"Vantage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... arrival at the window of the jail (through which he peered for two minutes before speaking) the whole of Adra's council, followed by the city's children in a noisy horde, proceeded in a cluster after him and took up position, each as he saw fit, at different vantage points. ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... year when his "History of Synagogue Poetry" appeared. He could permit himself to indulge in well-earned rest, and from the vantage-ground of age inspect the bustling activity of a new generation of friends and disciples on the once neglected ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... picture which presented itself to my view as I came out on the piazza of our summer-home by the sea, and from that point of vantage looked down upon the little group ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... God's fools burying fish anywhere but in their stomach," said the Shalotten Shammos, transporting a Brazil nut to the rear, where it was quickly annexed by Solomon Ansell, who had sneaked in uninvited and ousted the other boy from his coign of vantage. ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... due to the energy and activity of its employees. Superintendent Leach reached it shortly after the shock and found a number of men already there, whom he stationed at points of vantage from roof to basement. The fire apparatus of the Mint was brought into service and help given by the fire department, and after a period of strenuous labor the flames were driven back. The peril for a time was critical, the windows on Mint Avenue taking fire and also those on the rear three ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... one—everybody was shouting, everybody was writing a list of a new Government and reading it aloud. In one corner a man incessantly blew a trumpet, in another a patriot beat a drum. At one end was a table, round which the mayors had been sitting, and from this vantage ground Felix Pyat and other virtuous citizens harangued, and, as I understood, proclaimed the Commune and themselves, for it was impossible to distinguish a word. The atmosphere was stifling, and at last ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... him to prove when, and where, and by whom, and in what numbers, and with what violence, the other laws of trade, as gentlemen assert, were violated in consequence of your concession, or that even your other revenue laws were attacked. But I quit the vantage-ground on which I stand, and where I might leave the burden of the proof upon him: I walk down upon the open plain, and undertake to show that they were not only quiet, but showed many unequivocal marks of acknowledgment ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... long as you dealt with tradesmen accustomed to depend on aristocratic customers, your rank and position, and their large profits, protected you from suspicion; but you have made a mistake in descending from your vantage ground to make a poor shopman your innocent accomplice—a man who will be keenly alive to anything that may injure his wife or children. His terrors—but for my interposition—would have ruined you utterly. Tell me, how many of these things have ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... and narrow jealousy, Numbers reject each new expression, won, Perchance, from language richer than our own, O! with glad welcome may the POET see Extension's golden vantage! the decree Each way exclusive, scorn, and re-enthrone The obsolete, if strength, or grace of tone Or imagery await it, with a free, And liberal daring!—For the Critic Train, Whose eyes severe our verbal stores review, Let the firm Bard require that they explain ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... in the spring, summer, or early autumn, there are few spots more delightful than the terrace in front of our Golf Club. It is a vantage-point peculiarly fitted to the man of philosophic mind: for from it may be seen that varied, never-ending pageant, which men call Golf, in a number of its aspects. To your right, on the first tee, stand the cheery optimists who are about to make their ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... the close of a battle on land, the enemy routed, and our forces in possession of vantage ground of inestimable importance. Mr. Lincoln stated it as a fact that he had this dream just before the battles of Antietam, Gettysburg, and other signal ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... of vantage, short as it was, afforded by the precedence of her hostess in the matter of salutation, gave Mrs. Royston the opportunity to catch her breath and find her voice. She had not seen this man since, five years ago, he had left her home her ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... though he had sprung from a long line of Vikings. In his boyhood his choice of games had always been pirate. You saw him, a red handkerchief binding his brow, one foot advanced, knee bent, scanning the horizon for the treasure island from the vantage point of the woodshed roof, while the crew, gone mad with thirst, snarled and shrieked all about him, and the dirt yard below became a hungry, roaring sea. His twelve-year-old vocabulary boasted such compound difficulties as mizzentopsail-yard and main-topgallantmast. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... St. Mary's elemental grandeur. The steamer which brings our rheumatic traveller from the motor-stage at the foot of the lake lands him at the upper chalet group, appropriately Swiss, which finds vantage on a rocky promontory for the view of the divide. Gigantic mountains of deep-red argillite, grotesquely carved, close in the sides, and with lake and sky wonderfully frame the amazing central picture of pointed ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... earnest wish, and also by the feeling that work alone could give relief to the sorrow which overwhelmed her. She was bitterly disappointed that the "old guard" persisted in putting the question of the rights of women in the background, thus losing the vantage points gained by years of agitation. She alone, of all who had labored so earnestly for this sacred cause, was not misled by the sophistry that the work which women were doing for the Union would compel a universal recognition of their demands when the war ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... events Samuel and Everley had been witnesses from the vantage point of a soap box. Now suddenly the boy caught his friend's arm and pointed, ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... the better for thee. But I am no boor, fair damsel. Then shalt thou mount and ride him forth, and Marquis thy mastiff shall see thee go from the yard. Then will I mount the keep, and from that point of vantage look down upon the two courts, while Caspar goes to stand by thy dog. Thou shalt ride slowly along for a minute or two, until these preparations shall have been made; then shalt thou blow thy whistle, and set off at a gallop to round the castle, still ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... commonly called the border town between England and Scotland; at any rate it was a vantage-ground in days gone by that was of a great value to one faction and a thorn in the side to the other. The conquering and unconquered Scots are the back-bone of Britain, there's no denying that; and Carlisle is near enough to the ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... scanning the road from his post of vantage, "you'll be able to go with your fascinating pal Ruthven. ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... rest awhile, leaving the men to spy the neighbourhood. Of course they had to find something, so this time they found a "serow"—a somewhat scarce beast. I awaited the coming of the serow at various coigns of vantage where they said it was bound to pass, while the four men surrounded it from different directions. Finally, like the Levite, it passed by on the other side—at least I never saw it. The shikari afterwards informed me, in confidence, that it was, ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... he would have been able, undoubtedly, to disregard her and to continue the line of chatter which he had hit upon so happily and which he had never suspected was in him. But the fact, not so much that she knew, but that from this vantage point of knowledge she was ridiculing him, was too much for even his self-possession. It made the light banter impossible. Especially, as there was no doubt that Rose did ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... to take up a position of detachment, and from that vantage-ground he made at Hammersmith, on September 8th, 1874, an interesting speech, in which he gave free rein to the ironical mood of Prince Florestan. The Tories, he said, came into office with at all events a strong list of names: Mr. Disraeli, Lord Cairns ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... and, like any other fisherman, wanted to get its prey to dry land, although itself lived mostly in the water. Here, we said, is being enacted a little tragedy, that would have escaped any but sharp eyes. The snake, which was itself small, had the fish by the throat, the hold of vantage among all creatures, and clung to it with great tenacity. The snake knew that its best tactics was to get upon dry land as soon as possible. It could not swallow its victim alive, and it could not strangle it in the water. For a while it tried ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... antecedent artists—by bringing the opening buds of painting and sculpture to full blossom, and exhausting the resources of a long sustained and common inspiration, that the great masters proved their supremacy and rendered an advance beyond their vantage ground impossible. To those who saw and comprehended this "Pieta" in 1500, it must have been evident that a new power of portraying the very soul had been manifested in sculpture—a power unknown to the Greeks because ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... is fair, the tide flood. Carry your craft further in-shore, Master Bridges, that we may parley with these pirates from the vantage ground of our own deck," ordered the captain, and was obeyed so fairly that the Little James presently lay hove-to within a biscuit-toss of the staging, where some fifteen or twenty men were diligently employed in curing ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... still far from pleasant. The muck gave every step a slurping sound, and it clung in gobs. Then the vantage point Scotty selected was reached, directly opposite the pier. They parted the rushes slightly and ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... moral, Molyneux," said the other and graver personage; "thou canst not even let the elements escape thy gibes. I marvel how far we are from our cousin Ireland's at Lydiate. My fears mislead me, or we have missed our way. This flat bosom of desolation hath no vantage-ground whence we may discern our path; and we have been winding about this ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... the field was larger, and there was a greater variety of chances for surprising the enemy. He hid himself under the dead leaves, lay close to the branches of trees, and crept along brooks and ravines. It was often he who was selected to find a place of vantage for the flag. But he was never willing to act as its guardian, for he feared nothing so much as inactivity, preferring to chase his comrades through the woods. The short journey to the Bellevue woods was passed in the elaboration of various plans, and arguing about those ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... pushed up to the roof of the nearest sty. They were old buildings in some need of repair, and the rickety roof would certainly not have borne Octavian's weight if he had attempted to follow his daughter and her captors on their new vantage ground. ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... Ibsen conceived the poor blundering idealist of the Wild Duck. Chiappino is Browning's Werle; the reverse side of a type which he had drawn with so much indulgence in the Luigi of Pippa Passes. Plainly, it was a passing mood; as plainly, a mood which, from the high and luminous vantage-ground of 1846, he could look back upon with regret, almost with scorn. His intercourse with Elizabeth Barrett was far advanced before she was at length reluctantly allowed to see it. "For The Soul's Tragedy," he wrote (Feb. 11)—"that will surprise you, I think. There is no trace ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... gate of the Fort. They attacked it fiercely with their tomahawks, and a log which they used as a battering-ram. But the stout gate withstood their united efforts, and the galling fire from the portholes soon forced them to fall back and seek cover behind the trees and the rocks. From these points of vantage they kept up ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... sprang up among the battered defenders. Joyous yells bespoke a favorable turn of the tide. The enemy fell slowly back, relinquishing the vantage gained. Far behind Ridgeway's fainting form there arose the shouts of ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... water-courses. The unending mesquite with its first spring foliage resembled a limitless peach-orchard sown by some careless and unbelievably prodigal hand. Out of these false acres occasional knolls and low stony hills lifted themselves so that one came, now and then, to vantage-points where the eye leaped for great distances across imperceptible valleys to horizons so far away that the scattered tree-clumps were blended into an unbroken carpet of green. To the woman these outlooks were unutterably depressing, ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... his head, and answer that he would never cease to love Dorothy and search for her while life lasted. But troubles never seem to come singly. One day, as Jack was pacing restlessly up and down Broadway—the vantage-ground which he always sought at six o'clock each evening, to scan the faces of the working-girls as they passed, with the lingering hope in his heart that some day, sooner or later, his vigilance would be rewarded by seeing Dorothy—a terrible ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... left their horses in the stable of a venta, hidden among ilex trees by the roadside, and had clambered to this point of vantage above the highway, to pass the afternoon after the manner of their race. For the Spaniard will be found playing cards amid the wreck of the world and in the intervals between the stupendous events ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... paused for the fifth time. The crowd—knotty Spartans, keen Athenians, perfumed Sicilians—pressed his pulpit closer, elbowing for the place of vantage. Amid a lull in ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... railroad king) told of a similar feat which his car had performed. And then the young lady who sat beside him told how a fat Irish woman had skipped out of their way as they rounded a corner, and stood and cursed them from the vantage-point of the sidewalk. ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... is quite as much to be dreaded—you are indeed a gentleman, but one seeking to make fun of him, and possibly able to do so. At any rate, your knowledge of Rommany is a most alarming coin of vantage. Certainly, reader, you know that a regular London streeter, say a cabman, would rather go to jail than be beaten in a chaffing match. I nearly drove a hansom into sheer convulsions one night, about the time this chapter happened, by a very light puzzler indeed. I had hesitated ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... Fletcher, Massinger, or Ben Jonson, such books as Sidney's 'Arcadia,' Lyly's 'Euphues,' Spenser's 'Fairy Queen,' and last, but not least, Shakespeare's Plays, place the conception of woman and of the rights of woman on a vantage-ground from which I believe it can never permanently fall again—at least until (which God forbid) true manhood has died out of England. To a boy whose notions of his duty to woman had been formed, not on Horace and Juvenal, but on Spenser and Shakespeare,—as ...
— Women and Politics • Charles Kingsley
... my aunt always occupied what is termed an office chair. Being quite small in person, a portion of the great leather cushion, at the back, was left vacant. Squanko rarely failed to possess himself of this vantage-ground, and squatting thereon, peered wisely over his mistress's shoulder, as if studying the problem of what portion of the goodly meal before him might safely be ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... the lady who loves him bows low: He fears not the fight, for his racket is drawn, And he spurs his great steed as he charges the foe. And the sound of his war-cry is heard in the din, "Fifteen, thirty, forty, deuce, vantage, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various
... Battalion and the enemy, and there might not. Road mines and "booby" traps were to be expected. The Battalion arrived at Haubourdin at 4 p.m., where there was a halt for a meal. On reaching the suburbs of Lille advance guards had to be sent out, as any point of vantage might have concealed an enemy machine gun. The canal on the west of the city was reached about 5 o'clock. The bridges had all been blown up, but the Pont de Canteleu, though broken in two and half in the canal, afforded a means of crossing one at ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts
... little man in a black coat elbowed his way to the base of the statue from which vantage point he tried to address the crowd. "Friends," he quavered, as the uproar died, the idle mob ever ready for some new amusement, "friends, don't be too rash. Look before you leap. We are only a handful of untrained ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... has been said before, and said over again after. He who has read his Aristotle will be apt to think that observation has on most points of general applicability said its last word, and he who has mounted the tower of Plato to look abroad from it will never hope to climb another with so lofty a vantage of speculation. Where it is so simple if not so easy a thing to hold one's peace, why add to the general confusion of tongues? There is something disheartening, too, in being expected to fill up not less than a certain measure of time, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... losing vantage ground Winter's calmness failed him; he made a sudden thrust forward, and it being parried, lost his footing, the blade of his rapier ringing against the hilt of the other ere he ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... kissed him again, and called him "a dear, handsome old darling," and then, with another last coquettish kiss through the balusters, she bounded laughingly past her mamma, up the stairs, into her little room and behind the door, from which point of vantage she emerged with a terrific "boo!" intended to startle her mamma out of her senses,—but I don't ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... buttonhole me and remonstrate. Then he shrugged his stocky shoulders, the gesture indicating that one can't save a fool from his folly, and established himself at a near-by table, from which coign of vantage he ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... arrive with every available inch of space occupied. She would catch a chill or an influenza with no kind father near to save her a doctor's bill, and cure her simply for the pleasure of doing it. She would brave Hester's eagle eye, supposing it could scan Rose's misdeeds from some coigne of vantage commanding this end of the street. She signalled to the cab-driver opposite, who put his head out of the cab window and signalled back that he had a fare besides himself at present ensconced in ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... against Miko that long! Sooner or later he would find a place from where he could sweep this bowl beyond possibility of our hiding. I saw him running now, well beyond my range, to ferret out another point of vantage. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... the slender boles of crooked mountain-laurel bushes, he soon found a vantage point from which he could see on beyond the densely woven foliage, and, to his astonishment, found, before he had thought, possible that he had progressed so far, that he had already reached the place he sought. Memory had made the way to it a longer one than it was ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... ranch-house, clothed in something dark and plain. She paused for a moment under the live-oak trees. The prairies were somewhat dim, and the moonlight was pale orange, diluted with particles of an impalpable, flying mist. But the mock-bird whistled on every bough of vantage; leagues of flowers scented the air; and a kindergarten of little shadowy rabbits leaped and played in an open space near by. Santa turned her face to the southeast and threw three kisses thitherward; for there was none ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... July (1850). This sad event gave the opportunity for the success of the Compromise measures. Had General Taylor lived, their defeat was assured. As a Southern man, coming from a Gulf State, personally interested in the institution of slavery, he had a vantage-ground in the struggle which a Northern President could never attain. He had, moreover, the courage and the intelligence to uphold his principles, even in a controversy with Mr. Clay. His ignorance ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... better to reconnoitre your movements and to outwit attempts at capture. Their eyes—in life, reflecting gems—are so placed that they command a complete radius, and if you think to sneak upon them they dive from their vantage points and skip with hasty flips and flops to another arching root, which they ascend, and resume their observation. It must not be assumed that the climbing fish—which seems to be more at home on the surface of the water than below—climbs up among the branches. A foot or so is about the ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... searching, found a puddle of rain water which barely satisfied them. An isolated hill with perpendicular sides, which Sturt had noticed for some time, now attracted his attention, as being a lofty point of vantage from which to get an extensive view to the west. They accordingly made for it, over more promising country. They reached the hill which Sturt called Oxley's Tableland, but from its summit he saw nothing but a stretch ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... all assembled on the heights at Fort Erie they presented a formidable and imposing spectacle to the many thousands of Americans and Fenians who crowded the river banks and points of vantage for sight-seeing on the American side. It seemed as if the whole population of Buffalo and surrounding country were gathered on the river shore that pleasant Sunday afternoon to gaze upon the British ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... province, the first of all men, clearly to reveal, as a scientific fact certified by demonstration, the divine eminence of the practical above the merely speculative powers of man,—the fulfilment of which mission justly entitled him to all the privileges incident to the vantage-ground thus gained,—privileges widely significant in a survey of that field where chiefly these practical powers hold their Olympian supremacy, the field ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... deluge of lead, but some of their men got into the German second line and then began to bomb their way to right and left. The captured first trench was utilized by the attacking force. From that vantage the advance was led by a machine gun which was followed by a group of bomb throwers. In working forward the machine-gun base became lost when the man who had it was slain. Thereupon a Canadian "lumberjack" named Vincent became the base, the machine gun being fired ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... Jerry saw, from his coign of vantage, the white figure of the miller coming quickly down the road, waving his arms as if he had once owned a wind-mill instead of a water-mill, and was imitating the ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... vantage point we could see the entire length of the line of battle. The attack began shortly after daylight. Near Caloocan the Insurgent works were close in, but further off toward La Loma they were in some places distant a mile or more from the ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... the Saone between Chalon and Lyons, speeded by '330 square feet of canvas,' my little word of thanks in reply would never get well under weigh from the banks of our sluggish canal; so reserved launching it till I should reach this point of vantage: and now, forth with it, that, wherever it may find you, I may assure your kindness that it would indeed have gratified me to see you, had circumstances enabled you to come my way; and that the amends you promise for failing to do ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... was so definite that I didn't even get out. For one thing, Death seemed very near, and the close similarity which the slot I was occupying bore to a coffin, had all along been too suggestive to be ignored. Secondly, from my coign of vantage I had a most lovely view of the pavement outside the station. I never remember refuse looking ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... lying in the next room ill with the gout, when he heard the battle begun, almost dies with laughing. But alas! and O fie! our unwarlike Alexander, no match for his Amazon, falls down vanquished. She, getting her man underneath, then first, from her position of vantage, goes at his forehead, his eye-brows, his nose; with wonderful arabesques, and in a Phrygian style of execution, she runs her finger-points over the whole countenace of her prostrate subject: never were you less pleased, Morus, with ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... a picturesque, spacious house artistically situated at the vantage point of a domain of twenty acres and furnished with the soothing elegancies of modern ingenuity and taste. Among the attractions were a terrace garden, a well-accoutred stable, a tennis court, and a steam yacht. Mrs. Dale, who had prefaced her invitation by informing her husband that ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... Two guns were silenced. He saw men running through the trenches and he picked off several of them. By this time the Germans were aware that something was amiss—that an uncanny sniper had discovered a point of vantage from which this sector of the trenches was plainly visible to him. At first they sought to discover his location in No Man's Land; but when an officer looking over the parapet through a periscope was struck full in the back of the head with a ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... or two farther on the rocks bulged up a couple of feet above the surrounding slope. Thrusting the exhausted youngster ahead of her with nose and paws, the old bear gained this point of temporary vantage; and then, worried and frightened, sat down upon her haunches and stared all around her, as if trying to decide what should be done. The cub lay flat, with legs outstretched ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... intelligence. Within limits the individual may exercise choice, reacting upon and modifying his environment and himself. But a moment's reflection reveals to us that the new departure is but a step taken from a vantage-ground which has not been won by independent effort. The information in the light of which he chooses, the situation in the face of which he acts, the emotional nature which impels him to effort, the habits of thought ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... preconceived ideas. There were also very few materials accessible to a man like me to form a judgment from. But in such a case I verily believe that a little is as good as a feast—perhaps better. If one has a taste for that kind of thing the merest starting-point becomes a coign of vantage, and then by a series of logically deducted verisimilitudes one arrives at truth—or very near the truth—as near as any circumstantial evidence can do. I have not studied de Barral but that is how I understand him so far as he could be understood through ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... in America stand face to face with a tremendous task. It is a challenge to their faith, their devotion, their zeal. The accomplishment of it will mean not only the ascendancy of Christianity in the homeland, but also the gaining of a position of vantage for world-wide ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... and satisfied that it was hopeless to dislodge the enemy from their post of vantage, Sten now attempted a diversion by sending a force to attack the troops stationed at the convent of St. Claire. The Danes on the hill, seeing the danger of this detachment, and thinking that they had thoroughly beaten off ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... battles, in which his enemies had the a vantage, Ali began negotiations with Ibrahim, and finally concluded a treaty offensive and defensive. This fresh alliance was, like the first, to be cemented by a marriage. The virtuous Emineh, seeing her son Veli united ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Brautwagen: the great open cart loaded with the furniture and wedding presents the bride was taking as part of her dowry to her new home. It would be piled with bedding, wooden bedsteads, chests of drawers, and pots and pans; and gay-coloured ribbons would be floating from each point of vantage. Sometimes the bridal pair was with the cart, the young husband in his wedding clothes walking beside the horse, the bride seated amongst her possessions. Sometimes a couple of men in working clothes, probably the bridegroom and ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... Captaine of the Barke Bond. George Fortescute Captaine of the Barke Bonner. Edward Carelesse Captaine of the Hope. James Erizo Captaine of the vvhite Lion. Thomas Moone Captaine of the Francis. Iohn Riuers Captaine of the Vantage, Iohn Vaughan Captaine of the Drake. Iohn Varney Captaine of the George, Iohn Martin Captaine of the Beniamin. Edward Gilman Captaine of the Skout. Richard Haukins Captaine of the Galliot called the Ducke. ...
— A Svmmarie and Trve Discovrse of Sir Frances Drakes VVest Indian Voyage • Richard Field
... government as continued to exist during the centuries following the deposition of Charles the Fat was necessarily carried on mainly, not by the king and his officers, but by the great landholders. The grim fortresses of the medival lords, which appeared upon almost every point of vantage throughout western Europe during the Middle Ages, would not have been tolerated by the king, had he been powerful enough to destroy them. They plainly indicate that their owners were practically ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... ole wool's worf to say a word agin dat gal to me. No, he on'y say how Miss Nora wer' bery ill, an' in want ob eberyting in de worl' an' eberyting else besides. An' how here wer' a chance to 'vest our property to 'vantage, by lendin' of it te de Lor', accordin' te de Scriptur's as 'whoever giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord.' So I hunted up all I could spare and fotch it ober here, little thinkin' what a sight would meet my old ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... sympathize in her disappointment, but the weal of those unconverted tribes who were to be led from the darkness of their ways by the instrumentality of this youth, was far too important to admit the thought of rashly losing the vantage-ground he had gained, in the gradually-expanding intellect of the boy, by running the hazard of an escape. To all appearance, the intention of permitting him to quit the defences had therefore been entirely abandoned, when old Mark so ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... sunbeams dive through Tagus' wave, To spy the store-house of his springtime gold, Love-piercing thought so through her mantle drave, And in her gentle bosom wandered bold; It viewed the wondrous beauty virgins have, And all to fond desire with vantage told, Alas! what hope is left, to quench his fire That kindled is by sight, ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... un, en 't aint gwine ter. Young chaps kin make great 'miration 'bout gals, but w'en dey gits ole ez I is, dey ull know dat folks is folks, en w'en it come ter bein' folks, de wimmen ain gut none de 'vantage er de men. Now dat 's des de plain up en down tale I'm a-tellin' ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... of my tent—by way of vantage ground, as soon as the stranger was come within earshot, I lifted up my voice, and cried in a style of Arabian familiarity, "O thou that ridest so furiously,—weary and disappointed one,—turn in, I pray thee, into the tent of thy servant, ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... From the vantage ground of a little hill I could see the whole herd, and realised that I had been in only a small bunch of it, composed of cows and calves. Had I gone to the right I should soon have gotten into a raging mass of some thousand head of bulls. ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... the beloved dead was laid to rest for ever. A silent alley of planes and mulberry-trees led to the threshold, which was shaded by the delicate foliage of a myrtle. All about he had planted a dense hedge of hawthorn, cypress, and arborvitae, above which, from the vantage of a small terrace, built, under his orders, at the level of the first floor, he could see, day by day and at all hours, the white tomb of his wife, and a ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... relieving himself of it, stepped back a pace. Those of the bystanders who occupied the part of the room he indicated—a space bounded by four tables, and not unfit for the purpose, though somewhat confined—hastened to get out of it, and seize instead upon neighbouring posts of 'vantage. The man's reputation was such, and his fame so great, that on all sides I heard naught but wagers offered against me at odds; but this circumstance, which might have flurried a younger man and numbed his arm, served only to set me on making the most of such openings as the fellow's presumption ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... had a waking vision. He looked down upon the earth from some point of vantage. Germany lay beneath him as though viewed from the car of a balloon, with the familiar outlines pictured in the maps; yet he seemed to distinguish every roof in the cities and every tree in the woods. All parts of the ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... home, and all that remained was to keep a sharp lookout for a passing ship. They arranged watches so that one of them should be on deck during all of the daylight hours, and all hands were to keep their eyes open through the port holes and from such other points of vantage as they could take at all times when it was light enough to ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... for a few miles ahead was adapted for ambuscades. The valley was comparatively narrow and afforded more than one vantage point for covering a traveler. It was wholly a matter, Laramie felt, of bluffing it through. And beyond keeping a brisk pace with his horse, he could do nothing to protect himself. "You're a fool for luck, Jim," he remembered ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... regions do not seem to influence this type of construction or demand the rapid watershed of the gabled roof. During the time of the conquest of the City of Mexico these azoteas formed veritable coigns of vantage for the Aztecs, who poured down a hail of darts ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... inspector watched him anxiously, cautioning him from time to time to "look out where he was treading"; the labourer left the pump and craned forward from the margin of the mud, and the constable and I looked on from our respective points of vantage. For some time the search was fruitless. Once the searcher stooped and picked up what turned out to be a fragment of decayed wood; then the remains of a long-deceased jay were discovered, examined, and rejected. Suddenly the man bent down by the side of a small pool ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... shoulder. "Tootsy Wootsy," she called once more, and a black cat scrambled up to the crown of the poke bonnet. And one by one they were summoned by some endearing diminutive, until the nine cats had taken possession of every possible coign of vantage which was offered by the old lady's capacious person. There they sat, waving their tails to and fro, evidently very pleased by their mistress's little attentions. Mrs. Mee was not very popular in the neighborhood, except with the milkman and the ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... advance. Thus, while Victor Emmanuel, at the head of his men, flung himself from Vercelli on Palestro—meriting, by the skill of his military tactics, the acclamations of a regiment of zouaves whom he headed as corporal—the French, taking ad vantage of the Alessandria, Casale, and Novara Railway, made for the bridge of Buffalora over the Ticino. Only then did Gyulai perceive this clever stratagem which threw Lombardy open to the allies, and he was consequently obliged to cross the Ticino to block the enemy's ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... on which we stood was as soft as a sponge, so no harm could befall either of us should we be thrown. At any rate, such was my thought. So becoming a little exasperated at Wilfred's clever strategems, I became somewhat rough, and taking him from a vantage point I had gained I threw him down ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... meanest and most unpromising are the best, as they leave the greatest scope for the unbounded stores of thought and fancy in the writer's own mind. Poetry had with them "neither buttress nor coigne of vantage to make its pendant bed and procreant cradle." It was not "born so high: its aiery buildeth in the cedar's top, and dallies with the wind, and scorns the sun." It grew like a mushroom out of the ground; or was hidden in it like a truffle, which it required a ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... that particular form of nocturnal adventure known by the unsympathetic name of burglary. Among the exponents of the art Peace was at this time known as a "portico-thief," that is to say one who contrived to get himself on to the portico of a house and from that point of vantage make his entrance into the premises. During the year 1854 the houses of a number of well-to-do residents in and about Sheffield were entered after this fashion, and much valuable property stolen. Peace was arrested, ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... is unlikely the lady may find me all her imagination has depicted," went on the nobleman, with palpable embarrassment. "My noble master, the emperor, hath—regarding me still as but a stripling from his own vantage point of age and wisdom—represented me a young man in his proposals. But though I'm younger than I look, and feel no older than I am, how young, or how old, shall I seem ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... pounds, and addressed myself to the task of defending my flies against the smaller ones, and keeping them only for the big fellows, which ran over three pounds—the patriarchs of the streams. With these I had capital sport, for they knew every angle and hole, they sought every coign of vantage, and the rocks were so thick and so sharp that from the time one of these veterans took the fly, it was an equal contest which of us should come off victorious. I was often forced to rush splashing and floundering through the water to my waist to keep my line from being sawed, ...
— Elsket - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... which, farther on, sunk steeply into a dark ravine full of thick brushwood, with a small verge of thinly growing coppice not more than twenty yards in width, on tolerably level ground, within the low stone-wall which parted it from the cultivated land. I felt that I was now upon my vantage ground; and you may be sure, Frank, that I spared not the spurs; but the wolf, conscious probably of the vicinity of some place of safety, strained every nerve and ran, in fact, as if he had been almost unwounded; so that he was still ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... at one end of the table, and her father grimly at the other. The mother sat at the side, apparently looking on that position as one of vantage for commanding the whole field, and keeping her husband and her daughter both under her eye. The teapot and cups were set before the young woman. She did not pour out the tea at once, but seemed to be waiting instructions from her ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... outlay; hence, in government, morals, etc., the profit is what is really good, helpful, useful, valuable. Utility is chiefly used in the sense of some immediate or personal and generally some material good. Advantage is that which gives one a vantage-ground, either for coping with competitors or with difficulties, needs, or demands; as to have the advantage of a good education; it is frequently used of what one has beyond another or secures at ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... door ajar, moved my bed out from the wall to catch whatever breeze might stir, "composed myself for the night," as it used to be written, and lay looking out upon the quiet garden where a thin white haze was rising. If, in taking this coign of vantage, I had any subtler purpose than to seek a draught against the warmth of the night, it did not fail of its reward, for just as I had begun to drowse, the gallery steps creaked as if beneath some immoderate weight, and the noble form of Keredec emerged upon my field of vision. ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... mine, this clinging to an individual conviction, was the best moral training I received at Rockford College. During the first decade of Hull-House, it was felt by propagandists of diverse social theories that the new Settlement would be a fine coign of vantage from which to propagate social faiths, and that a mere preliminary step would be the conversion of the founders; hence I have been reasoned with hours at a time, and I recall at least three occasions when this was followed by actual prayer. In the first instance, the honest exhorter who ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... to restrain her curiosity, rose and peered over her mother's shoulder. From that vantage point she ejaculated, "Oh, how beautiful ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... away birds and other creatures from the ripening crops, and I have not unfrequently accepted the hospitable invitation of some of the village boys to climb up on to the platform and share their sport. From their post of vantage they can survey the whole field, and they sling stones with marvellous force and accuracy to whatever quarter the birds are attacking. They also make a din by beating empty oil-tins, and use clappers as the country ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... on the right combination?" asked the young inventor, whose latest idea, the plan of fighting fires in skyscrapers from an airship as a vantage point, was taking up all ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... from north to south, at the bottom of the imposing frame of mountains on the south with their extraordinary columnar formation. Each natural column, with its mineral composition and crystallization, shone like silver in the bright light. The ensemble from our point of vantage resembled the set of pipes of an immense church organ. High hills stood to the east. In the distance to the south-west the lower country was open with the exception of ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... heads and shoulders bent as though they thought a roof was about to fall on them; some ran from rock to rock, seeking cover properly; others scampered toward the safe vantage-ground behind the railroad embankment; others advanced leisurely, like men playing golf. The silence, after the hurricane of sounds, was painful; we could not hear even the Boer rifles. The men moved like figures in a dream, without firing a shot. They seemed each to be ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... government, which was defective and precarious, for the Orange party perpetually plotted against it, and slew the two most eminent of the Republican statesmen, and William III. himself intrigued for English aid to set the crown upon his head; but by the freedom of the press, which made Holland the vantage-ground from which, in the darkest hour of oppression, the victims of the oppressors obtained the ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... odder than the picture that Brockett's and Bennett Square presented from the vantage ground of Bucket Lane. How peaceful and happy those evenings (once considered a little dreary perhaps and monotonous) now seemed! Those mornings in the dusty bookshop, Mr. Zanti, Herr Gottfried, Mrs. Brockett, then Brockett's with its strange kind-hearted company—the dining-room, the marble ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... Some of the incidents are perhaps well known, being merely put into a novel and more popular shape. The spectator is here placed upon an eminence where the scenes assume a new aspect, new combinations of beauty and grandeur being the result of the vantage ground he has obtained. Nothing more is attempted than what others, with the same opportunities, might have done as well—perhaps better. When Columbus broke the egg—if we may be excused the arrogance of the simile—all that were present ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Olave Parry, from a vantage post near the door, could see into the gymnasium, and report progress. Her items of news passed in whispers down the ranks. The babies had skipped like a row of cherubs, and the Governors were wreathed in smiles. Kitty ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... Thrace, of the Tauric Chersonese, and Southern Scythia, their settlements were limited to the AEgean and perhaps the Propontis, so westward they seem to have contented themselves with occupying a few points of vantage on the Spanish and West African coasts, at no great distance from the Straits, and from these stations to have sent out their commercial navies to sweep the seas and gather in the products of the lands which lay at a greater distance. ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... of mind once remarked that, if the human race were suddenly stripped naked, it would be impossible to distinguish the refined from the vulgar. A truly inspired utterance. For as Captain Forest viewed his family from his plane of vantage, especially after the leveling process had set in, they strangely reminded him of a flock of tame geese rioting in a pond. They made a great noise and ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... nature of this force means, first, that rising of the consciousness into the spiritual world, already described, which gives the one sure foothold for Meditation; and then, from that spiritual point of vantage, not only an insight into the creative force, in its spiritual and physical aspects, but also a gradually attained control of this wonderful force, which will mean its direction to the body of the spiritual man, and its gradual withdrawal from the body of the natural man, until ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... shout from the thousand or more who had crowded to the river's edge, responded to by the fifteen hundred khaki-clad young men who were lined up at every point of vantage along ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... Iowa and Twenty-eighth Illinois, under Colonel Pugh, made a desperate effort to maintain their position, but were ordered by General Hurlbut to fall back when Lauman retired. These two regiments fell back fighting, forming wherever the ground gave vantage, and turning upon their pursuers. In the little field they halted and replenished their cartridge-boxes. Here the Twenty-second Alabama attacked them, but was so roughly handled that it took no further part in the contest that day. As these two regiments fell back thus slowly, from ...
— From Fort Henry to Corinth • Manning Ferguson Force
... room rose quietly, soundlessly. The ground dropped slowly away, then faster; and as we swung about I saw the hilltop beneath us. Its sides were lined with waving spectators; stricken momentarily with awe at the apparition of Tarrano, they had already forgotten it; from every vantage point of ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... again and from my vantage-point I began to watch her and gather courage from watching her. I could still feel her in my arms—so much more of a woman than I had at first suspected from seeing her about the camp. I could see her in my mind's eye wading the stream like a beautiful ghost. I could think of nothing but ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... window opening on to the veranda. It was his favorite vantage point in leisure. The after breakfast pipe usually found him there. His evening pipe, when the sun was dipping toward the glistening, fretted peaks of the hills, rarely found him elsewhere. It was the point from which, in a way, he was able to view the whole ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... landed nose and knees on the timbers, which formed his supports. A moment to take breath, and press his torn and bleeding fingers to his lips; then, reaching down, he gave a hand to his companion and dragged him to the same place of vantage. ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... this matter of the popish "lecture pieuse." However, I did manage somehow to curb and rein in; and though always, as soon as Rosine came to light the lamps, I shot from the room quickly, yet also I did it quietly; seizing that vantage moment given by the little bustle before the dead silence, and vanishing whilst the boarders ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... they were, for from his point of vantage, Tarzan could view the enclosure within the palisade. He marked the position of the hut in which he had first discovered the scent spoor of the she he sought. He saw the two sentries standing before ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... comprehend the drift of the question. He knew he was to run for his life, to furnish a kind of human hunt to his persecutors. Though in reality he was noted among his brother hunters for swiftness of foot, he assured the chief that he was a very bad runner. His stratagem gained him some vantage ground. He was led by the chief into the prairie, about four hundred yards from the main body of savages, and then turned loose to save himself if he could. A tremendous yell let him know that the whole pack of bloodhounds were off ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... unless you see, And so conceive, is vanity in me; Therefore I leave it to it self, and pray Like a good Bark, it may work out to day, And stem all doubts; 'twas built for such a proof, And we hope highly: if she lye aloof For her own vantage, to give wind at will, Why let her work, only be you but still, And sweet opinion'd, and we are bound to say, You are worthy Judges, ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... study, without the customary ablutions, and his tangled hair and scrubby beard were innocent of comb and razor. On being invited to be seated, I with some difficulty found a chair, for almost every square foot of surface in the place—floor, chairs, tables, shelves, and every other "coign of vantage"—was piled up with books, reports, law papers, printers' proofs, and other literary matter, begrimed with dust, and apparently in the most hopeless condition of muddle. On the table itself was the opened correspondence of the day, and although it was very early morning, a separated portion, consisting ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... horse. Latterly he was beyond all the impudencies of logic, considering a reference to the parish register worth all the reasons in the world, "I AM OLD AND WELL STRICKEN IN YEARS," he was wont to say; and I never found any one bold enough to answer the argument. Apart from this vantage that he kept over all who were not yet octogenarian, he had some other drawbacks as a gardener. He shrank the very place he cultivated. The dignity and reduced gentility of his appearance made the small garden cut a sorry figure. He was full of tales of greater situations in his ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... inconsiderable one in the mind of the King, of being at least free from any of the embarrassments of a Parliamentary grant. Apart from the actual money paid, the Treasury was relieved of an expenditure of about one hundred and twenty thousand pounds annually. Of all such vantage posts abroad, Dunkirk was perhaps the least useful, and the most risky to hold. Trifling as was the price obtained according to our reckoning, it was nevertheless of importance in the actual state of the exchequer. But the nation invariably shows itself sensitive to the loss ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... then, at the real point of dispute between the philosopher and the poet. They claim the same vantage-point from which to overlook human life. One would think they might peacefully share the same pinnacle, but as a matter of fact they are continuously jostling one another. In vain one tries to quiet their contentiousness. Turning to the ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... made her way hastily to a point of vantage, running the brief distance lying between the slight knoll on which she stood and the eastern edge of the valley where the rugged peaks rose abruptly. She scrambled up the first bit of slope, her heart beating wildly, expecting each second to hear the snap ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... the Roman occupation of Gaul. The place commanded one of the great roads into Spain, and in the fourth century Romans and Franks ousted each other from such a point of vantage. In the year 436, Theodoric, King of the Visigoths, superseded both these parties; and it is during his occupation that the inner enceinte was raised upon the ruins of the Roman fortifications. Most of the Visigoth towers that are still ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... Iola, earnestly, "I believe the time will come when the civilization of the negro will assume a better phase than you Anglo-Saxons possess. You will prove unworthy of your high vantage ground if you only use your superior ability to victimize feebler races and minister to a selfish greed of gold and a love ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... between two doughty heroes of the rookery. Their field of battle is generally the air: and their contest is managed in the most scientific and elegant manner; wheeling round and round each other, and towering higher and higher to get the vantage-ground, until they sometimes disappear in the clouds before ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... himself of every honorable ground to defeat him. He may begin at once by declaring to his opponent or his professional adviser, that he holds him at arm's length, and he may keep him so during the whole contest. He may fall back upon the instructions of his client, and refuse to yield any legal vantage ground, which may have been gained through the ignorance or inadvertence of his opponent. Counsel, however, may and even ought to refuse to act under instructions from a client to defeat what he believes to be an honest and just claim, ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... the king of Trigartas, well-versed in elephant-charges, approaching the front of Nakula's chariot, caused it to be dragged by the elephant he rode. But Nakula, little daunted at this, leaped out of his chariot, and securing a point of vantage, stood shield and sword in hand, immovable as a hill. Thereupon Suratha, wishing to slay Nakula at once, urged towards him his huge and infuriate elephant with trunk upraised. But when the beast came near, Nakula with ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... mulatto Egypt black Africa was always in closest touch, so much so that to some all evidence of Negro uplift seem Egyptian in origin. The truth is, rather, that Egypt was herself always palpably Negroid, and from her vantage ground as almost the only African gateway received ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... manner: the first brigade of his own division, under Brigadier Hicks, immediately supported by Brigadier Godby's brigade, which had constituted the garrison of Loodiana, gallantly stormed the village of Aliwal, and from this new vantage-ground opened a deadly fire upon the right of the enemy's left, and his left centre. Sir Harry then ordered his whole line to advance, which was gallantly achieved, the 31st (or Young Buffs) European regiment distinguishing itself, although the native regiments showed a noble ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Rufus Bennett, gazing on the scene from this point of vantage and mopping with a large handkerchief a scarlet face, which, as the result of climbing three flights of stairs, had become slightly ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... never heard of a spirit that cried like this one, or of a spirit that was frightened, and he rose to his feet that he might look over the gunwale and into the derelict. From this vantage he beheld the head of a little child, and he could see, also, that this very real child, and not the much feared spirits, was the source of ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... hills, which were painted softly in amethyst on a tender green sky, and nearer are some rocky hills, which are red at all hours of daylight. Boats and masts conceal the view of the city from the river to a great extent, but even when from a vantage ground it is seen spread out below, it is so densely packed, its streets are so narrow, and its open spaces so few, that one almost doubts whether the million and a half of people attributed to it are really crowded within the narrow area. From ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... steps' height of vantage, she looked down on the three upturned British faces—and her eyes went calmly from ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... is she Who is wedded unto Truth: Thou shalt know him when he comes, (Welcome youth!) Not by any din of drums, Nor the vantage of his airs; Neither by his crown, Nor his gown, Nor by anything he wears. He shall only well known be By the holy harmony That his coming ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... adversaries, though at vantage now, Should be subdued by strategy and guile. I from sore strait triumphant did emerge Through trenchant pen of a compatriot. This noble scion of Democracy Did wield a telling blow in my behalf ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... showed that, on this occasion, the Russian artillery was vastly superior, both in calibre and in range, to the Japanese guns. Forts, trenches, and rifle-pits, covered by mines and wire entanglements, were constructed on every point of vantage and in separate tiers. Searchlights were also employed, and every advantage was taken of the proximity of a great fortress and its ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... our doings, judged from the vantage point of the knoll, are very inconsistent. The spot occupied by the drying yard is the most suitable place for the new strawberry bed, and is in a direct line between the fence gap, where my fragrant things are to be, and the Rose Garden. Several of the walks that have been laid out according ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... the amplitude of a quarto to prove that all men are fashioned, even in the womb, with features that shall hereafter beautifully harmonise with the politics of the grown creature. Now WALL, being ordained a poor man and a Chartist, is endowed with a "laughing hyena" countenance. He even loses the vantage ground of our common humanity, and is sunk by his poverty and his politics to the condition of a beast, and of a most unamiable beast into the bargain. However, the vast enfolding iniquity is yet to be displayed and duly shuddered at; for WALL, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various
... surprise that had been sprung on them, the Boers commenced sniping the town from various vantage points in the vicinity. But French knew how to treat the sniper. The following notice was immediately dashed off by the local printing press and ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... to the future with dawnings of a new hope and cheerfulness. At no time in his life had he felt himself existing through so wide and full a range. He was a man now in full breadth and height, and, as he looked back upon his previous life, he could trace, as from a lofty vantage-ground, the plan and bearing of ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... of vantage which I found on the side of the hill was not only to a great extent sheltered from the bullets, but afforded an extensive view of the general action, and for the rest of the day I remained with Lord Dundonald ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... 'low: 'Frank, ease down on de ground; I'll just stay up here for a while.' I lay on them leaves, skeered to make a russle. Your pa up de tree skeered to go up or down! Broad daylight didn't move us. Sun come up, he look all 'round from his vantage up de tree, then come down, not 'til then, do ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various
... Burnam and his son had returned next door, and so far as we could observe from our vantage-point, preparations were being made for the body's removal. As the crowd below, driven away by the policemen one minute, only to collect again in another, swayed and grumbled in a continual expectation that was as continually disappointed, ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... look back through a haze of four years. When I first came to college I felt quite resentful because I'd been robbed of the normal kind of childhood that the other girls had had; but now, I don't feel that way in the least. I regard it as a very unusual adventure. It gives me a sort of vantage point from which to stand aside and look at life. Emerging full grown, I get a perspective on the world, that other people who have been brought up in the thick of ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... developed sense of humor than any other known insect. It is an established fact that after a person has fallen upon his face and clawed at the earth where the grasshopper was but is not, the grasshopper will be seen distinctly to laugh from his coign of vantage ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... I could see in favour of the People of the Child were that they would fight on the vantage ground of their mountain stronghold, a formidable position if properly defended. Also they would have the benefit of the skill and knowledge of Ragnall and myself. Lastly, the enemy must face our rifles. Neither the White nor the Black Kendah, ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... interest in these affairs and expressed his opinions freely and forcibly in his letters to his parents. His father was a strong Federalist and bitterly deprecated the declaration of war by the United States. The son, on the contrary, from his point of vantage in the enemy's country saw things from a different point of view and stoutly upheld the wisdom, nay, the necessity, of the war. His parents and friends urged him to keep out of politics and to be discreet, and he seems, at any rate, to have followed their ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... Feeling himself free for the moment, the boy jumped back in readiness for another attack. But once again the unexpected had him at a vantage. The boy anticipated no other attack now but that of fists or a knife at the utmost. These were the only contingencies that his inexperience could imagine. But before he had time to conjecture other possibilities, Red Fox had slipped off his blanket, ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... is great, so your regard should be; My worth unknown, no loss is known in me. Upon my death the French can little boast; In yours they will, in you all hopes are lost. Flight cannot stain the honor you have won; But mine it will, that no exploit have done; You fled for vantage, every one will swear; But, if I bow, they 'll say it was for fear. There is no hope that ever I will stay, If the first hour I shrink and run away. Here on my knee I beg mortality, Rather ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... undulating wood-covered heights faded away into mist, and blended with the horizon. To the east, a deep and fertile valley lay between the high lands on which they rested and the far ridge of oak hills. From their vantage height they could distinguish the outline of the Bare Hill, made more distinct by its flickering fires and the smoke wreaths that hung like a pearly-tinted robe among the dark pines that grew upon its crest. Not long tarrying did ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... And opportunities of being thrown In contact with the cultured and the gifted people of the day. Being the thirteenth one among six pairs I deemed it wise to keep apart and let the others have their say: And from my vantage-place upon the stairs, Or in a corner, where I seemed to read, I listened for some word That would make life seem sweeter, or cast light Upon the goal toward which all footsteps wend: and this was what I heard Throughout each day and half of every night. The men talked business, politics, and ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... at all, either to the sovereignty of Russia or to the preferences of the population with whose fortunes it dealt, but meant, in a word, that the Central Empires were to keep every foot of territory their armed forces had occupied—every province, every city, every point of vantage—as a permanent addition to their territories and their power. It is a reasonable conjecture that the general principles of settlement which they at first suggested originated with the more liberal statesmen of Germany and Austria, the men who have begun to feel the force of their own people's thought ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson
... on, from the vantage-ground of a pass over another spur of the same range, is obtained a widely extended view of the country to the east. For nearly thirty miles from the base of the mountains, low, level mud-flats extend eastward, bordered on the south by the marshy, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... duties we have to perform. With him we ascend to the highest pinnacle of feeling, and only then do we fancy we have returned to nature's unbounded freedom, to the actual realm of liberty. From this point of vantage we can see ourselves and our fellows emerge as something sublime from an immense mirage, and we see the deep meaning in our struggles, in our victories and defeats; we begin to find pleasure in the rhythm of passion and in ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... growling voices subsided into a murmur. The hostess settled the bow at her collar more becomingly, and her two pretty daughters feigned to be deeply occupied with some drawn thread work. David Helmsley, noting everything that was going on from his coign of vantage, recognised at once the dissipated, effeminate-looking young man, who, stepping out of a private room which opened on a corridor apparently leading to the inner part of the house, sauntered lazily up to the bar and, resting his arm upon its oaken counter, smiled condescendingly, not to say ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... against so much of the opposition and petty fault-finding that come from ignorance; and sometimes he rejoiced that his little girl, as he fondly called her, would be one of the earlier proofs and examples of a certain noble advance and new vantage-ground of civilization. This has been anticipated through all ages by the women who, sometimes honored and sometimes persecuted, have been drawn away from home life by a devotion to public and social usefulness. It must be recognized that certain qualities are required for married, ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... turned at once in the direction of the stranger's voice. And before the immense audience knew what was happening, five hundred German soldiers, armed with pistols and repeating rifles, had sprung to life, alert and formidable, at vantage-points all over the Garden. Two hundred, with weapons ready, guarded the platform and the Committee of Public Safety. And, in little groups of threes and fives, back to back, around the iron columns that rose through the galleries, ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett |
