"Catastrophe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which two successive dire failures had atrophied in his breast, once more rose up buoyant and hopeful. Once he had sworn to lay the Scarlet Pimpernel by the heels, and that oath was not yet wholly forgotten; it had lain dormant after the catastrophe of Boulogne, but with the sight of Armand St. Just it had re-awakened and confronted him again with the strength of ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... shelters that punctuated the parade were deserted, the pier stretched an untenanted length of boards over the still, lead-coloured sea, and it seemed as if nature herself was waiting for some elemental catastrophe. ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... accordingly, the siege, which had lasted seven weeks, was raised, and Don Frederic rejoined his father in Amsterdam. Ready to die in the last ditch, and to overwhelm both themselves and their foes in a common catastrophe, the Hollanders had at last compelled their haughty enemy to fly from a position which he had so ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... and how was that poor woman upstairs to be informed? "You came here intending to tell her," he said in a whisper. He feared every moment that Mrs Broughton would appear on the stairs, and learn from a word or two what had happened without any hint to prepare her for the catastrophe. ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... in the street. I thought I could see it tremble from the attacks of the water; and, with a contraction of the throat, I watched Cyprien cross the roof. Suddenly a rumbling was heard. The moon rose, a round moon, whose yellow face lighted up the immense lake. Not a detail of the catastrophe was lost to us. The Raimbeau house collapsed. We gave a cry of terror as we saw Cyprien disappear. As the house crumbled we could distinguish nothing but a tempest, a swirling of waves beneath the ...
— The Flood • Emile Zola
... thunderbolts, and the fire the flash of the lightning. But whatever may have been the nature of the sheet of flame which enveloped the guilty cities of the plain and set on fire the naphtha-springs that oozed out of it, the remembrance of the catastrophe survived to distant ages. The prophets of Israel and Judah still refer to the overthrow of Sodom and its sister cities, and St. Jude points to them as "suffering the vengeance of eternal fire." Some scholars have seen an allusion to their overthrow ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... to the club since the catastrophe and his father's death, and he was very serious and sombre and ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... becomes my painful duty to inform you of the loss of the U.S. brig Somers, late under my command, and of the drowning of more than half of her crew. The details of this sad catastrophe are briefly as follows: ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... blessed in his death. He cannot be separated from Christ, or from his symmetrically developed spiritual character. Death is not the extinction of being. We must make a distinction between natural and spiritual death. It is sin unforgiven that gives death his power. It is a fearful catastrophe to those out of Christ. Hence the holiness of others will not avail them at the hour of dissolution. "When the soul raves round the walls of its clay tenement, and runs to each avenue, and shrieks for help when no help can come," then the door of salvation is eternally shut. ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... sentence in tones so low that not a mouse in the corner could have heard.) 'Well, the inventor of that explosive has naturally been wanted ever since by all the heads of police in Europe. But the most curious—or perhaps the most natural part of my story is, that our hero, after the catastrophe, grew disgusted with himself and his comrades, acquired, in a fit of revulsion, quite a conservative taste in politics, which was strengthened greatly by the news he indirectly received of the great wealth and respectability of his brother, who had had no communion with ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... Ralegh had borne himself gallantly. He had kept and left the stage with unfailing dignity. The prosecution had at least evinced the respectable earnestness of stubborn hate. At the moment after the catastrophe the nobility, whether of persecuted greatness or of murderous vengefulness, evaporated. Ralegh's enemies appeared to have lost their motive and plan. They seemed no longer sure why or how they wished to wreak ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... the catastrophe matches the natural obscurity of our fate that even the best representative of the race is liable to lose his detachment. It is very obvious that on the arrival of the gentlemanly Mr. Jones, the single-minded Ricardo and the faithful Pedro, Heyst, the man of universal ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... second consequence of the conditions of the time. The catastrophe of Europe affected the matter as well as the manner of contemporary speculation. The French Revolution has become to us no more than a term, though the strangest term in a historic series. To some of the best of those who were confronted on ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... ire of William the Testy on hearing of the catastrophe at Fort Goed Hoop. For three good hours his rage was too great for words, or rather the words were too great for him (being a very small man), and he was nearly choked by the misshapen, nine-cornered Dutch oaths and epithets which crowded at one ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... very painful to think of the reproaches to his country and to his country's government that must have passed through the mind of that devoted man during those months of unmerited desertion. In Gordon's letter of the fourteenth of December he said: "All is up. I expect the catastrophe in ten days' time; it would not have been so if our people had kept me better ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... water on the cliffs, then the noise is terrific; the roaring heard down here in the mine is so inexpressibly fierce and awful, that the boldest men at work are afraid to continue their labour. All ascend to the surface, to breathe the upper air and stand on the firm earth: dreading, though no such catastrophe has ever happened yet, that the sea will break in on them if they remain in ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... just such exaggerations as are necessary for a fiction of this kind, he has forecast the conditions which have now overtaken us. We know—or we might know if we had the capacity for any sort of consequent consideration of our conditions—that in a reasonably conducted civilisation no such awful catastrophe as this senseless conflagration could have been possible. No doubt we shall profit by the lesson, but it is one that any individual might have learned for himself from these romances, without paying the fearful price that ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... with the family countenance; his chivalrous exploits on horseback, and mimic capering round the lists of his chequered tilt-yard; his unhappy differences with the partner of his bosom, and her lamentable catastrophe; the fracas with the sheriff's substitute; and his interview with that incomprehensible personage, 65the knight of the sable countenance, who salutes him with the portentous address of "schalabala! schalabala! schalabala!" his successive perils and encounters with the ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... To this catastrophe gentlemen at that time respectively known as Mr. Vernon Harcourt and Mr. Henry James appreciably contributed. They worried Mr. Gladstone into dividing between them the law offices of the Crown. But this turn of affairs came too late to be of advantage to ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... down, and the other boatman began talking earnestly to Tardif in his patois, of which I did not understand a word. Tardif's face was very grave and sad, indescribably so; and, before he turned to me and spoke, I knew it was some sorrowful catastrophe he ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... the papers together and put them in his biggest pocket. He knew not what to think. The suddenness of the affair dazed him. Thought-transference failed this time; he was too perturbed, indeed, to be in a receptive state at all. It seemed a catastrophe, a most undesirable and unexpected climax. The romantic solution revived in him—but only for a passing moment. He rejected it. Some big discovery was in the air. He felt that extraordinary sense of anticipation ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... reporters and photographers representing the Paris newspapers. These latter had—though I only found this out afterwards—been brought by the mechanics in the expectation of being able to record, with their notebooks and cameras, some catastrophe in which we were expected to play the leading parts. Knowing the powerful type of monoplane I had acquired, a machine not suited for a novice, the mechanics had felt sure some disaster would overtake me. But, as it happened, ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... which they were covered, and found some still alive, although they had been three, four, or even five days in that terrible condition" (from a Venetian book of 1667). A good deal of plundering went on, the peasants and Morlacchi looking on the catastrophe as a godsend. Biagio Caboga and Michele Bosdari armed their retainers, and kept watch over the ruined churches and public buildings: the relics and remains of the cathedral treasure were removed to a chapel in ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... it. A County forward sees his chance. Rushing up, he catches the ball, and instantaneously, so it seems, drop-kicks it, a tremendous kick clean over the School goal, before even the players have all taken up their places after the last catastrophe. ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... prayer for forgiveness breathed, and then he plunged a knife into his breast; the blade broke; he shattered the bottle at his side and swallowed the fragments, and then fell bleeding and exhausted on the straw. If left long alone, life would have ebbed away; but, probably in anticipation of such a catastrophe, the officer ere many hours revisited the cell to put chains upon the prisoner. Discovering his condition, a surgeon was called, remedies were applied, and two Austrian sentinels carried Foresti into ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... lost everything except what was on their bodies when the catastrophe occurred. Their horses were gone, and they hadn't a gun between them; nothing but two revolvers, and about a half dozen charges ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... they found that the story of the Baxters' fate had preceded them. Many folks were inclined to think that the wrongdoers deserved the catastrophe which had overtaken them. As nothing was heard of either father or son for a long while, it was presumed that both were ...
— The Rover Boys out West • Arthur M. Winfield
... milk, my lord," observed Watkins, in a regretful tone. He had seen the catastrophe from the ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... grave; in this dulness of the senses there is a gentle preparation for the final insensibility of death. And to him the idea of mortality comes in a shape less violent and harsh than is its wont, less as an abrupt catastrophe than as a thing of infinitesimal gradation, and the last step on a long decline of way. As we turn to and fro in bed, and every moment the movements grow feebler and smaller and the attitude more ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hopeful signs of a new revival were not wanting. The language had steadily developed with the enlightenment of the people, and was fast becoming fit to meet any demands that might be made upon it, when the great catastrophe of the Norman Conquest came, and with it practically the end of the historical and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... at him fixedly, it did not seem to her strange that she should thus have met one of his blood in the crowds of Algiers. She was absorbed in the one catastrophe whose hideousness seemed to eat her very life away, even while her nerve, and her brain, and her courage remained at their ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... the fine vessel we had just seen vanished from sight. The frigate's head was at once put off shore; the boats were lowered, and pulled away to rescue any of the unfortunate wretches who had escaped destruction. I went in one of the boats, and we approached the scene of the catastrophe. We saw two or three people clinging to the spars, but as they perceived us they let go their hold and sank from sight, afraid, probably, of falling into our hands alive. As soon as the boats returned on board, the frigate's sails were filled, and we stood for the brig ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... was even more grateful at our survival, and much shocked, though Ustane had been no favourite of his, or he of hers, for the matter of that. She called him "pig" in bastard Arabic, and he called her "hussy" in good English, but these amenities were forgotten in the face of the catastrophe that had overwhelmed her at the ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... Rodolph. He desired to reach his cherished home; and yet he dreaded to return and sadden the heart of his little Edith with the story of Fingal's death, and the sight of the inanimate form of her last and much-loved playfellow. Had it not been for this catastrophe, he would have kept from his wife and child the knowledge of the cruel attempt that had been made on his life as such knowledge could only distress them, and cause them needless anxiety and alarm in future. But the ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... is the little white and gold boudoir which still holds the mirror that gave the haughty Queen her first premonition of the catastrophe that awaited her. Viewed casually the triple mirror, lining an alcove wherein stands a couch garlanded with flowers, betrays no sinister qualities. But any visitor who approaches looking at his reflection where at the left the side panels meet the angle of the wall, will be greeted ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... in their name. They, however, quarreled with their mother, and finally drowned her, in order to remove her out of their way. Lysimachus, though he might justly have considered himself as in some sense the cause of this catastrophe, since, by deserting his wife and withdrawing his protection from her, he compelled her to return to Sicily and put herself in the power of her unnatural sons, was still very indignant at the event, and, fitting out an expedition, he went ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... that a few months among the distractions of town would send him back a new man. Mr. Stapleton, a mutual friend who was much concerned at his state of health, was of the same opinion. At the last instant came this terrible catastrophe. ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... Emineh, it is said that from the date of this catastrophe she separated herself almost entirely from her blood-stained husband, and spent her life in the recesses of the harem, praying as a Christian both for the murderer and his victims. It is a relief, in the midst ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the floor at Woodville's feet, and smashed in falling. As it smashed, he was looking down, wondering, no doubt, in his stupidity, what the pother was about,—for I was shouting, and making something of a clatter in my efforts to prevent the catastrophe which I saw was coming. On the instant, as the vapour secreted in the broken pellet gained access to the air, he fell forward on to his face. Rushing to him, I snatched his senseless body from the ground, and dragged it, staggeringly, towards the door which opened on ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... For if you do, you will precipitate the catastrophe that you fear. Be quiet, I beg you," said Mr. Fabian, composedly, putting his thumbs in his vest ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... as if some one had suddenly heard horrible news, which pierced him to the heart, and wrenched from him this troubled sound. Young voices trembled in affright, people rushed about in haste, pellmell. Again a loud, angry voice shouted out, drowning all other sounds. Apparently a catastrophe had occurred, in which the chief source of pain was an affront offered to some one. It evoked not complaints, but wrath. Then some kindly and powerful person appeared, who began to sing, just like Andrey, a simple beautiful song, a song of exhortation and summons ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... this to the dwellers upon the slope of the mountain, and if there comes hereafter a catastrophe which makes the world to shudder, am I responsible for that catastrophe? I did not build the mountain, or fill it with explosive materials. I merely warned the men that were in danger. So, now, it is not I that am stimulating men to the violent ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... Michael Cantacuzene as a home for the Moldavian envoys. It must have been an attractive house, surrounded by large grounds, and enjoying a superb view of the city and the Golden Horn. It was burnt[486] in the fire which devastated the district on the 25th June 1784, and since that catastrophe its grounds have been converted into market gardens or left waste, and its chapel has been a desecrated pile. But its proud name still haunts the site, calling to mind political relations which have long ceased to ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... of the veiled face confronted her stubbornly. She ransacked her memory for a forgotten catastrophe, a quarter of a century back. Impenetrably, a wall was ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... a terrible crash. The sole reason why I should desire it to happen in my day is, that I might be there to see! But the ruin of my own country is, perhaps, all that I am destined to witness; and that immense catastrophe (though I am strong in the faith that there is a national lifetime of a thousand years in us yet) would serve any man well enough as his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... restless until they found their rest in God. Quare fremuerunt gentes?... Adversus Dominum, et adversus Christum ejus! As to the end—he was not greatly concerned. It might well be that the ship would be overwhelmed, but the moment of the catastrophe would be the end of all things earthly. The gates of hell shall not prevail: when Rome falls, the world falls; and when the world falls, Christ is manifest in power. For himself, he imagined that the end was not far away. When he had named Megiddo ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... appears to me to have been most inconsiderable up to the final stages of the war. I doubt whether I ever met two men, prior, let me say, to Sherman's march through Georgia, who would distinctly limit themselves to this: "I wish the South might succeed, but I don't think it will." When the impending catastrophe of the South was no longer disputable, the Saturday Review, the idol of our Club-men and University-men, of those who are at once highly cultivated and intensely English, and who fancy themselves freer from prejudice and more large-minded than others in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... Gortz's; he lived in the Rue du Helder, a few doors from Attwood's new lodging. If the reader is curious to know the house in which the catastrophe of this history took place, he has but to march some twenty doors down from the Boulevard des Italiens, when he will see a fine door, with a naked Cupid shooting at him from the hall, and a Venus beckoning him up the stairs. On arriving at the West Indian's, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a government of such limited powers as that of the United States, could have prevented the late revulsion. The whole commercial world seemed for years to have been rushing to this catastrophe. The same ruinous consequences would have followed in the United States whether the duties upon foreign imports had remained as they were under the tariff of 1846 or had been raised to a much higher standard. The tariff of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan
... not only commended itself to the facile imagination of the unlearned, but received the sanction of the highest scientific authority. The great Lagrange bestowed upon it his analytical imprimatur, showing that the explosive forces required to produce the supposed catastrophe came well within the bounds of possibility; since a velocity of less than twenty times that of a cannon-ball leaving the gun's mouth would have sufficed, according to his calculation, to launch the asteroidal fragments on their respective paths. Indeed, he was disposed to regard the hypothesis ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... been solicitors for the Chetneys for the last two hundred years. Nothing, no matter how unimportant, which concerns Lord Edam and his two sons is unknown to us, and naturally we are acquainted with every detail of the terrible catastrophe ...
— In the Fog • Richard Harding Davis
... three woodmen rushed to the spot. They saw, as they supposed, the story at a glance. One of those accidents so common to the careless use of firearms—and I was proverbially unacquainted with their use—had produced the catastrophe. We were borne home, for I had fainted, and was as cold and lifeless as my victim. What passed during a day or two I scarcely remember. Something of strange people in the house—of disconnected words of sympathy—of a coffin—a funeral—a pilgrimage ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... started from his reverie. "Eh? ... I was dreaming. I beg pardon. It seems hard to realize, Mr. Kirkwood, that this awful catastrophe ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... portion of the river within the range of our guns; nor that the vessel could ever do much more than stem the rapid current of the Mississippi. The surrender of New Orleans was, indeed, inevitable; but even that catastrophe would not involve complete possession of the river by the enemy while we held the forts near its mouth. The gigantic efforts afterwards made by the Federal forces for the capture of Vicksburg showed the vital importance attached by the United States ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... you, Mrs. Ochiltree, for your solicitude," replied Mr. Delamere, with a shade of annoyance in his voice, "but my health is very good just at present, and I do not anticipate any catastrophe which will require my servant's presence before I am ready to go home. But I have no doubt, madam," he continued, with a courteous inclination, "that Sandy will be pleased to serve you, if you desire it, to the best of ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... have sent her to keep company with Hogarth's Merveilleuses in Bedlam, or with Decker's group of coquettes in the same place.—The other parts of the play are a dreary lee-shore, like Cuckold's Point on the coast of Essex, where the preconcerted shipwreck takes place that winds up the catastrophe of the piece. But this is also characteristic of the age, and serves as a contrast to the airy and factitious character which is the principal figure in the plot. We had made but little progress from that point till Hogarth's time, if Hogarth is to be believed in his description ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Parties. "There arises," says he, "the old question of the Duke of Wellington, frightened by the prospect of the abolition of the rotten boroughs: How will the King's government be carried out? How will parliamentary government work? In reality the catastrophe will not be more than that which so alarmed the hero of Waterloo; now, as then, it will be nothing more nor less than the destruction of something rotten."[14] The King's government has been improved by the ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... mind reeling beneath the catastrophe, recovered himself sufficiently to do the honours. It was at his instigation that Salvatore was there, and, greatly as he wished that he could have seen fit to choose a more auspicious moment for his business chat, ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... engaged, but in the meantime the affairs of the nation had become more and more complicated; the threatened secession of the Southern States had been accomplished; the long-expected, long-dreaded crisis seemed close at hand; the people were uncertain and bewildered in the presence of the dreadful catastrophe. All thought, all interest, all action were centered in the new President. The whole nation was breathlessly awaiting the declaration of Lincoln's policy. To call any kind of meeting which had an object other than that relating ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... chance whatever. He knew that I had guessed his arriere-pensee, but he let me off for the moment, for which I was thankful; either because he was still ashamed of it, or because he supposed I was reserving myself for the catastrophe,—should it occur. Well, my dear, it did occur, at the end of ten days. Mr. Tester came to see me twice in that interval, each time to tell me that poor Vandeleur was worse; he had some internal inflammation which, in nine cases out of ...
— The Path Of Duty • Henry James
... for people exercising sentimentality at the expense of common sense, the greatest catastrophe in intensity, if it be far away from us, diminishes, while the merest incident, a little out of the ordinary, affects them in a most immoderate manner if it be produced in the circle ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... absolutely have been destitute of the means of existence two days before we were found. Weak as we were, we considered it as certain that it would have been impossible for us to hold out, even twenty-four hours, without taking some food. After this catastrophe, which inspired us with a degree of horror not to be overcome, we threw the arms into the sea; we reserved, however, one sabre in case it should be wanted to cut a rope ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... himself in the contemplation of her face turned to him with an expression of awed curiosity. The shock of the world coming down about his ears in consequence of Carter's smartness was so terrific that it had dulled his sensibilities in the manner of a great pain or of a great catastrophe. What was there to look at but that woman's face, in a world which had lost its consistency, its shape, and ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... contains a thrilling description of this awful catastrophe, which has shocked both hemispheres. It depicts with graphic power the terrible scenes of the great disaster, and relates the fearful ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... "I suppose the catastrophe will arrive, sooner or later, and it is more likely to occur to a girl of twenty than to a ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... shock of the recent arrests, they were just beginning to wonder what would happen if their unsuspecting friends from commando walked into the pitfalls prepared for them, racking their brains for plans to avert such a catastrophe, when the very thing ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... Bernardo de Fuentiduenas, who was sick with the fever. He went on the voyage, and before dawn of Thursday, January 28, ran foul of a reef, where no land could be seen in any direction, except a few rocky points at low tide. The fever left the pilot at this sudden catastrophe, and at dawn the Spaniards saw on the reefs a large ship, that looked like a Chinese vessel, which had been wrecked. They went to this vessel to get its small boats. Entering it, they found not a soul, living or dead. But ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... neglected. We need to act now with full regard for pitfalls; we need to act with foresight and balance. We should not be lulled by the immediate alluring prospects into forgetting the fundamental complexity of modern affairs, the catastrophe that can come in this complexity, or the values that can ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... The catastrophe was witnessed by the assembled family, who hastened to the bleeding victims of parental injustice, and endeavored to do all that was possible to restore life to the mangled forms of the two who loved when living, and in death ...
— Punchinello Vol. 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870 • Various
... an interview with Sister Agatha informed her that in the evening she would probably be called to the sick bed of Ellen. Mr. Stowe bade us good-bye and sailed in the Havana steamboat at noon, that his presence at the catastrophe might not seem suspicious. At sunset I bade farewell to dear little Ellen, who was indeed as pale as death, and in an hour afterward was on board the ship, where I found every thing in readiness for a hasty departure, the top-sails, jib and spanker ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... they have done occasionally before and since. On the average one may say that about every fifty years a new star of fair magnitude makes its temporary appearance. They are now known to be the result of some catastrophe or collision, whereby immense masses of incandescent gas are produced. This one seen by Tycho became as bright as Jupiter, and then died away in about a year and a half. Tycho observed all its changes, and endeavoured to measure its distance from the earth, with the result that it was proved to ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... to-day are certainly great; but I should have preferred them before the never sufficiently mourned catastrophe of the immortal Yturbide. Let us throw a thick veil over so irreparable a loss. It is true that, surviving such great misfortunes, I have been enabled to consecrate my existence and my vigilance to the peace, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... brought it, and in what happened to it; in the admonition of his mother, "You should have done so and so," and Jack's one reply, "I'll do so another time"; in Jack's literal use of his mother's admonition, and the catastrophe it brought him on the following day, and on each successive day, as he brought home a piece of money, a jar of milk, a cream cheese, a tom-cat, a shoulder of mutton, and at last a donkey. The humor lies in the contrast between what Jack did and what anybody "with ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... intercept its Return; but driving it upon the Matrosses, one of them, who was jealous of its getting back into the Hands of the Soldiers, drew his Pistol to shoot it, which was the Source of this miserable Catastrophe. The Lieutenant carry'd along with him a Bag of Dollars to pay the Soldiers' Quarters, of which the People, and the Soldiers that were say'd, found many; but blown to an ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... my eyes, resolved to shut out the catastrophe of their broken necks and mangled limbs,—when thunders of acclamation shook the house; and, looking up, I beheld a transformation that seemed supernatural. The old great-coats, clumsy sabots, and hats, were scattered to the ground; and two youthful figures, glittering in white ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... wandering about day after day, searching for each other in vain, till all our ammunition was expended, and might easily then fall victims to rogue elephants, or bears, or other wild beasts. The contemplation of such a catastrophe was not pleasant; but still, what was to be done? I asked the question of myself over and over again, I examined my ammunition, and found that I had eight bullets and a dozen or more charges of small shot, with an ample ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... from his daughter to his wife, and from his wife to his daughter, like a man who was convinced that his troubles would never end. This new catastrophe created a different kind of difficulty, but he considered that the difficulties were as robust as had been the preceding ones. He put on his hat and went out of the room. He felt an impossibility of saying anything to ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... of the Alps, etc." ("Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc." Volume V., page 157, 1849) Murchison expressed his belief that the apparent inversion of certain Tertiary strata along the flanks of the Alps afforded "a clear demonstration of a sudden operation or catastrophe." It is this view of paroxysmal energy that Lyell criticises in the address.) Capital, that metaphor of the clock. (562/3. "In a word, the movement of the inorganic world is obvious and palpable, and might be likened to the minute-hand of a clock, the progress of which can be seen and ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... a dream was useful in preventing an impending catastrophe is recorded of a daughter of Mrs. Rutherford, the granddaughter of Sir Walter Scott. This lady dreamed more than once that her mother had been murdered by a black servant. She was so much upset by this that she returned home, and to her great astonishment, and not a little ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... and Clark Streets, was for many years the most famous all-night eating-house in Chicago. For chops and steaks it had not its equal in America, possibly not in the world. Long after we had ceased to frequent Boyle's, so long that our patronage could not have been charged with any share in the catastrophe, it went into the hands of the sheriff. This afforded Field an opportunity to write the following sympathetic and serio-whimsical reminiscence of a ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... thither I was directing the boat's course. Suddenly, right ahead, I saw a dark and shadowy mass just below the surface of the water. "A sunken rock!" I thought to myself, "and yet it is strange that I never before noticed it." I put down the helm in a moment, but a catastrophe seemed inevitable. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... objected. My instinct was to begin at once, his advice was to wait and see. According to him there was danger in hastening the catastrophe. The coup d'etat was organized, and the People were not. They had been taken unawares. We must not indulge in illusion. The masses could not stir yet. Perfect calm reigned in the faubourgs; Surprise existed, ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... was rescued by the boy. But it also seems on the word of Garibaldi himself that the woman would not have fallen in had not the boy suddenly appeared behind her playing bear, thus bringing about the catastrophe which ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... didn't rain, because the creek would get lower all the time." Paul himself observed, with emphasis, wishing to make every scout resolve to avoid this catastrophe, if it were at ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... not even generally accepted. There was much superstition in every order of the laity. An opinion prevailed among them, that the world was to end, and the day of judgment arrive, in the year 1000. An universal panic spread itself over Europe. Strange to relate, the people sought to avoid the catastrophe, by hiding themselves in caverns ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... different and more logical position, and maintained that "Consistent uniformitarianism postulates evolution as much in the organic as in the inorganic world. The origin of a new species by other than ordinary agencies would be a vastly greater 'catastrophe' than any of those which Lyell success fully eliminated from sober geological speculation." ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... however, they saw to their delight that the limits of the avalanche had not extended so far, the refuges, as they afterward learned, being so placed as to be sheltered by overhanging cliffs from any catastrophe ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... my dearest Harriet, do I now think of the impending fate of Dorothy; but oh, the difference between the sudden catastrophe in the one case, and the foreknowledge granted in the other! Time, whose awful uses our blind security so habitually forgets, is granted to her, with its inestimable value marked on it by the finger of death, undimmed by the busy hands of earthly pursuits and interests; she has, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... a perfect storm of laughter. But not to me in the light of what Russia has done and has proved herself capable, did this thing seem at all absurd; rather in it I sensed the dawn of catastrophe colossal. ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... attempt, declaring themselves unable to persuade the Prince even to any regard for decency: and the ill-advised and feeble King committed to Albany, who had been standing by waiting for some such piece of good fortune, the reformation of his son. The catastrophe was not slow to follow. Rothesay was seized near St. Andrews on the pretence of stopping a mad enterprise in which he was engaged, and conveyed to Falkland, where he died in strict confinement, "of dysentery or others say of hunger" is the brief and terrible record—blaming no ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... crew, still ignorant of the approaching doom, labored incessantly at their guns. As the sublime sight forced itself upon the eyes of all about, friends and enemies alike busied themselves with precautions for their own safety in the coming catastrophe. The ships to windward held on; those to leeward for the most part veered or slipped their cables, the "Alexander" fiercely refusing to do so till assured that the "Orient's" destruction was inevitable. Captain Berry went below to report to the admiral ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... could only dimly realise how great her suffering had been during the last two hours, ever since Geoffrey had returned from the downs and in an awestruck tone, and with halting, stammering speech had broken to them all the news of the catastrophe which had, so he then thought, overtaken Margaret. Hilary had at once broken out into the noisy grief and passionate self-reproaches which she had kept up without intermission ever since, but Eleanor's agony of mind had lain ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... At the close of the day the French were in possession of the enemy's ground, but the Russians, unbroken in their order, had only retreated to a second line of defence. Both sides claimed the victory; neither had won it. It was no catastrophe such as Napoleon required for the decision of the war, it was no triumph sufficient to save Russia from the necessity of abandoning its capital. Kutusoff had sustained too heavy a loss to face the French ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... by Charles VIII., which caused the expulsion of the Medici from Florence, and the establishment of a liberal government under the leadership of Savonarola. Michelangelo appears to have anticipated the catastrophe which was about to overwhelm his patron. He was by nature timid, suspicious, and apt to foresee disaster. Possibly he may have judged that the haughty citizens of Florence would not long put up with Piero's aristocratical insolence. But Condivi ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... the interest of the working class at heart wants to see such a revolution. But whether those interested in the working class want to see such a revolution or not, there are powerful forces in the United States that are making for just such a catastrophe. The Industrial Workers of the World has in the past and is now using all of its energies to avert such a cataclysmic debacle. It is not yet too late to avoid this terrible and sanguinary strife—provided that the I. W. W. is allowed to carry out its program of organizing ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... period of time China's population has remained at 400,000,000—the saturation point. The only reason that the Yellow River periodically drowns millions of Chinese is that there is no other land for those millions to farm. And after every such catastrophe the wave of human life rolls up and now millions flood out upon that precarious territory. They are driven to it, because they are pressed remorselessly against subsistence. It is inevitable that China, sooner or later, like Japan, will learn and put into application our own superior food-getting ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... does not scruple to assert, that a tempest which levelled them all with the ground would, in the end, prove a great blessing. There is some truth in these opinions, but humanity shudders at the misery such a catastrophe—like the potato blight, which truly struck at the root of the evil in Ireland—would entail on tens of thousands of the poor Corsicans, to whom the chestnut is the staff of life. In the interests of that humanity, as well ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... passed through my mind. I was determined to remove the possibility of such a catastrophe. I decided to prove traitor and reveal the existence of the Imperium that it might be broken up or watched. My deed may appear to be the act of a vile wretch, but it is done in the name of humanity. Long ere you shall have come to this line, I shall have met the fate of a traitor. ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... The catastrophe is very terrible, and the moral, though addressed by the poet to young men only, is quite as applicable to old men, ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... he turned to Underhill: "I think you have done your country a great service today in averting what might have been an appalling catastrophe. Do you not agree with me, Sir Egbert?" he glanced toward the Minister of ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... East. These seeds had been planted in boxes which I kept near the stove until frost was gone. They were full of promising plants. Hollyhocks, larkspur, pansies, and foxglove were ready to transplant, when a terrible catastrophe occurred—a little neighbor girl called on me, and, finding me gone, was right peeved. She entertained herself by uprooting my posies. With a complete thoroughness she mixed plants and dirt together, stirring water into the mixture with my trowel. If her grown-up cake-making ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... temperament determines the catastrophe of the other stories. They almost invariably close in the sullen gloom of a wet March evening, when we wonder afresh if ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... The catastrophe was one of appalling swiftness. Brick and Hamp could scarcely realize what had happened. The hole that had swallowed Jerry up yawned ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon
... distributed all over Penrod, both upon his body and upon his spirit. Driven by subtle forces, he had dipped his hands in catastrophe and disaster: it was not for a Georgie Bassett to beard him. Penrod was ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... explosive a matter. To stop the wedding now would cause a convulsion in Giant's Town little short of volcanic. Weakened, tired, and terrified as she had been by the day's adventures, she could not make herself the author of such a catastrophe. But how refuse Heddegan without telling? It really seemed to her as if her marriage with Mr Heddegan were about to take place as if ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... long minute. It was nothing less than a catastrophe, in the dead of an Arctic winter and in a game-abandoned land, to lose their grub. They were not panic-stricken, but they were busy looking the situation squarely in the face and considering. Joe Hines ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... between the two of them; something is always happening, from the moment when they drive out of Miss Pinkerton's gate at Chiswick till the last word that is told of either. But the book as a whole turns upon nothing that happens, not even upon the catastrophe of Curzon Street; that scene in Becky's drawing-room disposes of her, it leaves the rest of ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... children, and old people, to seek an asylum in a country unknown, without being aware what route they should take, at the beginning of winter, it was easy to foretell that we should conclude by this terrible catastrophe. The greatest glory that our generals and soldiers can claim is that they ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... tonic magic of the place prevented being decay, but it was though time still turned the hour-glass, but did it dreamingly, infatuated with the marvellous thing she had brought forth that now was not. So greatly had the play declined in plot and character since Mary's time that for the catastrophe of the present age there was nothing better than the snatching of the Church funds from the U.F.'s by the Wee Frees. It appeared to her an indication of the quality of the town's life that they spoke of their churches by initials just as the English, ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... of life's hostilities, such as is sometimes almost pointedly bestowed before or after a time of strain. It was a day on which Pocket certainly drew his spiritual breath more freely than on any other since the dire catastrophe. There were few fresh clouds; perhaps the only one before evening was the removal of the book on hallucinations in which Pocket had become interested on the Saturday afternoon. It was no longer ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... delight at the instantaneous effect of San Salvatore. Even the catastrophe of the bath, of which she had been told when she came in from the garden, had not shaken him. Of course all that he had needed was a holiday. What a brute she had been to him when he wanted to take her himself to Italy. But this arrangement, as it happened, was ever so much better, though ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... began again. "I am grateful, exceedingly grateful, Mr. Hand, for all that you have done for us since this catastrophe, but I can't have any mystery about people. That is absurd. Did you leave the Jeanne D'Arc when the others did—when ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... as this is inapplicable to the relation that exists between the world of matter, and the system of material laws, because, in this material sphere, there has been no revolution, no rebellion, no great catastrophe analogous to the fall of Adam. The law here was ordained to life, and the ordinance still stands. And it shall stand until, by the will of the Creator, these elements shall melt with fervent heat, and these heavens shall pass away with a great noise; until a new system of nature, and a new ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... while a sound of rending and cracking broke the silence that had followed his tragic words. All unconsciously, Wang Kum had given him the sticky chair; and the heat of the room and the doctor's feverish agitation, had combined to produce the catastrophe. The Reverend Gabriel Hornblower was trapped as effectually as a fly in a pool of molasses, and could only struggle helplessly in his ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... after having transacted the affairs committed to his charge, again turned his eyes homeward, he found for the second time the diadem at his feet. For long the development of the Roman commonwealth had been tending towards such a catastrophe; it was evident to every unbiassed observer, and had been remarked a thousand times, that, if the rule of the aristocracy should be brought to an end, monarchy was inevitable. The senate had now been overthrown at once by the civic liberal opposition and by the power of the soldiery; the only question ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... over the concert-bill. First there was an overture; then several scenes from "Lucia di Lammermoor,"—that great Shakspearian drama, whose dread catastrophe of Death and Doom leaves in the memory of the hearer a heavenly sorrow unmixed with earthly taint. It was the master-work of two poets, Scott and Donizetti, who had conceived it at the best period of their lives, when they were in all the vigor of manhood, and when mind and fancy had become ripened ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... this time the trials through which he had passed had seemed so great that they could not easily be added to. But if all those trials had been gathered into one vast calamity they would not equal one half of the rage and catastrophe of his war ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... execution of the sentence. The drums of the National Guards now beat to arms in all the sections under authority of the convention, while the tocsin continued to summon assistance with its iron voice to Robespierre and the civic magistrates. Every thing appeared to threaten a violent catastrophe, until it was seen clearly that the public voice, and especially amongst the National Guards, was declaring itself generally ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... how Mr. Haswell was induced by his desire for gain to visit you and how you had most mysteriously predicted his blindness. Now, there is no such thing as telepathy, at least in this case. How then was I to explain it? What could cause such a catastrophe naturally? Why, only those rays invisible to the human eye, but which make this piece of willemite glow ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... the spirit, the claims, and the duties of the English Church, confidence that devotion to its cause was the call of God, whatever might happen to their own fortunes, this confidence was unshaken by the catastrophe ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... more consoling is this promise. If we see that neither the decline of David's and Judah's dominion after Solomon, nor the apparently total disappearance of David's kingdom which took place after the Chaldee catastrophe, and continued for centuries; nor the altogether comfortless condition (when [Pg 67] looking only at what Is visible) which Jeremiah describes in the words: "Judah is captive in affliction and great servitude: she dwelleth ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... burning of the Breadland-House was justly called the great calamity, on account of what happened to Miss Girzie with her gold watch and silver teapot; yet, as Providence never fails to bring good out of evil, it turned out a catastrophe that proved advantageous to the parish; for the laird, instead of thinking to build it up, was advised to let the policy out as a farm, and the tack was taken by Mr Coulter, than whom there had been no such man in the agriculturing line among us before, not even excepting Mr ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... encampment was not continually filled with calamity and great mourning—far from it. There were long stretches of peace and plenty, extending almost uninterruptedly for years, and those who followed the law escaped the intervals of catastrophe. ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... nothing to be done," he said. "She is dead. I feared some such catastrophe when I saw her last evening. She was in the ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... picture, and light has gleamed but feebly there. It has been otherwise since I carried, for my comfort and support, the memory of my beloved Ellen into the serious employment of my later years. With the catastrophe of her decease, commenced another era of my existence—the era of self-denial, patience, sobriety, and resignation. Her example dropped with silent power into my soul, and wrought its preservation. Struck to the earth by the immediate blow, and rising slowly from it, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... advised as to the means which in the view of the Admiralty were best calculated to avert the perils he was likely to encounter, and in considering the question whether he is to blame for the catastrophe in which his voyage ended I have to bear this circumstance in mind. It is certain that in some respects Captain Turner did not follow the advice given to him. It may be (though I seriously doubt it) that had he done so his ship would have reached Liverpool in safety. ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... this immortality is a human immortality. One feels in studying the pre-Christian beliefs in immortality that they had very little effectiveness, and that the reason was that there was no real link connecting life in this world with life in the next. Death was a fearful catastrophe that man in some sense survived, but in a sense that separated his two modes of existence by a great gulf. Man survived, but his interests did not survive, and therefore he looked to the future with indifference or fear. This life seemed to him much preferable ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... shouting out the word 'accident' as you did and then dashing out of the room, you may easily have caused Sir Charles a shock which in his condition was sufficient to bring on this relapse. From your manner he may have thought some really grave catastrophe had overtaken his son. It is quite possible that you are directly responsible for his ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... an easy story; not a road for tender or for casual feet. Better the meadows. Let me warn you, it is as hard as that old man's soul and as sunless as his eyes. It has its inception in catastrophe, and its end in an act of almost incredible violence; between them it tells barely how one long blind can become ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... Of the remaining twenty-four bodies, five were men, and the rest lads, from twelve to seventeen years of age. Among the dead men was a pye-man, who was said to have fallen first, and caused the dreadful catastrophe. A great number of the pupils in attendance happened to be collected in St. Bartholomew's Hospital at the time, and afforded prompt assistance; and Dr. Powell, and a Surgeon, who were both upon the spot, directed ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... unerringly to the catastrophe they had been dreading all these months, "do you mean the boys have ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope
... turned the corner of the street, when, looking anxiously in the direction of his homestead, he saw a column of smoke. It was directly over the spot where he knew his house to be situated. He guessed at a glance what had happened. The frightful catastrophe he foreboded had befallen. Taddy had set the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... indiscriminately from their lips as she swept relentlessly down toward us. They anticipated nothing less than the capture and destruction of the felucca, and the detention of themselves as prisoners, which catastrophe, bad enough in itself as it must have appeared to them, was doubtless rendered infinitely more disagreeable by the reflection that to this mishap must be added the total collapse of their pretty little ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... overwhelmed with grief and bathed in sweat, came to a distressful condition. And saying,—It is even so—that virtuous lord of men, immersed in an ocean of grief anxiously proceeded to ascertain the cause (of that catastrophe). And that mighty-armed and high-souled one, acquainted with the divisions of time and place, could not settle his course of action. Having thus bewailed much in this strain, the virtuous Yudhishthira, the son of Dharma or Tapu, restrained ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... unendlichen Hoffnungen, Goetterkraefte trugen wie ein Woelkchen mich fort."[26] These facts have a direct bearing upon Hoelderlin's Weltschmerz, inasmuch as it was just this unequal and unsuccessful struggle of the idealist with the stern realities of life that brought about the catastrophe which wrought his ruin. ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... his character that, had he not been arrogant, disdainful, self-confident, resolutely and single-heartedly ambitious, he must inevitably have ruined himself—if he had ever been able to rise high enough to be worthy the dignity of catastrophe. ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... company, by special engagement, announced by posters, which also bear on a pasted slip of paper a notice of Eliakim Abbott's religious meeting. On this occasion he recited with great applause the tale of "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe." ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... David Holst, is one of those unhappy beings who seem doomed to a more than ordinary share of the ills of life. He has inherited from his mother at least a tendency to insanity, and he lives in fear of being involved in a terrible catastrophe, from which he only saves himself by strong efforts of will and by the recollection of the lost love of his youth. The awful calamity which overtook him at the very moment his betrothal to Susanna was sanctioned by her father proved, in fact, ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... depression. But he had been in telephonic communication all the afternoon with Delaine and Lady Merton at Lake Louise, as to their departure for the Pacific. They knew nothing and should know nothing of his own catastrophe; their ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the matter?" asked Sophie. "Are you in your elegiac mood? You look as I imagine Victor Hugo when he has not made up his mind about the management of his tragic catastrophe!" ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... each other in an agony of suspense. Never had they dreamed that they would witness such a dreadful catastrophe as was now ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... character that loves to brood and hates to act, is big with catastrophe. We have now to see how the inevitable law accomplished itself in the case of Rousseau. In many this brooding egoism produces a silent and melancholy insanity; with him it was developed into something of acridly ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... from the room and abruptly left the house. He slept at his lodgings; and the next morning he was horror-struck on hearing that Sarah Stout's body had been found drowned in the mill-stream behind her old home. That catastrophe had actually occurred. Scarcely had the young barrister reached the Market Place, when the miserable girl threw herself into the stream from which her lifeless body was picked on the following morning. At the coroner's inquest which ensued, Spencer Cowper gave his evidence with extreme ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... pale from the very contemplation of such a catastrophe, such an unprecedented haegira of dames! It is as if from every gay watering place, some softly tinkling bell should summon the fair mermaids. Beplaided and betrowsered, with their little gypsy hats, would they float out beyond the breakers, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... at Waldegrave's and at Flinders' Islands. The Investigator's Group. Coffin's Bay. Whidbey's Isles. Differences in the magnetic needle. Cape Wiles. Anchorage at Thistle's Island. Thorny Passage. Fatal accident. Anchorage in Memory Cove. Cape Catastrophe, and the surrounding country. Anchorage in Port Lincoln, and refitment of the ship. Remarks on the country and inhabitants. Astronomical ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... friendship and the thirst for and movement toward ideal society. Out of reflection upon the animal passion of sex may rise Dante's beatific vision of Beatrice. Conduct, consciously controlled, finds not only ways by which animal desires may be fulfilled without catastrophe; it transmutes ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... Barbary, or whether his anxieties and corpulent habit made him an easy victim to disease, neither the doctor nor any one else could determine. But at twelve o'clock that day Lance was seized with an attack of cholera and by three in the afternoon he was dead. The suddenness of the catastrophe shocked Mr. Mitchelbourne inexpressibly. He stood gazing at the still features of the man whom fear had, during these last days, so grievously tormented, and was solemnly aware of the vanity of those fears. He could not pretend ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... alters the situation, and must necessarily leave things very different from what it found them. Readers of this new edition may reasonably expect to find in it some account of the events which have within the last two years led up to this catastrophe, or at any rate some estimate of that conduct of affairs by the three governments concerned which has brought about a result all three ought ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... violent as almost to overpower her. Mr Harrel, indeed, had forfeited all right to her esteem, and the unfeeling selfishness of his whole behaviour had long provoked her resentment and excited her disgust; yet a catastrophe so dreadful, and from which she had herself made such efforts to rescue him, filled her with so much horror, that, turning extremely sick, she was obliged to be supported to the nearest box, and stop there for ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... to the principal persons, however serious or distressful through its intermediate incidents, in their opinion constituted a comedy. This idea of a comedy continued long amongst us, and plays were written, which, by changing the catastrophe, were ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... thought himself lost. He and his family made an appeal to the gratitude and humanity of our colleague. It was to procure a refuge for them, that Bailly employed the few hours of absence with which he was so much reproached: those hours during which that catastrophe happened which the Mayor could not have prevented, since even the superhuman efforts of General Lafayette, commanding an armed force, proved futile. I will add, that to spare M. de Crosne an arbitrary ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago |
