"Thaw" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... deep and angry crimson, where the sun and wind together; set a brand upon the clouds for being guilty of such weather; and the widest open country is a long dull streak of black; and there's hoar-frost on the finger-post, and thaw upon the track; and the ice it isn't water, and the water isn't free; and you couldn't say that anything is what it ought to be; but he's coming, coming, ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... "I saw a crag, a lofty stone As ever tempest beat! Out of its head an Oak had grown, A Broom out of its feet. The time was March, a cheerful noon—15 The thaw wind, with the breath of June, Breathed gently from the warm south-west: When, in a voice sedate with age, This Oak, a giant and a sage, [2] His ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... humility did this elemental spirit perform all needful offices for the household in which he was domesticated! He was equal to the concoction of a grand dinner, yet scorned not to roast a potato or toast a bit of cheese. How humanely did he cherish the school-boy's icy fingers, and thaw the old man's joints with a genial warmth which almost equalled the glow of youth! And how carefully did he dry the cowhide boots that had trudged through mud and snow, and the shaggy outside garment ...
— Fire Worship (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... for thaw. And no better advice can be given than Doc Robertson's: "Keep your feet dry and ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... the remains of one of our niggers' fires. Crouching over the embers I found a bearded figure, which hoarsely denounced me for coming to its fire. I explained that it was our fire, but that he was welcome, and settled down to thaw. It turned out to be a sergeant of the 38th Battery. I asked something, and he began a long rambling soliloquy about things in general, in a thick voice, with his beard almost in the fire, scarcely aware of my presence. I can't reproduce it faithfully, because of the language, but it dealt ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... familiarity from strangers, and Wee Willie Winkie was a very particular child. Once he accepted an acquaintance, he was graciously pleased to thaw. He accepted Brandis, a subaltern of the 195th, on sight. Brandis was having tea at the Colonel's, and Wee Willie Winkie entered strong in the possession of a good-conduct badge won for not chasing the hens round the compound. He regarded Brandis with gravity for at least ten minutes, and then ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... honest physicians, who, by virtue of their attainments, have a right to demand substantial fees. Even so, newspaper reports of the expense to the State of notorious trials are grossly exaggerated. The entire cost of the first Thaw trial to the County of New York was considerably less than twenty thousand dollars, and the second trial not more than half that amount. To the defence, however, it was a costly matter, as the recent schedules in bankruptcy of the defendant show. Therein ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... of twenty miles brought the travellers to a rugged defile in the mountains, from which they had a view of a beautiful valley of considerable extent. During the last two days a steady thaw had been rapidly melting away the snow, so that it appeared only here and there in the landscape in dazzling patches. At the distance of about half-a-mile from where they halted to breathe the horses before commencing the descent into this vale, several ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... the king and his people and appalled the robbers. In this respect it resembled the post-horn of Baron Munchausen's story, which, on being hung before a fire, allowed the notes that had been played into it (but not heard) to thaw out and entertain the company. And if the story of the shell is doubted, one has only to look at it in the Honolulu Museum to ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... weight—then vibrating backwards and forwards, she often called to mind, and endeavoured to believe, what Cecilia the first day told her, that this reserved manner was natural to him with strangers, and would wear off. But to her the icy coldness did not thaw. So she felt, or so she fancied, and which it was she could not decide. She had never before lived with any one about whose liking for her she could doubt, therefore, as she said to herself, "I know I am a bad judge." She feared to open her mind to Cecilia. ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... A thaw had now fairly set in. The breaking up of the frozen ocean was a magnificent spectacle, and "the great voice of the sea," as the whalers graphically describe it, was heard in all its solemnity. Little streams of water began to trickle down the declivities of the mountain ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... Davos would be beautiful, but the thaw had successfully dissipated its immaculate loveliness. Half of the snow slopes were already bare, the roads were a sea of mud, and the valley was as dingy as if a careless washerwoman had upset a basket of dirty linen on ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... caught his eager, questioning, and almost appealing glance, but he made no advances. "He thinks I am angry because of his keen criticism of my picture. For the sake of my own pride, I must not let him think that I care so much about his opinion;" and Christine resolved to let some of the ice thaw that had formed between them. Moreover, in spite of herself, when she was thrown into his society, he greatly interested her. He seemed to have just what she had not. He could meet her on her own ground in matters of taste, and then, in contrast with her cold, negative ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... last, for a drawn battle between the old and the new. The new, though not acknowledging itself to be beaten, takes to its heels, and flees in the stormy night through wind and snow. But the snow is moist and heavy; it is beginning to thaw. There is a vague presentiment of ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... funereal gravity of his bearing and expression, and Brent the timber-buyer, stood looking down from beetling cliffs rigidly bestowed with collossal and dripping icicles. To their ears came a babel of shouts, the grating of trees, long sleet-bound but stirring now to the thaw—the roar of blasting powder and the rending ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... and a trifle bitter, but I fancy sunshine would thaw her. There has not been much ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro
... at it that night until their eyes ached, it seemed that it was visibly approaching. And that night, too, the weather changed, and the frost that had gripped all Central Europe and France and England softened towards a thaw. ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... interrogate it, and see what I could make of it, by a cool, confidential proximity and examination. The ice was porous and spongy, as I have seen it on the shores of the Connecticut, when beginning to thaw out under the influence of a spring sun. I could see the little drops of water percolating in a thousand tiny streams through it, and dropping down on every side. Putting my ear to it, I could hear a fine musical trill and trickle, and that still small click and stir, as of melting ice, which ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... her for it, she would give up all that for which she had sold her soul? He could not feel that he was a prophet sent by God from whose lips would fall such inspired words that the iron frost would thaw and the great depths of her nature be broken up. In fact, he felt singularly uninspired, and very much embarrassed. And when he had tried the impossible (he said to himself), and had given her the last chance of going back on this ugly fraud from nobler motives than ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... hot milk!" declared Uncle Toby. "Here, Aunt Sallie, you look after the Curlytops and their friends while I put the car away, and then I'll come back and we'll have a cozy supper," went on Mr. Bardeen. "I'll put Jack by the fire to thaw him out." ...
— The Curlytops and Their Playmates - or Jolly Times Through the Holidays • Howard R. Garis
... passes sca'cely but he fetches in some hurted critter an' works with it. Dicey says thet half the time she's afeerd to step around her cook-stove less'n she'll step on some critter thet's crawled back to life where he's put it under the stove to hatch or thaw out, which she bein' bare-feeted, I ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... freeze, and nothing dwells In me but snow and icicles. For pity's sake, give your advice, To melt this snow and thaw this ice. I'll drink down flames; but if so be Nothing but love can supple me, I'll rather keep this frost and snow Than to be thaw'd or ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... boys wrought steadily through the rest of the day and the following two days. Inasmuch as the summer sun in the Klondike region does not thaw the soil to a greater depth than two feet, it was necessary to pile wood upon the earth and set it afire. As this gradually dissolved the frozen ground, the refuse dirt was cleared away, so as to reach paying earth or gravel. The results for a ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... pressed his hand in silence, and led him to a place by the side of the baroness. An animated discussion now began concerning the weather, which was completely changed; a strong south wind had risen in the night, so there was now a thaw. The snow was all melted—the torrents were flowing once more, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... fifteen dollars were raised, Bishop Quinn, of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, giving one-third of it. As there was a fall of snow a foot deep, the friends concluded to take us across a swamp, which would save a number of miles; and as there were indications of a thaw, one man offered his team and double sleigh if a certain colored man would go that night and drive it. We were soon well protected from the prospective inclement weather, with the buffalo-robe presented to me, and quilts around the balance of ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... shadows will soon disappear, the rays of the Eternal Sun will thaw the hoar frost of winter. . . . A little longer, and we shall be in our true country, and our childhood's joys—those Sunday evenings, those outpourings of the heart—will be given back to ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... brought a perceptible shrinking of the snowy mantle, leaving bare patches of wet, brown earth. One day Mokwa, breaking through a thick clump of juniper bushes, came out upon the bank of the Little Vermilion, its glassy surface as yet apparently unaffected by the thaw. For a moment the bear hesitated, his little near-sighted eyes searching the opposite bank and his nose sniffing the wind inquiringly; then, as if reassured, he stepped out upon the ice and made for ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... now, in this very incoherent, fragmentary way; without methodic education or habits of thought; with the various stereotyped systems which they have received by tradition, breaking up under them like ice in a thaw; with a thousand facts and notions, which they know not how to classify, pouring in on them like a flood?—a very Yeasty state of mind altogether, like a mountain burn in a spring rain, carrying down with it stones, ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... is!" cried the bunny uncle with a jolly laugh, looking down inside the "toot-tooter." "It is so cold that the tunes are all frozen solid in your horn. But I have a hot apple pie here in my basket that I was taking to Grandpa Goosey Gander. I'll hold the cold horn on the hot pie and the tunes will thaw out." ...
— Uncle Wiggily and Old Mother Hubbard - Adventures of the Rabbit Gentleman with the Mother Goose Characters • Howard R. Garis
... But the thaw proved an advantage in one way, for it opened up the roads that had been well-nigh impassable, and mail and other supplies ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope
... very misty, and most intensely dismal. So we crossed the Black Mount, and came to a place we had passed the day before, where a rapid river runs over a bed of broken rock. Now, this river, sir, had a bridge last winter, but the bridge broke down when the thaw came, and has never since been mended; so travelers cross upon a little platform, made of rough deal planks stretching from rock to rock; and carriages and horses ford the water, at a certain point. As the platform is the reverse of steady (we had proved this the day before), is very slippery, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... to her atmosphere—why should she have lost her atmosphere? Why should it sink into craters? Atmosphere is gas, great in volume, small in matter; where would there be room for it? Solidified by the intense cold? Possibly in the night time. But would not the heat of the long day be great enough to thaw it back again? The same trouble attends the alleged disappearance of the water. Swallowed up in the cavernous cracks, it is said. But why are there cracks? Cooling is not always attended by cracking. Water cools without cracking; ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... than had been remembered by the oldest housekeepers living. According to all appearances, we might now have expected the continuance of this rigorous weather for weeks to come, since every night increased in severity; but behold, without any apparent on the 1st of February a thaw took place, and some rain followed before night; making good the observation, that frosts often go off, as it were, at once, without any gradual declension of cold. On the 2nd of February, the thaw persisted; and on the 3rd, swarms of little insects were frisking and sporting ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... rigid foot but dip'd into the water, Shall strike that sharp and suddaine cold throughout, As it shall loose all vertue; and those Nimphs, Those treacherous Nimphs pull'd in Earine; Shall stand curl'd up, like Images of Ice; And never thaw! marke, never! a sharpe Justice. Or stay, a better! when the yeares at hottest, And that the Dog-starre fomes, and the streame boiles, And curles, and workes, and swells ready to sparkle; To fling a fellow with a Fever in, To set it ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... or other vegetables to be fed to stock become frosted, place them in a cool cellar, cover lightly with straw, and let them remain frozen. If they do not thaw they will be ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... not in February. Things happened, as things do, and it was early April before I got to the farm. But it had been a wintry March, and the farmers told me that the sap had not been running except for a few days in a February thaw. Anyway, it ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... had ceased—it was but a scud of early autumn on the mountains—the sun came out with bright slanting beams before his setting, there was a soft south wind; and Hob, when he came in, growled out that the thaw had set in, and he should be able to take the maid back in the morning. He sat scowling and silent during supper, and ordered Hal about with sharp sternness, sending him out to attend to the litter of the cattle, before all had finished, and manifestly treated him ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... glorious morning, the first thin white frost after a long thaw. The meet was in front of the Cross-Roads Inn, about a mile out of Drayton Parva. It was neutral ground, where Farmer Ashby could hold his own with Sir Peter any day, and speech was unfettered. Somebody remarked that Mrs. Nevill Tyson looked uncommonly happy ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... April Fergus suddenly broke down. His work had been almost incessant. The cold in the tent had, at night, been extreme; and, having been wetted to the skin one day, when a sudden thaw came on, his clothes had been frozen stiff when, at nightfall, the frost returned with even greater severity than before. In spite of the cloaks and blankets that Karl heaped upon his bed, he shivered all night, and in the morning hot fits came on. The king's surgeon, coming in to see him, ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... cold spells of last winter the gas-meter in my cellar was frozen. I attempted to thaw it out by pouring hot water over it, but after spending an hour upon the effort I emerged from the contest with the meter with my feet and trousers wet, my hair full of dust and cobwebs and my temper at fever heat. After ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... there was nothing to do but wait patiently for the snow to cease falling and for the thaw. But how intolerable it was; for the weather continued bitterly cold for many days, and the whole country was white. During those hungry days even that poor comfort of sleeping or dozing away the time was denied him, for the danger of discovery was ever present to his mind, and Shergold ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... Clinic (2005): 1. Get out of the cold. 2. Warm hands by tucking them into your armpits. If your nose, ears or face is frostbitten, warm the area by covering it with dry, gloved hands. 3. Don't rub the affected area, especially with snow. 4. If there's any chance of refreezing, don't thaw out the affected areas. If they're already thawed out, wrap them up so they don't refreeze. 5. Get emergency medical help if numbness remains during warming. If you can't get help immediately, warm severely frostbitten hands or ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... you we would fare," asked the King once, when the chancellor saw obstacles in their way which he would brush aside, "if my fire did not thaw the chill ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... too, too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew; Or that the Everlasting had not fixed His canon 'gainst self-slaughter. Hamlet, Act i. Sc. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... hence, they may, perhaps, be finished, or fallen again into decay. Bridges are as scarce as roads. The rivers, such as the Mirabka are crossed in miserable ferry boats, those which are shallower must be forded. In time of rain, or sudden thaw in the snow mountains, the rivers are overflowed, and travellers must then either wait some days or risk their lives. What a tremendous difference between the ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... beaches, and there was zest enough in that, in view of the probability of the dory turning over, or a gunboat dropping on to you. Then there was a good deal of very genuine excitement to be got out of placer-mining in British Columbia, especially when there was frost in the ranges, and you had to thaw out your giant-powder. Shallow alluvial workings have a way of caving in when you least expect it of them. After all, however, I think I like ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... of spring in 1916, new activities began on the Eastern front, and the Russians threatened a vigorous attack on the German lines in the north "after the thaw." By the middle of the summer the Russians expected, according to semi-official reports, to have twelve million men armed, drilled, and equipped ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... great biographical mass by skilful hands, and, like the succeeding pages, will stand for centuries unshaken by the bombardment of the critic, while succeeding years shall try them with frost and thaw, and the tide of time dash high against their massive front, only to recede, ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... out, Aladdin," he called. "There's going to be a big thaw." He closed the door and went into the next room, and Aladdin could hear him talking to the horse. After a little ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... mother; "he will speak determinedly and decidedly; but, if he acts not in the very moment of forming the resolution, it is no more to be relied on than an icicle in time of thaw. Do thou apprize me, if thou canst, what the Emperor is at present doing, and take my word I will find means to bring ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... time they were such good friends, he and the boys, that he was down on all-fours playing horses with them, and did some quite new tricks which they thought extremely amusing; he then invited them to come for a drive the next day. After a thaw, there had been an unusually heavy fall of snow; the town was white and the state of the ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... them in half like a rotten stick. The cattle are fed upon these fish during the winter months. But it has been proved, which is very strange, that if, after they have been frozen for twenty-four hours or more, you put these fish into water and gradually thaw them as you do the meat, they will recover and swim about again as well as ever. To ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... say Elkins was a welcome visitor at the ranch houses and was regarded as a good fellow. At the Bar-20 he found only two men who would not thaw to him, and he was possessed of too much tact to try any persuasive measures. One was Hopalong, whose original cold reserve seemed to be growing steadily, the Bar-20 puncher finding in Elkins a personality that charged ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... pretend to nothin', dear;" sais I, "I am just a nateral man. There is a time for all things, and a way to do 'em too. If I have to freeze down solid to a thing, why then, ice is the word. If there is a thaw, then fun and snow-ballin' is the ticket. I listen to a preacher, and try to be the better for his argufying, if he has any sense, and will let me; and I listen to the violin, and dance to it, if it's ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... the sun-beams shone through the tiny window in the grandfather's house, on the quiet child. The daughters of the sun-beams kissed him, they wished to thaw him, to warm him and to carry away with them the icy kiss, which the queenly maiden of the glaciers had given him, as he lay on his dead mother's lap, in the deep icy gap, whence he ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... up to see the parson," exclaimed the deacon, when the morning devotions were over, "and see if I can thaw him out a little. I've heard there used to be a lot of fun in him in his younger days, but he's sort of frozen all up latterly, and I can see that the young folks are afraid of him and the church, too, but that won't do—no, that won't do," repeated the good ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... all seasons shall be sweet to thee, Whether the summer clothe the general earth With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall Heard only in the trances of the blast, Or if the secret ministry of frost Shall hang them up in silent icicles, Quietly ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... murderous deceit sunk far out on the marsh—cold nights; soft moonlight nights—the marsh a mystic fairy-land; black nights—-mean nights of thrashing rain. Nights that paled to dawn with no luck to bring back to Suzette's larder. Sunny mornings after lucky nights, when Tanrade and I would thaw out over our coffee in the garden among ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... Aland, where the plenipotentiaries of Peter I. and Charles XII. negociated a peace, and endeavored to fix boundaries to their ambition in this frozen part of the world, which the blood of their subjects alone had been able to thaw for a moment. We hoped to reach Stockholm the following day, but a decidedly contrary wind obliged us to cast anchor by the side of an island entirely covered with rocks interspersed with trees, which hardly grew higher than the stones which ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... When the thaw set in, I put a couple of bricks down and put a box-lid on top, so that I could stand in a dry place. We had two picks and two shovels in that cellar in case anything happened overnight. I have been up against it. Whenever I talked ...
— Your Boys • Gipsy Smith
... alone, when I got cotched in one of them awful nor'easters, and I never came so near freezin' to death in all my life. Them sort of winds go right to the marrer of yer bones, and it takes yer a week to thaw out. Wall, sir, while I war tryin' to start a fire, a couple of Comanches managed to slip up and steal my mustang. I didn't find it out till three or four hours arter, and then I war mad. I couldn't stand no such loss, so I took the trail, and started off on ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... is considered better to travel at night and sleep at day, on account of the glare of the sun on the snow. We used to travel journeys of about ten hours, and then encamp, light our spirits-of-wine, put our kettle on it to thaw our snow-water, and after we had had our supper—just a piece of pemmican and a glass of water—we were glad to smoke our pipes and turn into bed. The first thing we did, after pitching the tent, was to lay a sort of macintosh covering over the snow; on this ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... leaves placed there to heat the plants, under the painted frames and the whitened bell-glasses, only a stunted crop made its appearance. He failed with the broccoli, the mad-apples, the turnips, and the watercress, which he had tried to raise in a tub. After the thaw all the artichokes were ruined. The cabbages gave him some consolation. One of them especially excited his hopes. It expanded and shut up quickly, but ended by becoming prodigious and absolutely uneatable. No matter—Pecuchet ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... more snow storms, followed by freezing weather after a thaw, and the boys and girls had much fun on the ice, a number of skating races having been arranged ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Snow Lodge • Laura Lee Hope
... nothing to write; this frost locks up all our communications; it has sent poor Tom back to us after nine days' sea-sickness, and when I hoped he was already at Berlin; and we are now told that less than a fortnight's thaw will not open the intercourse again. In that time how many things may be done, and what is worse, how many may not be done! Naples and Sardinia, with all that belongs to them, you will have seen in the French papers as fully as we, ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... for several days a strong south wind had swept up Pleasant Valley. That—as Solomon Owl knew very well—that meant a thaw was coming. He was not sorry, because the weather had been ...
— The Tale of Solomon Owl • Arthur Scott Bailey
... cessation of robbery on their trap line after the inconclusive visit to the enemy's camp. But a new and extreme exasperation arose in the month of March, when the alternation of thaw and frost had covered the snow with a hard crust that rendered snowshoes unnecessary and made it easy to run anywhere and leave ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... hail. Such was the face without; a mountain stood Threatening from high, and overlook'd the wood: Beneath the lowering brow, and on a bent, The temple stood of Mars armipotent: The frame of burnish'd steel, that cast a glare From far, and seem'd to thaw the freezing air. A strait long entry to the temple led, Blind with high walls; and horror over head: Thence issued such a blast, and hollow roar, 550 As threaten'd from the hinge to heave the door: In through that door, a northern light there shone; 'Twas all it had, for ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... with a' dry polish;" and so there is a kind of dry despair into which men fall, which is quite as forlorn as any tears of women. How many a man has doubtless wished at such times that the pump of his lachrymal glands could only thaw out, and he could give his emotions something more than a "dry polish"! The unspeakable comfort some women feel in sitting for ten minutes with a handkerchief over their eyes! The freshness, the heartiness, the new life visible ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... at once became more amiable, and the young wife, clinging to vain hopes, also became more cheerful. The thaw had not yet set in and a hard, smooth, glittering covering of snow extended over the landscape. Neither men nor animals were to be seen; only the chimneys of the cottages gave evidence of life in the smoke that ascended from them ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... a thaw set in. The ice and snow began to melt. The brooks and rivulets swiftly carried the water to ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... its iron grip at last and there were alternations of snow and thaw and frost when one evening a few of his scattered neighbours assembled at Allonby's ranch. Clavering was there, with Torrance, Hetty, and Miss Schuyler, among the rest; but though the guests made a spirited attempt ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... the driver too for this rare virtue, and then went home to talk about what we should do with our money. I cannot tell you all that we did with it, because money melts away 'like snow-wreaths in thaw-jean', as Denny says, and somehow the more you have the more quickly it melts. We all went into Maidstone, and came back with the most beautiful lot of brown-paper parcels, with things inside that supplied long-felt wants. But none of them belongs ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... the thaw was falling faster and faster; inside the house was dead silence, and outside it damp desolation, as Zack opened the street door, and, without hesitating a moment, dashed out desperately through mud and wet, to cast himself loose on the ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... these accumulations thaw or fall in the rolling avalance, or are piled up in shining glaciers. Two of these glaciers lie in the broad, rocky cliffs, between the Schreckhorn and the Wetterhorn, near the little town of Grindelwald. They are wonderful to behold, ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... moor Foster noted the smooth, hard surface of the wet road. The country was wild and desolate, but they had no roads like this in Canada, except perhaps in one or two of the larger cities. Indeed, in Western towns he knew, it was something of an adventure to cross the street during the spring thaw. The light got red and angry as they dipped into the valley; the firs on the hillcrest stood out black and sharp, and then melted into the gray background. A river pool shone with a ruby gleam that suddenly went out, and the dim water vanished into the shadow, ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... 'and warm yourself at the fire. You will thaw presently, Mr. Thistlewood. I suppose, like other unregenerate men, you live in rooms? Has that kind of life an irresistible charm ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... got off the car and found my legs cramped—to come to the rescue as interpreter. The Spanish Friar was accustomed to these little embarrassments, and he had a manner of meeting them with a smile. The misunderstanding and the embarrassment seemed to thaw the formality of the reception. The women looked relieved. They were obviously not expected to say anything, and they had no fear now that they would be put to the ordeal of meeting a possibly superior person, ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... days of the New Year we returned to the line in the Brickstacks sector south of the canal, and the heavy snow and frost having been succeeded by a sudden thaw accompanied by rain, the condition of the trenches in the low ground can be better imagined than described. Leather jerkins were quickly supplemented by "boots, gum, thigh," and the British soldier came to assume the appearance ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... accumulated and frozen upon the ship's sides on the lower deck. As long as it continued in this state, it did not prove a source of annoyance, especially as it had no communication with the bed-places. The late mildness of the weather, however, having caused a thaw to take place below, it now became necessary immediately to scrape off the coating of ice, and it will, perhaps, be scarcely credited, that we this day removed about one hundred buckets full, each containing ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... the floor. He drew them up again with a jerk and sat with his teeth chattering hunched on the edge of the bed. Lyaeus burrowed into the blankets and went back to sleep. For a long while Telemachus could not thaw his frozen wits enough to discover what noise had waked him up. Then it came upon him suddenly that huge rhythms were pounding about him, sounds of shaken tambourines and castanettes and beaten dish-pans and roaring voices. Someone was singing in shrill tremolo above the din ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... train had reached the top of the altitude. Ralph had walked over the more rugged parts of the pass, and had satisfied himself that there was no danger to be apprehended on this score. The ghyll was swollen by the thaw. The waters fell heavily over the great stones, and sent up clouds of spray, which were quickly dissipated by the wind. Huge hillocks of yellow foam gathered in every sheltered covelet. The roar of the cataract in the ravine silenced the ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... the Bactrian camel is the beginning and end of winter, when frost and thaw occur alternately. At such times of the year the snow falls thickly, is partially melted in the daytime, and at night freezes on the surface into a thin cake of ice. Through this crust the feet of the camel break, and the animal cuts its legs cruelly with the sharp edges of ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... strength, he had no power to give back life, where it had been so rudely quenched. Pure or not, the blood in those veins was frozen to ice, and though Ben heaped up wood on his hearth till the flames roared up the wide-throated chimney, there was not heat enough to thaw a single drop. At last, Ben gave up his own exertions, and laid the dead girl reverently on his own couch; kneeling meekly by her side, and then he began repeating the Lord's Prayer over her again and ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... not come down the river, so the mills had no work to do, for the logs on hand at the beginning of the cold snap had been sawed into long rough planks, and piled in the lumber-yards, ready to be rafted as soon as the thaw came. The cold, still air was sweet with the fragrance of fresh pine boards, and the ground about the mills was covered with sawdust, so that footsteps fell as silently as though on velvet, instead of ringing sharp against the ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... will still call her, for simplicity, in spite of her promotion,—had become somewhat afraid of Mrs. Houghton; but now, seeing her husband's courtesy to her guest, understanding from his manner that he liked her society, began to thaw, and to think that she might allow herself to be intimate with the woman. It did not occur to her to be in any degree jealous,—not, at least, as yet. In her innocence she did not think it possible that her husband's ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... be witnesses and trumpeters of their paramours' good parts, bedecking them with verses and commendatory songs, as we do statues with gold, that they may be remembered and admired of all." Ancient men will dote in this kind sometimes as well as the rest; the heat of love will thaw their frozen affections, dissolve the ice of age, and so far enable them, though they be sixty years of age above the girdle, to be scarce thirty beneath. Jovianus Pontanus makes an old fool rhyme, and turn poetaster to please ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... water ain't too high, and the ice don't run too swift in the Fork, it'll be all right. But if there's any such mixture of downpour and thaw as there was along the Creek back there, we may have to jump across a gap. It'll probably ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... full sunshine, till your heart of ice is melted, and your stupefied soul is filled with spiritual sensibility. For, "were a man a mountain of ice," said Old Honest, "yet if the Sun of Righteousness will arise upon him his frozen heart shall feel a thaw; and thus hath it been with me." Your poets and your philosophers have no resource against the stupidity that opposes them. "Even the gods," they complain, "fight unvictorious against stupidity." But your divines and your preachers have hope beside the dullest and the stupidest ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... had done wonders, but said that she could not wish for such a junction now, however it might be possible and desirable that it should take place some little time hence. This shows a very Conservative spirit and a marvellous thaw in the rigidity ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... within their browed recesses were Worn caves where thought lay couchant in its lair; Wert thou a spark among dank leaves, ah ruth! With age in all thy veins, while all thy heart was youth; Our contact might run smooth. But life's Eoan dews still moist thy ringed hair; Dian's chill finger-tips Thaw if at night they happen on thy lips; The flying fringes of the sun's cloak frush The fragile leaves which on those warm lips blush; And joy only lurks retired In the dim gloaming of thine irid. Then since my love drags this poor shadow, me, ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... freezing-point, and yet it is snowing," said Gurov to his daughter. "The thaw is only on the surface of the earth; there is quite a different temperature at a ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... most insipid young coxcomb preached Clean myself with warm water; my wife will have me Costs me 12d. a kiss after the first Find that now and then a little difference do no hurte Going with her woman to a hot-house to bathe herself Good discourse and counsel from him, which I hope I shall take Great thaw it is not for a man to walk the streets Heard noises over their head upon the leads His disease was the pox and that he must be fluxed (Rupert) I know not how their fortunes may agree If the exportations exceed ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger
... residence at Headingley, and the police suggested that I should be accompanied by an officer; but I did not believe in my danger, and desired no such protection. In the depths of one winter's night, when a thaw was dissolving a heavy fall of snow, I had a great fright. I had left my cab, which had driven away, and was mounting the steps leading to the porch of my house, when I suddenly saw, lying on the half-melted snow against the door itself, a large ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... shyly, and then with growing confidence as deserters from the opposition grew more numerous, the old friends returned, to be followed by many new ones. The younger generation being won over, their elders began to thaw and to exchange kindly greetings, and now and then we were invited to see their hut or tent, or to sit down outside for a ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... and I knew by the sudden scream and plunge of his horse that spurs were dug into raw sides. We turned down that steep, break-neck, tortuous street leading from Upper Town to the valley of the St. Charles. The wet thaw of mid-day had frozen and the road was slippery as a toboggan slide. We reined our horses in tightly, to prevent a perilous stumbling of fore-feet, and by zigzagging from side to side managed to reach the foot of the hill without ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... wood-cutting. It was now the latter part of January with weather still unusually cold. There were about three feet of snow on the ground, crusted over from a thaw which had occurred during the first of the month. In those days we burned from forty to fifty cords of wood in ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... Thaw was front-paged on the newspapers and gibbeted in the pulpits as the shocking example of youthful depravity. He seems never to have had a fighting chance to become a man. He seems to have been robbed of his birthright from the cradle. Yet the father of ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... a worse humor, stood before the fire trying to thaw himself; and while Marianne made haste to warm some wine, he began to speak of the cleared fields which he had skirted. Under the icy covering, however, beneath which they stiffly slumbered, hiding the seed within them, he had ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... started off Monday morning in high spirits. The foreman met her in a curt, business-like way, and assigned her to her place, saying that the girl in charge of the goods would tell her about the marks, prices, etc. This girl and her companions received Belle very coldly, nor did they thaw out before her sunshine. As a matter both of duty and interest the young woman upon whom the task devolved explained all that was essential in a harsh, constrained voice, and the others ignored the newcomer during business hours. Belle paid no attention to them, but ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe |
