"Conflagration" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... place crowded with people, that so much business, and so little mischief is done by fire: we abound more with party walls, than with timber buildings. Utensils are ever ready to extinguish the flames, and a generous spirit to use them. I am not certain that a conflagration of 50l. damage, has happened ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... detest this Rome, and shall rejoice to bid it adieu forever; and I fully acquiesce in all the mischief and ruin that has ever happened to it from Nero's conflagration downward. In fact, I wish the very site of it had been obliterated before I ever ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... South, known in history as "the rebel yell". Men and women and children joined in it. It began at the first sight of the regular column, swelled up the crowded streets, rose to the thronged housetops, ran along them for squares like a conflagration, and then came rolling back in volume only to rise and swell again greater than before. Men wept; children shrilled; women sobbed aloud. What was it! Only a thousand or two of old or aging men riding or tramping along through ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... neither faint nor scream if she were to enter the apartment at this moment. It is about five years since General Jerningham set hurriedly off, in considerable dismay, for the scene of a direful conflagration in a northern county, wherein several unfortunate individuals had perished. The fire originated at a hotel, and the General had reasons for fearing that his sister might be among the number of the sufferers, for ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... strutting mock-soldier of our own time say with a corresponding chuckle. God help us!—Rome had but one Nero fiddling when it burned, if history tells us true: we have had ten thousand military fiddlers playing away to admiring audiences during our conflagration! ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... which came through the crash of the conflagration were indeed of an odd sort, and MacIan turned a face of puzzled ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... turned from this immense scandal by a frightful calamity—the famous conflagration of Rome, which began the nineteenth of July of the year 64 and devastated almost all quarters of the city for ten days. What was the cause of the great disaster? This very obscure point has much interested historians, who have tried in vain to throw light on the subject. As far as I am concerned, ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... (holy orders) ordoni. Conference konferenco. Confess konfesi. Confession konfeso. Confide konfidi. Confidence konfidencio. Confident konfidema. Confine enfermi. Confirm certigi. Confirm (religious) konfirmi. Confirmation certigo. Confiscate konfisiki. Conflagration brulado. Conflict konflikto. Confluence kunfluigxo. Conform konformi. Conformable konforma. Conformity konformeco. Confound konfuzegi. Confrre kunfrato. Confront kontrauxstarigi. Confuse konfuzi. Confusion konfuzo—ado. Confute rifuti. Congeal firmigi. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... books relating to civil procedure kept by the pontiffs, &c.; [23] laws, lists of magistrates, [24] Libri Lintei kept in the temple of Juno Moneta; all under the reservation noticed before, that the majority perished in the Gallic conflagration. [25] These Professor Seeley classes as pure sources. The rest, which he calls corrupt, are the funeral orations, inscriptions in private houses placed under the Imagines, [26] poems of various kinds, both gentile ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... to consider the somewhat puerile theories of Vitruvius, or the myths which testify to the importance attached to fire by primeval man, we are at liberty to suppose that a conflagration caused by lightning or by the spontaneous combustion of vegetable materials in a state of fermentation, or other similar phenomena, made known to man the power of fire, and the use it might be to him. The accidental striking together of two flints produced a spark; observation taught ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... tramples on a field of feeble reeds, As a forest conflagration on the parched woodland feeds, Bhishma rode upon the warriors in his mighty battle car. God nor mortal chief could face him in the ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... lavished upon his air-drawn Babylon. This lofty column was ordered by the Commons, in commemoration of the extinction of the great fire and the rebuilding of the city: it stands on the site of the old church of St. Margaret, and within a hundred feet of the spot where the conflagration began. It is of the Doric order, and rises from the pavement to the height of two hundred and two feet, containing within its shaft a spiral stair of black marble of three hundred and forty-five steps. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... followed by a heavy, booming roar, that shook the crag to its base, announced the ruin of the pirate's den. At the same time the red fires gleamed in fitful flashes from the sheds, and, rapidly making headway, all at once burst forth in wild conflagration, till the whole nest was wrapped in flames. The shock of the explosion and the fires killed the wind, and a lurid pall of smoke and cinders hung like a gloomy canopy ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... one. The occupants of the large tenement house had vacated their rooms in alarm, each bearing what first came to hand, and reinforced by a numerous crowd of outsiders, were gazing in dismay at the sudden conflagration which threatened to ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... history as he could stick, said that in the Middle Ages a most prodigious fire-breathing dragon used to live in that region, and made more trouble than a tax-collector. He was as long as a railway-train, and had the customary impenetrable green scales all over him. His breath bred pestilence and conflagration, and his appetite bred famine. He ate men and cattle impartially, and was exceedingly unpopular. The German emperor of that day made the usual offer: he would grant to the destroyer of the dragon, any one solitary thing he might ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... landed in Charlestown, and within a few moments the whole town appeared in a blaze. A dense column of smoke rose to a great height, and there being a gentle breeze from the southwest, it hung like a thunder-cloud over the contending armies. A very few houses escaped the dreadful conflagration of this devoted town." ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... a cask near by. Heated and irritated as he was by his spasmodic toil at the pumps, for all his first nameless feeling of forbearance the sweating Steelkilt could but ill brook this bearing in the mate; but somehow still smothering the conflagration within him, without speaking he remained doggedly rooted to his seat, till at last the incensed Radney shook the hammer within a few inches of his face, furiously commanding him to do his bidding. Steelkilt rose, and slowly retreating round ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... Fire Brigade have received directions to hold themselves in readiness at the meeting of Parliament, to extinguish any conflagration that may take place, from the amazing quantity of inflammatory speeches and political fireworks that will be let off by the performers on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... young men went in the afternoon to inquire after the Conway party, when they found that her ladyship was lying down, but Isabel, who had been summoned from a wholesale conflagration of all the MS. relating to the fantastic Viscount, brought down Miss King, apparently to converse for her; for she did little except blush, and seemed unable to look ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hot wind is blowing from the hills. These fires are one of the great dangers of California. I have seen from Monterey as many as three at the same time, by day a cloud of smoke, by night a red coal of conflagration in the distance. A little thing will start them, and, if the wind be favourable, they gallop over miles of country faster than a horse. The inhabitants must turn out and work like demons, for it is not only the pleasant groves that are destroyed; the climate and the soil ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Solon of Athens: we find the Amphictyons also about half a century afterward undertaking the duty of collecting subscriptions throughout the Hellenic world, and making the contract with the Alcmaeonids for rebuilding the temple after a conflagration. But the influence of this council is essentially of a fluctuating and intermittent character. Sometimes it appears forward to decide, and its decisions command respect; but such occasions are rare, taking the general course of known Grecian history; while there ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... which overhangs London; the setting sun is just gleaming underneath with a dim and bloody glare, and the crimson rays spreading upward with a lurid and portentous grandeur, a subdued and dusky glow, like the light reflected on the sky from some vast conflagration. The deep flush fades away, and the rain begins to descend; and we hurry homeward rapidly, yet sadly, forgetful alike of the flowers, the hedgehog, and the wetting, thinking and talking only of ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... day on street disturbances and angry disputes assumed another aspect: they took in a larger area and were not so readily appeased. It was no longer an isolated band of insurgents which roused a city, but rather a conflagration which spread over the whole South, and a general uprising which was almost a ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... George III. has been deservedly admired: "France and England by the abuse of their strength may, for the misfortune of all nations, be long in exhausting it: but I venture to declare that the fate of all civilized nations is concerned in the termination of a war which kindles a conflagration over the whole world." This noble sentiment touched the imagination of France and ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... daintily served breakfast than to glance hurriedly over the front page of one's favorite newspaper and see it covered with startling headlines. It matters little what has happened during the night to shock the community, so long as it satisfies one's appetite for sensational news. It can be a fatal conflagration, a fearful railroad wreck, a gigantic bank robbery, a horrible murder, or even a scandalous divorce case. All one asks is that it be something big, with column after column of harrowing details. The newspapers are fully alive to what is expected of them, but it is not always easy ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... before the flame of war went roaring through Europe in unquenchable conflagration it would have seemed that nothing could possibly rouse Ashbridge from its red-brick Georgian repose. There was never a town so inimitably drowsy or so sternly uncompetitive. A hundred years ago it must have ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... reduced to ashes. The work done during two hundred and fifty years must be begun anew. There is not a single Christian house left standing.... The Christians have seen the massacre of their brethren and the conflagration of their houses. They have experienced the pangs of hunger, and have felt the heat of the sun on the burning sands. They must now undergo the hardships of exile, far from their native land and ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... his great sweeping gestures, all held the audience spellbound. I felt at the time that I had never before realised the supreme and vital importance of the subject on which he spoke. But when I tried to reconstruct from the ashes of my industrious notes the mental conflagration which I had witnessed, I was at a complete loss to understand what had happened. The records were not only dull, they seemed essentially trivial, and almost overwhelmingly unimportant. But the ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... might be, was not the beginning of all things. "A time may come when Parliament shall declare every American charter void; but the natural, inherent, and inseparable rights of the colonists as men and as citizens would remain, and, whatever became of charters, can never be abolished till the general conflagration."[100] ...
— The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens • Georg Jellinek
... parenthetically. Mr. PAYN is a good hand at keeping a secret, and it is not for the BARON DE B. W. to tell beforehand what the novelist keeps as a little bit up his sleeve till the last moment. Why call it The Burnt Million? To what tremendous conflagration involving such a fearful loss of life does the title point? The story will interest the Million and delight Thousands. Excellent as is the dialogue generally, the Baron ventures to doubt whether any ordinary person (and no one of these characters ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various
... burning face He saw with consternation, And back to hell his way did he take, For the Devil thought by a slight mistake It was general conflagration. 70 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... completely destroyed. At a certain season the pines change their foliage and the ground becomes thickly covered to the depth of a couple of inches or more with the dry and highly inflammable spines. Should these take fire, the conflagration in a high wind becomes serious, and spreads to the trees, ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... took the elevator to the roof, and sat side by side, silently watching the conflagration that was raging across the channel and the nearer flashes of the big guns along the island's ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... beheld at the same time the flames ascending and rolling in clouds from the King's Bench and Fleet Prisons, from New Bridewell, from the toll-gates on Blackfriars Bridge, from houses in every quarter of the town, and particularly from the bottom and middle of Holborn, where the conflagration was horrible beyond description. . . . Six-and-thirty fires, all blazing at one time, and in different quarters of the city, were to be seen from one spot. During the whole night, men, women, and children were running ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... was heard, and through the port holes could be seen the glare of the rising conflagration, while the shouts of the savages grew more exultant. They had set fire to the end of the building occupied by the daughters. The logs were dry as tinder, and the devouring element was soon enveloping the whole building in its fatal embrace. To remain in the cabin was certain death, in its ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... mighty forest only smokes and smoulders before it bursts into a conflagration: the time has not ...
— The King of the Dark Chamber • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... explanation, although whether it be in its details the true one, nobody, of course, will ever know. The layer of ashes found above the chamber indicated that the house had been burned down. Let it be supposed that the conflagration had taken place the night I fell asleep. It only remains to assume that Sawyer lost his life in the fire or by some accident connected with it, and the rest follows naturally enough. No one but he and Dr. Pillsbury either knew of the existence of the chamber or that I was in it, ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... like a sudden and violent conflagration lighted up from the Pont Neuf over the whole city," says De Retz. "Everybody without exception took up arms. Children of five and six years of age were seen dagger in hand, and the mothers themselves carried them. In less than two hours there ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... stork. Some of the people among whom they sojourn during the warm summer days regard the presence of the bird as a kind of safeguard against fire. And as an illustration of their love for their young, a story is told of a stork which, rather than desert its helpless offspring during a conflagration in Delft, in Holland, remained heroically by their side and perished with them ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... wrote that night was a word-picture of the rising moon entangled in a sheaf of corn upon a hilltop, with a long-eared rabbit sitting near by as if astonished at the conflagration. ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... genuine pioneer of the Western Reserve, having come with his father, Comfort S. Mygatt, at the age of ten years, to the new settlement at Canfield, Mahoning county, Ohio, in the year 1807. He was born at Danbury, Ct., on 14th of June, 1797, when that village had not recovered from its conflagration by the British, during the Revolution. There were then visible, and for many years during his boyhood, buildings which were charred by fires kindled ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands: Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse. 30 —Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone, Put me where I may look at him! True peach, Rosy and flawless: how I earned the prize! Draw close: that conflagration of my church —What then? So much was saved if aught were missed! 35 My sons, ye would not be my death? Go dig The white-grape vineyard where the oil-press stood, Drop water gently till the surface sink, And if ye find ... Ah God, I know ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... presence of a well-known magistrate and fully attested, has been published, and no attempt at contradiction or explanation has been made. Let none imagine the Ne Temere question is extinct in Ireland. It is at this moment a burning question. Under Home Rule it would create a conflagration. And surely there is reason for the indignation of Protestants. Here we see the most solemn contract into which a man or woman can enter broken at the bidding of a system which claims supreme control over all human ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... sky, and she stepped back quickly and threw out her hands as the man spoke. For the banked-down fires of his passion and his love, and the hurt to his race, and his own sudden-born agony flared in one half-second into a mighty, awful conflagration. The flame of his words licked at her feet and the hem of her garments, blazed across her hands with which she hid her face, and swept right over her from head to heels, and yet he did not touch her nor raise his ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... consented, and it was led forth to die. But neither knife nor axe could penetrate its hide, so they tried to consume it with fire. After a time it became red-hot, and then it leaped out from amid the flames, and dashed about setting fire to all manner of things. The conflagration spread and was followed by famine, so that the whole ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... which you have given me, and more especially for the last month, I ask myself if I dream. No, but you hide some mystery; what woman can yield you up to me and not die? Ah! jealousy has entered my heart with love,—love in which I could not have believed. How could I have imagined so mighty a conflagration? And now—strange and inconceivable revulsion!—I would rather ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... price of the house and furniture, together with further payment for the fright and for the inconvenience of being, for the present, houseless. You may do all that, and yet the moral guilt of the conflagration may remain upon your soul. But that is no affair of his: he is not the custodian of the moral law: he is not offended by your sin, formally viewed as sin: nor has he any function of punishing you, ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... the Pole, seating himself on the edge of the table, while the Italian leaned against the mantelpiece, and glanced round the room with furtive eye, as if to detect its innermost secrets, or decide where safest to drop a Lucifer-match for its conflagration,—"confrere," said the Pole, "your ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... rush out, stare wildly at the conflagration, and plunge back into the cabin. Scarcely a minute elapsed when he emerged, this time slowly, half doubled over, his shoulders burdened by a sack heavy and unmistakable. Smoke and Shorty sprang at ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... patriotism, came the news from Madrid of how the invaders were trampling not merely upon Spanish rights, but upon every consideration of humanity and good faith. The national will was stirred as never before or since; its expression grew louder every day, until at last the conflagration of devotion to a national cause was kindled far and near. Every community formed its committees, and these organized such neighborhood resistance as was possible, while communicating with other juntas ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... of the palace and the temple, with their pageants and nymphs, giving life to the landscape, while mine was a continual encounter with difficulty—a continual summons to self-control? My march was like that of the climber up the side of AEtna, every step through ruins, the vestiges of former conflagration—the ground I trode, rocks that had once been flame—every advance a new trial of my feelings or my fortitude—every stage of the ascent leading me, like the traveller, into a higher region of sand or ashes, until, at the highest, I stood in a circle of eternal ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... Howes, Clintons, and Burgoynes, were at least always ready to fight. As soon as the Americans could believe that the English were really abandoning their enterprize at the moment that it was all but completed, they rushed back to stop the conflagration: they were too late to save the stores which had been brought from York, the navy barracks, or the brig, but the frigate on the stocks, being built of green wood, would not easily burn, and was found but little ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... The developments in Germany and elsewhere have been ably reviewed by others,[119] and it is only to be noted here that two of the German papers, published in 1939 in Maschinenbau, appear to have been the sparks for the conflagration that still is increasing in extent and intensity. According to summaries in Engineering Index, R. Kraus, writing on the synthesis of the double-crank mechanism, drew fire from the Russian Z. S. Bloch, ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... commotions of the earth, together with several magnificent churches, monasteries, and public buildings. But what entirely completed the ruin of this then most opulent capital of the Portuguese dominions, was a devouring conflagration, partly fortuitous or natural, but chiefly occasioned by a set of impious villains, who, unawed by the tremendous scene at that very instant passing before their eyes, with a wickedness scarcely to be credited, set fire even to the falling edifices in different ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... the silent main; on Balls at the Orangerie of Versailles, where high-rouged dames of the palace are even now dancing with double-jacketted Hussar officers; and also on this roaring Hell-porch of a Hotel de Ville. Babel-tower, with the confusion of tongues, were not Bedlam added with the conflagration of thoughts, was no type of it. One forest of distracted steel bristles endless in front of an ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... locality. That such can be found when really sought for, witness the happy facility with which a fitting residence has been discovered in the east and west galleries surrounding the Imperial Institute for the promised new National Collection. At South Kensington we had a narrow escape of a conflagration, from too close a proximity to the kitchen of a shilling restaurant. At Bethnal Green we have been having a prolonged merry time of it, with damp walls behind us and leaking roofs above our heads. At one time we were packed away ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 23, 1890. • Various
... was out on the escape, and reached the ground amid ringing cheers. He carried her at once to the nearest place of safety, and, committing her to the care of Mrs White, rushed back to the scene of conflagration just as they were about to ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... contact with a small portion of a beam. Events not involved in that simple act follow of themselves. The part of the beam which was set afire is connected with its remote portions, the beam itself is united with the woodwork of the house generally, and this with other houses, so that a wide conflagration ensues which destroys the goods and chattels of many other persons besides those belonging to the person against whom the act of revenge was first directed, perhaps even costs not a few men their lives. This lay neither in the deed intrinsically nor in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... about them at all times; in the winter were the stars; in winter often, too, the northern lights, a firmament of wings, a conflagration in the mansions of God. Now and then, not often; not commonly, but now and then, they heard the thunder. It came mostly in the autumn, and a dark and solemn thing it was for man and beast; the animals grazing near home would bunch together and stand ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... the vast, up-belching explosions of the thanatos projectiles, Gabriel flew among the drifting mists and vapors. Still was he guided by one or two search-lights; but most of these were gone, now. Yet the glare of the conflagration, below, was luridly shuddering through the fog, painting it all a ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... began? Oh, my dear Chamisso, to confess it even to thee makes me blush. I drew the unlucky purse from my bosom, and with a kind of rage which, like a rushing conflagration, grew in me with self-increasing growth, I extracted gold, and gold, and gold, and ever more gold, and strewed it on the floor, and strode amongst it, and made it ring again, and, feeding my poor heart on the splendor and the sound, flung continually more metal ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... whose energetic temperaments had borne them through every quarter of the globe, many of them grown old and worn out in the service of science. All had, in some degree, physically or morally, undergone the sorest trials. They had escaped shipwreck; conflagration; Indian tomahawks and war-clubs; the fagot and the stake; nay, even the cannibal maws of the South Sea Islanders. But still their hearts beat high during Sir Francis M——'s address, which certainly was the finest oratorical ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... ordered burned to keep it out of the hands of the enemy. In vain the Mayor sent a committee to remonstrate against burning the warehouses. No heed was paid to the order, and soon tongues of lurid flame were leaping from building to building, until the conflagration was beyond all control. Men and women were like frenzied demons in their efforts to save property; there was terrific looting. Wagons and carts were hastily loaded with goods; some carried their things in ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... Heat. An alarm for giving notice of the existence of a conflagration. Such are sometimes operated by a compound bar thermostat (see Thermostat), which on a given elevation of temperature closes a circuit and rings an electric bell. Sometimes the expansion of a column of mercury when heated is used. This, by coming in contact ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... The start of our misfortunes was the exile of Phidias;(1) Pericles feared he might share his ill-luck, he mistrusted your peevish nature and, to prevent all danger to himself, he threw out that little spark, the Megarian decree,(2) set the city aflame, and blew up the conflagration with a hurricane of war, so that the smoke drew tears from all Greeks both here and over there. At the very outset of this fire our vines were a-crackle, our casks knocked together;(3) it was beyond the power of any man to stop ...
— Peace • Aristophanes
... William Leighton, a Colonel Deane, and a Colonel Manley, holding commissions from Charles, had met several times at the Mermaid Tavern and elsewhere, and had arranged for a midnight tumult on Saturday the 15th of May. They were to attack the guard at St. Paul's, seize the Lord Mayor, raise a conflagration near the Tower, &c. The hour had come, and the conspirators were in the Mermaid Tavern for their final arrangements, when lo! the trainbands on the alert all round them and Barkstead riding through the streets with a train of five small cannon. A good many were arrested, thirty of them London prentices. ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... can be burned, but they don't burn, and though in great fires libraries have been wholly or partially destroyed, we never hear of a library making a great conflagration like a cotton mill or a tallow warehouse. Nay, a story is told of a house seeming irretrievably on fire, until the flames, coming in contact with the folio Corpus Juris and the Statutes at Large, were quite unable to get over this ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... seconds that seemed minutes, minutes that were a hell of suspense. Below the horizon of prairie the sun sank from sight. In the hot air a bank of cumulus clouds glowed red as from a distant conflagration. For and eternity previous it seemed to the silent watchers there had been no move; now again at last the grass stirred; a corn plant rustled where there was no breeze; out into the small open plat surrounding the house sprang a frightened rabbit, scurried ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... followed by his friend Wilson. Paganel set to work to find dry moss, and had soon gathered sufficient. This he laid on a bed of damp leaves, just where the large branches began to fork out, forming a natural hearth, where there was little fear of conflagration. ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... door of the schoolroom open. There are some spectacles which a man never forgets. The burning of Troy probably seemed a large-sized conflagration to the pious Aeneas, and made an impression on him which he carried away with the ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... imagination did not remain unkindled in this general conflagration (the French Revolution); and I confess I should be more inclined to be ashamed than proud of myself if they had. I was a sharer in the general vortex, though my little world described the path of its revolution ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... pulled down his house, and burnt his furniture. Newgate was attacked next; the keeper went to the Lord Mayor, and, at his return, he found the prison in a blaze; that night the Fleet, and the King's Bench prisons, and the popish chapels, were on fire, and the glare of the conflagration reached the skies. I was heartily glad my father and mother were safe in ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... a heap below!" shouted Rameses, above the roar of the conflagration. "There is no escape but by a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... distinguish that the firmament was packed with vast, piling masses of heavy, menacing cloud. Very gradually the light strengthened, assuming, as it did so, a lowering, ruddy tint, until in the course of half an hour the whole sky had the appearance that is seen when it reflects a great but distant conflagration. And now I knew of a surety that a hurricane was brewing; for that fearful ruddy light in the sky was the self-same appearance that I had once before beheld when in the Althea's gig I had been attempting to ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... are fastened into four thousand hoops in the course of one day, it will be seen that the matter was duly considered. The stray spark from a feminine eye had kindled such a fierce fire in his heart that by the time the six o'clock whistle blew the conflagration threw a rosy glow ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... bliss can be his who is disturbed by doubts. And belief of one's identity with the Supreme Soul is the indication of salvation. He that knoweth the true meaning of the Vedas, understandeth their true use. Such a man is affrighted at the Vedic ritual like a man at sight of a forest conflagration. Giving up dry disputation, have recourse to Sruti and Smriti, and seek thou, with the aid of thy reason, the knowledge of the Undecaying One that is without a second. One's search (after this knowledge) becometh futile from defect ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... a relaxation of his muscles, the giving way of his will. Something seemed to snap in his head, and that wish, that idea kept back during all those hours, darted into his brain with the heat and noise of a conflagration. He must see her! See her at once! Go now! To-night! He had the raging regret of the lost hour, of every passing moment. There was no thought of resistance now. Yet with the instinctive fear of the irrevocable, with ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... Pyrenees, with her cargo of fire, was hove to, bitting the teeth of the gale and fighting and smashing the pounding seas. She was a shell, filled with a conflagration, and on the outside of the shell, clinging precariously, the little motes of men, by pull and haul, ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... ruin, unearthed several coins, which seemed quite plentiful in one place where the rain had washed down the side of a small mound, and found obvious signs of some great conflagration. Brown says that, as no one has got any better explanation of this fire than he has, he will ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell
... supremacy on the ocean; but it is due not only to the honor but to the security of the people of the United States that no nation should be permitted to invade our waters at pleasure and subject our towns and villages to conflagration or pillage. Economy in all branches of the public service is due from all the public agents to the people, but parsimony alone would suggest the withholding of the necessary means for the protection of our domestic firesides from invasion ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... school, Pratt's photograph gallery and the two motion-picture houses were threatened with destruction. As Anderson Crow, now deputy marshal of the town, declared the instant he arrived at the scene of the conflagration, nothing but the most heroic and indefatigable efforts on the part of the volunteer fire-department could save the town—only he put it in this way: "We'll have another Chicago fire here, sure as you're born, unless it rains or the wind changes ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... full of gentry, who had come far and near to hear the pleasant music float aloft. During the terrible Gordon Riots, in 1780, Brasbridge, the silversmith, who wrote an autobiography, says he went up to the top of St. Bride's steeple to see the awful spectacle of the conflagration of the Fleet Prison, but the flakes of fire, even at that great height, fell so thickly as to ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... rains which fell—which injured the salt springs even more, so that a half-fanega of salt, which usually is worth two or three reals, reached the price of twelve pesos. In La Estacada there was a great conflagration on Good Friday, in the night, which destroyed many houses. In the following year the scarcity of food was increased by a plague of locusts, which swept away all [vegetation]; and a caban of rice came to be worth twenty and twenty-four reals. But what caused the most suffering was ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... and the whole thing would die out of itself. The contrast between Miltitz and Cajetan was such that he had reason to be satisfied. Miltitz also considered that he had done well, and had extinguished a conflagration that might have become serious. He advised the Elector not to send the Wittenberg professor out of the country. More eager spirits were impatient of so tame a conclusion; for there were some to whom plenary indulgences for the living or the dead were a ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... meantime Lord Stamfordham, watching the situation, felt there was not a single instant to lose. There is one moment in the life of a conflagration when it can be stamped out: that moment passed, no power can stop it. Stamfordham, his head clear, his determination strong and ready, resolved to act without hesitating on his own responsibility. He sent a letter ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... phenomena of Nature were suspended, where animal and vegetable life were extinct, and from which even the favour of the Creator had been withdrawn. The intense cold, the solitude, the oppressive silence, and the red, gloomy moonlight, like the glare of a distant but mighty conflagration, all united to excite in the mind feelings of awe, which were perhaps intensified by the consciousness that never before had any human being, save a few Wandering Chukchis, ventured in winter upon these domains of the Frost King. There was none of the singing, joking, and hallooing, ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... earth like fruits of the palmyra palm falling upon the ground, loosened from their stalks. And the Kalakeyas armed with iron-mounted bludgeons and cased in golden mail ran against the gods, like moving mountains on conflagration. And the gods, unable to stand the shock of that impetuous and proudly advancing host, broke and fled from fear. Purandara of a thousand eyes, beholding the gods flying in fear and Vritra growing in boldness, became deeply dejected. And the ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... the world had cast upon the earth the burning brand of division and strife. This was so inevitable that Jesus had no regret that the fire was already kindled; but it would not burst into a conflagration until Jesus had been crucified, and he felt a pathetic impatience to have that dreadful experience accomplished. As Jesus emerged from that baptism of fire he would be the torch which would set the world ablaze with ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... confiscated the vast wealth which the priesthood had amassed and had long enjoyed. This immense property, including rich revenues, large buildings, broad fields, and annual harvests, was held for distribution. How shall it be distributed? That was the burning question of the day, and it started a conflagration in the Church, that kindled many a fire at the stake. The Civil court decided that one-sixth should be given to the Church. The Church accepted the allowance. It was a sweet morsel in her mouth; but bitter, oh, how bitter in ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... men behave alike when hit in battle. There is just as much difference in their actions as there is in the behavior of the members of a volunteer fire brigade at a country-town conflagration. The look of the mortally wounded is nearly always the same. There is always that deathly pallor that creeps over the face, and that fixed stare—horrible look of resignation—that tells so plainly that all is over with the unfortunate soldier. A few instances will serve to give a ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... itself. This fugitive and evanescent character of life, the way it uses and triumphs over the material forces, setting up new chemical activities in matter, sweeping over the land-areas of the earth like a conflagration, lifting the inorganic elements up into myriads of changing and beautiful forms, instituting a vast number of new chemical processes and compounds, defying the laboratory to reproduce it or kindle its least spark—a flame that cannot exist without ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... so Captain Billings, determining to adopt more stringent measures to check the conflagration that must be raging below in the cargo, caused the hatches to be opened; but such dense thick volumes of smoke and poisonous gas rolled forth the moment the covers were taken off, that they were quickly battened down ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... and genius, he has done little. His letters and poems remind you of a few scattered leaves, surviving the conflagration of the Alexandrian library. The very popularity of the scraps which such a writer leaves, secures the torments of Tantalus to his numerous admirers in all after ages. His letters, in their grace, freedom, minuteness of detail, occasional ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... a lurid touch of horror to the picture that might surpass all the rest a conflagration came to mock those who were in fear of drowning with a death yet more terrible. Where the ruins of Johnstown, composed mainly of timber, had been piled up forty feet high against a railroad bridge below the town a fire was started ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... However, Cameron came on her here, transfigured, glorified so to speak, consequently fell over neck in love, went quite batty in fact. A secret flame apparently smoldering all these months suddenly burst into a blaze—a blaze, by Jove!—regular conflagration. And no wonder, sir, when you look at her, her ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... said the Cardinal, "But you yourself—why have you made a name which is like a firebrand to start a conflagration of discord in Europe?—why do you use your gifts of language and expression to awaken a national danger which even the strongest Government may find itself unable to stand against? I do not blame you till I hear,—till I know;—but your writings,—your appeals ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... George Abbot, were hurrying out of the school dormitory. Some of the monitors began a remonstrance, but when a Senior or two pointed out to Doctor Meredith, who had been hastily aroused, that it was the duty of the students to help prevent the spread of the conflagration, so near the Hall, the head of the school allowed as many as cared to ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman
... flow down the sides of the mountain, some taking a course towards the ocean, others making their way in the direction of the valleys, threatening to seize in their course on the tall trees, those near the summit being quickly ablaze. With fearful rapidity the conflagration spread, up the hills, across the plains, sweeping over the plantations and destroying the dwellings of the unfortunate inhabitants. It seemed impossible that a single human being could escape. For some hours ...
— The Mate of the Lily - Notes from Harry Musgrave's Log Book • W. H. G. Kingston
... boles, and so on. Indeed, Jacob Glowr, who was standing by my side with his specs on, could see as plain as a pikestaff, a tea-kettle still on the fire, in the hearth-place of one of the gable garrets, where Miss Jenny Withershins lived, but happened luckily, at the era of the conflagration, to be away to Prestonpans, on a visit to some of her far-away cousins, providentially for her safety, greviously, at that very ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... was: "If books must be written, let them be written by men"; and she developed it at great length, while Cecil yawned and Freddy played at "This year, next year, now, never," with his plum-stones, and Lucy artfully fed the flames of her mother's wrath. But soon the conflagration died down, and the ghosts began to gather in the darkness. There were too many ghosts about. The original ghost—that touch of lips on her cheek—had surely been laid long ago; it could be nothing to her that a man had kissed ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... averaged three-quarters of a mile. The killed, and many of the severely wounded, of both armies, lay within this belt where it was impossible to reach them. The woods were set on fire by the bursting shells, and the conflagration raged. The wounded who had not strength to move themselves were either suffocated or burned to death. Finally the fire communicated with our breastworks, in places. Being constructed of wood, they burned with great fury. But the battle still raged, our men firing ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... preparation on all sides for departure. The camp-fires were trampled out lest they should kindle a conflagration in the forest. The baskets were tossed into one of the large canoes. Philibert and Amelie embarked in that of Le Gardeur, not without many arch smiles and pretended regrets on the part of some of the young ladies for having left them on their last ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... politicians of the burning of Newark and St. David's; but little have they said of the destruction of Buffalo, of Washington City, or the massacre of our unfortunate countrymen at Dartmoor; and that little has been directed to the justification of the perpetrators. The conflagration of our Capitol, with the appendages of art and taste, and even the slaughter of our countrymen, could not excite in those minds one feeling of indignation; whilst the unauthorized destruction of a few houses, ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse |
