"Acme" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gentleman, feeling the hand of a thief in his pocket, turned suddenly round and caught him in the act, exclaiming, "Who are you?" The mob which gathered round applauded to the very echo, and thought it the most capital joke they had ever heard, the very acme of wit, the very essence of humour. Another circumstance of a similar kind gave an additional fillip to the phrase, and infused new life and vigour into it just as it was dying away. The scene occurred ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... social equal of the allied peoples. The goal of Honor, he had attained in every war waged by America. He was with Jackson at New Orleans, a pioneer in the Mexican struggle, 200,000 strong in the great civil crisis, the acme of terror to Geronimo in the later Indian wars, the hero of San Juan in the Spanish-American combat, and at Carrizal in the latest Mexican imbroglio. By 1914, however, he had lost all rewards of honor which he had previously won. ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... toward the river, as though disliking very much to give up when the acme of the sport ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... a time when the bicycle marked the acme of progress and Bryan could be a hero, in a flat-roofed Texas town, whose intellectual glory was a Baptist college and whose answer to arguments, "ropes and revolvers," Brann wrote for only three years, and wrote as Shakespeare wrote, unmindful ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... was in the terrace; then I would stroll in alone, take a seat alone, and show a desire to be alone. They have a very clever way of serving strawberries at the Carlton. A vine, growing from ten to twelve large luscious berries is brought on in a silver pot. It is the acme of luxury. You pick the fresh berries from the vine on your table, the Terrace supplies quantities of cream, and you pay half a sovereign—$2.50—for a dish of strawberries. One dish is enough for the average customer. Every afternoon ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... accepted his offer without hesitation, and, burning to distinguish myself as an anatomical expert with the brush, I gave instruction to our family butcher to send me, as a model to study from, a kidney, which was to be the acme of goriness and as repulsive in appearance as possible. Of this piece of uncooked meat I made a quite pre-Raphaelite study in water-colours, but so realistic was the result that the effect it had upon me was the very antithesis ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... probably America's greatest manufacturing exploit. And this democratization of the automobile comprises more than the acme of efficiency in the manufacturing art. The career of Henry Ford has a symbolic significance as well. It may be taken as signalizing the new ideals that have gained the upper hand in American industry. We began this review of American business with Cornelius Vanderbilt ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... alliance between it and orthodoxy deepened my distrust of what was known about me as religion. As the struggle between slavery and freedom deepened, this feeling of mine increased. During my first year at college the fugitive-slave law was passed, and this seemed to me the acme of abominations. There were, it is true, a few religious men who took high ground against slavery; but these were generally New England Unitarians or members of other bodies rejected by the orthodox, and this fact increased my distrust of ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... tilting-matches cost no lives, and seldom broke bones. They were chiefly opportunities for the display of brilliant enamelled and gilt armour, at the very acme of cumbrous magnificence; and of equally gorgeous embroidery spread out over the vast expanse provided by elephantine Flemish horses. Even if the weapons had not been purposely blunted, and if the champions had really desired to slay one another, they would have found the task very difficult, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... though Damascus swarmed with Laurellas. Nothing in the dreams of Madame Carson, or Madame Camille, or Madame Devey, nothing in the blazoned pages of the Almanachs des Dames and Belle Assemblee, ever approached the Mdlles. Laurella, on a day of festival. It was the acme. Nothing could be conceived beyond it; nobody could equal it. It was taste exaggerated, if that be possible; fashion baffling pursuit, if that be permitted. It was a union of the highest moral and ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... phylogenetic studies. So far as the known record can inform us, the trilobites are exclusively Palaeozoic in distribution, but their course must have begun long before that era, as is shown by the number of distinct types among the genera of the lower Cambrian. The group reached the acme of abundance and relative importance in the Cambrian and Ordovician; then followed a long, slow decline, ending in complete and final disappearance before the end of the Permian. The newly-hatched ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... by a slender meal of biscuits, got their skates, and went out across the rimy meadows, past patient cows breathing clouds of steam, to Wickens's pond. Here, to their surprise, was Smilash, on electro-plated acme skates, practicing complicated figures with intense diligence. It soon appeared that his skill came short of his ambition; for, after several narrow escapes and some frantic staggering, his calves, elbows, and occiput smote the ice almost simultaneously. On rising ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... they use this latter is curious, and worthy of notice. Not satisfied with the ordinary "cutty" of the whites, they inhale it in volumes through a bamboo cane. The effect is a profound stupefaction, which appears to be their acme of enjoyment. On the morning of the 5th, taking with them their younger brother, John Jardine, and their two guides, Harricome and Monuwah, and the five fresh horses, in addition to their own, the Brothers started to return to the cattle ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... But the Acme Film Company, caught with the rest of the world in the pressure of hard times, wanted to economize. The manager had pointed out to Luck, during the course of an evening's discussion, that these Indians ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... be crouching near, hunting as well as hunted. Not that the pair of ruffians who had been thus hired would have hesitated for that thought, as I imagine. For it is strange, yet certain, that the zenith of courage and the acme of villainy can alike be bought for the price of a lady's glove. Among such outcasts as those from whom Bauer drew his recruits the murder of a man is held serious only when the police are by, and death at the hands of him they seek ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... which remains to me in this beautiful world of God's making, where each moment tells its own tale of active, progressive life in which there is no undoing. Nature knows naught of the web of Penelope, that acme of anxious pathetic waiting, but goes steadily on in ever widening circle towards the fulfilment ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... informed by his mother's spirit. The result in his expression was an absolute ferocity instead of severity of gloom, a fury of resentment against his fate, instead of that bitter leaning towards it which is the acme of defiance. ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... a brilliant toilet. She was adorned with diamonds and costly jewelry, and looked as beautiful and proud as a queen. She had now reached the acme of her career. She was still lovely, and besides she had become, as it were, the protectress of the most refined society of Vienna and the centre of the intellectual as well as aristocratic circles. She had accomplished ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... split up, long ago, into cliques, and we all became so select, that, at last, we reduced each clique to one member. Behold the very acme of selectness!" Hadria stood before them, in an attitude ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... chosen people to be oppressed? The Hellenistic writers of Sibylline oracles and the Hebrew writers of Apocalypses, imitating the doom-songs of Isaiah and Ezekiel, announced the coming overthrow of evil and the triumph of good. Evil had reached its acme in Nero, and the time had come when God would break the "fourth horn" of Daniel's vision (ch. 8), and exalt ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... day's adventure had been merely the acme of unpleasantness. Now something more sinister entered into it. He made certain that he had found the place where the water-hole should be. Then he sat down. His ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... for his purpose. Sumner's end has always seemed to me most pitiful. Removed from his high position as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate, followed relentlessly by the enmity of President Grant, than at the very acme of his fame; drifting from the Republican party, his own State repudiating him, Charles Sumner died ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... are long quarto lines, let us multiply them by some three to get the equivalent of the "skipping octosyllables." There will remain fifty to a hundred and fifty, with, in the prose, some extra matter not in the verse. But the acme of the contrast is reached in these words of the prose, which answer to some forty lines of the poet's watering-out. "Great was the joy that they made each other that night, for long had each suffered for the other. And when the day came, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... presented Jim as always the same quiet character, easy, slow, silent, lovable. In his brother cowboy, however, we had discovered in addition to his fine, frank, friendly spirit, an overwhelming fondness for playing tricks. This boyish mischievousness, distinctly Arizonian, reached its acme whenever it tended in the direction of ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... woman who tears herself regretfully from the artful temptations of the shop-window. As she hurried along, the Marquis de Monpavon, vivacious and superb, with a flower in his buttonhole, saluted her at a distance with the grand flourish of the hat so dear to the vanity of woman, the acme of elegance in the way of street salutations, the hat raised high in air above a rigid head. She answered with the polite greeting of the true Parisian, hardly expressed by an imperceptible movement ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... throats and shed the blood of the righteous with a satanic fury. Such blasphemous, sacrilegious and parricidal doings against the kingdom and name of God, manifest as such beyond possibility of denial, they defend as the acme of justice. While contending for the maintenance of their tyrannical position they go so far as to arrogate to themselves the name of the Church. What else can we do here but cry to Jehovah to make his name sacred and not to permit the overthrow of his ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... certain local characteristics, as the swelling of the joints in acute rheumatism, the sore-throat in scarlatina, or the eruption on the skin in smallpox, and their course is more or less strictly limited by distinct periods of increase, acme, and decline. No such rule obtains in the case of consumption, scrofula, and rickets, which are instances of chronic constitutional diseases. In them too the local manifestations of the general disease vary also: the lungs being ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... by singing at this time. The reason for encouraging the boy to keep on singing is, of course, that the choirmaster, having trained a voice for a number of years, dislikes losing it when it is at the very acme of brilliancy. For this feeling he can hardly be blamed, for the most important condition of successful work by a male choir is probably permanency of membership; and the leader must exercise every wile to keep the boys in, once they have become useful ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... night off, and they went, the three of them, to the movies that evening. To Mrs. Boyd the movies was the acme of dissipation. She would, if warned in advance, spend the entire day with her hair in curlers, and once there she feasted her starved romantic soul to repletion. But that night the building was stifling, and without any warning Edith suddenly got up and walked toward the ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... for?" I asked, utterly at a loss to account for proceedings which seemed to me the acme of folly. "He must know that the commune cannot be started here in Brittany! Speed, what is that ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... have come very slowly," replied the younger man with a calmness that struck the other as the acme of effrontery. "My light has been burning for ten minutes ... but I don't make out how you saw my window if you came from ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... perhaps, just. It may be said with truth that man is always susceptible of improvement, or that there never has been, or will be, a period of his history, in which he can be said to have reached his possible acme of perfection. Yet it does not by any means follow from this, that our efforts to improve man will always succeed, or even that he will ever make, in the greatest number of ages, any extraordinary strides towards perfection. The only inference ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... drops to prisms that glow and burn and flash with all manner of colored fires, which change and change again with inconceivable rapidity from blue to red, from red to green, and green to gold—the tree becomes a spraying fountain, a very explosion of dazzling jewels; and it stands there the acme, the climax, the supremest possibility in art or nature, of bewildering, intoxicating, intolerable magnificence. One cannot make ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... warmed simultaneously, more or less, as the planet approaches or departs from the sun. It means also that about the same conditions that Secretary Deepwaters suggested as desirable for the earth, prevail here, and that Jupiter represents, therefore, about the acme of climate naturally provided. On account of its rapid rotation and vast size, the winds have a tornado's strength, but they are nothing at this distance from the sun to what they would be if a planet with its present rate of rotation and size were where Venus or even the ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... superficial observer he would seem to show signs of fatigue. But after a few minutes he undertakes some much more difficult work, and becomes so deeply absorbed in this, that he shows us he has reached the acme of his activity (additions and writing down the results). When this work is finished, his activity comes to an end in all serenity; he contemplates his handiwork for a long time, then approaches the teacher, and begins to ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... profession, once he has come to man's estate, such as being a policeman, or a performer on the high trapeze. The poet would not have been the "Peoples' Laureate," had his fairy god- mother granted his boy-wish, but the Greenfield baker. For to his childish mind it "seemed the acme of delight," using again his own happy expression, "to manufacture those snowy loaves of bread, those delicious tarts, those toothsome bon-bons. And then to own them all, to keep them in store, to watch over and guardedly exhibit. The thought of getting money for ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... whom the situation is already sufficiently trying? Why, after so much pains and expense have been employed to make the occasion beautiful and impressive, should the "practical joker" take it upon himself to spoil it all by an ill-timed "pleasantry" which is the acme of rudeness and discourtesy? It is a curious character that can enjoy perpetrating what are really outrages upon other ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... walnut. He gave them their flat-silver, too, Puritan design, for an engagement present. Think of it, mama, me having that stuck-up Irma Sinsheimer for a relation! It always made her sore when I got chums with Amy at school and got my nose in it with the Acme crowd, and—and she'll change her tune now, I guess, me marrying her ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... am here this evening is as complete a mystery to me as to you. I do not know why your Society, at whose annual meetings orators are as the sand upon the seashore for multitude, should call upon Philadelphia, a city in which the acme of eloquence is attained by a Friends' Yearly Meeting, "sitting under the canopy of silence." I can only suppose that you designed to relieve the insufferable brilliancy of your annual festival, that you wished to ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... waiting to take on board the now sleepy passengers. The railway sleeping-car is essentially an American institution. Like every other institution, it has its critics, favourable and severe. On the one hand, it is said to be the acme of comfort; on the other, the essence of unrest. But it is just what might be expected under the circumstances, neither one thing nor the other. No one in his senses would prefer to sleep in a bed which was being bornc ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... metaphors—the ship of state, guiding the helm, and the rest of it—is much more frequently expressed by military metaphors. Even the posts of duty are the "spoils" of office. The State which to Plato was a deliberately harmonised music is to us a deliberate discord, and the acme of politics, whose crowning glory should be a peaceful measure, is by the vulgar not so inaccurately regarded as attained at a General Election, the nomenclature of which positively bristles with bayonets. Seats are won as towns were of old, and, as in the days of Joshua, ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... as a negro orator, he possessed far more common sense than the old Puritan before whom he stood. He opposed his plea as the acme of absurdity. The attack on the Federal Arsenal would be treason. It would array the whole Nation against him. It would hurl the army of the United States with the militia of Virginia on ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... "Serious," Littimer cried. "The acme of audacity—yes. The telegram has just come. 'Must see you tonight on important business affecting the past. Shall hope to be with ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... approached its close and the preparation for the marriage, even the details of the settlement were narrated, suspense reached its acme. Then came the letters of reprieve, the deliverance from the bondage of Peterson's vindictive malice, the power of establishing her claim; and when she wept her thanksgiving for salvation, many wept in sympathy; while Regina, borne away in breathless admiration ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... system. My breasts bounded up and down—my buttocks were set in motion from the effect of her caressing finger, my thighs were stretched widely apart, and my whole body was under the exquisite influence of her scientific manipulations. At last the acme came, a convulsive shivering seized me, I gave two or three convulsive heaves with my buttocks, and in an agony of delight I poured down my first tribute to the ...
— The Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival - The Belle of the Delaware • Kate Percival
... been the weak bluff of one whose strength had suddenly deserted him. He had snatched at it to cover his weakness. But to the score or more who saw that spiral of smoke dissolving jauntily into air, no such thought was possible. The filmy wreath represented the acme of dare-devil recklessness, the final proof of gameness in John Beaudry's son. He had turned his back on a drunken killer crazy for revenge and mocked the fellow at the risk ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... aristocracy,—an old-world air of respectability and stake in the country, and Church-and-Stateism. The burlier of the two was even rather a beau in his way. He had first learned to dress, indeed, when Bond Street was at its acme, and Brummell in his pride. He still retained in his garb the fashion of his youth; only what then had spoken of the town, now betrayed the life of the country. His neckcloth ample and high, and of snowy whiteness, set off to comely advantage a face smooth-shaven, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the world was a dream until Drake accomplished it, so a flight round the world was the acme of every airman's ambition. It was the accident of his father's plight that crystallized in Smith's mind the desires held in suspension there. The act was sudden: the idea ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... moment of creation: two operations—animating everything, qualifying everything. Romantic invention lacking in peoples without imagination. The role of analogy and of association through "constellation."—The evolution of myths: ascension, acme, decline.—The explanatory myths undergo a radical transformation: the work of depersonification of the myth. Survivals.—The non-explanatory myths suffer a partial transformation: Literature is a fallen and rationalized mythology.—Popular imagination ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... of the chieftains that helped Herman overcome Varus, and whose names may be found five hundred years back among the Deutsch Ritters that conquered Northern Europe from heathendom, and thence all the way down to now, occurring in martial and princely connection. It was the acme of martial splendour. ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... have assumed a disguise? You are already a great noble, but your fortunes have not yet reached their acme. You will one day be Marechal de France, and the dignity will be conferred upon you on the other side of the Rhone. Beauty has great influence over you; but with those whom you seek to please your purse has ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... popularity was at its height, a gentleman, feeling the hand of a thief in his pocket, turned suddenly round, and caught him in the act, exclaiming, "Who are you?" The mob which gathered round applauded to the very echo, and thought it the most capital joke they had ever heard — the very acme of wit — the very essence of humour. Another circumstance, of a similar kind, gave an additional fillip to the phrase, and infused new life and vigour into it, just as it was dying away. The scene occurred ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... had always been accustomed to a loose and easy attire, suitable for mountain work; and the high cravats and stiff collars, powdered heads and pigtails, and tight-fitting garments, seemed to him the acme of discomfort. It was not long, however, before he came upon a group of officers, and saw that the military etiquette was no less strict, in their case, than in that of the soldiers, save that their collars were less high, and ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... describe his political career in the Assembly otherwise than by adding, that when the revolutionary furor was at its acme, he was deemed by the Committee of Public Welfare worthy of an important mission in the South. The people of Bourdeaux were, accordingly, for some time harassed by the usual effects of these visitations—imprisonments ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... kind of stuff, that, with youth, takes the place of the recently discarded nursery fiction. I think of the hundreds of women that I have loved, beginning in my early boyhood, passing through my adolescence to the acme of my powers, and even now as I stand on the verge of my desuetude! Surely some one of these many women would have been constant, if women have any constancy in their make-up. Show me a woman howling out her life on my grave, and then I'll believe Bainbridge. But I know all ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... as innocent as summer lightning through all that he said. In person he was short and broad, round-faced, ruddy-cheeked, and in truth a little inclined to be fat, though he would never confess to more than a pleasing plumpness, which was held, he said, to be the acme of manly beauty amongst the ancients. The stern test of common danger and mutual hardship entitle me to say that no man could have desired a stauncher or more trusty comrade. As he was destined to be with me in the sequel, it was but ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Oh, acme of faith! The martyrs knew that the Almighty was equal to the occasion. She knows that her husband is not; yet she trusts, or, what is the same thing here, gets trusted. Men allied to such women are soon lifted up to—attics. It ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... is the acme of finesse. He angles soft to the side-lines, stop volleys the hardest drives successfully. He picks openings with an unerring eye. His overhead lacks "punch," but is steady ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... all were singing with thorough enjoyment, and with a full and realizing consciousness of gypsyism, being greatly stimulated by my presence and sympathy. I felt that the gypsies were taking unusual pains to please the Romany rye from the dur' tem, or far country, and they had attained the acme of success by being thoroughly delighted with themselves, which is all that can be hoped for in art, where the aim is pleasure and ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... Judaism." "He offered to the great family of man a Church with a Diety at its head and a religion peculiarly of principles. He left the moral code of Christianity untouched in its loveliness. After the death of St. Paul," continues Burton, "Christianity sank into a species of idolatry. The acme of stupidity was attained by the Stylites, who conceived that mankind had no nobler end than to live and die upon the capital of a column. When things were at their worst Mohammed first appeared upon the stage of life." ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... to walk toward that grinning ogre rising out of his old nightmares. His hand was no longer on the butt of his stunner, but swung loosely at his side. He saw the coming lash, the wicked promise in those small narrowed eyes. This was Logally at the acme of his strength, when he was most to be feared, as he had continued to exist over the years in the depths of a boy-child's memory. But Logally was not alive; only in a dream ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... culminating acme of my diplomacy, I effected the purchase of the neighboring apothecary's practice and good-will for Squills, upon terms which he willingly subscribed to; for the poor man had pined at the loss of his favorite patients,—though Heaven knows they did not add much to his income. And as for my father, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... marked, and a consuming desire impelled him to spend two years in Italy (1786-1788). The rest of his years Goethe spent in Weimar, his life enriched above all else by his friendship with Schiller. In this second Weimar period Goethe reached the acme of his powers. Even his declining years, although marked by loneliness and bringing him a full measure of grief (his wife, Christiane Vulpius, whom he had met shortly after his return from Italy, died in 1816, followed ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... merging itself and getting lost in the more clearly perfect identity of Sah-luma, whom he regarded with a species of profound hero-worship such as one man seldom feels for another. To call himself a Poet NOW seemed the acme of absurdity; how should such an one as he attempt to conquer fame with a rival like Sah-luma already in the field and already ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... simple code of ethics a man's loyalty to his wife occupied a very definite and unassailable position, the realisation came to him fraught with the acme of bitterness and self-contempt. Nor did he propose to yield to the madness in his blood. Hour after hour, as he tramped blindly across country, he thrashed the matter out. This love which had come to him was a forbidden thing—a thing ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... angel, but this is mere nonsense. The sole object of such commentators seemed to be to extort from Scripture confirmations of Aristotelian quibbles and their own inventions, a proceeding which I regard as the acme of absurdity. ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... and Isobel, clothed from head to foot in sombre black, descended from their respective rooms. Roger, also clad in the same funereal hue and wearing a black tie—and looking as though his garments afforded him the acme of mental discomfort—stood waiting for them, together with Nan, ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... second, that is to say, only six times its value in an energetic frog! Another curious thing is that a stoutish tree will give its response in a slow and lordly fashion, whereas a thin one attains the acme of its excitement in an incredibly short time! Perhaps some of us can tell from our own experience whether similar differences obtain amongst human kind or not? The plant's latent period in our cold weather may be almost doubled. Ordinarily speaking it takes Mimosa about fifteen minutes ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... these I think were more curious than any I had ever seen. One hardly knew where they began and where they ended, for they all seemed joined together, and roots and branches seemed one and the same thing. It was the acme of vegetable confusion. Even the river could not stop their progress, and we were constantly gliding between their roots and branches. The growth of ferns, orchids and parasites on the branches and roots of these trees was luxuriant to a degree and ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... only a resumption of "hear" in iii. 1 (and, to a certain extent, even of that in i. 2), intimating, that that which they are about to hear, will concentrate itself in a distinct and powerful expression,—the acme of the whole threatening ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... Parliamentary representatives have the confidence of no single Irish party. They were well enough for their immediate purpose, and no better men would come forward. To entrust them with large powers is the very acme of wild insanity. Admitting their honesty, which is doubtful, they have had no experience in business affairs, and their class is demonstratedly devoid of administrative capacity. The Poor Law Guardians of Cork, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... everything earthly and was glad to see it all punished and destroyed. I felt so alone and so strangely. And as a delicate spirit often grows melancholy in the very lap of happiness over its own joy, and at the very acme of its existence becomes conscious of the futility of it all, so did I regard my suffering with mysterious pleasure. I regarded it as the symbol of life in general; I believed that I was seeing and feeling the everlasting discord by means of which all things ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... which should place her in the same room for her second social affair in the Prouty House as that to which she had been assigned upon her first. The bureau had been new then and, to her inexperienced eyes, had looked the acme of luxurious magnificence. She recalled as vividly as though the lapse of time consisted of days, not years, the round eager face, that had ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... justice to their appalling situation. He preached, and prayed, and excommunicated, and stirred up men's minds to enjoy the splendours of an auto-da-fe; and, for all these, he was honoured by Pope and Caesar; was created a knight of Alcantara; and, as the acme to his glory, was made a familiar of the Holy Inquisition. Shakspeare no less felt the influence of the time. The old oppressive bonds under which bone and sinew were compressed in order to make jolly old England a footstool ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... distant green island gradually coming nearer, or the seagulls lighting on the water just ahead, or the white clouds in the blue sky, and with no sense of danger, but only the care-free buoyancy of youth and good spirits, is to many the very acme of enjoyment. At least, it was to Manson, to whom such an experience was entirely new. When they reached Spoon Island he went into raptures over it, for it was a rarity, even among the many beautiful ones he had visited. As its name implied, ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... vaguely tinted in Indian ink, drawn upon strips of gray paper most accurately cut but without the slightest attempt at a frame. This is all: not a seat, not a cushion, not a scrap of furniture. It is the very acme of studied simplicity, of elegance made out of nothing, of the most immaculate and incredible cleanliness. And while following the bonzes through this long suite of empty halls, we are struck by their contrast with the overflow of knickknacks scattered ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... otherwise most sensible and intelligent people amongst them degrade themselves so that one can't make head or tail of them. If you consider how essential to such a masterpiece is inoculation in the tender age of childhood, the missionary system appears no longer only as the acme of human importunity, arrogance and impertinence, but also as an absurdity, if it doesn't confine itself to nations which are still in their infancy, like Caffirs, Hottentots, South Sea Islanders, etc. Amongst these races it is successful; but in India, the Brahmans treat the discourses ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... the choir were entertained by the rector—once during the summer when they made merry out in the green woods, and once in the winter when they were entertained in the school-room. Leone had thought these parties the acme of grandeur and perfection; now she sat in that brilliant circle and wondered into what world ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... start. Of course with this small capital there was no fortune to be made, but that was not what I was looking for at that time. The bitter experience I had been through had put a limit to my ambition. The acme of my desires then was a comfortable living for my family and the ability to send to Mrs. Slater her interest cheque promptly each month. This I was now in a fair way to accomplish and my spirits and ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... misery reached its acme on the receipt by his father of his first school character, which document his father sent back for Walter's own perusal, with a letter which, if not actually reproachful, was at least ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... wonder was redoubled. They approached them with every mark of the profoundest reverence and awe, but forbore to examine them minutely. There were two large mirrors in the cabin, and here was the acme of their amazement. Too-wit was the first to approach them, and he had got in the middle of the cabin, with his face to one and his back to the other, before he fairly perceived them. Upon raising his eyes ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... were using was narrow, but fifty paces away in the direction of Argeles was a track which left our road to lead to a farm. For this spot the driver was making. There he would be able to turn with the acme of ease. ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... comfort, the education, the success of men in general, and to their plans and projects, is in a great measure due to her self-abnegation and self-sacrifice having been so long and so sweetly lauded by poets, philosophers and priests as the acme ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... engineers started a canvass of the big buildings in the theatrical district. After four or five had been searched without result they entered the 30-story Acme Theater building. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... anything in the world to be able to drive away this implacable dream. He longed for heavy sleep to crush his thoughts. So long as he remained awake, he had sufficient energy to expel the phantom of his victim; but as soon as he lost command of his mind it led him to the acme ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... often said that the only time he ever felt heretical was when in the presence of the gaitered calves of a Protestant dean. He wore his sleeves tight and his stock high, as in the days when William the Sailor was king in England, and his long gold-topped Prince Regent cane was the very acme ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... sure, that baptism in the desert, with the only drop of water they had to drink, seemed to me the very acme of religious fervor and sacred self-sacrifice. I wonder what I should think of the book were I to read it now, which Heaven forefend! The really powerful impression made upon my imagination and ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... thing to fill one with a kind of horror; with a sacred inexpressible pity and fear. The most tragical thing a human eye can look on. It was said to the Prophet, "Behold, I will show thee worse things than these: women weeping to Thammuz." That was the acme of ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... railroad, whereas the Russian Empire in Europe, with 2,100,000 square miles had only 35,447 miles of railroad. The Germans had the further advantage of having brought all their means of transportation to the very acme of perfection, while the Russians were lacking in equipment as well ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... away; and they will dislocate their vertebrae abasing themselves before him. It reminds one of the time of Louis XIV. in France, when millions of people were in the extremest misery—even unto starvation; while great grandees thought it the acme of earthly bliss and honor to help put the king to bed, or take off his dirty socks. And if a common man, by any chance, caught a glimpse of royalty changing its shirt, he felt as if he had looked into heaven and beheld Divinity creating worlds. Oh, it is ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... depends chiefly upon how much or how little of his entire story the author chooses to tell. In actual life, as was stated in a former chapter, there are no very ends; and it may now be added that also there are no absolute beginnings. Any event that happens is, in Whitman's words, "an acme of things accomplished" and "an encloser of things to be"; and in thinking back along its causes or forward along its effects, we may continue the series until our thought loses itself in an eternity. In any narrative, therefore, we are doomed to begin and end in mid-career; ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... said. As he spoke he sucked in his breath with that snakelike hissing sound which is the acme of politeness, in Japan—"that my humble breath may not blow upon you"—and spread wide his hands. "They are extremely low persons and dared ...
— Lords of the Stratosphere • Arthur J. Burks
... survive." "Every man I have met out here has the amazing guts to wear his crown of thorns as though it were a cap-and-bells." They have shredded off their weaknesses, and attained that "corporate stout-heartedness" which is "the acme of what Aristotle meant by virtue." For himself, he discovers that the plague of his former modes of life lay in self-distrust. It was the disease of the age. The doubt of many things which it were wisdom to believe had ended ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson
... crippled the feet, confined the waist, exposed the chest, loaded the limbs, and even enslaved the understanding. But these societies had been more successful in pulling down than in building up, and blinded with excess of zeal were hurrying us onward to a goal which might or might not be the acme of sanitative dress, but was certainly the zero of artistic excellence. The cause of this was not far to seek. We were inventing a new science, that of dress, and were without rules to guide us. So ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... the world could e'er cause me to tremble While trusting my all in a heart such as this, Too fond to deceive me; too true to dissemble— 'Twere a foretaste of Heaven, the acme ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... the captain now saw, were not braced together by hampering struts and wires, but seemed cantilevered into position, giving a clean run to the structure, great simplicity, and the acme of mechanical beauty. This giant bird of heaven lay in its nest, free of pattern, powerful beyond any air-mechanism ever built by man, almost a living thing, on whose back its captors might ride aloft defying man and nature, ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... Berlin or Hamburg, Jew or Christian, after frequenting the Manchester Exchange for a few months, finds out that, in order to buy cotton yarn or cloth cheap, he, too, had better drop those slightly more refined but still miserable wiles and subterfuges which are considered the acme of cleverness in his native country. The fact is, those tricks do not pay any longer in a large market, where time is money, and where a certain standard of commercial morality is unavoidably developed, ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... descriptive title. Needless to say that this chord does not "surprise" our modern ears to any great extent. The Minuet is one of Haydn's best—full of queer antics in rhythm and modulation. The Finale (Allegro di molto), in the Rondo Sonata form, is the acme of Haydn's vivacity and is a "tour de force" of brilliant writing for the strings. In many passages they ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... can turn Grardmer into a dreary place, but in the most brilliant sunshine this mountain pass is none the less majestic and solemn. One obtains the sense of contrast by slow degrees, so that the mind is prepared for it and in the mood for it. The acme, the culminating point of Vosges scenery is thus reached by a gradually ascending scale of beauty and grandeur from the moment we quit Grardmer, till we stand on the loftiest summit of the Vosges chain, dominating the Schlucht. For ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... cases violation proved to be "sure death," not by the hand of man, but from sheer fright. As a result, just as woman was considered to have both the tendency and power to impart her characteristics through contact, so the sexual act, the acme of contact, became the most potent influence for the emasculation ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... importance. The greatest experiment ever yet instituted to bring the progress of humanity to a higher plane of development is being worked out on this continent and in this age; and the war now progressing between the Northern and the Southern States is, in a marked sense, the acme and critical ordeal to ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... existence, the competition of each with all, the result of which is the selection, that is to say, the survival of those forms which, on the whole, are best adapted, to the conditions which at any period obtain; and which are, therefore, in that respect, and only in that respect, the fittest.* The acme reached by the cosmic [5] process in the vegetation of the downs is seen in the turf, with its weeds and gorse. Under the conditions, they have come out of the struggle victorious; and, by surviving, have proved that they are ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... of 1818, with its 25 per cent. duty upon cottons and woollens, and its increased duties on all forms of manufactured iron, (the tariff of 1824 which increased duties considerably), and the tariff of 1828, imposing an average of 50 per cent. duties, and in which the protective movement reached its acme (omitting, of course, the present McKinley Bill with its 60 per cent. average duty). In 1832, consequently, a great reaction in sentiment took place, and the "Compromise Tariff" was passed and duties were lowered. From this period, the advocacy of a high tariff in order to protect "Infant Industries," ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar
... on harmony one would gather that consecutive fifths and octaves and a number of other things were never indulged in by composers, and to cap the climax one would naturally accept the harmony exercises contained in the books as being the very acme of what we loved best in music. Thus we see that any investigation into the music of antiquity must be more ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... acme of bliss. "Yes, I shall make my farewell; I shall say my Merci and depart and there... in Karlsruhe... I shall close my eyes." ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... elephants is sedulously debarred entrance into the country. A few skins and horns, and some cattle, make up the remainder of the exports. English goods, sugar, tea, and coffee are the articles received in exchange. All the natives of these parts soon become remarkably fond of coffee. The acme of respectability among the Bechuanas is the possession of cattle and a wagon. It is remarkable that, though these latter require frequent repairs, none of the Bechuanas have ever learned to mend them. Forges and tools have been at their service, and ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... went her arm, down came the blind the house was dark again. He drew a long breath. 'Another ten minutes,' he thought, 'then I'll go in and shut up. By Jove! The limes are beginning to smell already!' And, the better to take in that acme of his well-being, he tilted the swing, lifted his feet from the ground, and swung himself toward the scented blossoms. He wanted to whelm his senses in their perfume, and closed his eyes. But instead of the domestic ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... seventy-four inches and Gordon's sixty-nine, though she strove to conceal the exaltation which her uniformed gallants stirred in her soul by bringing to bear upon them all the superlative superiority which she had studied as the acme of success in the habitues of the Hotel Astor. With Douglas it worked to a charm. He rose to the corresponding role as a trout to a fly, but poor Gordon was only too thankful when the companionship and conversation became more general. The ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... Carentan Winter Lettuce.—Crossman's New Improved, Early White Cabbage, Early Curled Simpson, Black-Seeded Simpson, Early Prize Head, Big Boston, Grand Rapids, All the Year Round, Yellow-Seeded Butter Musk Melons.—Extra Early Hackensack, Fine Large Green Nutmeg, Baltimore Acme Cantaloupe, Jenny Lind, Montreal Market, Bay View, Cosmopolitan, Long Island Beauty, Paul Rose or Petoskey, Delmonico, Early Christiana, Banana, Tip Top Water Melons.—Cole's Early, Green Gold, Florida Favorite, Pride of Georgia, Hungarian Honey, ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... there were diseases which differed in character from those generally prevalent; large numbers of people were affected in the same way; the disease beginning with a few cases gradually increased in intensity until an acme was reached which prevailed for a time and the disease gradually disappeared. Such diseases were attributed to changes in the air, to the influence of planets or to the action of offended gods. The priests and charlatans who sought to excuse their inability to treat epidemics ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... writers who make this statement, with an off-hand air of familiar scholarship, never by any chance bring forward the evidence for this greater atrociousness of the Thirty Years' War,[1] and one is inclined to suspect that this oft-repeated allusion to the Thirty Years' War as the acme of military atrocity is merely ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... pang of apprehension lest her new friend was about to turn out "proper," that acme of undesirable qualities to the girlish mind. If that were so, the future would be robbed of much of its charm; but the discussion of Aunt Margaret and her qualities must be deferred until a greater degree of intimacy had shown Bridgie the difficulties, as well as the ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... box," he wandered on, while she proceeded to undress him; and bit by bit she was able to piece together what had happened. "He was an unknown from Chicago. They sprang him on me. The secretary of the Acme Club warned me I'd have my hands full. An' I'd a-won if I'd been in condition. But fifteen pounds off without trainin' ain't condition. Then I'd been drinkin' pretty regular, an' I didn't ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... social import. Armed with a fair skin, a few freckles, an almost too high color at times, strange, deep, night-blue, cat-like eyes, a long nose, a rather pleasant mouth, perfect teeth, and a really good chin, she moved always with a feline grace that was careless, superior, sinuous, and yet the acme of harmony and a rhythmic flow of lines. One of her mess-hall tricks, when unobserved by her instructors, was to walk with six plates and a water-pitcher all gracefully poised on the top of her head after the ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... sensibilities. But the novelty of folding and pasting boxes, of the queer new kind of girls who worked with her, hardly survived into the second week. She saw that she was among a people where the highest known standard—the mode of life regarded by them as the acme of elegance and bliss—the best they could conceive was far, far below what she had been brought up to believe the scantest necessities of respectable and civilized living. She saw this life from the inside now—as the comfortable ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... her mother and Jemima, more seriously than she practised them, perhaps, for Ella, trained by the Madam, had taken her two "young folks" into her protection with a capable thoroughness that is the acme of good African service, and proceeded to create such an atmosphere of comfort in the rectory as Philip had ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... the words over his tongue; "it has a fine sound, laddie, a fine sound. That street must be the very acme of fashion." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... in operations of reclamation; that they abused their power by despoiling the peasants, and that dishonest farmers made a practice of evading taxes and tribute by settling within the bounds of a manor. These abuses reached their acme during the reigns of Uda and Daigo (888-930), when people living in the vicinity of a manor were ruthlessly robbed and plundered by the intendant and his servants, and when it became habitual to elude the payment of taxes by making spurious assignments ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... sanction unimplored, should have formed,—and with her own near relation,—this indissoluble tie, and having formed it should have attempted to conceal the fact from her when known to so many others,—appeared to her the acme of ingratitude, perfidy, and insult. She felt the injury like a weak disappointed woman, she resented it like a ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... has no Political System; yet it is controlled by the very Acme of System. Each Individual of their vast population is guided by "The Light ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... vessels of all kinds, and improvised a regular marine establishment; and raised nine new battalions of sepoys, and a numerous corps of native artillery. In the meantime the army under Colonel Leslie was marching towards the acme of action. In his progress he was directed to conciliate and captivate the goodwill of the rulers and people in every district through which his line of inarch lay; but at the same time he was to fight his way ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... upper lip lifted from her teeth in a sneer that was the acme of insult. The fire was beginning to play in her ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... follow the Parisian styles; but there is still a certain charming simplicity of manner which characterizes the whole bearing of a Spanish lady, and is quite free from that affectation and studied deportment which are too often considered as the acme of good breeding. This almost absolute lack of self-consciousness often leads to acts so naive that foreigners are often led to question their sense of propriety. But with this naivete and simplicity is joined a great love ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... the sense of compassion, which often is the acme of intrinsic craft. Glancing at the poor cot on which a sick girl is lying, he kindly inquires as to her ailment. Learning that it is some sort of low fever, about which the doctor has not expressed any positive opinion, Sir Donald suggests changes involving outlay of money, ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... had been with a large crowd of English. They seemed to me a strange race. To me the boat was the acme of comfort, and coolness, and cleanliness. But the bulk of my compatriots thought they were roughing it. I thought of the seventy thousand houseless creatures under the sun and the rain, starving on a daily bread dole—and these people wanted two or three courses for ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... circulation. Yet the old man wrote and spoke well, and had, from 1824 to 1829, as an ally the sharp and clever Thiers, and the better read, the better informed, and the more judicious Mignet. It was during the Vitelle administration that the Constitutionnel attained the very highest acme of its fame. It was then said to have had 30,000 subscribers, and to have maintained them with the cry of "Down with the Jesuits!" In 1827-28, during its palmiest days, the Constitutionnel had no Roman feuilleton. It depended then on its leading articles, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... from his mind, leaving a keen vision of the situation in its uncoloured reality. There arose within him a certain sense of shame that he had given so much and received, as yet, nothing in kind. He had passed that period of youth when a stolen kiss seems the acme of love's adventure. Such a theft on his part, irrespective of its consequences, would have left ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... imperfect unless faith and love find their acme, their outstretching completion, in this Christian hope. Do you seek to complete your faith and love by a living hope ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... apartment there was a round table, two lounges, and some easy-chairs; and in the second, which was somewhat smaller, most of the space was occupied by the bed. Mother Fetu drew attention to a crystal lamp with gilt chains, which hung from the ceiling. To her this lamp was the veritable acme of luxury. ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... volume contains some very splendid examples of this curious artificial kind of poetry. The amount of pleasure one gets out of dialect is a matter entirely of temperament. To say 'mither' instead of 'mother' seems to many the acme of romance. There are others who are not quite so ready to believe in the pathos of provincialisms. There is, however, no doubt of Mr. Swinburne's mastery over the form, whether the form be quite legitimate or not. The Weary Wedding has the concentration ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... Paulo to keep salt for many days in a solid state, which was not the case at Ega, when the baskets in which it is contained were well wrapped in leaves. Six degrees further westward, namely, at the foot of the Andes, the dampness of the climate of the Amazonian forest region appears to reach its acme, for Poeppig found at Chinchao that the most refined sugar, in a few days, dissolved into syrup, and the best gunpowder became liquid, even when enclosed in canisters. At St. Paulo refined sugar kept pretty well in tin boxes, and I had no difficulty in keeping my gunpowder dry in canisters, although ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... "a thin dirk-slot" for "a dagger-slot," the word "thin" carrying a keen mental impression of a snaky, hissing sound-sensation as the idea unfolded of the dirk slipping through the flimsy fabric of the shift, cast on the bunker cot to remain the silent evidence of the tragedy. The very acme of touches came in the punctuation[8] of the concluding lines—pauses that emphasize with so much ingenuity the very question that lends the speculatively ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... fear of ghosts and the consequent desire to propitiate them acquire an organised ritual in simple forms of ancestor-worship, such as the Rev. Mr. Turner describes among the people of Tanna (l.c. p. 88); and this line of development may be followed out until it attains its acme in the State-theology of China and the Kami-theology [26] of Japan. Each of these is essentially ancestor-worship, the ancestors being reckoned back through family groups, of higher and higher order, sometimes with strict reference ...
— The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study - Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... closed sanctum Livingstone still sat with intent gaze, poring over the page of figures before him. The expression on his face was one of profound satisfaction. He had at last reached the acme of his ambition—that is, of his later ambition. (He had once had other aims.) He had arrived at the point towards which he had been straining for the last eight—ten—fifteen years—he did not try to remember just how long—it had been a good ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... possible, though apparently not an essential destiny in form and figure. For the care and dispersal of the spores, achievement must surely be somewhat impaired. Whatever the measure of such inefficiency, among the Stemonitales Amaurochaete shows the acme, as Reticularia ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... the one-eyed Chinaman, who sat complacently smiling at the visitors, consisted of a loose blouse, blue trousers tucked into grey socks, and a pair of those native, thick-soled slippers which suggest to a Western critic the acme of discomfort. A raven, black as a bird of ebony, perched upon the Chinaman's shoulder, head a-tilt, surveying the newcomers with a beady, glittering left eye which strangely resembled the beady, ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... meetings denouncing the Standard influence would suddenly sell out their holdings the next day. In 1875 John D. Archbold, a brilliant young refiner who had grown up in the oil regions and who had gained much local fame as opponent of the Standard, appeared in Titusville as the President of the Acme Oil Company. At that time there were twenty-seven independent refineries in this section. Archbold began buying and leasing these establishments for his Acme Company, and in about four years practically every one had passed under his control. The Acme Company was merely ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... across the lines; and then to hear him laugh when he turned the vegetable snowdrift out into the wooden butter-bowl a little too soon, and a last shot or two blew the fluffy kernels all over the room—all this was the very acme of success in making a pleasant evening. All the time I ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... zenith, and green blue nearer the horizon, form the scales and chords of color possible to the morning and evening sky in pure and fine weather; the keynote of the opposition being vermilion against green blue, both of equal tone, and at such a height and acme of brilliancy that you cannot see the line where their edges pass ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... varying her work by painting the doors of the room, which were such an ugly colour, a pale yellow green, that they have offended our artistic eyes ever since we have been here. I am said to have wasted my whole morning watching my two-days-old chickens, supposed to be the acme of intelligence and precocity. The afternoon was spent in shingling the hen-house. It was only roofed over with tar-paper laid on to the rafters, which answers well if the wind doesn't blow the paper about, or that it has not any holes; but as the hen-house ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... acme of our intellectual wealth, we started about eleven o'clock upon every species of conveyance that chance could press into the service. Of hackney coaches there were few—but in jingles, noddies, and jaunting-cars, with ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... that all you say?" asked Gianbattista, in considerable astonishment. He felt, too, that as Marzio and he worked together, he deserved acme part of the credit. "It is church decoration of course, and not a 'piece,' as we say, but I would like ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... aspects, which I have collected, children and older human brutes spit, hiss, yell, snarl, bite noses and ears, scratch, gouge out eyes, pull hair, mutilate sex organs, with a violence that sometimes takes on epileptic features and which in a number of recorded cases causes sudden death at its acme, from the strain it imposes upon the system. Its cause is always some form of thwarting wish or will or of reduction of self-feeling, as anger is the acme of self-assertion. The German criminalist, Friedrich, says that probably every man might be caused to commit murder if ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... spirit-drinking seems to have arrived at its acme in the metropolis. Splendid mansions rear their dazzling heads at almost every turning; and it appears as if Circe had fixed her abode in these superb haunts. Happy are those who, like Ulysses of old, will not partake ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... Park on a ten-shilling hack seemed to be the height of fashionable enjoyment, and to splash your college tutor as you were driving down Regent Street in a hired cab the triumph of satire; when the acme of pleasure seemed to be to meet Jones of Trinity at the Bedford, and to make an arrangement with him, and with King of Corpus (who was staying at the Colonnade), and Martin of Trinity Hall (who was with his family in Bloomsbury Square), to dine at the Piazza, go to the play and see Braham in ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... admiration. Its glints speedily dim in the air. To be gobbled up by some hungry fish is the ordinary fate of the species. Possibly splendour is bestowed upon the shrimp as a means by which certain fish distinguish a particularly choice dainty, and the fish show the very acme of admiration by "wolfing" it. Thus are the examples of high art ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... I can only guess. There is but one person who can perhaps judge of you correctly,—a man older than myself by many years—whose life is the very acme of spiritual perfection—whose learning is vast and unprejudiced. I must see and speak to him before I try any more of my, or rather his, remedies. But we have lingered long enough out here, and unless you have something more to say to me, we ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... acme of this depravity was reached when the young gentlemen began shooting the pendants off the chandelier; then the servants hastily decamped and left the rogues to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... Empire, including the magnificent troops of the Imperial Guard. It was first and last a fighting army. The men were all young, and they struck me as being as keen as razors and as hard as nails. Their equipment was the acme to all appearances ordinary two-wheeled farm-carts, contained "nests" of nine machine-guns which could instantly be brought into action. The medical corps was magnificent; as businesslike, as completely equipped, and as efficient ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... The acme of self-control is reached and best illustrated in the first of the two institutions which we shall now bring to ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... security and prosperity in our Mother-land. So lauded be Almighty Allah and to Him be praise and thanks and goodly gratitude! And may He bless the King and us all his subjects and vouchsafe unto us and him the acme of felicity and make his life-tide happy and his endeavour constant!" Then arose the sixth Wazir and said, "Allah favour thee with all fell city, O King, in this world and in the next world! Verily, the ancients have ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... the effect likely to be created in the wilderness by this adorable acme of the feminine, with something between a smile ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... crowd. Its one fitting place is in the mouth of a swaggering comedian. In like manner words of contempt spoken of ourselves by ourselves, unless they are absolutely heartfelt and come from a mind thoroughly convinced of the fact of its own misery, are truly the very acme of pride, and a flower of the most subtle vanity; for it rarely happens that he who utters them either believes them himself or really wishes others to believe them: on the contrary, the speaker is mostly only anxious rather to be considered humble, ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... case, and it results of course in an immoral connection. Following this is the further rite of Almo-Samarpana or offering of oneself, in which the disciple is required to give his wife to the Guru or preceptor as the acme of self-sacrifice. The guru calls the disciple by a female name of one of the milkmaids of Brindaban to indicate that the disciple regards Krishna with the same devotion as they did. Sometimes the guru and a woman personate Krishna and Radha, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... and was rendered all the more maddening by occasional quiverings of the lid, which brought all her expectations to a climax. Now, now at any rate, she assured herself, the moment had come when the acme of horrordom would be bounced upon her and she would either die or go mad. But no; her agonies were again and again borne anew, and her prognostications unfulfilled. At last the creakings abruptly ceased—nothing was to be heard save the shaking of the trees, the distant yelping ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... absolutely necessary in order to arrange some ingenious piece of trickery, and they could all live weeks at the same hotel without either, by word or sign, betraying previous knowledge of each other. Indeed, Count Bindo di Ferraris was the very acme of ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... God when speaking of the sufferings He is going to impose upon His children. You know that it is said of a Roman emperor that he wrote laws very finely, and posted them so high on the walls that no one could read them, and then he punished the people who disobeyed the laws. That is the acme of tyranny: to provide a punishment for breach of laws the existence of which were unknown. Now we all know that there is sin against the Holy Ghost which will not be forgiven in this world nor in the world to come. ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... a beautiful and fertile country, where abound rich fields of grain and running streams of pure water, denotes the very acme of good times is at hand. Wealth will pile in upon you, and you will be able to reign in state in any country. If the country be dry and bare, you will see and hear of troublous times. Famine and sickness ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... partner in the brokerage firm of Bray, Parkinson & Co., and is president of the Free Gold Mining Company. Brooks is manager of the Acme Advertisers, and secretary of Free Gold. Bray and Parkinson are stockholders, and Wagstaff is a stockholder and also manager of the Free Gold properties in B. C. All are well known ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... one-half of the country, why not in the whole of it? If it would be a damning sin for us to admit another Slave State into the Union, why is it not a damning sin to permit a Slave State to remain in the Union? Would it not be the acme of effrontery for a man, in amicable alliance with fifteen pickpockets, to profess scruples of conscience in regard to admitting another pilfering rogue to the fraternity? "Thou that sayest, A man should not steal, dost thou steal," or consent, in any instance, to stealing? ...
— No Compromise with Slavery - An Address Delivered to the Broadway Tabernacle, New York • William Lloyd Garrison
... of the kind is told in the New Forest, where the Isle of Wight is regarded as the acme of stupidity. When the Isle of Wight people first began to walk erect, instead of on all fours, they are said to have waggled their arms and hands helplessly before them, saying, "And what be we ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... acme of refinement and culture might possibly be found in the smart set, but that it was a very small island, surrounded by a very large sea of other styles which spoke nothing so much as squandered opportunities. We knew girls ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... was, as he said, crowded. There was a loud continued murmur of human voices. Traffic was intense, and had reached what might be supposed its acme. It seemed as if business was undergoing a paroxysm, or fit, rather than pursuing her steady, healthful course. Bodies of men were standing in groups—some were darting from corner to corner, pen in mouth—a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various |
