"Debris" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... most, probably because they were used for temporary defense. At Huiron the upper half of the thirteenth-century Gothic church had been shaved off—in the ten-foot deep mass of debris lay the richly carved capitals of the massive pillars. At Ecrinnes near by the apse of the exquisite little church had been blown off, leaving the front and spire intact. At Maurupt the whole edifice, which commanded the rolling countryside for miles, was riddled from end to end. ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... me that it would have been wise to have gone out of the house," said I. "It is a wonder the building did not collapse. My cup is full of mud and debris ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... All his clothes, George's, Hal's, Jimmy's, were appropriated. They entered my room, broke that fine mirror for sport, pulled down the rods from the bed, and with them pulverized my toilet set, taking also all Lydia's china ornaments I had packed in the wash-stand. The debris filled my basin, and ornamented my bed. My desk was broken open. Over it was spread all my letters, and private papers, a diary I kept when twelve years old, and sundry tokens of dried roses, etc., which ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... late tragedy had added greatly to his reputation as a zealous officer. Things were now more ship-shape, as Miss Greeby had died after making confession of her crime and had been duly buried by her shocked relatives. The ashes of Lord Garvington and Mother Cockleshell, recovered from the debris of the cottage, had also been disposed of with religious ceremonies, and Silver's broken body had been placed in an unwept grave. The frightful catastrophe which had resulted in the death of four people had been the talk of the United Kingdom for the ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... again, and he rushed from the chamber, while Cadet, glad of his absence for a few moments, hastily filled up the grave and, replacing with much care the stone slabs over it, swept the debris into the passage and spread the carpet again smoothly over the floor. Every trace of the dreadful deed was obliterated in ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... steps. Into the house. Not a sound. She stood there a moment in the early-morning half-light. She peered into the dining room. The table, with its breakfast debris, was as she had left it. In the kitchen the coffeepot stood on the gas stove. She was home. She was safe. She ran up the stairs, got out of her clothes and into gingham morning things. She flung open windows everywhere. Downstairs once ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... for a long time undecided, but the victory finally remained with the heavy regiments of Assyria. The left wing of the Susians, driven into the Ulai, perished by drowning, and the river was choked with the corpses of men and horses, and the debris of arms and broken chariots. The right wing took to flight under cover of a wood, and the survivors tried ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... civilized man, like the wastes of the ocean or the deserts of Arabia; and, like them, be subject to the depredations of the marauder. Here may spring up new and mongrel races, like new formations in geology, the amalgamation of the "debris" and "abrasions" of former races, civilized and savage; the remains of broken and almost extinguished tribes; the descendants of wandering hunters and trappers; of fugitives from the Spanish and American frontiers; of adventurers and desperadoes of ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... days after I went out to the tan where these Roms had camped. But the birds had flown, and a little pile of ashes and the usual debris of a gypsy camp were all that remained. The police told me that they had some very fine horses, and had gone to the Northwest; and that is all I ever saw ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... flanked and roofed by three large oblong sheets of gray rock, whose form seems not to be considered of the slightest consequence. Those which form the cheeks of the windows are generally selected with more care from the debris of some rock, which is naturally smooth and polished, after being subjected to the weather, such as granite or syenite. The window itself is narrow and deep set; in the better sort of cottages, latticed, but with no affectation of sweetbrier or eglantine about ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... stone known to be in the whole swamp was at the head of the stream, on a tiny hillock formed of logs and the debris of many freshets. It was known as Cuffee's Stone, and the story was that a slave escaping from his master, and hiding in the swamp, had carried the stone there to build his fire upon. Close by, its sprawling roots ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... theater, over the same stone stairs and seats which two thousand years ago were occupied by the gayest of mortals. Then we went to the ruins of Pompeii and ate our lunch under large old trees growing upon the debris left by the great eruption. We passed through the narrow streets, over stone pavements worn by the tread of long-buried feet, through palaces, public gardens and baths, temples, the merchants' exchange, customhouse ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... orchestra as well. Everybody is more or less restless—one would guess that something is on their minds. And so it proves. The last tardy diners are scarcely given time to finish, before the tables and the debris are shoved into the corner, and the chairs and the babies piled out of the way, and the real celebration of the evening begins. Then Tamoszius Kuszleika, after replenishing himself with a pot of beer, returns to his platform, and, standing up, reviews the scene; he taps authoritatively upon ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... and Aun' Sheba immediately formed a chair with their hands, and Mara helped Mrs. Hunter, now ready enough to escape by any means, to avail herself of it. They made their way with difficulty over the debris to King Street. Here they were obliged to pause and rest. No rest, however, did Clancy obtain, for a momentary glance revealed one of the awful phases of the disaster. Three or four doors above them, houses were ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... headache: she looked like a garden after an early frost. But perhaps the most terrifying thing about her aspect was her complete indifference to it. A recollection suddenly came to Mr. Lanley of a railway accident that he and Adelaide had been in. He had seen her stepping toward him through the debris, buttoning her gloves. She was far beyond ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... hoping to find good feeding ground, become the food of these shells. We do not find that the sand mixed with seaweed has been petrified, because the weed which was mingled with it has shrunk away, and this the Po shows us every day in the debris of its banks. ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... swam half dragged himself through the slush and broken debris to the forward end of the sled, and seeking out the sheath-knife from beneath his parka, cut the harness of the two distressed animals. Once free, they scrambled to safety, shook themselves, and rolled ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... grasped her clothing and mine, and was rushing from the room when I called out: "Come back! Come back and dress. We've had an earthquake and an awful one, but somehow I feel the worst of it is over." Never did we more quickly get into our clothing and step outside. The hallway and rooms were piled with debris. Plaster, laths, broken pictures, and furniture lay in shapeless confusion on every hand. We came to the staircase. Part was gone; every step was likewise covered with the ruins of broken ceiling and wall. Devastation was everywhere, everywhere. Trusting the Lord, I landed safely on ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... same Confederate fort was found a miraculously preserved pocket of 17th-century debris marking the site of the earliest known armorer's forge in ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter
... carriage was killed, and Duson had his arm broken," he said. "I stepped out of the debris without a scratch. Come into the Customs House now and get your baggage through. I have taken a coupe on the ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... one of the travelers was anxious to alleviate their misery in some way, by offering them cigars, food, and money. My heart bled for the poor creatures, and I gave them all I had in my purse, and my luncheon also. They represented the debris of Faidherbe's army, which of all the troops had seen the most desperate fighting during the war. All the trains we passed were packed tight with soldiers, herded together like cattle, patient misery painted on their pale, ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... wrapped in a flimsy champagne-coloured dressing-gown, one of the spoils of Paris. Her hair had been rapidly combed out of its formal native arrangement. It looked draggled and hard as though she had been bathing. Titine, the French maid, was removing the rejected debris of kimono and sash. ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... shop was dark and damp, and foul with all manner of choking odors. On the walls, on the floor, and hanging from the rafters was a world of debris, dust-blackened, rust-corroded. Everything was there, every trade was represented, every class of society; things of iron and cloth and wood; all the detritus that a great city sloughs off in its daily ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... conquered; the citizens were at their feet. The yellow drawing-room seemed to her a holy place. The dilapidated furniture, the frayed velvet, the chandelier soiled with fly-marks, all those poor wrecks now seemed to her like the glorious bullet-riddled debris of a battle-field. The plain of Austerlitz would not have stirred ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... tree proved to be hollow at its base the searcher experimented with his gun barrel, poking it into the farther extremity of the cavity and rattling out the decayed wood and the debris of squirrel nests and owl lairs. In several cases these creatures themselves were disturbed, the lively squirrels to run chattering up the higher branches, the owls lumbering away into the forest, bumping ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... evidences extending from prehistoric ages to the ruined shepherd's cot of yesterday. At many spots a spectator may perceive in one survey the stone ruin of the Danmonian's habitation, and hypaethral temple or forum, the heather-clad debris left by Elizabethan streamers of alluvial tin, the inky peat-ridges from which a moorman has just cut his winter firing. But the first-named objects, with kindred fragments that have similarly endured, chiefly fire imagination. Seen grey at gloaming time, golden ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... shelves, and a broom. The little house was named Ellerslie, out of Grace Aguilar's Days of Robert Bruce, and became one of the children's most beloved possessions. But alas for Helen's Bower! A workman was sent to clear away the debris after the builders, and being a practical man, he cut away Helen's Bower—destroyed it utterly. Susy first discovered the vandalism, and came rushing to the house in a torrent of sorrow. For her the joy of life seemed ended, and it was long ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... themselves on either side, and the cat, emerging from his retreat, scrambled on to the shoulder of one of them, fully as curious as the rest to "see the shootin'." It was a weird sight,—dust, scorched grass, empty tins, rude hovels, piles of debris, African moonlight,—yet, except, perhaps, in the eyes of the newest comers, there was nothing strange in it. The others were too wrapped up in what was going to take place to see anything quaint in their every-day surroundings. There was ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... edge was below the surface several inches, then quickly lift it out; in doing this the overflow would carry off all leaves and twigs, leaving the remaining water in the pail clear and good. But you must first be sure that the pond contains pure water under the floating debris. ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... that lay between the Ridge and the forest their temporary retreat was anything but a temptation to the eye. Something had happened there a few thousand centuries before, and in a moment of evident spleen and vexation the earth had vomited up that pile of rock debris, and Jolly Roger good humoredly told himself and Peter that it was an act of Providence especially intended for them, though planned and erupted some years before they ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... equipped to maintain its fires. Nor does it fail when it comes to carrying away waste products. Like all factories, the body has its endless chain arrangement, the blood stream, which automatically picks up the debris in its tiny buckets—the blood-cells and serum—and carries it away to the several dumping-grounds in lungs, ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... approach to the mined bridge, and also effectually masked the position of his twelve-pounder, proceeded down the road alone for the purpose of destroying the bridge. Ten minutes later a deep boom, accompanied by a volcanic upheaval of dust and debris, announced the successful accomplishment of the task, at the same time that it startled the Spanish soldiery and aroused the curiosity and suspicion of the Spanish general, who at once dispatched a small reconnoitring party to investigate the nature of the explosion. Jack, ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... his fall was not far short of thirty feet, and he brought up with a bump which left him not breath enough to squeal. The ground was soft, however, with undergrowth and debris, and he had no bones broken. In a couple of minutes he was busy licking himself all over to make sure he was undamaged. Reassured on this point, he went prowling in exploration of the place ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... recently a prehistoric station has been made out at Hanoweh, a little village of Lebanon, east of Tyre. The flints are of primitive shapes, not unlike the most ancient forms found in France. They were discovered in a mass of DEBRIS of all kinds, forming a very hard conglomerate. Some teeth, which had belonged to animals of the bovidae, cervidae, and equidae groups, were got out with considerable difficulty, but the bones in the conglomerate were too touch broken up to be identified. Worked flints and arrow- ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... done that we started the tunnel. As you will observe, the tunnel is a round bore twelve feet in diameter, and no explosives were used in making it. We used a tunneling machine driven and operated by compressed air, boring on the average fifty feet every twenty-four hours, and we washed the debris away by a powerful stream of water directed against the face of the tunnel so as not to obstruct the work. We gave the tunnel for the first five miles a grade of one foot in ten and from that point to the summit a grade of sixty degrees, and laid heavy steel segment rails ...
— Eurasia • Christopher Evans
... Roy. The arcade looked as if a cyclone had swept through it. The cigar-stand was shattered beyond repair, its broken glass strewn everywhere. The chair of the bootblack had been splintered into kindling wood. Among the debris sat Meldrum groaning, both hands pressing a head that furiously ached. Brad Charlton was just beginning to ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... quote pages of Homer, has read Chrysostom for his recreation, is full of history, runs over with statistics right and left, and withal is strong in mother-wit. But the mother-wit proves not strong enough, perhaps, to push forth and show itself over the ponderous debris above it, the enormousness, or, if you please, the ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... and clinging to knotted ropes, spent a week smashing with hammers every bit of jutting sculpture on the facade, for fear a stone might become detached from one of these reliefs and fall on the King's head. The debris littered the pavement and was swept away. For a long time I had in my possession a head of Christ that fell in this way. It was stolen from me in 1851. This head was unfortunate; broken by a king, it was lost ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... I was almost completely covered with a blanket of debris, but I could move my arms, and managed to prop myself up in a sitting posture. It was there that my father and his searching party found me; he had been combing that district all night. They carried me back, terribly ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... midnight. Her health was drunk again in real champagne; speeches were made to impromptu toasts of "The New Woman in Business—God Bless Her." "The Poetry of the Palate," "The Creative Cake," etc.... At ten Ernestine and her aides, having succeeded in gathering the debris and straightening out the place for the public opening the next morning, went wearily home to bed. She was told that it had been a great success; she hoped that the enthusiasm would last; but all these people had eaten "a mighty sight of expensive stuff" without paying ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... passage had been cut through. They had gone barely a hundred yards when a screech, like a buzz-saw when it strikes a nail, sounded overhead. Looking up they saw a black disk hurtling through the air, to drop almost where they had been standing a moment before. There was a terrific explosion that sent debris to their ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... yellow-haired comrade. Like some slim Swiss youth—some boy mountaineer—and clothed like one, Miss Erith sat at the foot of a tree in the ruddy sunlight studying once more the papers which McKay had discovered that morning among the bloody debris ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... while a venerable deacon as firmly clutched the boy. The young rebel held fast, and the correcting deacon held fast also, until at last the balustrade gave way, and boy, deacon, and railing fell together with a resounding crash. Then, rising from the wooden debris, the thoroughly subdued boy and the triumphant deacon left the meeting-house to finish their little affair; and unmistakable swishing sounds, accompanied by loud wails and whining protestations, were soon heard from the region of the horse-sheds. Parents never resented such chastisings; ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... however, it was found that after passing a certain point the footpath was almost unencumbered by volcanic debris. This was owing to the protection afforded to it by the cone of Rakata, and the almost overhanging nature of some of the cliffs on that side of the mountain; still the track was bad enough, and in places so rugged, ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... hear that?" she whispered. "Something clinked! Ashes or wood won't make that sound. Oh, suppose it is the key!" She raked away again frantically, and hauled out a quantity of charred debris, but nothing even faintly resembling a key. When nothing more remained, she poked the fragments ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... all well-nigh forgotten now, obstinate Dutchman and valiant Spaniard alike. Amongst the dunes not a vestige remains of the field-works for which they fought. Bones, broken weapons and shattered breastplates, and all the debris of the fight, were long ago buried fathoms deep beneath mounds of drifting sand. Old Nieuport—Nieuport Ville, as they call it now—for which so much blood was shed, is desolate and dreary with its small industries and meagre commerce; but a short walk to the north brings us to Nieuport-Bains, ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... stooped to catch him, he succeeded in folding the end of her ancient Persian rug above an overturned Chelsea saucer and a widening pool of oatmeal and cream. Then he retired under the table and smiled suavely up at her, while she removed the debris. ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... of an ancient family of Noyon. But now, her ancestral home was a heap of debris, a tomb for men of many nations, which she did not like to visit. She took me there once, and we walked through the old tennis court where a little summer house remained untouched, its jaunty frailty seeming to mock at the desolation of all that ...
— Where the Sabots Clatter Again • Katherine Shortall
... we proceeded, the road got rougher and narrower: debris of all sorts, and horrible to look upon, lay about on either side. We halted suddenly, and were allowed to "fall out" for a ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... was the debris of a hasty meal. Morrow poured some milk from the pitcher into a saucer and placed it on the floor for the hungry kitten; then, taking the lamp, he started on a tour of inspection through the house. Everywhere the wildest ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... which had been terribly cut up by the wheels of artillery. It was already thronged with the debris of the battle, skulkers, wounded men hobbling, pallid malingerers edging their furtive way out of fire. Then ahead arose a terrible clamour, the wailing of wounded, frightened cries, the angry shouts of cavalrymen, ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... him several yards further from the mouth of the cave and pointed out the exact spot where I said I had picked it up amongst some quarry debris. Then followed a most learned discussion, for it appeared that this was a flint instrument of the rarest and most valuable type, one that Noah might have used, or Job might have scraped himself with, and the ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... had risen two feet at the Pine Camp bridge overnight. It was a boiling brown flood, covered with drifting foam and debris. The roar of the freshet awoke Nan in her bed before daybreak. So she was not surprised to see the river in such a turmoil when, after a hasty breakfast, she and Uncle Henry walked beside ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... he would take us to that biggest house burning on the Moss plantation. No sooner was the suggestion made than Curlie got his ambulance ready for us, and we were soon in front of the smoldering mansion. The proprietor was raking over the debris for gold and silver or other imperishable treasure. Among the ashes; were hand- cuffs, chains, shackles, and other slave-irons. He was occupying one of his slave cabins, as the long row was vacated by seventy of his former slaves. He was said to be one of the wealthiest planters in Kentucky. ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... piece of furniture had just been carried in; but, as Mr. Drummond was picking his way through the straw and debris that littered the side-path, two girlish figures came out of ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... midway on the bridge, when it sank suddenly to one side. A moment it acted as a dam, then bridge, horse and rider were swept away with a crash and carried downward with the driving flood. Vainly the trooper sought to turn his steed toward the shore; the debris from the structure soon swept him from his saddle. Striking out strongly, he succeeded in catching a trailing branch from a tree on the bank, but the torrent gripped his body fiercely, and, after a desperate struggle, tore ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... the hillside, which has already been shattered by heavy blasts of powder. The water tears thousands of tons of earth and gravel apart, and the muddy stream flows through sluices, where the gold is left. In this kind of mining a great quantity of debris, or "tailings," must ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... provisions provided for them. Then one by one they sauntered away down towards the stream. Malchus was the last to leave, and having seen that all his followers had preceded him, he, too, crossed the stream, paused a moment at a heap of debris from the mine, and picking up three or four pieces of rock about the size of his fist, rolled them in the corner of his garment, and holding this in one hand moved ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... weeds, and overgrown With rank grass, all torn and rent By war's opposing engines, strewn With debris ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... saw a mass of debris; old cans, ashes and the like were scattered in the center of the court or alley, while on both sides, near the buildings, a narrow board walk ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... explosion, far more furious than the first. In the downward rush Kathlyn stumbled and fell, the debris ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... may have still been nearly half wild. It is not until the period of the Lake Dwellings of Switzerland that we can discriminate between the wild animals and those that have been tamed. In the Lake Dwelling debris are found the bones of the wild bull, or urus, of Europe. Probably this large, long-horned animal was then in a wild state, and had been hunted for food. Alongside of these remains are those of a small, short-horned animal, supposed ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... of eager workers, and they seemed to fall in with whatever Hugh told them to do. He pointed this way and that as he directed them to dig in the mass of debris for any unfortunate who might be buried quite out of sight. And not once did it enter into the head of the earnest lad that the machine close by was clicking away merrily through it all, showing everything ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler
... with stones and earth, foremost among them Alexis White. The utmost care was needful to prevent the superincumbent weight from falling in and crushing the life there certainly was beneath, happily not the rock from above, but some of the debris of the stable. Frank Stebbing and the foreman had to drive back anxious crowds, and ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in 1885-90 In regard to these important excavations it must be remembered that in 480 and again in 479 the Acropolis was occupied by Persians belonging to Xerxes' invading army, who reduced the buildings and sculptures on that site to a heap of fire-blackened ruins This debris was used by the Athenians in the generation immediately following toward raising the general level of the summit of the Acropolis. All this material, after having been buried for some twenty three and a half centuries, has now been recovered. In the light of the newly found remains, ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... rocked under an explosion, and the debris Morey's ray had torn down over the door was blasted away. A score of men leaped through the gap before the dust had settled. Morey beamed them down mercilessly before they could fire ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... who saw little himself, is not willing to allow to others the advantage of having been more fortunate. "Quelques voyageurs ont avance qu'on distinguoit encore les debris de ces villes infortunees, lorsque les eaux de la mer etoient basses et lympides. Il en est meme que disent avoir appercu des restes de colonnes avec leurs chapitaux. Mais, il faut que l'imagination les ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... has seemed to us mere refuse and litter and dreariness and debris—all the shards and ashes and flints and excrement of the margins of our universe—take upon themselves, as they are thus caught up and transfigured, ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... state. No services are asked of it, and it is not cared for; it has no home and dwells in holes which it makes, unless it stays in some open tomb; no one feeds it; it hunts for itself, gorging on dead bodies and unnamable debris. There is a proverb which says that wolves do not eat each other; Eastern dogs are less scrupulous; they readily devour their sick, wounded, or dead companions. It seemed strange to me to see dogs which did not make any advances to me, and did not seek to be caressed, ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... building creatures have formed their reefs up to the water's edge along the ridge. The turbulent waves scouring over this living mass have carved and moulded it into millions of fantastic islands, sometimes heaping detached masses of dead debris high above the surface of the water. At low tide the most wonderful fields of the animal flowers of the sea are exposed. Some of them form branching systems of hard skeletons like stony trees, the soft, brightly coloured animals dotted over the stems like buds. Others form solid masses; ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... after the halt at the road house. Half-obliterated by the debris of snowslide and melting torrents, the trail was hard to follow. In some places the pack burros scrambled for a footing or skated awkwardly with tiny hoofs desperately set to check their descent, to be steadied and encouraged by the ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... of the house was a little vacant space, filled with heaps of debris from the demolished portions of the building and with refuse which had been dumped there by tenants who had left and had never been removed. This yard was separated only by a rotting fence with a single wooden rail from a small ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... degenerate at last in its endlessness into dropping things mechanically and hopelessly into whatever receptacle came first to hand. I do not wish to renew the moments of vehemence and exasperation when our Precious Ones, who really seemed to enjoy it all, clattered about among the debris, or the vague appreciation of suicide that was born within me when, in the midst of my despair, the Little Woman suggested that after all she was afraid we were making a mistake in leaving our little home where we had been happy so long; also that we moved too often, an unusual ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... mill, out upon the great wheel which had done all the work the past generations had given it to do, and was now dropping into decay as it had long dropped into disuse. Moss had gathered on the great paddles; many of them were broken, and the debris had been carried away by the freshets of spring ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in the alimentary laboratory through the process of normal fermentation. Is it not essential, therefore, that the connecting canals and receptacles be cleansed of the fermented debris that may remain unused and unexpelled, before more food be taken by the digestive apparatus? The all-important question is:—How soon and how well have the residuary part of the food (for some part will always be undigested or unassimilated), ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... pull them apart, but Roger was there first. He hung onto his father in desperate silence, while others pulled Oscar away. Mr. Wolf and Ernest followed the Moores as Roger led the way to a seat on a heap of debris. ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... further fall, called a 'settlement.' The word 'settlement' explains itself, perhaps. No matter how smooth the sea, the return of the tide seems on that coast to have a strange magnetic power upon the land, and the debris of a landslip will sometimes, though not always, respond to it by again falling and settling into new ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... population at the newly-opened mines. The lumps of native copper are still, however, a mystery. Mr. Geach has examined the country in every direction without being able to trace their origin; so that it seems probable that they result from the debris of old copper-bearing strata, and are not really more abundant than gold nuggets are in Australia or California. A high reward was offered to any native who should find a piece and show the exact spot where he obtained it, ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... of life of man prevents his appreciation of this fact, it is certain that the soil of a plain unceasingly acquires a real increase in its elevation in proportion as it is covered with different plants and animals. Indeed the debris successively heaped up for numerous generations of all these beings which have by turns perished, and which, as the result of the action of their organs, have, during the course of this life, given rise to combinations which would never ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... janitor's box with bird-cages at the windows. On that side rose, under a green trellis, the mansard of the neighboring house. A sculptor's studio backed on it its glass-covered roof, which showed plaster figures asleep in the dust. At the right, the wall that closed the yard bore debris of monuments, broken bases of columnettes. In the rear, the house, not very large, showed the six windows of its facade, half hidden by ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the most part empty. Others showed only fragments of broken pottery. Some had been broken in through their side walls or were open above and littered with the debris of their roofs. Lennon surmised the existence of several sealed lower chambers, ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... disappearance we acquired the superstitious belief that the spirits of the persons buried there came at dead of night and held a festival. It was at least certain that frequently of a morning we would discover fragments of pickled meats, canned goods and such debris, littering the place, although it had been securely locked and barred against human intrusion. It was proposed to remove the provisions and store them elsewhere, but our dear mother, always generous and hospitable, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... store a small open space was filled with broken crates, straw and boxes—the debris of unpacking. And there he saw a youthful woman sitting with her head turned partially from the road. As he passed a suppressed sob shook her. It captured his attention, and, with a slight, involuntary ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... watching the men of the fog wagon as they hunted for remaining sparks or flame. It was noticeable that now nobody moved toward the wreck. There were figures walking back toward the edge of the field. What civilians were about, even to the mechanics on duty, had started out to look at the debris at close range. But the guards were on the job. Nobody could approach. The onlookers went back to ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... life beyond the grave, that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of man's achievements must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins—all these things if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... soon as they were finished. These he took back with a piteous sigh, that sometimes extracted half a crown. Then he painted over the rejected one and let it dry; so that sometimes a paid portrait would present a beauty enthroned on the debris of two or three rivals, and that is where few ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... deprived of its motive power, has taken the deadly headlong dive to earth. It has struck the ground with terrific violence, burying its nose in the soil, showing incidentally that a flying machine is an indifferent plough, and has shattered itself, the debris soaked with the escaping fuel becoming ignited. In any event, after such a fall the machine is certain to be a wreck. The motor may escape damage, in which event it is salvaged, the machine subsequently ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... mounds, embankments and heaps of debris extends from near Bellota for about nine miles in a general west-south-west direction over a plain which is now densely covered by a ...
— The Battle and the Ruins of Cintla • Daniel G. Brinton
... to his study, and he laid the debris before me. I could understand his regarding it as of small importance when I looked at it, for the metal was almost black, and the stones lustreless and dull. I rubbed one of them on my sleeve, however, and it glowed afterwards like a spark, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... these marvels of brush and pencil, scrutinizing each one in turn, his sense of repulsion for the debris on the floor gave way to a feeling of enthusiasm. Not only were the sketches far superior to any he had ever seen, but the way in which they were done and the uses of the several mediums were a revelation to him. It was only when Fog-horn Cranch's big voice roused him ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... tunnel, and the charge inserted. Then all retreated back into the Tomb of Kings till the cartridge had exploded, and the smoke cleared off, which took a long while, when our people advanced with iron bars and baskets, and cleared away the debris, after which the process must ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... upon this road stand the ruins of the ancient city of Bost in a wonderful state of preservation; here, as elsewhere in this region, the remains of fortifications testify to the former military importance of the spot. The citadel of Bost is built on the debris of extensive works and rises 150 ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough
... Government might make a claim upon it, there was no particular necessity for secrecy, so we had up a man from the mines near by with drills and dynamite, who speedily shattered the block into a million pieces, more or less. Alas! there was no trace in its debris of 'pay dirt,' as the western miner puts it. While the dynamite expert was on the spot, we induced him to shatter the anvil as well as the block of cement, and then the workman, doubtless thinking the new earl was as ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... them curiously. They could see dimly the passageway along which they had come; they could make out its narrowing continuation on into the mass of the mountain. They looked up and saw an ever dwindling space merging with darkness and finally lost in utter obscurity. Underfoot was debris, rocky soil worn away from the cliffs throughout the ages, here and there fallen slivers and scale of rock. Shadows moved somberly, misshapen and grotesque, like brooding spirits of evil stirring ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... and the women and children were released. Only the wives of two colonial officers with their families were held captive and carried away into the western forests. In Cherry Valley heaps of smoking debris were all that remained. Groups of redskins still hovered about the unhappy village until, on the following day, they saw that an enemy was approaching. A body of militia had come from the Mohawk river, but they were too late; the savages, avoiding an encounter, ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... easy. He stood then upon a bench or terrace cumbered with rocks, and so broad that few persons casually looking would have suspected it artificial. Facing fully about from the piers, he walked forward following the terrace which at places was out of line, and piled with debris tumbled from the mountain on the right hand side; in a few minutes that silent guide turned with an easy curve and disappeared in what had yet the appearance hardly distinguishable of an area wrenched with enormous labor from a low cliff ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... as the female searcher called herself, was an evil-visaged, corpulent old creature, with a sickly, soft, insinuating voice, and a greasy, familiar manner that was most offensive. They had given her the scrap of torn lace and the debris of the jet as a guide, with very particular directions to see if they corresponded with any part of the ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths
... similar living forms will deposit the burden of lime brought into the sea by the rivers. Thus, if forces of degradation have their own way, in time there will be a gradual change in dominant character, from coarse sediments to fine, from rocks which are simply crumbled debris to rocks that are the product of chemical decay and sorting, so that we have the lime deposited as limestone in one place and the alumina and silica, in another. We shall have a change from local deposits, ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... marked the site of the house where he had spent his childhood, and for which his heart had longed; and where his loved ones had watched his departure, beggars were now greedily searching for plunder among the debris. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... approaching any of the larger pieces of rock-and-metal. That he and his brother had originally elected to come into this system along its orbital plane had been a mixed blessing. To have come in at a different angle would have avoided all the debris—from planetary size on down—that is thickest in a star's equatorial plane, but it would also have meant a greater chance of missing a suitable planet unless too much reliance were placed on the already weakened power generators. As it was, the Nipe had been ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... in Egypt by the ancient Nile A temple of imperishable stone, Stupendous, columned, hieroglyphed, and known To all the world as Faith's supremest shrine. Half in debris it stands, a granite pile Gigantic, stayed midway in resurrection, An awe, an inspiration, a dejection To all who would the cryptic past divine. The god of it was Ammon, and a throng Of worshippers from Thebes the royal-gated Forever at its fervid pylons waited ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice
... for in the waiting-room she could not fight off the conviction that the train would never arrive. When it came clanging in on grinding wheels and she clambered aboard, she knew that it would be wrecked, and the finding of her body in the debris, or its disappearance in the flames, would break poor Davidge's heart and leave her to the same ignominy in ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... would conceal her treasure; but I had nothing to guide me: I could only waste matches. And I did waste them. A dozen had been lit and extinguished before I was so much as sure the box was not under a pile of debris that lay in one corner, and I had taken the last in my hand before I became aware that one of the broken boards of the floor was pushed a little out of its proper position. One match! and that board was to be raised, the ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... fool, that he has lost his fortune on the Bourse, and that the syndicate of his creditors, presided over by Monsieur Ancona, has laid hands upon his palace. For, otherwise, I should not have ascended the steps of this papal staircase, nor have seen this debris of Grecian sarcophagi fitted into the walls, and this garden of so intense a green. As for Gorka, he may have returned for thirty-six other reasons than jealousy, and Montfanon is right: Caterina is cunning enough to inveigle both the painter and him. She will make Maitland believe that she received ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... arctic temperature to double the boiling water point, from 250 deg. below zero to 500 deg. above it, or the point at which tin melts. Subjected to these extremes, the glassy rocks crack, shiver and crumble away; enormous land slides occur; peaks topple over; and tons of debris, crashing down the mountains, are swallowed up forever in the yawing ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... of attraction is a partially-wrought limestone quarry, known by the name of the Sheethiehead, right above the village of Kinnesswood, and about a gunshot back from the brow of the Bishop Hill. It is surrounded on all sides by immense heaps of debris, which has been repeatedly dug into during the last thirty years by geologising students, in search of fossils connected with the carboniferous system, and who must have frequently met with the substance which has caused all this excitement, but never imagined it ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... which our new-born friendship was always to endure untarnished. Eh bien, man proposes! De Soyecourt is of a jealous disposition; and here I sit, amid my fallen aircastles, like that tiresome Marius in his Carthaginian debris." ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... and when morning broke upon a world of week-day labor, it was covered as far as their eyes could reach as with a clear and unwritten tablet, on which they might record their lives anew. Near the wreck of the broken bridge on the Warensboro turnpike an overturned buggy lay imbedded in the drift and debris of the river hurrying silently towards the sea, and a horse with fragments of broken and icy harness still clinging to him was found standing before the stable-door of Edward Blandford. But to any further knowledge of the fate of its owner, North Liberty ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte |
