The Afghan officers muttered that this was mere braggadocio on the part of the sahibs; that the sport was only to show how they would spit and cut down the sons of the Prophet, if they had the chance! To fathom such depths of bigotry as this incident reveals is one of the many difficulties which face ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... did," returned Joe warmly. "It was very good of you to go to that trouble. And, after the experience I had with Shalleg, I shouldn't wonder but what there was something in it. Though why he should be vindictive toward me is more than I can fathom. I certainly never did anything to him, except to refuse to lend him money, and I actually had ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... interesting to note that whenever one of the others addressed him directly, or turned to him when speaking, it was with a curious expression, not of fear, but partly amusement and partly something else which I could not fathom. Now, one might think that this was natural enough purely on account of the man's extraordinary appearance. I do not think that a sufficient explanation; for however strange a man's appearance may be, his intimate friends ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... not care for out-door things?" Then get a bit of wood and a few carving tools, and see what dainty wonders you can make at home. Or lose your cares in "illuminating"; or bury them fathom deep in German. From any of these, well begun and carried on, you will come back re-created for your work: made over "as good as new." Not poisoned with bad air, nor wearied by late hours; not singed and jaded with chagrin, ...
— Tired Church Members • Anne Warner
... and knew that, to match a ship against a fort with success, it was necessary to get as close as possible, and overpower it with weight of metal. After taking the necessary soundings, on the 2nd April he stood in to four-fathom water, taking with him the Viper and Triumph, and bombarded Severndroog fort. The Mahratta fleet gave no assistance, so the Swallow was detached to guard the southern entrance. All day long the cannonade continued, till a heavy swell setting ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... completely parching up everything and benumbing the men. One of the augurs, in consequence, advised that they should sacrifice to the wind; and a sacrifice was accordingly offered, when the vehemence of the wind appeared to every one manifestly to abate. The depth of the snow was a fathom; so that many of the baggage-cattle and slaves perished, with about thirty of the soldiers. They continued to burn fires through the whole night, for there was plenty of wood at the place of encampment. But ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... their bearing. Having acquired some notoriety and a reputation for sanctity, her prophesyings before long took the form of denunciation of the divorce, at that time in its earlier stages. She was exploited by sundry fanatical persons honest or otherwise—in such cases it is seldom possible to fathom the extent to which mania, intentional deception, conscious or unconscious suggestion, and mere credulity, are mingled. In those days, there were few people who would venture to attribute such phenomena to purely natural causes. Such a man as Thomas More, who was eminently ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... to have received particular marks of distinction from the Emperor Alexander; but what may have been the particular tittle tattle which led up to the caricature we shall next describe, we are now unable to fathom. That it grew out of the event which we have attempted to describe will be sufficiently obvious. It is entitled, A Russian Dandy at Home; a scene at Aix-la-Chapelle, and was published by Fores in December, 1818. In ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... dark, Mackay and those of his men who could handle an oar rowed unceasingly. Again and again he threw out his twenty-fathom line, but in vain. He made out a dim line of precipitous cliffs, yet the water seemed fathomless—the only map in existence was a rough one that Stanley had made. At last the lead touched bottom at fourteen fathoms. In the dim light of dawn they rowed and sailed toward a shady ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... religion rose to the level of the highest thought, had from the earliest times to endure all the blessing and curse of an aristocracy of intellect. The Latin religion like every other had its origin in the effort of faith to fathom the infinite; it is only to a superficial view, which is deceived as to the depth of the stream because it is clear, that its transparent spirit-world can appear to be shallow. This fervid faith disappeared with the progress of time as necessarily as ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Blanco thus describes the tobacco of the Philippines: "It is an annual, growing to the height of a fathom, and furnishes the tobacco for the estancos (licensed shops). General opinion prefers the tobacco of Gapan, but that of the Pasy districts, Laglag and Lambunao, in Iloilo, of Maasin or Leyte, is appreciated ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... the dun green light was shed Heavily round his head That through the veil of sea falls fathom-deep, Blurred like a lamp's that when the night drops dead Dies; and his eyes gat grace of sleep to see The deep divine dark dayshine of the sea, Dense water-walls and clear dusk water-ways, Broad-based, or branching as a sea-flower sprays That ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... as she endeavored to persuade him to do—and that for two reasons: the first, because by this means he should escape reproaches, recriminations, and prayers; the second, because he was not sorry to have an opportunity of reading his own thoughts and endeavoring, if possible, to fathom those of ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... each man. Five million men killed means an economic loss to the countries concerned of $15,000,000,000. But the economic value of the lives destroyed represents only a small fraction of their potentiality—socially, morally, and spiritually. No human brain can calculate, no heart can fathom the cost or ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... thankful for Gevrol's blunder. Had it not been for that, how would he ever have found an opportunity of investigating an affair that grew more and more mysterious as his search proceeded, but which he hoped to fathom finally. ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... adequate realization of the problems presented by life, are manifest, though in various degree, in all these records of French officers killed in the months which preceded Christmas 1914. These Frenchmen did not go out light-heartedly, nor with a pathetic inability to fathom the purpose for which they so generously went, but they had given the matter a study which seemed beyond their years. They marched to the blood-baths of Belgium and Lorraine with solemnity, as though to ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... composed of several ledges, shipping much water. Up to this point the Loquilocun flowed in a rocky bed, with (for the most part) steep banks, and sometimes for a long distance under a thick canopy of boughs, from which powerful tendrils and ferns, more than a fathom in length, were suspended. Here the country was to some extent open; flat hillocks, with low underwood, came to view, and, on the north-west, loftier wooded mountains. The last two hours were notable for a heavy fall of rain, and, about half past five, we reached a solitary house occupied ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... correct that composition," observed Shirley, as Moore concluded. "Your censor-pencil scored it with condemnatory lines, whose signification I strove vainly to fathom." ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... he felt he had solved the reason that he rode always with closed helm, he was for the first time anxious himself to hide his face from the sight of men. Not from fear, for he knew not fear, but from some inward impulse which he did not attempt to fathom. ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... adamant, and oxen that from tawny jaws breathed flame of blazing fire, and with bronze hoofs smote the earth in alternate steps, and had led them and yoked them single-handed, he marked out in a line straight furrows, and for a fathom's length clave the back of the loamy earth; then he spake thus: 'This work let your king, whosoever he be that hath command of the ship, accomplish me, and then let him bear away with him the imperishable coverlet, the fleece glittering with tufts ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... the darkness, I found myself at a loss to fathom the mentality of men like Jeeves's Uncle Cyril. What on earth he could see funny in a disaster which had apparently involved the complete extinction of a human creature—or, at any rate, of half a human creature and ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... preceded it, surging in at that moment and making a clean breach over the wreck, washed me off my feet, and would have swept me overboard had I not chanced to have in my hand the rope by which I had secured the boat. It lifted the wreck, slued her nearly half round, and swept her a good fathom nearer that danger point, the inner edge of the reef; and I began to realise that the peril was imminent, and momentarily growing more so, and that immediate action ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... she could not ask them from that bowed head, nor yet from those clasped hands. And yet, somehow, it seemed that something of the man's soul was revealed to her at this moment, though she could not as yet fathom the meaning of this strange answer ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... connects the highways of several tribes, but is impassable from December to April from the snow and the storms which rage among the cliffs. We are still four thousand feet above the plain, whose depth the swimming eye tries in vain to fathom, yet the snowy peaks above us are inaccessible. Descending chains of rocks mingled with flint and lime, we attain a more clement landscape. Kabyle girls crowd around a well called the Mosquitoes' Fountain, a naked boy plays melancholy tunes on a reed, and the signs of a lower ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... Lady Rylton, who does not understand him, who could not, if she tried, fathom the depths of self-contempt that he endures, when he thinks of this evening's work, of his permitting this child to marry him, and give him her wealth—for nothing—nothing! What can he give her in return? An old name. She had not seemed to care for that—to know the importance of it. "Now it ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... cabbage and other kitchen plants; and here and there the gardens cannot be seen at all, for the great elder trees that spread themselves out by the bank, and hang far out over the streaming waters, which are deeper here and there than an oar can fathom. Opposite the old nunnery is the deepest place, which is called the "bell-deep," and there dwells the old water spirit, the "Au-mann." This spirit sleeps through the day while the sun shines down upon the water; but in starry and moonlit nights he shows himself. ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... his well-merited reward and his liberty. The shark was dissected and the skeleton sent to Spanish Town, where a few years afterwards it fell to pieces for want of care. This unfortunate town has been twice destroyed by an earthquake; the ruins on a clear day may be seen in three-fathom water. ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... of necessity good confidential agents, or whether a fire-proof man was as a matter of course trustworthy, Frederick Trent threw himself into a chair, and, burying his head in his hands, endeavoured to fathom the motives which had led Quilp to insinuate himself into Richard Swiveller's confidence;—for that the disclosure was of his seeking, and had not been spontaneously revealed by Dick, was sufficiently plain from Quilp's seeking his company and ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... East Tennessee by the enemy, but it was hard for us to believe that the sudden retreat of Longstreet, after his announced intention to attack Knoxville, was not under orders which indicated a plan we ought to fathom. We had heard of his first purpose at many places on our road, for it is almost impossible to keep the people of the country from learning the destination of a moving column, and now the inhabitants who remained at Morristown ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... got no breath to waste in hollering," he panted. "Why, there's a good fathom and a half or two fathom o' water under her keel, and if I slack out down she'll go. Wants a couple o' boats to back in, one on each side, and get a rope under her thwarts. They could get her ashore then. Oh, dear! oh, dear! oh, dear! For him to leave me in charge, and then ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... attempted to fathom the depths of the Shaksperian ocean of thought, have only rounded the rim or skimmed over the surface of its illimitable magnificence. Tossed about by the billows of Shakspere's brain, for three hundred ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... which this shall be your Order. Dated on board his Majesty's ship Bristol, in Five-fathom Hole, off Charlestown, the 11th day ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... to my mind, I feel that the lonely wretched existence I lead is just as much an oppressive burden now as it was then, and that it is vain for me to try and shake it off. All my thinking and all my inquiries are fruitless; I cannot fathom what this glorious thing is which formerly happened in my life. Its mysterious and alas! to me, unintelligible echo, as it were, fills me with such great happiness; but will not this happiness pass over into the most agonising pain, and torture me to death, when I am obliged to ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... everything but what fear constrain them to keep; crafty, timorous, quick of apprehension, ingenious enough in their own works, as may testify their weirs in which they take their fish, which are certain enclosures made of reeds and framed in the fashion of a labyrinth or maze set a fathom deep in the water with divers chambers or beds out of which the entangled fish cannot return or get out, being once in. Well may a great one by chance break the reeds and so escape, otherwise he remains a prey to the fishermen the next low water ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... the company. Fear, surprise, anger, and curiosity, ruled them by turns and kept them incessantly upon the rack. There was something mysterious in the visiter who had just left them—something which they could not fathom—something unaccountable. 'Who could he be?' This was the question that each put to the other, but no one could give any thing like a rational answer. Meanwhile the evening wore on apace, and though the bell of the parish church hard by sounded the tenth hour, no one ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 402, Supplementary Number (1829) • Various
... some in dreams assured were Of the spirit that plagued us so: Nine fathom deep he had followed us From the ...
— The Rime of the Ancient Mariner • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... conflict of two arrows, Bringing death unto the maiden, Was a deep and darksome myst'ry Which his ignorance could not fathom. All the cause of his undoing Saw he in the silver arrow; So with true love's tireless effort, Quick he strove ...
— The White Doe - The Fate of Virginia Dare • Sallie Southall Cotten
... must bide a bit 'fore you can fathom their deepness," replied Joan; "and while you'm waitin' I wouldn't advise 'ee to take it for granted that the world's made up o' Reuben Mays—nor Adam Pascals neither;" and she ran to the door to welcome a cousin ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... heart, Knight of the Table Round, Pray for his soul, lords, of your part; A true knight he was found.' Ah! me, I cannot fathom ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... one living has been able to fathom the whole power of this ring, and no one can completely explain the secret signs engraved upon it. But, even with the imperfect knowledge of its properties which I possess, I can perform many wonders which no other creature can accomplish. If I put the ring ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... sail into the Gulf; and, having arrived at the oyster banks, cast anchor and commence business. The divers are first called to duty. They plunge to the bottom in four or five fathom water, dig up with sharpened sticks as many oysters as they are able, rise to the surface, and deposit them in sacks hung to receive them at the vessel's side. And thus they continue to do till the sacks are filled, or the hours allotted to this ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... are said to be just, and they behave like a father who disinherits his son because, as a man, he notes his parent's weakness. With tears and anguish have I striven for truth and knowledge. There is not a province of thought whose deepest depths I have not tried to fathom; and when I recognized that it is not given to mortals to apprehend the essence of the divinity because the organs bestowed on us are too small and feeble; when I refused to pronounce whether that which I ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... began when my play failed so dismally. A woman never can forgive failure. I have burnt the manuscript to the last page. Oh, if you could only fathom my unhappiness! Your estrangement is to me terrible, incredible; it is as if I had suddenly waked to find this lake dried up and sunk into the earth. You say you are too simple to understand me; but, oh, what is there to understand? You disliked my play, you have no faith ...
— The Sea-Gull • Anton Checkov
... horse; while in his mouth he held a jewel as large as a goose's egg, which shone like fire, and which, in the opinion of Sagean, was a carbuncle. Another of these images was that of a woman mounted on a golden unicorn, with a horn more than a fathom long. After passing, pursues the story, between these idols, which stand on platforms of gold, each thirty feet square, one enters a magnificent vestibule, conducting to the apartment of the king. At the four corners of this vestibule are stationed bands of music, ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... distasteful in American hotels that I cannot bring myself to use it in writing of them—she has been carried off to a lady's waiting room, and there remains in august wretchedness till the great man at the bar shall have decided on her fate. I have never been quite able to fathom the mystery of these delays. I think they must have originated in the necessity of waiting to see what might be the influx of travelers at the moment, and then have become exaggerated and brought to their present normal state by the gratified feeling of almost divine ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... him there, and glancing upwards from the street as the carriage drove off, I waved my hand to the slim black figure at the window, whose wan, weary eyes watched our departure with an expression which at the time I could not fathom. It was not until I was actually in the train that I remembered what Lady Delahaye's silent departure might ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Checco mio. Your mind is so quick to fathom matters of this kind. Think you, now, it might have been the ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... he remarked after a time, a slight twinkle in his eye of appreciation of the bull. But the twinkle quickly disappeared and the blue eyes took on a bleak and wintry look. "What dud he do ot Voloparaiso but land sux hundred fathom o' chain cable an' take never a receipt from the lighter-mon. I was gettun' my clearance ot the time. When we got tull sea, I found he hod no receipt ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... great semicircle in front of them. For some time the White Cloud continued to gaze at them in silent scrutiny, his large, dark, piercing eyes roving from Chiquita's face to the Captain's, in the seeming effort to fathom their thoughts and the very depths of their souls, as though to reassure himself of the ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... difference to me, their bein' there. I don't know 'em." For some reason that Lucy could not fathom, the woman's temper seemed to be rising, and being a person of tact ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... steamer on which I was did not draw much water, being built specially for river navigation, careful soundings had to be taken continually. I well recollect the cries of the man at the lead. When the man cried out "Una braca!" (one fathom), there was great excitement on board, and we had to slow down to half speed or dead slow. In the distance on the left bank in the haze could be distinguished high hills, at the foot of which white ribbon-like streaks were visible ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... breakers, and the howling of the tempest, and the heavy sea, which broke as high as the fore-yard, death appeared inevitable. There was only one hope left, and that was, that, should the tide change and take us under our lee-beam, it might possibly set us off on the Nine-fathom bank, which is situated at a distance of twelve miles north-northwest, off Boulogne harbor. On the event of reaching this bank, the safety of the ship and lives of the crew depended,—as it was determined there to try the anchors, for there was no possibility of keeping off shore ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... fellow's always got a decent sister to take about, anyway," he replied enigmatically, a remark over which Ingred pondered, but could not fathom. ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... present she is altogether undeveloped. She is two and twenty in years, but a child, or rather a piquant, amusing young girl, in manner, and perhaps in disposition. She is an enigma of which I should be sorry to have to undertake the solution. As she seems, I like her immensely, but when I try to fathom what she ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... in a series of Italian dialogues and Latin poems will not discourage those of his admirers who estimate the conspicuous failure made by all elaborate system-builders from Aristotle to Hegel. To fathom the mystery of the world, and to express that mystery in terms of logic, is clearly beyond the faculty of man. Philosophies that aim at universe-embracing, God-explaining, nature-elucidating, man-illuminating, comprehensiveness, have justly, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... Heneage accepted a chair and spoke of the performance. The conversation became general and of stereotyped form. Yet Wrayson was uneasily conscious of something underneath it all which he could not fathom. The atmosphere of the box was charged with some electrical disturbance. Heneage alone seemed thoroughly at his ease. He kept his seat until the close of the performance, and even then seemed in no hurry to depart. Wrayson, however, took his cue from the Baroness, ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... subject alane, dominie. It will tak a jury o' rich men to judge rich men. A poor man isna competent. The rich hae straits the poor canna fathom." ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... came down stairs to find the Colonel pacing the length of the dining-room, his head bent, a worried frown upon his brow. He came to a sudden halt at my appearance and regarded me a moment without speaking. I could see that something of moment had happened, but I could fathom nothing of its nature from ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... (twelvemonth), but never had she been intil that cave, an' kenned no more nor the bairn unborn what there was in 't. An' sae whan the airemite, as the auld minister ca'd him—though what for he ca'd a muckle block like yon an airy mite, I'm sure I never cud fathom—whan he gat up, as I was sayin', an' cam' foret wi' his han' oot, she gae a scraich 'at jist garred my lugs dirl, an' doon she drappit; an' there, whan I ran up, was she lyin' i' the markis his airms, as white's a cauk eemage; an' it was lang or he broucht her till hersel', ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... was the Anita, and she was the second barge in a tow of two. Ahead of her, at the end of a ninety-fathom steel tow-line, was the sister barge Champion, and at an equal distance farther ahead was the steamer Proserpine. Each barge carried stump spars and mutton-leg canvas—which was why Scotty, weary of the endless work in the deep-water windjammers, had gone "tow-barging"—and ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... conceivable ground," I concluded, "you must let me help you." "You can't," he said very simply and gently, and holding fast to some deep idea which I could detect shimmering like a pool of water in the dark, but which I despaired of ever approaching near enough to fathom. I surveyed his well-proportioned bulk. "At any rate," I said, "I am able to help what I can see of you. I don't pretend to do more." He shook his head sceptically without looking at me. I got very warm. "But I can," I insisted. "I can do even more. I am doing more. ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... plainly saw that each one of the three was conscious that Wolf was the midnight visitor, and that two of the three were in possession of knowledge with regard to the mysterious soldier which he could not fathom. He took to studying Wolf; sent for him frequently; had long talks with him ostensibly as to his duties with recruits, but began to "draw him out" as to his past. All he could learn was that he had come to this ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... small space in the fore and after parts to work the vessel. There was also a platform made in the hold for a further number. Took leave of our friends at Old Calabar, and dropped down the river just below seven fathom point, where we anchored for the night. Had a slight tornado ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... their Wits, open their Eyes, and let their Ears hear, and learn such a thing out of my Advice, which was never taken notice of, or learn'd before, and is to be found in this Spirit of Copper, internal and external. He that doth not observe, or truly understand my Writings, will not fathom many Secrets, nor search out to purpose and in truth, nor learn to advantage without me, therefore no Man can direct me, as concerning the Spirit of Copper, except he hath beforehand inverted and turned the Copper inside outwards, and truly learned all the Mysteries of its internal ...
— Of Natural and Supernatural Things • Basilius Valentinus
... she lifts her eyes,—dark eyes, of preternatural largeness; brilliant, too, but not with the sparkle of the diamond; brilliant as deep clear wells are, in which the mellow moonlight sleeps fathom-deep between black walls of rock; and round them, and round the wide-opened lips, and arching eyebrow, and slightly wrinkled forehead, hangs an air of melancholy thought, vague doubt, almost of startled fear; then that expression passes, and the whole face collapses into a languor of patient sadness, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... chair, and was sitting opposite her. Peter was still standing, his great bulk shutting the glare of the lamplight out of her eyes. She looked long and earnestly into the man's face, as though she would fathom the meaning of his visit before she in any way committed herself. But she ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... me. I must be growing in wickedness, to fathom that of others, I who so short a time ago disbelieved in the very existence of such a thing. I remembered having heard that the young lady and her family were extremely anxious to form his acquaintance, ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... are these. We have large and deep caves of several depths: the deepest are sunk six hundred fathom: and some of them are digged and made under great hills and mountains: so that if you reckon together the depth of the hill and the depth of the cave, they are (some of them) above three miles deep. For we find, that the depth of a hill, and the depth of a cave from the flat, is ...
— The New Atlantis • Francis Bacon
... towards the zenith. And then he was aware of a huge mass flying through the air towards him, and turned upwards just in time to escape the charge—if it was a charge—of a second aeroplane. It whirled by below, sucked him down a fathom, and nearly turned him over in the ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... just, But how can finite measure infinite? Reason! alas, it does not know itself! Yet man, vain man, would with his short-lined plummet Fathom the vast abyss of heavenly justice. Whatever is, is in its causes just, Since all things are by fate. But purblind man Sees but a part o' th' chain, the nearest links, His eyes not carrying to that equal ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... the Variation to be 4 degrees 49 minutes East. At 6 Sounded and had 32 fathoms Water; the Bottom Coral Rocks, fine Sand and Shells, which Soundings we carried upon a South-West 1/2 West Course 9 or 10 leagues, and then had no ground with 100 fathom. We were by our account and per run afterwards 54 Leagues East from the Coast of Brazil and to the Southward of the Shoals called Abrollos, as they are laid down in Most Charts. Wind South-East to North-East; course South 58 degrees ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... exactly, Pinch,' he rejoined, with a slight frown; 'because she has some girlish notions about duty and gratitude, and all the rest of it, which are rather hard to fathom; but in the main you are right. Her heart was ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... terminated a series of 402 measures in March 1840.[72] The resulting parallax of 0.3483" (corresponding to a distance about 600,000 times that of the earth from the sun), seemed to be ascertained beyond the possibility of cavil, and is memorable as the first published instance of the fathom-line, so industriously thrown into celestial space, having really and indubitably touched bottom. It was confirmed in 1842-43 with curious exactness by C. A. F. Peters at Pulkowa; but later researches showed that it required increase to nearly ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... fathom the possible motive of the stranger, who apparently was somehow interested in his doings. When they started out on their regular run, he told Fogg what Torchy had imparted to him. The fireman reflected speculatively over ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... face darkening with an expression I could not fathom. "What was done at that time cannot be undone. For you and me there is no future. Yes," he said turning towards her as she made a slight fluttering move of dissent, "no future; we can bury the past, but we can not resurrect it. I doubt if you would wish to if we could; as we cannot, of course ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... conclude. I should not ask so much of others. You, Svanhild, I've learnt to fathom thro' and thro'; You are too sensible to play the prude. I watched expand, unfold, your little life; A perfect woman I divined within you, But long I only saw a daughter in you;— Now I ask of you—will you be my wife? ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... a significant fact, and probably, could we fathom all the profundities and unravel all the entanglements of the relations between the sexes, as deep and as intricate as significant, that no woman thinks a man can pay her a higher compliment than to wish to make ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... considerable value was destroyed by them, and the temple of Fortune opened of its own accord. In addition to this, blood issuing from a bake-shop flowed to another temple of Fortune, whose statue on account of the fact that the goddess necessarily oversees and can fathom everything that is before us as well as behind and does not forget from what beginnings any great man came they had set up and named in a way not easy for Greeks to describe.[77] Also some infants were born ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... of her character; he believed her to be too profound for shallow people to read all in a moment: he even intimated that he himself had experienced no little difficulty in understanding her at odd times. "And so," said he, "they turn round upon you, and instead of saying, 'We are too shallow to fathom you,' they pretend ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... that of Reasoning, on the ground that it is necessary to obtain premises before we can reason from them. Now, Induction is mainly a process for finding the causes of effects: and in attempting to fathom the mode of tracing causes and effects in physical science, I soon saw that in the more perfect of the sciences, we ascend, by generalization from particulars, to the tendencies of causes considered singly, and then reason downward from those ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... shoals on each side, and having the Lady Nelson and a boat ahead; but on approaching the end of the channel, our passage into the sound was blocked up by a bank running across, upon which there was not water enough for the ship by a fathom, and we therefore anchored. At nine the tide had risen a fathom. and we passed over into the open sound; the depth immediately increasing to 4 and 7 fathoms, reduced to low water. So long as the flood ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... water and cliff; for otherwhere was a litter of great rocks and small, hard to be threaded even by those who knew the passes well; so that men had to tread along the very verge of the Shivering Flood, and wary must they be, for the water ran swift and deep betwixt banks of sheer rock half a fathom below their very foot-soles, which had but bare space to go on the narrow a way. So it held on for a while, and then got safer, and there was more space for going betwixt cliff and flood; albeit it was toilsome enough, since for some ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... the general belief, claimed by some whites as well as blacks, that I would sell at cost, "was bound" to do so, etc. It did not occur to those who so believed that I could have any good or disinterested reasons for selling for more than cost. It may be difficult to fathom one's own motives in such cases, but I can say honestly that I do not believe in the success of a system of selling to any people any property whatever for less than its market value, with a view to confer a lasting benefit upon them. That is, I think the immediate ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... reason I could not fathom, her good nature had returned. It was relief, perhaps, that ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... fermentation, a conflicting tumult in his soul. Veronica handed him a glass of punch; and in taking it, he gently touched her hand. "Serpentina! Veronica!" sighed he to himself. He sank into deep dreams; but Registrator Heerbrand cried quite aloud: "A strange old gentleman, whom nobody can fathom, he is and will be, this Archivarius Lindhorst. Well, long life to him! Your ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... o'er and o'er; It was his full heart's only lore; A prophet on the Sabbath day Had touched his sightless eyes with clay, And made him see who had been blind, Their words passed by him like the wind Which raves and howls, but cannot shock The hundred-fathom-rooted rock. ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... by the awful waste and stupidity of human life such as any great city unbares. But the Rector used the many instances to illustrate the requirements of wide sympathy, and to teach us to reverence the qualities of personality even when we could not fathom the reasons for apparent foolishness. He would say things like this: "Never forget that the development of our free will is what God wants. Love may make mistakes, but they are not failures. There are times ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... the church was painted ful of images. The chiefe image was of our Ladie, which was garnished with gold, rubies, saphirs and other rich stones abundantly. In the midst of the church stood 12. waxe tapers of two yards long, and a fathom about in bignesse, and there stands a kettle full of waxe with about 100. weight, wherein there is alwayes the wicke of a candle burning, as it were a lampe which goeth not ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... ideal life she had seen a lover with whom she could walk down through the years, whose life would touch hers at all points, who could fathom the depths of the nature that so puzzled herself, who could measure and supply the yearning reaches of intellect; who could awake in her soul a love, strong, deep, and unquestioning, so fervent, indeed, that she would turn from all other dreams and desires ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... Savage," replied the boatswain, "I consider it to be in a state which may be called precarious, and not at all permanent; but, with a little human exertion, four fathom of three-inch, and half-a-dozen tenpenny nails, it may last, for all I know, until it is time for ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... this,—a mystery that I cannot fathom," he said. "And now I would I knew what measures it would be ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... power of prayer, was adored. Thirty-three gods in all were invoked. The bodies of the dead were consumed on the funeral-pile. The soul survived the body, but the later doctrine of transmigration was unknown. All the attributes of sovereign power and majesty were collected in Varuna. No one can fathom him, but he sees and knows all. He is the upholder of order; just, yet the dispenser of grace, and merciful to the penitent. Worship is made up of oblations and prayers. It must be sincere. The gods will not tolerate deceit. They require faith. Of the last things and the last times the Rig-Veda ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... caustic manners, his coming in, and his going out; how long he was absent; how profoundly secret he kept himself, his doings, his whereabouts, and his mode of life. 'And,' said he, in conclusion, 'I know nothing of him. He's a queer dog, a wonderfully queer one. It would take a long time to fathom him, I can tell you. I've been with him for a long time; and am his confidential adviser, his lawyer, and all that sort of thing; and yet I've never done ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... other, the better side. But, deep down within him, that other side lived and grew strong, until it was strong enough to take possession of his body and cast him out. He is gone!" Gordon's voice rose again into triumphal tones. "He has dropped into an oblivion man's thought cannot fathom nor man's brain understand. He ordained his own destiny, he worked out his own fate. Let him have the end ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... confused and uncertain. Cady did not know whether to throw the ball or hold it, and the general exhibition of speed on the bases which was made by New York was characteristic of the team's dash in the race for the championship of the National League, and a system which the Boston players could not fathom. ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster
... Euclid. Some men find the modern English boy stimulating, and the old Egyptian humorous. Such are the born schoolmasters, and schoolmasters, like poets, nascuntur non fiunt. What I was born passes my ingenuity to fathom. Certainly not a schoolmaster—and my many years of apprenticeship did not make me one. They only turned me into an automaton, feared by myself, bantered by my colleagues, and sometimes good-humouredly ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... highest degree. Possibly she loves you deeply, only you do not believe it. Gauged by a woman's love, many men love, marry, and die, without even approximating the real grand passion themselves, or comprehending that which they have inspired, for no one but a woman can fathom ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... fathom the mental capacity and the mental processes of some of the highest mammals, there is the same superior degree of interest attaching to the study of wild species that the ethnologist finds in the study of savage races of men that have been unspoiled ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... said the cardinal; "but none can fathom the mysteries of Divine interposition. This coming council may save society, and on that I would speak to you most earnestly. His holiness has resolved to invite the schismatic priesthoods to attend it, and labor to bring ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... the Hat Mountain, to avoid the Flerrys and Eddy Winds under the high Land. The Course in is first N.W. till you open the upper Part of the Harbour, then N.N.W. half W. The best Place for great Ships to Anchor, and the best Ground is before a Cove on the East-side of the Harbour in 13 Fathom Water. A little above Blue Beach Point, which is the first Point on the West-side; here you lie only two Points open: You may Anchor any where between this Point and the Point of Low Beach, on the same Side near the Head of the Harbour, observing that close to the ...
— Directions for Navigating on Part of the South Coast of Newfoundland, with a Chart Thereof, Including the Islands of St. Peter's and Miquelon • James Cook
... as it was then! So transparent that we saw great fish swimming about, full fathom five under us. A monstrous shark drifted lazily past, his dorsal fin now and then cutting the surface like a knife and glistening like polished steel, his brace of pilot-fish darting hither and thither, striped ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... English artillery, loaded with round, bar, and chain shot, musket balls, spike nails, and every kind of missile that the men had been able to lay hands upon, were discharged when the two vessels were scarcely a fathom apart, and the Spanish ship's upper deck instantly became a shambles, scarcely a man remaining uninjured ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... island, I had a second crow over Charmian. A big fella marster belong Suava (which means the high chief of Suava) came on board. But first he sent an emissary to Captain Jansen for a fathom of calico with which to cover his royal nakedness. Meanwhile he lingered in the canoe alongside. The regal dirt on his chest I swear was half an inch thick, while it was a good wager that the underneath layers ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... Ask me not how her course she knows. He from Whom every instinct flows Hath breathed into His creatures power, Giving to each its needful dower; And strive and question as we will, We cannot trace the inborn skill, Nor fathom how, where'er she roam, The cat ne'er ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... been carefully inculcated at all times by unconstitutional statesmen. The reason is evident. Whilst men are linked together, they easily and speedily communicate the alarm of any evil design. They are enabled to fathom it with common counsel, and to oppose it with united strength. Whereas, when they lie dispersed, without concert, order, or discipline, communication is uncertain, counsel difficult, and resistance impracticable. Where men are not acquainted with each other's ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... but it was at their uncle they looked the moment after, because of the strange and sudden sound that issued from his lips. For it was like a cry, and his face wore a flushed and curious expression they could not fathom. The face and the cry were signs of something utterly unusual. He was startled—out of himself. A marvellous idea had evidently struck him. "It's either something," thought Judy, "or else he's got a pain." But Tim's mind was quicker. "He's got it," the boy decided, meaning, "We've got it out ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... had died and been buried in the ground was till fresh in his memory, and from the oaths and unkind language of his mother he had come to the conclusion that all must die and be buried in the same manner. What became of them after death he could not fathom, but he concluded that the frost in the winter-time was a sort of cold vapor arising from the bodies of those who were dead and that such things were all governed by the great ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... moment's silence, during which Benassis followed his own thoughts, careless of the keen glance by which his guest friend tried to fathom him. ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... she fathom the cause until upon a certain day which fell upon the end of a week's wearisome traverse of the hardest country yet encountered. Up and up and still higher he bore into a range of beetling crags, and always his gaze ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... suit; And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's tail, Tickling a parson's nose as 'a lies asleep, Then dreams he of another benefice: Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck, And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades, Of healths five fathom deep; and then anon Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes; And, being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two, And sleeps again. This is that very Mab That plats the manes of horses in the night; And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs, Which, once untangled, much ...
— Romeo and Juliet • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... rested only between him and the doctor, he might have made a private communication under pledge of secrecy, and so induced his principal to let the matter drop. But the matter did not rest solely between him and the doctor. Mr Bickers and Felgate, by some means which he was unable to fathom, appeared to have learned the secret, and were not likely to let it drop. Indeed, it was evident that, so far from that, they would like if possible to fix a charge of actual complicity in ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... usurped the place of the old society, refined, subtle and perhaps too studied, which formed the environment of the last Sung emperors. Despite their naive efforts and good will, these barbarians could not fathom an art so austere, enlightened and balanced. They were utterly ignorant of such a masterly conception of nature as was evoked in Chinese painting. Monochrome to them was dull. They could admire on trust, but they could not understand. On the other hand, the Northern style with its ...
— Chinese Painters - A Critical Study • Raphael Petrucci
... Relations, acquaintances, strangers, even enemies, could be found who would do so. But who will so love me as to carry my crushing burden of sin? Who can fully understand its exceeding sinfulness I Who can fathom the depths into which I have fallen, or enter the body of death which imprisons my spirit. One only, the truest, the best, the most loving of all, my Saviour! And His hatred of my sin, and His sorrow for it, is just ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... auction-room, and it became a by-word that a visit from the great book-hunter was as bad as a storm in the book-shops. He boasted in his epigrams of exploits in Flanders, in Switzerland, and among the Venetian book-stalls. At Rome he bought books by the fathom; he skimmed the German shelves, and passed over into England to relieve the islanders of their riches. At Lyons he met Marshal Villeroi, who gave him a great portion of the books which Cardinal de Tournon had bequeathed to the Jesuits. We trace the result of his travels ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... was "as filthy rags," that man's only hope for victory over sin must come from the God-ward side. He, therefore, made kingly provision so rich, so sufficient, so exceeding abundant, that as we study it, we feel we have tapped a mine of wealth, too deep to fathom. Just a ...
— How I Know God Answers Prayer - The Personal Testimony of One Life-Time • Rosalind Goforth
... the contemptuous tone in her voice, and he gave her a keen, searching look as if he were trying to read her thoughts and fathom the reason for her very ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... advantage, a great advantage, for me to observe the Count of Ferroll in this intimate society," said the prince, speaking slowly, "perhaps even to fathom him. But I am not come to that yet. He is a man neither to love nor to detest. He has himself an intelligence superior to all passion, I might say all feeling; and if, in dealing with such a being, we ourselves have either, we give ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... thou but thus long from thine, Restrained the beams of thy beloved shine, At thy return, if so thou could'st or durst Behold a Chaos blacker than the first. Tell him here's worse than a confused matter, His little world's a fathom under water, Nought but the fervor of his ardent beams Hath power to dry the torrent of these streams Tell him I would say more but cannot well, Oppressed minds, abruptest tales do tell. Now post with double speed, mark what I says By ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... had Jean spoken to her of Father Austin; she loved him already, but she had yet to fathom the nobleness of his soul. His single-heartedness and abnegation of self, his tenderness and quick sympathy (virtues tempering his fierce abhorrence of Paganism), his stern reprobation of the evil, and his yearning for the good, in the untutored barbarians among whom he laboured, ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... three hundred leagues of the river Saint Lawrence when the ship struck with amazing force against (as we supposed) a rock; however, upon heaving the lead, we could find no bottom, even with three hundred fathom. What made this circumstance the more wonderful, and indeed beyond all comprehension, was, that the violence of the shock was such that we lost our rudder, broke our bow-sprit in the middle, and split all our masts from top to bottom, two of which went by the board; a poor fellow, who ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... into the pool at this spot,' he said. 'Search the rock with your hands as you descend, and, about a fathom and a half down, you will find a hole. Enter it, head-first, but going slowly, for the lava rock is sharp and may ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... faith has nothing to do with the intellect; neither therefore ought the sceptic to be quite beyond the pale of your charity. Nay, his intellect being a rasa tabula in these matters, I should think he is in more favorable circumstances than they can be. But, seriously, let me try, if possible, to fathom this curious dogma,—I beg your pardon,—sentiment, I mean. Belief without faith in an intelligible sense (if by this last we mean a condition of the emotions or affections), I can understand; though if the truth believed be of a nature to excite to ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... opposite corner the doll sat staring at them with eyes of blank blue and her vacuous smile. A vague sense of injury was over Ellen, in spite of her delight and her gratitude—a sense of injury which she could not fathom, and for which she chided herself. However, ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... fathom him," confessed Hodge. "If ever I saw a deceptive young scoundrel, it's that chap. At times he's so meek and modest that he dazes me. At other times he's so flippant and forward that I want to collar him and shake him out of his clothes. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... hundreds. They subdivided the unit, moreover, into sixty equal parts, and each of these parts into sixty further equal subdivisions, and this system of fractions was used in all kinds of quantitive measurements. The fathom, the foot and its square, talents and bushels, the complete system of Chaldaean weights and measures, were based on the intimate alliance and parallel use of the decimal and duodecimal systems of notation. The sixtieth was more frequently employed than the hundredth when large quantities ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... less, and spoke never a word, although in the earlier part of our journey he had proved himself a most unrivalled chatterer. He seemed ill at ease in the presence of our guest, and a sort of mutual distrust, the cause of which I could not exactly fathom, seemed ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... really mean so, Philip?" she inquired, looking at me earnestly, as if to fathom the trick I was playing ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... of Baltimore, whose business it was to prosecute the African slave trade, was jealous of the Society and tried to undermine it. In addition, the trials and hardships incidental to founding the colony had reduced many of the settlers to want.[88] The most ignorant could thus fathom their condition: "We suffer: if the Society have means and does not apply them to our relief, it is without benevolence; if it have not means, it wants power and in either case ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... often heard and read about Brutus, one of those mysterious men whose history we could not fathom, for as far north as York we read in a book there that "Brutus settled in this country when the Prophet Eli governed Israel and the Ark was taken from the Philistines, about 1140 B.C., or a century and a half later than when David was singing Psalms in Jerusalem"; ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... the Invisible is! We cannot fathom it with our miserable senses, with our eyes which are unable to perceive what is either too small or too great, too near to, or too far from us; neither the inhabitants of a star nor of a drop of water ... ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... S. H. The Prince of Monaco, from the Institut Oceanographique of Monaco. Dr. W. S. Bruce made similar donations and supervised the construction of our largest deep-sea dredge. The three-thousand fathom tapered steel cables and mountings, designed to work the deep-water dredges, were supplied by Messrs. Bullivant. Appliances were also loaned by Mr. J. T. Buchanan of the 'Challenger' Expedition and by the Commonwealth Fisheries Department. The self-recording tide-gauges we employed were ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... scribbled words in the front of each Diana could see that they had all been sent to the Arab by the author himself—one even was dedicated to "My friend, Ahmed Ben Hassan, Sheik of the Desert." She put the books back with a puzzled frown. She wished, with a feeling that she could not fathom, that they had been rather what she had imagined. The evidence of education and unlooked-for tastes in the man they belonged to troubled her. It was an unexpected glimpse into the personality of the Arab that had captured her was vaguely disquieting, for it suggested possibilities ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... friend of my heart! Is that silken dress for thee? For the love of God, let me but touch it. Four dollars a fathom it be priced at. Thy husband is indeed the king of generosity. Art thou ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke |
