"Climax" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and recognizing this fact, Cicero writes earnestly to him,[128] on the eve of his return, to enlist him in support of Milo's candidacy for the consulship. Curio may have just arrived in the city when matters reached a climax, for on January 18, 52 B.C., Clodius was killed in a street brawl by the followers of Milo, and Pompey was soon after elected sole consul, to bring order out of the chaos, ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... me of your men, M. Flocon," angrily interposed the Judge. "One of them has given us a touch of his quality. Why should not the other be equally foolish? I quite expect to hear that the Countess also has gone, that would be the climax!" ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths
... their climax when the little party was seated around the fire with the Indians in ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... no way suggests lunacy; but the young Arab had happened to enter this world on the day of the new moon, which was considered to be a particularly fortunate and brilliant omen at his birth. Whether the climax of his good fortune had arrived at the moment he entered my service I know not; but, if so, there was a cloud over his happiness in his subjection to Mahomet, the dragoman, who rejoiced in the opportunity of bullying the two inferiors. Wat Gamma was a quiet, steady, well-conducted ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... a wilful anti-climax to her speech, and, as Stair knew very well, not in the least finishing as she had meant to. But her housekeeping pride was aroused. He must eat. She would heap his plate. She had heard him late last night moving about. Had he not slept well? That was ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... were hastening to a climax rapidly, when Wheaton or the panther must finish their hunting on the mountains of the Susquehanna, for if old smooth-bore should flash in the pan, or miss her aim, the die would be cast, as a second load would be impossible ere her claws would have sundered ...
— A Sketch of the History of Oneonta • Dudley M. Campbell
... in the Exhortation and elsewhere, one word is of Latin and the other of Saxon derivation.[1] But this is surely a very feeble excuse for bad composition. Of a very different kind is that beautiful climax which is reached in the three admirably chosen pairs of words in the Prayer for the Parliament, "peace and happiness, truth and justice, ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... Nicholas and Natasha, but which might have been told as well of the sons and daughters of the king of Troy. To Nicholas, the youth of all time, the strife of Emperor and Czar is the occasion, it may very well be, of the climax of his adventure; but it is no more than the occasion, not essential to it, since by some means or other he would have touched his climax in any age. War and peace are likely enough to shape his life for him, whether ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... fastened but I was told Aunt Rennie's opinion on the matter—(Tabitha always absurdly shortened her Aunt's surname, which was Rensworth). I never could mention a book I liked but Aunt Rennie had either read it or not read it. It did not matter which to me, the least. But the climax came when Aunt Rennie sent Tabitha a bicycle. Now I know that young women bicycle nowadays; but that is no reason why Tabitha should. I always turn away my eyes when I see a young girl pass the window on one of those ugly, muddy, dangerous machines, with her knees working ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... able to carry through what the other preachers would not attempt. He knew all the arts and tricks of oratory, the modulation of the voice to almost a whisper, the pause for effect, the rise through light, rapid-fire sentences to the terrific, thundering outburst of an electrifying climax. In addition, he had the intuition of a born theatrical manager. Night after night this man held me fascinated. He convinced me that, after all, eloquence consists more in the manner of saying than in what is said. It is largely ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... a story, or an allegory—that chain and backbone of continuous interest, implying a progress and leading up to a climax, which holds together the great poems of the world, the Iliad and Odyssey, the AEneid, the Commedia, the Paradise Lost, the Jerusalem Delivered—this is wanting in the Faery Queen. ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... individual responsibility—and that for the express purpose of realising his highest potentialities: it is only when we accept such a reading of the facts as this that we escape from that worst of nightmares which reaches its climax in hurling its foolish defiance at the Most High, challenging His right to punish the instruments of His own will, those "helpless pieces of the game He plays," impotent items ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... its central rotunda, is the climax of the entire structure. It is backed up and given solidity by the walls of the gallery behind it, 1,100 feet long. These walls, unbroken save for the entrances, are relieved and beautified by shrubbery set on a terrace halfway between the ground and the eaves. (p. ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... in his parish nine years, his age was thirty-two, he was in the prime of life, and at the climax of his power and his popularity. Three years before, he had been left a widower with three young children, one of whom became Rev. John F. Ware. That these two intensely religious natures, that of Mary Pickard and that of Henry Ware, should have been drawn ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... and the flash of his dark eye, as he shook them back over his shoulders; his thin, transparent fingers, unusually long; the mode in which he grasped his bow, and the tremendous length to which he drew it; and, climax of all, his sudden manner of placing both bow and instrument under his arm, while he threw his hands behind him, elevated his head, his features almost distorted with a smile of ecstasy, and his very hair instinct with life, at the conclusion of an unparalleled fantasia! ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... nebular navigation beats all my experience," said Captain Arms, wiping the water out of his eyes. "I was struck by a waterspout once in the Indian Ocean, and I thought that that capped the climax, but it was only a catspaw to this. Give me a clear offing and I don't care how much wind blows, but blow me if I want to get under any more lakes in ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... daughters do except stay at home to cheer father and mother, play and sing in the twilight, read, shop, sew, visit, receive their friends, and be young women of elegant leisure? If love, and love's climax, the wedding march, follow soon upon a girl's leaving school, she is taken out of the ranks of girlhood, and in accepting woman's highest vocation, queenship in the kingdom of home, foregoes the ease of her girlish life and its peril of ennui and unhappiness ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... the climax in a series of extravagances which had terrified the Queen. He was indignant at any delay in a restoration of the old royal kindness. At first he condescended to a few overtures for forgiveness. His friends could not believe that ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... onward rapidly from success to success, their stage effects outbid one another, men and things seem to be set in flaming brilliants, ecstasy is the prevailing spirit; but they are short-lived, they reach their climax speedily, then society relapses into a long fit of nervous reaction before it learns how to appropriate the fruits of its period of feverish excitement. Proletarian revolutions, on the contrary, such as those of the nineteenth century, criticize ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... of Lima, vanity and the love of dress appear to have reached their climax. To this passion for personal adornment they sacrifice everything. Formerly, when none but real pearls and diamonds were worn, many a lady was known to have ruined her husband by the purchase of those costly articles; now, however, thanks to French mock jewelry, they are ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... she rose from the table and told her guests to go to their rooms, don their riding-clothes, pack what they needed for the long and adventurous camping trip that she hoped would be the climax of their Western experience, and to snatch a little sleep before the cowboys roused them for ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... week saw the climax of this war romance—a tragic ending to a war epic. Lieutenant Warneford was practicing with a new French machine at Versailles. He either lost control or the motor failed him. It dropped to earth, killing the pilot and an American newspaper correspondent who was in the observer's seat. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... world? This doubt had so preyed upon her nerves that Miss Wycliffe was not far from the truth when she explained to her father that the maid was ill. But it was the vilification of her lover, to which she was forced to listen in silence, that had brought her emotions to a disastrous climax. ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... she played on, lost to all thoughts of the world around her, wrapped in the melody and meaning of the music. Then, as the finale rushed in a torrent of golden chords to its climax and the last note was struck, her hands fell away from the piano and she sank back on her seat with a little sigh of ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... the usual "call" to preach the gospel. Accordingly, having received the "call," he became a Methodist preacher, belonging to the Old Connexion, the New Connexion, and then advancing to Unitarianism, ultimately arriving at the climax of Freethought, in which cause he is now so distinguished an advocate. While a Methodist preacher, he was induced by a neighbor, an Atheist, to read Carlile's "Republican." We can readily understand why Christians ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... Hartford papers. What a magnificent meeting you had! Splendid climax of the campaign—the two ablest and most eloquent women on one platform and the Governor of the State by your side. I was with you in spirit that evening; the chairman of the Committee had both telegraphed and written me all about ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... expert, he felt sure that others would take exception. The gentleman was kind enough to insist on submitting his marked copy to me, and my wonderment increased as I turned over the pages, and it reached a climax when I happened upon the following passage, which had been marked to be omitted by the American printer. The passage was: "... in her stage life Evelyn was an agent of the sensual passion, not only with her voice, but in her arms, her neck, and ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... anything he ever heard." This reminded me of a capital story told me by an old family doctor many years ago. It was that sort of anecdote now out of fashion with raconteurs—a long preamble, many details, a gradual increase of interest, and a vivid climax, and when told by a sick bed would sometimes weary the patient. A man not especially well known had given a lecture in a New Hampshire town without rousing much enthusiasm in his audience, and as he rode away on the top of the stage coach next morning ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... enough of fossils and ruins for one day, from breakfast onward, so when old General Changarnier came to offer me his arm for dinner I said to myself, "This is the climax!" ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... vital question of labor, as modified by involuntary servitude, and free activity, found its most practical solution—was, and is, legitimately, appropriately, and naturally, the scene of the fiercest strife for national existence—where the claims and the climax of freedom and faith culminated in all the desolation of civil war. A more difficult country for military operations can scarcely be imagined. Early in the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... feud between the uncles and relatives of King Henry, in England, as related in a preceding chapter, had been going on, and was now reaching a climax. The leaders of the two rival parties were, as will be recollected, Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, or Cardinal Beaufort, as he was more commonly called, who had had the personal charge of the king during his minority, on one side, and the Duke of Gloucester, ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Mount of Olives when it was played in the Temple at Jerusalem. To add to the mystery surrounding this instrument, it has been proved by several learned authorities that it was merely a large drum; and, to cap the climax, other equally respected writers have declared that this instrument was simply a large shovel which, after being used for the sacrificial fire in the temple, was thrown to the ground with a great noise, to inform the people that the ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... him, and replied that he had not noticed any such thing, but that he did not believe she feared the Evil Eye. He went on with his story uninterrupted until the climax. He had found the crucifix, he said, on his return from bathing, and had been pleased with her for leaving it. Then he related the discovery of the body and his talk with Fray Juan de la Cruz. Here came in Gil's third question. "Did she return your handkerchief?" ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... severest, nor even in the months of lowest temperature, like December or January, but in the late winter and the early spring. Throughout the greater part of the temperate zone the death-rate for pneumonia begins to rise in December, increases in January, goes higher still in February, reaching its climax in that month or in March. April is almost as bad, and the decline often doesn't fairly set in ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... tragedy which is moving to its climax in the Balkans we all have our responsibilities, and none of us can escape our share of them by blaming others or by blaming the Turk. If there is any man here who, looking back over the last 35 years, thinks he knows where to fix the sole responsibility for all the procrastination ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... continued Mrs. North, "that while we and all our set shut our eyes to your very obvious relations with that woman, and while I myself often spoke of it to others as a simple flirtation, and averted a scandal for your sake, and when the climax was reached, and she herself gave you an opportunity to sever your relations, and nobody need have been wiser—and she'd have had all the blame—and it's only what she's accustomed to—you—you! you, James North!—you must nonsensically go, and, by this extravagant piece of idiocy and ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... a climax—she became conscious that she was about to become a mother. This affected her with terrible fears. She went back to that thought of a possible contingency which had torn her with conflicting feelings on the eve of her marriage. ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... stock of water, which I made in desperation during the night of the fourth day of our investment, showed that our enemies were not only still present, but as watchful and pertinacious as ever. And that night, or rather in the early hours of the following morning, came the climax, when the wily foe made a last desperate attempt to rush our defences and overpower us ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... morning would have gone for naught. For a moment Dorothea staggered, but for a moment only. "I didn't tell you everything," she said mysteriously. "Your mother is not alone in the bed. She is holding something in her arms. She is saying—" she paused to give her climax its full effect— "'Oh, why doesn't Jennie come home ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... her adventures with much glee—her walk through the woods, her arrival, the terrible way in which Lurcher had treated her, the kindness of the farmer, the proposed dinner, Nancy's manners. She was working up to the grand climax, to the moment when she should speak ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... with the exertion, Bobby fell into deep and strength-restoring slumber, and Skipper Ed joined the others to cheer their hearts with the good news that Bobby's illness had passed its climax, and to rejoice with them over a ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... Mr. Balfour had passed through the length and breadth of the land, visiting the poverty-stricken and disturbed districts of the West, with no other protection beyond that afforded by "his tender-hearted sister." Mr. Balfour rose to make a second speech, and the enthusiasm reached its climax. The great ex-Secretary seemed touched, and although speaking slowly showed more than his usual emotion. When he concluded the people sent up a shout such as England never hears—an original shout, long drawn out on a high musical note, something like the unisonous tone of forty ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint." I never thought what that meant until one morning in college chapel our president turned to us and said: "Most of you think that is an anti-climax," and we would say: "Why, of course, for a man cannot fly like the eagle. He can walk down hill, what is the use talking about that walking down hill." The old man shook his head and said: "No, no. Anybody can fly like an eagle in his imagination; when we are beginning any ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... from my little caravan, I would watch the sun set in always varying splendour. No two sunsets were anything like the same. Each through the ascendancy of some one shade of colour, or through an unusual combination of colour, had a special beauty of its own. I would watch each ripening to the climax and then shade away into the beauty of the night. And when the day was over the night would reveal that higher, wider life which daylight only ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... of sporadic development under the stimulus of new and favorable geographic conditions, a similar anti-climax. The expansion of the Russians across the lowlands of Siberia was quite in harmony with the genius of that land-bred people; but when they reached Bering Sea, the enclosed basin, the proximity of the American continent, the island stepping-stones ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... in the neighbourhood had an execrable flavor, and two donkeys sickened and died in less than an hour from its effects. Man suffered nausea and a general irritability of the system, and accordingly revenged himself by cursing the country and its imbecile ruler most heartily. The climax came, however, when Bombay reported, after an attempt to settle the Muhongo, that the chief's head had grown big since he heard that the Musungu had come, and that its "bigness" could not be reduced unless he could extract ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... humorous story, went on, his recital punctuated by bass and treble anticipatory laughter from his auditors: "—and when he called her upon the 'phone the next day to ask her about it, she said she didn't know he'd been there at all!" A roar of appreciation greeted this recondite climax, under cover of which Sylvia opened the front door and ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... not yet arrived at the climax, which made me inclined to exclaim, with the expiring Lion ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... corner the little spark brooded and smouldered. The watchman passed that way but it gave no sign. All was still in the great building, as the smouldering spark crept on and on over its little thread of existence to the climax. ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... fitted to shine as a gallant "in hall or bower," but had he been the climax of knightly qualities, the very impersonation of beauty, grace, and accomplishment, he could not have been better adapted than, in his own estimation, he already was, to please the fancy of a lady. He was blissfully unconscious of every imperfection; and displayed himself before what he thought ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... musical sense. He plays before the Grand Duke at seven, but he is destined for greater things. An idol of the hour, in some ways suggesting Richard Strauss, tries in vain to wreck his faith in his career. Early love episodes follow, and after a dramatic climax, the hero, like Wagner, has to ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... upon getting his answer, that he could not see the climax of hysteria towards which he was bringing her. But against that she was fighting, most fiercely of all. Like the rising water in a gauge, it was leaping in sudden bounds within her. But to break into tears, to murmur incoherently between laughter ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... despair, for her eyes were truly of the greatest beauty, and I was cruel enough to attack them. She evidently hated me, and her anger alone kept back her tears. Yet I would not undeceive her, for I wanted her to bring matters to a climax. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... a mistress: he introduces her Grace to the Countess his wife. The Countess his wife, in order to ramener her lord to his conjugal duties, is counselled, by a friend, TO PRETEND TO TAKE A LOVER: one is found, who, poor fellow! takes the affair in earnest: climax—duel, death, despair, and what not? In the "Faubourg St. Germain," another novel by the same writer, which professes to describe the very pink of that society which Napoleon dreaded more than Russia, Prussia, and ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... ahead. At length Fraser slowed down, dropped behind, and, just when Midnight had steadied down, up he clattered again. This he did three times in quick succession, causing Midnight to quiver with excitement, and madly to champ the bit. At length the climax was reached, for the noble beast, hearing again the thud of her opponent's hoofs, became completely unmanageable. With a snort of excitement she laid low her head, took the bit firmly between her ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... to the dear Hopital des Epidemies, explaining my reasons: and presently Brian and I set out for Paris by easy stages. The cap was put on the climax for me by remembering how he and I had walked over that very ground three years before, in the sunshine of life and summer. Brian too thought of the past, but not in bitterness. I hid my anguish from him, but it gnawed the heart of me with the teeth of a rat. I couldn't see what Brian had ever done ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... The comparative lull enabled us to reorganize and consolidate our position on the new line we had taken up and to obtain some rest after the fatigue and strain of the night. It did not last long, however, and in the afternoon the climax of the battle was reached, for, under the cover of intense artillery fire, the Germans launched no less than five separate assaults against the east of ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... was brought to a climax that evening when his sister appeared dressed for this, her first public appearance on the small stage of a country-neighbourhood, or, to speak more respectfully, county visiting. It was Howel's pleasure that she should ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... cohere with the preceding chain of thought. For, since nothing so sticks in the reader's mind as the conclusion, what is better than to put there what especially you want to fix in his soul. Consequently, those epigrams are rightly censured as faulty that go in the order of anti-climax or in which the conclusion is sort of added on or appended to the rest and does not neatly develop out of the preceding verses. This fault is discernible in the following epigram, though in ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... Kit looked at her with pained eyes; "can you ever forgive me, Miss Fairfield, for bringing you here? But of course I could not foresee this awful climax to our ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... thought you'd get golf into it. I suppose you were working up to your climax. Poor old Bob is ...
— First Plays • A. A. Milne
... novel to him; he could not discuss the contrast between last week's glorification of Somebody's Pickles and to-night's triumph of Everybody's Whisky, and he was almost bemused by the display, which provided such a bizarre anti-climax to the terrible ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... security. They even began bringing down their cattle from their alps, and devoted themselves to the tillage of far the greater portion of their fields. But Agesilaus only waited till their rash confidence reached its climax; then on the fifteenth or sixteenth day after he head first entered the country he sacrificed at early dawn, and before evening had traversed eighteen miles (5) or so of country to the lake (6) round which were collected nearly all the flocks and herds of the Acarnanians, ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... the gradual mythical evolution which found its climax in Apollo, the animation of this type, so fruitful in special instances, extended even to the form of his arms, his bow and arrows, and to the place of his habitation at Delphos. He was armed, according to Schwartz, with the rainbow and with thunderbolts, ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... common with the latter. In some telepathic way—influenced by these past-dated surroundings—dropped into the very den of this Procrustes of the seas, I was there to re-enact the fearful scene that had found its climax in the brain of ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... words such as: (pa-pa,) (ma-ma,) (Oo-me-me,)—(English: pigeon.) I showed them how thus to combine these signs into words. This very much interested them; but the climax came, when with the burnt stick I marked (Maneto,—English: God, or the Great Spirit.) Great indeed was the excitement among them. They could hardly believe their own eyes that before them was Maneto, the Great Spirit. He whom they had ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... struggle for the establishment of parliamentary government which took place within it—a struggle which had its beginning, indeed, in the deadlock by which the dissolution of 1906 was occasioned, which reached its climax in the fiscal debates of 1908-1909, and which during the years that followed gradually subsided, leaving both the status of parties and the constitutional order of the Empire essentially as they were at the beginning. Even before the dissolution of 1906 the Conservative-Centre bloc was effectually ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... butter-fingered pupil ever invented for the torture of teachers; at least, so Lancelot thought, but then he had never had any other pupils, and was not patient. It must be admitted, though, that Rosie giggled perpetually, apparently finding endless humour in her own mistakes. But the climax of the horror was the attendance of Mrs. Leadbatter at the lessons, for, to Lancelot's consternation, she took it for granted that her presence was part of the contract. She marched into the room in her best cap, and sat, smiling, in the easy-chair, wheezing complacently and beating time ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... her knees before me. I knew that the climax of her story was at hand. Her beautiful eyes, widened, and speaking dumbly of infinite sorrow, sought mine, and held them. I bent forward, and kissed her on the forehead. ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... which they should lose next of that frieze of light-hearted riders who had stood out so clearly against the blue morning sky, when viewed from the deck-chairs of the Korosko. Two gone out of ten, and a third out of his mind. The pleasure trip was drawing to its climax. ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... she was living through the climax of that afternoon's strain. And she dared not show it. She forced herself to do her best acting, sipping her tea with a steady hand. And what made her situation harder was that two of the party, Larry and Hunt, were treating her with the charmed deference ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... story, making it as humorous as he could. But when he had finished, she wasn't laughing. For a moment his impulse was to lay before her the whole story—the bitter climax, the ashen climax, which lately he had thought so beautiful. She had said that nothing in the past would matter—but this was of the future, too. Even if she ought to know, he had no right to force upon her the burden of what was to come. He found now that he had even cut himself off from ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... can remember it was on August 20th that the climax came. Liege had fallen. The English Expedition had landed, and was marching on Belgium. A victorious German army had goose-stepped into defenseless Brussels, and was sweeping out toward the French frontier. The French advance into Alsace had ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... grown-up fairy-tales of modern times.... The characters ... are finely various and their conversations piquantly fresh and edifying ... a dramatic climax of great strength and beauty ... clean, ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... this despoliation more rife than in the time of which we write. It had reached its climax of horrors, day after day recurring, when Colonel Miranda became military commandant of the district of Albuquerque; until not only this town, but Santa Fe, the capital of the province itself, was menaced with destruction by the red ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... thunders into Milton's "Lycidas," of which the general felicitous mingling of a conventional pedantry with idyllic charm and racy touches of realistic effect is very similar to the general effect of the golden group we have been describing. Among all the work that finds its climax in the beautiful creations of 1511, only in a few prints of the Little Passion, published in 1511, do we find any dramatic power or creativeness of essential conception. I may mention the Christ Scourging the Money-changers in the ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... was driven away. He fled indoors to his mother, flung himself into her arms and sobbed in newly awakened horror. To his dying day he never forgot that cry of pain. He had been in the way of cruel training with these men, but the climax woke him up. It was said that he never after was cruel to any creature, but this is sure—that he never after cared to be with cats ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... with its famous climax at the Chemin des Dames, began to slacken in July; and it was decided that the chasing squadrons, including the Storks, should be transferred to one of the British sectors where another offensive was being prepared. But before leaving the Fismes or Rheims district, Guynemer was active. ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... British Armies, on September 27th-29th. The enemy positions were most formidable. Nothing could stop the British. They swept right over them. It was a glorious day for British arms." It was also the climax of two months' fighting in which French, British, and Americans had all played to the full the part laid down for them by the history of the preceding years, and in which it fell to the British Army to give ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fashion, but this trait has been exaggerated in the case of both. Mark Twain has certainly made a stronger impression than many authors whose "sixthly" follows more inevitably. It is true that his romances do not gather up every loose end, that they do not close with a grand climax which settles everything; but they reflect the spirit of the western life, which also had many loose ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... he was obliged to conceal himself for a time; and to cap the climax, the conduct of his son, who was still in Paris, ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... indescribable comfort, and saved me from the depths of blank despair. Finally my breathing became laboured, I had sharp spasms of pain, and my pulse almost stopped. I felt that I was dying, and my sight grew dim. The crisis and climax of life were at hand. 'Oh!' I thought, with the philosophers and sages, 'is it to this end I lived? The flower appears, briefly blooms amid troublous toil, and is gone; my body returns to its primordial dust, and my works are ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... pioneer in this line in the Western world, gave the general principles in a nutshell, when he laid down the following rule: "There is a trianal series of graduations in the peculiar potencies of colors, the center and climax of electrical action, which cools the nerves, being in violet; the climax of electrical action, which is soothing to the vascular system, being in blue; the climax of luminosity being in yellow; and the climax of thermism or heat being in red. This is not ...
— The Human Aura - Astral Colors and Thought Forms • Swami Panchadasi
... reasonably competent and could rake in my modest share of War profits. But recently Clibbers, of the International Fiction Syndicate, approached me and said, "Old man, do me some War stuff. Anything you like, but it must have a novel climax." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various
... assault, and on February 8th the important outwork on Muselim Hill was taken by an impulsive bayonet charge. The city was not captured, however, until April 23d, when an entire day's ceaseless fighting ended in the yielding of the garrison, the climax of a six-month siege. ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... for the honor of drawing your blood, and then, when the mud begins to dry out sufficient to justify my dispensing with the wooden scraper, thunder-showers begin to bestow their unappreciated favor upon the roads, making them well-nigh impassable again. The following morning the climax of vexation is reached when, after wading through the mud for two hours, I discover that I have been dragging, carrying, and trundling my laborious way along in the wrong direction for Tchorlu, which is not over ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... noisy and musical neighbours began to increase in intensity. Apart from the tinker, whom I hated with a deadly hatred, and with whom I had a terrible scene about once a week, the number of pianos in the house where I lived was augmented. The climax came with the arrival of a certain Herr Stockar, who played the flute in the room under mine every Sunday, whereupon I gave up all hope of composing any more. One day my friends the Wesendoncks, who had returned from wintering in Paris, unfolded ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... Carnegie Hall an audience three times as great as that admitted had to be accommodated outside with loudspeakers and when the awesome crescendo of horns, drums, and broken crockery rubbed over slate surfaces announced the climax of the sixth movement, the crowds wept. Even for Mozart the hall was ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... complexion was unusually clear, but the epithet clung to him with a cruel tenacity. When an ill-natured reviewer could find nothing else to say, he had recourse to "pimpled essays" or "pimpled criticism."[27] The climax of abuse was reached in an article entitled "Hazlitt Cross-Questioned," which a sense of decency makes it impossible to reproduce, and which resulted in the payment of damages to the victim. Even the publisher Blackwood speaks of it, with what sincerity it is not safe to say, as disgusting ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... abruptly brought to a halt by a wall, against which I nearly dashed myself with a force that would have stunned me. Of the name of the hotel, or even of the street on which it was situated, I was utterly ignorant, and as the climax of my difficulty, I discovered that all the money I had in my pocket was a fifty-cent piece that I had brought from New-York. I attempted to buy a torch of a boy, but I could not persuade him that my half-dollar, though it ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the expression of soul-stimulating thoughts. This, the finest feature of his genius, no artist of the age was capable of adequately comprehending. Accordingly, they agreed in extolling a cartoon which displayed his faculty of dealing with un bel corpo ignudo as the climax of his powers. ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... there was not one of them from first to last that did not sheathe itself like a sharp knife in Unorna's heart. The enormous jealousy of Beatrice which had been growing within her beside her love during the last month was reaching the climax of its overwhelming magnitude. She hardly knew when Beatrice ceased speaking, for the words were still all ringing in her ears, and clashing madly in her own breast, and prompting her fierce nature to do some violent deed. But Beatrice looked for no sympathy and did ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... came, each rigidly after his kind, a Noah's procession of Dignitaries with the August Sovereign first of all. To bring on the majestic climax so early was illogical, of course, but dust having happened to be created before precedence, the Cortege was changed the other way round for a voyage, so that the First Category people breathed what the August Sovereign kicked up and kicked up some ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... and discomfort enough to make James unwilling to leave him; though his good-will did not prevent him from keeping up such a stream of earplugs and sinister auguries, that it was almost the climax of good-temper that enabled Louis to lie still, trying to read a great quarto Park's Travels, and abstaining from any reply that could aggravate matters. As the one would not go to luncheon, the other would not; and after watching the sound of the ladies' setting out for their drive, Louis ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the French and English to such an extent that they frequently had to interfere in Athens. The Greek people resented this interference and on one or two occasions fights broke out when allied sailors marched through the streets of the capital. Matters reached a climax in June, 1917. The governments of France, England, and Italy felt that they could stand the treacherous conduct of King Constantine no longer. They knew that he was assisting Germany in every possible way. They knew that their camp was full of spies who were reporting all their movements ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet
... the table was of excellent quality, and the two mates ate heartily of it, with the ship-bread. The last dose the captain had taken appeared to cap the climax, and he could no longer eat, or talk so as to be clearly understood. When the mates had finished their lunch, they saw that the skipper had dropped asleep in his chair. They rose from their places, and rattled the stools. The noise roused ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... travelers clattered along over the stony road under the impression of possible high adventure in a new world of such freshness. Nor was beauty wanting. The rhododendrons had, perhaps, a week ago reached their climax, and now began to strew the water and the ground with their brilliant petals, dashing all the way with color; but they were still matchlessly beautiful. Great banks of pink and white covered the steep hillsides; ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... no reminders of the human race which had cast her out and pursued her with torture of body and soul, here in the wilderness her spirits were going up, and her young eyes were looking hopefully round and forward. The up-piling horrors of those two days and their hideous climax seemed a dream which the sun had scattered. Hopefully! That blessed inexperience and sheer imagination of youth enabling it to hope in a large, vague way when to hope for any definite and real thing ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... for Pamela the following afternoon in the sitting-room of her flat on Fifty-eighth Street, felt that although the practical future of his life might be decided in other places, it was here that its real climax would be reached. Pamela herself was to pronounce sentence upon him. He was feeling scarcely at his best. An examination in the courthouse, which he had imagined would last only a few minutes, had been protracted throughout the afternoon. The district attorney had asked him a great many questions, ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... CLIMAX consists in heightening all the circumstances of an object or action, which we desire to place in a ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... powers of sustained effort, the accuracy of time maintained between the orchestra and the actors, and the fidelity to nature of the vocal effects. A singularly uncouth subject for an opera or even a ballet—the snarling, scuffling and snapping of quarrelsome dogs whose fury is working up to a climax, and it soon becomes as monotonous to unaccustomed ears as the masterpieces of some German composers to those whose musical education is below the required standard; but the boys will spend the best part of the long night in its ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... opposition to the early date set for the wedding. He had shown that, according to the best models, the hero of Roseleaf's novel—which was practically the young man himself, ought to pass through some very harrowing scenes yet before his wedded happiness began. He feared an anti-climax, and was apprehensive that the wonderful romance would lie untouched for long months while Roseleaf sipped honey from the lips of his beloved. And he acted as if these things were entirely at the disposal of Mr. Weil—as if the young couple were mere marionettes whose actions ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... February 21, after twenty-four hours of continuous bombardment, the battles incident to the siege of Verdun were fought at brief intervals during the next two months, down to the middle of April, and marked the climax of the War. The losses on both sides were enormous and extraordinary, and taken as a whole the struggle on the semicircular front north and east of the great French stronghold fully justified its description as "the most terrible battle ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... hopelessly enmeshed in the golden net which had been so skilfully and genially woven by Anne during the summer. He believed himself to be the coming man, all his natural shrewdness and rich experience going for naught before the witchery of his sister's imagination. In her mind the climax of the drama was a Dillon at the top of the heap in the City Hall. Alas, the very first orders of the chief to his secretary swept away the fine-spun dreams of the Dillons, as the broom brushes ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... development in the organ of the mental faculties, forms a fitting climax to the evidence already adduced of the progressive evolution of the general structure of the body, as illustrated by the bony skeleton. We now pass on to another class of facts equally suggestive ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... people lined the streets of the towns and villages, and hung out banners, and gazed their fill at the Indians and at the strange sun-burned faces of the crew. At Barcelona, where they arrived towards the end of April, the climax of these glittering dignities was reached. When the King and Queen heard that Columbus was approaching the town they had their throne prepared under a magnificent pavilion, and in the hot sunshine of that April ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... indeed, one may give the name of army to a few masses of men destitute, dispirited, and exhausted by fatigue and privation. On the arrival of the troops at Mayence no preparation had been made for receiving them: there were no provisions, or supplies of any kind; and, as the climax of misfortune, infectious epidemics broke out amongst the men. All the accounts I received concurred in assuring me that their situation ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... yet, come to think, it is a logical consequence enough. Strength is the outcome of need; security sets a premium on feebleness. The work of ameliorating the conditions of life—the true civilizing process that makes life more and more secure—had gone steadily on to a climax. One triumph of a united humanity over Nature had followed another. Things that are now mere dreams had become projects deliberately put in hand and carried forward. And the ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... did not harshly blame them. He remembered how he, too, when he had been impatient of the means, had once fancied postponing them to the end. That was in the days which were mainly filled for him with the business of writing fiction, and when the climax of his story seemed always threatening to hide itself from him or to elude his grasp. There were times when it changed to some other end or took a different significance from that it had primarily had. Then he had said to himself ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... death and leaps four centuries: it is young and perpetual. It thrills with something the failing middle ages had forgotten: it reaches what they never reached, a climax, for one cannot put too vividly the flash of the penultimate line, "I am granted a vision ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... brought us nearer the climax of our trip. We of the plains had longed and dreamed of the peaks. To us the White Mountains were at once the crowning wonder and chief peril of our expedition. They were to be in a very real sense the test of our courage. The iron crest of ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... ingenious pieces of mechanism. He did not even many times succeed in disposing the events and marshalling the characters in his narratives so as to work, by seemingly unforced and natural means, to a final situation and climax. Too often, in order to hold his story together and make it move forward at all, he was compelled to make his personages pursue a line of conduct preposterous and improbable, and even antagonistic to their nature. Take this very book. Old Martin Chuzzlewit is a man who has been accustomed, all ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... feelings would have languished from weariness, however intensely the sequel might have been wrought, had attention been claimed for a solitary wanderer to the end of the journey. Here then the history, which had probably reached its climax in the preceding scenes, revives, by taking a new form, and exciting a fresh interest, rather doubled than divided, though two have thenceforward to share it instead of one. Besides, the individual experience of one man, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan |
