"Ripple" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... engagement and speedily approaching marriage of the daughter of D. K. Underwood to his junior partner caused a ripple of excitement throughout the social circles of Ophir and Galena. Though little known, Walcott was quite popular. It was therefore generally conceded that the shrewd "mining king," as Mr. Underwood was denominated in that region, had selected a party in every way eligible as the future husband ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... bravely a little while to keep up; then he always fell behind. The mother would come back, and urge, and help him; but it was of little use. He was not strong enough; and the last glimpse I always had of them was a foamy wake disappearing round a distant point, while far in the rear was a ripple where the little fellow still paddled away, doing ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... his finger over the side, so that it made a ripple in the water (the most delightful experience of childhood). Emmeline, with one hand clasped in her uncle's, watched Mr Button with a grave ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... 'Well ridden!' A subdued hum runs round the excited spectators. The ardent racers are nose and nose. One swift, sharp cut, the cruel whip hisses through the air, and the black is fairly 'lifted in,' a winner by a nose. The ripple of conversation breaks out afresh. The band strikes up a lively air, and the saddling for the next race ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... riding one evening along the water-side. There was no sound except the ripple of the waves and the heavy flapping of a pelican's wing. As I paused to contemplate the scene an Egyptian passed me hurriedly, with a bloody knife in his hand. His dress was mean and ragged, but his countenance was one that the father of Don Carlos might have worn. He never ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... will hardly return to Doctor —— with pleasure. Chaucer with as thin a jest could have made an admirable poem, for the interest would have been distributed by his lightness of touch, by his descriptive power, by slyness, by geniality, by a changeful ripple of enjoyment over the entire piece. With Browning, when we have arrived at the apex of the jest, we are fatigued by the climb, and too much out of breath to be capable of laughter. In like manner few persons except the Browning enthusiast, who is not responsible for his fervour, will ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... extreme amazement in the Castle of Dorincourt occasioned by the sight of the Earl playing a "home game" with Little Lord Fauntleroy. No American grandfather thus engaged would cause the least ripple of surprise. Little Lord Fauntleroy, we recall, had been born in America, and had lived the whole ten years of his life with Americans. He had acquired the habit, so characteristic of the children of our Nation, of including his elders in his games. Quite ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... climates, or to understand what a blessing and beauty these continual and never-failing watercourses of New Zealand seem to visitors from sultrier and drier lands. The sun is quite strong enough to make men thankful for this gift of abundant water, and to make the running ripple of some little forest rivulet, heard long before it is seen through the green thickets, as musical to the ears of the tired rider as the note of the bell-bird itself. Even pleasanter are the sound and glitter of ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... spirit can find room. Himself is his dungeon. If he feels it not now, he will yet feel it one day—feel it as a living soul would feel being prisoned in a dead body, wrapped in sevenfold cerements, and buried in a stone-ribbed vault within the last ripple of the sound of the chanting people in the church above. His life is not in knowing that he lives, but in loving all forms of life. He is made for the All, for God, who is the All, is his life. And the essential joy of his life lies abroad ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... from these Wilcoxes for the second time. Paul and his mother, ripple and great wave, had flowed into her life and ebbed out of it for ever. The ripple had left no traces behind: the wave had strewn at her feet fragments torn from the unknown. A curious seeker, she stood for a while at the verge of the sea that ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... slowly around the horizon while he carefully tuned the various dials. It was when the rods pointed toward the southeast that there suddenly came the first response he had ever received. From somewhere within the mechanism there came a faint staccato ripple of clear beauty like countless tiny hammers ...
— The Cavern of the Shining Ones • Hal K. Wells
... had done for weeks. When he awoke next morning he went out. After a good night he found a pleasant exhilaration in the freshness of the early air. The sea was a more vivid blue, the sky more brilliant, than on most days, the trade wind was fresh, and there was a ripple on the lagoon as the breeze brushed over it like velvet brushed the wrong way. He felt himself stronger and younger. He entered upon the day's work with zest. After luncheon he slept again, and as evening ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... of water lay dark and silent within its stone steps; not a ripple disturbed its surface; not a dead leaf rested on its bosom. Only the motionless water looked up everlastingly at the gray winter skies above, and reflected them back blackly and gloomily ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... tied by conventions; they cannot even express admiration in fitting language; they may giggle or cackle so that every ripple of laughter and every turn of a phrase sounds nauseously insincere. Marion Dearsley durst not talk frankly with this fine fellow, but ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... whose waters are green and very much the color of the Niagara River. I cast the fly over on the water, and instantly a large fish came up, took the fly, and went down again so easily and gracefully that he scarcely made a ripple on the water until he felt the pull of the line. That was when I forgot everything connected with camp—Faye, horse thieves, and Indians! I had no reel, of course, and getting the big fish out of the water ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... same time with us. Having washed down decks and got 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 the whole forenoon, and were ready for a start upon the first sign of a breeze. Often we ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... spire midway between the roof of the church and the cross at the top of the spire. The Abbey where we built the Church was not girt by stone walls, but by a circle of poplar trees, and whenever a wind passed over them, were it ever so little a breath, it set them all a-ripple; and when the wind was high, they bowed and swayed very low, and the wind, as it lifted the leaves, and showed their silvery white sides, or as again in the lulls of it, it let them drop, kept on changing the trees from ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris
... What remains of the vision of that long succession of streets called by successive names from Knightsbridge to Ludgate Hill is the rush of a human torrent, in which you are scarcely more aware of the single life than of any given ripple in a river. Men, women, children form the torrent, but each has been lost to himself in order to give it the collective immensity which abides ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... The big Nubian sat at one end, cross-legged, a rifle on his knees. At the stern sat a brown boy. And so Arlee sank into the tired sleep that claimed her, and did not wake until the warm sunshine in her tiny window and the ripple of water against the sides told her that another morning was at hand and that they were ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... intermittent bursts of martial strains Which died upon the shout, as if amazed By gladness beyond music—they passed on! The Magistracy, with insignia, passed,— And all the people shouted in the sun, And all the thousand windows which had cast A ripple of silks in blue and scarlet down (As if the houses overflowed at last), Seemed growing larger with fair heads and eyes. The Lawyers passed,—and still arose the shout, And hands broke from the windows to surprise Those grave calm ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... had risen with a jingle of steel scabbard and a ripple of glitter on his gold-embroidered breast; a heavy sword-hilt appeared at his side above the edge of the table. In this gorgeous uniform, with his bull neck, his hooked nose flattened on the tip upon a blue-black, dyed moustache, he looked like a disguised ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... are not inappropriate in dealing with the small volume of 116 pages called Ionica, long ago ushered into the world so silently that its publication did not cause a single ripple on the sea of literature. Gradually this book has become first a rarity and then a famous possession, so that at the present moment there is perhaps no volume of recent English verse so diminutive which commands so high a price among collectors. When the library of Mr. Henry Bradshaw was ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... variety give a wild and romantic beauty to this poetical stream. At times it glides smoothly along through low meadow lands, and again it plunges into some dense thicket or brawls through some briery dell where the foliage is so thick that one can only see the glint and ripple of its waters at rare intervals, shining between the lapping leaves and tangled vines. Then again it sweeps onward through cleft rocks and jutting banks until, lost at last in the very heart of the primeval forest, its twilight waters reflect the images of giant trees which had their ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... revealed, with minstrel touch, Soften'd the spirit. There, in tones subdued By strong emotion, he disclosed his love For Leonore. "Oh Conrad! she is pure And peaceful as the lily bud that sleeps On the heaven-mirror'd lake." "I know it well, Nor would I wake a ripple or a breath To mar its purity." "Yet wait, my Son!" "Wait? Mother, wait! It is not in man's heart To love, and wait?" "But make your prayer to God. Lay your petition at his feet, and see What is His will." "Before that God I swear To be her true ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... taken complete possession of the body as well as the limbs, and a strange ripple ran just ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... Bucholz for the murder of Henry Schulte began in the old Court House at Bridgeport on the ninth day of September, and a ripple of excitement pervaded the city. The interest attaching to this case had extended beyond the locality in which it had occurred, and the reporter's table was crowded with representatives of the various metropolitan journals ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... religious services, came also the ministers of other denominations. We all labored together in harmony, except in one instance, where a conflict of appointments caused a momentary ripple. My appointment had long been established, and, to the surprise of the people, another appointment was announced by a young store-keeper of the village for the same hour. The word reached me of this attempt to displace ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... blue lake from the outside world. A rudely-built bloto, merely the hollowed trunk of a tree, crosses the water, with a torch flickering at the prow, for the sun has set, and the crimson afterglow begins to fade from the serrated crests of the opposite heights. The ripple of the water in the reeds at the edge of the road, and the sigh of the evening breeze, fluttering the leaves and creaking the yellow canes of the great bamboos, alone stir the silence, which comes as a welcome relief after the toil and excitement of the day; but alas! ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... the moonlight glided over each ripple, and reed, and closing water-lily; over her face, where the hood had fallen back from her loosened hair; over one hand trailing the water, and the other touching the flower at her breast; and, just above her breath, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... brown. Cupid who danced all naked in the log canoe, till the white gentlemen, swimming round, upset him; and canoe, and boy, and men rolled and splashed about like a shoal of seals at play, beneath the cliff with the Seguines and Cereuses; while the ripple lapped the Moriche-nuts about the roots of the Manchineel bush, and the skippers leaped and flashed outside, like silver splinters? And here, where we steamed along, was the very spot where we had seen the shark's back-fin when we rowed back from the first Guacharo cave. ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... farandole standing in a circle, each a link in an endless chain. It is but a mirage; those who look down know that they are dancing on a silken thread stretched over an abyss that swallows up all who fall and shows not even a ripple on its surface. What foot is sure? Nature herself seems to deny you her divine consolation; trees and flowers are yours no more; you have broken your mother's laws, you are no longer one of her foster children; the birds of the field ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... in Bermuda is the best fun imaginable for persons not liable to sea-sickness. The fisherman has in his left hand a "water-glass," which is merely a stout box with the bottom filled in with plate-glass. The water-glass must be held below the ripple of the surface, which, by the way, requires a fair amount of muscular effort, when through the pane of glass, the sea-floor ten fathoms below is clearly visible. The coloured fish of Jamaica were neutral-tinted pigmies compared to the polychrome monsters on a Bermudian reef, ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... cherished when they founded it, with the hardships and the sorrow, and the sickness and the pain, and the joy that had hallowed it as no other spot in all the universe—the place where their first love had nursed them in its tenderness, where they had sat hand in hand in the gathering dusk, drinking the ripple of the water and the whirr of the wild duck's wing; where she had gone down into the valley of the shadow and their little children had come into their arms. And it was gone. He had sold it. Without so much as by-your-leave from the partner of his labours ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... I refer to that most respectable and antique institution, the Committee on Revolutionary Claims. For thirty years it has been without business. For thirty long years the placid surface of that parliamentary sea has been without one single ripple. If the senator from Massachusetts desires a tribunal for calm judicial equilibrium and examination, a tribunal far from the "madding crowd's ignoble strife," a tribunal eminently respectable, dignified ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... to light and tumbled ignominiously into the basket,—to be followed every second or two by another of his companions; for the clam holes were many. The basket was soon full, but not before the cool ripple of the tide had passed the muscle rocks and ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... Instant the time—speed, Malise, speed!" Like heath-bird, when the hawks pursue, A barge across Loch Katrine flew; High stood the henchman on the prow, 290 So rapidly the barge-men row, The bubbles, where they launched the boat, Were all unbroken and afloat, Dancing in foam and ripple still, When it had neared the mainland hill; 295 And from the silver beach's side Still was the prow three fathom wide, When lightly bounded to the land The messenger of blood ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... burning of the stars. Whether just lit or just expiring counts little in eternity. The light and heat of the star is being absorbed by the ether of space as effectually and rapidly as the ocean swallows the ripple from the wings of an expiring insect. Sir William Herschel says of the galaxy of the milky way:— "We do not know the rate of progress of this mysterious chronometer, but it is nevertheless certain ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... his wing as his bright-plumaged fellows had done. The stars paled; nature stirred in her sleep; the sailor on the deck felt the tremor that quivered through the animate world, and rubbed his eyes more vigorously. A breeze moved through the trees; the ripple of the water was more distinct; there was a splash—another—another. A frog croaked sleepily to his fellows, and got no answer for a while. A yellow band stretched across the eastern horizon; it tinged the heaving waters, it flecked ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... 'Ape' (yes) was the reply. Not a word of French could I draw from them. When the cliffs were at length scaled, and I was on the open tableland, I found the south wind blowing there with great violence, although in the valley there was scarcely breeze enough to ripple the river pools. The sun was falling into the yellow haze of the west as I began to descend towards the valley of the Dourdou. I came upon a tributary of this stream in the bottom of a deep and solemn gorge, whose steep sides were densely wooded except where the rock jutted out and revealed ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... plumes of the Plynck and her Echo rippled as they breathed and slept, rather like water or fire in a little wind; and with every ripple they seemed to shake out a faint perfume that drifted across Sara's face in waves. And they both looked so lovely that she could not think of disturbing them, either. So she looked about to see if there might be any one else ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... Galata Bridge and in the mysterious quiet of Stamboul there was no ripple on the surface of affairs as other tourists haggled over a few piastres in the curio shops ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... sceptre for centuries kept, Shall it pass like the ripple, unhonour'd, unwept: Unknowing the lance, and the victim unknown, Far from Aberffraw's halls and Eryri ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... woman; "but for all that you can never return to the fair hills of Erin. But cheer up, Cuglas, there are mossy ways and forest paths and nestling bowers in fairyland. Lonely they are, I know, in your eyes now," said the little woman; "but maybe," she added, with a laugh as musical as the ripple on a streamlet when summer is in the air, "maybe you won't always think them ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... and it was presently 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 both in town and at ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... ever an opportunist careless of consequences. So, for that matter, was the gangsman. Knowing well that Jack would make a break for it the first chance he got, he hovered about the ship both day and night, alert for every movement on board, watchful of every ripple on the water, taunting the woebegone sailors with the irksomeness of their captivity or the certainty of their capture, and awaiting with what patience he could the hour that should see pratique restored and the crew at his mercy. Whether the ship had "catching" disease ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... swish, a ripple upstream. And as their heads turned they saw the water part and a black head, long, evil, glistening, pointing coldly down to where they were struggling towards the shore. Phil Holmes felt his strength ooze out. ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... gray and moss-grown walls, This ivied porch, and trelliced vine, The lattice with its narrow pane, A relic of the olden time; The willow with its waving leaves, Through which the low winds murmuring glide, The gurgling ripple of the stream That whispers softly at ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... and roll of bread, with the query and "2" beyond, all point to the fact that the consultant will have little complaints and grumbles to put up with, and there will be some doubt as to which of two people is most to blame. But it will be only a small ripple upon the otherwise smooth surface of the ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... neighborhood of his residence, which is always located in the river's bank. This is not true; for, in every stream which he inhabits, if this was his sole object, he could select many natural places where the water is without a ripple and where it is both deep and broad. The animal has a wiser object in view; and, it consists in providing against the pinching wants of hunger during winter, when nearly everything green has lost its sap and nutrition, and is, as a body, without blood and animation. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... bark on that Niagara river; it is bright, smooth, beautiful, and glassy. There is a ripple at the bow; the silver wake you leave behind, adds to your enjoyment. Down the stream you glide, oars, sails, and helm in proper trim, and you set out on your ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... "You boys know a lot about New York, just about as much as I do. I've read that a guy can drop a hundred dollars a night in a cabaret if he has a friend or two along, and never make a ripple on Broadway." ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... season of spring and sunshine. The lark carolled high in the air, the swallows darted on light wings to and fro; and the sea, vast and beautiful, gently heaved and undulated against the shore, with scarcely a ripple to break the long line of golden light, which danced and sparkled on its breast. The church bells were chiming for morning prayer; and the cliffs were covered with happy groups in their holiday attire. Flora, surrounded by friends and relatives, strove to be cheerful; ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... and the making-up would begin. Heigh-ho! I wish it could begin tonight!" She was silent then for a few minutes, and in a sadder voice added—"with Max I should become an angel—and I should have a life without a ripple—I would hate it, just as I hate the sea when it lies like a mirror under the sunshine—then I always want to scream out for a great north wind and the sea in a passion, shattering everything in its way. If I got into ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... to discredit the name of Mr. Lincoln and nominate some one else in his place caused hardly a ripple on the great current of public opinion. Death alone could have prevented his choice by the Union convention. So absolute and universal was the tendency that most of the politicians made no effort to direct or guide it; they simply ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... north there were islands, long stretches of sea opening between their green shores, far up into the coast land. The wind freshened and died, until at last in the twilight with scarcely a ripple the Swallow floated into a sheltered cove on the outermost of all the islands. A forest of stiff little spruces covered the sea point, and behind this was a smooth green field, and above on the crest of the island a ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... monomaniac, but for the fact that he cared too little about anything to go to law for it, and for the still more important fact that the heirs-at-law were sufficiently numerous to ingulf the whole property and leave no ripple to attest its submerged existence, had he done so; and on deserting it, he was better pleased to enrich the playfellow of his childhood than a host of unknown and unloved individuals. I cannot say that he did not more ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... house during the first act. Keeping his muffler pinned close so that his evening dress escaped notice, he found his way down to the railing quite secure from recognition by any one at the peep-hole of the curtain or in the boxes, and there took his seat to watch the late-comers ripple down the aisles. He was experienced enough to know that "first-nighters" do not always count and that they are sometimes false prophets, and yet he could not suppress a growing exaltation as the beautiful auditorium filled with men ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... glare of evening. The flush rose higher and higher, chased by the shadows; and then, after lingering for a moment on their crests of honeysuckle and juniper, passed away, and the whole became sombre and grey. The sea-gull sprang upwards from where he had floated on the ripple, and hied him slowly away to his lodge in his deep-sea stack; the dusky cormorant flitted past, with heavier and more frequent stroke, to his whitened shelf high on the precipice; the pigeons came whizzing downwards from the uplands and the opposite land, and disappeared amid the gloom ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... of water looked like a huge band of satin, and the slightest motion of the leaves was immediately perceptible in the mirror beneath them. From time to time, the least possible breeze rustled through the trees, and curled the water with a tiny ripple. The water itself was of the brightest emerald-green; and the forest of palmetto stems that grew along the edge, was reflected in it like myriads of swords and lances. In the small creeks and inlets, flocks of swans, pelicans, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... in the midnight of May. The tumbling of the seas makes a tune far away. She comes with closed eyes, with light footsteps she nears, And she sings the low song that each lipping ripple hears. "In love there ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... Blake walked along the streets in the midst of a crowd of happy, chatting church-goers her spirits rose, and she nodded gayly to the Buckstone girls and Harley Morris, and broke into quite a ripple of laughter as John Gardiner overtook them and asked if the wheel he had brought her the night before had ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... canticle again, went down the roof, and entered the water. It covered her softly, without a ripple. I had not ceased smiling. I looked with happiness upon the spot where ...
— The Flood • Emile Zola
... children and to make me lonely. I found playthings I could not carry in my pocket. These have remained with me all my life. The path we leave behind us is the one we oftenest tread. One little brook still flows through my heart. I feel it, I hear its smothered ripple, not meant for hearing, and I smell ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... rose-like perfume that fills your hair, Of times when my lips were free of your soft closed eyes, While down in the tank the waters ripple and rise And the flying foxes ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... Mary repeated, still in the dream that was made of music and moonlight, the ripple of the sea and the stirring of something new in her nature of which all these sweet and beautiful things seemed part. "Love! I never thought ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... have been too late. I was drifting out to the dark sea of death. I felt as if the river were bearing me so much nearer to that unknown sea with every ripple of the hurrying tide. 'Twas your draught of strong wine snatched me back from the cruel river, drew me on to terra firma again, renewed my consciousness of manhood, and that I was not a weed to be washed away. Oh, that wine! Ye gods! what elixir to this parched, burning throat! Did ever ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... defense), must have fallen victim to that. But the Throg was going to make very sure. The second flyer halted, remaining poised long enough to unleash a second bolt—dazzling any watching eyes and broadcasting a vibration to make Shann's skin crawl when the last faint ripple reached ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... eager band of successors, suggests an unpreparedness for the discovery when it came. Thus Calisto and Melibaea (1530), an imitation of a Spanish comedy of the same name, though it contained a definitely evolved plot, sent barely a ripple over the surface of succeeding authorship. It represents the steadfastness of the maiden Melibaea against the entreaties of her lover Calisto and the much more crafty, indeed almost successful, wiles of the procuress, Celestine. True, the play is dull enough. But if dramatists had been awake ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... Buffalo, if you must know! They pinched him on an old case, so you needn't blame me. I tell you I'm clear done with him. Love that worm! He just gave me an excuse to let my blacksheep blood ripple a little and it's all over now. And I'm sorry I played you for a sucker; honest I am. You gave me a lot of money for a wedding present and as the wedding doesn't count I'm going to give it back. You'll find it tucked away in your collar-box in the top drawer of your ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... you now regret, And crave a titled suitor yet; Hearts that are anchored side by side, No surface-ripple ...
— Daisy Dare, and Baby Power - Poems • Rosa Vertner Jeffrey
... In 1542 a ripple was caused by an order issued by Soliman the Great, forbidding the use of coffee; but no one took it seriously, especially as it soon became known that the order had been obtained "by surprise" and at the desire of only one of the court ladies ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... mention of Count von Kerber, which added a ripple to the wave of astonishment in Royson's breast. He took his baggage to Charing Cross in a cab, and deposited it there. Meanwhile, he learned from a further scrutiny of the list that his own few belongings were hardly wanted. ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... across the glassy surface of the deep, yielding a magic power to the soul-inspiring scene, and, by reflection, doubling the objects on the sea, whose translucent bosom scarcely heaved a sigh, or murmured forth a ripple on the ear; and now, amid the stillness of the night, we were suddenly amused with the deep-sounding notes of the key-bugle reverberating over the blue waters with most harmonious effect. "We are indebted to that mad ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... lady, and she runs up the scale with such witty exchange of compliment now culminating in a sob of passion, that the words are indistinguishable though the meaning is plain enough—love, laughter, flight, pursuit, celestial bliss—all floated out on the gayest ripple of tender endearment—until the sound of the silver horns, at first far distant, gradually sounds more and more distinctly, as if seneschals were saluting the dawn or proclaiming ominously the escape of the lovers.... The green garden, moonlit pool, lemons, lovers, and fish are all dissolved ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... to cause no little uneasiness. Brown paid tribute to his influence, when he declared that if the Senator from Illinois had stood with the administration, "there would not have been a ripple on the surface." "Sir, the Senator from Illinois gives life, he gives vitality, he gives energy, he lends the aid of his mighty genius and his powerful will to the Opposition on this question."[655] But Douglas paid a fearful ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... was painted to the eyes, and her maid was not quite skilful in blending her complexion rightly with her vivid hair; beautiful hair it was, with a large ripple that was most attractive, but Mr. Withells, sitting on the other side of Lady Pen, decided that he didn't approve of her. She was flamboyant and daring of speech. She made him nervous. He felt ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... I was, a greater enchantment awaited, when the next few steps brought me to a pool; a pool of crystal transparency, though dark for reflecting the black bowl of earth in which it lay. Without a ripple it nestled close against the roots of a golden-fig tree—an unfruitful parasitic giant of squat stature and tremendous girth; while, pendant from one gnarled out-reaching branch, and almost touching the mirror-like surface into ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... 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 ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... probably have got safely by the dangerous point but for a totally unlooked-for mishap. The water, which up to this time had been fully six feet in depth, suddenly shallowed to less than a quarter of that, so that he struck his knees against the bottom. The shock was very slight, and scarcely caused a ripple; but it takes only the slightest noise to alarm an Indian, especially when he is on the watch. That faint plash caused by the jar of the body caught the ear of the listening, peering redskin, who instantly slid his body over the bluff, and balancing himself for an instant, ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... equally compounded of simplicity and common sense. Her greatest charm was precisely what we call charm—a sweetly willing, pliant disposition, an air of gay seriousness, such as a child has, and a mood which could run swiftly, at the touch on some secret spring, from the ripple of laughter to the urgency of tears. She was very devout, but not at all in our way, who must set our God very far off if we are to consider His awful nature; she carried her gaiety with her into church, and would laugh in the ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... water, and its presence betrayed by the peculiar surface-ripple that marks its wake, a bomb with a delay-action fuse can be dropped upon it, the projectile not exploding until it reaches a depth of fifty feet or so. In case the first bomb does not score a hit, there are others to follow, with better ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... moments, when the ripple I caused had died away, sounds of life began again; unknown water creatures made queer noises in the pool below, low bird tones, unfamiliar scraps of song fell on the ear, ordinary ways ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... slowly, as though still intoxicated with that more than mortal sweetness, they bore it afar to the four corners of the earth. Some of it sank into the valley, and the river turned in its sleep to dimple with smiles, ripple with silvery laughter, and drop to sleep again. The scent of it rose to the hills, like heavenly incense from earthly altars, and the Little People in feathers and fur breathed deeply ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... Charlotte laughed—a ripple of merriment which was contagious, for Captain Rayburn smiled over the evening paper, and ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... Ida went out and strolled by the river, that river of which no one ever seems to grow weary. She wandered about the level meadows, where the last of the wild-flowers were blooming, or she sat on the bank, watching the ripple of the water, the slow smooth passage of pleasure-boat or barge, and the day was long but not dreary. It was so new to her to be idle, to be able to fold her hands and watch the stream, and not to fear reproof because she had ceased from ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... non-fulfilment, that annually attacked his most cherished hopes for the future development of his native town, failed in any wise to depress him, or check the prodigal casting of his optimistic daily bread on the placid social waters where, as the years multiplied, his enthusiasms scarce made a ripple. ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... Me too a darling smooth of face notes as I tend my flocks: How maddeningly o'er that fair neck ripple ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... river; Jake was waiting for the tools, and since wages were high, delay was costly. Then the gorge echoed with pulsating noise. The roar of the rapid rose and fell; he heard the wash of the eddy against the bank, the sharp ripple where the current split upon the rock, and the rattle of gravel striking the stones. The canoes rocked, swung to and fro, and brought up with sudden jerks. He did not know if the Indian slept, but if he did, a new note in the confused uproar ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... other mouldings, which at first sight appear very elaborate, are nothing more than a chamfer, with a series of small echoes of it on each side, dying away with a ripple on the surface of the wall, as in b, Fig. LV., from Coutances (observe, here the white part is the solid stone, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... are mistaken," said Max, impatiently, tossing the dagger to the floor and stepping back from the duke. A soft ripple of laughter was heard ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... far out of sight, assured me, what everything conspired to assure me, that I was certainly in fairyland, not on the common earth. But I could not get on with my Bible at all. Again and again I began to read; then a bird or a bough or a ripple would catch my attention, and straightway I was off on a flight of fancy or memory, dancing over again my dances with Mr. Thorold, dwelling upon the impression of his figure and dress, and the fascination of his brilliant, changing ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... courage again and stolen back to the balcony that opened upon the Canal Grande from the vast upper salon, impelled by her longing for freedom and light. The ripple of the water to the plash of passing gondolas took on the note of distance and soothed her like a lullaby, as the charming maid yielded herself to the golden daydream—the soft breezes lifting the bright rings of hair that clustered about her dainty head, while the wonderful light of the skies ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... somewhat delicate-looking gentleman seated beside him turned upon the big man an expansive smile, a mischievous smile, and, pushing his goggles up on his forehead, burst into such a ripple of laughter that his drooping moustache, which seemed so natural, fell from its place, instantly transforming him. It was the jovial, yet cautious, Henri enjoying this ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... was very early that year, and although it was not yet May, the green tassels were on the maples and the wild flowers made the ground gay in places. All around the clearing ran a ripple of bird song. The sunshine was 15 dreamy, the wind soft ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... one wild scream that went echoing and re-echoing to the roof. There was scarcely a splash, and no extra ripple at all. No heads came up again to gasp. No fingers clutched at the surface. The fearful speed of the river sucked them under, to grind and churn and pound them through long caverns underground and hurl them at last over the great cataract toward the ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... been called assertive. It was all a tune to which Fanny's heart could privately palpitate: her guest was happy, happy as a consequence of something that had occurred, but she was making the Prince not lose a ripple of her laugh, though not perhaps always enabling him to find it absolutely not foolish. Foolish, in public, beyond a certain point, he was scarce the man to brook his wife's being thought to be; so that there hovered before their friend the possibility of some subsequent scene between them, in ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... Bateese, who cared nothing for sport, had paddled up-stream to inspect the next reach of the river, and there, at the first ford, had found the moose lying dead and warm, with the ripple running over his flank and his gigantic horns high out of the water like ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the horse the same evening. He had of course no time to lose, and had begun his journey at the earliest possible hour. We found the sands firm and level, except the slight wrinkles produced by the ripple of the waves; but they were still wet, having only just been left by the sea. The guide appeared to drive with caution, and in no place went farther than a mile from land. We had a good deal of conversation, and I found him intelligent and communicative. His name is Thomas ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... stared at them as they passed. She heard clearly the expressions of wonder and curiosity of two women and a girl who were spreading out blankets in front of a rooming-tent. She looked at the man at her side. She appreciated his courtesy in not attempting to force an acquaintanceship. In her eyes was a ripple ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... the vast expanses of the oily sea no ripple was to be seen although Captain BABBIJAM kept his binoculars levelled at the silent horizon for three-quarters of an hour by the saloon clock. Far away in the murky distance of the mysterious empyrean, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... hands on his shoulders—lightly—the very ghost of contact. That was all. He waited a hundred years. Then another. Then, his weapons levelled, listening, he cast a quick glance backward. At the foot of the Pulpit a dark ripple lapped the rock. Nothing there now; nothing in Isla Water save far in the stars' lustre the ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... pause. From the kitchen region came much slamming of light wire door, and the sound of hissing and steaming, high-keyed remarks from the Chinese and the Portuguese girls, and now and then the ripple of Manzanita's laughter. A farm-hand crossed the yard, with pails of milk, and presently a dozen or more men came down the steep trail that ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... 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 ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... the small ripple spilt upon the beach Scarcely o'erpassed the cream of your champagne, When o'er the brim the sparkling bumpers reach, That spring-dew of the spirit! the heart's rain! Few things surpass old wine; and they may preach Who please,—the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... upon them. Neal and Triplett were killed, and fell into the river.—Rowell was missed and escaped by swimming the Kenhawa, the Indians shooting at him as he swam. In a few days after the dead were found in a ripple and buried. The Indians had not been able to draw them from their watery grave, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... perilous gift. He believes profoundly in silence—the sign of a perfect equilibrium. Silence is the absolute poise or balance of body, mind, and spirit. The man who preserves his selfhood ever calm and unshaken by the storms of existence—not a leaf, as it were, astir on the tree; not a ripple upon the surface of shining pool—his, in the mind of the unlettered sage, is the ideal attitude ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... perchance at Cyprus, exalted at the prospect of visiting the Cyprians' temple; or perchance standing with Gertrude on the deck of the yacht watching the stars growing dim in the east; the sailors would be singing at the time, and out of the ashen stillness a wind would come, and again we would hear the ripple of the water parting as the jib filled and drew the schooner eastward. I imagined how half an hour later an island would appear against the golden sky, a lofty island lined with white buildings, perchance ancient fanes. 'What a delicious book my six months with Gertrude will be!' I ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... ceased to gild the edges of the few clouds that had sufficient openings to admit the passage of its fading light. The canopy overhead was heavy and dense, promising another night of darkness, but the surface of the lake was scarcely disturbed by a ripple. There was a little air, though it scarce deserved to be termed wind. Still, being damp and heavy, it had a certain force. The party in the castle were as gloomy and silent as the scene. The two ransomed prisoners felt humbled and ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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. ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... the toiling ship, the dip of oars resonant in the hollow fog and a ripple babbling on her cutwater ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... around which the wavelets sparkled, pushed out into the deep, clear flood. Great mountains rose in the background, lonely, untouched by man's all-desolating hand, while all about us lay suave slopes clothed with most beautiful pea-vine, just beginning to ripple in the wind, and beyond lay level meadows lit by little ponds filled with wildfowl. There was just forest enough to lend mystery to these meadows, and to shut from our eager gaze the beauties of other and still more entrancing glades. ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... let thine hair Lighten as flame above that nameless shell Which was the moon, and thine eyes fill the world And thy lips kindle with swift beams; let earth Laugh, and the long sea fiery from thy feet Through all the roar and ripple of streaming springs And foam in reddening flakes and flying flowers Shaken from hands and blown from lips of nymphs Whose hair or breast divides the wandering wave With salt close tresses cleaving lock to lock, All gold, or shuddering and unfurrowed snow; And all the winds about thee with ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... me, thou God of mercy, To protect thine ancient hero, To support thy trusting servant, On the breasts of raging billows, On the far out-stretching waters. "Rock, O winds, this wondrous vessel, Causing not a single ripple; Rolling waves, bear ye me northward, That the oar may not be needed In my journey to Pohyola, O'er this mighty waste of waters." Ilmarinen's beauteous sister, Fair and goodly maid, Annikki, Of the Night and Dawn, the daughter, ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... 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
... the woak do overspread, The grass begloom'd below his head, An' water, under bowen zedge, A-springen vrom the river's edge, Do ripple, as the win' do blow, An' sparkle, as the sky do glow; An' grey-leav'd withy-boughs do cool, Wi' darksome sheaedes, the clear-feaeced pool, My chimny smoke, 'ithin the lew O' trees is there arisen blue; Avore the night do dim our zight, Or candle-light, ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... entered she looked up, and her lips curved and parted; her eyelids fluttered twice or thrice—a movement remindful (Poesy forgive us!) of the tail-wagging of a faithful dog—and a little ripple went through her like the commotion set up in a weeping willow by a puff of wind. Thus she ever acknowledged his coming, were it twenty times a day. If they who sometimes sat over their wine in Coralio, reshaping old, diverting stories of the madcap career ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... our arms caused, as was to be expected, considerable excitement all along the border; indeed, throughout India the announcement produced a certain feeling of uneasiness—a mere surface ripple—but enough to make those who remembered the days of the Mutiny anxious for ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... the world and the desires thereof assailed her, visit Sudleigh Fair. Better still, she need account to nobody if she chose to sit there on the doorstone, and let the hours go unregretted by. Presently, her happy musing was broken by a ripple from the outer world. A girl came briskly round the corner where the stone-wall lay hidden under a wilderness of cinnamon rosebushes and blackberry vines,—Rosa Tolman, dressed in white pique, with a great leghorn hat over her curls. The girl came ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... my house, without a ripple on its surface, and gleaming in the bright morning sunlight. It was a beautiful, broad, indolent silver stream, with crimson lights here and there; and on the opposite side of the river were rows of tall trees that covered all the bank with an immense wall ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... expedition had been set, and as often changed. The last date had been fixed for the eighth of July; but the excitement of the wreck, and the reaction of lassitude which followed that catastrophe, put to flight, for a time, all thoughts of amusement, and a fortnight elapsed without an apparent ripple on the calm of existence ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... naked figure with a boarding-sword in its hand, was for one swift moment seen hovering over the bulwarks. The next, a loud splash announced that my brave Queequeg had dived to the rescue. One packed rush was made to the side, and every eye counted every ripple, as moment followed moment, and no sign of either the sinker or the diver could be seen. Some hands now jumped into a boat alongside, and pushed a little off from the ship. Ha! ha! cried Daggoo, all at once, from his now quiet, swinging ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... on his bosom, watched her with keen friendly eyes. Clare was dreaming some agreeable morning-dream; for a smile of such pleasure as could haunt only an innocent face, nickered on it like a sunny ripple on the ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... importunately. This is our first real danger. There is real excitement in this. We all hope there will be a fight; all except Smallweed, who remains melancholy, according to his wont, save when a sad pun breaks the surface into a temporary ripple of quiet smiles. And so, with wild jokes, mad capers, and loudly shouted songs, we whirl along, twenty miles an hour, over bridges, through cuts, above embankments, always through danger and into danger. Hoot, toot! shrieks the engine; the breaks are rasped down; ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... charming enough to tempt any lover of nature. It is the abundance of these invincible foes which make interior life a burden and almost an impossibility. To these inhabitants alone Grand Falls has ceased to chant its melodious tune. Hereafter its melodious ripple will be heard by Bowdoin College, which, in the name of its explorers, Cary and Cole, claims the honor of ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... littlest sound was afloat, so that each was given its true value almost like a musical tone. An awful, beautiful silence this, brooding back of every sound; nothing in such a place gives forth mere senseless noise; the ripple of frogs in marsh and spring branch fall upon the sense as sweet as bird-songs. The clamour of little falls, the solemn suggestion of wind in the pines, the sweet broken jangle of cow-bells, a catbird in a tree—a continuous yet zigzag sort of warble, silver and sibilant notes ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... Suddenly a faint, fluttering ripple appeared to the southward; it came quickly: it seemed to flash over the waters; with the speed of the wind it moved on, till a quick, fresh blast struck the ship and sighed through the rigging. Then a faint breathing ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... sweeping round had cut out a wide bed, nearly three times its usual breadth. Tall trees grew almost to the verge of the banks on both sides, so that the water was almost always in shadow, while so high were the banks that few breezes were able to ripple its surface. It lay placid all the year, scarcely troubled even in winter, when the other parts of the creek rushed and tumbled in flood. There was room in the high banks of Anglers' Bend for all the extra water, and its presence was only marked by the strength ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... 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 rumour of a ripple, somewhere in the outside darkness, as though an object had been let into the water ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... eyes dwelt with pleasure on the noble lines of her relaxed figure. Better than beauty, he admitted the moment afterward, was the charm that shone for him in her wonderfully expressive face—a face over which the experiences of many lives seemed to ripple faintly in what was hardly more than the shadow of a smile. She had loved and suffered, he thought, with his gaze upon her, and from both love and suffering she had gained that fulness of nature which is the greatest good that either has ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... gurgled on a bough. In a moment Red Head had silently scaled the tree. Two tail feathers alone remained to show an awed game-keeper that Red Head had passed that way. A woodcock floated silently on the bosom of the tiny lake. He did not note the ripple which showed that a powerful animal was swimming towards him. A scream, and the woodcock, trumpeting shrilly, is drawn into ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various
... thought of thy gold weigheth more heavily with thee than the wrong to thy cloth," said the Queen, smiling, and at this a ripple of laughter went around, for everyone knew how fond the Bishop was of his money. Then the Queen turned to a knight who stood near, whose name was Sir Robert Lee. "Wilt thou back me in this manner?" said she. "Thou art surely rich enough ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... ripple and gleam of the young man's faultless coat, registered upon Banneker's subconscious memory as it had fallen at his feet, ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... rivers in the southeastern peninsula, the Macoris and the Soco furnish valuable outlets for the products of the sugar estates on their banks. A number of Dominican streams offer peculiarities. In the mountains there are brooks which gush out of the hillside, merrily ripple on for miles and vanish into the ground as mysteriously as they came. A number of coast streams sink into the sand of the beach, just before reaching the ocean. The Brujuelas River, which rises on the edge of the great plains, northwest of Bayaguana, flows south 25 miles through the ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... another. Without a word two keen swords flew from their scabbards and a duel to the death ensued. The visitors stared in amazement, but no one else paid any attention to the combat, which was soon over; the victor turning away from the body of his opponent and resuming his place without creating a ripple of interest. ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... the little table that fronted the open window and rested his head on his hands. It was early spring; the snow was gone; dazzling sunshine bathed the prairies in the distance, and near at hand were the twitter of birds and the ripple of water. It was a day to be ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... soon we came to a creek that ran through the woods and I could see it was deep and all shaded by the trees. Oh, jiminy, it was fine. And you could hear it ripple too, just like the water of Black Lake up near Temple Camp. If I was a grown-up author I could write some dandy stuff about it, because it was all dark and spooky as you might say, and you could see the trees reflected in it ...
— Roy Blakeley • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... closely-packed rows, listening to the pretentious instrumental noises which were impudently offered to them as a substitute for melody. While these docile victims of the worst of all quackeries (musical quackery) were still toiling through their first hour of endurance, a passing ripple of interest stirred the stagnant surface of the audience caused by the sudden rising of a lady overcome by the heat. She was quickly led out of the concert-room (after whispering a word of explanation ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... when all things seem born anew into some larger heritage of beauty. The moon hung low over the quiet sea, sleeping now under the spell of the summer night, as if no storm had ever vexed it. So silent, so hushed was it that but for the soft ripple on the sand we should have thought it calmed in eternal repose. Far off along the horizon the stars hung motionless as the sea; overhead they shone out of the measureless depths of space with a soft and solemn splendour. Not a branch moved on the great trees behind us, folded now ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... done.—Ah! Gold? Yes, I trust Our Lady's mercies are not shut up, nor her arms shortened.—Look, senors!"—and he pointed majestically out of the window. "It looks gold! it smells of gold, as I may say, by a poetical license. Yea, the very waves, as they ripple past us, sing of gold, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... there caves and precipitous little cliffs against which the sea broke in spray and thunder. But the inner shore, the shore of the lagoon, was low and regular, and so well protected by the wall of trees along the ridge that no storm could ever send more than a passing ripple along its sandy marges. Eternal ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... turned her head away to conceal the broad grin of triumph that spread over her vast face, like a ripple on a lake. "Little simpletons!" she muttered to herself, as she marched up to the ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... us that you will fight, and we will yield to you as we have yielded to everybody else." Captain Craig, following, said that the Prime Minister anticipated that Ulster's objection would after a few years be merely a ripple on the surface. "If the right honourable gentleman has challenged this part of his Majesty's dominions to civil war, ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... that has blinded you. The dazzling golden hoard you desired through life, watched, kept, gloated over. This love that tinged all your life and thoughts and feelings has poisoned you, has permeated with its fatal colour everything so that you cannot any longer see the beauty of the blue sky, the ripple of the moving waters, the tender bloom of blossoming flowers and trees. Remove the terrible gold-dust from your eyes that you have worshipped and you will see again, perhaps better than you have ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... assembled Cattleland. She had already met most of them at the launching of the machine from the flat car, and had directed their perspiring energies as they labored to follow her orders. Now she nodded a recognition with a little ripple of ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... at the other end of the table. A man of few fancies, he was never quite without imagination. His thoughts had travelled easily back to a few weeks ago. He saw Virginia sitting there, watched the delightful smile coming and going, the large grey eyes that watched him so ceaselessly, the little ripple of pleasant conversation, which he had never dreamed that he could ever miss. After all, what a child! As a matter of justice, and he told himself that it was justice only which had power to sway his judgment, what right had he to blame ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... disturbs the sleeping lake, And bids it ripple pure and fresh; It moves the green boughs till they make Grand music in their ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... should be subordinate. There be some highly intellectual persons who affect contempt when a preacher tells a story. There are very solemn persons who gravely disapprove when the sermon contains a touch of humour which causes a ripple of laughter in the holy place. Some people, again, hate an epigram, and say "the preacher is trying to be smart." It is impossible to please all the critics. The great business of the preacher is to get his work done; and if by a story, a touch of humour or of sarcasm, ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... was an oration delivered in the city of Baltimore in the year 1791, advancing the most extreme opinions, and it created not a ripple on the surface of ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole
... happiness; and when I went to bed there was something almost terrifying in the pleasures that besieged me in the darkness. Wonderful tremors filled me; my head swam in the most delirious but enjoyable manner; and the bed softly oscillated with me, like a boat in a very gentle ripple. It does not make me write a good style apparently, which is just as well, lest I should be tempted to renew the experiment; and some verses which I wrote turn out on inspection to be not quite equal to Kubla Khan. However, I was happy, and the recollection ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dipper family in North America. There is one species in South America, and another in Europe. He loves the mountain stream, with its dashing rapids and cascades. Indeed, he will erect his oven-like cottage nowhere else, and it must be a fall and not a mere ripple or rapid. Then from this point as a centre—or, rather, the middle point of a wavering line—he forages up and down the babbling, meandering brook, feeding chiefly, if not wholly, on water insects. Strange to say, he never leaves the ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... day when we were walking along the beach towards his station, we noticed some hundreds of pigeons fly down from the forest, settle on the margin of the water, and drink with apparent enjoyment. The harbour at this spot was almost land-locked, the water as smooth as glass without the faintest ripple, and the birds were consequently enabled to drink without wetting their plumage. My companion, who had lived many years in New Britain, told me that this drinking of sea-water was common alike to both cockatoos ...
— Amona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke |
