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High-water   Listen
adjective
high-water  adj.  Pertaining to water at its highest achieved level; of or pertaining to high water; as, the high-water marks on the walls after a flood.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"High-water" Quotes from Famous Books



... peaks stood upon the low flat ground, considerably within the mountains, and, as far as could be judged, had every appearance of being volcanic. That they were so, indeed, was in some measure corroborated by the quantity of pumice stone which was lying at high-water mark upon the eastern shore of the river, on which Mr. Flinders had landed to mark the nature and appearance of the country, not being able from the strength of the ebb tide to proceed ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins

... How in the world John Temple, in his big leather chair in the Bridgeboro Bank, had ever got wind of Jeb Rushmore no one was able to find out. John Temple was a genius for picking out men and in this case he touched high-water mark. ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh

... cried Peterkin, as we all assisted to drag the boat above high-water mark; "we'll light our candle and set about it this very night. ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... killing a cat than by choking it with cream," was his cryptic remark. "What would you say if I told you that in an hour's time we, will have every drop of water out of the yacht, and that following that we will have her afloat again at high-water." ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... side of the island, and on going to the windward shore it was curious to notice the process by which these islands gradually become covered with vegetation. The whole shore just above high-water mark was covered with little seeds, beans, and various other atoms of vegetation which had been dropped by birds or cast up by the sea, and which in process of time will cover the island with trees and shrubs. The island did not look much bigger than half a dozen ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey

... of village of quite respectable extent had been built along its southern margin, some of the buildings being so large that I at once set them down as storehouses. A number of people were moving about the buildings; and quite a dozen boats were hauled up on the beach above high-water mark. ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood

... marine deposits gradually collected on the shore. But in addition to these, the land has for ages been slowly rising from the sea, and terraces abounding in marine shells imbedded in agglutinated sand occur in situations far above high-water mark. Immediately inland from Point de Galle, the surface soil rests on a stratum of decomposing coral; and sea shells are found at a considerable distance from the shore. Further north at Madampe, between Chilaw ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... honestly, I will be upon my guard."—"Nay, sir," says he, "do not talk of being upon your guard; the best defence is to be out of danger. If you have any regard for your life and the lives of all your men, put to sea without fail at high-water; and as you have a whole tide before you, you will be gone too far out before they can come down; for they will come away at high-water, and as they have twenty miles to come, you will get near two hours of them by the difference of the tide, not reckoning the length of the way: besides, ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe

... (Dorset) is Seatown, and just beyond that comes Golden Cape. On the night of the above date one of the Seatown Revenue officers about 1 A.M. noticed flashes coming from the cliff between Seatown and Golden Cape. He proceeded to the cliff, which at high-water runs straight up out of the sea. It was a dark night with no moon, a little breeze, and only slight surf on the shore—ideal conditions for any craft ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton

... BRIDGE.—A suspension bridge is to be erected by M. Oudry, engineer, over the Straits of Messina, Sicily, from Point Pezzo, on the Calabrian Coast. It is to consist of four spans of 3,281 feet each, elevated about 150 feet above high-water level, so that the largest ships may pass under. The proposed Roebling bridge over the East River, between New York and Brooklyn, is to have a single ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... the outermost houses, it seems almost unaccountable that the little town should have persisted in clinging so tenaciously to the high-water mark; but there were probably two paramount reasons for this. The deep gully was to a great extent protected from the force of the winds, and, as it was soon quite brimful of houses, every inch of space was valuable; then, smuggling was freely practised along the coast, and the ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home

... pleasant, and said we should have the best he had. The bed into whose grateful softness I sank was piled with mattresses to within two or three feet of the ceiling, and, with no step-ladder, getting in and out was a problem. This morning we noticed the high-water mark, four feet above the lower floor. Mrs. Fetler said they had lived up-stairs ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... was a cave some eight yards square and three in height, whose straight-cut walls showed that men had once hewed stone therefrom. On one side was that passage through which we had come in, and on the other opened a sort of door which gave on to a stone ledge eight fathoms above high-water mark. For the cave was cut out just inside that iron cliff-face which lies between St. Alban's Head and Swanage. But the cliffs here are different from those on the other side of the Head, being neither so high as Hoar ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner

... become silted up, and are practically solid. Others are made and laid upon them ad libitum, and at last raise the crest above the level of the sea, the last course being laid with the advantage of high-water spring tides. This foundation supports courses of pitched masonry on its side, and these protect the stone or gravel embankment, which forms a roadbed. The river's water, instead of, as formerly, depositing its silt at the embouchure ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various

... from the mainland. They passed the cape, sailing in a westerly direction. There the water was very shallow, and their ship went aground, and at ebb-tide the sea was far out from the ship. But they were so anxious to get ashore that they could not wait till the high-water reached their ship, and ran out on the beach where a river flowed from a lake. When the high-water set their ship afloat they took their boat and rowed to the ship and towed it up the river into the lake. There ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... strewed about with big stones, while the roof was arched over in the red sand-stone. The encroachment of the sea upon the Wirral shore has been very gradual, but regular, for many years. Within the memory of man the sea has made an inroad of nearly, if not quite, a mile from its former high-water mark. It was not until the erection of the Wallasey embankment that a stop was ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian

... of the same year, a dreadful hurricane happened at Charlestown, which did great damage, and threatened the total destruction of the town. The lands on which it is built being low and level, and not many feet above high-water mark, the swelling sea rushed in with amazing impetuosity, and obliged the inhabitants to fly for shelter to the second stories of their houses. Happily few lives were lost in town; but a large vessel, called the Rising Sun, belonging to Glasgow, and commanded by James Gibson, which had come from ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt

... began to have a respect for Aline's judgment when the papers reported that prices were rising fast, and stock-salesman firms sent circulars to this effect into the districts. But, when I conferred with Jasper, he advised me to hold on. "The figures are climbing," he said, "and they'll reach high-water mark just before the ice ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss

... Pasture' Mr. Allen has reached the high-water mark thus far of his genius as a novelist. The beauty of his literary style, the picturesque quality of his description, the vitality, fulness, and strength of his artistic powers never showed to better ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major

... to the wharves. There he left the causeway and descended to the level of the beach. Beneath the pilings, and above the high-water mark, was a little hut. It was not over six feet square, constructed of all sorts of old pieces of boxes, scraps of tin, or remnants of canvas. Overhead rumbled continuously the heavy drays, shaking down, through the cracks the dust of the ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White

... of the sting- rae was not pleasant to eat, being rather tough and tasteless, so I used it as a bait for sharks. Turtles visited the island in great numbers, and deposited their eggs in holes made in the sand above high-water mark. They only came on land during the night, at high tide; and whenever I wanted a special delicacy, I turned one over on its back till morning, when I despatched it leisurely with my tomahawk. The creatures' shells I always devoted to the extension of my garden, ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont

... refracted images, of the grey stones at the bottom of the sea for twenty yards out and more. The sea had no power, it splashed in weak and hopeless waves, sucked itself away inward, came back again with a little run, and feebly toppled over. The high-water line was shown by a serpentine strip of jetsam winding along the whole of the shore. There was no yellow in the sands; clouds and sunshine struggled overhead, but beneath them all was grey. The wind rustled in the giant grasses ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham

... when the frost checks the drainage from the feeding glaciers on the peaks above, the saw-miller had insisted on driving down his logs when there was less chance of their stranding on the shoals that cumbered the high-water channel. Thurston lay awake for some time, listening to the fret of the river, which vibrated far across the silence of the hills, and to the occasional crash of a mighty log smiting the slide. Hardly had his eyelids closed when he was aroused by a sound of hurried footsteps approaching ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss

... of striking power and literary quality which may well remain the high-water mark in American fiction for the year.... Mr. Harrison definitely takes his place as the one among our younger American novelists of whom the most enduring work ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... that fell in our way and would take us up would do. I had always proposed to myself to get him well down the river in the boat; certainly well beyond Gravesend, which was a critical place for search or inquiry if suspicion were afoot. As foreign steamers would leave London at about the time of high-water, our plan would be to get down the river by a previous ebb-tide, and lie by in some quiet spot until we could pull off to one. The time when one would be due where we lay, wherever that might be, could be calculated pretty nearly, ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... commander. "Pull her in as close as you can and we'll unload her. Then we'll get her above high-water mark. This ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster

... in the trees above the high-water mark and the flames back on the ridge still thrust and flared, but were unable to cross the wide, wet flood-belt. The settlement and the "big woods" beyond ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... said Mrs. Hastings, "has grown rapidly since Harry took hold. The old part represents the high-water mark of his father's efforts. Of course," she added reflectively, "Harry has had command of some capital since a relative of his died, but I never ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... is an interesting lesson to be learned from a comparison between the New York Police Department as it is today and as it was twenty-five years ago. Then the scheme of organization was thoroughly bad—and the department was at its high-water mark of honest and effective activity. Now the scheme of organization is excellent—but the less said about the way it works the better. The answer to the riddle is this: today the New York police force is headed by Tammany; the name of the particular ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland

... that although the sea gains upon the land in many places, the land gains upon the sea in others, and that the loss and gain are more or less balanced. As a matter of area this is true. Most of the land that has been rescued from the pitiless sea is below high-water mark, and is protected by artificial banks. This work of reclaiming land can, of course, only be accomplished in sheltered places, for example, in the great flat bordering the Wash, which flat is formed by the deposit of the rivers ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield

... low island with a flat top was built to carry the house. Its top was six inches above high-water mark, and (that would, if accepted) be the floor of the permanent house. A good, practicable tunnel was built ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... Leder; Qui instar Euripi saepius in die reciprocantibus undis fluit & refluit, which ebbs and flows many times a day. This may proceed from its being supplyed from many Channels, coming from several parts of the Sea, lying sufficiently distant asunder to have the times of High-water differing enough one from the other; so as that whensoever it shall be High water over any of those places, where these Channels begin, it shall likewise be so in the Well; but ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... was full sea in the evening of an autumn day when a traveller arrived where the road ran along by a sandy beach just above high-water mark. The stranger, who was a native of some inland town, and utterly unacquainted with Cornwall and its ways, had reached the brink of the tide just as a "landing" was coming off. It was a scene not only to ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... downstairs to meet his host. The great door was ajar. He went into the open air. The garden was utterly dark, for clouds obscured the stars, and the air was laden with the saline odour of the wrack below high-water mark. The tide was out. What he had expected was to see Mungo and his master, but behind the castle where they should have been there was no one, and the voices he heard had come from the side next the shore. He listened a little and took alarm, for it was ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... 1863, after months of siege by river and by land, came the capture of Vicksburg, coincident with the Battle of Gettysburg, that was the high-water mark of the war. The announcement of these two victories, on July 4, 1863, intoxicated the North ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis

... is very narrow, and as they left the beach and gained the shade of the forest of coconuts that grew to the margin of high-water mark, they could see, between the tall, stately palms, the placid waters of the lagoon, and a mile or so across, the inner beach of the ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke

... second mate and five of his men were all that was left of the Sea Mist's company. And on that island they remained for nearly two weeks. Provisions they had brought ashore with them. Water they found by digging. Nat hid the gold at night, burying it on the beach below high-water mark. ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln

... harbour-bar. The tide was going out rapidly, and Worsley lightened the 'Dudley Docker' by placing some cases on an outer rock, where they were retrieved subsequently. Then he beached his boat, and with many hands at work we soon had our belongings ashore and our three craft above high-water mark. The spit was by no means an ideal camping-ground; it was rough, bleak, and inhospitable—just an acre or two of rock and shingle, with the sea foaming around it except where the snow-slope, running up to a glacier, formed ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton

... a glass for each of my patients, upon which their "high-water mark" is indicated by a slip of paper gummed on the outside. When Mr. Edgerton, pursuant to our stipulation, comes to me for his dose, I drop into the glass before his eyes a shot about the size of a small pea—then fill the glass with Magendie's Solution ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... towards the west and northwest, then turning again at New Madrid, making a great bend towards the southeast, as you will see by the map. The island is less than a mile long, and not more than a fourth of a mile wide. It is ten or fifteen feet above high-water mark. The line between Kentucky and Tennessee strikes the river here. The current runs swiftly past the island, and steamboats descending the stream are carried within a stone's throw of the Tennessee shore. The bank on that ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin

... to a boat-shed, placed opposite the village and close to high-water mark. Here a man, it was old Edward, was engaged in mending a canoe. Geoffrey glanced at it and saw that it was the identical canoe out of which he had ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard

... the new theology of the revival was the new psalmody. In general it may be said that every flood-tide of spiritual emotion in the church leaves its high-water mark in the form of "new songs to the Lord" that remain after the tide of feeling has assuaged. In this instance the new songs were not produced by the revival, but only adopted by it. It is not easy for us at this day to conceive the effect that must have been produced ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... HIGH-WATER mark was reached with the Whigs in the spring of 1833, and before the tide turned, two years later, Lord Grey and his colleagues had, in various directions, done much to justify the hopes of their followers. The result of the General Election in the previous December ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid

... compelled by the dense fog to lie-to again at a ground-ice, which, when the fog lightened, was found to have stranded quite close to land. The depth here was eleven metres. At this place we lay till the morning of the 10th. The beach, was formed of a sandbank,[235] which immediately above high-water mark was covered with a close grassy turf, a proof that the climate here, notwithstanding the neighbourhood of the pole of cold, is much more favourable to the development of vegetation than even the most favoured parts of the west coast of Spitzbergen. Farther inland was seen a very ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... incapable of human improvements. Kelp is a species of sea-weed, which, when burnt, yields an alkaline salt, useful for making glass, soap, and for several other purposes. It grows in several parts of Great Britain, particularly in Scotland, upon such rocks only as lie within the high-water mark, which are twice every day covered with the sea, and of which the produce, therefore, was never augmented by human industry. The landlord, however, whose estate is bounded by a kelp shore of this kind, demands a rent for it as ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... not more than seven miles. The tide forms a channel in the sand, which has been gradually coming nearer the shore for some years past, and has obliged persons crossing to take a longer circuit. It was now the spring-tide, and the sands we were travelling upon would, at high-water, be seventeen feet below the surface of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... they could boast that no Federal soldier, except as a prisoner, had stood so close as they had to the rebel stronghold. But during these weeks in June not a single soul in McClellan's army, and few in the Confederacy, suspected that the flood of invasion had reached high-water mark. Richmond, gazing night after night at the red glow which throbbed on the eastern vault, the reflection of countless camp-fires, and, listening with strained ears to the far-off call of hostile bugles, seemed in perilous case. No formidable position protected ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... response. "The first Mis' Larrabee was as good as gold, but she may have overdone the trick a little mite, mebbe; and what's more, I kind o' suspicion the parson thinks so himself. He ain't never been quite the same sence Dick left home, 'cept in preaching'; an' I tell you, Maria, his high-water mark there is higher 'n ever. Abel Dunn o' Boston walked home from meetin' with me Thanksgivin', an', says he, takin' off his hat an' moppin' his forehead, 'Osh,' says he, 'does your minister preach like that every ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... we found that it was low water. The boat was at high-water mark. What should we do? We did as the fishermen in that region always do in the same circumstances—took two rollers, perhaps six inches in diameter, lifted the bow of the boat, put one of the rollers under it, and the other upon the sand about eight feet in front of it. We then ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various

... output, and he makes the exceptional number for that day serve as the exponent of his circulation until good fortune brings him a similar and possibly larger order, and his circulation is reported as "still increasing." Another struck a "high-water mark" of "190,500" the day after Mr. Cleveland was elected, and that has been the implied measure of circulation for the last six years. Another, during a heated political campaign, or a great financial crisis, or some ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various

... embouchure of some fifty leagues across, but it would also have met with the bar of the prororoca, that terrible eddy which, for the three days preceding the new or full moon, takes but two minutes instead of six hours to raise the river from twelve to fifteen feet above ordinary high-water mark. ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne

... interested her, and her total disregard for cosmetics, would have horrified Millicent if she had known of her habits. The height of civilization to Millicent was expressed in a luxuriously-appointed dressing-table and in an excessive care of her body. Progress touched its high-water mark in the perfection of her creature comforts. Taken from this standpoint, progress could scarcely go any further, or so Michael would have thought if he had watched her ritual ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... rescue her from there? One hope he had, that her shelf might be above high-water mark, in which case patient endurance would be all that was needed until the tide ran out again. A glance at the wall of cliff behind Mary proved this hope to be futile, for the mark of the water showed above her head, ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant

... work, determined to save itself from destruction; and then followed the long weary years of doubt and mingled fear and hope, until at last that day came six years ago which we now celebrate— the day which saw the flood, tide of rebellion reach the high-water mark, whence it never after ceased to recede. At the moment, probably, none of us, either at home or at the seat of war, realized the grandeur of the situation, the dramatic power of the incidents, or the Titanic nature of the conflict. To you who were at home, mothers, fathers, ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... the absurdly elaborate costume of the late Renaissance. Then crinoline, gaudy materials, and ornamentations without meaning reached their high-water mark in ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank

... was right—they all knew him. The Leith millionaire, the summer resident, was a new factor in politics, and the rumours of the size of his fortune had reached a high-water mark in the Pelican Hotel that evening. Pushing through the crowd in the corridor outside the bridal suite waiting to shake hands with the new governor, Mr. Crewe gained an entrance in no time, and did not hesitate to interrupt the somewhat ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... both houses of Congress were democratic, by small majorities, for the first time since 1856. The tide ebbed in 1880, the Democrats losing control of the House, and suffering a decisive defeat in the presidential election; but with 1884 the fortune of the Democracy reached high-water mark. ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews

... write poetry almost as a child, and some of his earlier verses are his best. If Kingsley, with all his literary gifts, was never quite in the first rank in anything, he came nearest to being a poet of mark. Some of his ballads almost touch the high-water mark of true ballad poetry, with its abrupt fierce blows of tragedy and pathos, its simple touches of primitive rude speech, its reserve of force, its unspoken mysteries. At any rate, Kingsley's best ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison

... the Captain to Bobby Little, as the contrite Robb is removed. "Keen as mustard. But his high-water mark for beer is somewhere in his boots. All right, now ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay

... with their growth the demand for men, imperative as the very existence of the nation, mounted ever higher and higher. In 1756 fifty thousand sufficed for the nation's needs. By 1780 the number had reached ninety-two thousand; and with 1802 it touched high-water mark in the unprecedented total of one hundred and twenty-nine thousand men in actual sea pay. [Footnote: Admiralty Records 7. 567-Navy Progress, 1756-1805. These figures are below rather than above the mark, since the official returns on which ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... high-water mark was several feet lower than these debris, and was clearly marked. On the land above the cliffs he found a tangled jungle of tropical shrubs, into which he did not penetrate, but skirted it, and, walking eastward, came ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... unbroken smoke that poured out of their chimneys. Slimy gaps and causeways, winding among old wooden piles, with a sickly substance clinging to the latter, like green hair, and the rags of last year's handbills offering rewards for drowned men fluttering above high-water mark, led down through the ooze and slush to the ebb-tide. There was a story that one of the pits dug for the dead in the time of the Great Plague was hereabout; and a blighting influence seemed to have proceeded from it over ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... but sewing left her mind open to any obsession, and only too often, with the gross laughter from the next room, scraps of the lewd topics her husband delighted in came to her recollection. When Dan discoursed about such things he was at the high-water mark of pleasure, his countenance glowed, and enjoyment of the subject was expressed in all his person. Beth's better nature revolted, but alas! she had become so familiar with such subjects by this time that, although she loathed them, she could not banish ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... West to the old East, and is in our day bringing back again the new East to the old West. Religions, arts, tradings, philosophies, vices and laws have been borne, a strange flotsam, upon its unchanging flood. It has had its springs and neaps, its trembling high-water marks, its hour of affluence, when the world has been flooded with golden humanity; its ebb and effluence also, when it has seemed to shrink and desert the kingdoms set upon its shores. The fifteenth century in Western Europe found it at a pause in its movements: it had brought the trade and ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... person, the sight of him did no damage to her sense of the dispersal of her friends. She hadn't been so thoroughly alone with him since those moments of his showing her the great portrait at Matcham, the moments that had exactly made the high-water-mark of her security, the moments during which her tears themselves, those she had been ashamed of, were the sign of her consciously rounding her protective promontory, quitting the blue gulf of comparative ignorance and reaching ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James

... draught—they dined in comparative seclusion. Into the selection of that dinner Devenish put a great part of his ingenuity. The man who knows how to choose a meal and savour those intervals between the courses with anecdote, has reached a high-water mark of social excellence. Devenish was the type. He was not hampered with the possession of intelligence. Wit he had, but it was not his own. The man, after all, who can echo the wit of others and suit its application to the moment is a man of no little accomplishment. ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston

... the mud to low-water mark, and enables people to land or embark at any time, without struggling through the mud first of all. For, on all these rivers, mud is the general rule. Shingle and sand appear in places, and there is often a belt of either above high-water mark; but below that, and as far as the ebb recedes, is almost invariably a stretch of greenish-grey sticky ooze. It is in this that the mangroves flourish, and it contains the shell-fish which the Maoris largely eat. Our boats are usually built flat-bottomed, so that ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay

... Bach had educated his people into the belief that there was only one way to play, and that was as he did it. It is not at all probable that Heinrich put forward any claims of perfection, but the people regarded his playing as high-water mark, and any variation from his standards was considered ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard

... the Lake: one about fifteen feet above the present high-water mark, and the other about forty above that; but between the two the process of disintegration, which results from the sudden cold and heat in these regions, has gone on so much that seldom is a well-rounded smoothed one seen; the lower beach is very ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone

... acquaintance with American business methods, that Mr. Deaves buys his clothes. He was seen to buy an elegant mustard coloured suit there yesterday for $4.49. Of course not everybody could afford this sum, but the goods were worth it. Take it from us, high-water pants will be all the rage ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner

... boat unmanageable, and if upset the best swimmer could not live in these places. The rocks are serpentine and grey limestone, presenting angular masses which project into the stream; the former in all places within high-water mark is of a dark-brown colour. Micaceous slate? likewise occurs, although rarely. The depth is of course enormous, in the low state of the river, when Bayfield passed up, in many places no bottom was found, ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... might blow. As yet it was a great ungainly pile of logs, iron stanchions, and bracing-chains, without anything that could afford shelter to man from winds or waves, but with a platform laid from its cross-beams at a considerable height above high-water mark. ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne

... sea. The main or high seas are part of the realm of England, for thereon our courts of admiralty have jurisdiction, as will be shewn hereafter; but they are not subject to the common law[f]. This main sea begins at the low-water-mark. But between the high-water-mark, and the low-water-mark, where the sea ebbs and flows, the common law and the admiralty have divisum imperium, an alternate jurisdiction; one upon the water, when it is full sea; the other upon the land, when it ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... suspect the struggle in the heart of Julia Anderson? Did he guess that her pride and defiance had by this time reached high-water mark? Did he divine this from seeing her there? He rose and started in through the door of the upper hall, the only opening to the porch, except the window. But this was a feint. He turned back and sat himself down upon the farther end of the settee from Julia. He understood ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston

... is one of those extraordinary monuments of antiquity with which this singular and interesting island abounds. It occupies the whole of a high rocky peninsula, or rather an island, for it is surrounded by the sea at high-water, and scarcely accessible even when the tide is out, although a stone causeway, of great solidity, erected for the express purpose, connects the island with the mainland. The whole space is surrounded by double walls of great strength and thickness; and the ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... the policy set forth in Circular 124 reached a high-water mark in mid-1948. By then black troops, for so long limited to a few job categories, could be found in a majority of military occupational fields. The officer corps was open to all without the restrictions of a racial quota, and while a quota for enlisted men ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... to see if the beetle would be led by instinct to form its round pellets of mud as is its custom on the banks of the Nile, and having placed its egg in the centre, it begins to roll it from the margin of the river until it is above high-water mark. There it digs a hole and buries the pellet, leaving the sun to hatch the eggs in due time. Travellers who have watched the process describe the untiring way in which both the male and female beetle roll these pellets, ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen

... in pursuit of Shakespeare's thought—is presented, of course, in general outline, as an impersonation of "surviving force:" he has a certain amount of kingcraft also, a real fitness for great opportunity. But still true to his leading motive, Shakespeare, in King Henry the Fourth, has left the high-water mark of his poetry in the soliloquy which represents royalty longing vainly for the toiler's sleep; while the popularity, the showy heroism, of Henry the Fifth, is used to give emphatic point to the old earthy commonplace about "wild oats." The wealth of homely humour in these ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater

... The whole high-water line is strewn with the blanched and parted valves of the Beach Clam. Here and there yellowish streaks appear upon the gray sand, formed by the detritus of submarine shells. Among the fragments are often found perfect specimens, some of them ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... occasion some scattering shots were heard up the river, and after a while a body came floating down the stream. It was hauled on shore and buried in the sand a little above high-water mark. It was a poor Confederate who had attempted to desert to the enemy, but was shot while swimming for the opposite bank of the river. His grave was the centre of the beat of one of the picket posts on the river bank, and there were few men so indifferent ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy

... there is one reflection that must be obvious to all thinking men. This little fire of last August has become a world conflagration. The nation that first sent out her armies was Germany. There is a high-water mark of battle in every war, and after that, the invading waves begin their retreat. The high-water mark of Napoleon's was Austerlitz and the waves ebbed away at Waterloo. The high-water mark of the civil war was Gettysburg, and the tide ebbed out at Appomattox. Belgium's defense ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... which is 443 feet above the Thames. The top of the cross of St. Paul's Cathedral is 407 feet, whilst its base, or ground-line, is 52 feet. The base of the lowest building is that of the Bricklayer's Arms, Kent Road, the sill of the south door of which is only six inches above the high-water mark. The sill of the north entrance-door of Westminster ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various

... in the meantime upon me, when I kept more within doors than at other times. We had stowed our new vessel as secure as we could, bringing her up into the creek, where, as I said in the beginning, I landed my rafts from the ship; and hauling her up to the shore at high-water mark, I made my man Friday dig a little dock, just big enough to hold her, and just deep enough to give her water enough to float in; and then, when the tide was out, we made a strong dam across the end of it, to keep the water out; and so she lay, ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe

... brute force, was hustled off to the end of the pier, and then slapped, shaken, and reviled, for the enormity of her offence, until, in an acute nervous crisis, she wrenched herself out of her mother's clutches, and sprang over into the harbour. It was high-water happily, and Count Gustav Bartahlinsky, who was just going out in his yacht, saw her drop, and fished ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... looking for shells and pebbles, just after that storm which I have mentioned as moving the sand to a great depth, not knowing but I might find some cob-money, I did actually pick up a French crown-piece, worth about a dollar and six cents, near high-water mark, on the still moist sand, just under the abrupt, caving base of the bank. It was of a dark slate-color, and looked like a flat pebble, but still bore a very distinct and handsome head of Louis XV., and the usual legend on the reverse, "Sit Nomen Domini Benedictum," ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... no rent to pay, for their one-roomed cabin, standing on uncertain stilts outside the old levee, had been deserted during the last high-water, when Uncle Mose had "tooken de chances" and moved in. But then Mose had been able to earn his seventy-five cents a day at wood-sawing; and besides, by keeping his fishing-lines baited and set out the back and front doors—there were no windows—he had often drawn in a catfish, or his ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart

... often careless about his personal appearance, is late to breakfast, late to school, and his name is entirely wanting when the highest credits are awarded. Such a child may be sometimes recognized by the neglected appearance of his teeth and finger-nails, the "high-water marks" about his neck and wrists, the dust on his clothing and shoes, his untidy hair, etc. In fact, he seems to have adopted as his life motto the paraphrase, "There is no excellence about ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... steep beach, disclosed by the retreating tide, which had been formed by the accumulated masses of rock that had fallen in past ages from the cliffs above. These now, from the margin of the water up to high-water mark, were covered with a vast growth of sea-weed, which luxuriated here, and ran parallel to the line of vegetation on the summit of the cliff. On the other side of the strait the scene was different. Here the shores were more varied; in one place, rising high on steep precipices, ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille

... place in the public interest. It has introduced an element of picturesque enthusiasm and, here and there, a passion of hatred rarely seen before in New Zealand politics. It brought division into the Liberal Party in 1893, at the moment when the Progressive movement seemed to have reached its high-water mark, and the feeling it roused was found typified in the curious five years' duel between Mr. Seddon and Sir Robert Stout, which began in 1893 and ended only with Sir Robert's retirement at the beginning of the present year. It has strangely complicated New Zealand politics, is still doing so, and ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... throes. Perchance the mind is capable of suffering worse than the fiercest pangs of hopeless love combined with jealousy; one would not pretend to put a limit to the possibilities of human woe; but for Mallard, at all events this night did the black flood of misery reach high-water mark. ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing

... windows, and making us repeat them after him, to see if we had got them right. They were Gull Pond, (the largest and a very handsome one, clear and deep, and more than a mile in circumference,) Newcomb's, Swett's, Slough, Horse-Leech, Round, and Herring Ponds,—all connected at high-water, if I do not mistake. The coast-surveyors had come to him for their names, and he told them of one which they had not detected. He said that they were not so high as formerly. There was an earthquake about four years before he was born, which cracked the pans ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... I ought to have told you that the tides that day were close upon the top of the springs, with high-water at five o'clock or thereabouts—the rising tide had barely carried Mr. Jope and his party from Nandy's sight, round the bend, before another boatload of pleasure-seekers hove in sight at the mouth ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... other things. The notes are no longer timid, hesitating memoranda, but vigorous records made with the dash of assurance that comes from confidence and knowledge, and with the authority of one in supreme command. Under the head of "2d high-water trip—Jan., 1861—Alonzo Child," we have the story of a rising river with its overflowing banks, its blind passages and cut-offs—all the circumstance and uncertainty ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... Suitable for Fruits Blowing Improving Heavy Reclaimed Swamp Improving Uncovered Sand for Clay Sour and Old Plaster Handling Orchard Depth for Citrus Summer Fallow Sub-soil, Plow for Stable Drainage for Fruit Seeds, Soaking Trees over High-water Plowing toward or from Irrigated or not Too Much Water Too Little Water Thomas Phosphate, Applying Water Artesian ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson

... it all about?" again demanded the younger man, seizing the rope halter and aiding the mare to flounder out upon the firmer sand below high-water mark. "What are you doing up so early? And what were you going ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper

... (1637) we have reached the high-water mark of English Poesy and of Milton's own production. A period of a century and a half was to elapse before poetry in England seemed, in Wordsworth's Ode on Immortality (1807), to be rising again towards the level of inspiration which it had once attained in Lycidas. And ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... perceived that the pilot had made a mistake. Neither Charles nor his companions had ever before been in this part of Benbecula. They looked around them on the desolate prospect, and perceived that they were on a peninsula, perfectly desert, and which at high-water was separated from Benbecula. At first Charles hoped, that, when the tide was out, some passage might be discovered; but the waves retired and no passage appeared. The Prince was not disheartened; for his courage, ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson

... the commencement of this session the credit of the United States had reached high-water mark. It was apparent that, with judicious management, a three per cent. bond of the United States could be sold at par. On the first day of the session, December 5, 1881, I introduced a bill to provide for the issue of three per cent. bonds. It was referred to the committee on finance, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... in height, bordered their road on the right. To avoid the soft dry sand of their base the pony often trotted in the shallow flow of the foam, which even yet now and then crept over all the damp beach to the high-water mark. The wind was like spur and lash; the horse fled before it. Eyes and ears grew accustomed even to the threatening of the sea-monsters. The sun of the November afternoon sank nearer and nearer the level ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall

... accepted Eben as a fixture in their menage, and took no further concern about the matter. But Stair looked out many times at the green trenches closing in the land entrance to the isle, and even as he looked, it seemed that during the night the parallels had crept down a little nearer to high-water mark. ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett

... Mr. Hutchinson Port suffered a fresh pang of misery when the presentation was accomplished and he was forced to say approximately pleasant things to a lady whose decidedly ballet-like attire in the surf—or, to be precise, on the beach above high-water-mark, where, for some occult reason, she usually saw fit to do the most of her bathing—joined to the exceeding celerity of her conduct generally, had marked her during the preceding season as the conspicuous centre of one phase of ...
— The Uncle Of An Angel - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier

... August, 1862. Lee was to invade Maryland; Bragg was to invade Kentucky; Van Dorn was to break the hold of the Federals in the Southwest. If there is one moment that is to be considered the climax of Davis's career, the high-water mark of Confederate hope, it was the moment of joyous expectation when the triple offensive was launched, when Lee's army, on a brilliant autumn day, crossed the Potomac, singing ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... was entirely land-locked, buried in woods, the trees coming right down to high-water mark, the shores mostly flat, and the hilltops standing round at a distance in a sort of amphitheatre, one here, one there. Two little rivers, or rather two swamps, emptied out into this pond, as you might call ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson

... brown-eyed, filled with such mixed admiration, trust, and appeal, that a queer softness had risen in the Maestro from somewhere down in the regions of his heel, up and up, quietly, like the mercury in the thermometer, till it had flowed through his whole body and stood still, its high-water mark a ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various

... and he became very passionate and excitable, and spent much time in rushing about the woods in search of other deer, fighting those of his own sex, and making love to the does. The year was at its high-water mark, and the Buck was nearing his prime. Food was plenty; everywhere the beechnuts were dropping on the dry leaves; the autumn sunshine was warm and mellow; the woods were gay with scarlet and gold and brown, and the very taste of the air was enough to make ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert

... far as is practicable for the purpose of self-preservation. Almost for a century the Prussian authorities have been getting the control of their national schools more and more into their own hands. They have now succeeded in bringing the application of the theory of State interference to the high-water mark of practicability. From the rudiments of the alphabet to the history of economics, everything in the Prussian curriculum may be suspected of serving some political purpose. The schoolboy is regarded by the authorities as a mere pawn, to be moved on the national board in ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst

... seaport of Co. Dublin, Ireland, in the north parliamentary division, 21-3/4 m. N.N.E. of Dublin by the Great Northern railway. Pop. (1901) 2236. The harbour, though dry at low tides, has a depth of 14 ft. at high-water springs, and affords a good refuge from the east or southeast gales. There are two piers, and a railway viaduct of eleven arches crosses the harbour. The town has considerable manufactures of cottons and hosiery, "Balbriggan hose" being well known. The industry was founded by Baron ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... ground, the communication between the two was by means of a long wooden bridge. From the office and visitors' apartments a wooden pier extended into the river. The whole was raised on piles above the high-water mark. There was a rude mill for grinding sugar-cane, worked by bullocks; but cashaca, or rum, was the only article manufactured from the juice. Behind the buildings was a small piece of ground cleared from the forest, and planted with fruit trees— orange, lemon, genipapa, goyava, ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... strengthened, and that obstructions of all sorts had been placed across the river. Strong booms had been carried from side to side, and iron stakes driven into the bottom at intervals, reaching within two feet of high-water mark. The Chinese having neglected to remove the obstructions, after the admirals had waited several days, Mr Bruce and the French ambassador having arrived, the admiral sent in to say that unless his demands were immediately complied with he should force his way. A force ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston

... abounds. I have not read him so thoroughly as to warrant me in speaking very confidently about him, but from the examination which I have given his poetry, I think that he treats his subjects with as little inflation as possible, and he now and then touches a point of naturalness—the high-water mark of balladry, to which modern poets, with their affected unaffectedness and elaborate simplicity, attain only with the greatest pains and labor. Such a triumph of Mercantini's is this poem which I am about ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... depressant; but like all other forms of overindulgence, and excessive yielding to this excitement tends to bring on a reaction and a swing to the opposite emotional extreme, and the medium suffers thereby in many cases. There comes a time in all seances when the high-water mark of psychic power is reached, and this is a good time for the medium to bring the seance to a close—in fact, experienced mediums do precisely this very thing at this particular time. But this point once passed, there is experienced a ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita

... traffic has risen to its high-water mark; movement everywhere, people promenade, drive in carriages, gossip; engines are breathing stertorously in the far distance. A steamer whistles in the harbour, another steamer answers with a hoarse blast; flags flutter, barges swim ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun

... have called Samuel's anointing to mind, and have drawn arguments from the victory over Goliath, for trust in victory over Saul, as he had done for the former from that over the lion and the bear. But faith does not always keep high-water mark, and we can only too easily sympathise with this momentary ebb ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... agglomeration of half-digested scientific data, but a scientific view of life. The story moves, from beginning to end, with a beautiful epic calm and a grand inevitableness which remind one of Tolstoi, and reaches far toward the high-water mark of modern realism. Take, for instance, the characterization of Kirsten Ravn (pp. 11-15), and I wonder where in contemporary fiction so large and deep a comprehension is shown both of psychic and of physical ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... smuggler had attacked the unfortunate man, and, being by far the more powerful of the two, had grappled with him, and, plunging a long knife into his bosom, had thrown him over the cliffs. The next morning the body was discovered above high-water mark, with a knife known to belong to Johnson close to it, and on the top of the cliffs were seen the impressions of men's feet, as if engaged in a fierce struggle. A handkerchief, similar to one the smuggler had been observed to wear, was found in the dead man's grasp, and at a late hour ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston

... general manager. And a title is like a suit of clothes—it must fit the man who tries to wear it. I can clothe you in a little brief authority, as your old college friend, Shakespeare, puts it, but I can't keep people from laughing at you when they see you swelling around in your high-water pants. ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer

... hooks to as many cables, I went back to the northeast coast, and putting off my coat, shoes, and stockings, walked into the sea in my leathern jerkin, about half an hour before high-water. I waded with what haste I could, and swam in the middle about thirty yards, till I felt ground; I arrived at the fleet in less than half an hour. The enemy were so frightened, when they saw me, ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift

... moment. The implied conclusion is, that the Atlantic beat Mrs. Partington. Did it? It made, no doubt, a great mess in her house, it put her to flight, it put her to shame. But when I was last at Sidmouth the line of high-water mark was, I believe, much what it was before the great storm of 1824, and though the particular Mrs. Partington had no doubt been gathered to her fathers, the Mrs. Partington of the day was, equally without doubt, living very comfortably in the house which the Atlantic ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... weeping? why?' Shame on such wooer's dapper-mercery!"*1* And then follows a wooing that, to my mind, should be irresistible, and that, at any rate, is quite as high-souled as Browning's 'One Way of Love', which I have long considered the high-water-mark of the chivalrous in love. The Lady Clarionet is still speaking: "I would my lover kneeling at my feet In humble manliness should cry, 'O Sweet! I know not if thy heart my heart will greet: I ask ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... "The whole thing's a mystery—so far. But, as you live hereabouts, perhaps you can suggest something. The doctors are of the opinion that he was murdered—here—yesterday evening: that his body had been lying here, just above high-water mark, since, probably, eight or nine o'clock last night. Now, what could he be doing down at this lonely spot? He went inland when he left ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher

... who spends an idle day measuring the flow of his brook with a notched board, may say here: "This is all very well. This is the spring of the year, when my brook is flowing at high-water mark. What am I going to do in the dry months of summer, when there are not 250 cubic feet ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson

... more methodical investigation of the affair. In the first place I considered the manner in which the parchment had come into my possession. The spot where we discovered the scarabaeus was on the coast of the mainland, about a mile eastward of the island, and but a short distance above high-water mark. Upon my taking hold of it, it gave me a sharp bite, which caused me to let it drop. Jupiter, with his accustomed caution, before seizing the insect, which had flown towards him, looked about him for a leaf, or something ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith

... treasury can stand the drafts of both speech and composition. Judged by his works, as a poet in the end must be, he is one who might gain by revision and compression. But think, as is his due, upon the high-water marks of his abundant tide, and see how enviable the record of a poet who is our most brilliant and learned critic, and who has given us our best native idyll, our best and most complete work in dialectic verse, and the noblest heroic ode that America has ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... period of the inquiry by a statement made with regard to the fishermen at Spiggie and Ireland, in Dunrossness. The Act 29 Geo. II. c. 23 gives fishermen ample [Page 14 rpt.] powers to erect all apparatus and booths necessary for curing their fish on waste land within a hundred yards of high-water mark; but perhaps it could not be held as Mr. J. Harrison seems to think, to prevent a proprietor from enclosing and letting any part of his land adjacent to the sea for the purposes of a ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie

... down towards us. At length darkness compelled us to give up our sport, and, with an abundant supply of fish, we pulled slowly back towards our usual landing-place, where, having unladen our boat, we hauled her up to a safe spot above high-water mark. ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... many scholars estimate a high-water mark for the Roman population in excess of two millions; and one daring authority, by throwing out suburbs ad libitum into the Campagna, suburbs of which no trace remains, has raised the two to ten. The Colosseum could, no doubt, seat over 80,000 spectators; ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... consciousness imaged in the magic mirror of poetry than explicit autobiography.... Even with the greatest pages of 'Sister Songs' sounding in one's ears, one is sometimes tempted to think the 'Hound of Heaven' Mr. Thompson's high-water mark for unimaginable beauty and tremendous import—if we do damnably iterate Mr. Thompson's tremendousness, we cannot help it, he thrusts the word upon us. We do not think we forget any of the splendid things of an English anthology when we ...
— The Hound of Heaven • Francis Thompson

... spent as much time as he could at Ridge House. He came to the hard conclusion, at length, that Doris, in her new environment, had reached her high-water mark. Detached from strain and care, living quietly, and largely in the open, she had responded almost at once—to her limit, and there she remained. How long this improved state would hold was the main thing to be considered; nothing ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock

... hear my horse's hooves for the cracking and crushing and cannonade of it as it flowed in on a south wind to the front of the Gearran, giving the long curve of the land an appearance new and terrible, filled as it was far over high-water mark with monstrous blocks, answering with groans and cries to ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro

... or "On Going a Journey," or "The Deceased"—this last is perhaps the high-water mark of the book. To vary the figure, this essay dips its Plimsoll-mark full under. It is freighted with far more than a dozen pages might be expected to carry safely. So quietly, so quaintly told, what a wealth of humanity is in it! Am I wrong in thinking that those ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley

... martyred father, the anguish of the prisoner, were all invented by the poet on that rainy day in the tavern at Ouchy. Even the level of the dungeon, below the water of the lake, turns out to be a mistake, although Bonivard believed it: the floor of the crypt is eight feet above high-water mark. As for the thoughts of the prisoner, they seem to have been mainly occupied with making Latin and French verses of an objectionable sort not adapted for general publication. (See Ls. Vulliemin: Chillon, Etude historique, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various

... earlier people must have lingered, passes barely remarked. There is a great promontory on the coast, opposite the reef called the Hen and Chickens, which is pierced by a sort of tunnel about eight hundred feet in length and sixty feet in height, through which a boat can sail on calm days at high-water; and in the centre of the tunnel, bubbling up through the sea, rises a perpetual spring of fresh water. This is called the Virgin's Well, and I can discover no story or legend with which it is connected, though the name may possibly contain some earlier ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland

... 1847 wore smoothly to its close—a happy "trimestre" during which the Institution F. Brossard reached the high-water mark of ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier



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