"Torrent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... meal for a month, and is stamping about for his dinner. Now he approaches me as I sit writing, and I hear his step pause behind my chair. The fool is actually looking over my shoulder, and reading these words"—A torrent of Scotch burst forth right here: "It's a lee, sir,—it's a lee! I never read a worrd that yer wrort!" Screams from us; while Mr. Bennoch's sudden aspect of dramatic rage was as suddenly dropped, and he blazed once more with broad smiles, chuckling. I will insert here ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... only gave them a good trouncing in their own pond." He choked here, out of pity for her, keeping back the torrent of ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... the dressy Americans with their proper spirit of independence touch the limit of insubordination at every new command. Insults are freely exchanged; threats ring out on the tired ears. Frances is ubiquitous. She scolds the tailors with a torrent of abuse, she terrorizes the handsome manikin, she bewilders the kindly Mr. F., and before three days have passed she has dismissed the neat little Polish girl, in tears. This latter comes to me, her ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... one, Ben rode away, wishing he could leap a yawning gulf, scale a precipice, or ford a raging torrent, to prove his devotion to Miss Celia, and his skill in horsemanship. But no dangers beset his path, and he found the doctor pausing to water his tired horse at the very trough where Bab and Sancho had been ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... discolored by the vicinity of these strange mountains. Lower down the granite was of scintillating gray, and under our feet it seemed rasped, pounded; we were walking over shining powder. At our right, along a long and irregular course, a tumultuous torrent ran with a continuous roar. And we staggered along under this heat, in this light, in this burning, arid, desolate valley cut by this ravine of turbulent water which seemed to be ever hurrying onward, without being able to fertilize these rocks, lost in this furnace which greedily drank ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... by a scene of universal white. Above them towered vast Alpine summits, where the wild wind blew, sweeping the snow-wreaths into the air. In front was a deep ravine, at the bottom of which there ran a torrent that foamed and tossed over rocks and boulders. It was not possible to take a walk to any distance. Their boots were made for lighter purposes than plunging through snow-drifts; and so they were forced to remain indoors, and pass the time ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... crowd gathered about the gentleman, who became as quarrelsome as they, and took it into his head to box one of the mob, in order to do which more conveniently, he gave Smith his hat and cane, and his wig. Smith held them for some time, the mob forcing them along like a torrent, till the gentleman, whose name was Brown, made up a court near Northumberland House, and Smith thereupon marched off with the things, the necessity he was under so far blinding him that he made no scruple of attempting to sell ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... unpleasantly conscious of the fact would be to spoil it. The adult has therefore to take action of some sort with nothing but his conscience to shield the child from injustice or unkindness. The action may be a torrent of scolding culminating in a furious smack causing terror and pain, or it may be a remonstrance causing remorse, or it may be a sarcasm causing shame and humiliation, or it may be a sermon causing the child to believe that it is a little reprobate on the road to hell. The child has no defence ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... he threw himself back with a violent strain upon the bridle in his hand. But the wild words were hardly out of his mouth, when his hands dropped to his side, and the bellying sail was spattered with a torrent of ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... the water, now up to her ankles, and from her boxes obtained all the wraps she possessed. To keep up the spirits of the children she started a hymn, "Oh, come let us sing." Amidst the roar of the elements they caught the tune, and gradually their terror was subdued. When the torrent ceased she was in a high fever. She dosed herself with quinine, and as the shadow of death is never very far away in Africa she made all arrangements in case the end should come. But her temperature fell, and in two days ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... of the blue sky, the bright sunshine, the rushing torrent, the songs of birds, "sweet as children's prattle is," the breath of the meadows, the glow of effort, the beauty of poetry, the achievement of thought, the thousand and thousand real pleasures of life, are ...
— The Call of the Twentieth Century • David Starr Jordan
... of practice we learnt to hear each other in so low a key that the sounds were almost sure to escape the notice of the sentinels. If, as it rarely happened, we forgot ourselves, and talked aloud, there came down upon us a torrent of cries, and knocks at our doors, accompanied with threats and curses of every kind, to say nothing of poor Schiller's vexation, and ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... E. by rail from Avignon, by Cavaillon, is Apt, pop. 7000, on the torrent Calavon, in a sheltered hollow surrounded by mountains and calcareous cliffs. Hotels: The *Louvre; des Alpes. The principal industries are agriculture, pottery, and the making of preserved fruits. Fruit to be glazed with sugar, as well as that on which the sugar is to be crystallised, is allowed ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... A torrent of raps burst out in the wall immediately behind him, plainly audible in the silence. Then they stopped, as ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... prices decline. The dealers have reaped their harvest, and can afford to "fall" on what is left. Now come those whose means compel them to be content with indifferent fare. With them is seen a perfect torrent of boarding-house keepers, who are too smart to come when the prices are high and the articles good and fresh. Others, too, the dealers will tell you, are independently wealthy, some are said to be millionaires. They ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... remark about Bulgaria—not that I really knew anything about it, you know, for I'm no politician; still, I knew it was a subject that would make talk just now. My dear, I assure you I was positively frightened. All in a minute his face changed, his eyes flashed, he broke into such a torrent of abuse as I never heard in my ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... the first vacancy, non decimas, quae sunt pauperum Dei,[6] but leave to fight against the errant world for that seed[7] of which four and twenty plants are girding thee. Then with doctrine and with will, together with the apostolic office,[8] he went forth like a torrent which a lofty vein pours out, and on the heretical stocks his onset smote with most vigor there where the resistance was the greatest. From him proceeded thereafter divers streams wherewith the catholic garden is watered, so that its ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... the way they had to pass Morder Drift, and thinking only of the shame to their house, they rode altogether into the water, none looking ahead. There had been rains, and each man was compelled to give all his care to guiding his horse through the torrent, while holding his rifle aloft ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... stars didst see, the fields, And their new flocks and herds, O leader old And father of the human family! The wandering air that o'er the meadows played, When smote the rocks, and the deserted vales, The torrent, rustling headlong from the Alps, With sound, till then, unheard; and o'er the sites Of future nations, noisy cities, yet unknown To fame, a peace profound, mysterious reigned; And o'er the unploughed hills, in silence, rose The ray of Phoebus, and the golden moon. O world, how happy in ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... would hear no more. The torrent of his fury bore down everything before it. Fatimah's feeble protests were drowned. "Silence!" he cried. "What need is there for words? She is in the palace!—that's enough. The women's palace—the hareem—what more is ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... Browning's powers declined. The torrent of feeling could no longer float the raft of doctrine, as it had done so lightly and for so long. His poems, always difficult, grew dry ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... remember to have felt, at one time or another, some uneasiness, as if this athletic soul craved a larger atmosphere than it found; as if she were ill-timed and mis-mated, and felt in herself a tide of life, which compared with the slow circulation of others as a torrent with a rill. She found no full expression of it but in music. Beethoven's Symphony was the only right thing the city of the Puritans had for her. Those to whom music has a representative value, affording them a stricter copy of their inward ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... battle heightened with every step the regiment advanced. A turn in the winding road brought them to an opening in the woods which extended clear to the summit. Through this the torrent of noise poured as when a powerful band passes the head of a street. Down this avenue came rolling the crash of thousands of muskets fired with the intense energy of men in mortal combat, the deeper pulsations of ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... of Attic prose; and, studied him I had, more than any other prose writer whatever. Paripassu, I had become sensible that others had not studied him. One monotonous song of applause I found raised on every side; something about being "like a torrent, that carries everything before it." This original image is all we get in the shape of criticism; and never any attempt even at illustrating what is greatest in him, or characterizing what is most peculiar. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... man 'e war shaddered hevery day acrost Wo-Winyar, an' hees bullicks collared hevery night with Bob or Bat; an' them bullicks har'ly fit ter crawl with fair poverty. Dirty! W'y, Chows ain't in it with them varmin f'r dirtiness." Here followed a steady torrent of red vituperation, showing that Price took a strong personal interest in the respectable man with the ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... been made of Brbeuf,—that masculine apostle of the Faith,—the Ajax of the mission. Nature had given him all the passions of a vigorous manhood, and religion had crushed them, curbed them, or tamed them to do her work,—like a dammed-up torrent, sluiced and guided to grind and saw and weave for the good of man. Beside him, in strange contrast, stands his co-laborer, Charles Garnier. Both were of noble birth and gentle nurture; but here the ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... our own functions to nature. The river eats into the land; the whirlpool swallows all which is thrown into it, and the wind whistles, howls and moans; the torrent murmurs, the sun is born and dies, the heavens frown, the fields smile. This habit is also transferred to moral questions; and we speak of the heart of the question, the leading idea, the body of doctrines, ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... rocked the ranch buildings. The eggs flew across the room as the lid of the slop cauldron came whistling through the kitchen window in a blizzard of flying glass and buried itself, edgewise, in the wall over the stove. Hetty slammed backwards headfirst into a heap of shattered eggs. A torrent of broken plaster, and crockery fragments rained on her stunned figure. Through dazed eyes, she saw a column of purple-reddish fire ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael
... Pulley-and-rope device for hauling boat across river. Fiddlers "nearly fiddled themselves into the grave". Liquors "beginning to look scarce". Subdued and sheepish-looking bacchanals. Nothing extenuated, nor aught set down in malice. Boating on river. Aquatic plants. Bridge swept away in torrent. Loss of canoe. Branch from moss-grown fir-tree "a cornice wreathed with purple-starred tapestry". A New Year's present from the river. A two-inch spotted trout. No fresh meat for a month. "Dark and ominous rumors". Dark hams, ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... the Apennines, a little before it was day, I went down by the side of a torrent wondering where I should find repose; for it was now some hours since I had given up all hope of discovering a place for proper human rest and for the passing of the night, but at least I hoped to light upon a dry bed of sand under some overhanging rock, or possibly of pine needles beneath closely ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... Klock-klock. The whole length of the ravine might have been a mile and a half, or probably two miles. It wound in every possible direction through the hills (having apparently formed, at some remote period, the bed of a torrent), in no instance proceeding more than twenty yards without an abrupt turn. The sides of this dell would have averaged, I am sure, seventy or eighty feet in perpendicular altitude throughout the whole of their extent, and in some portions they arose to an astonishing ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... committee by whom it was conducted reported the result of their labours about the end of April. Seventy-nine thousand pounds were contributed; it would have been twice the sum, but for the distress, and the disturbance of public affairs by the torrent of revolution which was sweeping over the continent. The birthplace of Mr. Cobden, in Sussex, was purchased for him, and the remainder of the money invested according to his wish. A sum of L10,000 was raised for Mr. Bright, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... his master, that there was considerable danger in attempting to cross it. But Mowbray's mind and feelings were too high-strung to permit him to listen to cautious counsel. He spurred the snorting and reluctant horse into the torrent, though the water, rising high on the upper side, broke both over the pommel and the croupe of his saddle. It was by exertion of great strength and sagacity, that the good horse kept the ford-way. Had the stream forced him down among the ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... the main stream at a short distance below the bridge where the Clove road first crosses that torrent. The ravine through which it flows is incomparably beautiful, with the grand plunge (Haines's Fall or Fawn's Leap) at the head, and the seven graceful cascades, all visible from one projecting table rock, soon after following. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... lecture upon the future sufferings, privations, rebellions, and retaliations of the prospective husbands of females who had grown to woman's estate, and yet could not cook a meal. Through the green baize door I could hear the continuous torrent of invective, broken at first by protest, later on by soft exclamations of surprise, and finally—oh, the relief of that moment!—by an uncontrollable explosion of laughter. The Cockney mind is keenly alive to humour, and when a racy Irishwoman gets fairly started on ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... appearance of their friends is the signal of revolt for the Moravian Protestants. Bruenn is taken, the remainder of the country yields with free will, throughout the province government and religion are changed. Swelling as it flows, the torrent of rebellion pours down upon Austria, where a party, holding similar sentiments, receives it with a joyful concurrence. Henceforth, there should be no more distinctions of religion; equality of rights should be guaranteed to all Christian churches. They hear that ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... suddenly seized by a crocodile who, though on the watch, is buried in the muddy water and invisible. Every year a certain number of human lives are lost in this way. Cattle and other animals coming to the river-side to drink are dragged into the water and devoured. The Poona river, swollen to a torrent in the rains, and for the rest of the year reduced to a small stream, meandering along a stony and rocky bed, is not suited to the habits of a crocodile, and ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... a wonderful affair has this been, and how extraordinary is this torrent of success, which sweeps down all before it! I often think it too much, nay, almost wish it would happen to some other person, who had more ambition, whose hopes were more sanguine, and who could less have borne to be buried in the oblivion ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... he wanted; and partly from design, and partly from irrepressible indignation, he poured out a torrent of invective and reproach which soon sent his visitor away, perfectly convinced that the spirit they had undertaken to break had not yet ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... to time there was a sharp tinkling, as the higher windows cracked, broke, and fell upon the stones. Then came pouring down a spouting torrent of silver fire, shooting right out of a stone gargoyle-mouth as the molten lead from one part of the roof, dammed up by other lead which had not melted, at last forced its way spattering on to the paved ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... reef-ford reflects that of the left bank, and is pitted with diggings, large and small. In a dry torrent-bed, running north-south, was an oblong shaft, a native copy of European work, four feet by six, and timbered in the usual negro way. Its further bank was a high and steep slope of yellow clay with a midway step, containing another and a similar shaft: to the ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... weighing carefully every fact and detail, and trying the conclusions that had been drawn therefrom by the most rigorous and searching logic,—and then, assailing the credibility of the testimony brought forward to prove the habitual cruelty of his client, he gave utterance to a withering torrent of invective and sarcasm, in which the character of the main hostile witness shrivelled and blackened like paper in a flame. Then—having been eight hours on his feet—he began to avail himself of that last dangerous resource which genius ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... this moment, the cloud, which had been threatening all day, suddenly opened, and the rain poured down in a torrent. The grassy slopes instantly became so slippery that it was absolutely impossible to climb them, and the fire from above died away, as the ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... "This torrent came out in tone appalling. His very frame shook. 'It was awful!' said Mr. Lear. More than once he threw his hands up as he hurled imprecations upon St. Clair. Mr. Lear remained speechless—awed ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... he found his mother clamoring. Maggie had returned. She stood shivering beneath the torrent of ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... seething white, lashing among great, gray-capped, dark greenish boulders that blocked the way. High rocky banks standing close together squeezed the mighty river into a tumult of fury. Swiftly we glide down the racing torrent and plunge through the boiling waters. Sharp rocks rear above the flying spray while others are barely covered by the foaming flood. It is dangerous work. We midmen paddle hard to force the canoe ahead ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... like a cock blackbird. His yellow bill adds to the similitude. It is only when he is seen with the sun shining upon him that the cobalt blue patches in his plumage are noticed. His habit is to perch on the boulders which are washed by the foaming waters of a mountain torrent. On these he finds plenty of insects and snails, which constitute the chief items on his menu. He pursues the elusive insect in much the same way as a wagtail does, calling his wings to his assistance when ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... and bending down his head upon his hands, passed more than an hour in troublous meditation. All was confused and turbid. The stream of thought was like a mountain torrent, suddenly swelled by rains, overflowing its banks, knowing no restraint, no longer clear and bright, but dark and foaming and whirling in rapid and uncertain eddies round every object that it touched upon. The scene at Beaufort House, the thought of Laura, ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... whom his admiring seniors have given the lead in sallies, whims, and fights; but pleasanter than a boy, the soft hues of her sex toned her frolic spirit; she seemed her sex's deputy, to tell the coarser where they could meet, as on a bridge above the torrent separating them, gaily for interchange of the best of either, unfired and untempted by fire, yet with all the elements which make fire burn ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the ground, which the water-drops smote like duckshot in their accelerated velocity. The stream thickened in substance, and increased in power, gradually spouting further and yet further from the side of the tower. When the rain fell in a steady and ceaseless torrent the stream dashed downward ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... like her,—" she stopped midway in her torrent of information. "I came in to talk to you about Myrtle," she went on in a different voice; "that is, partly about Myrtle, but more of ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... pleading the example of the Emperor Aurelian; affirming that as he, after the death of Gallienus and the lamentable disasters which the republic suffered at that time, finding his treasury totally exhausted, fell upon the rich like a torrent, so Valentinian also, after the losses which he sustained in his Parthian campaign, being reduced to want by the greatness of his expenses, in order to procure reinforcements for his army and pay for his troops, mingled with his severity a desire of collecting excessive wealth. Pretending not ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... in the thickets, as unmanageable as the wild moose. More than half threw their riders. Not a man of them pulled a trigger: they were busy enough, God knows. Not one of them could have hit the sky with any certainty. I never saw such a torrent of horsehair and ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... Southern poet. A child of nature, his song is the voice of the Southland. Born in Charleston, S.C., December 8th, 1829, his life cast in the seething torrent of civil war, his voice was also the voice of Carolina, and through her of the South, in all the rich glad life poured out in patriotic pride into that fatal struggle, in all the valor and endurance of that dark conflict, in all the gloom of its disaster, and in all the sacred tenderness that clings ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... Paillon," said the driver, pointing to a diminutive stream in the midst of a wide stony bed. "The river has very little water in it now, but when the snow melts in the mountains it becomes a torrent." ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... over you to-day that you even refused to look at me?" she asked. "In all that long hour when we were so near together, did you give me one glance? You had forgotten me in the extremity of your grief!" she cried, scornfully. "And now that the first torrent of your tears has dwindled to a little stream, you have time to remember me! I thank my lord for the notice he deigns to give his handmaiden, but—I need it not. Well—why are ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... was not dangerously, ill, but they feared many days for his reason; and it required all the kind solicitude of the director of the college, combined with the most skillful medical aid, to stem the torrent of his sorrow, and to turn it gradually into a calmer channel, until by degrees the mourner recovered both health and reason. His youthful spirits, however, had received a blow from which they never rebounded, and one thought lay heavy on his mind ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... through the valley, and down rushed the waters of the inland sea. But a battalion of the fiends still pursued him, and again he smote with his tail and more strongly, and a vaster cleft went up and down the valley, and a more terrific torrent swept along. The leading fiends took the leap, but many fell into the chasm—and still the Devil was sorely pursued. He had just time to rap once more and with all the vigor of a despairing tail. And this time ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax
... temple perched at the top of a high wooded cliff. As it was still early in the afternoon, I turned off from the trail, and, accompanied by the interpreter, scrambled down the slope, gay with pink azaleas, to a charming wooden bridge spanning the torrent. After a sharp pull through a fine forest, we came out in front of the temple, which was dedicated to Kuan Yin: by the way, it is rather significant that China's favourite deity is the Goddess of Mercy. The place seemed deserted, and we wandered about ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... death in every blow he dealt, when a Russian cavalry officer, discharging his pistol at point blank distance, shot him dead from the saddle. I saw no more, for I was myself wounded and swept away in the torrent of the fight. But he is dead. Even if that pistol shot had not slain him, the hoofs of his own troopers, as they rushed madly forward in pursuit of the enemy, would have trampled every spark of ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... through the hotel and out at the other entrance, and so up the little unassuming side street into the roaring torrent of the narrow and crowded Strand. He jumped on a Putney bus, and paid his fair to Putney, fivepence, and then, finding that the humble occupants of the vehicle stared at the spectacle of a man in evening dress but without a dustcoat, ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... a torrent of sneezes and coughs. The old negro came running. Sherman shook his head and left ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... most of us were with difficulty able to restrain ourselves from weeping; but when we saw him drinking, and having finished the draught, we could do so no longer; but in spite of myself the tears came in full torrent, so that, covering my face, I wept for myself, for I did not weep for him, but for my own fortune, in being deprived of such a friend. But Crito, even before me, when he could not restrain his tears, had risen up. But ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... whom Etna's torrent fires have sent Far from the land where his first youth was spent; Who, inly drooping on a foreign shore, Broods over scenes which charm his eyes no more: And while his country's ruin wakes the groan, Yearns for the buried hut he called his own. So driv'n, O Poland! ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... small canoe, and, placing his wife and Heywood in the middle of it, he and Arrowhead took the paddles, seated themselves in the bow and stern, and guided their frail bark through many hundreds of miles of wilderness—over many a rough portage, across many a beautiful lake, and up many a roaring torrent, until, ...
— Away in the Wilderness • R.M. Ballantyne
... healing of the demoniac boy. He alone gives us this part of the conversation between our Lord and the afflicted child's father. The poor man had brought his child to the disciples, and found them unable to do anything with him. A torrent of appeal breaks from his lips as soon as the Lord gives him an opportunity of speaking. He dwells upon all the piteous details with that fondness for repetition which sorrow knows so well. Jesus gives ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... their summits seemed to fade into a coloured tremble as of ascending vapour; their steep sides were streaked with the green of narrow ravines; at their foot lay rice-fields, plantain-patches, yellow sands. A torrent wound about like a dropped thread. Clumps of fruit-trees marked the villages; slim palms put their nodding heads together above the low houses; dried palm-leaf roofs shone afar, like roofs of gold, behind the dark ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... of the Lad was a motion of the bow; but the motion was effective, for it sent a torrent of notes into the air, which thrilled through the body and tingled along the nerves like successive electric shocks. The old Trapper fairly bounded into the air; and when he struck the floor his feet were flying. ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... of laughing, springing, foamy waves, turning, crossing, even seeming to stand for an instant erect, but always borne impetuously forward like a crowd of triumphant feasters. Sit close down by it, and you see a fragment of the torrent against the sky, mottled, steely, and foaming, leaping onward in far-flung criss-cross strands of water. Perpetually the eye is on the point of descrying a pattern in this weaving, and perpetually it is cheated by change. In one place part of the flood ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... flush that comes and goes, he feels the throbbing breath, and realizes what a powerful and seductive temptation this might become. He is even kindled himself. For the first time he feels himself capable of rousing such a torrent of love in her that her whole soul shall be absorbed in his. Down in this shady corner, while the other couples are quite at the other end, he raises the sweet face, tranced in the beguiling melody of movement, and kisses the lips with all a man's passionate fervor, holds her ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... tongue too long. Now it was that the dam gave way and the torrent came whirling down and a hundred voices were lifted. Crowds and shadows distracted the light. One cried. "The man's dead, you fools; can't you see?" A dozen took it up and it ran out and away along the rumbling dock. "Doctor!" another bawled. "He's drank poison! Where's the doctor at?" And that, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... secure escape. Her imagination kept disturbing her with the figure of a small girl whose home was a soon-to-be-abandoned farm. A yearning possessed her for the one thing which she could not command, the sort of romance that sweeps one away like a torrent. That little girl had yearned for the gifts of the world, for experience, wealth and adulation, because she fancied that out of these things came romance and its prize of happiness. The woman had them all—except the end of them all for which she had wanted them. They were dulled and tarnished ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... distinctly marked, is that of travel. The descent down the sides of the Pit, and the ascent of the Sacred Mountain, show one familiar with such scenes—one who had climbed painfully in perilous passes, and grown dizzy on the brink of narrow ledges over sea or torrent. It is scenery from the gorges of the Alps and Apennines, or the terraces and precipices of the Riviera. Local reminiscences abound. The severed rocks of the Adige Valley—the waterfall of St. Benedetto; the crags of Pietra-pana and St. Leo, which overlook the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... cautiously around. "There, now," he added, "I declare if it is not raining! Just what one might have expected. We had a little sunshine in the morning, and so of course it must rain in the afternoon. What a climate! what a country!" and, amid a torrent of ejaculations and anathemas, they both went hurriedly round the pond, and reached the house just as the rain began to ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... even the most legitimate, even that of the 10th of August, even that of July 14th, begin with the same troubles. Before the right gets set free, there is foam and tumult. In the beginning, the insurrection is a riot, just as a river is a torrent. Ordinarily it ends in that ocean: revolution. Sometimes, however, coming from those lofty mountains which dominate the moral horizon, justice, wisdom, reason, right, formed of the pure snow of the ideal, after a long fall from rock to ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the waters dash aside, And swiftly round the thicket glide, Where mossy crag and fan-like bough Inshade the torrent far below. Within a towery wilderness Of nature's wildest gorgeousness, There rose in architecture quaint The cell of Strowan's valiant saint— A soldier-priest whose claymore long Was more persuasive than his tongue; Here stands his cross, ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... into stubborn streams Collecting, mimick'd the wrought oaken beams, Pillars, and frieze, and high fantastic roof, Of those dusk places in times far aloof Cathedrals call'd. He bade a loth farewel To these founts Protean, passing gulph, and dell, And torrent, and ten thousand jutting shapes, Half seen through deepest gloom, and griesly gapes, 630 Blackening on every side, and overhead A vaulted dome like Heaven's, far bespread With starlight gems: aye, all so huge and strange, The solitary ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... us. After getting over this shocking pass, we advanced towards a town called Taica, where we expected to procure provisions in abundance; but to our great mortification were unexpectedly stopped by a prodigious torrent, so swelled by the late heavy rains that it was quite impassable, and made such a noise in tumbling over its rocky bed that it might have been heard at the distance of two leagues. We had to stop here for three complete days to construct a bridge between the precipitous banks of this ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... with dignity from the mouth of a man like Wordsworth when he has been, as it were, driven to bay,—when he is consoling an intimate friend, distressed at the torrent of ridicule which, as she fears, must sweep his self-confidence and his purposes away. He may be permitted to assure her that "my ears are stone-dead to this idle buzz, and my flesh as insensible as iron to these petty stings," and to accompany his assurance ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... takes a new direction northward, and throws itself with impetuosity into the Gulf of Florida. At the end of the Gulf of Florida, in the parallel of Cape Cannaveral, the Gulf-stream, or current of Florida, runs north-east. Its rapidity resembles that of a torrent, and is sometimes five miles an hour. The pilot may judge, with some certainty, of the proximity of his approach to New York, Philadelphia, or Charlestown when he reaches the edge of the stream; for the elevated ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... ice-bound river, and there is nothing to tell us that beneath that white cloak its current rushes to the ocean. But presently the spring comes, the prisoned waters burst their fetters, and we see a glad torrent sparkling in the sunlight. And so it was with our heroine's heart; the breath of Arthur's passion and the light of Arthur's eyes had beat upon it, and almost freed the river of its love. Already the listener might hear the ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... night hideous. His opposite neighbour had an audience, and every now and then delivered in a high nasal key, "Let us curse and pray;" varying it sometimes thus: "Brethren, let us work double tides." And then he would deliver a long fervent prayer, and follow it up immediately with a torrent of blasphemies so terrific, that coming in such a contrast they made Alfred's body wet with perspiration to hear a poor creature so defy his Creator. No rest, no peace. When it was still, the place was like the grave; and ever and anon, loud, sharp, tremendous, burst a thunderclap of ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... vol. ix, fol. 3; vol. xii., fol. 21; vol. xiv., fol. 32.] In 1542, King James V. granted to John Mckenzie of Kintaill the waste lands of Monar, lying between the water of Gleneak on the north, the top or summit of Landovir on the south, the torrent of Towmuk and Inchclochill on the east, and the water of Bernis running into the water of Long on the west; and also the waste lands of lie Ned lying between Loch Boyne on the north, Loch Tresk on the south, lie Ballach on the west, and Dawelach on the east, in the earldom of Ross and sheriffdom ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... kissed his tawny mane, Sodden with flecks of froth and rain; Then put him at the surging flood! Girth deep the dauntless gelding sank, The tide hissed round his smoking flank, But straight for life or death she rode! The wide black heavens yawned again, Down came the torrent rushing rain— The icy river clutched her! Shrill in her ears the waters sang, Strange fires from the abysses sprang, The sharp sleet ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... in his room. He was lying down, looking very blue, very dismal, and utterly used up. At first, I did not notice this, but burst forth in a torrent of congratulations, shaking his hand most violently. He raised himself slightly from the sofa on which he was reclining, and his languid hand did not return my warm grasp, nor did his face exhibit the slightest interest in what I said. Seeing ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... clamoring muezzins filled the warm, tropical air with their jangling appeal. Rising with an air of weary indifference, he slowly crossed the room and threw wide the shutters of the solitary window, admitting a torrent of sunlight. As he did this, the door of the cell softly opened, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... this dreadful day. Then we entered our own chamber, and here at last poor Leo, who, ever since he had looked upon that frozen image of his living self, had been in a state not far removed from stupefaction, burst out into a torrent of grief. Now that he was no longer in the presence of the dread She, his sense of the awfulness of all that had happened, and more especially of the wicked murder of Ustane, who was bound to him by ties so close, broke upon him like a storm, and lashed ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... 8. As if to stem A greater loss with one which was more weak. 'To stem a loss' is a very lax phrase—and more especially 'to stem a loss with another loss.' 'To stem a torrent—or, the current of a river,' is a well-known expression, indicating one sort of material force in opposition to another. Hence we come to the figurative expression, 'to stem the torrent of his grief,' &c. Shelley seems to have yielded to a certain analogy in the sentiment, and also to the convenience ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... longer: he could not restrain the torrent of tears which was struggling to get free; he could not stay in that assembly of people; he must be alone, alone with God, ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder
... Meta Beggs, partly from the shreds of the superstitious dread that had once colored his attitude toward his wife and partly from the necessity to control what otherwise would sweep him into a resistless torrent. However, most of his impatience had vanished—a little while now, and in a discreet manner he could grasp all that he ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... scared, the picnickers huddled far up the little canyon's side and sat awed and watchful as the lightning flashed about them and the waters rose beneath them. The torrent of rain loosened the soil above, and they were so drenched in clay-colored water coming down, and sat so still beneath it, that they looked ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... distance I could see a white stream pouring from the precipitous edge of an elevated glacier; this seeming mountain torrent I knew was not water, but ice, thousands of tons of which having cracked and broken from the edge of the glacier, were now being dashed over the hard face of ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... in their career of conquest in South-western Europe caused probably by dissensions among their chiefs, and also by their arms being employed in attack upon the Scandinavian nations. But when Attila (or Atzel, as he is called in the Hungarian language) became their ruler, the torrent of their arms was directed with augmented terrors upon the west and the south; and their myriads marched beneath the guidance of one master-mind to the overthrow both of the new and the old ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... her breast the steel Lucretia thrust, She said, while forth th' ensanguin'd torrent gush'd; 'From me that no consent the tyrant knew, To my spouse my blood, to heaven my soul shall show; And thus in death these witnesses shall prove, My innocence, to shades below, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... at not having further advanced; "I fear that when the torrent has broken its embankment it will ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the beautiful poems, which he put forth to the world under Ossian's name. The word 'Bran,' the name given to Fingal's noble hound, employed by others than Ossian, is Celtic, and signifies 'Mountain Torrent,' implying that impetuosity of course and headlong courage which the dog possessed. I have said that many assert the Irish wolf-dog to be no longer in existence. I have ventured a denial of this, and refer to the ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... late to dress the beast that evening; so, after taking out the tongue and cutting off enough meat for supper and breakfast, we scrambled down to near the torrent, and after some search found a good spot for camping. Hot and dusty from the day's hard tramp, I undressed and took a plunge in the stream, the icy water making me gasp. Then, having built a slight lean-to of brush, and dragged together enough dead timber to burn all night, we cut long alder twigs, ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... appropriate the beauties of the neighbouring vale of the Exe. Both torrents descend from the highlands of Exmoor, and it is difficult to say which is the more beautiful. The valleys are similar, but have characteristic differences. The Barle has all the piquant charm of the mountain torrent, whilst the beauties of the Exe are of a sedater though not less pleasing character. Everywhere about Dulverton delightful landscapes may be caught, but the "show sight" is Mount Sydenham, just above the church (ascend lane at E. end of church and turn in at gate on L. when the first ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... do, puppy, if your hands were unbound?" He took his prisoner by the breast of his doublet and shook him. "Answer me! What should you do? Tchah! You empty windbag! You...." And then came a torrent of words unknown to mademoiselle, yet of whose foulness ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... woods, and hollow caves, A num'rous host along the plain appear, And hail their monarch with a gen'rous tear: 100 To Cusco's gate now rush th' increasing throngs, And such their ardor, rouz'd by sense of wrongs, That vainly would Pizarro's vet'ran force Arrest the torrent in its raging course; In vain his murd'ring bands terrific stood, 105 And plung'd their sabres in a sea of blood; Danger and death Peruvia's sons disdain, And half their captive city soon regain. With such pure joy the natives view their lord To the warm wishes ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams
... of persecution—the demolition of their churches, and the suppression of their worship—led the Protestants of the Cevennes, Viverais, and Dauphiny to combine for the purpose of endeavouring to stem the torrent of injustice. With this object, a meeting of twenty-eight deputies took place in the house of Brousson, at Toulouse, in the month of May, 1683. As the Assembly of the States were about to take steps to demolish the Protestant temple ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... that heavy burden, Outpouring in a torrent tears and sighs, And the voice flagged upon ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... cleft from top to bottom, spreads apart. The path lies in this breach, between two gigantic walls. A roaring torrent flows through the gorge. The air is icy, the granite looks black, and high above one the glimpse of blue ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... taking his stick firmly in his hand, stumped down the passage to the door of the room where the gamblers played, and, as he turned the handle, he was greeted with a torrent of shouts, high words, and the noise ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... a short distance, and then turned to the southward and took to a side road leading through a patch of high brushwood. Crossing a tiny mountain torrent, they came in sight of a dilapidated house, one end of which was all but wrecked. To the surprise of both Jack and his guide, smoke was issuing ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... free, not heeding her torrent of reproach. Then he seized upon one of the Folk as a guide and sought the laboratories. Far beneath the surface of Tav, where the light-motes shone ghostly in the gloom, they came into a place of ceaseless activity, where there were tables ...
— The People of the Crater • Andrew North
... reply from Doctor Heath; he was busy over his medicine case. He prepared a lotion, to be applied to the bruises, and a sedative, to be applied to the nerves of the patient, who was beginning to recover herself in a measure, and launched out into a torrent of invective against the author of her trouble; after which she rushed into a wild recital of her wrongs, beginning at the time when she left a good place in England, to follow the fortunes of John Burrill, and running with glib tongue over the entire gamut of her ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... frequently an eighth of an acre. It consists of soil painfully brought down from above, and secured by means of substantial stone walls, plastered with mud and covered with grass, strong enough to resist the force of the torrent. Each little patch or flat is so laid that a part of the stream shall flow over it without carrying away the soil; indeed, it is expected to leave some sediment. And as you look up such a valley you see terrace after terrace ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... river widens, that great river of opinion, And its torrent beats and plunges at the base of greed's dominion. Though you dam it by oppression and fling golden bridges o'er it, Yet the day and hour advances when in ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... fearful place. The torrent, swollen by the melting snow, plunges into a tremendous abyss, from which the spray rolls up like the smoke from a burning house. The shaft into which the river hurls itself is an immense chasm, lined by glistening coal-black rock, and narrowing ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... does this mean? I cannot understand such grief as this." But for a while she was quite unable to answer. The flood-gates were at length opened, and she could not restrain the torrent of her sobbings. ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... of the Charrebourgs could not tolerate, and the visconte taunted him with the honor which one of his house had done him in mingling their pure blood with that of a "roturier." Then came the obvious retort, "beggar," and even "trickster," retaliated by a torrent of scarcely articulate scorn and execration, and an appeal to the sword, which, with brutal contempt, (while at the same time, nevertheless, he recoiled instinctively a foot or two from the window,) the wealthy plebeian retorted by threatening to arrest him ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... just read the news that Charles Wyndham was dying, and were thereby sadly reminded of Pink Dominos and the torrent of farcical comedies that followed it in his heyday until every trick of that trade had become so stale that the laughter they provoked turned to loathing: these veterans also, when they returned from the field, were as much pleased by ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... suddenly interrupted by the noise of rushing water. Floods seemed to be bursting forth, and he and his guest, going hastily to the door, saw by the moonlight that the brook which issued from the forest was surging in a wild torrent over its margin, while a roaring wind was lashing the lake. In great alarm both shouted, "Undine! Undine!" But there was no response, and the two ran off in different directions in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... Greek never solaced his leisure with the latest tale of a gifted Charicles or Aristarchus, and the grave Roman would have been as much startled by a 'new novel' as by the apparition of a steam engine. The famous Minerva press was the first mighty wellspring whence gushed the broad and rapid torrent of cheap fiction. This perennial fountain has long ceased to flow, yet has its disappearance left no unsatisfied void. The procreation of human kind has failed to support the elaborate theory of Malthus, but had the sage philosopher transferred his calculations from the sons of men to works ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... upon hardened lava; this ground is called in the country 'hraun'; the writhen surface presented the appearance of distorted, twisted cables, sometimes stretched in length, sometimes contorted together; an immense torrent, once liquid, now solid, ran from the nearest mountains, now extinct volcanoes, but the ruins around revealed the violence of the past eruptions. Yet here and there were a few jets of steam from ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... epical impulse, deprived its most important creations of the external epical form. The age of awakened national self-consciousness was also the age of drama. The greatest poetical genius of that or any age, and his associates, were playwrights first and poets afterwards. The torrent of inspiration rushed mainly to the stage. Hence the old experience was reversed, and whereas Aeschylus described himself and his fellow-dramatists as subsisting on scraps filched from the great ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... seldom occurs unless the whole country-side is aflame. At other times, when there is peace in the land, and the wet season has made the unbridged rivers impassable, whole companies of travellers camp on either side of some river—a silver thread in the dry season, a rushing torrent now. But the r'kass knows every ford, and, his long pole aiding him, manages to reach his destination. It is his business to defy Nature if necessary, just as he defies man in the pursuit of his task. He is a living proof of the capacity ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... no take you money," cried he, frantic with rage, trying to push the silver into Chook's hand. And then Chook overwhelmed him with a torrent of words, swearing that he had taken the money and made a sale. The ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... estimate the difficulties in the way of justice when Henry came to the throne. The wretched freeholders summoned to the Shire Court from farm and cattle, from mill or anvil or carpenter's bench, knew well the terrors of the journey through marsh and fen and forest, the dangers of flood and torrent, and perhaps of outlawed thief or murderer, the privations and hardships of the way; and the heavy fines which occur in the king's rolls for non-attendance show how anxiously great numbers of the suitors avoided joining in the troublesome and thankless business of the court. When they reached ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... under the bridge that crosses the fall. It was a sweet place in a great solitude, where the silence was broken only by the tumbling waters, the cooing of pigeons on the roof, and the twittering of ringouzels by the side of the torrent. The air was fresh with the smell of new peat. There was a wedge-shaped garden in front, and it was encompassed by chestnut-trees. As Hugh Ritson drew near he noticed that a squirrel crept from the fork of one of these trees. The little creature rocked itself on the ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... whole 'stream of tendency without us makes for righteousness.' In the one course of life we go with the stream of divine activity which pours from the throne of God. In the other we are like men trying to row a boat up Niagara. All the rush of the mighty torrent will batter us back. Our work will be doomed to destruction, and ourselves to shame. For ever and ever to be good is to be well. An eternal truth lies in the facts that the same word 'good' means pleasant and right, and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... hours after leaving the huts on White river the path leads across the hot, dusty desert; then it reaches the rim of White river canon and follows its edge so closely that a pebble tossed from the saddle would drop into the torrent more than a thousand feet below. How musical the roar of the stream, and how cool its waters look! As the trail passes some especially dizzy spot the Indian women lean away from the sheer edge in fear. For miles the trail traverses the bluff. At times the river ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... now in thick forest, and the track was much narrower, so that it had become worn into a hollow, as if it were the dry bed of a torrent. The horses and the carters were weary, yet they were obliged to plod on, as the arms had to be delivered before the morrow. They spoke little, except to urge the animals. Felix soon dropped into a ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies |
