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More "Catastrophe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ruins! Those officers who were in pursuit of Lomellino were so astounded by the sudden din and the column of flame, that they remained rooted to the spot where they had turned to gaze on the evidence of the catastrophe: and Lomellino had succeeded in effecting a safe and unobserved return ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... as you know, is a very loyal worker. She's president of the society here. She did what she could to prevent the catastrophe, but she was powerless. Then she resigned. This was Rally Day, you know. The women from all the county churches came in. There must have been two hundred of them. We looked forward to a very profitable meeting. I prayed the opening prayer myself. Then I had some calls to make. It ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... do it," scolded Bobby, rushing forward, though of course he couldn't have known that Dot meditated such a catastrophe. In fact, that small girl was more surprised than any ...
— Four Little Blossoms on Apple Tree Island • Mabel C. Hawley
... I expect to be censured. As Bainbridge drew toward what I suppose would, under any circumstances, have been his close, I was sitting with my face toward Arthur, and the actions of that unpolished gem told me that the catastrophe was at hand. Those who say that "the expected never happens" misinform us; for the expected very frequently does happen. The wretched boy did not—would not—look at me, and I could not, of course, interrupt the flow of eloquence that poured from the lips of Bainbridge. ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... have outlasted their vitality,—at some unexpected moment, there must come a terrible crash. The sole reason why I should desire it to happen in my day is, that I might be there to see! But the ruin of my own country is, perhaps, all that I am destined to witness; and that immense catastrophe (though I am strong in the faith that there is a national lifetime of a thousand years in us yet) would serve any man well enough as his final spectacle ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... carriage, with the other waved his hat, and shouted, "Vive le Roi!" In another instant I saw him stagger; a pike was darted into his bosom, and he fell dead under the wheel. Before the confusion of this frightful catastrophe had subsided, a casement was opened immediately above my head, and a woman, superbly dressed, rushed out on the balcony waving a white scarf, and crying, "Vive Marie Antoinette!" The muskets of the escort were turned upon her, and a volley was fired at ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... are capable of wielding by simply—it is so very simple now—simply transferring our personalities to the higher plane. What if we were to do wrong? We might involve the whole world in some unspeakable catastrophe." ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... of course approached the minimum to start with. Now Bernadine wore only a wisp of nylon perched precariously on one breast and part of a ribbon that had once been a belt. Discovering the catastrophe, she shrieked once and leaped into the pool any-which-way, covering her breasts with her hands and hiding in water up ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... know that this spot has been the scene of a catastrophe fearful to look back upon, in the annals ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... diction, placed before a female writer. But if, disdaining the construction of sentences,—the precise decorum of the cold grammarian,—she has caught the spirit of her author,—if, in every altered scene,—still adhering to the nice propriety of his meaning, and still keeping in view his great catastrophe,—she has agitated her audience with all the various passions he depicted, the rigid criticism of the closet will be but a slender abatement of the pleasure resulting from the sanction of an ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald
... of Quebec—Montmagny, D'Ailleboust, and D'Argenson—pleaded with the home authorities to send reinforcements for their feeble garrison, by whom alone Quebec hoped to escape the ever-dreaded catastrophe. Through press of home affairs, and official neglect and indifference, these requests continued to be disregarded. Reprisals were taken against the Iroquois whenever opportunities occurred; but even ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... either with the Holy Spirit of Ormazd or with Ormazd himself. He is the all destroying Satan, the source of all evil in the world and, like Ormazd, exists since the beginning of the world. Eventually, in the great world catastrophe, he will be defeated by Ormazd and disappear. The later sect of the Zervanites held that both were visible manifestations of the primeval principle Zruvan akarana (Infinite ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... No catastrophe had befallen during my absence. The same peaceful sunny Sunday reigned in Gatun; new-laundered laborers were still lolling in the shade of the camps, West Indians were still batting at interminable balls with their elongated paddles in the faint hope of deciding ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... party in the cabin that afternoon. The painful impression made by this catastrophe was heightened by the knowledge that it might have been prevented. The steamer amidships was filled up to her rail with coal, and the boy was thrown overboard by a sudden lurch while walking upon ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... hear, whether I wrote or not. I had come to this wisdom too late. I fully believe that, as far as my ability to prevent the catastrophe was concerned, I was then and there a possessed person—a slave of spirits—as utterly bound to do the will of my magnetizers as ever a 'subject' was. Though I cannot be persuaded that all these beings, from whom unseen I had heard so much, were 'only evil continually,' ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... centralization, which proscribes liberty as manifestly as night obscures the day. As for my part, gentlemen, there are two things which I love equally—liberty and France. Well, then, as I believe in God, do I believe that both must perish in the throes of some convulsive catastrophe if all the life of the nation shall continue to be concentrated in the brain, and the great reform for which I call is not made: if a vast system of local franchise, if provincial institutions, largely independent and conformable to the modern spirit, are not soon ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... housekeeper, who ruled him with a rod of iron, and insulted Mrs. Austin and others, undertook to manage me in the same way, and got packed off in consequence, though I did all I could to keep the secret, and prevent the catastrophe; but he insisted on knowing why I left him, and he applied to the secretaries, who were witnesses of the whole transaction. The philosopher was indignant, and insisted on her making me a suitable apology. I said I wanted no apology, having made up my mind to go ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... suddenly surprised by an overwhelming body of insurgents, who must have rushed in and massacred them before the soldiers could stand to their arms. If any white people in the neighbourhood had escaped with their lives, they must have gone away and not dared to return to the scene of the catastrophe. ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... through all these vicissitudes, and his presence alone preserved intact the rights of the state over which he reigned as sovereign. If any disaster befell his worshippers, his temple was the spot where the survivors of the catastrophe rallied around him, their religion preventing them from mixing with the inhabitants of neighbouring towns and from becoming lost among them. The survivors multiplied with that extraordinary rapidity which is the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... twice every day; and the result was pretty uniform, viz., that my brother and I terminated the battle by insisting upon our undoubted right to run away. Magna Charta, I should fancy, secures that great right to every man; else, surely, it is sadly defective. But out of this catastrophe to most of our skirmishes, and to all our pitched battles except one, grew a standing schism between my brother and myself. My unlimited obedience had respect to action, but not to opinion. Loyalty to my brother did not rest upon ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... continue to hold out? Ten thousand Spaniards still surrounded the walls, and at any moment might break in, and massacre and rapine would sweep over her native city. Night and day she prayed that the dreaded catastrophe might be averted, yet day after day passed, and the fleet lay in sight of the walls, but too far distant for their cannon to reach the enemy. Even Admiral Boisot was in despair. He despatched a letter to the Prince, stating his belief that if the spring tides, soon to ...
— The Lily of Leyden • W.H.G. Kingston
... to imply that the family had lost nothing, the boys being the only sufferers. And it was a bit staggering—all their work and machinery and tools and plans utterly ruined—the lathe and drill a heap of twisted iron. It was with a rueful face that Bill surveyed the catastrophe. ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... general," Allister was fond of saying, "plans in two ways: for an absolute victory and for an absolute defeat. The one enables him to squeeze the last ounce of success out of a triumph; the other keeps a failure from turning into a catastrophe." ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... act, and deplore the violent death of the "lordly" brute who, out of his selfish and wicked recklessness, had snatched away the life of an only child from its father without care or compunction. But it was the fearful swiftness of the catastrophe that affected Helmsley most,—that, and what seemed to him, the needless cruelty of fate. Only last night he had seen Tom o' the Gleam for the first time—only last night he had admired the physical symmetry and grace ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... Mr. Haswell was induced by his desire for gain to visit you and how you had most mysteriously predicted his blindness. Now, there is no such thing as telepathy, at least in this case. How then was I to explain it? What could cause such a catastrophe naturally? Why, only those rays invisible to the human eye, but which make this piece of willemite glow—the ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... showed Aunt Clara letters from people who'd employed him, lots of Americans whose names we've heard, and some we're acquainted with. The tragic thing is, that he finds difficulty in getting engaged because of his face. I've felt guilty ever since I called it a catastrophe. Of course it is; but I said it to be funny, which was cruel. And we deserve to punish ourselves by keeping the poor wretch a few days, or more, if ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... region; and the bilingual mongrel peoples, that arose in subsequent times out of the remains of the native Italians and Achaeans and the more recent immigrants of Sabellian descent, never attained any real prosperity. This catastrophe, however, belongs in point of time ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... through an immense depth of conglomerate formation, a hundred feet of bowlders and pebbles cemented together by integrant particles which appear to have been washed down from the mountains-probably during the subsidence of the deluge, for even if that great catastrophe were a comparatively local occurrence, instead of a universal flood, as some profess to believe, we are now gradually creeping up toward Ararat, so that this particular region was undoubtedly submerged. What appear to be petrified ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... a white man of blood untainted, must answer for this final tragic catastrophe! Without me, perhaps, the sachems of the three clans might submit to the will of the League, for even the surly Onondagas had now heeded the League-Call—yes, even the Tuscaroras, too. And as for those Delaware dogs, they had come, belly-dragging, cringing to ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... pity you should have come too late for the catastrophe, when you had seen all the preface! Five days ago Bella and Charley made their great coup, ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... of our wounded, and many of our surgeons, with rare courage, remained there to take charge of them, for it required some nerve to run the risk of being sent to Libby prison when the fight was over, a catastrophe which has often happened to our medical officers. Among the rest, the chief surgeons of the First Corps, Doctor Theodore Heard and Doctor Thomas H. Bache, refused to leave their patients, and in consequence of the hasty retreat of the enemy ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... sense of all humanity honeycombed with millions upon millions of small sorrows, absorbing joys and hopes and fears, and in spite of them all the Great Life sweeping on, with no Great Death to check its course, no immense catastrophe, all these little troubles like mere tiny specks of foam upon the surface of ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... of the stairway, saw this catastrophe, but did not smile. He turned on his heel, and made his way slowly around the corner of the passage into the other part of the building, and paused at the open doorway of the Honourable Hilary's outer office. By the street windows ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the first to realize the extent of the catastrophe, and in a short while chairs and life-preservers and tables—everything that could float—had been tossed into the sea to the struggling immortals therein. On board the Gehenna, those who had not cast themselves into the waters, under the cool direction of Holmes and Bonaparte, ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... not been answered by any growl of thunder; the storm did not at once move up and the heavens above were still clear and sunny by day, and starry-kirtled at night. But here and there were those who, like Hermann on the first announcement of the catastrophe, scented trouble, and Michael, going to see Aunt Barbara one afternoon early in the second week of July, found that she was ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... short memory, does not remember the catastrophe. She was three at the time of it. She was in the nursery when the blow fell, and presently her mother came in looking very distracted and wild, and caught the little girl's face between her hands, and looked into it, and turned it this way ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... of despair arose from those still on board the ill-fated "Trident" when this catastrophe happened. During the next half-hour the rocket apparatus was plied with great success, but although most of the women and children were saved by it (and by the boat before it was disabled), there were still upwards of fifty ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... at that time the general topic of conversation at Paris.]—and what do you think of it? Let me know, for I am determined to form my taste upon yours. I hear that the situations and incidents are well brought on, and the catastrophe unexpected and surprising, but the verses bad. I suppose it is the subject of all conversations at Paris, where both women and men are judges and critics of all such performances; such conversations, that both form and improve the taste, and whet the judgment; are surely preferable ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... May! Still no steamer had come, but the mosquitoes had—bloodthirsty beyond any the temperate climates know. It was clear that some catastrophe had befallen the Woodworth boats. And Nig had been lured away by his quondam master! No, they had not gone back to the gulch—that was too easy. The man had a mind to keep the dog, and, since he was not allowed to buy him, he would do ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... Position after position—fortress after fortress—city after city—declared impregnable by the Government up to the very last moment, fell suddenly and mysteriously; only to expose, when too late, the chain of grievous errors that inseparably linked the catastrophe ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... catastrophe my sister joins in the appeal I am making. I hope, in the course of the next six months, to be able to repay the loan. But it is absolutely necessary to obtain the money at once, for my creditors ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... the catastrophe. How Pentheus, arrived within sight of the orderly Maenads, was not satisfied, but desired a higher station from which to view their unseemly life. Then a wonder: the stranger bent down an ash tree, and seating Pentheus in a fork of it let the tree return to its position, ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... and Alexius was solemnly crowned with his father in the dome of St. Sophia. In the first days of his reign, the people, already blessed with the restoration of plenty and peace, was delighted by the joyful catastrophe of the tragedy; and the discontent of the nobles, their regret, and their fears, were covered by the polished surface of pleasure and loyalty The mixture of two discordant nations in the same capital might have been pregnant ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... down. At the close of the day the French were in possession of the enemy's ground, but the Russians, unbroken in their order, had only retreated to a second line of defence. Both sides claimed the victory; neither had won it. It was no catastrophe such as Napoleon required for the decision of the war, it was no triumph sufficient to save Russia from the necessity of abandoning its capital. Kutusoff had sustained too heavy a loss to face the French beneath the walls of Moscow. Peace was no nearer for the ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... the methods, even could we borrow the results, of wisdom older than all our civilization by myriads or hundreds of myriads of years. But would not the sudden advent of larger knowledge from some elder planet prove for us, by reason, of the present moral condition of mankind, nothing less than a catastrophe?—might it not even result in the extinction of the ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... no intention of stopping, only just long enough to see the place and make arrangements for the prosecution of my journey; but this catastrophe hurried my departure, and at the end of three days we were both mounted on mules, travelling over hot, bare plains, with the sun pouring down until one's brain seemed scorched; and when at last water was reached, it was thick and muddy-looking, so that, but ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... trusty messenger, by whom, or by whose means, they were publicly delivered to the bishops in the presence of their attendants. It was a precipitate and unfortunate measure, and probably the occasion of the catastrophe which followed. The prelates, caught in their own snare, burst into loud complaints against his love of power and thirst of revenge; they accused him to the young King of violating the royal privileges, and wishing to tear the crown from his head; and they hastened to Normandy to demand redress from ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... Schontz to beg the loan of some plate, telling her what had happened to Lousteau. After making the child welcome to all she had, Madame Schontz went off to her friend Malaga, that Cardot might be warned of the catastrophe that had befallen ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... Harriet, do I now think of the impending fate of Dorothy; but oh, the difference between the sudden catastrophe in the one case, and the foreknowledge granted in the other! Time, whose awful uses our blind security so habitually forgets, is granted to her, with its inestimable value marked on it by the finger of death, undimmed by the busy hands ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... became closely bound. Propinquity bred intimacy. Shortly afterwards Camillo's mother died, and in this catastrophe, for such it was, the other two showed themselves to be genuine friends of his. Villela took charge of the interment, of the church services and the settlement of the affairs of the deceased; Rita dispensed consolation, and ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... man saw nothing for it, as they rode on, save a grim contest between them which could end in what? What could he do with her? They were riding away fresh from this awful catastrophe, and she was not saying a word! She had even asked him why he had come there! How was he to subdue her, when the very act of trapping her had failed to do so? His ruse, while so successful materially, had failed so utterly spiritually. They reached the house, and Aileen got out. The old ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... an end of mine," remarked Challenger, "for science is not dead, and this catastrophe in itself will offer us many most ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and patted her hand; then added, "We must go and beg pardon, I suppose; I should not wonder if the catastrophe had damaged Aunt Jane the most; and if so, I don't know what ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to fan up her wrath anew, and she started in to talk at him again. Under which circumstances, perhaps it was just as well that a couple of heavy bangs overhead and a series of appalling yells, betokening a nursery catastrophe, should cut short her eloquence, and start ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... (about 1712-1732) not more than eight or nine of Shakspeare's plays were acted, whereas Garrick annually gave the public seventeen or eighteen. Romeo and Juliet had lain neglected near 80 years, when in 1748-9 Garrick brought it out, or rather a hash of it. 'Otway had made some alteration in the catastrophe, which Mr. Garrick greatly improved by the addition of a scene, which was written with a spirit not unworthy of Shakespeare himself.' Ib. p. 125. Murphy (Life of Garrick, p. 100), writing of this alteration, says:—'The catastrophe, as it now stands, is the most affecting ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... been apprehensive that the evacuation of Egypt was unavoidable. The last news he had received from that country was not very encouraging, and created a presentiment of the approach of the dreaded catastrophe. He, however, published the contrary; but it was then of great importance that, an account of the evacuation should not reach England until the preliminaries of peace were signed, for which purpose M. Otto was exerting all his industry and talent. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... prey to the convulsions of famine, rebellion, and pillage. And yet all sleep at this moment, and their peaceful slumbers are not disturbed for a single instant by the prospect of such a frightful catastrophe. On the other hand, eighty departments have been laboring to-day, without concert, without any mutual understanding, for the provisioning ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... the day before New Year's Eve. Views were divided as to the nature of the coming catastrophe—whether it would come as a flood or as an earthquake. Most of the people remained outside their houses, some on the plain, others on the hills; all with ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... the meaning of this paper stands for a more or less excusable mistake. A ship may be "driven ashore" by stress of weather. It is a catastrophe, a defeat. To be "run ashore" has the littleness, poignancy, and bitterness of ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... hitherto occupied by them; and, instead of trusting everybody, put no faith in any one. This conduct ultimately recoiled upon themselves; their shares fell in value; some of them became bankrupt, while the others had a hard struggle to avoid that catastrophe; and the public lost all confidence in banks and bankers. The worst part of the tale remains to be told; namely, that many widows and orphans, whose all was invested in bank shares, were utterly ruined and reduced to destitution ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... moralising philosopher may find food for contemplation in such a scene and such a catastrophe. He may see, in the lofty and decaying trunks, the hoary relics and representatives of a generation of better and greater spirits than those who lead the destinies of his own,—spirits, left not more as monuments of the past than as models for the imitation ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... Benjamin, she was quite sure, did not expect anything of the kind. But— Then Lizzie paused, and Mr. Benjamin, with the sweetest and wittiest of smiles, suggested that perhaps Miss Greystock was going to be married. Lizzie, with a pretty maiden blush, admitted that such a catastrophe was probable. She had been asked in marriage by Sir Florian Eustace. Now Mr. Benjamin knew, as all the world knew, that Sir Florian Eustace was a very rich man indeed; a man in no degree embarrassed, and ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... be speaking is a Hebrew who chanced to be present at Gaza when the, incidents related took place. After the catastrophe he rushes to Manoah, the father of Samson, to whom and his assembled friends he relates what he saw. ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... most healthful place of recreation to be in; and, cleaving the dense smoke, you ascend into sunlight. Perhaps you stroll to some place where the air is better, but which may still have a story quite as exciting as the catastrophe of the imperial bakehouse: perhaps to Bertholdsdorf; a pretty little market-town with a tall-steepled church, and a half ruined battlement, situated on the hill slope about six miles to the south of Vienna. It ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... which I had looked for so much profit to my art, had ended in a catastrophe of which I did not then even measure the extent. It was nearly two years before I recovered from the attack at Neuchatel enough to work regularly, and these circumstances threw me still further from my chosen career. More exciting and absorbing occupation called me, and I obeyed, whether ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... ex his duobus altero nobis infestissimo, altero nobis amicissimo, licebit singula coniicere, quae sunt horum simillima. Etenim, ut nostrorum illa fuit Epistasis turbulenta, sic nostrorum haec evasit divina Catastrophe. ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... Mrs. Hawker, you have been-duly warned of the catastrophe- character of this point, on which woman is said never to have been wooed in vain. Here are Captain Truck and myself, ready at any moment to use these carving knives, faute des Bowies, in order to show our desperate devotion; and I deem it no more than prudent in you, not to smile again this ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... contact. And this he gave her simply, ungrudgingly, with a high purity of understanding, guiltless of any shadow of embarrassment or any after-thought. Their lighter, somewhat enigmatic relation of the earlier evening was extinguished, swamped by the catastrophe of Charles Verity's illness. Exactly in how far she gauged the gravity of that illness and its only too likely result, or merely wept, unnerved by the distressing outward aspect of it, Carteret could not determine. But he divined, and rightly, that she was in process of ranging herself, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... obtained the prussic acid, nor why she had selected that particular moment for its use. I ought to add, that CASANUOVA left England before the inquest, and has never returned. On the mystery of the final catastrophe the manuscript throws no light. It ends abruptly. But the whole tone of it leads me to believe, that in some unexplained manner Sir CHARLES himself had been instrumental in causing his wife's death. But you, no doubt, know, and could tell us ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, Jan. 2, 1892 • Various
... period. It used to be thought that there was a mysterious blank or gulf between the Old and the New Stone Age. The Palaeolithic culture seemed to come to an abrupt close, and the Neolithic culture was sharply distinguished from it. It was suspected that some great catastrophe had destroyed the Palaeolithic race in Europe, and a new race entered as the adverse conditions were removed. This was especially held to be the case in England. The old Palaeolithic race had never reached Ireland, which seems to have been cut oft from the Continent during the Ice-Age, ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... can be no harm in hearing what the fellow has to say. It may be about some threatened invasion of the savages; and as protectors of the people, you, ayudante, know it's our duty to do whatever we can for warding off such a catastrophe." ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... during which the policy of the Union in its relations with Europe constituted the principal basis of our own political divisions, and the most arduous part of the action of the Federal Government. With the catastrophe in which the wars of the French Revolution terminated, and our own subsequent peace with Great Britain, this baneful weed of party strife was uprooted. From that time no difference of principle, connected with the theory of government, or with our intercourse ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... I had been brought to safety. After that he spoke no more, for his mind began to labour heavily with his coming speech. His lips kept muttering, his eye wandered, and I began to prepare myself for a second catastrophe. I tried to think of something to say myself, but my mind was dry as a stone. The next thing I knew we had drawn up outside a door in a street, and were being welcomed by some noisy gentlemen with rosettes. The hall had about five hundred in ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... was stuck into the kidneys, and which was the occasion of his speedy and dreadful death. A few days after this, my best greyhound was stuck in the loins, in the like barbarous manner, which brought on the same kind of speedy and agonizing death; and this was the catastrophe of these two noted dogs, which had been much talked of, and were famous amongst sportsmen, as being most perfect in their kind. Some time after this, their game-keeper, in company with his nephew, buried two ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... War, believing the catastrophe was coming, she took instructions from an R.A.M.C. staff sergeant-major in all the intricacies of yellow, blue, and red tickets, and of forms from A to Z, or rather, from the first wound to the burial, required by the R.A.M.C. The result was ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... outlines that her mistress has left undefined. Thus, in the present tale, though it would have been far more convenient not to have spread the story over such a length of time, and to have made the catastrophe depend upon the heroes and heroines, instead of keeping them mere ineffective spectators, or only engaged in imaginary adventures for which a precedent can be found, it has been necessary to stretch out their narrative, so as to be at least consistent with the ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Bumpus, who seemed to be almost smothered under the folds of his blanket, which he must have had up over his head at the time the catastrophe came upon them. ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... to school when thirty years old to exchange the trade of war, into which he had wandered in the folly of youth, for a profession that harmonized better with his gentle, thoughtful nature. That this war had now, twenty years later, turned him into a soldier again was a misfortune, a catastrophe which had overtaken him, as it had all the others, without any fault of his or theirs. Yet there was nothing to do but to reconcile himself to it; and first of all he had to avoid that constant hair-splitting. Why torment himself so with questions? Some man had to stay ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... The catastrophe—for to me it was no less a thing—had come upon me so suddenly that I was fairly stunned. From sheer force of habit I went over to the church and knelt before the altar; but I could not pray; I could only ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... construction loan of three million dollars, and the first section of line, extending from Piermont on the Hudson to Goshen, was put into operation in September, 1841. In the following year the company became financially embarrassed and was placed in the hands of receivers. This catastrophe delayed further progress for years, and it was not until 1846 that sufficient new capital was raised to go on with the work. The original estimate of the cost for building the entire line of 485 miles had been three million dollars, but already the road had cost over six millions and only a small ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... the rest of the day in the sort of aniantissement which that sort of headache often produces, and in the meantime everybody held tete-a-tetes. The Colonel held his peace about the will, not half crediting such a catastrophe, and thinking one matter at a time quite enough for his brain; but he talked to the Professor, to Janet, to Allen, and to Bobus, and tried to come to a knowledge of the bridegroom's history, and to decide what course ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to him to unburden his mind, and Riddell encouraged him to do it. He told all the sad history of the failures, and follies, and sins which had reached their catastrophe that day; and the captain, on his side, in his quiet manly way, strove all he could to infuse some hope for the future, and courage to ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... that it is sublime to stand on the shore and behold a shipwreck. It is sublime only as one's personal interests and feelings are not engaged. It would not be sublime if it were possible for the spectator to aid in averting the catastrophe; it would not be sublime if one's friends were aboard the ship. One is able to appreciate beauty only as one is able to detach one's self from what is immediate and practical, and by virtue of this detachment, ...
— The Enjoyment of Art • Carleton Noyes
... contemporaries of most of the existing sea-shells. Since they lived, no very great change in the form of the land can have taken place. What, then, has exterminated so many species and whole genera? The mind at first is irresistibly hurried into the belief of some great catastrophe; but thus to destroy animals, both large and small, in Southern Patagonia, in Brazil, on the Cordillera of Peru, in North America up to Behring's Straits, we must shake the entire framework of the globe. An ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... Ernest's catastrophe had come about so gradually no one had suspected it. He was reading a letter from Alice, who wrote a fine close hand, when his father noticed that he was holding the paper almost to his eyes. An examination revealed the fact that the poor eyes were sadly ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... boy away from her. Nora, however, had never assented to this, partly from a conviction of her own ignorance, not knowing what might be the power of a husband in such a matter, and partly thinking that any argument would be good and fair by which she could induce her sister to avoid a catastrophe so terrible as that which ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... within the city, excepting Hector, the field is cleared for the most important and decisive action in the poem; that is, the battle between Achilles and Hector, and the death of the latter. This part of the story is managed with singular skill. It seems as if the poet, feeling the importance of the catastrophe, wished to withdraw from view the personages of less consequence, and to concentrate our attention upon those two alone. The poetic action and description are narrowed in extent, but deepened in interest. The fate of Troy is impending; the irreversible decree of Jupiter is about ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... Keeler's face, there was enough in it to make several ordinary scrimped faces. Besides large physical proportions, there was enough in it of generosity, enough of whole-heartedness, a world of sympathy. The great catastrophe of her life had affected the muscles of her face so that although she enunciated her words very distinctly, she had a slow, automatic way ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... Polly's week of housekeeping might have ended, nor how substantial her castle in the air might have grown, had not a catastrophe occurred to her of a double ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... Another catastrophe from too fierce zeal on the part of the tithingman is recorded. An old farmer, worn out with a hard Saturday's work at sheep-washing, fell asleep ere the hour-glass had once been turned. Though he was a man of dignity, for he sat in his own pew, he could not escape the rod of ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... in the middle of the company, the harlequin down on his left knee, and the columbine standing on his right knee, with her arms curved over her head. Unlike their dancing, which is charmingly graceful, their attitudinizing is hardly a success, and threatens to end in a catastrophe.) ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... give; But some fierce Naga nightly haunts the spot Whose poisoned breath no man can breathe and live." "Fear not for me," the Buddha answered him, "For I this night will make my dwelling there." "Do as you will," Kasyapa doubtful said, "But much I fear some dire catastrophe." Now mighty Mara, spirit of the air, The prince of darkness, roaming through the earth Had found this grotto in the sacred grove, And as a Naga there kept nightly watch For those who sought deliverance from his power, Who, when the master ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... without any thing occurring that could lead to a developement of this dreadful catastrophe. All search after the lady was now given up, and nothing but the remembrance of the unhappy affair remained. At length the hour arrived, when this dreadful mystery was explained, which displayed one of the most diabolical and desperate transactions ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... that awaits me without a murmur; but the sentence of the law which delivers my body to the executioner will, through the ministry of the law, labour in its own vindication, to consign my character to obloquy; for there must be guilt somewhere, whether in the sentence of the court, or in the catastrophe, time must determine. A man in my situation has not only to encounter the difficulties of fortune, and the force of power over minds which it has corrupted or subjugated, but the difficulties of established prejudice. The man dies, but his memory lives. That mine may not perish, that ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... this weapon to be six times stronger and the animal ten times more powerful; launch it at the rate of twenty miles an hour, and you obtain a shock capable of producing the catastrophe required. Until further information, therefore, I shall maintain it to be a sea-unicorn of colossal dimensions, armed not with a halberd, but with a real spur, as the armoured frigates, or the 'rams' of war, whose massiveness and motive power ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... I drank tea with Johnson at Dr. Taylor's, where he had dined. He entertained us with an account of a tragedy written by a Dr. Kennedy, (not the Lisbon physician.) 'The catastrophe of it (said he) was, that a King, who was jealous of his Queen with his prime-minister, castrated himself[672]. This tragedy was actually shewn about in manuscript to several people, and, amongst others, to Mr. Fitzherbert, who repeated to me two lines ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... at the baseness of such enjoyment, she clung to it from habit or from corruption, and each day she hungered after them the more, exhausting all felicity in wishing for too much of it. She accused Leon of her baffled hopes, as if he had betrayed her; and she even longed for some catastrophe that would bring about their separation, since she had not the courage to make up ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... friction on board of the Bronx; and Captain Passford felt even more elastic than usual. Doubtless the capture he had just made afforded him a good deal of inspiration; but the fact that the mystery of the deaf mute and the second lieutenant had been solved, and the unfathomable catastrophe which their presence on board threatened had been escaped was a great ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... contained a long letter, written on the night of her return to Beckendorff's; she had stayed up the whole night writing. It was to have been forwarded to Vivian, in case of their not being able to meet. In the enclosure were a few hurried lines, written since the catastrophe. They were these: "May this safely reach you! Can you ever forgive me? The enclosed, you will see, was intended for you, in case of our not meeting. It anticipated sorrow; yet what were its ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... impotent condition of those men of great hereditary estates, who indeed dislike the designs that are carried on, but whose dislike is rather that of spectators than of parties that may be concerned in the catastrophe of the piece. But riches do not in all cases secure even an inert and passive resistance. There are always in that description men whose fortunes, when their minds are once vitiated by passion or by evil principle, are by no means a security ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Perkins, both of whom observed the foetid effluvia and regarded them as being emitted from the premises in the occupation of Krook, the unfortunate deceased. All this and a great deal more the two gentlemen who have formed an amicable partnership in the melancholy catastrophe write down on the spot; and the boy population of the court (out of bed in a moment) swarm up the shutters of the Sol's Arms parlour, to behold the tops of their heads while they ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... intermixed with yellow and red bandanna, like the flags of different nations. After such a salutation, the celebrated Story-Teller felt almost ashamed to produce so humble an affair as Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe. ...
— Passages From a Relinquised Work (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... are better supported in Dryden than in Shakespeare. We have no low buffoonery in the former, such as disgraces Enobarbus, and is hardly redeemed by his affecting catastrophe. Even the Egyptian Alexas acquires some respectability, from his patriotic attachment to the interests of his country, and from his skill as a wily courtier. He expresses, by a beautiful image, the effeminate attachment to life, appropriated to his character ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... for any less dogmatic philosophy than his own or for any less sweeping social change than that he expected. Moderate social reform to him was but temporizing; indeed, it was evil, inasmuch as it helped to postpone the inevitable, but in the end, beneficent catastrophe of the social revolution. A step-by-step movement toward socialism, state socialism,[19] even of a pretty sweeping character, was, to the old-time Marxians, not really socialism at all. A valid reason for this attitude was found in the extremely limited manhood suffrage ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... were tragic. Evidently he felt that their absence was a matter of immense importance, was a catastrophe. ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... after the above catastrophe, and as the recollection of it was nearly effaced by Miss Jumpheavy's abduction of Ensign Downley, our friend, Mr. Waffles, on visiting his stud at the four o'clock stable-hour, found a most respectable, middle-aged, rosy-gilled, better-sort-of-farmer-looking ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... by itself, for the jar caused the hammer to come down; the gun went off, sending the bullet downwards through the heart of the unfortunate man, who fell dead upon the ground. Eldredge[1] stood stupefied, looking at the catastrophe which had ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... look a little backwards to those circumstances which led to the catastrophe mentioned at the end ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... was written Ali Pasha was still living; but the prediction which it implies was soon after verified, and he closed his stern and energetic life with a catastrophe worthy of its guilt and bravery. He voluntarily perished by firing a powder-magazine, when surrounded, beyond all chance of escape, by the troops of the Sultan his master, whose ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... in itself, it was more important to describe a disaster after it had occurred than to endeavor to prevent the occurrence; but, as a business man, he knew perfectly well that his patrons would read an account giving all of the sickening detail of a terrible catastrophe, while few, if any, would wade through a dry discussion of the means for protecting the public from just such disasters. The public is always very indignant with the effect, but does not care to trouble itself with the cause; but the effect never will be prevented ...
— Bridge Disasters in America - The Cause and the Remedy • George L. Vose
... that much above and below the imaginary plane cutting the sun at its equator, from which the earth and other larger planets vary but little. This no doubt is due to the near approach and disturbing attraction of some large comet, or else it was flung above or below the ordinary plane in the catastrophe that we think befell the large planet that doubtless formerly existed where we now find this swarm. You can see that its path makes a considerable angle to the plane of the ecliptic, and that it is ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... which two successive dire failures had atrophied in his breast, once more rose up buoyant and hopeful. Once he had sworn to lay the Scarlet Pimpernel by the heels, and that oath was not yet wholly forgotten; it had lain dormant after the catastrophe of Boulogne, but with the sight of Armand St. Just it had re-awakened and confronted him again with the strength of ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... shelters that punctuated the parade were deserted, the pier stretched an untenanted length of boards over the still, lead-coloured sea, and it seemed as if nature herself was waiting for some elemental catastrophe. ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... accordingly, the siege, which had lasted seven weeks, was raised, and Don Frederic rejoined his father in Amsterdam. Ready to die in the last ditch, and to overwhelm both themselves and their foes in a common catastrophe, the Hollanders had at last compelled their haughty enemy to fly from a position which he had so ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... and how was that poor woman upstairs to be informed? "You came here intending to tell her," he said in a whisper. He feared every moment that Mrs Broughton would appear on the stairs, and learn from a word or two what had happened without any hint to prepare her for the catastrophe. ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... in the street. I thought I could see it tremble from the attacks of the water; and, with a contraction of the throat, I watched Cyprien cross the roof. Suddenly a rumbling was heard. The moon rose, a round moon, whose yellow face lighted up the immense lake. Not a detail of the catastrophe was lost to us. The Raimbeau house collapsed. We gave a cry of terror as we saw Cyprien disappear. As the house crumbled we could distinguish nothing but a tempest, a swirling of waves beneath the ...
— The Flood • Emile Zola
... thunderbolts, and the fire the flash of the lightning. But whatever may have been the nature of the sheet of flame which enveloped the guilty cities of the plain and set on fire the naphtha-springs that oozed out of it, the remembrance of the catastrophe survived to distant ages. The prophets of Israel and Judah still refer to the overthrow of Sodom and its sister cities, and St. Jude points to them as "suffering the vengeance of eternal fire." Some scholars have seen an allusion to their overthrow ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... to the club since the catastrophe and his father's death, and he was very serious and sombre and ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... becomes my painful duty to inform you of the loss of the U.S. brig Somers, late under my command, and of the drowning of more than half of her crew. The details of this sad catastrophe are briefly as follows: ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... blessed in his death. He cannot be separated from Christ, or from his symmetrically developed spiritual character. Death is not the extinction of being. We must make a distinction between natural and spiritual death. It is sin unforgiven that gives death his power. It is a fearful catastrophe to those out of Christ. Hence the holiness of others will not avail them at the hour of dissolution. "When the soul raves round the walls of its clay tenement, and runs to each avenue, and shrieks for help when no help can come," then the door of salvation is eternally shut. ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... sentence in tones so low that not a mouse in the corner could have heard.) 'Well, the inventor of that explosive has naturally been wanted ever since by all the heads of police in Europe. But the most curious—or perhaps the most natural part of my story is, that our hero, after the catastrophe, grew disgusted with himself and his comrades, acquired, in a fit of revulsion, quite a conservative taste in politics, which was strengthened greatly by the news he indirectly received of the great wealth and respectability of his brother, who had had no communion with ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... Ralegh had borne himself gallantly. He had kept and left the stage with unfailing dignity. The prosecution had at least evinced the respectable earnestness of stubborn hate. At the moment after the catastrophe the nobility, whether of persecuted greatness or of murderous vengefulness, evaporated. Ralegh's enemies appeared to have lost their motive and plan. They seemed no longer sure why or how they wished to wreak ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... second consequence of the conditions of the time. The catastrophe of Europe affected the matter as well as the manner of contemporary speculation. The French Revolution has become to us no more than a term, though the strangest term in a historic series. To some of the best of those who were confronted on ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... ire of William the Testy on hearing of the catastrophe at Fort Goed Hoop. For three good hours his rage was too great for words, or rather the words were too great for him (being a very small man), and he was nearly choked by the misshapen, nine-cornered Dutch oaths and epithets which crowded at one ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... very painful to think of the reproaches to his country and to his country's government that must have passed through the mind of that devoted man during those months of unmerited desertion. In Gordon's letter of the fourteenth of December he said: "All is up. I expect the catastrophe in ten days' time; it would not have been so if our people had kept me better ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... water on the cliffs, then the noise is terrific; the roaring heard down here in the mine is so inexpressibly fierce and awful, that the boldest men at work are afraid to continue their labour. All ascend to the surface, to breathe the upper air and stand on the firm earth: dreading, though no such catastrophe has ever happened yet, that the sea will break in on them if they remain in ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... just such exaggerations as are necessary for a fiction of this kind, he has forecast the conditions which have now overtaken us. We know—or we might know if we had the capacity for any sort of consequent consideration of our conditions—that in a reasonably conducted civilisation no such awful catastrophe as this senseless conflagration could have been possible. No doubt we shall profit by the lesson, but it is one that any individual might have learned for himself from these romances, without paying the fearful price that ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... with the family countenance; his chivalrous exploits on horseback, and mimic capering round the lists of his chequered tilt-yard; his unhappy differences with the partner of his bosom, and her lamentable catastrophe; the fracas with the sheriff's substitute; and his interview with that incomprehensible personage, 65the knight of the sable countenance, who salutes him with the portentous address of "schalabala! schalabala! schalabala!" his successive perils and encounters with the ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... To this catastrophe gentlemen at that time respectively known as Mr. Vernon Harcourt and Mr. Henry James appreciably contributed. They worried Mr. Gladstone into dividing between them the law offices of the Crown. But this turn of affairs came too late to be of advantage to ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... down, and the other boatman began talking earnestly to Tardif in his patois, of which I did not understand a word. Tardif's face was very grave and sad, indescribably so; and, before he turned to me and spoke, I knew it was some sorrowful catastrophe he ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... the papers together and put them in his biggest pocket. He knew not what to think. The suddenness of the affair dazed him. Thought-transference failed this time; he was too perturbed, indeed, to be in a receptive state at all. It seemed a catastrophe, a most undesirable and unexpected climax. The romantic solution revived in him—but only for a passing moment. He rejected it. Some big discovery was in the air. He felt that extraordinary sense of anticipation ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... reporters and photographers representing the Paris newspapers. These latter had—though I only found this out afterwards—been brought by the mechanics in the expectation of being able to record, with their notebooks and cameras, some catastrophe in which we were expected to play the leading parts. Knowing the powerful type of monoplane I had acquired, a machine not suited for a novice, the mechanics had felt sure some disaster would overtake me. But, as it happened, ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... which they were covered, and found some still alive, although they had been three, four, or even five days in that terrible condition" (from a Venetian book of 1667). A good deal of plundering went on, the peasants and Morlacchi looking on the catastrophe as a godsend. Biagio Caboga and Michele Bosdari armed their retainers, and kept watch over the ruined churches and public buildings: the relics and remains of the cathedral treasure were removed to a chapel in ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... it. A County forward sees his chance. Rushing up, he catches the ball, and instantaneously, so it seems, drop-kicks it, a tremendous kick clean over the School goal, before even the players have all taken up their places after the last catastrophe. ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... prayer for forgiveness breathed, and then he plunged a knife into his breast; the blade broke; he shattered the bottle at his side and swallowed the fragments, and then fell bleeding and exhausted on the straw. If left long alone, life would have ebbed away; but, probably in anticipation of such a catastrophe, the officer ere many hours revisited the cell to put chains upon the prisoner. Discovering his condition, a surgeon was called, remedies were applied, and two Austrian sentinels carried Foresti into ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... lost everything except what was on their bodies when the catastrophe occurred. Their horses were gone, and they hadn't a gun between them; nothing but two revolvers, and about a half dozen charges ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... they found that the story of the Baxters' fate had preceded them. Many folks were inclined to think that the wrongdoers deserved the catastrophe which had overtaken them. As nothing was heard of either father or son for a long while, it was presumed that both were ...
— The Rover Boys out West • Arthur M. Winfield
... milk, my lord," observed Watkins, in a regretful tone. He had seen the catastrophe from the ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... grave; in this dulness of the senses there is a gentle preparation for the final insensibility of death. And to him the idea of mortality comes in a shape less violent and harsh than is its wont, less as an abrupt catastrophe than as a thing of infinitesimal gradation, and the last step on a long decline of way. As we turn to and fro in bed, and every moment the movements grow feebler and smaller and the attitude more ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hopeful signs of a new revival were not wanting. The language had steadily developed with the enlightenment of the people, and was fast becoming fit to meet any demands that might be made upon it, when the great catastrophe of the Norman Conquest came, and with it practically the end of the historical and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... at him fixedly, it did not seem to her strange that she should thus have met one of his blood in the crowds of Algiers. She was absorbed in the one catastrophe whose hideousness seemed to eat her very life away, even while her nerve, and her brain, and her courage remained at their ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... the fine vessel we had just seen vanished from sight. The frigate's head was at once put off shore; the boats were lowered, and pulled away to rescue any of the unfortunate wretches who had escaped destruction. I went in one of the boats, and we approached the scene of the catastrophe. We saw two or three people clinging to the spars, but as they perceived us they let go their hold and sank from sight, afraid, probably, of falling into our hands alive. As soon as the boats returned on board, the frigate's sails were filled, and we stood for the brig ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... was even more grateful at our survival, and much shocked, though Ustane had been no favourite of his, or he of hers, for the matter of that. She called him "pig" in bastard Arabic, and he called her "hussy" in good English, but these amenities were forgotten in the face of the catastrophe that had overwhelmed her at the ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... Rodolph. He desired to reach his cherished home; and yet he dreaded to return and sadden the heart of his little Edith with the story of Fingal's death, and the sight of the inanimate form of her last and much-loved playfellow. Had it not been for this catastrophe, he would have kept from his wife and child the knowledge of the cruel attempt that had been made on his life as such knowledge could only distress them, and cause them needless anxiety and alarm in future. But the ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... is the little white and gold boudoir which still holds the mirror that gave the haughty Queen her first premonition of the catastrophe that awaited her. Viewed casually the triple mirror, lining an alcove wherein stands a couch garlanded with flowers, betrays no sinister qualities. But any visitor who approaches looking at his reflection where at the left the side panels meet the angle of the wall, will be greeted ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... in their name. They, however, quarreled with their mother, and finally drowned her, in order to remove her out of their way. Lysimachus, though he might justly have considered himself as in some sense the cause of this catastrophe, since, by deserting his wife and withdrawing his protection from her, he compelled her to return to Sicily and put herself in the power of her unnatural sons, was still very indignant at the event, and, fitting out an expedition, he went ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... that a few months among the distractions of town would send him back a new man. Mr. Stapleton, a mutual friend who was much concerned at his state of health, was of the same opinion. At the last instant came this terrible catastrophe. ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... Emineh, it is said that from the date of this catastrophe she separated herself almost entirely from her blood-stained husband, and spent her life in the recesses of the harem, praying as a Christian both for the murderer and his victims. It is a relief, in the midst ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the floor at Woodville's feet, and smashed in falling. As it smashed, he was looking down, wondering, no doubt, in his stupidity, what the pother was about,—for I was shouting, and making something of a clatter in my efforts to prevent the catastrophe which I saw was coming. On the instant, as the vapour secreted in the broken pellet gained access to the air, he fell forward on to his face. Rushing to him, I snatched his senseless body from the ground, and dragged it, staggeringly, towards the door which opened on ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... For if you do, you will precipitate the catastrophe that you fear. Be quiet, I beg you," said Mr. Fabian, composedly, putting his thumbs in his vest ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... as if some one had suddenly heard horrible news, which pierced him to the heart, and wrenched from him this troubled sound. Young voices trembled in affright, people rushed about in haste, pellmell. Again a loud, angry voice shouted out, drowning all other sounds. Apparently a catastrophe had occurred, in which the chief source of pain was an affront offered to some one. It evoked not complaints, but wrath. Then some kindly and powerful person appeared, who began to sing, just like Andrey, a simple beautiful song, a song of exhortation and summons ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... this to the dwellers upon the slope of the mountain, and if there comes hereafter a catastrophe which makes the world to shudder, am I responsible for that catastrophe? I did not build the mountain, or fill it with explosive materials. I merely warned the men that were in danger. So, now, it is not I that am stimulating men to the violent ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... Michael Cantacuzene as a home for the Moldavian envoys. It must have been an attractive house, surrounded by large grounds, and enjoying a superb view of the city and the Golden Horn. It was burnt[486] in the fire which devastated the district on the 25th June 1784, and since that catastrophe its grounds have been converted into market gardens or left waste, and its chapel has been a desecrated pile. But its proud name still haunts the site, calling to mind political relations which have long ceased to ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... of the veiled face confronted her stubbornly. She ransacked her memory for a forgotten catastrophe, a quarter of a century back. Impenetrably, a wall was ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... a terrible crash. The sole reason why I should desire it to happen in my day is, that I might be there to see! But the ruin of my own country is, perhaps, all that I am destined to witness; and that immense catastrophe (though I am strong in the faith that there is a national lifetime of a thousand years in us yet) would serve any man well enough as his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... restless until they found their rest in God. Quare fremuerunt gentes?... Adversus Dominum, et adversus Christum ejus! As to the end—he was not greatly concerned. It might well be that the ship would be overwhelmed, but the moment of the catastrophe would be the end of all things earthly. The gates of hell shall not prevail: when Rome falls, the world falls; and when the world falls, Christ is manifest in power. For himself, he imagined that the end was not far away. When he had named Megiddo ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... appears to me to have been most inconsiderable up to the final stages of the war. I doubt whether I ever met two men, prior, let me say, to Sherman's march through Georgia, who would distinctly limit themselves to this: "I wish the South might succeed, but I don't think it will." When the impending catastrophe of the South was no longer disputable, the Saturday Review, the idol of our Club-men and University-men, of those who are at once highly cultivated and intensely English, and who fancy themselves freer from prejudice and more large-minded than others in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... Gortz's; he lived in the Rue du Helder, a few doors from Attwood's new lodging. If the reader is curious to know the house in which the catastrophe of this history took place, he has but to march some twenty doors down from the Boulevard des Italiens, when he will see a fine door, with a naked Cupid shooting at him from the hall, and a Venus beckoning him up the stairs. On arriving at the West Indian's, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a government of such limited powers as that of the United States, could have prevented the late revulsion. The whole commercial world seemed for years to have been rushing to this catastrophe. The same ruinous consequences would have followed in the United States whether the duties upon foreign imports had remained as they were under the tariff of 1846 or had been raised to a much higher standard. The tariff of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan
... not only commended itself to the facile imagination of the unlearned, but received the sanction of the highest scientific authority. The great Lagrange bestowed upon it his analytical imprimatur, showing that the explosive forces required to produce the supposed catastrophe came well within the bounds of possibility; since a velocity of less than twenty times that of a cannon-ball leaving the gun's mouth would have sufficed, according to his calculation, to launch the asteroidal fragments on their respective paths. Indeed, he was disposed to regard the hypothesis ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... been solicitors for the Chetneys for the last two hundred years. Nothing, no matter how unimportant, which concerns Lord Edam and his two sons is unknown to us, and naturally we are acquainted with every detail of the terrible catastrophe ...
— In the Fog • Richard Harding Davis
... three woodmen rushed to the spot. They saw, as they supposed, the story at a glance. One of those accidents so common to the careless use of firearms—and I was proverbially unacquainted with their use—had produced the catastrophe. We were borne home, for I had fainted, and was as cold and lifeless as my victim. What passed during a day or two I scarcely remember. Something of strange people in the house—of disconnected words of sympathy—of a coffin—a funeral—a pilgrimage ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... started from his reverie. "Eh? ... I was dreaming. I beg pardon. It seems hard to realize, Mr. Kirkwood, that this awful catastrophe ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... portion of the river within the range of our guns; nor that the vessel could ever do much more than stem the rapid current of the Mississippi. The surrender of New Orleans was, indeed, inevitable; but even that catastrophe would not involve complete possession of the river by the enemy while we held the forts near its mouth. The gigantic efforts afterwards made by the Federal forces for the capture of Vicksburg showed the vital importance attached by the United States ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... you, Mrs. Ochiltree, for your solicitude," replied Mr. Delamere, with a shade of annoyance in his voice, "but my health is very good just at present, and I do not anticipate any catastrophe which will require my servant's presence before I am ready to go home. But I have no doubt, madam," he continued, with a courteous inclination, "that Sandy will be pleased to serve you, if you desire it, to the best of ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... have sent her to keep company with Hogarth's Merveilleuses in Bedlam, or with Decker's group of coquettes in the same place.—The other parts of the play are a dreary lee-shore, like Cuckold's Point on the coast of Essex, where the preconcerted shipwreck takes place that winds up the catastrophe of the piece. But this is also characteristic of the age, and serves as a contrast to the airy and factitious character which is the principal figure in the plot. We had made but little progress from that point till Hogarth's time, if Hogarth is to be believed in his description ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Parties. "There arises," says he, "the old question of the Duke of Wellington, frightened by the prospect of the abolition of the rotten boroughs: How will the King's government be carried out? How will parliamentary government work? In reality the catastrophe will not be more than that which so alarmed the hero of Waterloo; now, as then, it will be nothing more nor less than the destruction of something rotten."[14] The King's government has been improved by the ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... mind reeling beneath the catastrophe, recovered himself sufficiently to do the honours. It was at his instigation that Salvatore was there, and, greatly as he wished that he could have seen fit to choose a more auspicious moment for his business chat, ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... engaged, but in the meantime the affairs of the nation had become more and more complicated; the threatened secession of the Southern States had been accomplished; the long-expected, long-dreaded crisis seemed close at hand; the people were uncertain and bewildered in the presence of the dreadful catastrophe. All thought, all interest, all action were centered in the new President. The whole nation was breathlessly awaiting the declaration of Lincoln's policy. To call any kind of meeting which had an object other than that relating ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... chance whatever. He knew that I had guessed his arriere-pensee, but he let me off for the moment, for which I was thankful; either because he was still ashamed of it, or because he supposed I was reserving myself for the catastrophe,—should it occur. Well, my dear, it did occur, at the end of ten days. Mr. Tester came to see me twice in that interval, each time to tell me that poor Vandeleur was worse; he had some internal inflammation which, in nine cases out of ...
— The Path Of Duty • Henry James
... for people exercising sentimentality at the expense of common sense, the greatest catastrophe in intensity, if it be far away from us, diminishes, while the merest incident, a little out of the ordinary, affects them in a most immoderate manner if it be produced in the circle ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... absolutely have been destitute of the means of existence two days before we were found. Weak as we were, we considered it as certain that it would have been impossible for us to hold out, even twenty-four hours, without taking some food. After this catastrophe, which inspired us with a degree of horror not to be overcome, we threw the arms into the sea; we reserved, however, one sabre in case it should be wanted to cut a rope ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... himself in the contemplation of her face turned to him with an expression of awed curiosity. The shock of the world coming down about his ears in consequence of Carter's smartness was so terrific that it had dulled his sensibilities in the manner of a great pain or of a great catastrophe. What was there to look at but that woman's face, in a world which had lost its consistency, its shape, and ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... contains a thrilling description of this awful catastrophe, which has shocked both hemispheres. It depicts with graphic power the terrible scenes of the great disaster, and relates the fearful ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... "I suppose the catastrophe will arrive, sooner or later, and it is more likely to occur to a girl of twenty than to a ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... shock of the recent arrests, they were just beginning to wonder what would happen if their unsuspecting friends from commando walked into the pitfalls prepared for them, racking their brains for plans to avert such a catastrophe, when the very thing ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... Bernardo de Fuentiduenas, who was sick with the fever. He went on the voyage, and before dawn of Thursday, January 28, ran foul of a reef, where no land could be seen in any direction, except a few rocky points at low tide. The fever left the pilot at this sudden catastrophe, and at dawn the Spaniards saw on the reefs a large ship, that looked like a Chinese vessel, which had been wrecked. They went to this vessel to get its small boats. Entering it, they found not a soul, living or dead. But ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... neglected. We need to act now with full regard for pitfalls; we need to act with foresight and balance. We should not be lulled by the immediate alluring prospects into forgetting the fundamental complexity of modern affairs, the catastrophe that can come in this complexity, or the values that can ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... an interview with Sister Agatha informed her that in the evening she would probably be called to the sick bed of Ellen. Mr. Stowe bade us good-bye and sailed in the Havana steamboat at noon, that his presence at the catastrophe might not seem suspicious. At sunset I bade farewell to dear little Ellen, who was indeed as pale as death, and in an hour afterward was on board the ship, where I found every thing in readiness for a hasty departure, the top-sails, jib and spanker ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... they have done occasionally before and since. On the average one may say that about every fifty years a new star of fair magnitude makes its temporary appearance. They are now known to be the result of some catastrophe or collision, whereby immense masses of incandescent gas are produced. This one seen by Tycho became as bright as Jupiter, and then died away in about a year and a half. Tycho observed all its changes, and endeavoured to measure its distance from the earth, with the result that it was proved to ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... to-day are certainly great; but I should have preferred them before the never sufficiently mourned catastrophe of the immortal Yturbide. Let us throw a thick veil over so irreparable a loss. It is true that, surviving such great misfortunes, I have been enabled to consecrate my existence and my vigilance to the peace, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... brought it, and in what happened to it; in the admonition of his mother, "You should have done so and so," and Jack's one reply, "I'll do so another time"; in Jack's literal use of his mother's admonition, and the catastrophe it brought him on the following day, and on each successive day, as he brought home a piece of money, a jar of milk, a cream cheese, a tom-cat, a shoulder of mutton, and at last a donkey. The humor lies in the contrast between what Jack did and what anybody "with ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... intercept its Return; but driving it upon the Matrosses, one of them, who was jealous of its getting back into the Hands of the Soldiers, drew his Pistol to shoot it, which was the Source of this miserable Catastrophe. The Lieutenant carry'd along with him a Bag of Dollars to pay the Soldiers' Quarters, of which the People, and the Soldiers that were say'd, found many; but blown to an ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... my eyes, resolved to shut out the catastrophe of their broken necks and mangled limbs,—when thunders of acclamation shook the house; and, looking up, I beheld a transformation that seemed supernatural. The old great-coats, clumsy sabots, and hats, were scattered to the ground; and two youthful figures, glittering in white ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... wandering about day after day, searching for each other in vain, till all our ammunition was expended, and might easily then fall victims to rogue elephants, or bears, or other wild beasts. The contemplation of such a catastrophe was not pleasant; but still, what was to be done? I asked the question of myself over and over again, I examined my ammunition, and found that I had eight bullets and a dozen or more charges of small shot, with an ample ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... from his daughter to his wife, and from his wife to his daughter, like a man who was convinced that his troubles would never end. This new catastrophe created a different kind of difficulty, but he considered that the difficulties were as robust as had been the preceding ones. He put on his hat and went out of the room. He felt an impossibility of saying anything to ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... of the Alps, etc." ("Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc." Volume V., page 157, 1849) Murchison expressed his belief that the apparent inversion of certain Tertiary strata along the flanks of the Alps afforded "a clear demonstration of a sudden operation or catastrophe." It is this view of paroxysmal energy that Lyell criticises in the address.) Capital, that metaphor of the clock. (562/3. "In a word, the movement of the inorganic world is obvious and palpable, and might be likened to the minute-hand of a clock, the progress of which can be seen and ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... a dream was useful in preventing an impending catastrophe is recorded of a daughter of Mrs. Rutherford, the granddaughter of Sir Walter Scott. This lady dreamed more than once that her mother had been murdered by a black servant. She was so much upset by this that she returned home, and to her great astonishment, and not a little ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... and Clark Streets, was for many years the most famous all-night eating-house in Chicago. For chops and steaks it had not its equal in America, possibly not in the world. Long after we had ceased to frequent Boyle's, so long that our patronage could not have been charged with any share in the catastrophe, it went into the hands of the sheriff. This afforded Field an opportunity to write the following sympathetic and serio-whimsical reminiscence of a ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... thither I was directing the boat's course. Suddenly, right ahead, I saw a dark and shadowy mass just below the surface of the water. "A sunken rock!" I thought to myself, "and yet it is strange that I never before noticed it." I put down the helm in a moment, but a catastrophe seemed inevitable. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... objected. My instinct was to begin at once, his advice was to wait and see. According to him there was danger in hastening the catastrophe. The coup d'etat was organized, and the People were not. They had been taken unawares. We must not indulge in illusion. The masses could not stir yet. Perfect calm reigned in the faubourgs; Surprise existed, ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... was rescued by the boy. But it also seems on the word of Garibaldi himself that the woman would not have fallen in had not the boy suddenly appeared behind her playing bear, thus bringing about the catastrophe which ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... didn't rain, because the creek would get lower all the time." Paul himself observed, with emphasis, wishing to make every scout resolve to avoid this catastrophe, if it were at ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... not even generally accepted. There was much superstition in every order of the laity. An opinion prevailed among them, that the world was to end, and the day of judgment arrive, in the year 1000. An universal panic spread itself over Europe. Strange to relate, the people sought to avoid the catastrophe, by hiding themselves in caverns ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... different and more logical position, and maintained that "Consistent uniformitarianism postulates evolution as much in the organic as in the inorganic world. The origin of a new species by other than ordinary agencies would be a vastly greater 'catastrophe' than any of those which Lyell success fully eliminated from sober geological speculation." ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... however, they saw to their delight that the limits of the avalanche had not extended so far, the refuges, as they afterward learned, being so placed as to be sheltered by overhanging cliffs from any catastrophe ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... my dearest Harriet, do I now think of the impending fate of Dorothy; but oh, the difference between the sudden catastrophe in the one case, and the foreknowledge granted in the other! Time, whose awful uses our blind security so habitually forgets, is granted to her, with its inestimable value marked on it by the finger of death, undimmed by the busy hands of earthly pursuits and interests; she has, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... a perfect storm of laughter. But not to me in the light of what Russia has done and has proved herself capable, did this thing seem at all absurd; rather in it I sensed the dawn of catastrophe colossal. ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... attempt, declaring themselves unable to persuade the Prince even to any regard for decency: and the ill-advised and feeble King committed to Albany, who had been standing by waiting for some such piece of good fortune, the reformation of his son. The catastrophe was not slow to follow. Rothesay was seized near St. Andrews on the pretence of stopping a mad enterprise in which he was engaged, and conveyed to Falkland, where he died in strict confinement, "of dysentery or others say of hunger" is the brief and terrible record—blaming no ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... crew, still ignorant of the approaching doom, labored incessantly at their guns. As the sublime sight forced itself upon the eyes of all about, friends and enemies alike busied themselves with precautions for their own safety in the coming catastrophe. The ships to windward held on; those to leeward for the most part veered or slipped their cables, the "Alexander" fiercely refusing to do so till assured that the "Orient's" destruction was inevitable. Captain Berry went below to report to the admiral ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... could only dimly realise how great her suffering had been during the last two hours, ever since Geoffrey had returned from the downs and in an awestruck tone, and with halting, stammering speech had broken to them all the news of the catastrophe which had, so he then thought, overtaken Margaret. Hilary had at once broken out into the noisy grief and passionate self-reproaches which she had kept up without intermission ever since, but Eleanor's agony of mind had lain ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... At the close of the day the French were in possession of the enemy's ground, but the Russians, unbroken in their order, had only retreated to a second line of defence. Both sides claimed the victory; neither had won it. It was no catastrophe such as Napoleon required for the decision of the war, it was no triumph sufficient to save Russia from the necessity of abandoning its capital. Kutusoff had sustained too heavy a loss to face the French ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... by Charles VIII., which caused the expulsion of the Medici from Florence, and the establishment of a liberal government under the leadership of Savonarola. Michelangelo appears to have anticipated the catastrophe which was about to overwhelm his patron. He was by nature timid, suspicious, and apt to foresee disaster. Possibly he may have judged that the haughty citizens of Florence would not long put up with Piero's aristocratical insolence. But Condivi ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... the interest of the working class at heart wants to see such a revolution. But whether those interested in the working class want to see such a revolution or not, there are powerful forces in the United States that are making for just such a catastrophe. The Industrial Workers of the World has in the past and is now using all of its energies to avert such a cataclysmic debacle. It is not yet too late to avoid this terrible and sanguinary strife—provided that the I. W. W. is allowed to carry out its program of organizing ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... period of time China's population has remained at 400,000,000—the saturation point. The only reason that the Yellow River periodically drowns millions of Chinese is that there is no other land for those millions to farm. And after every such catastrophe the wave of human life rolls up and now millions flood out upon that precarious territory. They are driven to it, because they are pressed remorselessly against subsistence. It is inevitable that China, sooner or later, like Japan, will learn and put into application our own superior food-getting ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... does not scruple to assert, that a tempest which levelled them all with the ground would, in the end, prove a great blessing. There is some truth in these opinions, but humanity shudders at the misery such a catastrophe—like the potato blight, which truly struck at the root of the evil in Ireland—would entail on tens of thousands of the poor Corsicans, to whom the chestnut is the staff of life. In the interests of that humanity, as well ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... passed through my mind. I was determined to remove the possibility of such a catastrophe. I decided to prove traitor and reveal the existence of the Imperium that it might be broken up or watched. My deed may appear to be the act of a vile wretch, but it is done in the name of humanity. Long ere you shall have come to this line, I shall have met the fate of a traitor. ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... he turned to Underhill: "I think you have done your country a great service today in averting what might have been an appalling catastrophe. Do you not agree with me, Sir Egbert?" he glanced toward the Minister of ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... East. These seeds had been planted in boxes which I kept near the stove until frost was gone. They were full of promising plants. Hollyhocks, larkspur, pansies, and foxglove were ready to transplant, when a terrible catastrophe occurred—a little neighbor girl called on me, and, finding me gone, was right peeved. She entertained herself by uprooting my posies. With a complete thoroughness she mixed plants and dirt together, stirring water into the mixture with my trowel. If her grown-up cake-making ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... temperament determines the catastrophe of the other stories. They almost invariably close in the sullen gloom of a wet March evening, when we wonder afresh if ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... distributed all over Penrod, both upon his body and upon his spirit. Driven by subtle forces, he had dipped his hands in catastrophe and disaster: it was not for a Georgie Bassett to beard him. Penrod was ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... explosive a matter. To stop the wedding now would cause a convulsion in Giant's Town little short of volcanic. Weakened, tired, and terrified as she had been by the day's adventures, she could not make herself the author of such a catastrophe. But how refuse Heddegan without telling? It really seemed to her as if her marriage with Mr Heddegan were about to take place as if ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... long minute. It was nothing less than a catastrophe, in the dead of an Arctic winter and in a game-abandoned land, to lose their grub. They were not panic-stricken, but they were busy looking the situation squarely in the face and considering. Joe Hines ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... between the two of them; something is always happening, from the moment when they drive out of Miss Pinkerton's gate at Chiswick till the last word that is told of either. But the book as a whole turns upon nothing that happens, not even upon the catastrophe of Curzon Street; that scene in Becky's drawing-room disposes of her, it leaves the rest of ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... children, and old people, to seek an asylum in a country unknown, without being aware what route they should take, at the beginning of winter, it was easy to foretell that we should conclude by this terrible catastrophe. The greatest glory that our generals and soldiers can claim is that they ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... tonic magic of the place prevented being decay, but it was though time still turned the hour-glass, but did it dreamingly, infatuated with the marvellous thing she had brought forth that now was not. So greatly had the play declined in plot and character since Mary's time that for the catastrophe of the present age there was nothing better than the snatching of the Church funds from the U.F.'s by the Wee Frees. It appeared to her an indication of the quality of the town's life that they spoke of their churches by initials just as the English, ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... of life's hostilities, such as is sometimes almost pointedly bestowed before or after a time of strain. It was a day on which Pocket certainly drew his spiritual breath more freely than on any other since the dire catastrophe. There were few fresh clouds; perhaps the only one before evening was the removal of the book on hallucinations in which Pocket had become interested on the Saturday afternoon. It was no longer ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... delight at the instantaneous effect of San Salvatore. Even the catastrophe of the bath, of which she had been told when she came in from the garden, had not shaken him. Of course all that he had needed was a holiday. What a brute she had been to him when he wanted to take her himself to Italy. But this arrangement, as it happened, was ever so much better, though ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... began again. "I am grateful, exceedingly grateful, Mr. Hand, for all that you have done for us since this catastrophe, but I can't have any mystery about people. That is absurd. Did you leave the Jeanne D'Arc when the others did—when ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... as this is inapplicable to the relation that exists between the world of matter, and the system of material laws, because, in this material sphere, there has been no revolution, no rebellion, no great catastrophe analogous to the fall of Adam. The law here was ordained to life, and the ordinance still stands. And it shall stand until, by the will of the Creator, these elements shall melt with fervent heat, and these heavens shall pass away with a great noise; until a new system of nature, and a new ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... while a sound of rending and cracking broke the silence that had followed his tragic words. All unconsciously, Wang Kum had given him the sticky chair; and the heat of the room and the doctor's feverish agitation, had combined to produce the catastrophe. The Reverend Gabriel Hornblower was trapped as effectually as a fly in a pool of molasses, and could only struggle helplessly in his ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... after having transacted the affairs committed to his charge, again turned his eyes homeward, he found for the second time the diadem at his feet. For long the development of the Roman commonwealth had been tending towards such a catastrophe; it was evident to every unbiassed observer, and had been remarked a thousand times, that, if the rule of the aristocracy should be brought to an end, monarchy was inevitable. The senate had now been overthrown at once by the civic liberal opposition and by the power of the soldiery; the only question ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... over the concert-bill. First there was an overture; then several scenes from "Lucia di Lammermoor,"—that great Shakspearian drama, whose dread catastrophe of Death and Doom leaves in the memory of the hearer a heavenly sorrow unmixed with earthly taint. It was the master-work of two poets, Scott and Donizetti, who had conceived it at the best period of their lives, when they were in all the vigor of manhood, and when mind and fancy had become ripened ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... this time the trials through which he had passed had seemed so great that they could not easily be added to. But if all those trials had been gathered into one vast calamity they would not equal one half of the rage and catastrophe of his war ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... execution of the sentence. The drums of the National Guards now beat to arms in all the sections under authority of the convention, while the tocsin continued to summon assistance with its iron voice to Robespierre and the civic magistrates. Every thing appeared to threaten a violent catastrophe, until it was seen clearly that the public voice, and especially amongst the National Guards, was declaring itself generally ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... how Mr. Haswell was induced by his desire for gain to visit you and how you had most mysteriously predicted his blindness. Now, there is no such thing as telepathy, at least in this case. How then was I to explain it? What could cause such a catastrophe naturally? Why, only those rays invisible to the human eye, but which make this piece of willemite glow ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... the spirit, the claims, and the duties of the English Church, confidence that devotion to its cause was the call of God, whatever might happen to their own fortunes, this confidence was unshaken by the catastrophe ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... more consoling is this promise. If we see that neither the decline of David's and Judah's dominion after Solomon, nor the apparently total disappearance of David's kingdom which took place after the Chaldee catastrophe, and continued for centuries; nor the altogether comfortless condition (when [Pg 67] looking only at what Is visible) which Jeremiah describes in the words: "Judah is captive in affliction and great servitude: she dwelleth ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... burning of the Breadland-House was justly called the great calamity, on account of what happened to Miss Girzie with her gold watch and silver teapot; yet, as Providence never fails to bring good out of evil, it turned out a catastrophe that proved advantageous to the parish; for the laird, instead of thinking to build it up, was advised to let the policy out as a farm, and the tack was taken by Mr Coulter, than whom there had been no such man in the agriculturing line among us before, not even excepting Mr ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... encampment was not continually filled with calamity and great mourning—far from it. There were long stretches of peace and plenty, extending almost uninterruptedly for years, and those who followed the law escaped the intervals of catastrophe. ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... nothing to be done," he said. "She is dead. I feared some such catastrophe when I saw her last evening. She was in the ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... picture, and light has gleamed but feebly there. It has been otherwise since I carried, for my comfort and support, the memory of my beloved Ellen into the serious employment of my later years. With the catastrophe of her decease, commenced another era of my existence—the era of self-denial, patience, sobriety, and resignation. Her example dropped with silent power into my soul, and wrought its preservation. Struck to the earth by the immediate blow, and rising slowly from it, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... advised as to the means which in the view of the Admiralty were best calculated to avert the perils he was likely to encounter, and in considering the question whether he is to blame for the catastrophe in which his voyage ended I have to bear this circumstance in mind. It is certain that in some respects Captain Turner did not follow the advice given to him. It may be (though I seriously doubt it) that had he done so his ship would have reached Liverpool in safety. ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... this immortality is a human immortality. One feels in studying the pre-Christian beliefs in immortality that they had very little effectiveness, and that the reason was that there was no real link connecting life in this world with life in the next. Death was a fearful catastrophe that man in some sense survived, but in a sense that separated his two modes of existence by a great gulf. Man survived, but his interests did not survive, and therefore he looked to the future with indifference or fear. This life seemed to him much preferable ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... shouting out the word 'accident' as you did and then dashing out of the room, you may easily have caused Sir Charles a shock which in his condition was sufficient to bring on this relapse. From your manner he may have thought some really grave catastrophe had overtaken his son. It is quite possible that you are directly responsible for his ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... an easy story; not a road for tender or for casual feet. Better the meadows. Let me warn you, it is as hard as that old man's soul and as sunless as his eyes. It has its inception in catastrophe, and its end in an act of almost incredible violence; between them it tells barely how one long blind can become ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... Of the remaining twenty-four bodies, five were men, and the rest lads, from twelve to seventeen years of age. Among the dead men was a pye-man, who was said to have fallen first, and caused the dreadful catastrophe. A great number of the pupils in attendance happened to be collected in St. Bartholomew's Hospital at the time, and afforded prompt assistance; and Dr. Powell, and a Surgeon, who were both upon the spot, directed ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... unerringly to the catastrophe they had been dreading all these months, "do you mean the boys have ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope
... turned the corner of the street, when, looking anxiously in the direction of his homestead, he saw a column of smoke. It was directly over the spot where he knew his house to be situated. He guessed at a glance what had happened. The frightful catastrophe he foreboded had befallen. Taddy had set the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... indiscriminately from their lips as she swept relentlessly down toward us. They anticipated nothing less than the capture and destruction of the felucca, and the detention of themselves as prisoners, which catastrophe, bad enough in itself as it must have appeared to them, was doubtless rendered infinitely more disagreeable by the reflection that to this mishap must be added the total collapse of their pretty little ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... overwhelmed with grief and bathed in sweat, came to a distressful condition. And saying,—It is even so—that virtuous lord of men, immersed in an ocean of grief anxiously proceeded to ascertain the cause (of that catastrophe). And that mighty-armed and high-souled one, acquainted with the divisions of time and place, could not settle his course of action. Having thus bewailed much in this strain, the virtuous Yudhishthira, the son of Dharma or Tapu, restrained ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... unendlichen Hoffnungen, Goetterkraefte trugen wie ein Woelkchen mich fort."[26] These facts have a direct bearing upon Hoelderlin's Weltschmerz, inasmuch as it was just this unequal and unsuccessful struggle of the idealist with the stern realities of life that brought about the catastrophe which wrought his ruin. ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... his character that, had he not been arrogant, disdainful, self-confident, resolutely and single-heartedly ambitious, he must inevitably have ruined himself—if he had ever been able to rise high enough to be worthy the dignity of catastrophe. ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... company, by special engagement, announced by posters, which also bear on a pasted slip of paper a notice of Eliakim Abbott's religious meeting. On this occasion he recited with great applause the tale of "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe." ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... David Holst, is one of those unhappy beings who seem doomed to a more than ordinary share of the ills of life. He has inherited from his mother at least a tendency to insanity, and he lives in fear of being involved in a terrible catastrophe, from which he only saves himself by strong efforts of will and by the recollection of the lost love of his youth. The awful calamity which overtook him at the very moment his betrothal to Susanna was sanctioned by her father proved, in fact, ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... depression. But he had been in telephonic communication all the afternoon with Delaine and Lady Merton at Lake Louise, as to their departure for the Pacific. They knew nothing and should know nothing of his own catastrophe; their ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the matter?" asked Sophie. "Are you in your elegiac mood? You look as I imagine Victor Hugo when he has not made up his mind about the management of his tragic catastrophe!" ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... each other in an agony of suspense. Never had they dreamed that they would witness such a dreadful catastrophe as was now ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... character that loves to brood and hates to act, is big with catastrophe. We have now to see how the inevitable law accomplished itself in the case of Rousseau. In many this brooding egoism produces a silent and melancholy insanity; with him it was developed into something of acridly ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... from the room and abruptly left the house. He slept at his lodgings; and the next morning he was horror-struck on hearing that Sarah Stout's body had been found drowned in the mill-stream behind her old home. That catastrophe had actually occurred. Scarcely had the young barrister reached the Market Place, when the miserable girl threw herself into the stream from which her lifeless body was picked on the following morning. At the coroner's inquest which ensued, Spencer Cowper gave his evidence with extreme ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... pale from the very contemplation of such a catastrophe, such an unprecedented haegira of dames! It is as if from every gay watering place, some softly tinkling bell should summon the fair mermaids. Beplaided and betrowsered, with their little gypsy hats, would they float out beyond the breakers, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... at Waldegrave's and at Flinders' Islands. The Investigator's Group. Coffin's Bay. Whidbey's Isles. Differences in the magnetic needle. Cape Wiles. Anchorage at Thistle's Island. Thorny Passage. Fatal accident. Anchorage in Memory Cove. Cape Catastrophe, and the surrounding country. Anchorage in Port Lincoln, and refitment of the ship. Remarks on the country and inhabitants. Astronomical ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... friendship and the thirst for and movement toward ideal society. Out of reflection upon the animal passion of sex may rise Dante's beatific vision of Beatrice. Conduct, consciously controlled, finds not only ways by which animal desires may be fulfilled without catastrophe; it transmutes ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... Barbary, or whether his anxieties and corpulent habit made him an easy victim to disease, neither the doctor nor any one else could determine. But at twelve o'clock that day Lance was seized with an attack of cholera and by three in the afternoon he was dead. The suddenness of the catastrophe shocked Mr. Mitchelbourne inexpressibly. He stood gazing at the still features of the man whom fear had, during these last days, so grievously tormented, and was solemnly aware of the vanity of those fears. He could not pretend ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... alters the situation, and must necessarily leave things very different from what it found them. Readers of this new edition may reasonably expect to find in it some account of the events which have within the last two years led up to this catastrophe, or at any rate some estimate of that conduct of affairs by the three governments concerned which has brought about a result all three ought ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... violent as almost to overpower her. Mr Harrel, indeed, had forfeited all right to her esteem, and the unfeeling selfishness of his whole behaviour had long provoked her resentment and excited her disgust; yet a catastrophe so dreadful, and from which she had herself made such efforts to rescue him, filled her with so much horror, that, turning extremely sick, she was obliged to be supported to the nearest box, and stop there for ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... to the principal persons, however serious or distressful through its intermediate incidents, in their opinion constituted a comedy. This idea of a comedy continued long amongst us, and plays were written, which, by changing the catastrophe, were ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... thought himself lost. He and his family made an appeal to the gratitude and humanity of our colleague. It was to procure a refuge for them, that Bailly employed the few hours of absence with which he was so much reproached: those hours during which that catastrophe happened which the Mayor could not have prevented, since even the superhuman efforts of General Lafayette, commanding an armed force, proved futile. I will add, that to spare M. de Crosne an arbitrary ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
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