"Thaw" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hard-worked, discouraged woman whom we had seen, in spite of her bitterness. Poor soul! she looked like a person to whom nobody had ever been very kind, and for whom life had no pleasures: its sunshine had never been warm enough to thaw the ice at ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... lungs, by inhaling steam. Most of the bridges were swept away by the sudden melting of the snows, and large stores of provisions were spoiled by the unexpected appearance and violent character of the thaw. These may be enumerated among the unpleasant consequences. Among the pleasant, we esteem a final and agreeable melioration of the climate, which regained most of its ancient character, and a rapid and distinct elongation of our caudtz, by a sudden ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... things would go on like this, I should begin to grumble; but we shall probably get broken in to each other in a day or two, and then I can thaw him out. We talked glittering generalities for a while—the weather, and the war prospects abroad, and the chances of getting deer on the other side of a mountain not far away—like any commonplace boobies at a county ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... was head of the party in the lower kitchen. He stood at one end of the table, cutting with his huge knife the hard frozen pork into very thin slices, which the rest of the company took, and before they had time to thaw cut up into small dice on the little boards Mr. Van Brunt had prepared. As large a fire as the chimney would hold was built up and blazing finely; the room looked as cosy and bright as the one upstairs, and the people as busy and as talkative. They had less to do, however, ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... hadn't wanted you, you may be pretty sure I shouldn't have asked you," retorted Jane bluntly. "Mary an' 'Liza will likely be scat to death at first, but they'll get over it an' thaw out. Don't pay ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... consternation of the assembly was indescribable; and, in the first alarm, the deputies prepared for flight. The Emperor alone declared that he would not leave the town, and encouraged the rest by his example. Unfortunately for the Swedes, a thaw came on, which broke up the ice upon the Danube, so that it was no longer passable on foot, while no boats could cross it, on account of the quantities of ice which were swept down by the current. In order to perform something, and to humble the pride of the Emperor, Banner ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... am counting on you for next Friday. A young American author studying England—I suppose like that Count Something-or-other in Pickwick Papers—is coming to dinner. I understand he drinks very little, so I am relying on you to thaw him. ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... thaw, followed by drying wind. The roads were in good order for the visitors to the Aristophanic comedy. The fifth day of Christmas was fixed for the performance. The theatre was brilliantly lighted, with spermaceti candles in glass chandeliers for the audience, and ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... caused to flow over the face of the red cliffs, is now a stationary thread of silver, spell-bound by the enchaining frost; and icicles, or, as old-fashioned people call them, aglets, of three or four feet long, ornament the overhanging ledges, prone to fall to the beach—far, far below—when a thaw releases them from their present stations. But the air is so very keen that nothing but the briskness of our walk, and the enlivenment of an occasional spell of snow-balling, in which the seniors are tempted to join the juniors, prevent our ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... A thaw had set in, it was muddy and cold, the ice on the river broke, and the roads became impassable. For days neither provisions for the men nor fodder for the horses had been issued. As no transports could arrive, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... had been cleared of the snow for New-Year's day, by a thaw, and a hard shower in the night. The sun rose bright and clear; and, as usual, early in the morning, that is to say morning in its fashionable sense, the greater part of the male population of the town were in motion, hurrying in ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... long had dwelt. As she glanced by as lightly as a bird on the wing, she occasionally beamed upon him with one of her dangerous smiles. She then little thought or cared that his honest and unoccupied heart was as ready to thaw and blossom into love as a violet bank facing the south in spring. He soon had a vague consciousness that he was not doing just the prudent thing, and therefore rejoined his aunt and uncle. Soon after he pleaded the weariness of his journey and retired. ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... Like words congeal'd, &c.] Some report in Nova Zembla, and Greenland, mens' words are wont to be frozen in the air, and at the thaw ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... hurled some distance down the river, then piled up one above another until they reached the summit of the bank fifty or sixty feet high, and being deposited there in huge unsightly masses, were left to thaw away drop by drop, a process which it would take some five or six weeks to accomplish. Some of the men had lately returned from a bear hunt, being, however, disappointed of their prey—a matter of less consideration than usual, for Bruin, being ...
— Owindia • Charlotte Selina Bompas
... lie more off from the sun, and so are more cold and senseless; but was a man in a mountain of ice, yet if the Sun of Righteousness will arise upon him, his frozen heart shall feel a thaw; and thus it ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... thaw out again, and then you'll see. Instead of the comfortably tepid, genial ghost I have been in my past, sir, I shall be ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... buttresses, flying-buttresses, that keep the monument up, one thing there is that makes it totter. There is no loud battering from without, but a certain softness in the very foundations, which attacks the crystal with an imperceptible thaw. What thing do I mean? The humble stream of warm tears shed by a whole world, until they have become a very sea of wailings. What do I call it? A breath of the future, a stirring of the natural life, which shall presently rise again in irresistible might. The fantastic building ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... at the joke. Walter Hine could not but think that he had made a very witty remark. He began to thaw into something like confidence. He sat ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... the thaw did not set in quickly. Now, one Sunday, on their way to mass, the farmers noticed a great flight of crows, who were whirling endlessly above the open field, and then, like a shower of black rain, descended in a heap at the same ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... Fahrenheit, and in winter having fallen to 83 deg. below zero—making a difference of 189 deg. In this district are the enormous deposits of mammoth bones. Spring after spring, the alluvial banks of the lakes and rivers crumbling under the thaw have given up their dead; and the islands opposite to the mouth of the Yana, and, as there was reason for believing, even the bed of the ocean itself, teems with those mysterious memorials of antiquity. The question is, how do those bones come there? ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... in some form for many generations. I'm beginning to believe that the Englishman has always been afraid of the future—that's what's keeps him so alert. They say to me: "You have frightful things happen in the United States—your Governor of New York[16], your Thaw case, your corruption, etc., etc.; and yet you seem sure and tell us that your countrymen feel sure of the safety of your government." In the newspaper comments on my Southampton[17] speech the other day, this same feeling cropped up; ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... longer to keep up with Jones, called to him, and begged him a little to slacken his pace: with this he was the more ready to comply, as he had for some time lost the footsteps of the horses, which the thaw had enabled him to trace for several miles, and he was now upon a wide common, where ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... literary; and, above all, he had, as Scott recognised, but as has not been always recognised since, a really remarkable and then novel command of flowing but fairly strict lyrical measures, the very things needed to thaw the frost of the eighteenth-century couplet. Erskine offered, and Lewis gladly accepted, contributions from Scott, and though Tales of Wonder were much delayed, and did not appear till 1801, the project directly caused the production ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... bed. As when the copses on high mountains stand White-veiled with frozen snow, which o'er the glens The west-wind blasts have strown, but now the sun And east-wind melt it fast, and the long heights With water-courses stream, and down the glades Slide, as they thaw, the heavy sheets, to swell The rushing waters of an ice-cold spring, So melted she in tears of anguished pain, And for her own, her husband, agonised, And cried to her heart with miserable moans: "Woe for my wickedness! O hateful life! I loved mine hapless husband—dreamed ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... Europe: the churches were ordered to toll their only bell, and the gasconades of the bulletin were uncommonly pompous—but the novelty of the event has now subsided, and the conquest of Holland excites less interest than the thaw. Public spirit is absorbed by private necessities or afflictions; people who cannot procure bread or firing, even though they have money to purchase it, are little gratified by reading that a pair of their Deputies ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... a welcome visitor at the ranch houses and was regarded as a good fellow. At the Bar-20 he found only two men who would not thaw to him, and he was possessed of too much tact to try any persuasive measures. One was Hopalong, whose original cold reserve seemed to be growing steadily, the Bar-20 puncher finding in Elkins a personality that charged the atmosphere with hostility and quietly ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... never said a word. And when a short time afterwards he asked me what time of day it wuz, pretendin' his watch had stopped, I looked full and cold in his face for several minutes before I sez in icy axents, "I don't know!" Every word fallin' from my lips like ice-suckles from a ruff in a January thaw, and then I turned my back and went ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... stream beds, up dry watercourses, seeking the source of those yellow specks seen far down the mountains near the sea. Precipice, rapids, avalanche, winter storm, take their toll of dead. Corpses are washed down in the spring floods; or the {5} thaw reveals a prospector's shack smashed by a snowslide under which lie two dead 'pardners.' Then, by and by, when everybody has forgotten about it, a shaggy man comes out of the wilds with a leather bag; the bag goes to the mint; and the world ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... winter so dry, that the deerskin moccasins, which many persons habitually wear, are scarcely moistened the season through. There are occasional upward oscillations of temperature; and, once in a series of years, a thaw in January or February; but these are rare occurrences. Rain has not fallen in winter but once in many years. The whole winter is a radiant and joyous band of sunny days and starlight nights. This inaugurates the carnival season when sleighing and merrymaking parties in both town and country form ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... to get your long chatty letter, and to hear that you are thawing towards science. I almost wish you had remained frozen rather longer; but do not thaw too quickly and strongly. No one can work long as you used to do. Be idle; but I am a pretty man to preach, for I cannot be idle, much as I wish it, and am never comfortable except when at work. The word holiday is written in ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... all these insects, in being compelled, by the laws of its physical organization, to live in communities, during the entire year. The balmy breezes of Spring will quickly thaw out the frozen veins of a torpid Wasp; but the bee is incapable of enduring even a moderate degree of cold: a temperature as low as 50 deg. speedily chills it, and it would be quite as easy to recall to life the stiffened corpses in the charnel house of ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... K. Fox might have designed her jewelry; she glistens with diamonds until she makes you think of the ice coming out of the Hudson River in the early spring. But about her complexion there is no suggestion of a March thaw. For it is a climate-proof shellac. Her eyebrows are the self-made kind, and her lips were done by hand. Her skirt is too short for looks and too tight for comfort; she is tightly prisoned at the waistline and not sufficiently confined in the bust. There is nothing natural ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... made no advances. "He thinks I am angry because of his keen criticism of my picture. For the sake of my own pride, I must not let him think that I care so much about his opinion;" and Christine resolved to let some of the ice thaw that had formed between them. Moreover, in spite of herself, when she was thrown into his society, he greatly interested her. He seemed to have just what she had not. He could meet her on her own ground in matters of ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... and as I sat in the little grey waiting-room, watching the narrow golden beam that danced over the closed wicket, I could well believe that a rest remains for Annie, and that she is sure of a welcome at her journey's end. And as the sun's warmth began to thaw the tracery of frost on the window, I began to hope that God's grace may yet find out Dave, and that he too may "make good" in the years to come. As for the little woman from Quill Lake, who was still willing to take the one chance, ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... of the year and even one special day when singers should especially look out for their voices. From January 15th-20th is the period of January thaw and of colds from melting snow. From March 19th-25th the earth is beginning to ferment and this is a period for spring fever and intestinal troubles, which indirectly affect the voice. May 9th usually is cold and ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... went on as it greased; the girls mostly stayed away—the Babbletown girls, for they had guilty consciences, I suspect; and in February there came a thaw. I stood looking out of the store window one day; the snow had melted in the street, and right over the stones that had been laid across the road for a walk, there was a great puddle of muddy water about two yards wide ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... thousand earthly charms, and Miss Ormiston had compared his merits as a guide and protector with those of her brothers, and found he was much more considerate, and made her wish law, which they were often far from doing. In point of fact, a thaw had been very imminent, but, alas! since then a sharp frost had set in between them, as unaccountably as frosts ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... breath drawn quick and short, in fuller tides Life posting through the veins, each pulse on fire, And the whole body tingling with desire, Pants for those charms, which Virtue might engage, To break his vow, and thaw the frost of Age, Bidding each trembling nerve, each muscle strain, And giving pleasure which is almost pain. 330 Women are kept for nothing but the breed; For pleasure we must have a Ganymede, A fine, fresh Hylas, a delicious boy, To serve our purposes of beastly ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... rivers when the ice that locked their flow melts into their waters. And when fine natures relent, their kindness is swelled by the thaw.—Bulwer-Lytton. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... hot milk!" declared Uncle Toby. "Here, Aunt Sallie, you look after the Curlytops and their friends while I put the car away, and then I'll come back and we'll have a cozy supper," went on Mr. Bardeen. "I'll put Jack by the fire to thaw him out." ...
— The Curlytops and Their Playmates - or Jolly Times Through the Holidays • Howard R. Garis
... great deal more pleasant," Godfrey said: "I call it glorious weather. It is infinitely better than alternate rains and winds, with just enough frost occasionally to make you think you are going to do some skating, and then a thaw." ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... at times over the snow and ice, and the aurora borealis flashes its splendors through the heavens. The cold is so great that old chroniclers, writing about the arctic regions, pretended that when the inhabitants tried to speak, their very words froze in coming out of their mouths, and did not thaw out till spring. It is not safe to believe all that old chroniclers tell us, and perhaps in this case they only tried, in an extravagant way, to make their readers understand how very cold it ...
— Harper's Young People, March 30, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... he should find his house chopped a little when the thaw comes," said Elizabeth Eliza, "than that he should find us lying about the house, dead of hunger, ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... glow and sparkle was gone out of her figure; and whereas just before she had resembled a bright, frosty, star-gemmed evening, with a crimson gleam on the cold horizon, she now looked as dull and languid as a thaw. As kind Mr. Lindsey led her up the steps of the door, Violet and Peony looked into his face,—their eyes full of tears, which froze before they could run down their cheeks,—and again entreated him not to bring ...
— The Snow-Image - A Childish Miracle • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a burying, for then she had to go with Abel to help in carrying the coffin to the house of mourning. They set out on the second day after her return. The steep road down to the plain—called the Monkey's Ladder—was a river, for a thaw had set in. But Hazel did not mind that, though her boots let in the water, as she minded the atmosphere of gloom at old Samson's blind house. She would never, as Abel always did, 'view the corpse,' and this was always taken as an insult. So she waited in the road, ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... the window-panes of the basement lodging were covered with ice. They bore the most beautiful ice-flowers that any snow man could desire; but they concealed the stove. The window-panes would not thaw; he could not see the stove, which he pictured to himself as a lovely female being. It crackled and whistled in him and around him; it was just the kind of frosty weather a snow man must thoroughly enjoy. ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... the lungs in the expired air is much greater than in hot climates, and the body is also cooled by the evaporation of water in the form of aqueous vapor. Moist air is a better conductor of heat than dry air, which accounts for much of the discomfort felt in winter when a thaw takes place as compared with the feeling of elasticity when the air is dry. In cold weather, therefore, moist air cools down the skin and lungs more rapidly than dry air, and colds consequently result. London fogs are injurious, not only on ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... wide up-town street the human tide flowed fast and as if thaw had set in, releasing it from the bondage of winter. Girls in light wraps and without hats loitered in the white flare of drugstore lights. Here and there a brown stoop bloomed with a boarder or two. In front of Seligman's florist shop, which occupied ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... speech for Abbot, but his heart is full. The old gentleman's sad face seems to thaw and beam under the influence of his frank avowal and that winning plea. Abbot has held forth his other hand, and there the two men stand, both trembling a little, under the influence of a deep and holy emotion, clasping each other's hands and looking into ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... early January thaw that spoiled all outdoor sport for the Lakeview Hall girls. Skating, bobsledding, skiing, and even walking, was taboo for a while, for there was more mud in sight than snow. The girls had to look for entertainment on ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... she is tipsy And I, if a poet, must drink like a gipsy. Suppose I should borrow the horse of Jack Stenton— A finer ridden beast no muse ever went on— Pegasus' fleet wings perhaps now are frozen, I'll send her old Stenton's, I know I've well chosen; Be it frost, be it thaw, the horse can well canter; The sight of the beast cannot help to enchant her. All the boys at our school are well, tho' yet many Are suffered, at home, to suck eggs with their granny. "To-morrow," says daddy, "you must ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... of the stars. The red blush which tinges the face of night with a hue like that which mounts to the cheeks of a beautiful maiden, when the name of her beloved youth is whispered in her ear, is the flame which arises from the fires kindled by the kind spirits of the north, to thaw the frozen mist which impedes their light footsteps across the face of the heavens. And the laugh is the laugh of eager joy, which those spirits utter when, indulging in their loved pastime, they remember the occurrence which led to their glorious destiny, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... butcher—warmed to generosity by the family patronage—would lend it for the great performance. I have no doubt but that the manager, from this time forward, will beg all errands in his direction and that his smile will thaw the friendly butcher to his purpose. Certainly two legs of lamb, if whispered that the drama is at stake, will consent to hang for one tremendous day upon a single hook. Our hook is to be screwed into a block of wood, and there is something about knuckles and a cord around the ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... least of all these maladies But in one minute's fight brings beauty under: Both favour, savour hue, and qualities, Whereat the impartial gazer late did wonder, 748 Are on the sudden wasted, thaw'd and done, As mountain-snow melts with the ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... moaning under the snow, which by some curious chance of circumstances was just below him. But the odd thing was that they did not seem to mind it much, only moaning piteously and impatiently, as if they were in a hurry for a thaw to come and set them free. Then one of them began to ring the bell for dinner; and another did the same; and Saxe felt that he ought to be doing something to take them food to eat—coarse bread, butter, cheese like Gruyere, full of holes, ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... influence of her charms was increased by the fame of a severity which cost her nothing, and who could venture to flirt with a succession of admirers in the just confidence that no flame which she might kindle in them would thaw her own ice. [359] Among those who pursued her with an insane desire was a profligate captain in the army named Hill. With Hill was closely bound in a league of debauchery and violence Charles Lord Mohun, a young nobleman whose life was one long revel and brawl. Hill, finding that the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... made the discovery, it was at the same time exasperating to think of the feast of eggs they had missed in the last two years. During the rest of the day they watched the penguins and the skua gulls which were nesting around them; and before supper they took soap and towels down to a rill of thaw-water that ran within a few yards of their tent, and washed in the warm sunlight. 'Then,' Scott says, 'we had a dish of fried penguin's liver with seal kidneys; eaten straight out of the frying-pan, this was simply delicious. I have come to the conclusion that life in the Antarctic ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... the band who were entering with great gusto into the spirit of the occasion, arranged themselves in a half-circle about the piano, replaced their shoes, stripped their instruments of their coverings—the cornetist breathing noiselessly into the mouth-pieces to thaw out the frost—and stood at attention for ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... beginning of 1915 comparative calm reigned over the Austro-Russian theatre of war, so far as actual hostilities were concerned. But it was not altogether the variable climatic conditions of alternate frost and thaw—the latter converting road and valley into impassable quagmires—that caused the lull. It was a short winter pause during which the opposing forces—on one side at least—were preparing and gathering the requisite ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... came from what, in our northern latitudes, we esteem a colder quarter, it was ever so much warmer here, on account of its passing over the warm pampas of the Plate before reaching us, the effect of which soon became apparent in the melting of the snow on the ground as rapidly as when a thaw takes place at home. Properly speaking, however, the snow rather may be said to have dried up than melted, for it was absorbed by the air, ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... compact. But large bodies of cavalry, and heavy artillery, cannot venture on the ice unless it be of great thickness and strength. An army can never trust, for any length of time, to either fords or ice; if it did a freshet or a thaw would place it in a most critical state. Military bridges will, therefore, become its only safe reliance for ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... did invent fre awd antiquity, Be new received inte awr kirks with great solemnity. Bay these thaugh lemen been apprest, the clargy all het gean, Far te awr sents theis affer yifts all whilk we sall receive: Awr hally mass, thaw thea bay dere, thea de it but in vain, Far thaw ther frends frea Purgatory te help thea dea believe, Yet af ther hope, gif need rewhayre,[41] it wawd theam all deceive. Sea wawd awr pilgrimage, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... of success looked at us intently; and a most curious change came over his clever, bad-tempered face. His eyes are as bright as ice, and have somewhat the same cold light in them. Now a thaw set in and melted them, and a mottled red spread ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... Serve him with alacrity, say nothing not necessary, and the joy in your heart will thaw him out before long. Express to your customers your desire that they should come again,—never by words, because that is too difficult, except in a barber-shop, where it is a custom—but by opening the door for them ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... bolt upright, grim and silent, they drew up to the table, and when the phenomena began they displayed no signs of interest. Their 'detective' attitude was so objectionable that even those who had endeavored to thaw out these self-constituted Sherlock Holmeses, gave up the attempt, and, in consequence, what had promised to be a really enjoyable evening, proved one of the most uncomfortable it has ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... time of the January thaw the Olifants had cut the rest of the large wood about the pond and curtailed the Cottontails' domain on all sides. But they still clung to the dwindling Swamp, for it was their home and they were loath to move to foreign parts. Their life of daily perils went on, but they ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... matter for the recording angel to write down against me, if—with my painful consciousness of the frost in this old man's blood, and the positive ice that had congealed about his heart—I should thaw him out, were it only for an hour, with the summer warmth of a little wine. What else could possibly be done for him? How else could he be imbued with energy enough to hope for a happier state hereafter? How else be inspired to say his prayers? For there are states ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... winter, and hope you are in a warm, comfortable house, have pleasant books to read, and some pleasant friends to see. One does not want many; only a few bright faces to look in now and then, and help thaw the ice with little rills of genial conversation. I have fewer of these than at Rome,—but still several. * * * * * Horace Sumner, youngest son of father's friend, Mr. Charles P. Sumner, lives near ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... that night he remained near the cabin. At least once each day, and sometimes at night, he would return to the clearing. And more and more frequently he was thinking of Neewa. Early in March came the Tiki-Swao—(the Big Thaw). For a week the sun shone without a cloud in the sky. The air was warm. The snow turned soft underfoot and on the sunny sides of slopes and ridges it melted away into trickling streams or rolled down in "slides" ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... is built by our forest-rangers who help the timber jacks build these roads. You see, while frost holds good the heaviest tree trunks can be readily moved over icy swamp bottoms, but in the spring, when thaw and freshets begin, the bottoms are more like a marsh, or shallow lake, than anything else I know of. Then these corduroy roads are a make-shift for hard ground," explained Polly, while Noddy started to clip-clop over the ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... And was so feeble and fearful, with soft speech The youth bespake him softly; but there fell From the sweet lips no sweet word audible That ear or thought might reach: No sound to make the dim cold silence glad, No breath to thaw the hard harsh air with heat; Only the saddest smile of all things sweet, Only the sweetest smile of all ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... same strain. Mavis found herself greatly enjoying the thinly veiled compliments which he paid her. It was the first time since she had grown up that she had spoken to a smart man, who was obviously a gentleman. If this were not enough to thaw her habitual reserve, there was something strangely familiar in the young man's face and manner; it almost seemed to Mavis as if she were talking with a very old friend or acquaintance, which was enough to justify the unusual ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... was followed by the beginning of a thaw, interrupted by a sudden and very sharp cold spell, when the mercury went down to zero and the water from the melting snow turned to ice. Richmond was encased in a sheath of gleaming white. The cold wintry sun was reflected from roofs of ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... torrents after thaw, Urged; and to feed whose movement, spinning sand, The feeble sons of pleasure set their hand; And, in this ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... both in fact and in fiction, that I have heard recently of a proposal for the establishment of a Company to employ Sir Joseph Paxton to take it down. Only one of those travellers, however, has been enabled to bring Mont Blanc to Piccadilly, and, by his own ability and good humour, so to thaw its eternal ice and snow, as that the most timid lady may ascend it twice a-day, "during the holidays," without the smallest danger or fatigue. Mr. Albert Smith, who is present amongst us to-night, is undoubtedly "a traveller." I do not know whether ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... effects on the general face of nature; for the melting snow was many hours in becoming saturated with its own and water from above. Nor had our travellers, for the greater part of the day, been much incommoded by the rain, or the thaw, that was in silent, but rapid progress around and beneath them; as their vehicle was a covered one, and as the hard-trodden paths of the road were the last to be affected. But, during the last hour, a great change in the face ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... taught him that cold Spanish etiquette which arrests all the impulses of the heart. He restrains himself and others by an immovable presence and an icy look; as for me, I confess that I am always waiting for the moment of thaw, but in vain. We were accustomed to other manners from the witty and simple-hearted Henri; and we were at least free to tell him that ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... a garb like this? Needs he the tragic fur, the smoke of lamps, The pent-up breath of an unsavoury throng To thaw him into feeling, or the smart And snappish dialogue that flippant wits Call comedy, to prompt him with a smile? The self-complacent actor, when he views (Stealing a sidelong glance at a full house) The slope of faces from the floor to the roof, As if one ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... vacant road, a red Bicycle approaches; I wait In a thaw of anxiety, for the boy To ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... on their knock, and there was such a pretty warmth of welcome in her tranquil manner that Elinor was won at once, though Judith, who prided herself on her discrimination, did not completely thaw out until the visit ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... was not quite so cold—a sudden and very rapid thaw had set in; and when after a hurried toilet Armand, carrying a bundle under his arm, emerged into the street, the mild south wind ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... over again his dingy rumpled old newspaper, compelled "to eat the leek of his disappointment." The wind, which had blown inveterately steady from the surly north-east, had veered, however, during the preceding night, to the west; and, as it were by the spell of an enchanter, an instant thaw commenced. In the low grounds the snow gleamed forth in patches of a pearly whiteness; but, on the banks of southern exposure, the green grass and the black trodden pathway again showed themselves. The vicissitudes of twenty-four hours were indeed wonderful. Instead of the sharp ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... liquescence^, liquescency^; melting &c (heat) 384; colliquation^, colliquefaction^; thaw; liquation^, deliquation^, deliquescence; lixiviation^, dissolution. solution, apozem^, lixivium^, infusion, flux. solvent, menstruum, alkahest^. V. render liquid &c 333; liquefy, run; deliquesce; melt &c (heat) 384; solve; dissolve, resolve; liquate^; hold ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... next morning was fair and bright, flushed with pink and warmed with sunshine to its golden heart. It was acknowledged to be the "beatinest" winter weather that ever was known,—a thaw that was not enough of a thaw to make the roads impassable, and without rain. The rude little settlement was alive long before the sun was up. Candles and lanterns flitted to and fro. The people were all eager and alert. Even the dogs and roosters seemed to feel the unusual excitement ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... pillowcases; at the dull photographs of the landlady's hideous husband and children enshrined on the mantelshelf; looked at the abomination of desolation surrounding him until his soul sickened and cried out like a child's for something more like home. It was as if a spring thaw had melted his ice-bound heart, and on the crest of a wave it was drifting out into the milder waters of some unknown sea. He could have laid his head in the kind lap of a woman and cried: "Comfort me! Give me ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... vild procurement of hells bawd, despaire, To prostitution of unnaturall death And then of woes erelasting which admit Noe diminution? Can you heare this, Madam, And does the flintie substance of your heart Not thaw, like to a hill of Russian Ice When fires applid to't? Yes, your ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... not less frightful. A detachment of Loison's division, obedient to their duty, had congregated there, stacked arms and, in order to warm themselves to the best of their ability—the temperature was 30 deg. below zero R. (37 deg. below zero F.)—and to thaw the frozen bread, had lighted a fire. I cannot describe the fight among these soldiers for single pieces of ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... horrid spectacle, intended to strike terror into all beholders—through February and March, as long as the weather continued cold enough to keep them frozen. When at length the spring came on, and the flesh of these dreadful trophies began to thaw, they were taken down and thrown together into a pit, among the bodies ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... this year that it froze hard twelve or fourteen hours every day, while from eleven o'clock in 'the morning till nearly four, the sun shone as brightly as possible, and it was too hot about mid-day for walking! Yet in the shade it did not thaw for an instant. This cold weather was all the more sharp because the air was purer and clearer, and the sky continually of ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... of December, generally, they experience their first thawing. Those which a month ago were sour, crabbed, and quite unpalatable to the civilized taste, such at least as were frozen while sound, let a warmer sun come to thaw them, for they are extremely sensitive to its rays, are found to be filled with a rich, sweet cider, better than any bottled cider that I know of, and with which I am better acquainted than with wine. All apples are good in this state, and your jaws are the cider-press. Others, which ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... labour proceeded—plows ran; flat scrapers and wheeled fresnos followed, scooped up the earth, bore it to the banks above; horses tugged and strained; men toiled, pausing only to thaw their feet and hands at fires burning by the ditch or to drain great tin-cups of the scalding coffee that the cooks dipped from cans. And steadily the excavation widened and deepened hour by hour, the slope ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... end of March, on Good Friday, after the thaw had set in. It was pouring with rain so that he had not a dry thread on him and was feeling very cold, but yet vigorous and full of spirits, as always at that time. "Is she still with them?" he thought, as he drove into the familiar, old-fashioned courtyard, surrounded ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... weather with a rather sudden and inclement decrease of temperature, brought on by cold south-east winds; if these are accompanied with rain in winter, which, however, rarely happens, it would sometimes turn to sleet or even snow, or else to hard freezing at night. The snow would, however, thaw with the warmth of the sun, and so restore the temperature as before. The bracing quality of the climate mostly consists just in those variations of cool nights and warm days, and the occasional days of comparatively cold, boisterous weather. The latter must indeed be provided ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... acute symptoms of any kind," the lady replied. "Indeed I think I am a trifle cold and matter-of-fact in my disposition, but I began to thaw so perceptibly under Miss Burton's influence that I became quite interested in her. I think I deserve some credit for saving the child also, for it was I who kept her talking in the doorway. Most people are a weariness to me, and I was surprised ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... the subject by a well known chemist. It is asserted that living cells containing a saccharine liquid do not permit infiltration from interior to exterior; this phenomenon occurs only when cell and tissue are dead. It is necessary that the degree of cold should be sufficiently intense, or that a thaw take place, under certain conditions, to kill tissue of walls of said cells. An interesting fact is that when cells are broken through the action of freezing, it is not those containing sugar that ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 • Various
... very disagreeable; snow six inches deep, and from rain and sleet and thaw and freeze, has formed a hard crust, so as to make bad traveling—in the roads icy and slippery. To-day cloudy, damp and cool. A few days ago the mercury reached 8 degrees below zero, the lowest of the season. It is very hard on stock, and many of the cattle are without ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... while the troops drew off to build fires, warm their rigid fingers, thaw out their buffalo moccasins, and munch crackers, leaving a strong guard around the Cheyennes. In the night there was a shooting—the Indians had charged through ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... between the old and the new. The new, though not acknowledging itself to be beaten, takes to its heels, and flees in the stormy night through wind and snow. But the snow is moist and heavy; it is beginning to thaw. There is a vague presentiment ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... taciturnity and anxiety grew apace. He was little more talkative than the painted devil chaser on the blackened canvas of his tepee, but he gave David to understand that he would have a hard time getting back with his dogs and sledge from Fond du Lac if the thaw came earlier than he had anticipated. David marvelled at the old warrior's endurance, and especially when they crossed the forty miles of ice on Wollaston Lake between dawn and darkness. At high noon the snow was beginning ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... more open to atmospheric circulation, and having lost the water which prevented the temperature of its lower portions from being so readily affected by the temperature of the air as it is when dry, will freeze to a greater depth in winter and thaw out earlier in the spring. The deep freezing has the effect to greatly pulverize the lower soil, thus better fitting it for the support of vegetation; and the earlier thawing makes it earlier ready for ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... broken, and the ensuing thaw led to a complete reconciliation. Sir James Thornhill treated his daughter and son-in-law more generously, and lived with them in future till ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... crackling between his fingers, and splinters of ice were breaking off. He was obliged to wait until the heat produced a slight thaw, and then with great care he stripped the figure, baring the head first, then the bosom, and then the hips, well pleased at finding everything intact, and smiling like a lover at a woman ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola |
