"Ebb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... full of small annoyances. Calpurnia, wishing, on the Feast of Fors Fortuna, to excuse the dining-room servants from a noonday attendance, had had a luncheon served in the grotto of the tidal spring. Unluckily, while they were testing the ebb and flow by putting rings and other small objects on a dry spot and watching the water cover them, Quadratilla lost out of one of her rings a very valuable emerald. From that moment until the stone was ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... the crash of thunder. Dreary uplands, the hiss of rain, the sough of drifting snow, the patient plod of a mule along a perilous trail. And then the jungle: its discordant uproar, its hammering of frogs, its hoots and howls, the dismal swash of flood waters. A monotonous ebb and flow of life, punctuated by sudden flares of fight. Then ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... favour, and brought me back more than I had lost. I continued playing with a heap of gold before me, and on my putting a fistfull of sequins on a card it came out, and I went paroli and pair de paroli. I won again, and seeing that the bank was at a low ebb I stopped playing. Canano paid me, and told his cashier to get a thousand sequins, and as he was shuffling the cards I heard a cry of, "Here come ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... show its dark path, that seemed to bend no whither, to be an arc in an immeasurable circle of light and glory. The great river-courses which have shaped the lives of men have hardly changed; and those other streams, the life-currents that ebb and flow in human hearts, pulsate to the same great needs, the same great loves and terrors. As our thought follows close in the slow wake of the dawn, we are impressed with the broad sameness of the human lot, which never ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... hour the sailors began to hoist the sails, the hawsers were thrown off, and, with a gentle wind blowing aft, the ship glided along past the shore, being helped by the tide, which had begun to ebb half an hour before. The lads were greatly interested in watching the well-wooded slope on the left, with the stately ruins of Tintern Abbey rising above the trees. Then they passed the round fort, at the ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... apples in our travelling bag, but this Dirck provided himself better for making the journey. When we were ready, we went over the salt meadow or marsh to the kill, which was full half an hour's distance; but when we came to the canoe, the ebb tide was still running strong, and we required the flood. The canoe lay in a bend of a small creek, and it was impossible to get it out of this bight and over the mire, except at high water, which would ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... fall, the ebb and tide of genius, we have heard much from Milton, Dryden, and others. At ebb time—a time which must come to all, pretty or rich, treasures are discovered upon some shores; or golden sands are seen when the waters run low. In others bare rocks, slime, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... the tide began to flow, and we fancied our dangers over; but the crisis was not yet come. The ebb-tide returned, rushing down with the current of the river with such overwhelming velocity, that we expected the vessel would be torn from her moorings. Two men were placed at the helm to keep her steady, but, in spite of their utmost exertions, she was dashed from side to side like ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... the boy's part they might even have trusted to this breeze to carry them the rest of the way, had it not been for the ebb tide. This too had steadily increased in strength, and now, unless a miracle happened, would sweep them far to the westward of their goal. Hitherto they had been working their oars one on each side of the boat. Now Tilda shifted ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of liberty has never been at a lower ebb in England than it has been for the last twenty years. Never before has it been so easy to slip small Bills through Parliament for the purpose of locking people up. Never was it so easy to silence awkward questions, or to protect high-placed officials. Two hundred years ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... descried at intervals, his head appearing, now and again, like a cork on the top of a billow. But the last of the ebb was helping him, and Jim Lewarne, himself at times neck-high in the surf, continued to pay out the line slowly. In fact, the feat was less dangerous than it seemed to the spectators. A few hours before, it was impossible; but by this there was little more than a heavy ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... over at the western point again caught his eye. After a moment's scrutiny he rose and limped toward it, following the concave of the beach, and often pausing to rest and bathe his head. It was a long journey for him, and the tide, at half-ebb when he started, was rising again when he came abreast of the object and sat down to look at it. It was of metal, long and round, rolling nearly submerged, and held by the alternate surf and undertow parallel with the ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... the season of early spring, when her husband left on the ebb of a high tide with a raft of logs for the usual transportation to the lower end of the bay. As she stood by the door of the little cabin when the voyagers departed, she noticed a cold look in the southeastern sky, and she remembered hearing her husband say to his companions that ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... another part of this chapter. In San Francisco Mrs. Sarah B. Cooper gave generously of her valuable time and powerful influence. Mrs. Mary Wood Swift and Mrs. Mary S. Sperry responded many times when the finances were at the lowest ebb. It would be impossible to name even a small fraction of those who freely and ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... nowher's nigh the sloop," responded Perkins. "This ebb-tide's got him in tow, an' he'll be down layin' ag'in' the Nancy Jane afore mornin'. That's the ship he'll ha'nt, bein' ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... quitting Utgard, the Chief Joetun, escorting them politely a little way, said to Thor: "You are beaten then:—yet be not so much ashamed; there was deception of appearance in it. That Horn you tried to drink was the Sea: you did make it ebb; but who could drink that, the bottomless! The Cat you would have lifted,—why, that is the Midgard-snake, the Great World-serpent, which, tail in mouth, girds and keeps-up the whole created world; had you torn that up, the world must have rushed to ruin! As for ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... own province, and attempted to occupy one in which she had neither part nor lot, this reproach is common to her with a crowd of distinguished men. Newton failed when he turned from the courses of the stars, and the ebb and flow of the ocean, to apocalyptic seals and vials. Bentley failed when he turned from Homer and Aristophanes, to edit the Paradise Lost. Inigo failed when he attempted to rival the Gothic churches of the fourteenth ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of the American army were now at the lowest ebb, so that had Howe been an efficient general it must have been either captured or entirely destroyed. Through the treason of Adjutant Demont, who had deserted to Lord Percy with complete information of their weakness, Forts Washington and Lee were captured, November ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... I have no taste Of popular applause; the noisy praise Of giddy crowds, as changeable as winds; Still vehement, and still without a cause; Servant to chance, and blowing in the tide Of swoln success; but veering with its ebb, It ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... the party in a village near the camp; for the force was badly provided with tents, the king's resources being at a very low ebb; he maintained the war, indeed, chiefly by the loans he received from England and Germany. The next day several bodies of troops were seen approaching the camp. A quarter of an hour later the trumpets blew; officers rode about, ordering the tents to be levelled and the ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... full tide they floated off the bank and drifted with the ebb down towards the sea. At the first break of dawn she looked up, and there, looming large in the mist, lay a galley, anchored in the mouth of the river. Giving thanks to Allah for their safe arrival, the band brought her aboard and led her towards the cabin. ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... self-defense. But the rebels were yelling and firing over the hill, and my regiment was going the other way on important business, and it was a question with me whether I should kill the old man, and see his life-blood ebb out there in front of his children, or be captured, and perhaps shot for burning buildings. I decided that it was my duty to murder him, and get my horse. So I rested my revolver across my left forearm, and took deliberate aim at his left eye, a beautiful, large, ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... tide of success was flowing, and had borne the flag of the new Confederacy within sight of the gates of Washington. Colonel Henderson deals only with what I think may be called the period of Southern victories, for the tide began to ebb when Jackson fell; and those who read his volumes will, I am convinced, look forward eagerly to his story of the years which followed, when Grant, with the skill of a practised strategist, threw a net round the Confederate capital, drawing it gradually together until he imprisoned ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... as under Louis XV., but, in place of one mistress who was the dispenser of favors, there were numerous intriguing court women who were as corrupt and frivolous as the men. These split the court into factions. As the finances of the country sank to the lowest ebb, odium was naturally cast upon the whole court, without exception, by the people; hence, the wholesale slaughter of ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... further excuse for deferring my promised lecture. The month of May had arrived. My father delicately broached the subject of the announcement. Being a little fractious, perhaps from some ebb in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... everything was in readiness and should be executed the moment Mr. Blake arrived. Induced by this promise, Mr. Blake set out for Plymouth; upon his arrival a trial was made in Cat-water, where Mr. Day lay, during the flow of tide, six hours, and six more during the tide of ebb; confined all the time in the room appropriated for his use. A day for the final determination was fixed; the vessel was towed to the place agreed upon; Mr. Day provided himself with whatever he thought ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... already gone so far I approached a little nearer and declared the purpose of my visit. He would have to come at once with me, sleep on board my ship, and to-morrow, with the first of the ebb, he would give me his assistance in getting my ship down to the sea, without steam. A six-hundred-ton barque, drawing nine feet aft. I proposed to give him eighteen dollars for his local knowledge; and all the time I was speaking he kept on considering attentively the various aspects of the banana, ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... not refuse, and the princess was bidden to make ready for a new bridal. For this day Fikenhild had long been prepared; he had built a massive fortress on a promontory, which at high tide was surrounded by the sea, but was easy of access at the ebb; thither he now led the weeping princess, and began a wedding feast which was to last all day, and to end only with ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... into his pocket with angry decision. But—it didn't come out. The color began to ebb out of his face. The countenances about him showed a growing interest; and some of them a heightened satisfaction. There was an uncomfortable pause—then he forced out, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and reveal the greater drama that is without end. They arouse those deep and lasting emotions which grow out of the recognition of elemental and universal tragedy. His aim is not merely to tell a tale; his aim is to show the vast ebb and flow of forces which sway and condition human destiny. One cannot imagine him consenting to Conan Doyle's statement of the purpose of fiction, quoted with characteristic approval by the New York Times: "to amuse mankind, to help the sick and the dull ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... for many weeks an English newspaper, and I read a speech of Mr. Balfour in which he said that the House of Lords ought to be preserved because it represented something in the nature of permanent public opinion of England, above the ebb and flow of the parties. Now Mr. Balfour is a perfectly sincere patriot, a man who, from his own point of view, thinks long and seriously about the public needs, and he is, moreover, a man of entirely exceptionable intellectual power. But alas, in spite of all ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... plenty o' time. Be easier bimeby. Tide's got another hour o' ebb yet. But how in the name o' oakum did you two gents manage to get in here? I knowed there was a hole here where the seals dove in, and I did mean to come sploring like at some time or other; but it's on'y once in a way ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... of mood Was he, but sternly fierce; and as he knelt And clasp'd his knees, and would his pray'r prefer, Achilles clove him with his mighty sword, Gash'd through the liver; as from out the wound His liver dropp'd, the dark blood gushing forth His bosom fill'd, and darkness clos'd his eyes, As ebb'd his life away. Then through the ear Mulius he thrust; at th' other ear came forth The brazen point. Echeclus next he met, Son of Agenor, and his hilted sword Full on the centre of his head let fall. The hot blood dy'd the blade; the darkling ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... lend themselves willingly, as do their kin over the sea, to the ebb and flow of powerful contrary feelings, and rush body and soul from the extreme of joy to the acme of sorrow. The mild serenite, enjoyed by men with classical tendencies was to them unknown, and the word was one which no Norman Conquest, no Angevin rule, no "Augustan" imitation, could force ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... wounded might, indeed, have to suffer a day or so, but he anticipated nothing worse. He had talked it all over with Miller before setting forth on his rounds, and knew just what to say. Most women were reassured and rendered hopeful, but Mrs. Forrest's spirits were at low ebb and she required consolation in double allowance. Bayard lingered with her, nothing loath, hoping that Miss Forrest might come into the family sitting-room to hear his version of affairs at the front. Even after Mrs. Forrest was talked out, and the font of her ready ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... words. There is a hint of Ingersoll in his speeches which are full of alliteration and rhythmic phrases. He has a sense of form sadly lacking in his stammering and inarticulate colleagues, for oratory in the Senate is probably at its lowest ebb. But, strangely enough, it is only occasionally that he makes a lasting impression. His eloquence ripples like water and ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... wall, burst also clear over the houses, hurling themselves in torrents of icy water into the street beyond. And up the width of one little street that runs to the bay, and past its barricaded doors, you may see sometimes billows that have overleapt the wall come charging, to ebb with angry swish and long-drawn clatter of shingle as the waves suck back. It is a strange sight, and it causes one to wonder what manner of men they are who dwell here, who draw their living from the bosom of a sea that thus harshly treats its children. Yet it is a sea that can be kindly enough; ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... surprised when an envoy from Constantinople demanded the evacuation of Cyprus, and announced that the Sultan intended to exercise his full rights as sovereign of the island. The armaments of the Republic were at a low ebb, but Doge and Senate rejected the Ottoman demand, and defied the menace of ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... about that. We have not the slightest respect for it as such, and it is just as well to remember this in all our spiritual adjustments. We fear power when we cannot master it; but just as far as we can master it, we make a slave and a beast of burden of it without hesitation. We cannot change the ebb and flow of the tides, or the course of the seasons, but we come as near it as we can. We dam out the ocean, we make roses bloom in winter and water freeze in summer. We have no more reverence for the sun than we have for a fish-tail gas-burner; we stare into his face with telescopes ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... hauser and the snowy hull leaped forward, nose high in the air. When it reached a point opposite where the Governor stood its stern was buried deep by the terrific thrash of the screw, and borne on the swift ebb tide it streaked out of sight into the west, like a thing alive. The Major was off—the Constabulary guards its own. When one falls, others ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... after public meetings were held or printed reports issued, funds often fell to their lowest ebb. Mr. Muller and his helpers were singularly kept from all undue leaning upon any such indirect appeals, and frequently and definitely asked God that they might never be left to look for any inflow of means through such channels. For many reasons the Lord's dealings with them ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... better than the rest solely because we expect boys to be torn and patched. Mrs. Simms was invisible except as a gray blur beyond the rain-barrel, in the midst of which her pipe glowed with a regular ebb and flow of embers. ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... terminate. I was quite at my ease at La Ferme. I resolved therefore to wait there until I received fresh particulars. I despatched a courier to Madame de Saint-Simon, requesting her to send me another the next day, and I passed the rest of this day, in an ebb and flow of feelings; the man and the Christian struggling against the man and the courtier, and in the midst of a crowd of vague fancies catching glimpses of the future, painted ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... streams of light ran between the trees, smiling and making them smile. And as Fleda's eye rested there, another voice seemed to say "At evening time it shall be light," and "Sorrow may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." She could have cried, but spirits were too absolutely at an ebb. She knew this was partly physical, because she was tired and faint, but it could not the better be overcome. Yet those streaks of sunlight were pleasant company, and Fleda watched them, thinking ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... and risen to the frantic pitch; who vainly struggles at the Gate against such inrush, and had even got through the Gate, conjuring and commanding, but was himself swum in again by those panic torrents of ebb-tide. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... very dark hour she writes: "But even in this low ebb of fortune I am not without some kind interval...I adore and praise the unsearchable wisdom and boundless goodness of Almighty God for this dispensation of His providence towards me. For I clearly discern there is more of ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... pleasant afternoon, Before the sun was set, A fox and other country folk Upon the beach had met. The creeping tide far out had ebb'd, And by the shelving strand There stretch'd a wide and level plain Of glist'ning ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... all his uncertainties. He saw her just then as a Circe. He was a man, swung to an ebb and flow of mood by influences outwardly as nebulous as moon-mists. Just now the influence of Loraine Haswell was at ebb-tide. Tomorrow it might run again to flood, but Paul Burton obeyed ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... was sitting on the wharf, watching the ebb of the tide. The current was swift, for there had been heavy rains within a few days; the river was full of drifting logs, bits of bark, odds and ends of various kinds; the water, usually so blue, looked ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... a spatial phenomenon; and, as will appear presently, the arrangement of words and sentences on the formal page is a real factor in the rhythm of verse. Moreover, most of the rhythms of motion, such as walking, the ebb and flow of tides, the breaking of waves on the beach, are composites of temporal ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... case the ship would just pass over in safety. This is known as the "tide difficulty." There is, in addition, the "dip" of the mine due to the strength of the tidal current. E and F show what is meant by the dip of a mine. It is the deflection from the vertical caused by the ebb and flow of the tide. It frequently causes a mine-field to be quite harmless to passing surface craft except during the period of slack ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... hear poor rogues Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too— Who loses, and who wins; who's in, who's out;— And take upon us the mystery of things, As if we were God's spies: and we'll wear out, In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones, That ebb and ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... perhaps one should say the end of the age of monastic influence. Pope Eugenius III., the great Suger and St. Bernard, all died when Hugh was a young man. The great enthusiasm for founding monasteries was just beginning to ebb. Yet a hundred and fifteen English houses were founded in Stephen's reign, and a hundred and thirteen in the reign of Henry II., and the power of the monastic bodies was still almost paramount in the church. ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... best suit with their mounting and aspiring hopes, may imagine that this new fund, in the sister nation, may prove a rival to theirs; and, by drawing off a multitude of subscribers, will, if it makes a flood in Ireland, cause an ebb in England. But it may be answered, that, though our author avers, that this fund will vie with the South-Sea, yet it will not clash with it. On the contrary, the subscribers to this must wish the increase ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... human heart, with its countless waves of hope and fear, beating against the shores and rocks of time and fate, was not born of any book, nor of any creed, nor of any religion. It was born of human affection, and it will continue to ebb and flow beneath the mists and clouds of doubt and darkness as long as love kisses the lips of death. It is the rainbow—Hope, shining upon the tears ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... morning Lorraine's spirits were at their lowest ebb. If it were not for the new stepfather, she would return to the Casa Grande, she told herself disgustedly. And if it were not for the belief among all her acquaintances that she was queening it over the cattle-king's ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... of this country continue to enjoy great prosperity. Undoubtedly there will be ebb and flow in such prosperity, and this ebb and flow will be felt more or less by all members of the community, both by the deserving and the undeserving. Against the wrath of the Lord the wisdom of man cannot avail; in time of flood or drought ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... in the month of February, I came ashore at the wharf at dusk. I had pulled down as far as Greenwich with the ebb tide, and had turned with the tide. It had been a fine bright day, but had become foggy as the sun dropped, and I had had to feel my way back among the shipping, pretty carefully. Both in going and returning, I had seen the signal ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... called attention to a floating object which moved inside the mouth of the small, tidal creek that wandered through the marshy lowlands. In the shadowy light it could easily be mistaken for a log drifting down on the ebb of the tide. This was what the lads assumed it to be until they both noticed a behavior curious in a log. The long, low object turned athwart the current at the entrance of the creek and shot toward the nearest bank as though ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... that sometimes, in that cold and dismal hour before the dawn, when hope and courage are at their lowest ebb, there appears among the worn and homesick soldiers in the trenches the spirit of the Great Emperor. Cheeringly he claps ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... he had Jennie at the table beside him, and could reach over and hold her hand every now and then, or catch her in his arms and murmur passionate words. Delicious thrills and raptures possessed him; his hopes would rise like a flood-tide—but then, alas, only to ebb again! He would get so far, and every time it would be as if he had run into ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... receipt of this order the ship swung to the ebb. Instantly Mr. Sharpe unmoored, and the Agra began her famous voyage, with her head at right angles to her course; for the wind being foul, all Sharpe could do was to set his topsails, driver, and jib, and keep her in the tide way, and clear of the numerous craft, by backing ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... ebb; a hush of gentle joy, For man, and beast, and bird; The quavering songster ceases its employ; The aspen is ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... their quitting Utgard—the chief Jotun, escorting them politely a little way, said to Thor—"You are beaten, then; yet, be not so much ashamed: there was deception of appearance in it. That horn you tried to drink was the sea; you did make it ebb: but who could drink that, the bottomless? The cat you would have lifted—why, that is the Midgard Snake, the Great World Serpent—which, tail in mouth, girds and keeps up the whole created world. Had you torn that up, the world must have rushed to ruin. ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... the silver-mining boom in Nevada began to ebb, and there was an exodus of men and women, mostly discouraged and "broke," to San Francisco. As Mrs. Osbourne had arranged to meet her husband in that city, she decided to join some of her friends in their removal to the coast, and began to make preparations for the long, hard journey. ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... toward the new custodian of his tin box, and an utter revulsion of sentiment ensued, wherein sympathy for General Rene Laurance reigned supreme. Oh instability of human compassion! To-day at the tumultuous flood, we weep for Caesar slain; To-morrow in the ebb, we ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... comfort, and as the years passed and reputation grew he found himself able to revisit his birthplace in security, and to take definite steps to re-establish the family fortunes, then at so low an ebb. ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... them, the seamen beat them off, using their large sealing-knives with such effect that they killed sixteen, and cleared the decks. The remaining natives jumped overboard. A number were swept away by the ebb-tide and drowned. Next day the crew, now only fourteen in number, repulsed an attempt made in canoes to take the vessel by boarding, and killed Karaka. Emboldened by this, they afterwards made an expedition to the shore and cut up or stove in all their enemies' canoes lying ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... still for a thousand years, else rolls slowly back toward brutishness, there being none of sufficient strength to advance the standards further up the rugged mountainside—nearer the Celestial City. Thus, ever in ebb and flow, gaining and losing, only to regain; nations rising and falling but to serve as stepping-stones whereon mount a nobler race, a grander people, the irrepressible conflict of the Godlike with the Beastlike in ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... a turn at lumbering, bought a tract of chestnuts and made a good penny in railroad ties. He saved every dollar above his expenses. He bought a small interest in a contracting firm, and presently he became its head. There was ebb and tide to his fortunes but he hung on. A lighting contract made him a rich man. Then he drifted into politics; and now, at the age of fifty, he was a power in the state. The one phase of sentiment in the man was the longing ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... above odds, fails to recognize the impossible, and is deaf to all save the clamor for battle. He called Hans and Pete to him. Their sacks were slim, and with his own the three partners could rake together only two hundred dollars. In the ebb of their fortunes, this sum was their total capital; yet they laid it unhesitatingly ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... here when you are dead and gone. Think of the men who have second and third wives and whose children are often turned adrift to look out for themselves. Hundreds of poor women are living hard and joyless lives just to save up money. And it is a shame to grind their children to the lowest ebb." ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... fly immeasurably beyond the present orbit of Neptune, and then rush inwards to the centre, only to be driven outwards again. Surging out and in, the fluid mass would expand and contract alternately, until in course of ages the fiery tides would cease to ebb and flow. If the impact had been somewhat indirect it would rotate slowly on its axis, and under the influence of gravity and centrifugal force acquire a globular shape which would gradually flatten to a lenticular disc. ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... thought and refinement of spirit, in whatever form it manifests itself, is at its lowest ebb among the Sakais and especially representative art, although it is curious to notice how much more they prefer (I speak of the male sex) this latter to that of sounds. Music may procure some moments of bliss to those who yield themselves to its charms but it is ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... across a whole continent, and is flooded for half the year, where there can never be railroads, or highways, or even pedestrian travelling, to any great extent, can hardly be considered as dry land. It is true that, in this oceanic river system, the tidal action has an annual, instead of a daily, ebb and flow; that its rise and fall obey a larger light, and are regulated by the sun, and not the moon; but it is nevertheless subject to all the conditions of a submerged district, and must be treated as such. Indeed, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... knowest not the end of existence that thou deemest abominable and wicked men to be happy and powerful; while, because thou hast forgotten by what means the earth is governed, thou deemest that fortune's changes ebb and flow without the restraint of a guiding hand. These are serious enough to cause not sickness only, but even death; but, thanks be to the Author of our health, the light of nature hath not yet left thee ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... anxious and determined to rouse their coreligionists from their lethargy and to create within them a new ambition for a higher and a more honourable place in intelligence and official usefulness. This is much needed, because the community has reached its lowest ebb of ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... village within three or four miles of the metropolis, may be remarked a tide of young men wending diurnal way to and from their respective desks and counters in the city, preceded by a ripple of errand-boys, and light porters, and followed by an ebb of plethoric elderly gentlemen in drab gaiters. Now these individuals compose—for the most part—that particular, yet indefinite class of people, who call themselves "gentlemen," and are called ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various
... Bolingbroke to his coronation; he visits the captive king in prison, and shames the desertion of the great. The political incident of the deposition is sketched with extraordinary knowledge of the world;—the ebb of fortune, on the one hand, and on the other, the swelling tide, which carries every thing along with it. While Bolingbroke acts as a king, and his adherents behave towards him as if he really were so, he still continues to give ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... consequences of that same moral hurt Iglesias' pride and loyalty alike refused. In respect of them he set his jaw and sternly averted his eyes. Yet, though the will may be steady to resist and to abstain, the tides of feeling ebb and flow, contemptuous of control as those of some unquiet sea. They defy volition, notably in illness when vitality is low. Refuse as he might to go behind the fact, it remained indisputable that the Lady of the Windswept Dust had given him his dismissal. ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... where the coves indent the shore and fall And fill with ebb and flowing of the tides; Whereon some barge rocks or some dory rides, By which old orchards bloom, or, from the wall, Pelt every lane with fruit; where gardens, tall With roses, riot; swift my gladness glides To that old pasture ...
— An Ode • Madison J. Cawein
... rate reducing as the wave approaches Dover, in the vicinity of which the tidal waves from the two different directions meet, one arriving approximately twelve hours later than the other, thus forming tides which are a result of the amalgamation of the two waves. On the ebb tide the direction of the waves ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams
... thing for Ireland. But they begin to see that the required conditions do not exist. They begin to see that they have been used by such men as O'Brien and Healy, they see the incompetency which has reduced the party paper to so low an ebb, they see the misery and degradation which the Land League inflicted on the once thriving districts of Tipperary; they saw their neighbours, poor, unlettered men, dupes of unscrupulous lying eloquence, men whom it was murder to deceive—they saw these men sentenced to long ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... or the school of the Serapeum; nay, as an amateur, he had often sung in the chorus there and acted as deputy for the regular leader. The theatre in his native town of Tauromenium had also been a famous one of old, but, at the time of his return, it had sunk to a very low ebb. Most of the inhabitants of the beautiful city nestling at the foot off Etna, had been converted to Christianity; among them the wealthy citizens at whose cost the plays had been performed and the chorus maintained. Small entertainments were still frequently given, but ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... crystal, and glistened and shot out dazzling rays like fire. Indeed, they appeared to seethe and glow like the eye of a dragon, or the white-hot steel of the sword-forger. One was called the Jewel of the Flood-Tide, and the other the Jewel of the Ebb-Tide. Whoever owned them had the power to make the tides instantly rise or fall at his word, to make the dry land appear, or the sea overwhelm it, in ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... shore Alp mutely mused, And wooed the freshness Night diffused. There shrinks no ebb in that tideless sea,[354] Which changeless rolls eternally; So that wildest of waves, in their angriest mood,[pi] Scarce break on the bounds of the land for a rood; And the powerless moon beholds them flow, 430 Heedless if she come or go: Calm or high, in main or bay, ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... as 1821 a federal district court in Kentucky asserted admiralty jurisdiction over inland waterways to the consternation of certain interests in Kentucky which succeeded in inducing the Senate to pass a bill confining admiralty jurisdiction to the ebb and flow of the tide, only to see it defeated in the House.[363] However, in 1825, in The Thomas Jefferson[364] the Court relieved these tensions by confining admiralty jurisdiction to the high seas and upon rivers ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... This constant ebb and flow of the great sea is a grand provision for its purification. Even the wind is sent to the sea to be cleansed. The sea washes every shore, purifies every cove, bay, and river twice every twenty-four hours. All putrescible matter liable to breed a pestilence is carried far from ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... war had ebb'd away From Trachis and Thermopylae, Long centuries had come and gone Since that fierce ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... who thereupon appointed him Abbot. He wrote a Register of things done in his time, compiled a book of Decretals and Constitutions of Provincial Chapters, and sundry works on geometry and astronomy. He constructed a clock showing the courses of the sun and moon, the ebb and flow of the tides, etc., which Leland, Librarian to Henry VIII., speaks of as still going in his day. He also made an astronomical instrument to which he gave the name "Albion," and wrote a book describing the manner of using it. Edward III., visiting ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... children, in convalescence from infective disorders, when the nutrition of the body has fallen to a low ebb, show as evidence of cerebral exhaustion a group of symptoms which in a sense are the reverse of those which characterise cerebral irritation and chorea. The healthy child is a creature of free movement. The children we are now considering will sit for a long time motionless. The expression ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... faith, kept it to himself. This epigram remained at the time a profound secret to Lord Oldborough. Whilst Cunningham was going with a prosperous gale, it was not heard of; but it worked round, according to the manoeuvres of courts, just by the time the tide of favour began to ebb. Lord Oldborough, dissatisfied with one of Cunningham's despatches, was heard to say, as he folded it up, "A ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... comes a stratum of sand, with marine shells, or the shells of mollusks living in brackish water. If there be tides, and, of course, flowing and ebbing currents, mud is let fall upon the sand only after the latter has been raised above low-water mark; for then only, at the change from flood to ebb, is the water still enough to form a deposit of so light a material. Where mud is found at great depths, as, for example, in a large proportion of the Ij, it is a proof that at this point there was never any considerable tidal flow or other current. ... The powerful tidal currents, flowing and ebbing ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... trembling, prostrate falls, And on the boundless of thy goodness calls. "Oh! give the winds all past offence to sweep, To scatter wide, or bury in the deep: Thy power, my weakness, may I ever see, And wholly dedicate my soul to thee: Reign o'er my will; my passions ebb and flow At thy command, nor human motive know! If anger boil, let anger be my praise, And sin the graceful indignation raise. My love be warm to succour the distress'd, And lift the burden from the soul oppress'd. Oh ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... all mine avenue; He catches down and foolish painted flies That spider wary and wise. Each morn it hangs a rainbow strung with dew Betwixt boughs green with sap, So fair, few creatures guess it is a trap: I will not mar the web, Though sad I am to see the small lives ebb. 40 ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... heightened by his realization that Augustin Daly's greatest work and achievements were behind him. The famous old manager was undergoing that cycle of experience which comes to all of his kind when the flood-tide of their success begins to ebb. ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... gathered twelve thousand men for the recapture of Louisburg, but exaggerated reports of the French strength frightened him from the attempt. Similar inaction lost him Fort William Henry on Lake George. The end of the year 1757 saw the English cause on this side at low ebb, Montcalm, the tried and brilliant French commander, having outwitted or frightened the English officers at ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... Third, and Fourth Avenues. The creek set in from the bay where the Gowanus Canal is retained, and rendered the marsh impassable at high-water as far as the line of Baltic Street. Blocks of buildings now stand on the site of mills that were once worked by the ebb and flow of the tides. The lower part of what is known as South Brooklyn was largely swamp land in 1776. Here the peninsula terminated in a nearly isolated triangular piece of ground jutting out into the harbor, called Red Hook, ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... delight in tireless repetition. The days repeat themselves, the tides ebb and flow, the tree sways forth and back. This world is intent upon recurrences. Not the pendulum of a clock is more persistent of iteration than are all existing things; periodicity is the ultimate law and largest explanation of the universe—to do it over again the ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... significance of his words. The implication was clear, even though veiled in the heaviest sarcasm. He had the satisfaction of seeing the colour ebb from her cheek. Her face being averted, he missed the swift flicker of pain that rushed to her eyes and, departing, took away with it the soft light that had glowed in them the instant before. He had touched a concealed canker,—the sensitive spot that had been the real ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... other two to the westward. They were rowed by about forty oars each, and appeared, from their swiftness, to be flying, and that, too, from under my very nose; and what rendered it still more ridiculous and disagreeable, owing to a strong ebb tide, the ship remained exactly in a position that no gun could be brought to bear on either side. The dingy and jolly-boat gave chase; but the pirates had the start, and it was useless; for although a few men ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... breeze was light, the boat made fair way with the tide, and when the ebb ceased at about ten o'clock the mouth of the river was but a few miles away. The mast was lowered and the sails stowed. The boat was then rowed into a little creek and tied up to the bushes. The basket of provisions ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... merchants. For as a farmer can not husband his ground so well if he sit at a great rent, so the merchant can not drive his trade so well, if he sit at great usury. The third is incident to the other two; and that is the decay of customs of kings or states, which ebb or flow with merchandising. The fourth that it bringeth the wealth or treasure of a realm or state ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... to the stout oak door, he forced it back. The wind moaned and hissed through the closing aperture. It was like the ebb of a broken wave to those who had heard the sea. Turning about, as the candles on the table blinked, the young man lazily dashed the rain and sleet from his beard and breast, and lay down again on the settle, with something between a shiver and a yawn. "Cruel night, this," he muttered, ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... modelled boats rested upon the beach, and five miles out to sea was pictured upon the horizon, like a phantom ship, the weird and indistinct outlines of a United States Coast Survey schooner. The tide was on the last of the ebb, and finding it impossible to get within half a mile of the point, I anchored my little craft, built a fire in my bake-kettle, made coffee on board, and, quietly turning in for a doze, rested until the ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... bearing. To avoid this danger, it is therefore necessary to haul over towards Quail Island, when the highest hummock on it bears South-West 1/2 West. The tides follow the direction of the channel, varying in velocity from one to two knots. The ebb in ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... of sound began to ebb, the volume lessened and grew distant, and he found himself, regretfully, abruptly, sinking back into what by comparison was mere noise. First, he became conscious that he listened—heard—saw; then, that Miriam's ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... of the government examination, and substituting therefor various branches of the new learning. "We have been compelled to issue this decree," said the Emperor, "because our examinations have reached the lowest ebb, and we see no remedy for these matters except to change entirely the old methods for ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... twingeing hope that it would not be so, she watched the silver birch branch hesitate, yield to the under-ebb, and lie at last helpless on the black stagnancy, which continued to vibrate with an air of malice. Soon its pretty leaves were waterlogged, and it sank down to bed with the grassy rottenness beside the whitish grasses. It had had no ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... him unmistakably there was no touch of self-pity or impressiveness. He had just to die, and he devoted his swift energies to it, as he had done to living. I never saw him so splendid and noble as he was at that last awful moment. Life did not ebb away, but he seemed to fling it from him, so that it was not as the death of a weary man sinking to rest, but like the eager transit of a soldier to another part ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... inflections brewed in company of an evening being added from time to time to the common stock. Like sea-water in a little creek, the phrases which represent these ideas surge up daily, punctually obeying the tidal laws of conversation in their flow and ebb; you hear the hollow echo of yesterday, to-day, to-morrow, a year hence, and for evermore. On all things here below they pass immutable judgments, which go to make up a body of tradition into which no power of mortal man can infuse one drop of wit or sense. The lives of these ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... a few commonplace remarks on the way of living of the friars, their hypocrisy and laziness. I endeavoured to obtain some information respecting the state of instruction in the place, and from their answers was led to believe that it must be at the lowest ebb, for it seemed that there was neither book-shop nor school. When I spoke of religion, they exhibited the utmost apathy for the subject, and making their bows left ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... Barriers marked the lowest ebb of Belgian nationality. During the protracted war which preceded it, complete anarchy reigned, imperialists, the allied conference, Maximilian Emmanuel and the French administering various parts of the country. The great nation raised in the heart of Europe by the dukes of Burgundy seemed practically ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... perfectly motionless and ghastly; and as she kept her large lucid eyes fixed upon the woman's face, the powers of life, that had been hitherto in such a tumult of delight within her, seemed slowly, and with a deadly and scarcely perceptible motion, to ebb out of her system. The revulsion was too dreadful; and with the appearance of one who was anxious to shrink or hide from something that was painful, she laid her head down on the humble ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... Two miles, on the starboard side, appeared Gilboa, stretching from north to west like an immense arm. Towards the south and east some coral showed itself, left by the ebb. We had run aground, and in one of those seas where the tides are middling—a sorry matter for the floating of the Nautilus. However, the vessel had not suffered, for her keel was solidly joined. But, if she could neither glide off nor move, she ran the ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... the true foresight. They called him a far-seeing man. How did he get that name? Well, he made a fortune. He managed to make use of the ebb and flow of the market, and never once got stranded. He was shrewd and did some good guessing, and now, forsooth, they say he is 'very far-seeing.' But he has not opened his Bible for years, and the fountains of sympathy are dried up in his ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth
... nights, but I invented a formula instead, which I repeated to myself continually. Especially, I remember, it came in useful when at the end of the march with my feet frost-bitten, my heart beating slowly, my vitality at its lowest ebb, my body solid with cold, I used to seize the shovel and go on digging snow on to the tent skirting while the cook inside was trying to light the primus. "You've got it in the neck—stick it—stick it—you've got it in the neck," ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... was just then at a very low ebb. Sainte-Beuve had been dead about five years; his own contemporaries, Edmond Scherer for instance, were getting old and discouraged; the new generation seemed to be turning unanimously, in consequence of the disasters of the Franco-German ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... forth fruit, when our governess appeared on the scene. Uncle George's manner at once underwent a complete and contemptible change. His interest in rational topics seemed, "like a fountain's sickening pulse," to flag and ebb away; and though Miss Smedley's ostensible purpose was to take Selina for her usual walk, I can vouch for it that Selina spent her morning ratting, along with the keeper's boy and me; while, if Miss Smedley walked with any one, it would appear to have ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... He is thus caught in his own web, and could not liberate himself if he would. But, in fact, he never shows a trace of wishing to do so, not a trace of hesitation, of looking back, or of fear, any more than of remorse; there is no ebb in the tide. As the crisis approaches there passes through his mind a fleeting doubt whether the deaths of Cassio and Roderigo are indispensable; but that uncertainty, which does not concern the main issue, is dismissed, ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... commoda secum, Multa recedentes adimunt.' The blessings flowing in with life's full tide Down with our ebb of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... being inferior, suffered heavily. Luckily for the allies the wind fell calm; and while Tourville himself and other French ships got out their boats to tow into action again, the allies were shrewd enough to drop anchor with all sail set, and before Tourville took in the situation the ebb-tide, setting southwest, had carried his fleet out of action. He finally anchored a league ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... back with an eye of disgust. But they were the natural results of an age when religion was at the lowest ebb in Europe; when our travelled gentry only brought back with them that disregard of Christianity which they had learned in Paris and Rome, and when Voltaire's works were found on the toilet of every woman ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... The ebb-tide favoured our navigation, and soon brought us within sight of an arm of the sea, stretching eastward, at the extremity of which the mission of St. Jose was built in the year 1797, on a very fertile spot. It is already one of the richest ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... second visit to Madeira, I find the wine trade at a very low ebb. The demand from America, owing to temperance, the tariff, and partly to an increased taste for Spanish, French, and German wines, is extremely small. Not a cargo has been shipped thither for three years. The construction given to the tariff, by the ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... Album," a dramatic poem of extraordinary power, has so much more markedly the defects of his qualities that I take it to be, at the utmost, the poise of the first gradual refluence. This analogy of the tidal ebb and flow may be observed with singular aptness in Browning's life-work—the tide that first moved shoreward in the loveliness of "Pauline," and, with "long withdrawing roar," ebbed in slow, just perceptible lapse to the poet's penultimate volume. As ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... two years, and renew the provincial officers every twelvemonth; if the Americans, who have abandoned the political world to the attempts of innovators, had not placed religion beyond their reach, where could it abide in the ebb and flow of human opinions? where would that respect which belongs to it be paid, amidst the struggles of faction? and what would become of its immortality, in the midst of perpetual decay? The American ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... the money-market, affect many speculative adventures and operations when at the very moment credit may be most needed. It is absolutely necessary that I should be daily at my post on the Bourse, and hourly watch the ebb and flow of events. Under these circumstances I had counted, permit me to count still, on your presence in Bretagne. We have already begun negotiations on a somewhat extensive scale, whether as regards the improvement of forests and orchards, or the plans ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and wept bitterly. He took the dead man's belt, and lashed himself to the upright. That act, and his tears for his beloved, were almost his last acts of perfect reason: for next day came the delusions and the dreams that succeed when hunger ceases to torture, and the vital powers begin to ebb. He lay and saw pleasant meadows with meandering streams, and clusters of rich fruit that courted the hand and melted ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... is life, whose ebb and flow Heaves the deep sea of human mind; True happiness they only know, Whose every ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... when he could give things, and he gave a great deal to the poor that came to the house, so that his stock of cash was at a low ebb. ...
— The Book of One Syllable • Esther Bakewell
... created something beyond themselves: and ye want to be the ebb of that great tide, and would rather go back to the beast than ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... of the ebb, in Newton Bay, Quickens the spring, as the tide grows less; Even as true love flows alway Counter the flood of the ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... country without a literature. He was of that ornate school which usually comes last in a national literature, and he came first. American taste had been vitiated by men like Griswold and N. P. Willis until it was at the lowest possible ebb. Willis was considered a genius, that is the worst that could possibly be said. In the North a new race of great philosophers was growing up, but Poe had neither their friendship nor encouragement. He went indeed, sometimes, to the chilly salon of Margaret Fuller, but he was always a discord ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... all fours like a beetle, waving its limbs like feelers. Before I could throw open the window again it darted into the surf, and, when I leaned out into the chilling drizzle, I saw nothing save the flat ebb crawling on the coast—I heard nothing save the purring of bubbles on ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... passion of the soul, and being such, is subject to ebb and flow, and to be extreme both ways. For whatever is a passion of the soul, whether love or hatred, joy or fear, is more apt to exceed, or come short, than to keep within its due bounds. Hence, oft-times that which is loved today is hated ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... familiar and dearly loved, awakened some show of consciousness, even at that ebb. For a moment, the closed eye lids trembled, and the nostril quivered, and the faintest shadow of ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... made to produce the songs of each different species which they represented, till a falcon on the topmost branch uttered a harsh cry, and all became silent. General education had, however, fallen to a low ebb among the population, and the wisdom of the ancients was chiefly concentrated among the higher class of Marabouts, whose headquarters were at Bugia, and their present chief, Hadji Eseb Ben Hassan, had ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... outlying colonies. Upper Canada can feed all England with wheat, and could do so without any aid of railway through the States, if a railway were made from Quebec to Halifax. But then comes the question of the cost. The Canada Grand Trunk is at the present moment at the lowest ebb of commercial misfortune, and with such a fact patent to the world, what company will come forward with funds for making four or five hundred miles of railway, through a district of which one-half is not yet prepared for population? It would ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... doubts rushed down upon her, crushing her reason. She saw in this ceremony a horrible travesty from which she must escape at all costs.... But how? She had no longer the strength to repudiate boldly her settled decision. Her courage was at ebb and she was caught in the grip of unreasoning panic. She would abandon everything and everybody ... she would slip away ... she would be true to herself first and then try afresh to be true to others. In short she was for the ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... Ebb tide to me as of the sea! Old age causes me reproach ... It is riches Ye love, it is not men: In the time when we lived It was men we loved ... My arms when they are seen Are bony and thin: Once they would fondle, They would be round glorious kings ... I must take my garment even in the sun: ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... together and walked toward Lily's rooms; but somehow they both fell silent. Lily was again afraid of Batty, and Maurice's exhilaration had begun to ebb; there came into his mind the bleak remembrance of the overturned table ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... time, at a hint from Roger Chillingworth, the friends of Mr. Dimmesdale effected an arrangement by which the two were lodged in the same house; so that every ebb and flow of the minister's life-tide might pass under the eye of his anxious and attached physician. There was much joy throughout the town, when this greatly desirable object was attained. It was held to be the best possible measure for the young clergyman's ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... where there is apparent immobility, as becomes evident when the history of institutions is followed through long periods of time. The utmost that can be said is that, where intelligence is little developed and energy at a low ebb, the social will may bear the stamp of passive acceptance of the inherited, rather than exhibit a tendency to innovation. Will it remains, but we may hesitate to describe it ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... line, the wretched horses dozing as they stood, the drivers huddled into their fur capes and numbed by the clinging cold. Everywhere was darkness and chill and the listless misery of a winter dawn, when vitality is at its lowest ebb and the passions of ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... the fissile results of the frost; the wavering line of ripple-marks of Seas that shall ebb no more; growth of lichen; an army of ants in full march; a passion-flower trailing from a crevice, its purple blooms lying upon the gray stone near where it is stamped with the fossil imprint of a sea-weed, faded long ago ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... to perpetuate the coalition that had been formed between the mercantile classes and the proletariate, and to wring from the senate an acceptance of the new military genius with his plans for reform, there are clear indications which prove that an ebb of political feeling had been witnessed, even during the last three years—a turn of the tide which shows how utterly unstable the coalition against the senate would have been, had it not been reinforced by the continuance of disasters abroad. The first sign of the reaction ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... coast of Staten Land, and set like a torrent round Cape St John; where they take a N.W. direction, and continue to run very strong both within and without New Year's Isles. While we lay at anchor within this island, I observed that the current was strongest during the flood; and that on the ebb its strength was so much impaired, that the ship would sometimes ride head to the wind when it was at W. and W.N.W. This is only to be understood of the place where the ship lay at anchor, for at the very time we had a strong current setting to the westward, Mr Gilbert ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... colour, the variety, the breadth, the constant intellectual distinction, the sheer brilliant power of novels such as these, one perceives that a "great Victorian" could only have succeeded in an age when all the arts were at their lowest ebb in England, and the most middling of the middle-classes ruled with the Bible in one hand and the Riot Act in ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... Eating. We should not eat for at least two or three hours before going to bed. When we are asleep, the vital forces are at a low ebb, the process of digestion is for the time nearly suspended, and the retention of incompletely digested food in the stomach may cause bad dreams and troubled sleep. But in many cases of sleeplessness, a trifle of some simple food, especially if the stomach seems to feel exhausted, often ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... whether, as is more likely, all the munitions are going there, it is certain that they were very outclassed upon the three days (June 10, 11, 12) which I allude to. There were signs that for some reason their spirits were at a low ebb. On the evening before our arrival the French had massed all their bands at the front, and, in honour of the Russian victory, had played the Marseillaise and the Russian National hymn, winding up with general shoutings and objurgations ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle |
