"Ebb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Wessex makes headway enough to be owned as overlord of England by them. Now therefore is there one place in all England where peace has come, and to that place I would go to end my days. Here in London the tide of war will ebb and flow ever. Let me go down with you to Reedham, my son, that I ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... out in the stream away from the dock, captain," ordered Handy, when they were ready to start. "The tide is nearly flood and we can drop down the river with the first of the ebb. We can get outside early and then determine where next ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, in the heart of Venice. There, in the dim quietness of the old church, they lie at rest together, undisturbed by the voices of the passers-by in the square outside, or the lapping of the water against the steps, as the tides ebb and flow ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... habits before they fade away. Says James in his remarkable chapter on Instinct: "In all pedagogy the great thing is to strike while the iron is hot, and to seize the wave of the pupils' interest in each successive subject before its ebb has come, so that knowledge may be got and a habit of skill acquired—a headway of interest, in short, secured, on which afterwards the individual may float. There is a happy moment for fixing skill in drawing, for making boys collectors in natural history, ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... think of sleeping, much more of talking. We were absorbed by more or less gloomy thoughts. It was the night before the battle, with the difference that nothing forced us to engage in the struggle. Two sorts of ideas struggled in the mind. It was the ebb and flow of the sea, each in its turn. Objections to the venture were not wanting. Why run so much danger? If we succeeded, of what advantage would it be? If an accident happened, how we should regret it! Then the imagination set to work; all the mountain catastrophes ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... go down together; a perfect yet deepening peace was upon it. Cosmo scarcely left him, but watched and waited, with a cold spot at his heart, which kept growing bigger and bigger, as he saw his father slowly drifting out on the ebb-tide of this earthly life. Cosmo had now to go through that most painful experience of all—when the loved seem gradually withdrawing from human contact and human desires, their cares parting slowly farther ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... of their children and wives full control of their property and earnings. The only concession that had been made to the steady demand of the women for suffrage was the grant of the School franchise in 1893 and eligibility to the school boards. Interest in woman suffrage was at a low ebb when the new century opened. The membership of the association had decreased and at the State convention in Hartford in 1901 the treasurer's report for the year showed an expenditure of only $21.75. The report of the president and secretary said: "The work of the association is confined to the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... somewhere, either in the hull or aloft. Then they took to their oars again, and I saw that unless we could knock some of them over she—and those in the second boat as well—would be aboard of us in a few minutes, for there was now but little wind and the strength of the ebb tide was fast slackening. ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... the action so it coincided with the ebb of applause coming over the speaker—applause from the loyal multitudes who had just heard Professor Cargill end his lecture. As it was now permissible, Blanchard reached under the table and snapped a button. ...
— The Clean and Wholesome Land • Ralph Sholto
... she was afraid of another invading hand; and blushing at the praise she could not disclaim ran away as soon as she was free. But as the tide of supper-time began to ebb, the doctor arrested Faith in her running about and saying that his sister had had no supper yet and wanted company, led her to the place his aunt had spoken of, a clear space at one end of the table, where the doctor also discovered he had taken ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... a bold design; it runs 1743 feet in a right line into the bay, where there is, at the lowest ebb, 17 feet of water. On this wharf are upwards of eighty large stores, containing merchandize to a great amount. I could never view these buildings without astonishment at the infatuation of the proprietors: they are, without a single exception, of wood, and the roofs ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... refuged in Turkish territory and turned Moslem. Nor when, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Serbs struck for independence did Bosnia join them. The Slav Vezir and the Pashas of Bosnia led great armies against them. By then the whole situation had changed, however. The ebb-tide of the Turk had begun. Austria and Russia in the eighteenth century had already decided upon the partition of his lands. Russia thought and cared only for Constantinople and the way there. Bosnia was recognized as Austria's sphere. ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... he was navigating the swift ocean river flowing round the world. He was, therefore, surprised to find as he rounded the Cape that the current had ceased, or, in his own words, the "ebb came to an end." Three days more and they were at the mouth of the Tagus. Near this part of the coast lay the Tin Islands, according to Greek ideas, though even to-day their exact locality is uncertain. Pytheas must ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... the truth, anyway. You see," she continued, "most people think piety's at a low ebb unless we're gettin' up some kind of a holy show all the time, to bring people together that wouldn't meet anywhere else if they saw each other first. Then when they've bought a chance on a pieced bed-quilt, or paid for chicken-pie ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... ebb-time, they turn, the eyes beneath the busbies are gone. But the blood has suspended its timbre, the heart from out of oblivion Knows but the retreat of the burning shoulders, the red-swift waves of the sweet Fire horizontal ...
— Bay - A Book of Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... their children? I affirm the fact to be exactly the contrary. Those communities in which there are no common schools, and in which the people generally are in a state of deplorable ignorance, are precisely those in which the sense of parental obligation on this point is at the lowest ebb. Go to a region of country in which not one man in ten can read and write, and you will find that not one man in ten will care whether his children are taught to read and write. Those communities on the contrary which have the best and most complete system of common schools, and in which this ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... than I had lost. I continued playing with a heap of gold before me, and on my putting a fistfull of sequins on a card it came out, and I went paroli and pair de paroli. I won again, and seeing that the bank was at a low ebb I stopped playing. Canano paid me, and told his cashier to get a thousand sequins, and as he was shuffling the cards I heard a cry of, "Here come ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... is no settled price set by God upon any commodity that is bought or sold under the sun; but all things that we buy and sell do ebb and flow as to price like the tide. How then shall a man of tender conscience do, neither to wrong the seller, buyer, nor himself in the buying and selling ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... disposition and genius to a tittle. He had a love for such scenes of strife: in the midst of them his spirit rose calm and supreme, soaring (like an angel or not, but anyway the compliment is a very pretty one) on the battle-clouds majestic, and causing to ebb or to flow the mighty ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... actually hungry, and her suspicions began to ebb. He hadn't lied about that. And he ate like a gentleman. Young, not more than thirty; possibly less. But that dreadful stubble and that black eye! The clothes would have passed muster on any fashionable golf links. A fugitive? ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... whom I had lost? A stranger among my own country people, with the every-day habits and every-day pleasures of my youthful life left behind me—without plans or hopes to interest me in looking at the future—it is surely not wonderful that my spirits had sunk to their lowest ebb, and that I even failed to appreciate with sufficient gratitude the fortunate ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... to the fight for that day. On the morning of the 10th a portion of the French fleet was discovered, when, the wind springing up, a general chase was ordered. This continued till 4 p.m., when, the wind shifting to the southward, and the ebb ceasing, both ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... a nauseating feeling, which, especially after eating, causes vomiting. This relieves you temporarily, but soon a weakening sensation follows, which leaves you limp as a dish-rag. Your spirits are at their lowest ebb and you feel a sort of hopeless helplessness and a mad desire to escape it all, to get to the open fields and the perfume of the flowers in Blighty. There is a sharp, prickling sensation in the nostrils, ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... a reply. The enthusiasm spread from rank to rank. Foremost of those beside the water's edge stood Oliver and Bernard de Brocas; and when at last the ebb came, and the word was given to advance, they were amongst the first who dashed into the shallow water, whilst Gaston and his brother, though unable to press into the foremost rank, ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... half-transformed, with qualities That oft betrayed each other, elements Not blent but struggling, breeding strange effects, Passing the reckoning of his friends or foes. Haughty and generous, grave and passionate; With tidal moments of devoutest awe, Sinking anon to furthest ebb of doubt; Deliberating ever, till the sting Of a recurrent ardor made him rush Right against reasons that himself had drilled And marshalled painfully. A spirit framed Too proudly special for obedience, Too subtly pondering for mastery: Born of a goddess with a mortal sire, Heir of flesh-fettered, ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... signal the anchor was lowered, but its chain barely ran because the bottom lay no more than a meter down, and this locality was one of the shallowest spots near the bank of shellfish. Instantly the skiff wheeled around under the ebb ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... the soup and coffee, doggedly turned and followed Hastings up the slope again. But, behind the back of his lanky partner, he was whimpering softly. Never before had the battle scene beyond inspired him with so much terror as now, for its ebb and flow was leaving a greater human wreckage than the Red Cross men could handle. The wounded were arriving at longer periods, because the stretcher-bearers were having farther and farther to go for them; and the disturbing fact was becoming evident that there ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... from the middle of the eleventh century. It was the work of numerous teachers, many of them of unsurpassed acuteness, who, at a time when learning and scholarship were at a low ebb, made it their aim to systemize, elucidate, and prove on philosophical grounds, the doctrines of the Church. Aristotle was the author whose philosophical writings were most authoritative with the schoolmen. In theology, Augustine was the ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... extreme timidity; but their harvest appears to have been great, and the adventure no more perilous than lucrative. In 1800, on the occasion of my grandfather's first landing, and during the two or three hours which the ebb-tide and the smooth water allowed them to pass upon its shelves, his crew collected upwards of two hundredweight of old metal: pieces of a kedge anchor and a cabin stove, crowbars, a hinge and lock of a door, a ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... going out, and had, perhaps, two hours to ebb. The boys hugged the channel bank on the right, passed under the bridge unnoticed, and kept on their silent and anxious way, mile after mile. Finally, Sandy steered into a creek and glided softly against the ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... had chosen the last of the ebb tide for the trip down Rodgers River, which gave them low water for their work on the clam bar and a flood tide to help them up Harney's River. They made a false start at the mouth of the river by taking a channel that ran too far to ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... more than offset by the domestic infelicity they caused. Each of these knight-errants of literature was supposed to choose a lady-love, and it made no difference if she were already married. Thus conjugal fidelity was at a very low ebb, while amorous intrigues were openly encouraged by what amounted to a definite system of civilization. To settle the many vexed questions arising from this state of affairs, the Courts of Love were formed, at which noble ladies decided all disputed points. Most famous ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... These are the men that are moved no more By the will to traffic and grasp and store And ring with pleasure and wealth and love The circles that self is the center of; But they are moved by the powers that force The sea forever to ebb and rise, That hold Arcturus in his course, And marshal at noon in tropic skies The clouds that tower on some snow-capped chain And drift out over the peopled plain. They are big with the beauty of cosmic things. Mark how their columns surge! They seem To follow the ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... filled with big thrilling events. The ebb and flow of battle called into action all that was best and noblest in the boys, and my Lieutenant served his Battery and wrought deeds of valor to a degree all excelling and inspiring. I knew the secret of ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... from the tropics, J. P. Bridger, United States consul on the island of Ratona, was in the city. We had wassail and jubilee and saw the Flatiron building, and missed seeing the Bronxless menagerie by about a couple of nights. And then, at the ebb tide, we were walking up a street that ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... thought appeared! The letter lifted her above her own suffering. Her mind was held by the great vital experience of a soul, a soul faring forth on its supreme adventure. He did not say what had happened in words, but she saw his descent in the flesh and his upward flight of spirit—the low ebb and the flashing heights.... How well she knew the cool brightness of his eyes, as he wrote! The god she had liberated that sunlit day was dead—not dead to her alone, but to any woman of Shore or Mountain or Isle.... With a gasp, she recalled ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... all the sun lay dying, his crimson ebb of life staining the firmament with splendour, his mighty heart turning the dance of Death to a triumphant progress, where Blood and Flame rode by with clouds for chargers, and Earth and Sky themselves shouldered the ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... Caught unawares at ebb or flood— Or dull bombardment, day by day, With fort and earth-work, far away, Low couched in ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... fights at long ranges; these furnish of course no new experiences or discoveries to Naval gunners; in fact, the sameness of them is depressing, and what with marching, fighting, poor living, dysentery, and jaundice, I humbly confess that my martial zeal is at a much lower ebb than it was a year ago. Yet time may produce many changes and surprises, and I may yet find myself again at ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... modelled boats rested upon the beach, and five miles out to sea was pictured upon the horizon, like a phantom ship, the weird and indistinct outlines of a United States Coast Survey schooner. The tide was on the last of the ebb, and finding it impossible to get within half a mile of the point, I anchored my little craft, built a fire in my bake-kettle, made coffee on board, and, quietly turning in for a doze, rested until the tide arose, when in the darkness I hauled ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... a constant ebb and flow of men in the office, presumably professional cleaners. They came and went, or sat along the walls, waiting. A large percentage were foreigners but the clerks proved to be accomplished linguists. They talked, with more or less fluency, with ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of Mr. Quincy, in many points one of the most eloquent of our political history, will show the brightest phase of federalism at its lowest ebb. One can hardly compare it with that of Mr. Clay, which follows it, without noticing the national character of the latter, as contrasted with the lack of nationality of the former. It seems, also, that Mr. Clay's speech carries, in its internal characteristics, sufficient evidence of ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... appeared to be conducted for the accommodation of the medical men and their pupils, who came to make experiments on the poor, for the benefit of the rich. One of the physicians, I must not forget to mention, gave me half-a-crown, and ordered me some wine, when I was at the lowest ebb. I thought of making my case known to the lady-like matron; but her forbidding countenance prevented me. She condescended to look on the patients, and make general enquiries, two or three times a week; but the nurses knew the hour when the visit of ceremony would commence, and every thing ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... slept or woke, for the events of the past days, coupled with the disappointment of not being set ashore as he had hoped, had brought even his determined courage to a low ebb. He was on the verge of a fever, and Bob's prescription of rest and sleep was what he most needed. Made snug at the back side of the berth, where little or no light came, he fell into a fitful slumber. Bob ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... finances of the Society at home were at a low ebb, and it was thought needful to diminish the number of stations. The intolerance of the Burmese Government led to the decision that there was less benefit in maintaining that at Rangoon than those in ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the poet and the scholar—the things he would have liked to be and which she would have liked him to be. But Maria Silva read a different tale in the hollow cheeks and the burning eyes, and she noted the changes in them from day to day, by them following the ebb and flow of his fortunes. She saw him leave the house with his overcoat and return without it, though the day was chill and raw, and promptly she saw his cheeks fill out slightly and the fire of hunger leave his eyes. In the same way she had seen his wheel and watch go, and ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... answered Joshua, firmly, but good-humouredly at the same time; 'thou canst not expect that our own hands should pull down what our purses established. Thou killest the fish with spear, line, and coble-net; and we, with snares and with nets, which work by the ebb and the flow of the tide. Each doth what seems best in his eyes to secure a share of the blessing which Providence hath bestowed on the river, and that within his own bounds. I prithee seek no quarrel against us, for thou shalt have ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... few can be found that, for their importance and ultimate benefit to mankind, are comparable with this expiring effort of her arms. It did not, indeed, open to her any new career of conquest—it did not consolidate the relics of her power—it did not turn the rapid ebb of her fortunes. The mission of imperial Rome was, in truth, already accomplished. She had received and transmitted through her once ample dominion the civilization of Greece. She had broken up the barriers of narrow nationalities among the various ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... now we sit by the River of Time And gaze at the waves below, But its brink is covered by frost and rime, And we hear on the wind a muffled chime Proclaiming the end of a brief sojourn: Yet the floods of life still whirl and churn As the currents ebb and flow:— By the rolling wheel we wait our turn Calm, but ready to go! The hopper is drained, but unmoved still, The Miller who grinds ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... self-restraint of the maidens was a great subduer of wanton looks, lest the soundness of the soul should be infected by the licence of the eyes; and women desired to avouch the purity of their hearts by the modesty of their faces. Then one Ottar, the son of Ebb, kindled with confidence in the greatness either of his own achievements, or of his courtesy and eloquent address, stubbornly and ardently desired to woo the maiden. And though he strove with all the force of his wit ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... fishing! If a Bishop can't be a fisherman, who can?' He twiddled his ring again. 'We stayed there a little too long, and while we were getting up our stone, down came the fog. After some discussion, we decided to row for the land. The ebb was just beginning to make round the point, and sent us all ways at ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... was to souls or (to speak upon the mere historical plane) to civilization, bad as it was that the tide of culture should have begun to ebb from the far regions which it had once so beneficently flooded, the Reformation, that is, the reaction against the unity, the discipline, and the clear thought of Europe, would never have counted largely in human affairs had it been confined to the external fringe of the civilized world. That ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... old world turns over once in twenty-four hours, and swings around the sun in yearly revolution. For these, tides ebb and flow, the land brings forth, and the clouds float in the sky. To these all forces are but servants. For these ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... this load of debt we shall sink. It is said by the leading papers of England that we have no money, have exhausted our credit, must disband our armies, and make the best terms we can with rebellion. Doubtless, our credit in Europe is at a low ebb just now, and we are thrown upon our own resources, and on these we must swim or sink. There is nothing to reject in this. We have shown the world how a free state can raise troops and create a navy out of its own materials; and now we will show the world how a free state ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... water was still. A faint ebb and flow whispered against the tiny gravel beach at the end. I noted a practicable way from it to the top of the cliff, and from the cliff down again to the sand beach. Everything was perfect. The water was a beautiful light green, like semi-opaque glass, and from the ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... represented by High Commissioner of the Republic Paul RONCIERE (since 8 August 1994) who was appointed by the French Ministry of Interior head of government: President of the Territorial Government of French Polynesia Gaston FLOSSE (since 4 April 1991); President of the Territorial Assembly Tinomana EBB (since NA) cabinet: Council of Ministers; president submits a list of members of the Territorial Assembly for approval by ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... story-maker is still giving us thrilling fiction, to be sure, but here it is the Scotchman of acute conscience, writing a spiritual allegory with the healthy instinct which insists that the lesson shall be dramatized. So, too, in a late fiction like "Ebb Tide," apparently as picaresque and harum-scarum as "Treasure Island," it is nevertheless the moralist who is at work beneath the brilliantly picturesque surface of the narrative, contrasting types subtly, showing the gradings in moral disintegration. In the past-mastership of the ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... in which he has lived have never allowed him to have one. There has been no period of flood in his tide which might lead him on to fortune. While he has been waiting patiently for high water the ebb has come upon him. Mr. Prendergast himself had been a successful man, and his regrets, therefore, were philosophical rather than practical. As for Herbert, he did not look upon the question at all in the same light ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... primatial Christian city, and under the eye of an aged archbishop.[288] The representation of Alesius is only the more credible because it is the more restrained, and the one representation corroborates the other, and proves to what a low ebb morality had sunk among the ministers of the old church in Scotland before it was swept away. Not only did this bold bad man set at nought the laws of God and the canons of his church, and make a boast of doing so among his boon companions, ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... believe the reason why the spirit grows savage and we forget that we are human here so often is that we never see the sun or moon. We never hear the stir of wings in the sky, feel the throb of Nature's heart in the ebb and flow of tides, or walk with our heads among ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... the crisped and crowded waves that flicker and dance before the strong winds upon the uplifted level of the shallow sea. But the scene is widely different at low tide. A fall of eighteen or twenty inches is enough to show ground over the greater part of the lagoon; and at the complete ebb the city is seen standing in the midst of a dark plain of sea-weed, of gloomy green, except only where the larger branches of the Brenta and its associated streams converge towards the port of the Lido. Through this salt and sombre plain the gondola and the fishing-boat advance by tortuous ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... a cinch, had his forehead pressed against the saddle and could afford a grin. He knew that the courage of a killer is largely dependent on his physical well-being. If he is cold or hungry or exhausted, his nerve is at low ebb; if life is running strong in his arteries his grit is above par. For years Roush had been drinking to excess. He had reached the point where he dared not face in the open a man like Albeen with ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... heart accused me of a mean and selfish desire to keep him all to myself, but I was obliged meekly to endure the obloquy, undeserved as it was. Koenigin used to go into fits of laughter at my dilemma, and just at this period my admiration of the Jook went down to the lowest ebb. "He is a selfish, conceited creature!" I exclaimed in my wrath. "I really believe he thinks that bewitching little Kitty would fall in love with him forthwith if he submitted to an introduction. Oh, I do wish he knew what ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... some time elapsed, but few emotions are more transient than such impure religious excitement as the crowd had felt, and the ebb is as great as the flood, and the oozy bottom laid bare is foul. Popular favourites in other departments have to experience the same fate—one day, 'roses, roses, all the way'; the next, rotten eggs and curses. Other folks than the ignorant peasants at Lystra have had ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... the boat made fair way with the tide, and when the ebb ceased at about ten o'clock the mouth of the river was but a few miles away. The mast was lowered and the sails stowed. The boat was then rowed into a little creek and tied up to the bushes. The basket of provisions was opened, and a hearty meal enjoyed, Tony being now permitted for the first ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... retired valley of Ennerdale, with its grand background of hills, precipitous enough to be fairly called mountains, forces the two lads into closer affection. Shut in by these 'enormous barriers,' and undistracted by the ebb and flow of the outside world, the mutual love becomes concentrated. A tie like that of family blood is involuntarily imposed upon the little community of dalesmen. The image of sheep-tracks and ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... Peter's pale-green eyes ajar Dream, wake; wake, dream, in one brief bar; And I am sitting, dull and shy, And she with gaze of vacancy, And large hands folded on the tray, Musing the afternoon away; Her satin bosom heaving slow With sighs that softly ebb and flow, And her plain face in such dismay, It seems unkind to look her way: Until all cheerful back will come Her cheerful gleaming spirit home: And one would think that poor Miss Loo Asked nothing else, if she ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... night. But—was it a man? For the figure suddenly began running over the beach on all fours like a beetle, waving its limbs like feelers. Before I could throw open the window again it darted into the surf, and, when I leaned out into the chilling drizzle, I saw nothing save the flat ebb crawling on the coast—I heard nothing save the purring of ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... shrieking "Ruin!", strange moans and wailings were heard in Courthouse and Theatre, on the Thames estuary the ruddy glow of sunset looked like blood and flame, the sand-ripples and sea-wrack left by the ebb suggested corpses; everything ministered to ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... strong, and the bathing most dangerous to even an experienced swimmer. I remember one morning the terrible fright we were given by an uncle of ours; he swam out into the bay, was caught by the current of an ebb tide and borne out of reach of our eyes. A fishing boat picked him up still alive, though greatly exhausted. "It was a world of horror and anguish crowded into four or five minutes of dreadful agitation," ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... which once passed the House of Commons for the relief of merchant- insurers, who had suffered by the war with France. If a great many fell, much greater were the number of those who felt a sensible ebb of their fortunes, and with difficulty bore up under the loss of great part of their estates. These, prompted by necessity, rack their wits for new contrivances, new inventions, new trades, stocks, projects, and anything to retrieve the desperate credit of their fortunes. That this is probable ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... learning; and that even Cato, who preceded them in point of time, was a studious man: then succeeded the Lepidi, Carbo, and Gracchi, and so many great orators after them, down to our own times, that we were very little, if at all, inferior to the Greeks. Philosophy has been at a low ebb even to this present time, and has had no assistance from our own language, and so now I have undertaken to raise and illustrate it, in order that, as I have been of service to my countrymen, when employed on public affairs, I may, if possible, be so likewise in my retirement; and in this I must ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... was an ebb and flood tide, of unusual extent, within half-an-hour. At another, a belt of land, including a burying-ground, was washed away, so that, according to the observer, "it appeared as if the dead had sought ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... food for the use of man." Care was taken that councils should not be called when ploughing was to be done or wheat to be threshed. Benedict bent himself to the task of teaching the rich and the proud, the poor and the lazy the alphabet of prosperity and happiness. Agriculture was at its lowest ebb. Marshes covered once fertile fields, and the men who should have tilled the land spurned the plough as degrading, or were too indolent to undertake the tasks of the farm. The monks left their cells and their prayers to dig ditches and plough fields. The effect was magical. ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... surmounted by green-grey wiry grass that held and was half buried in fine blown sand. Above, the heavens made a complete hemisphere of blue in which a series of remote cumulus clouds floated and dissolved. Before him spread the long levels of the sands, and far away at its utmost ebb was the sea. Eleanor had gone to explore the black ribs of a wrecked fishing-boat that lay at the edge of a shallow lagoon. She was a little pink-footed figure, very bright and apparently transparent. ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath; like those fabled undulations of the Ephesian sod over the buried Evangelist St. John. And meet it is, that over these sea-pastures, wide-rolling watery prairies and Potters' Fields of all four continents, the waves should rise and fall, and ebb and flow unceasingly; for here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still; tossing like slumberers in their beds; the ever-rolling waves but made so by their restlessness. ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... with the accession of Artaxerxes there is at once a revival of art. Art had sunk under the Parthians, despite their Grecian leanings, to the lowest ebb which it had known in Western Asia since the accession of Asshur-izir-pal to the throne of Assyria (B.C. 886). Parthian attempts at art were few and far between, and when made were unhappy, not to say ridiculous. The coins of Artaxerxes, compared with ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... namely, the two small ones; for to the westward of these there is a large one which is not to be regarded. Having the capes thus opposite each other, you are in the middle of the channel and by the first buoy. The current runs outside along the shore, east and west, to wit: the ebb tide westerly, and the flood easterly, and also very strong. The ebb runs until it is half flood. There are still two other channels, the old one which is the middle one, and the Spanish Channel stretching to the east. We had reached the middlemost buoy when it ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... beach, and found the boat on shore half-filled with water, in consequence of the man having left her. I called the people, and baled her out; found she was considerably damaged, and very leaky. At half-past 5 A.M., the ebb-tide making, we left Macao with vegetables ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... pounds, a farm, a horse, a flock of sheep, if only he would go and bring me a surgeon. Malcolm Bey was mad, he said; no surgeon would come at such a time, miles for a single wounded man. I knew that he was right, but I could not sit idly watching my friend's life ebb away. I doubled the prize, and with a shrug of the shoulders ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... sources of inspiration. Study your temperament, your work and your customers to find out under what conditions your production is the easiest and greatest. It is neither necessary nor wise to write letters when energies and interest are at a low ebb, when it is comparatively easy to stimulate the lagging enthusiasm and increase your power to write letters that ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... arts cannot be said to have flourished in England during the period of the great war, and architecture was certainly at a low ebb, but several eminent names belong to this period. Sir Thomas Lawrence was by far the foremost English portrait painter, and fitly represents the elegance of the regency, while Raeburn enjoyed an equal reputation in Scotland. Turner, however, was painting in his earlier manner and ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... second visit to Madeira, I find the wine trade at a very low ebb. The demand from America, owing to temperance, the tariff, and partly to an increased taste for Spanish, French, and German wines, is extremely small. Not a cargo has been shipped thither for three years. The construction given to the tariff, ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... blest assurance brings, I know, To bleeding hearts but sad relief— The dark and troubled tide of grief Must have its ebb ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... for a little longer, still sitting by the table, with her eyes now constantly smiling into his, until at last he had to remind himself so vigorously of the absent and lucky baronet that the pleasure began to ebb. And then they said good-night and he was left ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... wells are situated from which ships obtain water. At first sight it appears not a little remarkable that the fresh water should regularly ebb and flow with the tides; and it has even been imagined that sand has the power of filtering the salt from the sea-water. These ebbing wells are common on some of the low islands in the West Indies. The compressed sand, ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... more or less at sight, those properties which would quickly and surely appreciate in value; and he believed he possessed it. Given the control of a few thousands as a point of departure, and the financial ebb and flow, a man must be a born fool, he said, not to be able to make a reasonable ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... inhumanity." The Cyclop heard, and came forth enraged, and in his anger he plucked a fragment of a rock, and threw it with blind fury at the ships. It narrowly escaped lighting upon the bark in which Ulysses sat, but with the fall it raised so fierce an ebb as bore back the ship till it almost touched the shore. "Cyclop," said Ulysses, "if any ask thee who imposed on thee that unsightly blemish in thine eye, say it was Ulysses, son of Laertes: the king of ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... he said; "and there's other sing'lar things! How is it that a sea-farin' man, that's dyin' to home, will allers die on the ebb-tide? It never fails, but how does it happen? Tell me that! And there's more ways than one of ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... cutlasses and pistols. Besides the lieutenant and Jack, there was the coxswain, and there were some half-dozen long pikes which, as the latter observed, would come in handy, if they had a fight with another boat or had to attack a fort, but for boarding he would not give a rush for them. The ebb-tide rushed past the boat dark and smooth, but with swirling eddies, which showed the strength of the current against which ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... now, and Dagmar's courage was at lowest ebb. The motherly woman took the ever-present "telescope," and setting it down in a corner of the pleasant room, directed Dagmar to a chair near the little stove, in which a small light glowed, quite suitably opposed to the chill ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... his self-salesmanship ability at such a low ebb. To his unspeakable horror, he felt his eyes betray him. They ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... no doubt that I had experienced the ebb of some vitality, for it is the saddest thing about us that this bright spirit with which we are lit from within like lanterns, can suffer dimness. Such frailty makes one fear that extinction is our final destiny, and it saps us with numbness, and we are less than ourselves. Seven ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... made. Away she went; and, before one of the mutinous fleet could go in chase, she was under the protection of the guns on shore. It was now our turn; but we had not a moment to lose, as the tide was on the turn to ebb, when we should have had it against us. What was our vexation, therefore, when the order was given to get under weigh, to find that the pilot, either from fear, incompetency, or treachery, had declared that he could not take charge of the ship! Sir Harry would ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... when she was weak—weak physically, mentally, spiritually, morally—when under the sheer weight of this frightful and growing burden of suspense she was not capable of fighting her misery, her abasement, her low ebb of vitality, and at the same time wholly withstanding ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... poetic imagination, Thackeray had at first set himself, conversely, to strip the trappings off these fine folk, and to poke his fun at the feudal lords and ladies by treating them as ordinary middle-class men and women masquerading in old armour or drapery. He came in as a writer on the ebb-tide of romanticism, when the reaction showed its popular form in a curious outburst of the taste for burlesques and parodies on the stage and in the light reading of the time. Whether the creation of this taste is to be ascribed to the appearance of two writers with such genius for wit ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... master of hounds as ordinarily presides over the hunt in English counties. Mr. Jorrocks comes into a hunt when no one else can be found to undertake the work; when, in want of any one better, the subscribers hire his services as those of an upper servant; when, in fact, the hunt is at a low ebb, and is struggling for existence. Mr. Jorrocks with his carpet-bag then makes his appearance, driving the hardest bargain that he can, purposing to do the country at the lowest possible figure, followed by a short train of most undesirable nags, with reference to which the wonder is that Mr. Jorrocks ...
— Hunting Sketches • Anthony Trollope
... Album," a dramatic poem of extraordinary power, has so much more markedly the defects of his qualities that I take it to be, at the utmost, the poise of the first gradual refluence. This analogy of the tidal ebb and flow may be observed with singular aptness in Browning's life-work—the tide that first moved shoreward in the loveliness of "Pauline," and, with "long withdrawing roar," ebbed in slow, just perceptible lapse to the poet's penultimate ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... discovered that an unscrupulous real estate dealer had unloaded upon her worthless property. The patched and threadbare clothes of the boy told him that from a worldly point of view the affairs of the Farnums were at ebb tide. ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... the sad desolate tides; In a warm harbour long ago They waited you, and waited long, And guessed and feared at last, But could not know. Now in a language strange the waves make song, And the flood surges round your broken sides, And the ebb leaves you to the burning sun. But when the voyage of my life is done, And my soul puts forth no more, Then may I sleep Beneath the fathoms of the tideless deep, And not be cast deserted on ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... her to a most amusing play at the Palais-Royal, a comedy which had kept the house in roars of laughter all the evening, and now, as they sat at supper, she saw that his spirits had fallen to a very low ebb. This puzzled ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... researches," he says, "I was in the situation of a natural philosopher who follows the various species of animals and insects from the height of their perfection down to the lowest ebb of life; when, arriving at the vegetable kingdom, he can scarcely point out to us the precise boundary where the animal ceases and the plant begins; and may even go so far as to suspect them not to be essentially different. But, recollecting ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... herself a grove, una nemus, holds her unchanging beauty throughout the year, like her half-brother, the ocean, whose voice she shares; and only marks the flowing of her annual tide of life by the new verdure that yearly submerges all trace of last year's ebb. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... Tamesis with the tide from the port of Londinium, deep-laden with wines and spices, silks, glass, candles, and rich stuffs from foreign lands; with lamps and statuary and paintings for the great Roman houses; with fruits and grain, vegetables, meats and poultry. And at the ebb came the barges down again, this time with wool and pelts, smelling villanously and tainting all the air as they went by. Here also was the river-ford, passable at low tide, marked out by stakes, and leading from the southern side of Thorney, opposite the marsh-ford, ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... would do it, by Heaven, he would do it! The memory of what had happened came fierily back, and made the pressing darkness burn. His wrath was brimming on the edge, ready to burst, and he felt proudly that it would no longer ebb in fear. Whisky had killed fear, and left a hysterical madman, all the more dangerous because he was so weak. Let his father try it on now; ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... the pauses between the ebb and flow of the waves, I heard a curious sound in the house,—a muffled sort of moan, coming at regular intervals. And, as I sat up to make out where it was, another sound caught my attentive ear. Drip, drip, drip, went something out in the hall, and in an instant ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... kept always by a whispering instinct on the ebb-tide to safety, hurry along under the maternal march in short, sharp jerks, pecking as they go. Now the train comes to a full stop, for two of the chickens are thoughtful and immobile, careless ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... the point of instituting a revolt against the bailiff through impatience to hear his work! now that they had it they did not care for it. This same representation which had been begun amid so unanimous an acclamation! Eternal flood and ebb of popular favor! To think that they had been on the point of hanging the bailiff's sergeant! What would he not have given to be still at that hour ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... still shivered, now and then, in the too-thin red silk robe, and drew the shawl closer. Her heart was as heavy as her head, her mind busy with retrospect and forecast, neither enlivening. The courage which had sustained her through almost four years of endeavour was at a singularly low ebb to-night. It had ebbed low at other times, but usually she had been able to summon it again by a mere act of the will, by a determination to be resolute, not to be downcast, never to allow herself so much as to imagine ultimate ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... of San Francisco is situated on the south side of the entrance, fronting on the bay, and about six miles from the ocean. The flow and ebb of the tide are sufficient to bring a vessel to the anchorage in front of the town and carry it outside, without the aid of wind, or even against an unfavourable wind. A more approachable harbour, or one of greater security, is unknown to navigators. The permanent ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... at their lowest ebb. Burdened with a wife and child, he had found it necessary to return, after a second futile attempt to gain a living by his calling in a country town, to Milan, his "stony-hearted step-mother." If he had reckoned on his mother's bounty he was doomed to disappointment, ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... rose; in vain his glance Look'd up, appealing to the blue expanse, Where, in their calm, immortal beauty, shone Heaven's cloudless orbs. With faint and fainter moan, Bound on the shrine of sacrifice he lay, Till, drop by drop, life's current ebb'd away; Till rock and turf grew deeply, darkly red, And the pale moon ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... France between 1887 and 1895 were at a low ebb. The financial scandals which led to the resignation of President Grevy in 1887, the serio-comic political career of General Boulanger, dangerous and constant labour disturbances in the great centres of industry, the Panama ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... come, Far Minnesota too; They come to a sun whose rays disown— May it wither them as the dew! The ghosts of our slain appeal: "Vain shall our victories be" But back from its ebb the flood recoils— Back ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... that despises thee? Half dead and half alive, like a lizard mangled by a passing crow, and left to writhe: a deer, struck by an idle hunter, left wounded in the jungle, unable even to procure its death, to ebb away its life through burning days and black intolerable nights, eyed by the vultures sitting by. And thou wouldst be the vulture? Thou wilt only be a jackal, eating what the lion leaves. What! live beside ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... he felt at rather low ebb that he passed, rather disconsolately, the Flat Iron Building and remembered Martin. Having no other place to go, he decided to call upon that shrewd gentleman and gather from such a source of hard common sense fresh courage. He turned in through the big swinging door that let a gust ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... already established in the service. His own start in official life was delayed, and took place under circumstances by no means auspicious. The tone, both in political and private life, was at that time at its lowest ebb in India. Drinking, gambling, and extravagance of all kinds were tolerated even in the best society, and Colebrooke could not entirely escape the evil effects of the moral atmosphere in which he had to live. It is all the more remarkable that his taste ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... to ebb was that of Lewis Keseberg, Jr., on January 24, 1847.[21] His grief-stricken mother could not be comforted. She hugged his wasted form to her heart and carried it far from camp, where she dug a grave and buried ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... gentles, will you never wait your turn?" he rumbled in a deep angry voice. "Can you not see that we are warping the Rose of Guienne into midstream for the ebb-tide? Is this a time to break in upon us? Your goods will go aboard in due season, I promise you; so ride back into the town and find such pleasure as you may, while I and my mates do our work without let ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... audacity generally paid. Later on he carried it into politics, and with equal success. My readers may know that he came into power in 1848, when the affairs of the House of Austria were at their lowest ebb, Vienna in revolution, Hungary in ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... good and some bad, as in everything," replied the sailor. "We shall see. But now the ebb is evidently making. In three hours we will attempt the passage, and once on the other side, we will try to get out of this scrape, and I hope may find the captain." Pencroft was not wrong in his anticipations. Three hours later at low tide, the greater part of ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... work of wit With the same spirit that its author writ: Survey the WHOLE, nor seek slight faults to find Where nature moves, and rapture warms the mind; Nor lose, for that malignant dull delight, The generous pleasure to be charm'd with wit. But in such lays as neither ebb nor flow, Correctly cold, and regularly low, 240 That, shunning faults, one quiet tenor keep, We cannot blame indeed—but we may sleep. In wit, as nature, what affects our hearts Is not the exactness of peculiar parts; 'Tis not a lip, or eye, we beauty call, But the joint ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... best pleased with me. But it is possible for men to love and not to admire. It is a foolish thing to say that reverence must go with love. I know men who have lost their heads and their souls for women whom they knew infamous. But when one admires where one loves, then in the ebb and flow of passion the heart is safe, for admiration holds ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... near its lowest ebb, so that there was a piece of smooth water under the lee of the rock, we hoisted out our little "twin" boat. This was a curious contrivance, being simply a small boat cut across amidships, so as to form two parts which fitted into each other like saucers, and were thus rendered small enough ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... with religion and spirituality and Christian mystery, broke with golden turbulence upon the world of the nineties, the critics were abashed and knew not what to think of it. The effect was somewhat like that produced by Attwater, in Stevenson's "The Ebb-Tide," when he began suddenly to discourse on Divine Grace to the amazement of Herrick and his crew of scoundrels from the stolen Farallone. "Oh," exclaimed the unspeakable Huish, when they had recovered breath, "Oh, look 'ere, turn down the lights at once, ...
— The Hound of Heaven • Francis Thompson
... advancing." He gathered twelve thousand men for the recapture of Louisburg, but exaggerated reports of the French strength frightened him from the attempt. Similar inaction lost him Fort William Henry on Lake George. The end of the year 1757 saw the English cause on this side at low ebb, Montcalm, the tried and brilliant French commander, having outwitted or frightened the English officers at ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... Deacon Pratt, from the passing remarks of the Widow White, who was induced to allude to the uncle, in consequence of the charitable visits of the niece. One day, when matters appeared to be at a very low ebb with him, and shortly after he had been put ashore, the sick mariner requested an interview with the deacon himself. The request had been reluctantly granted; but, during the visit, Daggett had managed so well to whet his visiter's appetite for ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... loose-hung under lip Villon eyed his companion quizzically, but with a little pity through the banter. They were alone in the common room of the Chien Noir, and on the table by which they sat were two bottles of the famous '63 wine, one empty, the other with its tide at a low ebb, but La Mothe's horn mug was still unemptied after its first filling. With some men this would have been an offence, but not with Francois Villon. "Good-fellowship is not in wine but in words, or ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... art thou? What am I come to? A woman's toy, at these years! Death, a bearded baby for a girl to dandle. O dotage, dotage! That ever that noble passion, lust, should ebb to this degree. No reflux of vigorous blood: but milky love supplies the empty channels; and prompts me to the softness of a child—a mere infant and would suck. Can ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... health was very bad—and it must be borne in mind that, throughout all this experience, his physical condition was one of ebb—and he was in considerable distress by reason of the negligence, the positive ill-treatment even, he received from his wife and step-children. His wife was vain, extravagant, unfeeling, and had a growing taste for private drinking; his step-daughter was mean and over-reaching; and his ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... fortifications to be seen in this one county—some whereof are exceeding plain to be seen; some of one form, some of another; some of one nation, some of another—British, Danish, Saxon, Roman—as at Ebb Down, Burywood, Oldburgh Hill, Cummerford, Roundway Down, St. Ann's Hill, Bratton Castle, Clay Hill, Stournton Park, Whitecole Hill, Battlebury, Scrathbury, Tanesbury, Frippsbury, Southbury Hill, Amesbury, Great ...
— From London to Land's End - and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman" • Daniel Defoe
... destination at little cost. I recall an occurrence that happened when the schooner was anchored in Carquinez Straits, opposite the soldiers' camp on shore. We were waiting for daylight and a fair wind; the schooner lay anchored at an ebb-tide, and about daylight Ord and I had gone ashore for something. Just as we were pulling off from shore, we heard the loud shouts of the men, and saw them all running down toward the water. Our attention thus drawn, we saw something swimming in the water, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... this discovery operated as a shock, left her with a vague dismay in which there was even an element of foreboding. The dismay of course subsided, in the light of some sudden proof of Madame Merle's remarkable intelligence; but it stood for a high-water-mark in the ebb and flow of confidence. Madame Merle had once declared her belief that when a friendship ceases to grow it immediately begins to decline—there being no point of equilibrium between liking more and liking less. A stationary ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... balustrade of the great basin, to speak about a carp. Nobody made any answer. He afterwards addressed his remarks about these carp to some builder's-men who did not keep up the conversation in the regular way; it was but a question of carp with them. Everything was at a low ebb, and the king went away some little time after. As soon as we dared look at one another out of his sight, our eyes meeting told all." There was no venturing beyond looks. Fenelon had said, with severe charity, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... get them by that time," McPhearson objected instantly. "By the fourteenth century there were clocks that really began to be clocks. In 1326, for example, the Abbott of St. Albans made a marvelous clock which not only showed the course of the sun and moon but the ebb and flow of the tide. In the meantime more big clocks began to be put up on the church towers. But remember, none of these could boast any nice degree of accuracy; it was many, many years later before the secrets of correct time-keeping were mastered. ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... had ebb'd away From Trachis and Thermopylae, Long centuries had come and gone Since that ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... upright amid the coral-reefs, presented a gaunt spectacle, plainly visible from the Hero's decks as she threaded her way among the shoaly waters, while a similar though less tragical warning was the disaster that had overtaken two other vessels, the Astrolabe and the Zelee, which by a sudden ebb of the tide were thrown high and dry upon the sands, and remained in this frightful condition for eight days before the returning waters drifted them off. But the Hero was a staunch craft—an iron blockade-runner, built at Glasgow ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... day; not a noise, not a footfall, not a solitary soul abroad, not a wave nor a vestige of the great restless sea of humanity which a little space before surged through it, and which, in a little while to come, would rise and swell to its full, and then ebb, and fall, and drop away once more into ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... utter necessity of living on the high table-lands of the interior, rather than on the sea-board or the banks of the great arterial rivers. Men may escape death in an unhealthy place, but the system is enfeebled and energy reduced to the lowest ebb. Under such circumstances life becomes a misery, and important results can hardly be looked for when one's vitality is preoccupied in wrestling with the unhealthiness of ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... and positive. In the first stage history shows that man explained the origin of everything by explicit reference to wills like his own, though, of course, invisible; and ultimately, by an appeal to one supreme Will. Thus, a thunderstorm, the rise and setting of the sun, the ebb and flow of tides, the succession of seasons and crops are all explained by the agency of unseen wills, powers, or divinities. As time advances, progress is so far made that all minor deities are merged in the belief in one supreme Being who created the universe and is ever responsible ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... thus that ignorance, confusion and unrest, like waves of ocean, ebb and flow in the ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... and his patience began to ebb. For the first time he assumed the offensive. Pressing Selim close, he feinted quickly twice, and catching the other off guard he brought his sword down on the stranger's with a crash. There was a flash of sparks, a sharp ring of metal ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... my head free. I breathed again in the cold air—I felt all the energy ebb from the body beneath me. I had conquered at last. 'Brownie' lay quietly in the gutter, breathing gently as ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... is at as low an ebb as in the far interior of Brazil, and crimes are connived at which would entail infamy and criminal prosecution in Europe. While I was there it was generally asserted and believed in the place, that two officers ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... The ships will be ready, for you know what our navy can do when required: but as you know, I have not one atom of stock on board. The flood-tide has made almost an hour, and we must sail at the first of the ebb, as twelve hours' delay may be most serious. Now, tell me—here is the list of what is required; boats will be ready and men in plenty to get it on board;—can you get it ready by ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... bow weary of befriending you at play. What would have become of you, if your last misfortune had happened to you when your money had been at as low an ebb as I have known it? Attend carefully then to this necessary deity, and renounce the other. You will be missed at the court of France before you grow weary of this; but be that as it may, lay up a good store of money: when a man is rich he consoles ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... horse-drawn vehicle that passed, but it was occupied, and the driver paid no heed to his call. Several taxi-cabs whirled past, both north and south bound, but he knew better than to hire them, so he waited as patiently as he could while those billows of intoxication continued to ebb and flow through his brain, robbing him of that careful judgment which he fought ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... bitter pools at ebb-tide lie, In barren sands at Blakeney; Green, grey and green the marshes creep, To where the grey north waters leap By dead ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... vote: And, if the same power should declare the same censure against those who wore Indian stuffs and calicoes, or woollen manufactures imported from abroad, whereby this nation is reduced to the lowest ebb of misery; I should readily, heartily, and cheerfully pay obedience; and to my utmost power persuade others to do the like: Because, there is no law of this land obliging us either to receive such coin, or to wear such ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... countryman's journey, who comes up to the term, and with his hobnail shoes grinds the faces of the poor stones, and so returns again. It is the soul of the year, and makes it quick, which before was dead. Innkeepers gape for it as earnestly as shell-fish do for salt water after a low ebb. It sends forth new books into the world, and replenishes Paul's Walk with fresh company, where Quid novi? is their first salutation, and the weekly news their chief discourse. The taverns are painted against the term, and many a cause is argued there and tried at that bar, where ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... difficult to forget, as we stood there, that, if any one slipt, he would disappear forever, for the billows in their ebb would sweep him out to the open sea, as it were in a moment. Yet the excitement of the whole group was too evident to rest with any seriousness on such a thought. Some one suddenly fired a gun in the place, and the concussion ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... might-have-beens. But one fact requires to be emphasised. Fielding's critics and biographers have dwelt far too exclusively upon the uglier side of his Bohemian life. They have presented him as yielding to all the temptations which can mislead keen powers of enjoyment, when the purse is one day at the lowest ebb and the next overflowing with the profits of some lucky hit at the theatre. Those unfortunate yellow liveries which contributed to dissipate his little fortune have scandalised posterity as they scandalised his country ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... look, and said: "I am blowed if they ain't blackfellows in their canoes. They are poleing them along towards the channel, one, two, three—there's a dozen of 'em or more. I can see their long spears sticking out, and they are after some mischief. The tide is on the ebb, and they are going to drop down with it, and spear those two men in the boat; and they are both landlubbers, and haven't even got a gun with them. We must bear a hand and help them. Get your guns and ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... tears," she said, smiling; "it was the revulsion of feeling. My life was at a low ebb: if your sentence had been against me it would ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... many who had been at the church from the first might be seen at it; numerous persons recognised as "fixtures" were there; but they have either gone to other churches or died off, and there is now a strong ebb and flow of ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... instance, the sea, the only natural boundary of a country, which from a military point of view, constitutes a protection to it, without, at the same time, disturbing peaceful traffic. (Riedel.) Here, also belong ocean currents, especially when uniformly supported by regular winds,(192) the ebb and flow of the tides, which constitute a piece of commercial machinery of the very greatest importance, particularly when they affect the waters of rivers to a great distance.(193) In this age, when the love of ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... The same lack of completeness marked the pogroms which took place simultaneously in several other cities within the jurisdiction of the governor-general of New Russia. In the beginning of May the destructive energy characterizing the first pogrom period began to ebb. A lull ensued in the "military operations" of the Russian barbarians which continued until the month of July of ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... achievement and his marked effect on early Venetian art, Veronese painting fell for a time to a very low ebb; but Mantegna's influence was strongly felt here, and art revived in Liberale da Verona, Falconetto, Casoto, the Morone and Girolamo dai Libri, painters delightful in themselves, but having little connection with the school of Venice. Francesco Bonsignori, ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... have much of our company, because we shall hold on till we moor alongside the wharves of London; but if it's foul, or there is not enough of it to take us against tide, we have to anchor on the ebb, and then of course we ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... visitation from the blood-sucking bats. The far-away volcanoes occasionally sent up sheets of flame, which in the distance were like summer lightning; the torrents of lava and crashes that had sounded so thunderous when near, were now like the murmur of the ocean's ebb tide, lulling the terrestrials to deeper sleep. The pale moons were at intervals momentarily obscured by the rushing clouds in the upper air, only to reappear soon afterwards as serene as before. All ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... A rock in which old waters' rise and dip, Plunge and recoil, and backward eddying tide Had, age-long, worn, while races lived and died, Involved channels, where the sea-weed's drip Followed the ebb; and now earth-grasses sip Fresh dews from heaven, whereby on earth they bide— I sat and gazed southwards. A dry flow Of withering wind blew on my drooping strength From o'er the awful desert's burning length. Behind me piled, away and upward go Great sweeps of savage mountains—up, away, ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald |
