|
|
|
More "Topmost" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his sanctuary "in the rocky Pytho"—a rugged and uneven recess, of no great dimensions, embosomed in the southern declivity of Parnassus, and about two thousand feet above the level of the sea, while the topmost Parnassian summits reach a height of near eight thousand feet. The situation was extremely imposing, but unsuited by nature for the congregation of any considerable number of spectators; altogether impracticable for chariot-races; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... right-hand corner, facing west, sideways to the river, the trees grow quite close to the windows, so that an active man or a boy might without great risk leap from the eaves below the dormer window into the topmost branches of the linden, which here grows strong and tough, as it surely should do ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... trampled down under the windows. The clump of burdock against the wall under the window turned out to have been trodden on too. Dyukovsky succeeded in finding on it some broken shoots, and a little bit of wadding. On the topmost burrs, some fine threads of dark blue wool ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... placed him upon the topmost turret of contemporary literary fame. Since the publication of the work he was fairly prosperous, although his temperament was of that gently procrastinating and gracious kind that buys peace with a faith in men and things. Mary had an eager, alert and enthusiastic way ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... compliments, and played with his advances, after the fashion of the trained ball-room belles, who know how to be almost caressing in manner, and yet are really as far off from the deluded victim of their suavities as the topmost statue of the Milan cathedral from the peasant that kneels on its floor. He admired her all the more for this, and yet he saw that she would be a harder prize to win than he had once thought. If he made up his mind that he would have her, he must go armed ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... your stories in the first place, sir, and I don't care if they are true in the second. What is the life or happiness of such a low creature as yourself to the prosperity of Strong, Palmer or Griswold? I think that impudence has mounted its topmost round, when you ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... bundle of jointed rods, which could be put together like a fishing-rod, and on the topmost of these was a white flag two feet square. On the buoy itself was firmly lashed a step similar to the "bucket" (I believe it is called) in which a carriage- whip is placed when not in use by the driver. The rods, taken ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... star and cradle and 'gain he speak his thought. He say: "What is cradle, Sensei? I know 'bout star. Every night at my honorable home I open shoji to see old priest strike bell and make him sing. Then I see big star hang out light over topmost of mountain." One more time he say, like thinking to himself: "Cradle. Maybe him shrine for new ...
— Mr. Bamboo and the Honorable Little God - A Christmas Story • Fannie C. Macaulay
... every few steps, they climbed over rocks and fallen trees, keeping as close as possible to the stream, until suddenly they found themselves gazing up at a beautiful waterfall which came gushing from a pile of giant rocks reaching up among the topmost ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... fears—like everything else in the world, this is unjust. For a little while, five or ten minutes, not more than ten, I would let my mind dwell on that thought, trying to dig down to its roots which doubtless drew their strength from the foetid slime of human superstition, trying to behold its topmost branches where they waved in sparkling light. No, that was not the theory; I must imagine those invisible branches as grim skeletons of whitened wood, standing stirless in that ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... side, except for its narrow riband of tree-tops among the fields; but within its narrow limits it is glorious with flowers, cascades, pools full of trout, set with water-plants in blossom, and the haunt of innumerable birds. Even the wild ducks ascend to the topmost pools, and are constantly in flight down the narrow winding vistas of grass, water, and trees, which they, like the kingfishers and water-hens, seem to think are set out for ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... courage to start on the journey of life. A tall twig led from the nest straight up into the air, and this was the ladder he mounted. Step by step he climbed one leaf-stem after another, with several pauses to cry and to eat, and at last reached the topmost point, where he turned his face to the west, and took his first survey of the kingdoms of the earth. A brother nestling was close behind him, and the pretty pair, seeing no more steps above them, rested a while from ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... Lanyard went on down the steps, at their foot pausing to spy out through a half-open doorway to the topmost storey. ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... dust of his ancestors, he followed the example of most ambitious men of his class by repairing to St. Petersburg (whither, as we know, the more spirited youth of Russia from every quarter gravitates—there to enter the Public Service, to shine, to obtain promotion, and, in a word, to scale the topmost peaks of that pale, cold, deceptive elevation which is known as society). But the real starting-point of Tientietnikov's ambition was the moment when his uncle (one State Councillor Onifri Ivanovitch) instilled into ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... strange curves of strength and grace as they bend themselves against the mountain side; they breathe more freely and toss their branches more carelessly as each climbs higher, looking to the clear light above the topmost leaves of its brother tree; the flowers which on the arable plain fall before the plough, now find out for themselves unapproachable places where year by year they gather into happier fellowship, and ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... the oriole possesses! His song has a saucy note of challenge running through it, and also a human intonation that makes it rarely attractive. All day long the male sings his cheery solos, scarcely pausing for breath or food, now sitting on the topmost twig of a dead apple tree in the orchard, now amid the screening foliage of a maple in the yard, and anon on the other side of the street in a stately cottonwood. But where is that modest little personage, his ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... mosquitoes had become more intolerable than ever. At last, half mad with irritation, I set off straight up the side of the nearest mountain, in hopes of attaining a zone too high for them to inhabit; and, poising myself upon its topmost pinnacle, I drew my handkerchief over my head—I was already without coat and waistcoat—and remained the rest of the morning "mopping and mowing" at the world ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... skirts of Le Berry stands a town which, watered by the Loire, infallibly attracts the traveler's eye. Sancerre crowns the topmost height of a chain of hills, the last of the range that gives variety to the Nivernais. The Loire floods the flats at the foot of these slopes, leaving a yellow alluvium that is extremely fertile, excepting in those places where it has deluged them with sand and ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... the name is a misnomer, for there are no books in it and our courteous guides said there never had been. We ascended the narrow stairs leading from the vast, empty, dusty room on the lower floor through an equally empty second story to the third and topmost story, which is the home of hundreds of doves. Going out on the narrow balustrade under the eaves in the gray dawn of the morning, I looked upon the gorgeous gilded roof of the temple near by and then ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... Beauvais explored the recesses, and threw down to the laughing crowd embroidered shawls and scarfs yellow with age, soft muslins of antique pattern, stiff big-flowered brocades, scraps of gauze ribbon, gossamer laces. On one topmost shelf he came upon a small wooden box inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Felice reached up for it, and, moved by some undefined impulse, Richard came and stood by her side while she opened it. A perfume which he recognized arose from it as she lifted a fold of tissue-paper. ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... traveling with their shells horizontal as do earthly beetles, these insects stood erect on their two lower pairs of legs, which were of different lengths so that all four feet touched the ground when the shell was vertical. The two upper pairs of legs were used as arms, the topmost pair[A] being quite short and splitting out at the end into four flexible claws about five inches long, which they used as fingers. These upper arms, which sprouted from a point near the top of the head, were peculiar in that they apparently had no joints like the other three pairs but were flexible ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... came the cool breath of evening air and the sound of water lapping against stone. A patch of faint light showed pale against the iron bars, and as Angela looked that way, a great grey rat leapt through the grating, and ran along the topmost bin, making the bottles shiver as he scuttled across them. Then came a thud on the sawdust-covered stones, and she knew that the loathsome thing was on the floor upon which she was standing. She lowered her light shudderingly, and, for the first time since she ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... enough in summer, but had no especial charm at this time. The level expanse of bare ploughed fields on each side of the narrow road had a dreary look; the hedges were low and thin; a tall elm, with all its lower limbs mercilessly shorn, uplifted its topmost branches to the dull gray sky, here and there, like some transformed prophetess raising her gaunt arms in appeal or malediction; an occasional five-barred gate marked the entrance to some by-road to the ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... also to publish most enthusiastic criticisms of her concerts, calling her "the wonder-child," and "the first German artist," one who "already stands on the topmost peak of our time." He even printed verses upon her genius. In a letter to Wieck, in 1833, he says, "It is easy to write to you, but I do not feel equal to write to Clara." She was still, however, the child to him; the child whom he used to frighten with his gruesome ghost-stories, ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... he admission gives. Of all kinds a single pair, And the members safely there Of his house he doth embark, Then at once he shuts the ark; Everything therein has pass'd, There he keeps them safe and fast. O'er the mountain's topmost peak Now the raging waters break. Till full twenty days are o'er, 'Midst the elemental roar, Up and down the ark forlorn, Like some evil thing is borne: O what grief it is to see Swimming on the enormous sea Human corses pale and white, More, alas! than I can write: O what grief, what grief profound, ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... 'Alta California'," says Noah Brooks, "made him famous. It was my business to prepare one of these letters for the Sunday morning paper, taking the topmost letter from a goodly pile that was stacked in a pigeon-hole of my desk. Clemens was an indefatigable correspondent, and his last letter was slipped in at the bottom of ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... lieutenants, the master, and a couple of mates took the command. Dicky Esse and I accompanied the Second-Lieutenant. Our orders were to board the prows, and if they offered any resistance, to destroy them. The water was smooth and beautifully blue, while the rising sun tipped the topmost heights of the lofty hills, which rose, as it were, out of the ocean, feathered almost from their summits to the water's edge with graceful trees. There lay the brig, while the prows were clustered like so many beasts of prey around their quarry. The pirates seemed in no way alarmed at our ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... In the topmost height of the celestial world the Lord appears as a sun, and all the infinite multitudes of angels, swarming up through the innumerable heavens, wherever they are, continually turn their faces towards him in love and joy. But at the bottom of the infernal ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... it was my duty Thus much to speak; but think not I forget— Dear Father! how could I forget and live— You and the story of that doleful night When, Antioch blazing to her topmost towers, You rushed into the murderous flames, returned Blind as the grave, but, as you oft have told me, Clasping your ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... long line of upheaven rocks seek again the ocean which gave them birth in its far-separated divisions of Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic. The sun sank slowly behind the range and darkness began to fall on the immense plain, but aloft on the topmost edge the pure white of the jagged crest-line glowed for an instant in many-coloured silver, and then the lonely peaks grew ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... flooded the topmost branches of the forest foliage. My eyes came round to the aureole which was their ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... none howled more fiercely with delight than did Steelkilt, as he strained at his oar. After a stiff pull, their harpooneer got fast, and, spear in hand, Radney sprang to the bow. He was always a furious man, it seems, in a boat. And now his bandaged cry was, to beach him on the whale's topmost back. Nothing loath, his bowsman hauled him up and up, through a blinding foam that blent two whitenesses together; till of a sudden the boat struck as against a sunken ledge, and keeling over, spilled out the standing mate. That instant, as he fell on the ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... exclamation of hope, got upon her feet and ran forward to him. He hurried her to the window. She obeyed him in silence, for it was clear that terror had robbed her tongue of all articulate speech. He clambered out, turned on the topmost rung, and flinging an arm round her waist, was lifting her out, when the other figure stepped forward and set a hand on his shoulder. The look on this woman's face was now terrible. Something seemed working in her throat ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... from the front of the storey below it, but equidistant from the two sides, where the platforms were 21 ft. wide. The three upper storeys were 45 ft. in height altogether, the two below these were 26 ft. each, and the height of the lowest is uncertain. The topmost storey probably had a tower on it which enclosed the shrine of the temple. This edifice was for a long time a bone of contention among savants, but Colonel Rawlinson's investigations have brought to light the fact that it was a temple dedicated to the seven heavenly ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... other branches of the Civil Service are so rigidly provided for that the foreign service is like the topmost rock which you sometimes see in old pictures of the Deluge. The pressure for a place ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... White Logic grins. "At the end of all his thinking he still clung to the sentiment of immortality. Facts transmuted in the alembic of hope into terms of faith. The ripest fruit of reason the stultification of reason. From the topmost peak of reason James teaches to cease reasoning and to have faith that all is well and will be well—the old, oh, ancient old, acrobatic flip of the metaphysicians whereby they reasoned reason quite away in order to escape the pessimism consequent upon the grim and honest ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... draping down over the nape of his neck protects it from the fervid rays of the Chaco sun. It is a costume imposing and picturesque; while the caparison of his horse is in keeping with it. The saddle, called recado, is furnished with several coverings, one upon another, the topmost, coronilla, being of bright-coloured cloth elaborately quilted; while the bridle of plaited horse-hair is studded with silver joints, from which depend rings and tassels, the same ornamenting the breast-piece and neck straps attaching the martingale, ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... since Maurice's arrival at the farm. Elsie was sitting on the topmost step of the store-house stairs, intent upon some kind of coarse knitting-work, whose bag-like convexity remotely suggested a stocking. Some straggling rays of the late afternoon sun had got tangled ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... pealing shriek, Lo, from Ilion's topmost tower, Ilion's fierce prophetic flower Cried the coming of the Greek! Black in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... land, while at another time two sharks towed his vessel against a head wind with such speed that the sea fowl could hardly keep him in sight. Clearing his eye by a fast and prayer, he climbed to the topmost height of the Waianae Mountains and closely scanned the horizon. The earth was as brick, and the sky as brass, and the sea as silver, save in one quarter: a tiny blur on the universal glare could be seen, he fancied, over Maui. He would ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... Little River drains a province larger than a European kingdom. Chungking is built at a great height above the present river, now sixty feet below its summer level. Its walls are unscalable. Good influences are directed over the city from a lofty pagoda on the topmost hill in the vicinity. Temples abound, and spacious yamens and rich buildings, the crowning edifice of all being the Temple to the God of Literature. Distances are prodigious in Chungking, and the streets so steep and hilly, with flights of stairs cut from the solid rock, that only a mountaineer ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... wilder. They passed an immense tree, under which Indians may have bivouacked, and in some storm long past the lightning had plowed its way from the topmost ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... thoughts must through the creature's brain have past! Even from the topmost stone, upon the steep, [24] Are but three bounds—and look, Sir, at this last— O Master! it has been a ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... and with the tiny tweezers lifted up one of the gray-coloured, diamond-shaped paper seals. He moistened the adhesive side, and, still holding it by the tweezers, dropped it on his handkerchief and pressed the seal down on the face of the topmost package of banknotes. He tied the parcel up then, and, picking up the pen, addressed it in ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... William Dale, faint imperceptible pushes for fifteen years, and see now at the end where it had pushed him. First it had pushed him upward, higher and higher, to a position of conspicuous pride, to the topmost summit of a fair mountain, where he could look round and say, "I have all that I pined for. This is the world's castle, and I am the king of the castle." Then it had begun to push him down the other side of this mountain, the dark side, the side that was always ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... went, sometimes stumbling in the dark, sometimes emerging into the light, until at last they reached the topmost step where ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... thrasher, strong and able without being familiar, and easily seen and heard. Rosy purple evenings after thundershowers are the favorite song-times, when the winds have died away and the steaming ground and the leaves and flowers fill the air with fragrance. Then the male makes haste to the topmost spray of an oak tree and sings loud and clear with delightful enthusiasm until sundown, mostly I suppose for his mate sitting on the precious eggs in a brush heap. And how faithful and watchful and daring he is! Woe ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... until he knew everything about them; and he was certain they told no story. When he was certain, he rearranged the letters, as Roy had done, in rows of five each. Then he laid down his pencil and began another careful search. He read the topmost line from left to right, and from right to left. It made no sense. He took the second and found no meaning in it. Another boy might have skipped the others, but not Willie. Each of the thirteen rows he studied ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... quiet retreat is at the Ventnor end of the Landslip and within a short distance of Old Bonchurch. The two thatched cottages are almost grown in, and the bright red cliff which forms the prominent feature consists of the topmost beds of the lower Greensand. The lower beds behind the cottage are of geological interest from the diversity of colour in the beds. The sands are white and firm, and there are rocks and pools where children love to play. Close by is the path leading ...
— Pictures in Colour of the Isle of Wight • Various
... he strained at his oar. After a stiff pull, their harpooneer got fast, and, spear in hand, Radney sprang to the bow. He was always a furious man, it seems, in a boat. And now his bandaged cry was, to beach him on the whale's topmost back. Nothing loath, his bowsman hauled him up and up, through a blinding foam that blent two whitenesses together; till of a sudden the boat struck as against a sunken ledge, and keeling over, spilled out the standing mate. That instant, as he fell on the whale's ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... the broad-backed hills, Hear the uproar of their joy; We will mark the leaps and gleams Of the new-delivered streams, And the murmuring rivers of sap Mount in the pipes of the trees, Giddy with day, to the topmost spire, Which for a spike of tender green Bartered its powdery cap; And the colors of joy in the bird, And the love in its carol heard, Frog and lizard in holiday coats, And turtle brave in his golden spots; While cheerful cries of crag and plain Reply to the thunder ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... add salt if desired, and a half cup of sweet cream, mix well, and bake for twenty minutes. Or, fill a pudding dish with alternate layers of peeled and sliced tomatoes and bread crumbs, letting the topmost layer be of tomatoes. Cover, and bake in a moderate oven for an hour or longer, according to depth. Uncover, and brown for ten or ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... he asks for more cloth. The really practical statesman does not fit himself to existing conditions, he denounces the conditions as unfit. History is like some deeply planted tree which, though gigantic in girth, tapers away at last into tiny twigs; and we are in the topmost branches. Each of us is trying to bend the tree by a twig: to alter England through a distant colony, or to capture the State through a small State department, or to destroy all voting through a vote. In all such bewilderment he is wise who resists ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... ridge and riverside the western mail has gone, Across the great Blue Mountain Range to take that letter on. A moment on the topmost grade while open fire doors glare, She pauses like a living thing to breathe the mountain air, Then launches down the other side across the plains away To bear that note to 'Conroy's ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... fell upon a medley of photographs; snaps from her own camera, which had tumbled out of her bag in unpacking. The topmost one represented a group of young men and maidens standing under a group of stone pines in a Riviera landscape. She herself was in front, with a tall youth beside her. She bent ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... after this, to watch the daily feeding of the little birds, and to observe how, when not feeding them, the mother sat brooding on the nest, warming them under her soft wings, while the father-bird sat on the topmost bough of the apple-tree and sang to them. In time they grew and grew, and, instead of a nest full of little red mouths, there was a nest full of little, fat, speckled robins, with round, bright, cunning eyes, just ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... information that cannot perhaps be regarded as strictly legal, but such as he was afterwards able to turn to admirable account. He would seem to have studied the profession exhaustively in all its branches, from the topmost Tulkinghorns and Perkers, to the lowest pettifoggers like Pell and Brass, and also to have given particular attention to the parasites of the law—the Guppys and Chucksters; and altogether to have stored his mind, as he had done at school, with a series of invaluable notes and observations. ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... how Baby allowed me to roll him down hill, crawling and puffing up again each time with perfect good-humor; how he climbed a young sapling after my Panama hat, which I had "shied" into one of the topmost branches; how, after getting it, he refused to descend until it suited his pleasure; how, when he did come down, he persisted in walking about on three legs, carrying my hat, a crushed and shapeless mass, clasped to his breast with the remaining ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... these trials for conspiracy in the prisons. Forty-nine accused crowded the tiers of seats. Maurice Brotteaux occupied the right-hand corner of the topmost row,—the place of honour. He was dressed in his plum-coloured surtout, which he had brushed very carefully the day before and mended at the pocket where his little Lucretius had ended by fretting ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... windows seemed to melt asunder into nothingness as we passed—and there was no stop to our onward progress till suddenly I saw before me a steep and narrow spiral stairway of stone winding up into the very centre of a rocky pinnacle, which in its turn lifted its topmost peak into the darkness of a night sky sprinkled with millions of stars. The sombre Figure paused: and again I felt the search-light of its invisible eyes burning through me. Then, as though satisfied with its brief survey, it began ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... convey the idea of immense and incalculable age than the hoary beard and venerable appearance of this monarch of the woods. Spanish moss of a silvery grey covered the whole mass of wood and foliage, from the topmost bough down to the very ground; short near the top of the tree, but gradually increasing in length as it descended, until it hung like a deep fringe from the lower branches. I separated the vegetable curtain with my hands, and entered this august temple with feelings of involuntary awe. The change ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... hardy, and powerfully built. He had come from the New Brunswick woods some three years ago, and had wrought and fought his way, as he thought, against all rivals to the proud position of "boss on de reever," the topmost pinnacle of a lumberman's ambition. It was something to see LeNoir "run a log" across the river and back; that is, he would balance himself upon a floating log, and by spinning it round, would send it whither he would. At Murphy's question LeNoir ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... rows of nests and the beautiful brown eggs in them. Jimmy Skunk couldn't climb, and so he could have gotten only the eggs in the lower nests. Now if he, Unc' Billy, had been there, he could have climbed to the very topmost nest and—but what was the use of thinking about it? He hadn't been there, and he couldn't go ...
— The Adventures of Unc' Billy Possum • Thornton W. Burgess
... they leave under an olive tree, Which by the reins two Sarrazins do lead; Those messengers have wrapped them in their weeds, To the palace they climb the topmost steep. When they're come in, the vaulted roof beneath, Marsilium with courtesy they greet: "May Mahumet, who all of us doth keep, And Tervagan, and our lord Apoline Preserve the, king and guard from ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... fresh star-shell lit up the trench they saw a man in khaki thrust his head and shoulders over the topmost bag and look under his hand in ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... profusion of sweet-scented flowers clothe their banks; above, waves the mountain-ash, glowing with scarlet berries; and beyond, rise hills and rocks and mountains, piled upon one another, and fringed with fir to their topmost acclivities. Perhaps the Norwegian forests alone equal these in grandeur and extent. Those which cover the Swiss highlands rarely convey such vast ideas. There, the woods climb only half way up their ascents, and then are circumscribed by snows: here, no boundaries ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... was often a cause of great anxiety and pain to him; for it was difficult to satisfy men of all tempers, and some of these not of the most generous sort. On such occasions he might be seen with his right-hand thumb thrust through the topmost button-hole of his coat-breast, vehemently hitching his right shoulder, as was his habit when labouring under any considerable excitement. Occasionally he would take an early ride before breakfast, to inspect the progress of the Sankey viaduct. He had a favourite horse, ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... raven, who sat upon the topmost stone, black against the bright blue sky, flapped lazily away, and sunk down the abysses of the cliff, as if he had scented the corpses beneath the surge. Below them from the gull-rock rose a thousand birds, and filled the air with sound; the choughs ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... the earth with beauty. Thousands, and tens of thousands, blue, and yellow, and pink, and violet, and white, of every shadow and every form, are to be seen, vying with each other, and eclipsing every thing besides. Midway they meet you again, sometimes fragrant, and always lovely; and in the topmost places, where the larch, and the pine, and the rhododendron (the last living shrub) are no longer to be seen, where you are just about to tread upon the limit of perpetual snow, there still peep up and blossom the "Forget me not," the Alpine ranunculus, and the white and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... in the sideboard, and after she had drunk it they sat for some few minutes in agitated silence. The street sounds outside had died away. Julian's was the topmost flat in the block, and their isolation was complete. He suddenly ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... rapture in the song of the bluebirds was sweeter than the voice of Cyrus to which he had listened. And in a meadow on the right, an old grey horse, scarred, dim-eyed, spavined, stood resting one crooked leg, while he gazed wistfully over the topmost rail of the fence into the vivid green of the distance—for into his aching old bones, also, there had passed a little of that longing for joy which was born of the miraculous softness and freshness of the spring. To him, as well as to Gabriel and to the ploughmen and to the bluebirds flitting, ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... you down the stairs if you'll say the word," he said as they paused a moment at the topmost step. ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... the race instinct ran powerfully, and who was not untainted of antipathies to red men and yellow men and black men and all men not wholly white, Richard did not pause to inquire the rights and the wrongs of the altercation. He seized upon the topmost person of color and pitched him into the street. Then he pitched another after him. The third, getting some alarming notions of what was going on, arose and fled. None of the three came back; for discretion ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... of some horse-chestnuts at the rear of the garden, were almost destitute of leaves, but they were not neglected on that account. An agile boy, armed with a lantern, climbed each tree, and explored even the topmost branches. ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... bobolink. He comes amid the pomp and fragrance of the season; his life seems all sensibility and enjoyment, all song and sunshine. He is to be found in the soft bosoms of the freshest and sweetest meadows, and is most in song when the clover is in blossom. He perches on the topmost twig of a tree, or on some long, flaunting weed, and, as he rises and sinks with the breeze, pours forth a succession of rich, tinkling notes, crowding one upon another, like the outpouring melody of the skylark, and possessing ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... forests, was hastily scraped together and fired; and as the blaze lighted up the forest, three other heaps were collected in a circle around the tree, which were also fired, and larger sticks brought and heaped upon them—the smoke and heat of which drove the children to the topmost limbs of the tree. It is well they had decided on the fires, for they had not been blazing ten minutes, when the whole pack of beasts, numbering full fifty, with ferocious growls, came down from the hills ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... But he dismisses this thought as impossible; for if there were a future life, I should be the first to know of it. It would certainly have been revealed to a splendid mind like mine. It is the mountain peak that catches the first flush of the dawn, not the valley: it is the topmost branch of the great tree that gets the first whisper of the coming breeze. It is a pity that Cleon had not heard the Gospel. I thank thee, O Father, that Thou hast hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... he said; "I can show you something," and he unlocked the door of a cabin. There appeared to be nothing in it but a huge piece of tarpaulin, which depended, bulging, from the topmost bunk. He pulled it up. The lower bunk had been removed, and in its place was the ugly body ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... sure, Dagaeoga. Look at the bird with the red crest, perched on the topmost tip of the tall, green bush directly in front of us. I can distinguish his song from those of the others, and it seems that the note contains something ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... abrupt— In spite of those heart-bracing colloquies, 470 In spite of real fervour, and of that Less genuine and wrought up within myself— I could not but bewail a wrong so harsh, And for the Matin-bell to sound no more Grieved, and the twilight taper, and the cross 475 High on the topmost pinnacle, a sign (How welcome to the weary traveller's eyes!) Of hospitality and peaceful rest. And when the partner of those varied walks Pointed upon occasion to the site 480 Of Romorentin, home of ancient kings, [T] To the imperial edifice of Blois, [U] Or to that rural castle, name now slipped ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... world as in the chorus of the Nephelai. Such a morning may be chosen for the giro of the island. The Blue Grotto loses nothing of its beauty, but rather gains by contrast, when passing from dense fog you find yourself transported to a world of wavering subaqueous sheen. It is only through the very topmost arch that a boat can glide into this cavern; the arch itself spreads downward through the water so that all the light is transmitted from beneath and colored by the sea. Outside the magic world of pantomime there is nothing to equal ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... this smooth channel in the midst the late sun streamed toward us, a soft wash of gold. Behind all this the sky, pale to whiteness immediately overhead, deepened to the splendid orange of the sunset. Each tree cast his shadow upon his neighbour, so that only the topmost branches burned in the light. Over and above us floated the drowsy hum of the insect world; rarely we heard the moaning of a wood-dove, more rarely still the stirring of deer hidden in the thicket shade. This was a magical evening, primed with wonders, in the glamour of which Master Harkness could ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... small fire, he baked the nuts slightly, and then pealed off the husks. After this he wished to bore a hole in them, which, not having anything better at hand at the time, he did with the point of our useless pencil-case. Then he strung them on the cocoa-nut spine, and on putting a light to the topmost nut, we found to our joy that it burned with a clear, beautiful flame; upon seeing which, Peterkin sprang up and danced round the fire for at least five minutes in the excess ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... inborn propensity to go out into the world to see the regions beyond, he had the intensest desire to climb upward—so that without shifting his horizon, he could yet extend it, and take in a far wider sweep of vision. "I envied every bird," he goes on, "that sat singing on the topmost bough of the great, century-old cherry tree; the weathercock on our barn seemed to me to whirl in a higher region of the air; and to rise from the earth in a balloon was a bliss which I would almost have given my life to enjoy." His desire to ascend soon ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... only get nearer, so as to touch them," said he, and immediately the obedient cloak ducked down; Prince Dolor made a snatch at the topmost twig of the tallest tree, and caught a bunch of leaves ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... Taking out the topmost sheet, she shook it open. Then the next and the next till she reached the bottom of the box. Nothing of a criminating nature came to light. The box as well as its contents was without mystery of any kind. This was not an unexpected result of course, ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... ceased their work and watched it. The vibrations became more violent, and the sounds they produced grew louder and louder till they reached a shrill wild cry. There came a pause, then a deep shuddering groan. The topmost branches began to move slowly, the whole stately bulk swayed, and then shot towards the ground. The gigantic trunk bounded from the stump, recoiled like a cannon, crashed down, and lay conquered, with a roar as of an earthquake, in a cloud ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... Bennett in 1828, when in his thirtieth year, became the Washington correspondent of the New York Enquirer, which was then on the topmost round of the journalistic ladder. It is related of him that during his stay in this position he came across a copy of Walpole's Letters and resolved to try the effect of a few letters written in a similar strain. The truth of this is doubtful. It ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... unquestionably very ill. Sarah had been quite right in telegraphing so peremptorily to Hilda; and if she had not so telegraphed she would have been quite wrong. On the previous day she had been sitting on the cold new oilcloth of the topmost stairs, minutely instructing a maid in the craft of polishing banisters. And the next morning an attack of acute sciatica had supervened. For a trifling indiscretion Sarah was thus condemned to extreme physical torture. Hilda had found her rigid on the bed. She suffered ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... waves his wings, and sinks to the swaying twigs. I hear too a quail piping from the meadow fence, and another trilling his answering whistle from the hills. Nearer by, a tyrant king-bird is poised on the topmost branch of a veteran pear-tree, and now and then dashes down, assassin-like, upon some homebound, honey-laden bee, and then with a smack of his bill resumes ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... him. Unable to, I stopped him. I seized his arm. But he shook his head, pointed to the mountain's topmost peak, and ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... condescend to shine upon Indian Bar at all, and the old settlers tell me that he will not smile upon us for the next three months, but he nestles lovingly in patches of golden glory all along the brows of the different hills around us, and now and then stoops to kiss the topmost wave on the opposite shore of the Rio ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... of sprightfulness; And he ought to let Scripture alone—'tis self-slaughter, For nobody likes inspiration-and-water. He'd have been just the fellow to sup at the Mermaid, Cracking jokes at rare Ben, with an eye to the barmaid, His wit running up as Canary ran down,— The topmost bright bubble on the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... tree resting, I heard a roundelay, The nightingale was singing On the oak tree's topmost spray. ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... lea, Fat and full-fed; their kine, as home they wind, The lagging traveller of his rest remind! With might and main their fallows let them till: Till comes the seedtime, and cicalas trill (Hid from the toilers of the hot midday In the thick leafage) on the topmost spray! O'er shield and spear their webs let spiders spin, And none so much as name the battle-din! Then Hiero's lofty deeds may minstrels bear Beyond the Scythian ocean-main, and where Within those ample walls, with asphalt made Time-proof, Semiramis her empire swayed. I am but a single voice: ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... blue infinite:- Which is so strong, my strongest throes And the rough world's besieging blows Not break it, and so weak withal, Death ebbs and flows in its loose wall As the green sea in fishers' nets, And tops its topmost parapets:- Which is so wholly mine that I Can wield its whole artillery, And mine so little, that my soul Dwells in perpetual control, And I but think and speak and do As my dead fathers move me to:- If this born body of my bones The beggared soul so barely owns, What money ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Christmas-tree! And look, O look to its tip and see The feathery slim fir leaves and where, In the topmost boughs, is the image fair Of the Christ-child nestling amid the green And the little brown ...
— Child Songs of Cheer • Evaleen Stein
... regarding her son with a little puzzled frown. Suddenly she reached out and tapped the topmost of the scribbled sheets strewn the length of Jock's side ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... however, and those of the airplane, are in the control of men; and there may be still a chance of bringing about a better state of affairs than now exists. While the war correspondents were actually in France, and while they were often forced to write at topmost speed, there was excuse for avion and camion, vrille and escadrille, and all the other French words which bespattered the columns of British and American, Canadian and Australian newspapers. I doubt if there ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 5 - The Englishing of French Words; The Dialectal Words in Blunden's Poems • Society for Pure English
... traversed all about it, with great interest, and had gone up to the topmost round of seats, and turning from the lovely panorama closed in by the distant Alps, looked down into the building, it seemed to lie before me like the inside of a prodigious hat of plaited straw, with an enormously broad brim and a shallow ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... honour of Saturn;[477] either because their religious principles are derived from the Idaei, who are supposed to have been driven out with Saturn and become the ancestors of the Jewish people; or else because, of the seven constellations which govern the lives of men, the star of Saturn moves in the topmost orbit and exercises peculiar influence, and also because most of the heavenly bodies move round[478] their ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... through the little window and fell directly upon the pile of newspapers he had brought from the kitchen and thrown on the floor. His glance chanced to rest for an instant upon the topmost paper of the pile. It was a New York journal which devotes two of its inside pages to happenings in society. When he threw it down it had unfolded so that one of these pages lay uppermost. Absently, scarcely realizing ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... rising perpendicularly from the plain! Here and there loose rocks lay at its base, as if they had fallen from above; and trees grew out of its face, clinging by their roots in the seams of the cliff. Scattered pines standing upon its topmost edge, stretched their branches out over the plain; and the aloe plants, the yuccas, and cacti, added to the wild picturesqueness of ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... darkness had crept down over the mountain and into the peaceful valley. Then began the tortuous descent. Quinnox in the lead, they walked, crawled and ran down the narrow path, bruised, scratched and aching by the time they reached the topmost of the summer houses along the face of the mountain. After this walking was easier, but stealthiness made their progress slow. Frequently, as they neared the base, they were obliged to dodge behind houses or to drop into the ditches by the roadside ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... most punctual of men. He entered his office in Mincing Lane precisely at ten o'clock on Thursday morning. His letters had already been sorted and arranged in two neat piles on his desk. Topmost on one of them was a cablegram from Toronto: "Meet me home eleven p.m. Smith." He never admitted that anything would surprise him, and in fact he showed no sign of excitement, but looked through his correspondence methodically, distributing the papers among several ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... by way of being a non-party affair, took place on a blustering February afternoon. The elite of Stoneleigh were picturesquely grouped upon the steps of the main entrance of the Library, from the topmost of which the Mayor, the Dean, and the Candidates addressed a shivering ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... appreciate the character of the fog, my companion proposed that we should 'put off into the unknown dark.' Not till I had got into the street, and was groping my way among the pedestrians, instead of watching them in security from the topmost of a flight of steps, could I estimate its real nature. To my bewildered eyes it had the appearance of a solid wall constantly opposing our further progress. The blazing torches that we met were invisible at fifty yards' distance. The tradesmen had ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... hundred and eight such signal stations as this, modest, inexpensive little offices, established over the United States, from the low sea-coast plains to the topmost peak of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... divine in Ischia. From the topmost garden terrace of the inn one looks across the sea toward Terracina, Gaeta, and those descending mountain buttresses, the Phlegraean plains and the distant snows of the Abruzzi. Rain-washed and luminous, ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... try the experiment took possession of the boy as he sat on the topmost rail with the glossy back temptingly near him. Never thinking of danger, he obeyed the impulse, and while Charlie unsuspectingly nibbled at the apple he held, Dan quickly and quietly took his seat. He did not keep it long, however, for with an astonished snort, Charlie reared straight up, and deposited ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... was not so; the eagle sunk gradually into the abyss beneath, and the branches of trees and bushes were broken by its weight. Then the hunters roused themselves: three of the longest ladders were brought and bound together; the topmost ring of these ladders would just reach the edge of the rock which hung over the abyss, but no farther. The point beneath which the eagle's nest lay sheltered was much higher, and the sides of the rock were as smooth as a wall. After consulting ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... the Broom, and especially the topmost young twigs, are purgative, and act powerfully on the kidneys to increase the flow of urine. They contain chemically an acid principle, "scoparin," and an alkaloid, "sparteine." For medical purposes these terminal twigs are used (whether fresh or dried) to make a decoction which ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... gently swelling ridge on which the ancient roadway lies. They near the mound, and a solemn stillness succeeds their chanting songs; the priests ascend the hill of sacrifice and prepare the sacred fire. Now the first beams of the rising sun shoot up athwart the ruddy sky, gilding the topmost boughs of the trees. The holy flame is kindled, a curling wreath of smoke arises to greet the coming god; the tremulous hush which was upon all nature breaks into vocal joy, and the songs of gladness burst ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... on his way too; and if he was merry before, he was now ten times more so. He had not gone far before he met an old miser: close by them stood a tree, and on the topmost twig sat a thrush singing away most joyfully. 'Oh, what a pretty bird!' said the miser; 'I would give a great deal of money to have such a one.' 'If that's all,' said the countryman, 'I will soon bring it down.' Then he took up his bow, and down fell the thrush into the bushes at the foot of ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... that well-remembered evening when Wilhelmine was installed lady-in-waiting to her Highness, a tall fir-tree was planted in a gilded barrel. A thousand twinkling lights burned on the branches, and little trinkets dangled temptingly. Overhead, on the topmost branch, the waxen Christmas angel with tinsel wings hovered over this family gathering. Symbol of peace and goodwill, this angel would look down pitifully on the men and women round the Christmas tree, whose hearts were full of bitterness, of envy and hatred! ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... in by railroad from the lakes, and are placed on board the ships with a rapidity which must be seen to be appreciated. The blocks are packed in sawdust, which is used very much as mortar is used in a stone wall. Between the topmost layer of ice and the deck there is sometimes a layer of closely packed hay, and sometimes one of barrels of apples. It has occasionally happened that the profit upon the apples has paid the freight upon the ice, which usually amounts to about ten thousand dollars, or ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... weight of lead upon her. She rushed into the room, but at the very entrance Lottchen fell. At that moment the assassin exchanged his stealthy pace for a loud clattering ascent. Already he was on the topmost stair; already he was throwing himself at a bound against the door, when Louisa, having dragged her sister into the room, closed the door and sent the bolt home in the very instant that the murderer's hand came into contact with the handle. Then, from the violence of her ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... sheep clambering among the mossy ruins, and cropping the little tufts of grass sprouting out of the sides of the embrasures for cannon. And once I saw a black goat with a long beard, and crumpled horns, standing with his forefeet lifted high up on the topmost parapet, and looking to sea, as if he were watching for a ship that was bringing over his cousin. I can see him even now, and though I have changed since then, the black goat looks just the same as ever; and so I suppose he would, if I live to be as old as ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... always thus that his madness declared itself: there were moments when it rose to appalling frenzy. Then he imagined himself to be again hurling the Christian assailants from the topmost walls of the besieged temple, in that past time when the image of Serapis was doomed by the Bishop of Alexandria to be destroyed. His yells of fury, his frantic execrations of defiance were heard afar, in the solemn silence of pestilence-stricken Rome. ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... throng the hollows; new tints and half-tints flicker and shift everywhere; mists hang floating over ravines and precipices; the vegetation grows more various, here slenderer, there richer and more luxuriant; whilst high over all, bright on the topmost summits, is a new strange something—the white snows of purity, catching the morning streaks on them of a brighter day, that has never as yet risen upon the ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... these things, the younger brother was in the valley of the acacia; there was none with him; he spent his time in hunting the beasts of the desert, and he came back in the even to lie down under the acacia, which bore his soul upon the topmost flower. And after this he built himself a tower with his own hands, in the valley of the acacia; it was full of all good things, that he might provide for himself ...
— Egyptian Tales, Second Series - Translated from the Papyri • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... seemed an endless time, amid a growing grind of thunder and in the almost darkened room, the phial in Chris's hand gave off an arching rosy glow. Chris, his cheeks hot from excitement and the fire, tiptoed out just as Mr. Wicker's step creaked on the topmost tread of the spiral stair. With infinite caution Chris closed the door silently behind him, and running lightly forward, reached the figure of ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... wind. The night was perfectly still. Not a leaf quivered on the topmost branch of the linden which tapped our chamber-window. Yet a Power like a mighty rushing blast gainsaid me and smote ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... glances to make sure that the bull was neither after us on the road, nor watching us from behind this bush or that hillock. Turkey never left me till he saw me safe up the ladder; nay, after I was in bed, I spied his face peeping in at the window from the topmost round of it. By this time the east had begun to begin to glow, as Allister, who was painfully exact, would have said; but I was fairly tired now, and, falling asleep at once, never woke until Mrs. Mitchell pulled the clothes off me, an ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... not easily baffled, and he determined to scrutinize every shelf, of this particular section in turn. With the aid of one of those step-ladders folding into a chair which you sometimes see in libraries, he examined the topmost shelves but without result. He took down in turn Macaulay's History of England, a handsome edition of the works of Swift, and a set of Moliere without getting any nearer the end of ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... grew shorter, and she toiled on in a resolute uncomplaining manner after his long, vigorous steps, till he looked round, and seeing her panting far behind, turned to help her, lead her, and carry her, till the top was achieved, and the little girl stood on the topmost stone, gazing round at the broad sunny landscape, with the soft green meadows, the harvest fields, the woods in their gorgeous autumn raiment, and the moorland on the other side, with its other peaks and cairns, ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in your seat. Now the black Maltese crosses on the German's wings stand out clearly. You think of him as some sort of big bug. Then you hear the rapid tut-tut-tut of his machine gun. The man that dived ahead of you becomes mixed up with the topmost German. He is so close it looks as if he had hit the enemy machine. You hear the staccato barking of his mitrailleuse and see him pass from ...
— Flying for France • James R. McConnell
... midwinter, but a south-wind sweeps up the Mississippi, so mild and balmy that the blue-birds and robins are out. The steamboats are crowded with troops, who are waiting for orders to sail, they know not where. Groups stand upon the topmost deck. Some lie at full length in the warm sunshine. The bands are playing, the drums beating. Tug-boats are dancing, wheezing, and puffing in the stream, flitting ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... he, when all the place he had gone o'er. And with much trouble clomb the broken stair, And from the topmost turret seen the shore And his good ship drawn up at anchor there, Came down again, and found a crypt most fair Built wonderfully beneath the greatest hall, And there he saw ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... all the books at home from Inchbald's Theatre to White's Farriery; he ransacked the neighbouring book-cases. He found at Clavering an old cargo of French novels, which he read with all his might; and he would sit for hours perched upon the topmost bar of Doctor Portman's library steps with a folio on his knees, whether it were Hakluyt's Travels, Hobbes's Leviathan, Augustini Opera, or Chaucer's Poems. He and the Vicar were very good friends, and from his Reverence, Pen learned that honest taste for port wine which distinguished ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... had at last left the dense woods behind him and had come to a cleared place, he saw the singer. At the top of the highest peak was a cairn, and on the topmost stone of this cairn silhouetted against the pale evening sky stood Glory Goldie Sunnycastle, ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... ripples on, a quiet undertone of perfect confidence, freedom without reserve as to another self, suddenly discovered in the working identity of a fellow-creature. It ripples on just thus, all the distance of the walk along the topmost down, in the evening sunlight, and then comes a pause to negotiate the descent to their handy little forest below. Then a sense that they are coming back into a sane, dry world, and must be a lady and a gentleman again. But there must be a little farewell ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... Jephson's part: similar bolster of papers, neatly folded and laid across the foot of my bed. This time I poured myself a cup of tea and reached for them lazily. The Times was topmost. Jephson always laid the ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and then struck into a green path which led through the wood. The path wound beneath dark pines; their topmost branches, were red in the evening light, but the shade was black beneath them. Soon the path reached a little grassy glade, and there among cold, wet grasses was the Wishing Well. It was almost hidden by the grass, and looked very black, and cool, and ...
— The Gold Of Fairnilee • Andrew Lang
... the topmost of the court-house steps, and for a moment looked down on the crowd with the usual air of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... stunned, unable to move. Something had undoubtedly happened to his head, but he was still conscious. Cautiously he turned himself over and looked round. No one was about; no one had seen this ignominious downfall of Jingalo's topmost symbol on the too highly polished floors of its own abode; and nobody must know. It was not the right and dignified way for a royal accident to happen: falling down-stairs suggested the same failing as that to which steeplejacks ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... opposite the Palace are of comparatively recent construction. In Pfeffel's Viva et Accurata Delineatio of the palaces and public buildings of Vienna, 1725 (oblong folio,) the palace faces a wide place or square. Eighteen sculptured human figures, apparently of the size of life, there grace the topmost ballustrade in the copper-plate view of this truly ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... feet in diameter and 179 feet in extreme height, and has fine mosaic pavements, elaborately carved columns, and numerous bas-reliefs. The building is of white marble. The tower is divided into eight stories, each having an outside gallery of seven feet projection, and the topmost story overhangs the base about sixteen feet, though, as the center of gravity is still ten feet within the base, the building is perfectly safe. It has been supposed that this inclination was intentional, but the opinion that the foundation has sunk is no doubt correct. It is most ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... lives sweeter and happier. His mind was great enough and his heart large enough to encompass all that lies between the visible horizons of human thought and activity, and even in his old age he lived upon the topmost peaks, eagerly looking for the horizon beyond. In the words of the late Mr. Gladstone, he "was inspired with the belief that life was a great and noble calling; not a mean and grovelling thing that we are to shuffle through as we can, but an ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... Madelinette!" were heard everywhere. Even the English soldiers cheered, and Madelinette sang a la Claire Fontaine, three verses in French and one in English, and the whole valley rang with the refrain sung at the topmost pitch ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to a curious instance in a species of Verbascum, the lower flowers of which had hairy stamens as usual, but the filaments of the topmost flower were quite destitute of hairs, and dilated like ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... great sufferer by it. The fire had spread to his farm; but by the efforts of his own people and the neighbouring settlers it was got under, and its progress supposed to be effectually checked, when an unlucky spark from a tree, which had been on fire to the topmost branch, flying upon the thatch of the hut where his people lived, it blazed out; the hut with all the out-buildings, and thirty bushels of wheat just got into a stack, were in a few minutes destroyed. The erecting of the hut and out-houses had ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... Before they reached the topmost story they heard a considerable noise overhead. It was a one-sided altercation; broken and piteous on the one hand, voluble and ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... at him with a little frown as if she did not quite believe him. The day had now come and a pink light suffused the topmost peaks. A faint warmth spread itself like a caress across the valley and turned the cold air into a ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... and that the fleets should be decorated. A beautiful evening favored the special rejoicings at the capital where the houses were voluntarily illuminated. Those who seek to ascertain by external appearances the real feelings of a people amid events of this kind, remarked that the topmost stories of houses in the faubourgs were as well lighted as the most magnificent hotels and finest houses of the capital. Public buildings, which under other circumstances are remarkable from the darkness of the surrounding houses, were scarcely seen amid this profusion of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... with gingerbread cakes, sword-swallowers, and waffles piping hot. As the evening falls, colored lamps and Chinese lanterns are lighted around the venerable oak which stands in the middle of the fairground, and boys climb about among its topmost branches with ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... one of the topmost benches, sat Citizen Lenoir, the stage-manager of this palpitating drama. He looked down, with obvious satisfaction, at the scene which he himself had suggested last night to the members of the Jacobin Club. Merlin's ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... and for the space of thirty years he lived in a great epic on the Millennium. This is the book presented to me by Jess, that lies so quietly on my topmost shelf now. Open it, however, and you will find that the work is entitled "The Millennium: an Epic Poem, in Twelve Books: by James Duthie." In the little hole in his wall where Jimsy kept his books there was, I have no doubt—for ...
— A Window in Thrums • J. M. Barrie
... week, as we have wended our way up the loaning to the Pettybaw inn for our luncheon, we have passed three magpies sitting together on the topmost rail of the fence. I am not prepared to state that they were always the same magpies; I only know there were always three of them. We have just discovered what they were about, and great is the excitement in our little circle. ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... brought in by railroad from the lakes, and are placed on board the ships with a rapidity which must be seen to be appreciated. The blocks are packed in sawdust, which is used very much as mortar is used in a stone wall. Between the topmost layer of ice and the deck there is sometimes a layer of closely packed hay, and sometimes one of barrels of apples. It has occasionally happened that the profit upon the apples has paid the freight upon the ice, which usually amounts to about ten ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... we passed by moonlight (such a flood of white moonlight) and got into Milan in the morning. There we stayed two days, and I climbed to the topmost pinnacle of the cathedral; wonder at me! Indeed I was rather overtired, it must be confessed—three hundred and fifty steps—but the sight was worth everything, enough to light up one's memory for ever. How glorious that cathedral is! worthy almost of standing face to face with ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... ascended to the topmost of its 12,349 feet, still in the Southern Alps the peaks are many which are yet unsealed, and the valleys many which are virtually untrodden. Exploring parties still go out and find new lakes, new passes, and new waterfalls. It is but a few years since the ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... by the wall awhile and watched; the sorrow of it all sank into us. There in the holiest place of all, according to their thinking, close to the emblems of deity, they had set this grievous perversion of the holy and the pure. Right on the topmost pinnacle of everything known as religious there they had enthroned it, and robed it in starlight and crowned it as queens are crowned. "Oh, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness!" "One thing have I desired of the Lord . . . to behold the fair beauty of the Lord"—such words open chasms ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... Sabbah came down to Kanmakan with loud voicing and hugely rejoicing; when lo! there arose a cloud of dust and grew till it walled the view, and there appeared under of it riders an hundred, like lions an-hungered. Upon this Sabbah took flight, and fled to the hill's topmost height, leaving the assailable site, and enjoyed sight of the fight, saying, "I am no warrior; but in sport and jest I delight."[FN99] Then the hundred cavaliers made towards Kanmakan and surrounded him on all sides, and one of them accosted him, saying, "Whither goest thou with ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... kingdom. Chungking is built at a great height above the present river, now sixty feet below its summer level. Its walls are unscalable. Good influences are directed over the city from a lofty pagoda on the topmost hill in the vicinity. Temples abound, and spacious yamens and rich buildings, the crowning edifice of all being the Temple to the God of Literature. Distances are prodigious in Chungking, and the streets so steep and hilly, with flights of stairs cut ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... them at last, and as they rushed to it, and planted themselves on the topmost point, where still a few scraps of the scent lingered, all the fatigue and labour were forgotten in an exhilarating sense of triumph ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... slightly with his muzzle. As he did so, a sidelong hint of the man standing below with the raised gun smote him; he sprung round furiously, and, seizing his prey, was about to leap into some unknown airy den of the topmost branches now waving to the slow dawn. The late moon had rounded through the sky so that her gleam at last fell full upon the bough with fairy frosting; the wintry morning light did not yet penetrate the gloom. The woman, suspended in mid-air an instant, cast ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... could help it. Never,—till Sunday came: when, mounting the pulpit, he opened them indeed, and his pent-up utterance burst forth in a perfect torrent of a sermon, a wild gush of words, shouted at the topmost stress of a remarkably lusty voice, arresting for a minute or two by reason of the sheer physical energy it represented, and then for a long half hour exquisitely tiresome. But on week-days he maintained a prodigious silence, and this (as, though fierce-looking, he wasn't ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... was particularly curious to survey life from where he stood; a new perspective lay open before him. The old life had nothing in prospect but a miserable old age; but this led upward. Here he could achieve what he willed—even the highest place! What if he finally crept up to the very topmost point, and established an eight-hour day and a decent day's wage? Then he would show them that one could perfectly well climb up from below without forgetting his origin and becoming a bloodsucker! They should still drink to the health of Pelle, their ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... made a speech to the islanders and explained his idea. There was a great deal of cheering and shouting, and every one agreed that an ark on the topmost tower would meet a long-felt want, and that when once that ark was there, fear would for ever be a stranger ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... the clear, joyous note of a bird, just above Balder's head. It was such a note as might have been uttered by a paradisical cuckoo with the breath of a brighter world in his throat. Looking up, he saw a beautiful little fowl perched on the topmost twig of the birch-tree. It had a slender bill, and on its head a crest of splendid feathers, which it set up at Balder in a most coquettish manner. The next moment it flew over the wall, and from the farther side warbled an invitation ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... the mere outcome of one man's ambition, it might scarce be worth recording. But Alexander was only the topmost wave in the surging of a long imminent, inevitable racial movement. Its effect upon civilization, upon the world, was incalculably vast. Alexander and his successors were city-builders, administrators. As ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... over her as she sat on the bridge's railing. On the road, not far away Susy McRae's guitar betrayed her approach, and John Wendell's barytone hummed the air that she was picking. Von Rittenheim put his foot on the topmost bar and leaned his elbow on his uplifted knee. By his position Sydney was screened ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... with long tails, perched motionless on the lower branches and uttered a loud, thrice-repeated whistle. We heard the calling of the false bellbird, which is gray instead of white like the true bellbirds; it keeps among the very topmost branches. Heavy rain fell shortly after ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... or native 'bear' of Australia, carries her young on her back (fig. 3), and apparently without serious inconvenience, though she has to make her way about the topmost boughs of the giant gum-trees. Finally, we must refer to the kangaroo, which carries its young in a special pouch, too well known to need description here. The point to which we would direct attention is the burden which all these animals are ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... coming immediately, and we were so near the reef by this time that there was not a minute to lose. With a look of incredulity and contempt, he said with an oath that he would rather see a wind than hear of it! But while he was speaking I watched his eye, and followed it up to the royal (the topmost sail), and there, sure enough, the corner of the sail was beginning to tremble in the coming breeze. "Don't you see the wind is coming? Look at the royal!" I exclaimed. "No, it is only a cat's-paw," he rejoined (a mere puff of wind). "Cat's-paw ...
— A Retrospect • James Hudson Taylor
... always, she attained the topmost step outside his office door breathless, and, as always, Shelby gravely lent a hand to deposit her plump little person in the softest of his old-fashioned office chairs. The ceremony ended regularly with the panting announcement, "The Lord has ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... the prospect through the doorway. "There it is. This country's beginning. We don't know half it means to the world yet. Well, I hadn't enough capital to play with, so I resolved right away to start in and learn a trade from its first step to its topmost rung, and to earn my keep right through. Meanwhile my capital's lying invested against the time I open out. I'm going to jump right into the groundwood pulp business when the time comes. And out of that I mean to build a name that folks won't easily forget. Well, I guess you won't find much that's ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... flashing, flame of scarlet, Teasing, tantalizing, madcap varlet, Glooming, glinting through the boughs, Making, breaking lover's vows; Dashing leader of the choir, Standing on the topmost spire, Scintillating song and fire, Calls me: Come up—come up—higher, ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... had placed him upon the topmost turret of contemporary literary fame. Since the publication of the work he was fairly prosperous, although his temperament was of that gently procrastinating and gracious kind that buys peace with a faith in men and things. Mary had an eager, alert and enthusiastic way ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... stars will fall from the sky. The earth will be shaken as when there is a great earthquake; the waves of the sea will roar and the highest mountains will totter and fall. The trees will be torn up by the roots, and even the "world tree" will tremble from its roots to its topmost boughs. At last the quivering earth will sink beneath the waters of ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren
... talk of years evanished, let me harp upon the time When we trod these sands together, in our boyhood's golden prime; Let me lift again the curtain, while I gaze upon the past, As the sailor glances homewards, watching from the topmost mast. Here we rested on the grasses, in the glorious summer hours, When the waters hurried seaward, fringed with ferns and forest flowers; When our youthful eyes, rejoicing, saw the sunlight round the spray In a rainbow-wreath of splendour, ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... gloomy. Beyond the extinguished footlights they could see the curved enormous cavern of the house, row upon row of empty seats. In the orchestra box two or three men, one in his coat sleeves, were disputing over an opera score. High up in the topmost gallery some one was experimenting with the calcium machine; a fan of light occasionally swept the house, or a man's profile was silhouetted against ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... could only get nearer, so as to touch them," said he, and immediately the obedient cloak ducked down; Prince Dolor made a snatch at the topmost twig of the tallest tree, and caught a bunch ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... Gerhardt. Three dollars he paid for board, and fifty cents he kept for spending money, church dues, a little tobacco and occasionally a glass of beer. Every week he put a dollar and a half in a little iron bank against a rainy day. His room was a bare corner in the topmost loft of the mill. To this he would ascend after sitting alone on the doorstep of the mill in this lonely, foresaken neighborhood, until nine o'clock of an evening; and here, amid the odor of machinery wafted up from the floor below, by ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... and, indeed, saw nothing of them except at a distance. In the forest and thickets about the place we were tolerably successful in collecting, finding a number of birds and insects which do not occur at Para. I saw here, for the first time, the sky-blue Chatterer (Ampelis cotinga). It was on the topmost bough of a very lofty tree, and completely out of the reach of an ordinary fowling-piece. The beautiful light-blue colour of its plumage was plainly discernible at that distance. It is a dull, quiet ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... leaves were turned brown; some of them had fallen off, and lay—poor, little unburied corpses—upon the narrow circle of earth which, having failed to keep life green within their cells, now denied to them the right of sepulture. A few of the topmost sprouts still struggled to keep up a parody of verdure, and one or two faded flowers had not yet forsaken their calices—a silly piece of devotion on their part! Icy little blasts, squeezing in through ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... with a too curious sacrilegious eye, they vanish behind the silvery beeches, they make you believe that their voice was only a running brooklet, perhaps they metamorphose themselves into a tawny squirrel that scampers away and mocks you from the topmost bough. It was not a grove with measured grass or rolled gravel for you to tread upon, but with narrow, hollow-shaped, earthy paths, edged with faint dashes of delicate moss—paths which look as if they were made by the free will of the trees and underwood, moving reverently aside to look ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... point where the concealed foundations of Hawthorne's life terminate, and the final structure begins to appear above the surface, like the topmost portion of a coral island slowly rising from the depths of ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... fishermen, who gained a livelihood openly by sardine-fishing, and secretly, it was said, by smuggling. The chateau was built on a cliff, which it completely occupied. This cliff was formed of several terraces that rose in a stair one above another. On the topmost one sat the chateau, like an eagle in its nest. It had four dentilated turrets, with great casements and immense galleries, that gave it the grandest possible aspect. On the second terrace you found ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... composer who should have aspired to report them; and the indignant air of outraged privacy he assumed, on finding himself discovered, together with his loud, angry protest, as, with crown depressed and plumage furled, he rapidly ascended to the topmost branch of a tall Birch, the better to proclaim my perfidy to the whole world, would have excited the interest and applause of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... other side. It was lighted by three high narrow windows looking toward the north, and three more close together looking west, and forming a bay so deep as to be quite a small room in itself. It almost overhung the high-road, only a tall holly-hedge being between them, but so near that the topmost twigs of the holly grew up to the window-sill. It was a quiet road, however, too far from the town for much traffic, and Evadne could sit there with the windows open undisturbed, and enjoy the long level prospect of fertile land, field and fallow, wood and water, that lay before her. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... sound of the bell reaching our ears as before, and then Duppo began to look up eagerly into the trees. Suddenly he ceased paddling, and made signs to Arthur to do the same. Gliding on a few yards further, we saw, on the topmost bough of a tree overhanging the water, a beautiful white bird, about the size of a jay. At the same time there came forth from where it stood a clear bell sound, and we saw from its head a black tube, rising up several inches above it. Duppo cautiously ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... was a foliaged clump; and oft on Cytorus' ridge hath this foliage announced itself in vocal rustling. And to thee, Pontic Amastris, and to box-screened Cytorus, the pinnace vows that this was alway and yet is of common knowledge most notorious; states that from its primal being it stood upon thy topmost peak, dipped its oars in thy waters, and bore its master thence through surly seas of number frequent, whether the wind whistled 'gainst the starboard quarter or the lee or whether Jove propitious fell on both ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... at a little distance, watching the proceedings of our very unwelcome companions, while Ithulpo stood near, casting every now and then towards them glances expressive of the most intense hatred, and a desire of vengeance. The sun was still low, but his rays yet tinged the topmost branches of the trees and the lofty ranges of mountains in the distance. The soldiers had brought skins of wine and plenty of good cheer with them; and when they had eaten, they passed the wine-skins round right merrily, the officers joining in the carouse. Instead of pouring ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... arranged things so, that wherever fine minds have aspired to the light of the Spirit, Plato has been there to guide them on their way. So you are to see Star-Plato shining, you are to hear that voice from the Spheres at song, when Shelley, reaching his topmost note, sang: ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... way up the steps leading to the topmost deck. Others had already preceded them. A dozen men and women were looking out over the sea through their binoculars. They recognized Landover, Madame Careni-Amori (clutching her jewel case), Joseppi, Fitts and ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... and probably in Europe. Just before reaching Golspie, a lofty, sombre mountain, with its bald head enveloped in the mist, and which I had been two hours apparently in passing, cleared away and revealed its full stature—and more. Towering up from its topmost summit, a tall column lifted a human figure in bronze skyward cloud-high and frequently higher still. I believe the brazen face that thus looks into the pure and holy skies without blushing, is a duplicate of the one worn in human flesh by His Grace, Evictor I., who unpeopled his great ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... Tanager is a solitary bird. He likes the deep woods, and seeks the topmost branches. He likes, too, the thick evergreens. Here he sings through the summer days. We often pass him by for he is hidden by ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [June, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... fragrance of the season; his life seems all sensibility and enjoyment, all song and sunshine. He is to be found in the soft bosoms of the freshest and sweetest meadows, and is most in song when the clover is in blossom. He perches on the topmost twig of a tree, or on some long, flaunting weed, and, as he rises and sinks with the breeze, pours forth a succession of rich, tinkling notes, crowding one upon another, like the outpouring melody of the skylark, and possessing the ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... court, 70 feet square, of the topmost story, is open to the sky, but the original intention was to provide a light dome, presumably similar to that built a little later to crown the mausoleum of Itimad-ud-daula. Finch, the traveller, who was at Agra about 1611, was informed that the cenotaph was 'to be inarched over with the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... that cannot perhaps be regarded as strictly legal, but such as he was afterwards able to turn to admirable account. He would seem to have studied the profession exhaustively in all its branches, from the topmost Tulkinghorns and Perkers, to the lowest pettifoggers like Pell and Brass, and also to have given particular attention to the parasites of the law—the Guppys and Chucksters; and altogether to have stored his mind, as he had done at school, with a series of invaluable notes ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... early Yukon days! Why, it was he who, when they had reached the summit of that heart-breaking pass, had rescued young Mordaunt. Jervis Mordaunt, with a single horse, had packed his entire outfit single-handed to the topmost point of the trail, and then, when the hardest part of his journey had been accomplished and his goal was already in sight, his horse had given out and died. When they had come up with him, his beast had been dead three days, ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... a rise of only two feet, last night; evidently the flood is nearly at its greatest. We are now twenty feet above the level of ten days ago, and are frequently swirling along over what were then sharp, stony slopes, and brushing the topmost boughs of the lower lines of willows and scrub sycamores. Thus we have a better view of the country; and, approaching closely to the banks, can from our seats at any time pluck blue lupine by the armful. It thrives mightily on ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... her in the steerage, by Wolf Larsen's bunk. I looked at him, the man who had been hurled down from the topmost pitch of life to be buried alive and be worse than dead. There seemed a relaxation of his expressionless face which was new. Maud looked at me and ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... party, and looked and looked at it, and I listened—and at last it became dreadful and I was frightened at it. I wouldn't go alone again, for I felt queer and wanted to follow the great flow of it. But at twelve o'clock, with the "sun upon the topmost height of the day's journey," most of Nature's sights appear to me to be at their plainest. In the evening, when the shadows grow long and all hard lines are blurred, how soft, how different, everything is! ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... offer from such a suitor as Lord Hampstead. But in truth the glory of the thing was not very much to her. It was something, no doubt. It must be something to a girl to find that her own personal charms have sufficed to lure down from his lofty perch the topmost bird of them all. That Marion was open to some such weakness may be acknowledged of her. But of the coronet, of the diamonds, of the lofty title, and high seats, of the castle, and the parks, and well-arranged ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... fly well dusted with meal, must suffer a little at a cousin's table where the fly was au naturel, and the lady spiders must be mutually shocked at each other's appearance. But the part of the mill she liked best was the topmost story,—the corn-hutch, where there were the great heaps of grain, which she could sit on and slide down continually. She was in the habit of taking this recreation as she conversed with Luke, to whom she was very ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... sped on; and ever their wake gleamed white far behind, like a path seen over a green plain. On that day all the gods looked down from heaven upon the ship and the might of the heroes, half-divine, the bravest of men then sailing the sea; and on the topmost heights the nymphs of Pelion wondered as they beheld the work of Itonian Athena, and the heroes themselves wielding the oars. And there came down from the mountain-top to the sea Chiron, son of Philyra, and where the white surf broke he dipped his feet, ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... outstepped those bounds set to the conduct of English gentlemen, nor would you have garnered more than a trifle on account of your proper reckoning. I do not say that you are the first person whom I have wantonly injured. But it is a fact that I, in whom pride has ever been the topmost quality, have never expressed sorrow to any one for anything. Thus, I might urge that my present abjectness must be intolerably painful to me, and should incline you to forgive. But such an argument were specious merely. I will be quite frank with you. I will confess to you that, in this humbling ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... moss, that hung like innumerable beards from every bough and twig. Nothing could better convey the idea of immense and incalculable age than the hoary beard and venerable appearance of this monarch of the woods. Spanish moss of a silvery grey covered the whole mass of wood and foliage, from the topmost bough down to the very ground; short near the top of the tree, but gradually increasing in length as it descended, until it hung like a deep fringe from the lower branches. I separated the vegetable curtain ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... before had either of them tasted such ecstasy; from the precipitous climb in the truck that hauled them, up and up, to the head of the high diamonded stair; the brief, exciting passage along the gangway to the boat that waited for them, its prow positively overhanging the topmost edge, the sliding lip of danger, where the rails plunged shining to the blackness below; the race they had for the front seat where, Ranny said, they would get the best of it; and ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... strictly supervised as they proceed with the work, for many failures are due to their ignorance or carelessness in this particular. The object of bonding will be understood by reference to fig. 4. Here it is evident from the arrangement of the bricks that any weight placed on the topmost brick (a) is carried down and borne alike in every course; in this way the weight on each brick is distributed over an area increasing with every course. But this forms a longitudinal bond only, which cannot extend its influence beyond the width of the brick; and a wall ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... heads of the assaulting parties; and caldrons prepared, with furnaces to melt up pitch, brimstone, boiling oil, &c., wherewith hospitably to receive them. Having the keenest eye in the whole garrison, young Otto was placed on the topmost tower, to watch for the expected coming of the ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... among the mossy ruins, and cropping the little tufts of grass sprouting out of the sides of the embrasures for cannon. And once I saw a black goat with a long beard, and crumpled horns, standing with his forefeet lifted high up on the topmost parapet, and looking to sea, as if he were watching for a ship that was bringing over his cousin. I can see him even now, and though I have changed since then, the black goat looks just the same as ever; and so I suppose he would, if I live to ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... fertilizers and aphides seemed in its earnest absorption to verge upon the emotional and tender he interfered at once. He commanded my attention. He perched on nearby boughs and endeavored to distract me. He fluttered about and called me with chirps. His last resource was always to fly to the topmost twig of an apple tree and begin to sing his most brilliant song in his most thrilling tone and with an affected manner. Naturally we were obliged to listen and talk about him. Even old Barton's weather-beaten apple face ...
— My Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... thee, too,' said Conrad; 'thou art the marauding villain Slavata, whose body I intend to hang upon my topmost turret, to blacken in the sun and feed the ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... On the topmost peak of Sinai whence the Pharanite sentinels were accustomed to watch the distance, a handkerchief was waving as a signal ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... back of him, Who, beyond measure, dar'd on earth." I then: "If soul that to the verge of life delays Repentance, linger in that lower space, Nor hither mount, unless good prayers befriend, How chanc'd admittance was vouchsaf'd to him?" "When at his glory's topmost height," said he, "Respect of dignity all cast aside, Freely He fix'd him on Sienna's plain, A suitor to redeem his suff'ring friend, Who languish'd in the prison-house of Charles, Nor for his sake refus'd through every vein To tremble. More I will not say; and dark, I know, my words ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... half an hour to reach the topmost ridge of rock, from which point he would have to break cover and reveal himself as he made the last two or three hundred yards up the shale side of the mountain to ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... to know what sort of angels he was entertaining unawares, obtained permission from the "women folks," sent a boy off with the jug of drink and showed his callers to the topmost ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... the butt of his impudence. This time he should meet his match; I would keep my head clear and my feet steady enough to venture a dance with him. The constantly suspicious attitude of my mind, to be sure, interfered with my pleasure very considerably. I was in a too observant mood to float on the topmost wave of enjoyment, and besides an extraordinary disquietude had seized upon me, a contraction about the heart that was quite new to me, such as sensitive people undergo before a storm or in anticipation of momentous changes of fortune. I wandered about restlessly. Numerous though ...
— The Gray Nun • Nataly Von Eschstruth
... furze-bushes, and creeping from one to another as soon as disturbed, contribute to keep it much out of sight, unless one knows and can imitate its call-note, in which case the male bird will soon answer and flutter up to the topmost twig of the furze-bush in which it may have previously been concealed, fluttering its wings, and repeating the call until again disturbed. This is the only occurrence of which I am aware in any of the Islands, included in the limits I have prescribed for myself; but Mr. ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... those inconvenient stair-cases, pushed about, and squeezed, and elbowed by the poorest rabble of poor gallery scramblers—could I once more hear those anxious shrieks of yours—and the delicious Thank God, we are safe, which always followed when the topmost stair, conquered, let in the first light of the whole cheerful theatre down beneath us—I know not the fathom line that ever touched a descent so deep as I would be willing to bury more wealth in than Croesus ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... myself, not perfectly, but well enough to bring squirrels down from the topmost branches of tall pines, to have foxes and lynx approach me, and ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... effect on the great gas bag of the sudden release of a load so great would certainly cause a sudden upward flight which might be so quick and so powerful as to affect the very structure of the ship. So far as known 250 pounds was the topmost limit of Zeppelin bombs, while most of them were of much smaller dimensions. The airplane bombs were seldom more than sixty pounds in weight, although in the larger British machines a record of ninety-five pounds has been attained. The most common form of bomb used in the heavier-than-air ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... conquered, and he was beaten. Yet her brown eyes and even the sturdy uplifted arm cringed to him, and asked in abasement to be forgiven for the impiety committed. From her other hand a cloth dripped foul water on to the topmost step. ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... even Magnificent Lorenzo may now perceive, if he has happened to haunt New York in 1916; and the Ambersons were magnificent in their day and place. Their splendour lasted throughout all the years that saw their Midland town spread and darken into a city, but reached its topmost during the period when every prosperous family with children kept ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... between the shelves are generally ornamented with a set of pictures of rural innocence, where shepherds are seen wooing shepherdesses, balanced by representations of not quite such innocent Didos weeping at the Sally Port, and waving their lily hands to departing sailor-boys. On the topmost-shelf stands, or is tied to the side, a triangular piece of a mirror, three inches perhaps by three, extremely useful in adjusting the curls of our nautical coxcombs, of whom one at least is to be found ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... Fields, and was an hundred miles from side to side, every way; and above it there were three hundred and six fields, each one less in area than that beneath; and in this wise they tapered, until the topmost field which lay direct beneath the lowermost floor of the Great Redoubt, was but four ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... getting poultry to the great market, by means of carts of four stages or stories, one above another, to carry the birds in, drawn by two horses, which by means of relays travelled night and day, and covered as much as 100 miles in two days and one night, the driver sitting on the topmost stage. ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... was robbery outright, but robbery of a kind so common in our country that people have become callous to it. It was by just such means and methods that many of the great fortunes of America have been won, and the winners ride to-day on the topmost wave of prosperity and popular acclaim, when, if the people but realized the truth, many an object of their adulation would be wearing convict stripes and prison pallor to the ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... I will fly into the topmost airs to gather fresh songs in the clouds, in the midst of the vapours and ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... and fantastic about these shadows. Here is a leafless larch-sapling, eight feet high. The image of the lower boughs is traced upon the snow, distinct and firm as cordage, while the higher ones grow dimmer by fine gradations, until the slender topmost twig is blurred and almost effaced. But the denser upper spire of the young spruce by its side throws almost as distinct a shadow as its base, and the whole figure looks of a more solid texture, as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... the other. On the last terrace of all, fountains and jets of water poured into one large basin, in which were gold and silver fish. Beyond this were shady walks, which led to a lake on which floated waterlilies and swans. From the top of the topmost flight of steps you could see the blazing gardens one below the other, the fountains and the basin, the walks and the lake, and beyond these the trees, and the smiling country, and the ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... opened the door. The night-air floating in puffed out the candle. There was a thicket of holly and underwood, as dense as a jungle, close about the door. I should have been in pitch-darkness, were it not that through the topmost leaves there twinkled, here and there, a glimmer ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... conducting her through the magnificent suite of apartments, which had already excited his displeasure, pointed out to her the armorial bearings of the proud minister, which were conspicuous in every room. The shield represented a squirrel ascending the topmost branches of a tree, with the ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... fresh salt air, when he wriggled out into the well, was almost as good as a feast to him. He climbed hastily to the surface, and, as he crept out from under the topmost slab, took careful note of its position, and then scored with a piece of rock each stone which led up to it. For, if ever he should need an inner sanctuary, here was one to his hand, and evidently quite unknown to the present generation of ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... kind of horse-shoe curve. Behind the palace runs the Rue des Forges. Nos. 34 and 36 is the Maison Richard, formerly the residence of the British Embassy to the Court of Burgundy. At the top of the spiral staircase is the "Homme au panier," astatue 4feet 6 inches in height, on a pedestal at the topmost step, representing a manciple or serving-man bearing a basket on his right shoulder, out of which spring, like so many stems of wheat, nearly a score of vaulting ribs for the roof that closes in the staircase. No. 38, the Maison Milsand has a fine Renaissance faade, also ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... almost deserted. He mounted the steps slowly, his mind crowded with memories—with what burning hatred in his heart he had come to face the owner of that house, to disarm Victor Mahr of his revengeful power. With what primeval elation he had stood upon that topmost step and drawn long breaths of satisfaction at the thought of the encounter in which, with his own hands he had laid his enemy low! Its thrill came to him anew. Again he recalled the hurried purposeful visit that had ended with his finding the enemy ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... conversation ripples on, a quiet undertone of perfect confidence, freedom without reserve as to another self, suddenly discovered in the working identity of a fellow-creature. It ripples on just thus, all the distance of the walk along the topmost down, in the evening sunlight, and then comes a pause to negotiate the descent to their handy little forest below. Then a sense that they are coming back into a sane, dry world, and must be a lady and a gentleman again. But there must be a little farewell to the enchanted ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... shoe. For, like the sin, the punishment is awful: he shall carry about for ages the phantom-body of the girl, knowing that her soul is away, sitting with the soul of his brother, down in the deep ravine, or scaling with him the topmost crags of the towering mountain-peaks. There are some who, from time to time, see the doomed man careering along the face of the mountain, with the lady hanging across the steed; and they say it always betokens a storm, such as this which is now ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... his nobles and chiefs that they should bring with them to Saragossa as many men as they could gather together. And when they were come to the city, it being the third day from the issuing of the King's command, they saluted the great image of Mahomet, the false prophet, that stood on the topmost tower. This done they went forth from the city gates. They made all haste, marching across the mountains and valleys of Spain till they came in sight of the standard of France, where Roland and Oliver and the Twelve Peers were ranged ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... flowing hand across the sky and returns to cross the t's. It circles impertinently round your head, fixing its bold tricolour eye upon you until you begin to think there must be something wrong with your appearance. It bounds upon a field of onions and rebounds in the same breath from the topmost cloud of heaven. The rooks return ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... one of the trees near at hand, he might extend his view, and perhaps gain a portion of the knowledge he was so desirous of obtaining. He acted upon the thought at once, and, selecting the tallest, first concealed his rifle, and then climbed to the very topmost branches. There he was rewarded by a magnificent view, and one which promised him some of the results he was seeking. With this extension of his field of vision he discovered more than one evidence that he was not in a solitude. In the first ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... eye fell upon a medley of photographs; snaps from her own camera, which had tumbled out of her bag in unpacking. The topmost one represented a group of young men and maidens standing under a group of stone pines in a Riviera landscape. She herself was in front, with a tall youth beside her. She bent ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... too, thou'lt sing! for well thy magic muse Can to the topmost heaven of grandeur soar; Or stoop to wail the swain that is no more! Ah, homely swains! your homeward steps ne'er lose; 90 Let not dank Will[46] mislead you to the heath; Dancing in mirky night, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... who had been sent on in advance pointed out a figure perched on the topmost rail of a fence overlooking the road and field, and said it was Jackson. Approaching, I saluted and declared my name and rank, then waited for a response. Before this came I had time to see a pair of cavalry ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... Ned's wiggling feet had found the topmost rung of the ladder. The next moment he was rapidly descending it, and, when on the ground, he and Tom carried it away, to prevent its use by ...
— Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice • Victor Appleton
... Sekhet-Aaru, or Elysian Fields, which is given in the Papyrus of Anhai, [Footnote: Brit. Mus., No. 10,472.] a priestess of Amen who lived probably about B.C. 1000. Here we see the deceased entering into the topmost section of the district and addressing two divine persons; above one of these are written the words "her mother," followed by the name Neferitu. The form which comes next is probably that of her father, and thus we are sure that the Egyptians believed they would meet ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... higher and more unconquerable than ever. Separate tall flames shot up and spread out above them like the fiery cloisters of some infernal cathedral, or like a grove of red tropical trees in the garden of the devil. Higher yet in the purple hollow of the night the topmost flames leapt again and again fruitlessly at the stars, like golden dragons chained but struggling. The towers and domes of the oppressive smoke seemed high and far enough to drown distant planets in a London fog. But if we exhausted all frantic similes for that frantic scene, the ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... and as a fresh star-shell lit up the trench they saw a man in khaki thrust his head and shoulders over the topmost bag and look under his ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... they are humiliatingly conscious of study wasted on a prettily-bound work of fiction that for all use and purpose in life is quite valueless. The edifice of romance is constructed much on the same plan as a child's castle of cards, and deservedly shares the same fate. That is to say, the topmost card overbalances the whole structure. It is usually the hand of Reason that topples over Love's romantic tenement by crowning it with the card of Common Sense. When we find Love has become a practical reality, the discovery is often very unpleasant. ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... bottom was the sea, in the depths of which were to be seen swimming the most fantastic fishes, and on the surface a superb three-decked vessel. On the two sides, trees full of birds put the heavens, which they touched with their topmost branches, in communication with the earth, which they grasped with their roots; and in the space left in the middle of all this, in the most perfectly horizontal line, and reproduced in six different writings, was the adverb "pitilessly." ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... treasure of several generations. Mounted on a stepladder, Robert Beauvais explored the recesses, and threw down to the laughing crowd embroidered shawls and scarfs yellow with age, soft muslins of antique pattern, stiff big-flowered brocades, scraps of gauze ribbon, gossamer laces. On one topmost shelf he came upon a small wooden box inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Felice reached up for it, and, moved by some undefined impulse, Richard came and stood by her side while she opened it. A perfume which he recognized arose from it as she lifted a fold of tissue-paper. ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... once existed between America, Europe and Africa—in other words, where the Atlantic Ocean is now. That theory has found many followers. In support of it one is told that such islands as Madeira, the Canaries, the Azores, are the topmost peaks of a now partly submerged range of mountains which once stood upon that vanished continent. It is also a common belief that Northern Africa underwent the contrary process, and was pushed up from under the sea. That is why—it ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... fill it up, their softly rounded heads coming to within three feet of the level where he stood. All the mother birds—rooks, jays, thrushes, and pigeons—were plainly in view under him, as they sat brooding on their nests among the topmost twigs, and there was a great cawing and crowing of the cock-birds while they flew about and fed their mates. The leaves were not out; their buds only looked like green eggs spotting the trees, excepting that here and there a horse-chestnut, ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... the vase a plant sprouted, slowly growing before their eyes until it became a beautiful bush, and on the topmost branch appeared the six-leaved clover which Ojo ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... of the circles where those phantoms dwell that I had left behind me, like sorrows one would fain forget, I saw a vast shade. Standing in an attitude of aspiration, that soul looked eagerly into space; his feet were riveted by the will of God to the topmost point of the margin, and he remained for ever in the painful strain by which we project our purpose when we long to soar, as birds about to take wing. I saw the man; he neither looked at us nor heard us; every muscle quivered and throbbed; at each separate instant ...
— The Exiles • Honore de Balzac
... begun to tell on the air, but not much, for when the forest was behind me, and when I had come to a bare heath sloping more gently upwards—a glacis in front of the topmost bulwark of the round mountain—- I was oppressed with thirst, and though it was not too hot to sing (for I sang, and two lonely carabinieri passed me singing, and we recognized as we saluted each other that the mountain ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... in man's soul from the woman soul As part thereof in essence, spirit and flesh, Even as a malady may be, while this thing Is health and growth, and growing draws all life, All goodness, wisdom for its nutriment. Till it become a vision paradisic, And a ladder of fire for climbing, from its topmost Rung a place for stepping ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... lay dim and shadowy below. One by one the stars died out as the yellow turned to a deeper glow that shot forth in long streamers, the rosy fingers of the dawn, from the horizon to the zenith. Cold and ghostly lay the snows on the mighty cone; till at last there came upon their topmost slope, six thousand feet above us, a sudden blush of pink. Swiftly it floated down the eastern face, and touched and kindled the rocks just above us. Then the sun flamed out, and in a moment the Araxes valley and all the hollows of the savage ridges we were crossing were flooded ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... trail, carved with infinite patience and ingenuity out of the canyon wall. To Allen it was as safe and easy as a flight of stairs. Nucky, trembling in the saddle would have felt quite as comfortable standing on the topmost window ledge of the Flat Iron building, in New York. And, to Nucky, there was no trail! Only a narrow, corkscrew shelf, deep banked with snow into which the mules set their small feet gingerly. For many minutes, the boy saw only this ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... Never with mightier glory than when we had reared thee on high, Flying at top of the roofs in the ghastly siege at Lucknow— Shot through the staff or the halyard, but ever we raised thee anew, And ever upon the topmost roof our banner ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... full of dreams, yet wide awake. I lie and watch the topmost tossing boughs Of tall elms, pale against the vaulted blue; But even now some yellowing branches shake, Some hue of death the living green endows:— If beauty flies, ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... detached or misclassified plays of Shakespeare in which alone a reverent and reasonable critic might perhaps find something rationally and really exceptionable have also this far other quality in common, that in them as in his topmost tragedies of the same period either the exaltation of his eloquence touches the very highest point of expressible poetry, or his power of speculation alternately sounds the gulfs and scales the summits of all imaginable thought. In all three of them the power of passionate and imaginative eloquence ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... exact lineage of the human family as no one had hitherto attempted to fathom it. Utilizing his wide range of zoological and anatomical knowledge, he constructed a hypothetical tree of descent—or, if you prefer, ascent—from the root in a protozoon to the topmost twig or most recent offshoot, man. From that day till this Haeckel's persistent labors have been directed towards the perfection of that ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... so unpleasant in taste that we longed to find a spring. Being unable to get a clear view of the horizon, I directed l'Encuerado to climb to the summit of a lofty tree. The Indian ascended to its topmost branch, and, having surveyed the prospect in every direction, came down far from pleased at having failed to discern what he desired. Fatigue, however, now compelled ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... his car as we went out. You never saw such a scene as then. It was frightening, like a mob of lunatics let loose. Every time he is seen tearing along the streets there's this wild scene, Bernd says. He has suddenly leaped to the topmost top of popularity, for he's the dispenser now of the great lottery in which all the draws are going to be prizes. You know there isn't a German, not the cleverest, not the most sober, who doesn't regularly and solemnly ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... are far ahead of foreign cathedrals in the beauty and richness of the tabernacle work of their stalls, which in many instances are "like a whole wood, say a thicket of old hawthorn, with its topmost branches spared, slowly transformed into stalls." These in Carlisle, if not among the finest specimens in England, certainly take very ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Carlisle - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. King Eley
... gates of the dwelling she loved were closed upon her once again—and this time for ever. How the memory of the place came back to her this chill March morning!—the tall elms rocking in the wind, the rooks' nests tossing in the topmost branches, and the hoarse cawing of discontented birds ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... down. It is not easy to believe the River is near. It seldom shows. You think at times you hear the distant call of a ship. But what would that be? Something in the mind. It happened long ago. You, too, are a ghost left by the vanished past. There is a man above at a high loophole, the topmost cave of a warehouse which you can see has been exposed to commerce and the elements for ages; he pulls in a bale pendulous from the cable of a derrick. Below him one of the horses of a van tosses its ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... stations of robbers. Some two years since, a band of six mounted banditti remained there three days, and plundered whomsoever approached from either quarter: their horses, saddled and bridled, stood picqueted at the foot of the trees, and two scouts, one for each eminence, continually sat in the topmost branches and gave notice of the approach of travellers: when at a proper distance the robbers below sprang upon their horses, and putting them to full gallop, made at their prey, shouting Rendete, Picaro! Rendete, Picaro! (Surrender, scoundrel, surrender!) ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... front of wall with statues and plashing water showing dimly in the moonlight; and beyond the wall there was a space of blue and silver lake; and girdling the lake the forest-covered Monte Cavo rose towering into the moonlit sky, just showing on its topmost peak that white speck which once was the temple of the Latian Jupiter, and is now, alas! only the monument of an Englishman's crime against history, art, and Rome. The air was soft, and perfumed with scent from the roses in the side-alleys below. A monotonous bird-note came from the ilex darkness, ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... tree tops and say: 'I see Jacob's ladder. Brother Wash is climbin' dat ladder. Him is half way up. Ah! Brudders and sisters, pray, while I preach dat he enter in them pearly gates. I see them gates open. Brother Wash done reach de topmost rung in dat ladder. Let us sing wid a shout, dat blessed hymn, 'Dere is a Fountain Filled Wid Blood'.' Wid de first verse de women got to hollerin' and wid de second', Uncle Pompey say: 'De dyin' thief I see him dere to welcome ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... his feet, he looked at the brute tamer with an air of stupefaction, as if he hesitated to believe so great an enormity. Dagobert, regretting, his violence, and feeling that no means of conciliation note remained, threw a rapid glance around him, and, retreating several paces, gained the topmost steps of the staircase. The burgomaster stood near the bench, in a corner of the landing-place, whilst Morok, with his arm in the sling, to give the more serious appearance to his wound, was close beside him. "So!" ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... said the baker, "there were three baskets of white bread on my head, one above another, and on the topmost basket were all kinds of roasted meat and food for Pharaoh; and the birds came, and ate the food from the baskets ...
— The Wonder Book of Bible Stories • Compiled by Logan Marshall
... other, made such a scene of it as I can give you no idea of. My ladies were now on foot, of course; but we dragged them on as well as we could (they were thorough game, and didn't make the least complaint), until we got to the foot of that topmost hill I have drawn so beautifully. Here we all stopped; but the head guide, an English gentleman of the name of Le Gros—who has been here many years, and has been up the mountain a hundred times—and your humble servant, resolved ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... not long been with us ere her fame reached the little "village over the river," and drew from thence many calls, both from gentlemen and ladies. Among these was a Mr. Richard Evelyn and his sister, both of whom had the honor of standing on the topmost round of the aristocratic ladder in the village. Mr. Evelyn, who was nearly thirty years of age, was a wealthy lawyer, and what is a little remarkable for that craft (I speak from experience), to an unusual degree of ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... English aristocracy exhibit names belonging to more noble, more heroic men than those who were called respectively Pearce, Cribb, and Spring? Did ever one of the English aristocracy contract the seeds of fatal consumption by rushing up the stairs of a burning edifice, even to the topmost garret, and rescuing a woman from seemingly inevitable destruction? The writer says No. A woman was rescued from the top of a burning house; but the man who rescued her was no aristocrat; it was Pearce, not Percy, who ran up the burning stairs. Did ever one of those glittering ones save ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... but a strange one," he went on, with his eyes fixed on the topmost ridge of his brown puttie. "We were climbing the face of a kopje, one day. It was very steep, and we crawled up a narrow trail in single file. Two days before, our guns had been shelling the whole kopje, and they must have cracked it up badly. All at once, the man above me loosened ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
Copyright © 2025 Free-Translator.com
|
|
|
