"Ripple" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the "Action of Waves" "Edin. New Phil. Journ." volume 31 page 245.) One may, therefore, be allowed to suspect, from the appearance just mentioned in the New Red Sandstone, that at greater depths, the bed of the ocean is heaped up during gales into great ripple-like furrows and depressions, which are afterwards cut off by the currents during more tranquil weather, and ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... floating Custom House at Gravesend, and onwards, skirting the little creeks and mudbanks where the Thames widens to the sea—when every sound of the tide flapping heavily at irregular intervals against the shore, and every ripple, were fraught with the terror of pursuit—exemplifies in the most striking way the rapidity and instinctive ease of Dickens's observation. ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... really. But she had achieved a reputation for wit which insured applause for even her feebler efforts. Nap Ballou, the foreman, never left the escapement room without a little shiver of nervous apprehension—a feeling justified by the ripple of suppressed laughter that went up and down the long tables. He knew that Tessie Golden, like a naughty schoolgirl when teacher's back is turned, had directed one of ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... bitterness; if she could begin by holding herself undisturbed, though obliged to wear a collar that stood up behind and turned over in front with those lappet corners she had always thought so ugly,—yes, even though the waterfall should leak out and ripple over stubbornly,—though these things must go on for twenty-four hours at least, and these twenty-four hours be spent unwillingly in a dull country tavern, where the windows looked out from one side into ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... Than wand'ring slowly when the tide is low, Alone and silent by the gentle sea; Each winding cranny of the rock may be Enjoyment's wealth. There, is a world of thought, Of joys unbounded for a heart as free, A universe of life if only sought; Each breath, each dreaming ripple ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... orders to return in an hour's time, departed. The young gentleman sketched the willow and the brook in no very masterly fashion, but at a sort of hasty random, and tiring of his self-imposed task before half an hour was over, threw himself at length beside the brook, and there, lulled by the ripple of the water and the slumberous noise of insects, fell asleep. The valet's returning footsteps awoke him. He rolled over idly and lit ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... must have drowned them both. Pointing his hands and throwing up his heels, he made one vain dive after her, then he knew that the pit was too deep for the bottom to be reached in that way. He swam to the trunk from which Dolly had leaped, and judging the distance by the sullen ripple, dashed in with a dive like a terrified frog. Like a bullet he sank to the bottom, and groped with three fathoms of water above him. Just as his lungs were giving out, he felt something soft and limp and round. Grasping this by the trailing hair, he struck mightily up for the surface, and drew ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... Indian crouching in its stern wielding a paddle, was skimming across the stream, not a sound or splash of paddle, nor hardly a ripple from it to be ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... a green, shelving bank, and shoved her off with the long sticks we carried. The wind caught her sail and drove her forward in fine style; she made a great ripple as she went. Once she caught in a drowned bush; but the current swung her clear, and she cut across the course of the brook like a Falmouth Packet. Hugh and I ran along the causeway, and over the bridge, ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... basin, with a pale blue- green light floating in the centre like a night-light. Round that basin the man on the floor wriggled himself three times. How he did it I do not know. I could see the muscles ripple along his spine and fall smooth again; but I could not see ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... their several stations, during which, here and there, a vessel lying quiet waiting her opportunity would glide forward with a dozen slow turns of the screws, not agitating the water beyond a light ripple at the bows. The bay at the moment was quiet as a mill-pond, and it needed little imagination to prompt recognition of the identity of dignified movement with that of a swan making its leisurely way by means equally unseen; no turbulent display of energy, ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... drops forgivingly And sadly, breaking not the general hush; The maple-swamps glow like a sunset sea, Each leaf a ripple with its separate flush; All round the wood's edge creeps the skirting blaze 75 Of bushes low, as when, on cloudy days, Ere the rain falls, the cautious farmer ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... thing has gone about far enough, sir," replied Captain Breaker, as calmly as though there had not been a ripple ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... Cornish rhyme, 'Then the fish are off the rock'—and the rock's St. Michael's. The HUER, as we call him, for he gives the hue and cry from the hill-top lookout when the fish are coming, he stands on Michael's Crag just below there, as I stand myself so often, and when he sights the shoals by the ripple on the water, he motions to the boats which way to go for the pilchards. Then the rowers in the lurkers, as we call our seine-boats, surround the shoal with a tuck- net, or drag the seine into Mullion ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... while behind her in the gathering dusk the coast grew hazy—faded out—was gone. The two boys, sitting late into the first watch, shivered with that fine ecstasy of adventure that can come only in the shadowy mystery of star-lit decks and the long, whispering ripple of a following sea. ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... Amidst a ripple of laughter Meeking made a gesture which signified that he had done with Mrs. Mallett, and she presently stepped down from the witness-box. ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... passage a few moments later, there was a sound of laughter in the parlor. He recognized the full, round lazy chuckle of Aunt Chloe, but there was a higher girlish ripple that he did not know. He had never heard Sophy laugh before. Nor, when he entered, had he ever seen her so animated. She was helping Chloe set the table, to that lady's intense delight at "Missy's" girlish housewifery. She was picking the berries fresh from the garden, buttering the Sally Lunn, ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... unjustly, perhaps—for her own missionary path had ever been so easy and untroubled. Mrs. Kirke was a woman of marked beauty, whose sweet imperiousness, sympathy, humor, and tact made her the adored of the islanders. She not only spoke native well, but with a zest and sparkle, a silver ripple of irony, ridicule, and good-fellowship that carried everything before it. No kings ever bothered Mrs. Kirke. Even the redoubtable Tembinok, with forty boats full of armed savages, had been stemmed in his Napoleonic career and turned ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... subdued hum runs round the excited spectators. The ardent racers are nose and nose. One swift, sharp cut, the cruel whip hisses through the air, and the black is fairly 'lifted in,' a winner by a nose. The ripple of conversation breaks out afresh. The band strikes up a lively air, and the saddling for the next race ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... visiting the Cyprians' temple; or perchance standing with Gertrude on the deck of the yacht watching the stars growing dim in the east; the sailors would be singing at the time, and out of the ashen stillness a wind would come, and again we would hear the ripple of the water parting as the jib filled and drew the schooner eastward. I imagined how half an hour later an island would appear against the golden sky, a lofty island lined with white buildings, perchance ancient ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... directions, and pressing aside the branches that impeded progress. I sat facing the motionless girl, but could barely distinguish her shapeless form, wrapped in the blanket; and not once did her voice break the stillness. The night hung heavy; not even the gentle ripple of water disturbed the solemn silence ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... out of her chair and from the room. Her departure created a ripple of curiosity. It was most unusual for a girl to be dismissed from table, and had Ada only known it, she had drawn the attention of the ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... King'?" asked Flavia, leaning over my shoulder, so that the ripple of her hair played on my cheek. ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... streets, and distributed elephants among the senators, and laid Etruria out in vineyards, and contemplated in leisure moments the suppression of Christianity as a subordinate detail of administration, a mere ripple on the broad ocean of his policy—at this period Bahram the First, King of Persia, naturally became ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... leans her head, And dreamily smiles at the peach-tree leaves, wherethrough She sees an infinite May sky spread A vault profoundly blue. The voice from the house fades far away, The glistening leaves more vaguely ripple and sway . . The tap is closed, the water ceases to hiss . . . Silence . . . blue sky . . . and then, 'I brought you this . . . ' She turns again, and smiles . . . He does not know She smiles from ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... was never quite without imagination. His thoughts had travelled easily back to a few weeks ago. He saw Virginia sitting there, watched the delightful smile coming and going, the large grey eyes that watched him so ceaselessly, the little ripple of pleasant conversation, which he had never dreamed that he could ever miss. After all, what a child! As a matter of justice, and he told himself that it was justice only which had power to sway his judgment, what right had he to blame ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... particularly surprised, because his backwoods philosophizing had long ago led him to the conclusion that when things get started happening, they have a way of keeping it up. Days, weeks, months, glide by without event enough to ripple the most sensitive memory. Then the whimsical Fates do something different, find it interesting, and proceed to do something else. So, though Timmins had been accustomed all his life to managing bulls, good-tempered ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... I gazed out, the whole prairie was bathed in rose-coloured light that appeared to ripple over it in pink waves. The tall grass, tall as that of an English hay-field, seemed touched with fire; far on every side stretched the open plain, absolutely level, bounded at last in the far distance by that deep purple wall of mountains, flat-topped, level-lined ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... main banks holding here and there a village as in an arm maternally crook'd, but opening into creeks where the oaks dip their branches in the high tides, where the stars are glassed all night long without a ripple, and where you may spend whole days with no company but herons and sandpipers. Even by the main river each separate figure—the fisherman on the shore, the ploughman on the upland, the ferryman crossing between ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... into Eudora's voice; something whimsical crept into the love-light of the other women's eyes. Again a soft ripple of mirth ...
— The Yates Pride • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... bear down through a score of gradations, to Kagax the bloodthirsty little weasel, but will sniff under every old log in the hope of finding a wood mouse; and if he takes a swim, as he is fond of doing, not a big trout in the river but leaves his eddy to rush at the tiny ripple holding bravely across the current. So, with all these enemies waiting to catch him the moment he ventures out, Tookhees must needs make one or two false starts in order to find out ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... the scene and invest it with holier attributes. The moon sheds her light on the surface of the ocean. No sounds break the stillness of the hour as the ship, urged by the favored breeze, quietly, yet perseveringly, pursues her course, save the murmuring ripple of the waves, the measured tread of the officer of the watch as he walks the deck, the low, half-stifled creaking of a block as if impatient of inactivity, the occasional flap of a sail awakened out of its sleep, and the stroke of the bell every half ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... and leaf-buds were ephemeral and eternal, ever passing and ever renewed, old as the stars, or the waste ether in which they range: the green, sappy stem, the dew-bead that hung on it, the shape of a ripple were the same now as when Nineveh was a queen of civilization and men's flesh was reddening alive in osier cages over altar fires on Wiltshire downs. And all the sweetness, all the romance of an English midsummer night seized the heart of Lawrence, a nomad, ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... among the eels and pike, to find his comrades of the summer before; then the stream was still once more. The coots and water-hens swam in and out of the reeds, and wondered what it was all about. The water-lilies flapped upon the ripple, as lonely as in the loneliest mere. But their floats were soon broken, their white cups stained with human gore. Twenty yards of deep clear water. And treasure inestimable to win ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... street there passed a cripple Maimed from before its birth; On the strange face gleamed a ripple Like a ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... out into a roar of applause and a ripple of hand clapping ran over the arena from the appreciative performers. They wholly forgot themselves in their surprise and approval of ...
— The Circus Boys On the Mississippi • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... level water, one solitary fish, of powerful fin and tail, breasted the steep stream. Now forward a leap, then a slide backward, sometimes further to the rear than the next leap made up for, then steady progress, then a slip, but every moment nearer, until, clearing foam and ripple and spray at one bound, it passed the edge and swam happily in ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... was going for a fish, and then on down to the beautiful river, whose waters are green and very much the color of the Niagara River. I cast the fly over on the water, and instantly a large fish came up, took the fly, and went down again so easily and gracefully that he scarcely made a ripple on the water until he felt the pull of the line. That was when I forgot everything connected with camp—Faye, horse thieves, and Indians! I had no reel, of course, and getting the big fish out of the water was a problem, for I was standing on a rather high and steep bank. It jumped and jerked in ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... for the purpose of having a nice swimming pond in the neighborhood of his residence, which is always located in the river's bank. This is not true; for, in every stream which he inhabits, if this was his sole object, he could select many natural places where the water is without a ripple and where it is both deep and broad. The animal has a wiser object in view; and, it consists in providing against the pinching wants of hunger during winter, when nearly everything green has lost its sap and nutrition, and is, as a body, without blood and animation. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... sun is set; the swallows are asleep; The bats are flitting fast in the gray air; The slow soft toads out of damp corners creep, And evening's breath, wandering here and there Over the quivering surface of the stream, Walkes not one ripple from its ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... a second time. When any one is speaking that commands interest, as Berryer did, the effect of this vivacity is very pleasing, the murmur of feeling that rushes over the assembly is so quick and electric,—light, too, as the ripple on the lake. I heard Guizot speak one day for a short time. His manner is very deficient in dignity,—has not even the dignity of station; you see the man of cultivated intellect, but without inward strength; nor is even his panoply ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... kindly inform your friend," said the voice, shaking with a ripple of light laughter, "that Mademoiselle de la Tour de Nesle has something very ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... Adye was on the doorstep and the bolts were dropping back into the staples. He hesitated for a moment, feeling more comfortable with his back against the door. Then he marched, upright and square, down the steps. He crossed the lawn and approached the gate. A little breeze seemed to ripple over the grass. Something moved near him. "Stop a bit," said a Voice, and Adye stopped dead and his ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... we have cultivated the fine habit of looking upon it with the welcoming eyes through which Richard Jefferies beholds it: "The whole time in the open air," he tells us, "resting at mid-day under the elms with the ripple of heat flowing through the shadow; at midnight between the ripe corn and the hawthorne hedge or the white camomile and the poppy pale in the duskiness, with face upturned to the thoughtful heaven. Consider the glory of it, the life above this ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... again, in a natural fortress, a group of eight; so they were placed as far as my eye could reach. The British force I could not see at all; they were out on the veldt, and the kopjes hid them from me; but I could hear the regular roll and ripple of their disciplined volleys, and in course of time, by watching the actions of the Boers, I could anticipate the sound. They watched our officers, and when the signal to fire was given they dropped behind ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... what sad thoughts came to him as the voices floated out to him, mixed up with the low ripple ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... is a beautiful place. The scenery is of a mild and placid character, with nothing bold in its aspect; but I think its beauties will grow upon us, and make us love it the more, the longer we live here. There is a brook, so near the house that we shall be able to hear its ripple in the summer evenings, . . . . but, for agricultural purposes, it has been made to flow in a straight and rectangular fashion, which does it infinite damage as a ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... capitalists, royalties, and others. They have been poisoned, shot, and dynamited, in the belief that their removal would benefit humanity. Yet nothing would seem to be quite so obvious as the fact that their removal has hardly caused a ripple in the swiftly moving current of evolution. Others, often more forceful and capable, have immediately stepped into their places, and the course ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... further we halted at an encampment of eight lodges on the left, in order to view a rapid before us: we had already passed eight, and some of them difficult; but this was worse than any of them, being a very hazardous ripple strewed with rocks: we here purchased roots and dined with the Indians. Among them was a man from the falls, who says that he saw white people at that place and is very desirous of going down with us; an offer which however we declined. Just above this camp we had passed a tent, near ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... the provident love of Miss Emily. It was wheeled in front of her room window, from whence she could look out upon the wide expanse of the ocean. It was a gloriously bright, calm morning, and the water lay clear and still, with scarce a ripple, to the far distant pearly horizon. She seemed to be looking at it in a kind of calm ecstasy, and murmuring the words ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... A ripple of laughter ran around the room that was now hot and stuffy from the glare and smell of the great oil-lamps. Code heard the laugh, and his brows drew down ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... of William Bucholz for the murder of Henry Schulte began in the old Court House at Bridgeport on the ninth day of September, and a ripple of excitement pervaded the city. The interest attaching to this case had extended beyond the locality in which it had occurred, and the reporter's table was crowded with representatives of the various metropolitan journals who designed giving publicity to the proceedings ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... majestic-grave, too, especially grave. When the sky is grey, they frown always, and even the warm rays of the setting sun but serve to light their grand solemnity. Very different is the changing sea at their foot. At times it will ripple all day, agog with smiling; anon, provoked by an idle breeze's banter, you shall see it black with rage. In the morning, maybe, it will sleep placidly enough in the sunshine, but at eventide the wind has ruffled its temper, so that it mutters and heaves with anger, breathing forth threatenings. ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... lingering within them, seemed to follow me, when, taking to my boat again, I rowed off to a kind of garden or public walk in the sea, where there were grass and trees. But I forgot them when I stood upon its farthest brink—I stood there, in my dream—and looked, along the ripple, to the setting sun; before me, in the sky and on the deep, a crimson flush; and behind me the whole city resolving into streaks of red and purple, ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... concerned himself little with these petty details. To him China was only a pleasing background for Miss Roberta Boynton; he saw no further than her eager, smiling eyes, and heard nothing more distant than the ripple of her laughter. ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... Here the ripple in his speech, which disturbed Commodore Trunnion so much, sorely afflicted my worthy grandfather. He muttered something that a snaffle was the safest bit a sinner could place faith in—assumed the mantle of prophecy—foretold, as it would appear, troublous times to be in rapid advent—and ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... on the serious business of food-getting. The camps stood a pace or two above high-water mark in the meagre shelter of sighing casuarinas, and were often changed, for there were six miles of gently curving, ripple-embroidered shore on which to rest. To this day most of the traffic is regulated by the tide. High water drives the wayfarer to the loose, impeding sand, over which the great convolvulus sends its tireless tentacles, to be thrown back twisted and ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... arms caused, as was to be expected, considerable excitement all along the border; indeed, throughout India the announcement produced a certain feeling of uneasiness—a mere surface ripple—but enough to make those who remembered the days of the Mutiny anxious for better news ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... Englishmen were—the one seated, the other reclined at length—on one of the mounds that furrow the ascent of Posilippo. Before them spread the noiseless sea, basking in the sunshine, without visible ripple; to the left there was a distant glimpse through gaps of brushwood of the public gardens and white water of the Chiaja. They were friends who had chanced to meet abroad unexpectedly, joined company, and travelled together ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... he heard a faint ripple of mirth drift across the room. But, of course, he had to be mistaken. "I think the governor replied wisely. I expect to return home and confer with ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... any prelude, pours forth his voice at once, launches into the most daring modulations, pursues the freshest and most delicate melodies, cadences, pauses, and trills; now you heard the notes murmuring at the bottom of its throat, like the ripple of the brook as it loses itself among the pebbles; now you heard them rising and gradually swelling and filling the air, and lingering long-drawn in the skies. It was tender, glad, brilliant, pathetic; but his music was not made ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... domain? In the evening, when the towing is over for the day, the women bring out their sewing, the children play round the tiller, and the good man smokes his immense pipe with complete and indolent satisfaction. And so day passes on to day without a variation, and life runs by without a ripple or a murmur for the canal population, while the mere landsmen look on with envy at what seems to them an idyllic existence, and even ladies of breeding and high station have been known to declare that they would gladly change places with ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... silver in the gold. Two different metals and where they're not well fused. That sword blade, too. Just the misalignment of molecules in the surface of the steel makes it look wavy, and ripple when the light changes or you move. Different even in two parts of the same material. That's why you can't get the stereo cube to reproduce color-feel exactly." Breathing heavily, Jason had to let his ...
— Zero Data • Charles Saphro
... out of his lips when he disappeared, and the princess heard a rustle and saw a ripple on the water; and in the faint moonlight she beheld a snake swimming into the river. Soon it disappeared and she was left alone. In vain she waited with beating heart for something to happen, and for ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... A ripple, of faint laughter ran lightly through the court at the undisguised frankness of the boy's reply. The judge ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... early afternoon poured full on it: its surface appeared to ripple and heave with a fluid splendor. The colors had lost none of their warmth, the outlines none of their pure precision; it seemed to Wyant like some magical flower which had burst suddenly from the mould of darkness ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... grassy banks a muffled chorus echoes nightly, While the swirling eddies answer and the wavelets ripple lightly. ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... big fish in our wake, or I hear the ripple of a ship's cut-water. But I cannot see hull or canvass in this darkness," said the mate, after a brief but searching gaze in the direction from whence ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... of the river toward me, quietly and without stride or step, gliding over the water like a mist or the vapour of a calm white frost; and he stopped at the ripple where the shore began, and he looked at me very peacefully. And I felt neither fear nor doubt of him, any more than I do of this pen ...
— George Bowring - A Tale Of Cader Idris - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... the surface of the pond, below the surface there was life and movement. Every little while the surface would be softly broken, and a tiny ripple would set out in widening circles toward the shore, starting from a small dark nose thrust up for a second. The casual observer would have said that these were fish rising for flies; but in fact it was the apprehensive beavers coming up to breathe, afraid to show themselves on ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... with a little ripple of childish laughter, "do you remember how absurdly poor we were when we were first married, and how you refused to take any help from your family? And do you remember that silly old pair of black trousers that used to get so thin on the knees and how I used ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... he exclaimed, startled. "I 'd like to set my dog on the beast." His irritation merely elicited a little ripple of amusement, for though she was submissive to his will, she was never afraid of his censure. "Come," he continued; "this is no place to stand. We will go into that new building across ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... that many of the gentle and pure-souled people who read this amiable writer go on their way through his pages without discerning this quiver, this ripple, this vibration, of "miching mallecho." On softly-stepping feline feet, the great sleek panther of psychological curiosity glides into very perverse, very dubious paths. The exquisite tenuity and flexibility of his style, light as the flutter of a feather through the air, enable him to wander ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... his speech. The sound of approaching feet on the stairs turned the eyes of every one toward the wide doorway. A ripple of fond surprise circled the room, as Grace descended the last step to be met by Tom Gray. Into the room, hand in hand, stepped two veritable foresters. In his suit of brown corduroy, with his high-laced tan boots, Tom looked as though he were about to start on one of the long hikes in ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... the water had been a clear, shining brown, with the pebbles showing white and yellow through it; but out here in the middle of the river it was all a blaze and ripple and sparkle of blue and gold. Hildegarde rested on her oars, and sat still for a few minutes, basking in the light and warmth; but soon she found the glory too strong, and pulled over to the other side, where high steep banks threw a shadow on the water. Here the water was very deep, and ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... sleeping lake, And bids it ripple pure and fresh; It moves the green boughs till they make Grand music in their ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... most delicate of tasks to paddle the canoe, and cause scarcely a ripple in the water, but they were so skillful they were able to do it, and make no sound that Robert himself could hear. Although his nerves were steady his excitement was intense. A situation so extraordinary put every power of his imagination into play. His fancy fairly peopled ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... so that had any one observed us at the distance of a few yards, he might have almost taken us for a phantom-boat, or a shadow on the dark water. Not a breath of air was stirring; but, fortunately, the gentle ripple of the sea upon the shore, mingled with the soft roar of the breaker on the distant reef, effectually drowned the slight plash that we unavoidably made in the water by the dipping of ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... but even a good-natured reader will hardly return to Doctor —— with pleasure. Chaucer with as thin a jest could have made an admirable poem, for the interest would have been distributed by his lightness of touch, by his descriptive power, by slyness, by geniality, by a changeful ripple of enjoyment over the entire piece. With Browning, when we have arrived at the apex of the jest, we are fatigued by the climb, and too much out of breath to be capable of laughter. In like manner few ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... its old musical joy, and about them the birds sang, and very near to them a pair of mating red-squirrels chattered and played in a mountain-ash tree. And Nada's hair brightened in the sun, and began to ripple into curls at the end, and Peter's bristling whiskers grew dry—so that half an hour after she had dragged herself out of the water there was a new light in the girl's eyes, and a color in her cheeks that was ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... hears in the ripple of the flowing water the weeping of Cucuduri, and throws three small fish to him. If he should not do this, he would catch nothing. Cucuduri would throw stones into the water and drive the fish off, or he would even throw stones at the ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... better chance of seeing the felucca without being seen. The lieutenant stood up and slowly moved round, scanning every part of the horizon. The land breeze had now completely died away, and there was not a ripple on the water, though the slow moving glassy undulations which came rolling in and constantly rocking the boat, showed that they were not floating on an inland lake. Jack and Adair began to fear that the felucca was not in sight, when Hemming slowly sank down into ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... one January morning, very early—a pinching, frosty morning—the cove all grey with hoar-frost, the ripple lapping softly on the stones, the sun still low and only touching the hill-tops and shining far to seaward. The captain had risen earlier than usual, and set out down the beach, his cutlass swinging under the broad ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Hedges, too, and the rich, rich verdure of England; and villages full of picturesque old houses, thatched, and ivied, or perhaps overrun with roses,—and a stately mansion in the Elizabethan style; and a quiet stream, gliding onward without a ripple from its own motion, but rippled by a large fish darting across it; and over all this scene a gentle, friendly sunshine, not ardent enough to crisp a single leaf or blade of grass. Nor must the village ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... were growing and procured a sharp rod, which I secreted among the flour-bags in the schoolroom. At half-past one I brought my scholars in and ordered them to their work with a confident air. Things went without a ripple until three o'clock, when the writing lesson began. Jimmy struck his pen on the bottom of the bottle every time he replenished ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... are the waters where danger may nearly always be expected. The sea may be as smooth as glass, the skies bright, and not a breath of wind be stirring; or a gentle breeze, just enough to ripple the water, may send our vessel slowly before it, and in a few hours the winds may be roaring, the waves dashing into the air, and the skies dark ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... claret cool and fresh from the spring on shore, where it had been placed on arrival. The night was beautiful and starlight, and, our repast over, the awning was removed, and we sat out enjoying our cigars in the cool night breeze blowing in fresh and strong from the sea. The quiet ripple of the waves as they broke on the sandy beach had a soothing effect very favourable to reflection (and baccy), and the lights of the little fishing village twinkling at the foot of the black and rugged peak of Santubong—which rose to a height of 1,500 feet above our heads, and ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... advance the money on the bonds of the company, without interest. Suppose I am able to finance a hundred farms that way, then as the payments come in, still more farms. The thing will spread like a ripple in a pool, until it covers the whole country. When you turn a sum of money loose, WITH NO INTEREST CHARGE ATTACHED TO IT, there is no limit to ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... scorched headlands of Arabia, is alike entranced by the vision of beauty which expands before him as the island rises from the sea, its lofty mountains covered by luxuriant forests, and its shores, till they meet the ripple of the waves, bright with the foliage ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... and by degrees extinguishing the stars. Before long half the sky was overspread. Evidently motive power lay in the cloud itself, for there was not a breath of wind. Absolute calm reigned in the atmosphere; not a leaf stirred on the tree, not a ripple disturbed the surface of the water. There seemed to be scarcely any air even, as though some vast pneumatic machine had rarefied it. The entire atmosphere was charged to the utmost with electricity, the presence of which sent a thrill through ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... but now there was a change—mysterious, illusive. There were no words for this that had transpired. But for the moment, one thing only was certain. The night was no longer voiceless, the dark was no longer empty. Far off there, beyond the reach of vision, unlocalised, strange, a ripple had formed on the still black pool of the night, had formed, flashed one instant to the stars, then swiftly faded again. The night shut down once more. There was ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... over the side, so that it made a ripple in the water (the most delightful experience of childhood). Emmeline, with one hand clasped in her uncle's, watched Mr Button with a grave ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... by the fine prospect, Ree ran down the hill, across the clearing and to the summit of the knoll or bluff. The ripple and splash of the river, the bright sunshine and his discovery of this ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... been extricated from the dense tiers of vessels along the quay, and hauling out of the harbour, we were at last fairly on the high road to Corsica, never did the sun appear to shine more brightly; the Mediterranean looked more blue than any blue one had seen before, there was a ripple from the fresh breeze, the waves sparkled, and seemed positively to laugh and partake ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... down along the shore in this bed during the last century or two, have been conveyed away. As we pass on northwards, however, we see the white sand occurring in much larger quantities,—here heaped up in little bent-covered hillocks above the reach of the tide,—there stretching out in level, ripple-marked wastes into the waves,—yonder rising in flat narrow spits among the shallows. At length we reach a small, irregularly-formed bay, a few hundred feet across, floored with it from side to side; and see it, on the one hand, descending deep into the sea, that exhibits over its whiteness ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... flatness in all the detail of it, as in Holland, or Lincolnshire, or Central Lombardy, it appears to me like a prison, and I cannot long endure it. But the slightest rise and fall in the road,—a mossy bank at the side of a crag of chalk, with brambles at its brow, overhanging it,—a ripple over three or four stones in the stream by the bridge,—above all, a wild bit of ferny ground under a fir or two, looking as if, possibly, one might see a hill if one got to the other side of the trees, will instantly give me intense delight, because the shadow, or the ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... provision for religious services, came also the ministers of other denominations. We all labored together in harmony, except in one instance, where a conflict of appointments caused a momentary ripple. My appointment had long been established, and, to the surprise of the people, another appointment was announced by a young store-keeper of the village for the same hour. The word reached me of this attempt to displace the Methodists, when ten ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... had forgotten the crocodiles, and he now tore the sharp, triangular blade from his belt, his imagination turning the ripple and plap of water against the nearest boat into the movement ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... not a natural woman, for nothing human seemed to emanate from her. Her face expressed no emotion, either good or bad, beyond a voluptuousness at once sensual and divine. She doubtless noticed my suffering, for she asked with a voice as clear as the ripple of ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... perfect afternoon. Little white clouds drifted here and there over the tops of the wooded hills, but they only made the sky more deeply and intensely blue. There was just enough breeze to ripple the water so that it caught every sunbeam, and set it dancing on the tremulous surface. Below her a fish-hawk poised and dipped, seeking his dinner; far out, two black specks showed where her friends were at their "sport." Margaret drew ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... the pickerel. One might, if he were a lucky and persevering fisherman, take a trout in the swift waters of the brook; but for the pickerel, theirs was not the joy of such exertion. In the dark, silent places along Mill stream, where never a ripple disturbed their seclusion, you might see one, now and then, lying motionless in the shadow of an overhanging branch, at the surface of the ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... same time with us. Having washed down decks and got our breakfast, the two vessels lay side by side, in complete readiness for sea, our ensigns hanging from the peaks, and our tall spars reflected from the glassy surface of the river, which, since sunrise, had been unbroken by a ripple. At length, a few whiffs came across the water, and, by eleven o'clock, the regular north-west wind set steadily in. There was no need of calling all hands, for we had all been hanging about the forecastle the whole forenoon, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... restless and continuous moaning had at length struck his ear. What was in its call to-night that he should thus sway towards it as though drawn by some dread magnetic force? He had been born to the dashing of its waves and knew its every mood and all the passion of its song from frolicsome ripple to melancholy dirge. But there was something odd and inexplicable in its effect upon his spirit as he faced it at this hour. Grim and implacable—a sound rather than a sight—it seemed to hold within its invisible distances ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... night is sweet: thy breath is in the air, I feel it on my face; thy tender eyes Look love upon me from yon starry skies! They bring to me, those glancing moonbeams fair, The shine and ripple of thy silken hair. And in the silent whispers and the sighs That from the throbbing heart of Nature rise, I hear thee, feel ...
— Sonnets • Nizam-ud-din-Ahmad, (Nawab Nizamat Jung Bahadur) |
