"Topmost" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at the top of a hill—the topmost of an ascending range of hills—and to some minds that alone is rapture. To inhale the fresh night air was to drink deeply of an ethereal beverage. I had never experienced so delicious a sensation since I had stood ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... the side of the rock. He still couldn't believe his eyes. Ensign Chandler had been impaled by two long feathered shafts, two arrows. The force of the first one had spun Chandler around and he lay now with his back arched across the topmost ramparts of the rock, two arrows protruding from his chest and his life blood, starkly crimson against the white ...
— A World Called Crimson • Darius John Granger
... Janet bringing in the cows, saw her return and go into the house. The afternoon was still lovely—the sky, a pale gold, with thin bars of grey cloud lying across it, and the woods, all delicate shades of brown and purple, with their topmost branches clear against the gold. The old red walls and tiled roofs of the farm, the fields, the great hay and straw stacks, were all drenched in the soft ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... carols at the dawn of day From the green steeples of the piny wood; The oriole in the elm; the noisy jay, Jargoning like a foreigner at his food; The bluebird balanced on some topmost spray, Flooding with melody the neighborhood; Linnet and meadow-lark, and all the throng That dwell in nests, and ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... this supermundane existence. Its influences are both positive and negative, good and evil. It has powers adapted to every issue of human experience; because it is the outgrowth, the fruitage of human life. Its roots are planted in this earth. Its topmost branches wave in the sunlight which flows from the "Throne of God." It is God. Not a separate and distinct being; but an intelligent principle of love abounding in everything; expressing itself through ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... which came the cool breath of evening air and the sound of water lapping against stone. A patch of faint light showed pale against the iron bars, and as Angela looked that way, a great grey rat leapt through the grating, and ran along the topmost bin, making the bottles shiver as he scuttled across them. Then came a thud on the sawdust-covered stones, and she knew that the loathsome thing was on the floor upon which she was standing. She lowered ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... the baker, "there were three baskets of white bread on my head, one above another, and on the topmost basket were all kinds of roasted meat and food for Pharaoh; and the birds came, and ate the food from ...
— The Wonder Book of Bible Stories • Compiled by Logan Marshall
... thee From the fir-tree's lofty branches." Ilmarinen, full consenting, Straightway climbed the golden fir-tree, High upon the bow of heaven, Thence to bring the golden moonbeams, Thence to bring the Bear of heaven, From the fir-tree's topmost branches. Thereupon the blooming fir-tree Spake these words to Ilmarinen: "O thou senseless, thoughtless hero, Thou hast neither wit nor instinct; Thou dost climb my golden branches, Like a thing of little judgment, Thus to get my pictured moonbeams, Take away my silver ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... dewy grass, The myrtle and the mountain violet, Blend their rich odours with the fragrant trees, And sweeten the soft air. Above us spreads The purple sky, bright with the unseen sun The hills yet screen, although the golden beam Touches the topmost boughs, and tints with light The grey and sparkling crags. The breath of morn Still lingers in the valley; but the bee With restless passion hovers on the wing, Waiting the opening flower, of whose embrace The sun shall be the signal. Poised in air, The winged minstrel of the liquid dawn, ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... this last week, as we have wended our way up the loaning to the Pettybaw inn for our luncheon, we have passed three magpies sitting together on the topmost rail of the fence. I am not prepared to state that they were always the same magpies; I only know there were always three of them. We have just discovered what they were about, and great is the excitement in our little circle. ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... a day, reflected I, will not only keep me alive, but restore some of my spent strength; and labouring constantly for ten days, I should be almost certain to reach the topmost tier of the cargo. Perhaps in less time? If less, all the better; but certainly in ten days I might get through them all, even though there should be ten tiers of boxes between me and the ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... such ecstasy; from the precipitous climb in the truck that hauled them, up and up, to the head of the high diamonded stair; the brief, exciting passage along the gangway to the boat that waited for them, its prow positively overhanging the topmost edge, the sliding lip of danger, where the rails plunged shining to the blackness below; the race they had for the front seat where, Ranny said, they would get the best of it; and ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... news, Watson, for it showed me that I was on the right road. I looked up at the sun. It was low in the heavens, and I calculated that in less than an hour it would lie just above the topmost branches of the old oak. One condition mentioned in the Ritual would then be fulfilled. And the shadow of the elm must mean the farther end of the shadow, otherwise the trunk would have been chosen as the guide. I had, then, to find where the far end ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... decided, Den?" I asked, for I felt that I should like to climb to the topmost pinnacle of the highest peak in all the world and shout the good news to the four ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... we note the conquering armies, With their brave, victorious leaders, Who enlisted in the service, From the county of old Garrard. General Landram was promoted, In the rising scale of glory, From the easier gradations, To the topmost roll of honor. Born within the hillside city, Architect of his own fortunes, Native industry and talent Led him up to high position. Poet, pensman, and musician, Writer, editor, and lawyer, Social leader and controller ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... a small niche let into the wall of the house, and produced the heavy oaken casket in which the old man kept the documents relating to his property. This he placed upon a small table beside his chair, opened it, and took out the topmost paper. He was completely master of the situation, and the deliberation with which he surveyed the circle of excited faces around him seemed to indicate that he ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... all the learned theories of Professor Hardwigg, a fierce and vehement fire certainly burned within the entrails of the great spheroid. Its action was felt even to the very topmost crust of the earth; the plants then in existence, being deprived of the vivifying rays of the sun, had neither buds, nor flowers, nor odor, but their roots drew a strong and vigorous life from the burning earth ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... only get nearer, so as to touch them," said he, and immediately the obedient cloak ducked down; Prince Dolor made a snatch at the topmost twig of the tallest tree, and caught a bunch of ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... its intricate branches, and the pointed fretwork of its light and narrow leaves, inlaid on the blue field of the sky, and the small rosy-white stars of its spring blossoming, and the beads of sable fruit scattered by autumn along its topmost boughs—the right, in Israel, of the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow,—and, more than all, the softness of the mantle, silver grey, and tender like the down on a bird's breast, with which, far away, it ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... perched on the topmost step of a library ladder, looking over a black letter volume of Hollinshed, from the well filled shelves of his pupil. Suddenly he paused, and his antiquarian instincts were aroused by the sight of a sheet of paper, yellow and time worn. He seized ...
— The Lumley Autograph • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... his neck descends; His woolly care their pensive lord attends: This only solace his hard fortune sends. Soon as he reach'd the shore and touch'd the waves, From his bor'd eye the gutt'ring blood he laves: He gnash'd his teeth, and groan'd; thro' seas he strides, And scarce the topmost ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... sparkling lake under canvas, till the overhanging hills of the opposite side robbed them of their aerial wings, and the sail being struck, the boatmen bent to their oars. As they passed under a promontory, clothed from the water's edge to its topmost ridge with the most luxuriant vegetation, it was pointed out to the ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... expeditions to discover this Fortunate Island, but all in vain; and long before these lines meet the gaze of my astonished readers, the flag that has braved a thousand years the battle and the breeze will be fluttering bravely on the topmost towers of Ungyway. I need scarcely add that we shall in future pay for all our imports in gold, and send away our superabundant pauper population, native and foreign, each with about one hundred golden sovereigns in his capacious ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 24, 1887 • Various
... first of all corrupted to Rattlin by that topmost of all top-sawyers, Joe Brandon—it having thus been so established, for many reasons, concealment among the rest, your mother thought it best for you to retain it. Now, Ralph, mark this—about eight, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... later days of the great cardinal's life, when his power was beginning to wane, but while it was yet sufficiently strong to permit now and then of volcanic outbursts which overwhelmed foes and carried friends to the topmost wave of prosperity. One of the most striking portions of the story is that of Cinq Mar's conspiracy; the method of conducting criminal cases, and the political trickery resorted to by royal favorites, affording a better insight ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... of an evening late in autumn, dimly illumined the space within. I saw the holy Coffin as it lay on the gentle slope of a hill; a giant Pine stood at its head, and in its topmost branches perched the Eagle, pierced to the heart and sleeping in its own blood. Within the coffin lay the sacred Form, with the cross on her breast, the veil on her face, the fetters on her hands, and the crown upon her ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... for a lifetime. Wooden seats had been built in, sloping upwards to the tops of the walls. Above, instead of a ceiling, a great flight of crows passed slowly across a square of grey cloud. Right up to the topmost benches the folk were banked—broadcloth in front, corduroys and fustian behind; faces turned everywhere upon him. The grey reek of the pipes filled the building, and the air was pungent with the acrid smell of cheap, strong tobacco. Everywhere among the human faces were to be seen the heads ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... these insects stood erect on their two lower pairs of legs, which were of different lengths so that all four feet touched the ground when the shell was vertical. The two upper pairs of legs were used as arms, the topmost pair[A] being quite short and splitting out at the end into four flexible claws about five inches long, which they used as fingers. These upper arms, which sprouted from a point near the top of the head, were peculiar in that they apparently had no joints like the other three pairs but ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... topmost step, the collie lifted his head, his nostrils dilating wide. A thrill went through him. His nearsighted eyes swept the crowd. They rested at last on Rhuburger. Another deep inhalation told him all he needed to know. ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... be fancy; impossible. I saw it distinctly. I cannot be in a dream. See there! again, on that topmost branch. It moves!" ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... these laws were actual and not formal only was proved by the instance that within the hundred years before the birth of Elissa, a lady Baaltis had been executed for some such offence, having been hurled indeed from the topmost pinnacle of the fortress above the temple to the foot of the ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... loud, "Bow-wow-wow." The old cat bounded as if he were made of India-rubber of the best quality. Such a cat-jump the little boy had never seen before. The first leap carried Old Klaws far out on the garden walk, and in the twinkling of an eye he was among the topmost branches of the old pear tree. When he felt himself safe, he turned round and began to spit and snarl and say bad words at Old Boze, who was looking at him with his long tongue hanging out of his mouth, and his face all wrinkled ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... sing! for well thy magic muse Can to the topmost heaven of grandeur soar; Or stoop to wail the swain that is no more! Ah, homely swains! your homeward steps ne'er lose; 90 Let not dank Will[46] mislead you to the heath; Dancing in mirky night, o'er fen and lake, He glows, to draw you downward ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... furrowed sides of gray old rocks, and glided whispering beneath the sorrowful willows. Old trees renewed their youth in the slight tenacious grasp of many a tremulous tendril, and, leaping lightly above their topmost heights, vine laughed to vine, swaying dreamily in the summer air; and not a vine nor brook nor hill nor forest but sent up a sweet-smelling incense to its Maker. Not an ox or cow or lamb or bird living its own dim life but lent its charm of unconscious grace to the great picture that unfolded ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... and riches, has been to the many who have gone thither a land of great expectations, but small results. This was specially the case in the earlier period of its history, after the discovery of gold and its settlement by "Americans," as we call ourselves, par excellence. Hurled from the topmost height of extravagant hope to the lowest deep of disappointment, the shock is too great for reaction; the rope, razor, bullet, or deadly drug, finishes the tragedy. Materialistic infidelity in California is the avowed belief of multitudes, and its subtle poison infects the minds ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... haste, they reached the summit just as the sun rose and tinged the topmost pinnacles with a golden hue. Pushing on towards an elevated ridge of rock, they climbed to the top of a mound, from which they could obtain a view of the surrounding country, and then they discovered that their place of refuge was a small ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... broken from its frozen chain, which had held it fast during the long winter, and was rushing on, rejoicing at its freedom. The purple buds, holding wonderful secrets of things to come, were bursting forth from every tree and bush, while from the topmost boughs the birds called and sang to their mates: "Oh! be happy, be happy, for ...
— A Child's Story Garden • Compiled by Elizabeth Heber
... the pursuit after the wealth that perishes. Is not goodness higher than truth, and are not the men that are content to devote themselves to becoming wise more numerous than those that are content to devote themselves to becoming pure? And, topmost of all, is there anything to be compared with the gifts that are held out to us in that great Saviour and in His message? And is there anything that the mass of men pass by with more unanimous refusal than the offered feast which the great King of humanity has provided for His subjects? What is ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... will of brain or joy of soul in the task of the day. There has been a time in the story of mankind when hand and brain worked together. In every monument of the past on this English soil, even at the topmost point of springing arch or lofty pillar, is tracery and carving as careful and cunning as if all eyes were to see and judge it as the central point and test of the labor done. Has the nineteenth century, with its progress ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... streamed through the little window and fell directly upon the pile of newspapers he had brought from the kitchen and thrown on the floor. His glance chanced to rest for an instant upon the topmost paper of the pile. It was a New York journal which devotes two of its inside pages to happenings in society. When he threw it down it had unfolded so that one of these pages lay uppermost. Absently, scarcely realizing that he was doing ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... leafage, impervious to sunlight, covers the Isle of Timana, creating a region of perpetual dimness from western beach to eastern precipice, where orchids cling and palms peer on rocks below. All the vegetation is matted and interwoven, only the topmost branches of the milkwood escaping from the clinging, aspiring vines. Tradition asserts that not many years since Timana was much favoured by nutmeg pigeons, now sparsely represented; but the varied honey-eater and a friar bird possessing a most mellow and fluty note, cockatoos and metallic ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... who air raisin this row, & who in the fust place startid it, I'm 'shamed of you. The Showman blushes for you, from his boots to the topmost hair upon ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... him well. The oak on which he had mounted was one of the tallest in that quarter of the wood, and easily out-topped its neighbours by a fathom and a half; and when Dick had clambered into the topmost fork and clung there, swinging dizzily in the great wind, he saw behind him the whole fenny plain as far as Kettley, and the Till wandering among woody islets, and in front of him the white line of high-road winding through the forest. The boat had been righted—it ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... drifted up some 2-3 feet to windward. Just by the side two pairs of ski sticks, or the topmost half of them, appeared over the snow, and a bamboo which proved to be the mast ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... deep. Advancing cautiously to the smooth edge of the chasm, I seized hold of a spruce-tree and looked down. Below lay one of those grim glimpses which the earth holds hidden, save from the eagle and the mid-day sun. Caught in a dark prison of stupendous cliffs, hollowed beneath so that the topmost ledge literally hung over the boiling abyss of water, the river foamed and lashed against rock and precipice. The rocks at the base held the record of its wrath in great trunks of trees, and blocks of ice lying piled and smashed in shapeless ruin. It is difficult to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... tinkled and plashed over the stones on its way to the near-by Catawba; and its peaceful brawling, and the evensong of a pair of clear-throated warblers poised on the topmost twigs of one of the trees, should have been sweet music in the ears of a returned exile. But on that matchless bride's-month evening of dainty sunset arabesques and brook and bird songs, I was in little ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... by hitting my nose against the wall," he admits in the "Note-Books." Who would not enjoy seeing a monarch come to so humble a contact with the bulwarks of his tower? Especially if he were royal enough not to take offense at one's mirth, as this one never did. Reaching the topmost heights of the stone pile, shaggy with yellow moss, we eagerly pressed to the battlements and drank in the view, finding all Florence spread out before us, far down from the breeze and light and prospect of our perch,—understanding ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... gullied by scores of impromptu rivulets, could glimpse the broad river billowing and raging, the cattle huddling terrified in the pastures, the woods swaying and writhing in deathlike grapple. The wind hurled by them in a thousand moods and tones, all angry; a fine, high shrieking on its topmost note—a hoarse snarl—a lull, as though the straining monster were pausing to catch its breath—then a roaring, sweeping onrush as if bent on irresistible destruction. And on top of this glare, this rage, was the thousandfold crackle, rattle, ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... gradually into the abyss beneath, and the branches of trees and bushes were broken by its weight. Then the hunters roused themselves: three of the longest ladders were brought and bound together; the topmost ring of these ladders would just reach the edge of the rock which hung over the abyss, but no farther. The point beneath which the eagle's nest lay sheltered was much higher, and the sides of the rock were as smooth as a wall. ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... my ardours: thou wast the deep glen; Thou wast the mountain-top, the sage's pen, The poet's harp, the voice of friends, the sun; Thou wast the river, thou wast glory won; Thou wast my clarion's blast, thou wast my steed, My goblet full of wine, my topmost deed: Thou wast the charm ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... the Islet of the Calf, here rent wildly into deep black chasms, there lying low under long sweeping acclivities of grass and heath. No sound rose, no light was visible, on either shore. The black lines of the topmost masts of the wreck looked shadowy and faint in the darkening mystery of the sky; the land breeze had dropped; the small shoreward waves fell noiseless: far or near, no sound was audible but the cheerless bubbling of the broken water ahead, pouring through the ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... mist that hangs over the river—pale as the feet of the morning, and silver as the wings of the dawn. As the shadow of a rose in a mirror of silver, as the shadow of a rose in a water-pool, so was the rose that blossomed on the topmost spray of ...
— The Happy Prince and Other Tales • Oscar Wilde
... through a maze of squares and streets southwards. At last Rice stopped before a house in a terrace of smoke-begrimed tenements, and led the way inside. They mounted flight after flight of stairs, pausing at last before a door on the topmost floor. Rice threw it open, and motioned his companion ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... for his life. He sought the highest mountain and climbed to the top of the highest pine-tree. Still the waters pursued him. They rose higher and higher. What could he do? He broke off a few of the topmost branches, and made a raft upon which he got and saved himself. He saved also a number of the animals that were kicking and struggling in the water all around him. At length he bethought himself of making a new world. How should he do it? Could he but procure a little of the old world ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... took a wild step forward, the stair bucked and she stepped firmly backward and sat down violently on Sara's head. Pen and Jim roared with the crowd. The red-headed woman scrambled to the topmost stair again, then turned and shook her ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... been in her interests. She was never an independent State; her historical traditions do not move her to play a political part in Europe. Besides, her population is mixed. The Swedish element constitutes only the topmost layer, and is not powerful enough to move toward an independent existence or toward union with the Power which belongs to the same race as that layer, while the mass of Finns, dreading the oppression of the Swedish party, is drawn more to Russia by the simple instinct of self-preservation. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... used a long handled picker, so as not to bruise the fruit. Laddie helped with everything through the day, worked at his books at night, and whenever he stepped outside he looked in the direction of Pryors'. He climbed to the topmost limbs of the trees with a big basket, picked it full and let it down with a long piece of clothesline. I loved to be in the orchard when they were working; there were plenty of summer apples to eat yet; it was fun to watch the men, and sometimes I could be useful by handing baskets ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... a squirrel on the ground, he is not long in getting to the topmost branch of the highest tree, so perfectly is he adapted for "rising" ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... wore the Bennett medal for saving the life of a woman at the disastrous fire in the old "World" building, on January 31, 1882. The ladder upon which he stood was too short. Riding upon the topmost rung, he bade the woman jump, and caught and held ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... class, exactly like its neighbors, which lined both sides of the dingy street. The door was always open, more than half the time hanging by one hinge, the stairways were dark and crooked, the rooms small and dirty. In a back kitchen on the topmost floor, a man sat, or rather huddled, in a chair drawn close to the stove. His eyes were closed and his head drooped wearily against the back of the chair. That last spell of coughing had been unusually ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... the glory of them; they saw his life in danger; they saw him at last expire in agonies, though they believed that, had he so willed it, no danger could harm him, and that had he thrown himself from the topmost pinnacle of the temple he would have been softly received in the arms of ministering angels. Witnessing his sufferings, and convinced by the miracles they saw him work that they were voluntarily ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... construction. In Pfeffel's Viva et Accurata Delineatio of the palaces and public buildings of Vienna, 1725 (oblong folio,) the palace faces a wide place or square. Eighteen sculptured human figures, apparently of the size of life, there grace the topmost ballustrade in the copper-plate view ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... was all astir now, resounding with the chirping of birds and the rustling of squirrels. The refrain of the birds in the hedge of wild roses was repeated from the topmost branches of the century-old oak-trees; the branches shook and bent under the sudden rush of winged creatures; and while the last of the shadows faded away, and the night-birds with silent, heavy flight hurried to their mysterious shelters, a lark suddenly rises from the field with its wings wide-spread, ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... more, gave wings to our most sombre hours, and put a point on the imagination. As for the superstition of the tales of ceilidh and buaile-mhart I have little to say. Perhaps the dullest among us scarce credited the giant and dwarf; but the Little Folks are yet on our topmost hills. ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... New York there was practising, at that time, a lawyer by the name of Bansemer. His office, on the topmost floor of a dingy building in the lower section of the city, was not inviting. On leaving the elevator, one wound about through narrow halls and finally peered, with more or less uncertainty and misgiving, at the half-obliterated sign which ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... later days he grew more and more unsure of himself, as he felt compelled to work at his topmost speed. His Journal for 1829 has the following record in regard to a review he was writing: "I began to warm in my gear, and am about to awake the whole controversy of Goth and Celt. I wish I may not make some careless blunders."[379] The criticisms of "J.B." became more frequent and ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... Fat and full-fed; their kine, as home they wind, The lagging traveller of his rest remind! With might and main their fallows let them till: Till comes the seedtime, and cicalas trill (Hid from the toilers of the hot midday In the thick leafage) on the topmost spray! O'er shield and spear their webs let spiders spin, And none so much as name the battle-din! Then Hiero's lofty deeds may minstrels bear Beyond the Scythian ocean-main, and where Within those ample walls, with asphalt made Time-proof, ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... them anyway." The young woman in blue serge made one last effectual dive into the depths of excelsior, the topmost billows of which were surging untidily over the edge of a big crate in the middle of the basement floor, and secured a nest of blue and rose colored teacups, which she proceeded to unwrap lovingly and display on a convenient packing box. "Not ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... think, and others work. They did both; and, through their strenuous efforts, ere the early buds of spring had given a palpable green tinge to the shrubs and trees that clothed the slopes of the hills and dotted the valley of Minturne Creek here and there, or the snow had quite vanished from the topmost mountain peaks, and the river that ran through the gulch subsided down into its proper proportions, all traces of the storm ravages had been cleared away, and the snug little camp of the Boston exploring party looked itself again, "as neat and ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... cut firewood. The giant carried a club in place of an axe, and when they came to a large birch-tree he asked Ashpot whether he would like to club the tree down or climb up and hold the top of it. The boy thought that the latter would suit him best, and he soon got up to the topmost branches and held on to them. But the giant gave the tree such a blow with his club as to knock it right out of the ground, sending Ashpot flying across the meadows into a marsh. Luckily he landed on soft ground, ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... fronting the modern villas close on the margin of the sea. At another point, a wooden tower of observation, crowned by the figure-head of a wrecked Russian vessel, rises high above the neighboring houses, and discloses through its scuttle-window grave men in dark clothing seated on the topmost story, perpetually on the watch—the pilots of Aldborough looking out from their tower for ships in want of help. Behind the row of buildings thus curiously intermingled runs the one straggling street of the town, with its sturdy pilots' cottages, its mouldering marine ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... hidden by the black throng, and still the crowds arrived, seating themselves row behind row on the wild thyme and heather. The topmost corner of the field merged into a rocky wilderness of stunted heath and patches of burnt grass, studded with harebells, and this unapportioned piece of ground stretched away into the adjoining corner of the Vicar's long meadow. In the afternoon ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... they exhibit a wonderful diversity of external characters, considering that all seem equally adapted to a purely arboreal life. In the howlers we have a specially developed voice organ, which is altogether peculiar; in the spider monkeys we find the adaptation to active motion among the topmost branches of the forest trees carried to an extreme point of development; while the singular nocturnal monkeys, the active squirrel monkeys, and the exquisite little marmosets, show how distinct are the forms under which the same general type, may ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... chosen seat; And Pity, at the dark and stormy hour Of midnight, when the moon is hid on high, Keeps her love watch upon the topmost tower, And turns her ear to each expiring cry, Blest if her aid some fainting wretch might save, And snatch him, cold and speechless, from ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various
... quantity to make it quite thick, add salt if desired, and a half cup of sweet cream, mix well, and bake for twenty minutes. Or, fill a pudding dish with alternate layers of peeled and sliced tomatoes and bread crumbs, letting the topmost layer be of tomatoes. Cover, and bake in a moderate oven for an hour or longer, according to depth. Uncover, and brown for ten ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... Sekhet-Aaru, or Elysian Fields, which is given in the Papyrus of Anhai, [Footnote: Brit. Mus., No. 10,472.] a priestess of Amen who lived probably about B.C. 1000. Here we see the deceased entering into the topmost section of the district and addressing two divine persons; above one of these are written the words "her mother," followed by the name Neferitu. The form which comes next is probably that of her father, and thus we are sure that the Egyptians believed ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... temples and ears, her pink, clean cheeks, her little dark-brown, scintillating eyes, and her firm red mouth, made all the firmer by the position of her chin upon her hand. As ever, her round, strong neck was swathed high and tight in white satin; but between the topmost fold of the satin and the rose of one small ear-lobe was a little triangle of white skin, that was partly her neck and partly her cheek, and that Condy knew should be softer than down, smoother than satin, ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... note here for reference the signification of one of the hieroglyphs in the right-hand half of Fig. 52, i. e., in that half which contains only writing. The topmost chiffre is undoubtedly the name, or part of the name, of the principal figure represented in the other half. It is in pure picture-writing; that is, it expresses the sum of his attributes. It has the crotalus mask, ...
— Studies in Central American Picture-Writing • Edward S. Holden
... comes from its own path, for were two to proceed from the same path, they would destroy the whole world. It hath never happened that a path hath been misplaced. Should I, then, have mistaken Job for another? The gazelle gives birth to her young on the topmost point of a rock, and it would fall into the abyss and be crushed to death, if I did not send an eagle thither to catch it up and carry it to its mother. Were the eagle to appear a minute earlier or later than the appointed time, the little gazelle would perish. ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... the ocean which gave them birth in its far-separated divisions of Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic. The sun sank slowly behind the range and darkness began to fall on the immense plain, but aloft on the topmost edge the pure white of the jagged crest-line glowed for an instant in many-coloured silver, and then the lonely ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... boughs, spanning a trench, thickly planted with roots of the Tara, like alligators, or Hollanders, reveling in the soft alluvial. Strolling on, the wild beauty of the mountains excited our attention. The topmost crags poured over with vines; which, undulating in the air, seemed leafy cascades; ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... and shadowy below. One by one the stars died out as the yellow turned to a deeper glow that shot forth in long streamers, the rosy fingers of the dawn, from the horizon to the zenith. Cold and ghostly lay the snows on the mighty cone; till at last there came upon their topmost slope, six thousand feet above us, a sudden blush of pink. Swiftly it floated down the eastern face, and touched and kindled the rocks just above us. Then the sun flamed out, and in a moment the Araxes valley ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... inserted, and from the top of that, along another passage, is the small chamber discovered by Mr. Davison; its height is only three feet six inches; above it are four other similar niches, discovered by Colonel Howard Vyse, the topmost of which is angular. Wilkinson supposes that the sole purpose of these chambers is to relieve the pressure on the King's Chamber, and here was discovered the cartouche containing the name of the founder, Suphis, identical with that found upon the tablets in Wady ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... make, Wherein the quiet waters sank to sleep,— And, whatso'er was prison'd in that keep, A monstrous Snake was warden:—round and round In sable ringlets I beheld him creep Blackest amid black shadows to the ground, Whilst his enormous head, the topmost turret crown'd. ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... a low cry of joy, for the dark cloud ahead of them was a high mountainous land, whose topmost points were beginning to blush with the first touches of the sun that was ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... before the eyes of the proudest and fairest mothers and daughters of New Orleans, glaringly, on the open Plaza, the Creole whom Joseph had met by the graves in the field, Honore Grandissime, the uttermost flower on the topmost branch of the tallest family tree ever transplanted from France to Louisiana, Honore,—the worshiped, the magnificent,—in the broad light of the sun's going down, rode side by side with the Yankee ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... she was able to leap away unobserved through the topmost branches of the trees, and after putting several miles between herself and their camp, she ultrophoned a full report to her Contact Boss back in the Wyoming Valley. My own Ultrophone Field Boss picked up the message and brought the graph record of it to ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... gray eclipse Of late but pushed their topmost plume, Or felt with green-touched finger-tips For ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... wax'd hotter—"Speak out, lad, say, Must we fall in that canting caitiff's power? Shall we yield to a knave and a turncoat? Nay, I had liever leap from our topmost tower. For a while we can surely await relief; Our walls are high and our doors are strong." This Kerr was indeed a canting thief— I know not rightly, some private wrong He had done Sir Hugh, but I know this much, Traitor or turncoat, he ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... on his way too; and if he was merry before, he was now ten times more so. He had not gone far before he met an old miser: close by them stood a tree, and on the topmost twig sat a thrush singing away most joyfully. 'Oh, what a pretty bird!' said the miser; 'I would give a great deal of money to have such a one.' 'If that's all,' said the countryman, 'I will soon ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... Rob. And, divesting himself of his cartridge-belt and jacket, a little later he began to make his way up to the topmost branches of the tall spruce, breaking off the dead limbs as he slowly ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... rather to stand and move about there, for at that time I did not like to sit anywhere but on the grass or the oaken bench. The old poets were there in rich binding, all the classics, and the choicest specimens of modern literature. There were light, airy, movable steps, so as to reach to the topmost shelves, and there I loved to poise myself, like a bird on the spray, peeping into this book and that, gathering here and there a golden grain or sweet scented flower for the garner of thought, or the ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... expectations. Age had not withered him, nor could custom stale his infinite variety in half an hour. His pleasant neatness and compactness, his small hands and feet, his teeming ready brain, his unaffected accessibility, and a certain fine apprehensiveness which stamped him as susceptible from his topmost hair to his tipmost toe, proved irresistible. Clara talked of nothing else for weeks and weeks afterwards. And as she happened to talk to the lady of the furniture shop, and that lady also desired above ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... arrangement previously made with Ashton. In the office were portraits of police commissioners and the chiefs and others who had been connected with the department for many years. Entering an elevator we were soon on the topmost floor where were the cells in which prisoners just arrested and waiting for trial were confined. The doors of the cells, all of iron, were opened or closed by moving a lever. It was now about 9:30 P.M., and officers were bringing in such persons as had been arrested for theft, ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... boughs which cast them. There is something subtle and fantastic about these shadows. Here is a leafless larch-sapling, eight feet high. The image of the lower boughs is traced upon the snow, distinct and firm as cordage, while the higher ones grow dimmer by fine gradations, until the slender topmost twig is blurred and almost effaced. But the denser upper spire of the young spruce by its side throws almost as distinct a shadow as its base, and the whole figure looks of a more solid texture, as if you could feel it with your hand. More ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... from them, children are learning to consider essentials. The "knowingness" of some of our children on subjects connected with dress is simply appalling. A girl of eight or ten summers will take you in at a glance, from topmost plume to boot-tap, by items and collectively, analytically and synthetically. She discourses, in technical terms, of the fall of your drapery,—the propriety of your trimmings, and the effect of this, ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz
... he said; "I can show you something," and he unlocked the door of a cabin. There appeared to be nothing in it but a huge piece of tarpaulin, which depended, bulging, from the topmost bunk. He pulled it up. The lower bunk had been removed, and in its place was the ugly body ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... I sure my Dear to view, I'd climb that Pine-Trees topmost Bough, Aloft in Air that quivering plays, And round and round ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... ammunitions, and provisions, were housed roomily, rose the enormous trunk full forty feet in girth, towering like some tall lighthouse, smooth for a hundred feet, then crowned with boughs, each of which was a stately tree, whose topmost twigs were full two hundred and fifty feet from the ground. And yet it was easy for the sailors to ascend; so many natural ropes had kind Nature lowered for their use, in the smooth lianes which hung to the very earth, often without a knot or leaf. Once in the tree, you were within ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... the fields again, past the barb-wire boundary line, across the river, and up among the foot-hills, leading to the mountain close at hand. When the topmost crest was reached I stopped for a last look at the Yegnare Valley, at San Francisco lying below, at San Morano farther in the distance, at the mountain looming up in the background, beyond which lies Tegacigalpa, and then I turned with strengthened spirit to the ...
— Six Days on the Hurricane Deck of a Mule - An account of a journey made on mule back in Honduras, - C.A. in August, 1891 • Almira Stillwell Cole
... the garden near our house, under the chestnut trees, deep in the shade. The full moon could not pierce the closely woven foliage. All her beams were caught on the topmost boughs which waved in silver. A lovely night to stain with murder! Oh me! ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... oak tree resting, I heard a roundelay, The nightingale was singing On the oak tree's topmost ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... court, 70 feet square, of the topmost story, is open to the sky, but the original intention was to provide a light dome, presumably similar to that built a little later to crown the mausoleum of Itimad-ud-daula. Finch, the traveller, who was at Agra about 1611, was informed that ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... of these trees. The trees themselves were split as by lightning, or torn in half, as with your hands you could tear apart a loaf of bread. Through some, solid shell had passed, leaving clean holes. Others looked as though drunken woodsmen with axes from roots to topmost branches had slashed them in crazy fury. Some shells had broken the trunks in half as a ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... very hard temples, with the knotty oak. With his oak, {too}, he levels Nedymnus, and Lycotas the darter, and Hippasus having his breast covered with his flowing beard, and Ripheus, who towered above the topmost woods, and Tereus, who used to carry home the bears, caught in the Haemonian mountains, alive ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... fallen to musing again, and it is doubtful if he heard her. He saw before him immense, primeval forests, black, shadowy; vast, sluggish rivers, above which hung a thick and fever-laden air; trees from whose topmost branches swung gorgeous, ephemeral flowers; and then long stretches of yellow beach, where a brazen ocean tumbled and hissed. Then many cities, squalid and splendid, colorful and fantastic as the erection of a dream, and through all these he saw himself ever passing, appearing and ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... not without its effect. In a deep, leafy covert I concealed my poor dying patient, "earthy, and of the earth"—literally, in every sense—but the squirrel still enjoyed its sequestered home on the topmost branch of an English walnut-tree, from which it cheerfully, but cautiously, descended at my call when I went out to carry it almonds or filberts from the dessert (invariably served with wine to my father, who, in observance of his English custom, sat alone some moments ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... give up her mouth to his kisses, her tiny warm dove's body to his arms. Never in all the forty-five intervening years had he seen such a wall on such a night, its base in velvety darkness and its topmost half shining ghostly as plaster does in moonlight, without his hands remembering the queer pleasure it had been to crush crisp muslin, without his heart remembering the joy it had been to coax from primness its first consent to kisses. Before he could reproach himself ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... embodied in the clock and case which now filled, fitting to a nicety, the niche in the back wall. Outwardly there was nothing very unusual about the clock itself. A gilt box enclosing the mechanism and carrying the plain white face, the hands at twelve, occupied the topmost third of the case, which was of thick plate-glass bound and backed with gilt metal. There was no apparent means of opening the case. From what one could see, however, the workmanship was perfect, exquisite. The compensating pendulum alone was ornamented—with a conventional ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... triumph. From Rio he went to London, and on his first appearance he captured his Covent Garden audience. When he made his first appearance in the United States he was already at the top of the operatic ladder, and, although many attempts to dislodge him have been made, he stands still on the topmost rung. ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... were the family portraits. On the topmost row, crowding a line of old canvases depicting evangelists and martyrs in semblance of a frieze, were the most ancient Febrers, venerable merchants of Majorca, painted some centuries after their death, ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of God's holiest charge, The minister of praise at large, Which thou mayst now receive; From thy blest mansion hail and hear, From topmost eminence appear To this ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... with energy—often elemental, volcanic energy that nothing can resist; and at its lowest, the energy is the energy of robust health and a keen appetite. That energy carried him far beyond the modest goal he thought of, exceeding his fellows. He won the topmost heights within the reach of man. The old polyphonists he never tried to rival, but in the style of music he wrote no composer has gone or can go higher than he. A wiseacre has said that he left a sterile monument. It may be that monuments in the British Museum blow and blossom and reproduce their ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... pronouncing these words, there followed a tumult over head, as if heaven and earth were coming together. The trees in their topmost branches bended to their very roots. It seemed as if the whole forest were peopled with devils, making a crash like a thousand waggons, hurrying to the right and the left, before and behind, in every possible direction, with thunder and lightning, and the continual discharge of great cannon. Hell ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... with gun and traps. Would he have anticipated the swift rising storm and regained the shelter of the stout old fort? With the boom of falling trees going on about them, with the fiery crackle of the blazing light as it hit the topmost branches of the adjacent forest, he wondered and hoped, and feared for the old man in ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... Commons, Monday, March 9.—When on conclusion of Questions the PRIME MINISTER rose to move Second Reading of Home Rule Bill, House presented appearance seen only once or twice in lifetime of a Parliament. Chamber crowded from floor to topmost bench of Strangers' Gallery. Members who could not find seats made for the side galleries, filling both rows two deep. Still later comers patiently stood at the Bar throughout the full hour occupied by the historic speech. A group more ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various
... knew it, and I grew calmer, presently. The roughness of the going helped me to do that, for it took all a man's wits and faculties to grope his way along the path we were following now. Indeed, it was no path at all that led us to the Pimple—the topmost point of Vimy Ridge, which changed hands half a dozen times in the few minutes of bloody fighting that had gone on here ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... conclusion forced itself on the untaught mind. The flocks which strayed in heaven were no earthly sheep, but were the property of spiritual beings, and were themselves perhaps spiritual; the swans which flew aloft, far above the topmost peak of the Himalaya, were no ordinary swans, but were divine and heavenly. The wolf which howled so wildly in the long winter night, the hounds, whose bay sounded so. dismally through the shaking black forest, were no mundane wolves ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... a huntsman came along with four hounds. The cat sprang trembling into a tree, and crept stealthily up to the topmost branch, where she was entirely hidden ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... was in every respect as complete a triumph as the first. The audience numbered upward of SEVEN THOUSAND, filling the vast amphitheatre to the topmost circles of the gallery. The sight of that dense sea of heads, from either extremity of the balcony, reminded us of one of Martin's grand, gloomy pictures, and the resemblance was further increased by the semi-oriental appearance of ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... keep young, he thought. Fat chance they had of getting old. Who ever heard of an old war pilot? Ha! That's a good one! And here's a double row of tall poplars fringing the road directly ahead. Hold her close to the ground and then zoom her at the last minute ... landing gears just clearing the topmost branches ... make it, and that's hedge hopping. Fail to make ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... was splendid and of exceeding speed, so that when all the rest were powerless to cross the river it alone stemmed the roaring eddy without weariness. This rapid comes down in so swift and sheer a volume that animals often lose all power of swimming in it, and perish. For, trickling from the topmost crests of the hills, it comes down the steep sides, catches on the rocks, and is shattered, falling into the deep valleys with a manifold clamour of waters; but, being straightway rebuffed by the rocks that bar the way, it keeps the speed of its current ever at the same even pace. And so, ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... I would keep my head clear and my feet steady enough to venture a dance with him. The constantly suspicious attitude of my mind, to be sure, interfered with my pleasure very considerably. I was in a too observant mood to float on the topmost wave of enjoyment, and besides an extraordinary disquietude had seized upon me, a contraction about the heart that was quite new to me, such as sensitive people undergo before a storm or in anticipation of momentous ...
— The Gray Nun • Nataly Von Eschstruth
... draughty, odorous, and gloomy. Beyond the extinguished footlights they could see the curved enormous cavern of the house, row upon row of empty seats. In the orchestra box two or three men, one in his coat sleeves, were disputing over an opera score. High up in the topmost gallery some one was experimenting with the calcium machine; a fan of light occasionally swept the house, or a man's profile was silhouetted against ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... feeling that the cardinal struck a truer and deeper note; while both together did not hinder me from hearing the faint songs of grasshopper sparrows rising from the ground on either side of the lane. It was a fine contrast: the mocker flooding the air from the topmost bough, and the sparrows whispering their few almost inaudible notes out of the grass. Yes, and at the self-same moment the eye also had its contrast; for a marsh hawk was skimming over the field, while up in the sky ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... of the "blue skippers" that look like periwinkles blown to life. A bee shot past him so quickly that the thrum of it sounded short as a twanged string, and the next moment a late foxglove spire, naked save for its topmost bell, quivered beneath the onslaught of the arched brown and yellow body. The heat haze shimmered on the distant horizon like an insect's wing, but was tempered on the moorland height by the capricious wind, and Ishmael kept ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... domes of quivering leaves contrasted with the columnar aisles of the banyan fig. They admired the old monarchs of the forest, bearded to the waist with hangings of moss, the flowing creepers delicately climbing from the lower branches to the topmost shoots, and the cordage of llianas stretching from trunk to trunk like bridges for the monkeys to pass over. Then they issued into a clear space dotted with asokas bearing rich crimson fiowers, cliterias of azure blue, madhavis exhibiting petals ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton |
