"Ripple" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... children in Ernst's care, both Mr. and Mrs. Bruder, prompted by their strong gratitude to Dennis, rushed through the streets as if distracted. Their intense anxiety and warm German feeling caused them to heed no more the curious glances cast after them than would a man swimming for life note the ripple he made. ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... no more than a foot in width, which leads away from the old spring-house on the hillside. You will not find him swimming about like the minnows in the still, deep water of the stream, but where the clear, cold water is rushing rapidly over the stones of a ripple he makes his home. There he rests quietly on the bottom, waiting patiently for his food, the larvae or young of gnats, mosquitoes, and other ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... sudden menace on the part of nature. All round the horizon small leaden-colored clouds began to collect, scudding rapidly along, as though searching impatiently for a direction and a shape. Then the waters began to ripple, and became streaked with rapid luminous reflections, with long stripes of green, violet, white, ochre, black. Finally this irritation of nature ended in a violent downpour, which confused sky, water, and earth in one gray mass, broken only by a lighter ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... brig glided over the blue sea, like a swan skimming over a tranquil lake. As seen at that distance, she appeared a mass of white canvas; nor did she cause a ripple on the calm, mirror-like surface. On she came, till her deck seemed almost beneath the rock, and the young Italian fancied, in her eagerness, that she could see the countenances of those who walked it, and could distinguish the chief himself from all the ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... which a great human impulse had assumed at a specific date in a certain city. The dynamic force which created these conditions, which will continue to create them—lust—they refer to in a few pious sentences. Their thinking, in short, is perfectly static and literally superficial. In outlining a ripple they have ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... remote cantonment of Quillon, stands a monument to the memory of a dog. He was left to watch his master's clothes while bathing. Presently he was seen to be doing everything in his power to attract attention, by barking and running excitedly backwards and forwards on the shore. An advancing ripple was then discerned on the smooth surface of the lake, and the next instant the meaning of this flashed home. A crocodile had got between the swimmer and the landing-place, and was coming out to seize his prey. Hope might well have been stricken dead in the face of such a situation. ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... was setting in red splendour over the grey and purple hills, and the canal lay smooth and shiny in the shadow—no ripple broke its surface. It was like a grey satin ribbon between the dusky green silk of the meadows that were on ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... an upper deck, sailing to an island. The day was sunlit, the wind was gentle, and the faintest ripple ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... by her own imperial hand in the great workroom of the manufactory. The work was well and deftly done, but so delicate is the process that when the light strikes athwart this mirror at a particular angle, you can clearly trace a faint hair line of shadow traversing it, the ineffaceable record of a ripple of laughter which broke from the Empress's lips at some gay remark made by one of the personages grouped about her while her hand was ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... its gold, because he showed to men the heart under its swagger. He annexed the Sandwich Islands to the fun of the nation long before they were put under its flag. Because of him the Missouri and the Mississippi go not unvexed to the sea, for they ripple with laughter as they recall Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, poor Jim, and the Duke. Europe, Asia Minor, and Palestine are open doors to the world, thanks to this Pilgrim's Progress with his "Innocents Abroad." Purity, piety and pity shine out ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... movement which brought his spine sharply up into a position behind its starting-point, a gesture in which he must have been trained by the husband of his sister, Mme. de Cambremer. This rapid recovery caused a sort of tense muscular wave to ripple over Legrandin's hips, which I had not supposed to be so fleshy; I cannot say why, but this undulation of pure matter, this wholly carnal fluency, with not the least hint in it of spiritual significance, this wave lashed to a fury by the wind of ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... a green, shelving bank, and shoved her off with the long sticks we carried. The wind caught her sail and drove her forward in fine style; she made a great ripple as she went. Once she caught in a drowned bush; but the current swung her clear, and she cut across the course of the brook like a Falmouth Packet. Hugh and I ran along the causeway, and over the bridge, ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... thought," said Nash. "A mighty ship, A lightning-shattered wreck, out in that night, Unseen, has foundered thundering. We sit here Snug on the shore, and feel the wash of it, The widening circles running to our feet. Can such a soul go down to glut the sharks Without one ripple? Here comes one sprinkle of spray. Listen!" And through that night, quick and intense, And hushed for thunder, tingled once again, Like a thin wire, the crowder's ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... the river banks and glen. The moonlight vaults beyond the trees To gain the river side, and sees A dusky maiden sitting there, Who twines her lovely raven hair, And frequent lifts her melting eyes To where the flashing ripple flies Across the bosom of that glass Where dancing stars nocturnal pass. A princess of the wildwood she, And graceful as the deer that flee Till stricken by the light-winged shaft So deadly from the hunter's craft. The river sings beneath her feet; It finds an echo in the sweet ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... look!" cried Edna, suddenly. "Do you see that little ripple where the water lies in the channel? The tide is turning at last. In an hour or so, now, the water will be high enough for Cricket to get over here at least,—though we can't get home for a ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... been deprived of their burdens, and a concerted complaint was made to the police, who promptly located the offender and brought him summarily to trial. Mrs. Jenkins was subpoenaed as a witness, which caused quite a ripple of excitement in the family. Divided between dread of appearing in public and pride at the importance with which she was regarded by her little flock, Mrs. Jenkins was quite upset by the occasion. She hadn't attended a function for so long that her ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... was all Humbert's reply, and he now turned away and walked the deck alone and in silence. Meanwhile the bustle and movements of the crew continued, and soon the great ships, stripped of their white sails, lay tranquilly at anchor in a sea without a ripple. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... in the outset, that in this lecture I shall endeavor to lift my subject above the plane in which it is ordinarily treated. I don't believe I ever announced a lecture on Matrimony, that I did not detect the ripple of a smile on the face of my audience, as if they regarded the whole subject as a huge practical joke, something wonderfully funny, on no account to be ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... faculties must have been keyed up to the pitch of his nerves, for to me the night remained as voiceless as a subterranean cavern. I became intensely irritated with him; within my mind I cried out against this infatuated pantomime of his. And then, of a sudden, there was a sound—the dying rumor of a ripple, somewhere in the outside darkness, as though an object had been let into the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... world is moving in the direction of a greater frankness. I do not mean that a man has not a right to live his life privately, in his own house and his own circle, if he wills. But if that life is lived simply, generously and bravely, I welcome any ripple or ray from it that breaks in light and fragrance upon ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... out over the calm and quiet street, basking in the sunlight, peacefully minus a ripple of breeze to break the beauty of ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... three, she suddenly broke into a little ripple of laughter, and, upon being questioned severely as to the reason of such unseemly mirth, she said, gaily, "I was just wondering what poor Phil will do with three girls, and one ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... her face a little and nodded. "Yes, Alaska," she said, and the old captain fancied there was the slightest ripple of a tremor in her voice. ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... The soft ripple of the lake beside him seemed like mockery. The tears rolled slowly down his cheeks, as he looked toward the pitilessly unresponsive desert of the west and southwest. Then Heraklas, helpless in his misery, raised ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... about, and the house seemed curiously still. She heard the ripple of running water from an unseen fountain somewhere, and the intermittent murmur of voices in a room close by, but there is a silence that broods above such sounds, and this it was ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... bee's hum soft and steady, and here it chuckled and chirped, bubbling up in sudden little rapids and cascades. At Judy's feet was a thin flat stone, which rested loosely on the top of another, and flap-flapped, bobbing up and down as the ripple rose and fell. Sitting idle in the firelight, warmed and fed to unwonted contentment, Judy watched it half drowsily for ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... life sometimes ripple along like the waters of a little stream in summer. At other times they rush with the wild impetuosity of a ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... The enormous body appeared to waver slightly as a breath of wind washed against it: obviously it was not gaining weight as it grew. Almost, now, it appeared to float in the air. Swiftly it grew another twenty-five feet, and the gray expanse of its clothes shimmered strangely as a ripple ...
— A Scientist Rises • Desmond Winter Hall
... deposited on the sand, while the latter was yet at the bottom of the ocean, though this range is now, I believe, nowhere less than from fifteen hundred to two thousand feet above the level of the sea. The marks of the ripple of the sea may be observed in some places where the basalt has been recently washed off, beautifully defined, as if formed only yesterday, and there is no other substance to be seen ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... which we sat, indeed no house at all. Beneath us rose and fell a stanch vessel, responsive to the long lift of the southern seas. It was not a rustle of the leaves we heard through the open windows, but the low ripple of waves along our strakes came to our ears through the open ports. Hiroshimi did not depart to the kitchen; but high aloft our lookout swept the sea for sail that might ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... In the blue and buoyant air, Cinctured by bright winds, Treading the sunlight. And the waves which precede you Ripple and stir The ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... there were houses on either side, in search of our boat. By the time we had embarked the tints of the sunset had vanished, a moon nearly full rode undisputed mistress in the cloudless sky, and we cut our way to our ship through the ripple that was dancing and sparkling ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... his pipe. Chapel was over. The organist was prancing through the voluntary, and the first ripple of boys had already reached Dunwood House. In a few minutes the masters would be here too, and Ansell, who was becoming interested, hurried ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... lingering within them, seemed to follow me, when, taking to my boat again, I rowed off to a kind of garden or public walk in the sea, where there were grass and trees. But I forgot them when I stood upon its farthest brink—I stood there, in my dream—and looked, along the ripple, to the setting sun; before me, in the sky and on the deep, a crimson flush; and behind me the whole city resolving into streaks of red and ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... thought he heard a faint ripple of mirth drift across the room. But, of course, he had to be mistaken. "I think the governor replied wisely. I expect to return home and confer with ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... it? Why does the great wind stir the deep waters? It does but ripple the shallow pool as it passes, for shallowness can but ripple and throw up shadows. We cannot tell, but this we know—that deep things only can be deeply moved. It is the penalty of depth and greatness; ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... speaker's face from beneath her drooping lids, making no effort to read his thoughts, but weighing his words and impressing every detail of his story upon her mind. When he had done there was silence for a time, broken only by the plash and ripple of the ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... majority the sole opportunity of intellectual stimulus as well as spiritual growth. The coming of John Cotton to Boston, was much as if Phillips Brooks should bestow himself upon the remotest English settlement in Australia, or a missionary station in northern Minnesota, and a ripple of excitement ran through the whole community. It meant keener political as well as religious life, for the two went side by side. Mather wrote later of New England: "It is a country whose interests were most remarkably ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... the holding of his hand might last a long while—for he might think of naught save her—and long it lasted forsooth, and still she spake no word, though whiles a little sweet chuckle, as of the garden warbler at his softest, came from her lips, and the ripple of her raiment as her swift feet drave it, sounded loud to his eager ears in the ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... than I had lately shown. I watched her for a few minutes admiring the grace and dexterity with which she plied the paddle, and then my eyelids closed, and in another instant I was fast asleep. I do not think I ever enjoyed a more sound slumber, lulled by the ripple of the water on the side of the canoe as we glided rapidly along. Charley, being older and more inured to labour, was able to keep up better than I was, and I knew that he would not give in while there was any necessity for his exerting ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... impression on the morale of American citizenry. In fact, America from the moment war was declared against Germany until the time an armistice was declared, seemed to care for nothing but results. Charges of graft made with bitter invective in Congress created scarcely more than a ripple. The harder the pro-German plotters worked for the destruction of property and the incitement to labor disturbances, the closer became the protective network of Americanism against these anti-war influences. After ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... The bank rose higher and higher in the sky. Now one mass darted forward—now another—and light bodies flew rapidly across the blue expanse overhead. First the surface of the ocean was crisped over with a sparkling ripple, and then wavelets appeared, and soon they increased to waves with frothy crests; and the schooner sprung forward, the canvas swelling, the braces tautening, and the masts and spars cracking with the additional ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... breakfast, the two vessels lay side by side, in complete readiness for sea, our ensigns hanging from the peaks, and our tall spars reflected from the glassy surface of the river, which, since sunrise, had been unbroken by a ripple. At length a few whiffs came across the water, and, by eleven o'clock the regular northwest wind set steadily in. There was no need of calling all hands, for we had all been hanging about the forecastle ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... dark, the yard was thronged with people. They listened with smiles or a faint ripple of merry ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... knew for, and it was with unbelieving wonder, and delight, that I came suddenly upon the shore of the sea. A little while, and its gentle billows were flowing beneath the hoofs of my beast, but the hearing of the ripple was not enough communion, and the seeing of the blue Propontis was not to know and possess it—I must needs plunge into its depth and quench my longing love in the palpable waves; and so when old Moostapha (defender against demons) looked round for his charge, he saw with horror and dismay ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... England. All day the vessel ran down the French coast; and although he was a captive, and every mile reeled off the log took him further from home, Ralph could not help admiring the speed at which the brig slipped through the water, cutting the waves with her sharp bow and leaving scarcely a ripple behind her, so fine and clean was her run. Very different was this smooth, gliding motion from the quick plunge and shock of the bluff-bowed fishing boat to which he was accustomed. The sails had been scrubbed until there was not a speck upon them. The masts were lofty ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... led to remove hundreds of police officials, capitalists, royalties, and others. They have been poisoned, shot, and dynamited, in the belief that their removal would benefit humanity. Yet nothing would seem to be quite so obvious as the fact that their removal has hardly caused a ripple in the swiftly moving current of evolution. Others, often more forceful and capable, have immediately stepped into their places, and the course of events has ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... is sweet: thy breath is in the air, I feel it on my face; thy tender eyes Look love upon me from yon starry skies! They bring to me, those glancing moonbeams fair, The shine and ripple of thy silken hair. And in the silent whispers and the sighs That from the throbbing heart of Nature rise, I hear thee, feel thee,—own thy ...
— Sonnets • Nizam-ud-din-Ahmad, (Nawab Nizamat Jung Bahadur)
... was pale, smooth, and phosphorescent, and I remember that the phrase "wan water," so familiar in the Scottish ballards, struck me just then as peculiarly appropriate, though its real meaning is quite different. A gentle breeze, from which I had hoped for a ripple, had utterly died away, and it was a warm, breathless Southern night. There was no sound but the faint swash of the coming tide, the noises of the reed-birds in the marshes, and the occasional leap of a fish; and it ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... races of sand larks and plovers, are seen busily traversing the wet sand, in search of the red worm which burrows there, or peering with steady eye to watch the motions of the small fry and aquatic insects in the ripple on ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... down again, Miss Baxter, and listen. I know this sentimental kind of writing must be irksome to a practical woman like yourself, but in our business we cannot neglect even the slightest detail. Let's see, where was I?—'tenderness,' oh, yes. 'Her hair is of midnight darkness, inclined to ripple, with little whiffs of curls imperiously defying restraint about her temples. Her complexion is as pure as the dawn, touched now and then with a blush as delicate as ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... there with streaks of pale light. The stormy winds of the German Ocean were apparently lulled to rest; and, though the incessant rolling of the surge on the shore heightened the gloomy character of the hour and the view, the light ripple that ruffled the sleeping billows was produced by a gentle air, that blew directly from the land. Notwithstanding this favorable circumstance, there was something threatening in the aspect of the ocean, which was speaking in hollow but deep murmurs, like a volcano ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... hand the reefs were numerous, but out beyond nothing broke its polished mirror, from which arose a soft, caressing ripple, light and intensified from the depths of its many bays. Its horizon seemed so calm, and its depths so soft! The great blue sepulchre of many Gaoses hid its inscrutable mystery, while the breezes, faint as human breath, ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... filled by a fat, middle-aged woman, neither blonde nor brunette, with a large, serene face. Upon it was written a frank confession that she had never in her life had an original thought capable of creating a ripple of interest. She was Mrs. Sidney, rich, of an "old" family—in the New York meaning of the word "old"—both by marriage and by birth, much courted because of her position and because she entertained a great deal ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... fear of being thwarted by the brush; then into a black, well-like pool, ten or fifteen feet deep, with a smooth, circular wall of rock on one side worn by the water through long ages; or else into a deep, oblong pocket, into which and out of which the water glides without a ripple. ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... Forum, where it ends, is the magnificent facade of the Temple of Antoninus Pius and Faustina, the most perfect of all the Roman temples. There are six splendid Corinthian columns in front and two at the sides, each composed of a single block of green ripple-marked Cipollino marble, about forty-six feet in height and five feet in diameter, with bases and capitals of marble, originally white, but now rusty and discoloured by age; all beautifully proportioned and carved in the finest style of ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... The ripple of events which we have recorded may seem too insignificant; of still less import is the story of the efforts of Clairborne, from 1634: to 1647, to gain, or retain possession of Kent Island, in the Chesapeake, on which he had "squatted" before Baltimore got ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... Camp that I was 'looking for a friend,' I got away from the absurd old woman, who, with her husband at her heels, was marching toward the lake—'Where there was enough water, maybe, to make a ripple and where one wouldn't get stepped on if one happened to ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... dance the minuet with Mr. Lee." Her tone was still sweetly languid, her manner most indifferent. The thick and glossy tress that, drawn forward, was to ripple over white neck and bosom was too loosely curled. She regarded it in the mirror with an anxious frown, then spoke ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... merely animal stratum of existence; you live to-day because you lived yesterday, and you do not forecast to-morrow. Perhaps you learn to assuage and deceive the hunger of your immortal soul by forcing your attention upon the petty ripple of daily events and duties, until you present, to the outsider, the appearance of a commonplace, non-tragic person, bearing no noticeable scars of the crime which society perpetrated on you. You perhaps lose, at last, the realization of your own inhuman plight, and ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... into a roar of applause and a ripple of hand clapping ran over the arena from the appreciative performers. They wholly forgot themselves in their surprise and ...
— The Circus Boys On the Mississippi • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... law as a scavenger, is held as unclean by the Mexicans, who would almost starve rather than eat it; and the suggestion, taken seriously and indignantly resented by Mme. Bazaine, created quite a ripple of disturbance in ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... things are—the green fields and the blue sky, the ripple of bright water, and the changeable glories of a landscape in mid-summer; or the upturned countenances of men, looking for signs in the heavens, when they have ships at sea—or wives and children getting ready for a drive—or new hats and no umbrellas—or houses afire, which may not happen to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... forest region. The many smokes on the hills, buildings of large size, cottages, and cultivated spots, together with the moving crowds on the land, the prahus, canoes, and fishing-boats on the water gave the whole a civilized appearance. Our own vessel lay, almost without a ripple at her side, on the glassy surface of the sea, carried onwards to our destined anchorage by the flowing tide, and scarce a sound was heard except the splashing of the lead as it sought the bottom. The ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... the centre of the room, on the bare earth floor, stood a big, deep, brass basin, with a pale blue- green light floating in the centre like a night-light. Round that basin the man on the floor wriggled himself three times. How he did it I do not know. I could see the muscles ripple along his spine and fall smooth again; but I could not see any ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... ride gay little boats, Diamonds flash from the dipping oars; Laughter and song's mingled melody floats To ripple and die ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... and acting for a long while in a painful dream. Her usually clear and tranquil soul was troubled and bewildered as she sat in the boat at the head of Felicita's coffin, with her dear face so near to her, yet hidden from her eyes. All around her lay the Lake, with a fine rapid ripple on the silvery blue of its waters, as the rowers, with measured and rhythmical strokes of their oars, carried the boat's sad freight on towards Lucerne. The evening sun was shining aslant down the wooded slopes of the lower hills, and dark blue shadows gathered where its rays ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... concentrated, convinced Hamilton that he was, indeed, at the opening of a fight. Even while he was giving some hurried orders to his officers, a man was wounded at one of the port-holes. Then came a series of yells, answered by a ripple of sympathetic French shouting that ran throughout the town. The patrol guards came straggling in, breathless with excitement. They swore to having seen a thousand men marching ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... A ripple of gentle laughter, like a lightly dancing wave on a deep calm sea, passed from the platform to the outer door; the lamplighters went back to their seats; and the pastor with a change of voice said solemnly: "Friends, let ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... bank the water had been a clear, shining brown, with the pebbles showing white and yellow through it; but out here in the middle of the river it was all a blaze and ripple and sparkle of blue and gold. Hildegarde rested on her oars, and sat still for a few minutes, basking in the light and warmth; but soon she found the glory too strong, and pulled over to the other side, where high steep banks threw a shadow on the water. Here the water was very ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... him narrowly as he took his letters. Perhaps their subconscious minds (according to her dear friend's theory) held communication, but only the faintest unintelligible ripple of that appeared on ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... at unpleasantly short intervals. All this attracted David's attention, and he soon found he could play upon Pepper as well as the fiddle, raising him and subduing him by turns; only, like the ocean, Pepper was not to be lulled back to his musical ripple quite so quickly as he could be ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... they form an almost flat sand, still variously and beautifully shaded, but in which you can trace the original forms of vegetation; till at length, in the water itself, they are converted into banks, like those formed off the mouths of rivers, and the forms of vegetation are lost in the ripple marks on ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... a couple of hours to this species of recreation, we weighed anchor, and again got under way. Slowly and smoothly, without a ripple or a jar, we ascended through the blue ether to our former altitude, and floated off over those majestic mountain-tops, toward the west. Loath to part from scenes of such impressive beauty,—scenes, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... both above and below the surface of the oil of turpentine, the currents can be better observed, and will be seen to rush down the wire, proceeding directly from it towards the mercury, and there, diverging in all directions, will ripple its surface strongly, and mounting up at the sides of the vessel, will return to ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... recognised. He seized the terrific pledge, and, with a look betokening some deadly purpose, hastened to his wife's chamber. He demanded admittance in too peremptory a tone for denial. His features were still, not a ripple marked the disturbance beneath. He stood with a calm and tranquil brow by her bed-side; but she read a fearful ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... it say 'the King'?" asked Flavia, leaning over my shoulder, so that the ripple of her hair played on my cheek. "Is ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... way the wind blew before the Deluge by marking the ripple and cupping of the rain in the petrified sand now preserved forever. We tell the very path by which gigantic creatures, whom man never saw, walked to the river's edge ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... to be common to all mankind—"no one can fail to observe the sweetness and the strength, the outspokenness, the downrightness, and, at the same time, the nervous delicacy of pausation, the rhythm all ripple and suspended fall, the dainty but, the daintier and forsooth, as though the pouting of a proud reserve curved the fine lip of him, and had to be atoned for by the ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... calm of that summer evening, when not a ripple lapped on the stony beach, when the only indication of war was the music of the firing high above and the occasional whistle of a spent bullet overhead, the good old padre, in clear, low tones, went through the sergeant's burial service. The rites were finished, ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... After the ripple of his merriment with the children had passed he turned to me with a face now serious and pensive, and said: "Ah, so many things familiar to us are strange to you ...
— The Song of our Syrian Guest • William Allen Knight
... religious interests of the pupils, they not only did themselves credit, in the examination he made of the school, but returned from the interview with their relish for spiritual things undiminished. Indeed, the event, which ordinarily would have been more than a nine days' wonder, caused scarce a ripple on the deep current ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... Bohemian board. From the adjoining room came the music of hired minstrels: the guitar, the violin, and blending voices—a piping tenor and a soft Spanish falsetto. They chanted rhythmically to the clatter of tongues, the ripple of laughter, and the ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... voice again be heard. Disraeli did neither—he continued to speak on various occasions, and expressed himself so courteously, so modestly, so becomingly, that the members listened in awe and curiosity. Then soon it was discovered that beneath the mild and gentle ripple of his speech ran a deep current of earnest truth, tinged with subtle wit. When he spoke, the loungers came in from the cloakrooms, fearing to miss ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... had they gone To the glimmering mountain-lakes, And had torn up by the roots The tall crested water-reeds With long plumes and soft brown seeds, And had carved them into flutes, Sitting on a tabled stone Where the shoreward ripple breaks. And he taught him how to please The red-snooded Phrygian girls, Whom the summer evening sees Flashing in the dance's whirls Underneath the starlit trees In the mountain-villages. Therefore now ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... ma mie?" a ripple of mockery on the current of her voice, "and he a man such as any girl in France might be proud to wed. Well, well, you are not to be constrained, you say." And the Marquise's laugh was menacing and unpleasant. "Be not so ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... was not a ripple to indicate that as far as the Maitland Mills were concerned there was beneath a surging tide of unrest. So undisturbed indeed was the surface that the inexperienced young manager was inclined to make light of the anxieties of his father, ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... that he is saying anything that is worth while. As the late Professor Harris said, one of the last times I saw him, "There are unsounded depths in a man's nature of which he himself knows nothing till they are revealed to him by the plash and ripple of his own conversation with other men." This great principle of life, when applied in conversation, may be stated simply then in ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... the front seat, and Charley rowed him over as if he were afraid of making a ripple on the water. He and Jeff were almost holding their breath with excitement over what their ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the photograph back in his pocket, and filled his pipe again, while it was almost dark before he had smoked it out. The thrush had gone, and only the ripple of the water broke the silence, until he heard footsteps on the stones behind him. Then, looking round, he saw a young woman moving towards the river, and he watched her with a quiet interest, for his perceptions were a little sharper than usual ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... The grass grew so thin and dry that they did little harm by passing through it. It sprang up in front of their feet as they moved backwards in their white dresses. All colour had passed from the earth. The ripple of the river and the cry of the whip-poor-will rose amid the murmur ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... heavy tug at the great rope that bound the houseboat to the little motor tug. The motor boat moved out into the bay, and with almost no perceptible motion and no noise, except the gentle ripple of the water purling against the sides of the craft, the houseboat followed it. The longed-for vacation on the ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... wisdom spake so merrily. A voice, and no mere echo, thine, Of many tones, but manly ever. Thy rustic Biglow's rugged line A grateful world neglecteth never! It smote hypocrisy and cant With flail-like force; sleek bards that ripple Like shallow pools—who pose and pant, And vaguely smudge or softly stipple,— These have not brain or heart to sing As Biglow sang, our quaint Hosea, Whose "Sunthin in the Pastoral line," Full primed ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 22, 1891 • Various
... paid a visit to the Empress one bright morning, when the harbour was smooth as a mill pond, and scarcely a ripple even was seen over the expanse of ocean outside. She lay as firm as ever, with her masts standing, and to all appearance in as good condition as she was the day when the attempt was made to bring her into the harbour, except that when they looked ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... heroic West had spoken through this fearless giant of other days. There was no mistaking the meaning that ran through that quietly worded message. It brought the crowd up with a thrill of apprehension, followed by honest shame. There was even a ripple of applause. The crowd started once more to file out, but in different mood. Some of the more impetuous, who had rushed downstairs before the judge had spoken, were hustled away from the agent's automobile, around which they had grouped ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... ranged away on either side into unknown distances, dully glistening like gray ice, unbroken save in this place. The gray strand on which I stood was a narrow strip following the foot of the wall. Behind me lay a vast, unmoving ocean banked over with an all-concealing mist. Not a ripple stirred along that weird beach, or a ray changed the fixed gray twilight. And I was afraid, for my danger was not of the common dangers of mankind, but that which freezes the blood of man when he draws near the supernatural; ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... stretches around the Mont for miles every way—of sand or sea, for the water covers it at flood-tides, beating up against the foot of the granite rocks and the granite walls of the ramparts. But at neap tides and eaux mortes, as the French say, there is nothing but a desert of brown, bare sand, with ripple-marks lying across it, and with shallow, ankle-deep pools of salt water here and there. Afar off on the western sky-line a silver fringe of foam, glistening in the sunshine, marks the distant boundary to which the sea has retreated. On every other ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... miles off, but in reality we were twenty, and the land improved as we neared it. It was the fiercest day we had had, the deck was almost too hot to stand upon, the sea and sky were both magnificently blue, and the unveiled sun turned every minute ripple into a diamond flash. As we approached, the island changed its character. There were lofty peaks, truly—grey and red, sun- scorched and wind-bleached, glowing here and there with traces of their fiery origin; but they were cleft by deep chasms and ravines ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... occupations—if occupations they might be called—the breathless foliage rich in the depth of summer; behind, the old-fashioned house, unpretending, not mean, its open doors and windows giving glimpses of the comfortable repose within; before, the lake, without a ripple and catching the gleam of the sunset clouds,—all made a picture of that complete tranquillity and stillness, which sometimes soothes and sometimes saddens us, according as we are in ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... bright moon hung in the frosty sky. The fells rose from the opposite edge of the lake like phantom mountains. The air was stirless. Through the boughs and sprays of the leafless elms no sigh or motion, however hushed, was audible. Not a ripple glimmered on the lake, which at one point only reflected the brilliant moon from its dark blue expanse like burnished steel. The road that runs by the inn door, along the margin of ...
— Madam Crowl's Ghost and The Dead Sexton • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... you not remember? The stars are shining, the night wind is blowing, and we are on the terrace looking down on the glittering lights of the city. Hark! that joyous sparkling strain, full of riant laughter, recalls the sad students who wandered past, and then from amid the airy ripple of notes comes the sweet, mellow strain of the 'cello, which tells of love eternal amid the summer roses; how the tender melody sweeps on full of the perfume and mystic meanings of that night. Hark! is that the nightingale in the trees, or only the silvery notes of ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... the year was young. The villa of white marble was built on a gentle rising knoll, prettily wooded, at the foot of which running through a glade was a tiny streamlet clear as crystal, which with its ripple and the singing of the birds lent music to the air. On the highest garden site was built a tower from whence an extensive view of the city is gained, with its spires and palaces, together with the violet sea, and the ever ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... courteously placed at my disposal. Our party was augmented by a military escort, under command of Onder-Lieutenant J. Van Dijl, consisting of one Javanese sergeant and six native soldiers, most of them Javanese. At midday the surface of the water was absolutely without a ripple, and the broad expanse of the river, ever winding in large curves, reflected the sky and the low jungle on either side with bewildering faithfulness. At night the stars were reflected in the water in the same ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... of the trail, leading out from the timber groves, pointed into a sea of green along the valley of the Kaw. The grass, not yet tall enough fully to ripple as it would a half month later, stood waving over the black-burned ground which the semicivilized Indians had left the fall before. Flowers dotted it, sometimes white like bits of old ivory on the vast rug of spindrift—the pink verbena, the ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... the wing of the storm-bird, said, "Grandfather, it is much better; move it but a little now, that I may see!" So he moved it; he gave a flap, and lo! a slight ripple passed over the surface of the sleeping sea. And striking lightly with his wings, again there came a breeze, and the Ogokpegeak, or the scum, was blown away, and the Indians fished again, and all ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... watched. At the bottom the sand was so white and shiny that it might have been made of star-dust. Growing up from it were beds of marvelous seaflowers, opening and shutting delicate petals, beautiful seafans that waved with every ripple, high, thick shrubs and towering trees in which the fishes had built their nests. In and out among all this undergrowth, frisked tiny sea-horses, ridden by mischievous sea-urchins. They leaped and trotted and galloped ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... the reef miles away, a phenomenally high tide occurred. His wife—a comely girl of British descent—was alone on the shoal. She watched the rising water apprehensively, until all the sand was covered save the few feet on which the frail shelter stood. One more ripple and the floor was swamped. Then, wading and swimming, she managed to reach a punt, and so saved her life. Since then these patches of sand have not been regarded as a safe outpost even by those most venturesome ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... restless and continuous moaning had at length struck his ear. What was in its call to-night that he should thus sway towards it as though drawn by some dread magnetic force? He had been born to the dashing of its waves and knew its every mood and all the passion of its song from frolicsome ripple to melancholy dirge. But there was something odd and inexplicable in its effect upon his spirit as he faced it at this hour. Grim and implacable—a sound rather than a sight—it seemed to hold within its invisible distances the image of his future fate. What this image ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... languishing roll of your wanton eye. At this you may see great brawny sons of Rome all in a quiver, losing all decency of gesture and command of voice, as the strains glide into their very bones, and the marrow within is tickled by the ripple ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... waiteen to show you to your bed,' the fellow said in a voice as soft as the ripple ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... shining down on the red parasols, the light dresses, the joyous faces and on the ocean, barely stirred by a ripple. When we were out of the harbor, the little vessel swung round the big curve and pointed her nose toward the distant shore which was barely visible through the early morning mist. On our left was the broad estuary of the Seine, her muddy water, which never mingles with that ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... for the arrest of Major Kingman; perhaps he would be ordered to close the bank on account of the loss of the securities. It was not the first crime the examiner had unearthed. Once or twice the terrible upheaval of human emotions that his investigations had loosed had almost caused a ripple in his official calm. He had seen bank men kneel and plead and cry like women for a chance—an hour's time—the overlooking of a single error. One cashier had shot himself at his desk before him. None of them had taken it with the dignity and coolness of this stern old Westerner. ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... first, walked up and down beside her gravely, and then lay down in the middle of the path, keeping an eye on Agatha's movements. Her voice, pitched at its softest, now seemed to be infinitely enlarged without being made louder. It carried far in among the trees, clear and soft as a wave-ripple. Entranced, Agatha began the second part of the song, just for ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... there breathed a wind on me, Nor sound nor motion made: Its path was not upon the sea, In ripple or in shade. 455 ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... gently, followed by a long rustling of the water on the sand, and a silence till the next wave fell. He waded on till he could swim, and then struck out to where the Isles stood, all sharp and bright in the moon. He swam with long quiet strokes, hearing the water ripple past; and soon the great crags loomed out above him, and he heard the waves fall among their rocky coves. At last he felt the ground beneath his feet; and coming out of the water he dressed himself, and then—for he would not ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... in face she looked fifty. In that face there was no childishness whatever. It was a thin, peaked, sallow face, with a discontented expression; her features were small and pinched, her hair, which was of inky blackness, fell on her shoulders in long, straight locks, without a ripple or a wave in them. She looked like an elf, but still this elfish little creature was redeemed from the hideousness which else might have been her doom by eyes of the most wonderful brilliancy. Large, luminous, potent eyes—intensely black, and deep as the depths ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... started, six strong—four whites, and Cato, and Ferdinand—well armed, and with a good supply of provisions. The sun was already very hot, and the water smooth as glass, save where the prow of the boat broke the still surface into a tiny ripple, which continued plainly visible half a mile astern. I find it difficult to bring before the reader the thousand curious objects that met us on our way. The sullen crocodile basking in the sun, sank ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... cloths. During the dinner-hour! slipped away unnoticed to where some quince-trees were growing and procured a sharp rod, which I secreted among the flour-bags in the schoolroom. At half-past one I brought my scholars in and ordered them to their work with a confident air. Things went without a ripple until three o'clock, when the writing lesson began. Jimmy struck his pen on the bottom of the bottle every time he ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... man on the bench permitted the slightest ripple of anxiety to disconcert his steadfastness of gaze just then pandemonium was ripe for breaking in his courtroom. But the judge looked down with imperturbable calm as though this were the accustomed procedure of his court, and when a margin ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... would have resented such familiarity, but now something touched her spirit with an inexpressible pity, and she let a tiny ripple of a smile pass over her lovely face as her eyes traveled on down the platform in search of the tall form of John Cameron. In the moment of the oncoming train she had somehow lost sight of him. Ah! There he was stooping over a little white haired woman, taking ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill |
