"Ebb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nobleman was too much wrapped up in his own confused and distracted reflections, to notice the rude expressions of savage fidelity, in which, even in the latest ebb of life, the unhappy author of his misfortunes seemed to find a stern and stubborn ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... wall, Fort and ramp without a blow; Money moves the merchants all, While the tides shall ebb and flow; Money maketh Evil show Like the Good, and Truth like lies: These alone can ne'er bestow Youth, ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... the benefactor of humanity, who has purified its passions by loftiest thoughts and noblest sentiments, stilling their turbulence by the same processes that magnify their power, and showing how the soul, in ebb and flow, and when its tide is at full, may be at once as strong and as serene as ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... and material interests seemed wholly in the ascendant, and the anti-slavery cause was at a low ebb. But many things had happened in two decades, below the surface current of public events, and, just on the threshold of a new era, we may glance back over these twenty years. All the European world had been full of movement. France had passed through three revolutions. Germany, Austria, and Italy ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... conquerors, leaving the ships of war in flames, made their way into an inner basin where many transports lay. Eight of these vessels were set on fire. Several were taken in tow. The rest would have been either destroyed or carried off, had not the sea again begun to ebb. It was impossible to do more, and the victorious flotilla slowly retired, insulting the hostile camp with a thundering chant of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Cournant, the liberal notary and the rival of the ministerial notary Auffray, became the close advisers of the Rogrons, to whom they were able to do a couple of signal services. The leases granted by old Rogron to their father in 1815, when matters were at a low ebb, were about to expire. Horticulture and vegetable gardening had developed enormously in the neighborhood of Provins. The lawyer and notary set to work to enable the Rogrons to increase their rentals. Vinet won two lawsuits against two districts on a ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... wisest to shift our berth. Once aweigh, the captain thought it best to turn out of the Downs, which we did, working through the Straits, and anchoring under Dungeness, as soon as the flood made. Here we lay until near sunset, when we got under way to try our hand upon the ebb. I believe the skipper had made up his mind to tide it down to the Land's End, rather than remain idle any longer. There was a sloop of war lying in-shore of us, a mile or so, and just as we stretched ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... town itself there is nothing remarkable to be seen. On the sea-coast they shewed me the place where Moses led the children of Israel through the Red Sea. The sinking of the tide at its ebb is here so remarkable that whole islands are left bare, and large caravans are able to march through the sea, as the water only reaches to the girths of the camels, and the Arabs and Bedouins even walk through. As it happened to be ebb-tide when I arrived, ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... Mourzuk is at a low ebb on account of the rival Touarick city of Ghat, and especially from the disturbed state of the Bornou route during the last few years. However, there are caravans between Cairo and Mourzuk, which never frequent Tripoli. Many British and Levant ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... see my native country thus prostrate under foreign usurpers, the generality quite disheartened, and the few, who dared to take her part, thus publicly insulted, was a shock I was not prepared for, and which, therefore, sunk my spirits to the lowest ebb of despondence. Such was the frame of mind wherein I left my native state, and set out, sick and alone, for the northward, with scarce a hope of ever seeing better days. About the middle of the second day, as I beat my solitary road, slowly winding ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... it, and falls together with it into fruitful dust, from which can be moulded flesh; it joins itself, in dew, to the substance of adamant, and becomes the green leaf out of the dry ground; it enters into the separated shapes of the earth it has tempered, commands the ebb and flow of the current of their life, fills their limbs with its own lightness, measures their existence by its indwelling pulse, moulds upon their lips the words by which one soul can be known to another; is to them the hearing of the ear, and the beating of the heart; and, passing ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... claim, both on account of their high birth and of being officers of the Raja of Satara (not of the Peshwa), rank and precedence over the houses of Sindhia and Holkar; and these claims, even when their fortunes were at the lowest ebb, were always admitted as far as related to points of form and ceremony." The great Maratha house of Nimbhalkar is believed to have originated from ancestors of the Panwar Rajput clan. While one branch of the Panwars went to the Deccan after the fall of Dhar and marrying with the people there became ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... of course, a consistent Royalist like her father. But to some minds, such an ebb and flow may seem to justify the philosophy of Urbain, and even more, perhaps, the light and happy ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... the mammas in London and in the country will be running after him. Not that he will be any great catch, for of course he has nothing—and the poor place will be brought to a low ebb.' ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... myriad influences in the ebb and flow of immigration that carry the impulses, the ideals, and the new life of America into the heart of ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... Burke describes it, "a contrivance of human wisdom" I might ask him, if wisdom was at such a low ebb in England, that it was become necessary to import it from Holland and from Hanover? But I will do the country the justice to say, that was not the case; and even if it was it mistook the cargo. The wisdom of every country, when properly exerted, is sufficient for all its purposes; and there could ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... any appeared which seemed fit for them. Yet some place must be found where Johanna's poor, tired head could rest that night. At last, completely exhausted, with that oppressive exhaustion which seems to crush mind as well as body after a day's wandering in London. Hilary's courage began to ebb. Oh for an arm to lean on, a voice to listen for, a brave heart to come to her side, saying, "Do not be afraid, there are two of us!" And she yearned, with an absolutely sick yearning such as only a woman who now and then feels the utter helplessness of her womanhood ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... lost its freshness. Antelao and Tofana, guarding the vale above Cortina, show faint streaks of snow upon their amethyst. Little clouds hang in the still autumn sky. There are men dredging for shrimps and crabs through shoals uncovered by the ebb. Nothing can be lovelier, more resting to eyes tired with pictures than this tranquil, sunny expanse of the lagoon. As we round the point of the Bersaglio, new landscapes of island and Alp and low-lying mainland move into sight at every slow stroke of the oar. A luggage-train comes ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... herself, and was ready to think herself above this earth while she was in it: And what, inferred she to Mrs. Lovick, must be the state itself, the very aspirations after which have often cast a beamy light through the thickest darkness, and, when I have been at the lowest ebb, have dispelled the black clouds of despondency?—As I hope they soon will this ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... community, that ever existed upon the face of the globe was there so little daily ebb and flow as in this. Dull as an ordinary Town or City may be; however monotonous, eventless, even stupid the lives of its citizens, there is yet, nevertheless, a flow every day of its life-blood—its population towards its heart, and an ebb of the same, every evening towards its extremities. ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... since the last drop of rain had closed the wet season. It was 15th November, and the river had fallen to so low an ebb that the stream was reduced to a breadth of about eighty yards of bright and clear water, rushing in places with great rapidity through the centre of its broad and stony bed, while in sudden bends of the channel it widened into ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... man must have alike. The ringleader, unfortunately for himself, had lately fired at a dead lion, to astonish the Unyoro, and his chum had fired a salute, which was contrary to orders; for ammunition was at a low ebb, and I had done everything in my power to nurse it. Therefore, as a warning to the others, the guns of these two were confiscated, and a caution given that any gun in future let off, either by design ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... The ebb of the company's prosperity dated from Kate's marriage. Somehow things did not seem to go well after. In the first place the production of Olivette was not a success. Mortimer was drunk, did not know his words, ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... 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 in his ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... the Father's love. 'My faculties are slipping away day by day,' he wrote to his niece from his deathbed. 'Happy is it for all of us that our true good lies not in them. As they ebb, may they leave us as little children trusting in the Father of Mercies ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... have perceptive powers of which we can form no conception, and may thus discern the approach of particular events as distinctly an we can now calculate the ebb and flow of the tides, or the eclipses ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... things are too well known to require repetition. And do you ask for fortitude, energy, and perseverance? Then look at woman under suffering, reverse of fortune, and affliction, when the strength and power of man have sunk to the lowest ebb, when his mind is overwhelmed by the dark waters of despair. She, like the tender ivy plant bent yet unbroken by the storms of life, not only upholds her own hopeful courage, but clings around the tempest-fallen oak, to speak hope to his faltering spirit, and shelter him from ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... same official for the value of coals consumed, the captain of the port for the homeward passage-money of some shipwrecked sailors—all three letters and the replies thereto being in the same handwriting. I rather think, by the way, that the Labuan treasury was at a low ebb when we were there; for I know that the question arose whether it contained enough money to meet some fifty or sixty dollar notes of ours which we had given ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... these were the love of the world, and doing business on Sundays: and it seems they thought so themselves; for after the fire the office-door was fast closed on the Sabbath. When the Thames had an unusual ebb and flow, it was observed, that it had never happened in their recollection, but just before the rising of the Earl of Essex in Elizabeth's reign,—and Sir Symonds became uneasy at the political aspect ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... land-ice to which we were secured, and thus set us adrift and at the mercy of the tides. Happily, however, neither of these occurred, the floe remaining stationary for the rest of the tide, and setting off with the ebb which made soon after. In the mean while the Hecla had been enabled to get under sail, and was making considerable progress towards us, which determined me to move the Fury as soon as possible from her present situation into the bight I had sounded in the morning, where we made ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... 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 chance, any more than she ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... you can read in the eye of seven-eighths of your audience, Pray, go on. If you cannot read that, you have mistaken your vocation; you were never called to the ministry. The secret of the persuasive power of our favorite orators is in their constant recognition of the ebb and flow of the sensibilities they are acting upon. Their speech is, in effect, an actual conversation, in which they are speaking for as well as to the audience; and the interlocutors are made almost as palpably such as at the "Breakfast- ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... leaves beside the window drooped motionless in the dank air, so her mind drooped into a settled depression. She pitied herself,—that lowest ebb of melancholy self-consciousness. She went back to Emilia, and, seating herself, studied every line of the girl's face, the soft texture of her hair, the veining of her eyelids. They were so lovely, she felt a sort of physical impulse to kiss them, as if ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... may come and years may go, Seasons ebb and seasons flow, Autumn lie 'neath Winters' snow, Spring bring Summer verdancy. Life may line our brow with care, Time to silver turn our hair, Still, to us betide whate'er, Dexter, ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... never-silent rushes, beneath a sky refreshed and sweetened with storm. The boat was enormously heavy and made slow progress. When too the tide began to flow I must needs push close in to the bank and await the ebb. But towards evening of the third day I ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... 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 ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... that deep roar Which works in storm and calm the eternal will, Drags down the cliffs, bids the great hills go by And shepherds their multitudinous pageantry,— Here, on this ebb-tide shore A jewelled bath of beauty, sparkling still, The little sea-pool smiled away the sea, And slept on its own ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... under their personal direction; and the Thebias, as well as certain spots in Arabia, are reported to have been literally crowded with solitaries. Nearly a hundred thousand of all classes, it is said, were at one time to be found in Egypt.... Although the enthusiasm might be at a lower ebb in one country than in another, it actually affected the church universal, so far as the extant materials of ecclesiastical history enables us to trace its rise and progress.... The more rigid and heroic of the Christian anchorets dispensed with all clothing ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... composed in comfort on a litter of coarse grass and parched seaweed than her eyes closed in the drowsiness of sheer exhaustion. This respite was altogether helpful. She had slept but little during the gale, and its tremendous climax had surprised her vitality at a low ebb. ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... were destined to ebb with unspeakably-greater rapidity, and to leave me, in a moment, ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... the river-mouth, a mile away. They followed a path across the wide stretch of pasture, where wild blackberry vines and tall blueberry bushes grew, then through a strip of meadow land, and at last ran out on the bare stretch of sand and weed left by the ebb tide toward the narrow channel cut by the clear water of ...
— The Puritan Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... labyrinth of dreams;"*6* and of the heavens reflected in the marsh waters: "Each winding creek in grave entrancement lies A rhapsody of morning-stars. The skies Shine scant with one forked galaxy, — The marsh brags ten: looped on his breast they lie."*7* Later, as the ebb-tide flows from marsh to sea, we are parenthetically treated to these two lines: "Run home, little streams, With your lapfuls of stars and dreams."*8* Finally, the heaven itself is thus pictured: "Now in each pettiest personal sphere of dew ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... impulse whose manifestations have been always vigorous though occasionally exaggerated. In any of the great departments of activity nationally pursued—as art has been pursued in France since Francis I.—there are always these rival currents, of which now one and now the other constantly affects the ebb and flow of the tide of thought and feeling. The classic and romantic duel of 1830, the rise of the naturalist opposition to Hugo and romanticism in our own day, are familiar instances of this phenomenon in literature. The revolt of Gericault and Delacroix against ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... surprise, and they were so astonished, that he had to repeat the call before they fully understood what was meant. Then they immediately gave three long and hearty cheers. The beach is covered with a soft blue mud. It being ebb tide, I could see some distance; found it would be impossible for me to take the horses along it; I therefore kept them where I had halted them, and allowed half the party to come on to the beach and gratify themselves by a sight of the sea, ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... which was the sole answer these words called forth did not take from the refinement of the young widow's expression, but rather added to it; Violet watched it in its ebb and flow and, seriously affected by it (why, she did not know, for Mrs. Hammond had made no other appeal either by look or gesture), pushed forward a chair and begged her ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... a yawn. He realized with the abruptness which comes to a man who stands alone with nature in the small hours that he was very sleepy. The excitement which had sustained him till now had begun to ebb. The free life of the bearded farmer seemed suddenly less attractive. Bed was what ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... guest is not of this fickle class. He is a tower amid the waters, his foundation is upon a rock, he moves not with the ebb and flow of the stream. The storm may gather, the waters may rise and even dash above his head, or they may subside at his feet, still he stands unmoved. We know his site and his bearings, and with the fullest confidence we point to where he stood six-and-fifty years ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... one of the group, a Spartan whose rank and services entitled him to more than ordinary familiarity with the chief, "it is not the ocean itself that we should dread, it is the contagion of those who, living on the element, seem to share in its ebb and flow. The Ionians are never three ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... eyes were lusterless, his two rough hands clenched nervously. Just for one weak moment he longed for forgetfulness. He longed to shut out those hideous visions with which he was pursued. He longed for peace, for rest from the dull aching of his poor torn heart. His courage was at a low ebb. Something of the nature of the hour had got hold of him. It was sundown. There was the long black night between him and the morrow. He felt so ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... fired. They heard the guard turned out; lights passing on the batteries close to them, and row-boats manning. They double-banked their oars, and, with the assistance of the ebb-tide and obscurity, they were soon out of gun-shot. They then laid in their oars, shipped their mast, and ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... of John Wilkes's scruples as to leaving the house during the daytime, Cyril thenceforth went out with him every day. If the tide was in flood they rowed far up the river, and came down on the ebb. If it was running out they went down as far as it would take them. Whenever the wind was favourable they hoisted the sail; at other times, they rowed. The fresh air, and the exercise, soon did their work. Cyril at first could ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... is," she thought, "that success takes hold of our sensibilities, and in the same way does failure serve to discourage one, and put enthusiasm at a low ebb." ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... it appeared that his spirits had reached their lowest ebb, and before many minutes had passed he was pouring forth his tribulations with much frankness and simplicity. Mr. Griffith Donne's principal trial was the existence of an elderly maiden aunt, who did not approve of him, and was in the habit of expressing her disapproval in lengthy epistolary ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... appearance of two harbours facing the two entrances of the Euripus. It would be difficult to find a station more dangerous for shipping; for not only do the winds come down with great violence from the high mountains on each side, but the strait itself of the Euripus does not ebb and flow seven times a day at stated times, as is reported, but the current changing irregularly, like the wind, now this way now that, is hurried along like a torrent rolling headlong down a steep mountain, so that no quiet is given to vessels there day or night. But not only did so perilous ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... we found as little depth or less, whereupon we rode all night in five fathom water, and we perceived the sea to run with so great a rage into the land that it was a thing much to be marveled at; and with the like fury it returned back again with the ebb, during which time we found eleven fathom water, and the flood and ebb continued from five to six hours. The next day the captain and the pilot went up to the ship's top and saw all the land full of sand in a great round compass and joining itself with the other shore; and ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... to bankruptcy as the proportion of unemployed men in their ranks becomes greater, they are being petted and made much of by our class; an infallible sign that they are making no further progress in their duty of destroying us. The small capitalists are left stranded by the ebb; the big ones will follow the tide across the water, and rebuild their factories where steam power, water power, labor power, and transport are now cheaper than in England, where they used to be cheapest. The workers will ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... suspense in Piccadilly; the tide had flowed up to the theatres, and had not yet begun to ebb. The tranquil trees, still feathery, draped their branches along the farther bank of that broad river, resting from their watch over the tragi-comedies played on its surface by men, their small companions. The gentle sighs which distilled from their ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... influence was at the lowest ebb, two eloquent preachers, John Wesley and George Whitefield, started a movement which is still gathering force. Wesley did not ask his audience to listen to a sermon on the favorite bloodless abstractions of the eighteenth-century ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... of the unseen. Before he sees or hears anything, the Temanite has the sense of fear—the fear of something more than human. The unknown weighs upon him and presses him down, all the life and energy in him are at low ebb—he feels as though the tides of life were running out. A spirit passes before his face. It is like a breath of scarcely moving air out of the night. The hair of his flesh (mark the psychological and physiological ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... dull sailer, was the last which came to an anchor. The weather was fine: the wind N.W. and consequently too near to allow us to double Chassiron, with a contrary current. At seven in the evening, at the beginning of the ebb, we weighed anchor, and hoisted our sails; all the other vessels did the same: the signal to get under way had been given them a few minutes before. At night we found ourselves between the lights of Chassiron and La Baleine.[5] A few moments sufficed to double ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... the Legion lay dying in Algiers. There was lack of woman's nursing, there was dearth of woman's tears; But a comrade stood beside him, while his life-blood ebb'd away, And bent, with pitying glances, to hear what he might say. The dying soldier faltered, as he took that comrade's hand, And he said, "I never more shall see my own, my native land; Take a message, and a token, to some distant friends of mine, For I was born at Bingen—at ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... on the Christmas-eve,— The game of forfeits done—the girls all kiss'd Beneath the sacred bush and past away— The parson Holmes, the poet Everard Hall, The host, and I sat round the wassail-bowl, 5 Then half-way ebb'd: and there we held a talk, How all the old honour had from Christmas gone, Or gone, or dwindled down to some odd games In some odd nooks like this; till I, tired out With cutting eights that day upon the pond, 10 Where, three times slipping from the outer edge, I bump'd the ice into ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... heap," admitted Jack, keeping a wary eye on the approaching craft, lest it foul his own boat, and bring sudden disaster on the cruise which had begun so auspiciously. "But perhaps that's a trick these river pilots have when heading up into an ebb tide. They know all the wrinkles of the game, I guess, and how to save themselves ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... were at a low ebb. George Sandys felt it was a pity that the project could not be pushed more vigorously. When the plantation was asked to take a number of the "infidelles children to be brought up" the officials asked to be excused since they were "sorely weakened ...
— The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624 • Charles E. Hatch
... such a dangerous passage as the English could not attempt without exposing their ships to the most imminent hazard. This was a very mortifying defeat to the French king, who had been so long flattered with an uninterrupted series of victories; it reduced James to the lowest ebb of despondence, as it frustrated the whole scheme of his embarkation, and overwhelmed his friends in England with grief and despair. Some historians allege that Russel did not improve his victory with all advantages that might have been obtained before the enemy ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... something pointed, which as perpetually merges into something dull. He is like a bad swimmer, strikes out with great force, makes a confounded splash, and never gets a yard the further for it. It is a great effort not to sink. Indeed, Monsieur D'A—, your literature is at a very reduced ebb; bombastic in the drama—shallow in philosophy—mawkish in poetry, your writers of the present day seem ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in God's great plan, How futile it seems as the ages roll, Do what it may or strive how it can To alter the sweep of the infinite whole! A single stitch in an endless web, A drop in the ocean's flood and ebb! But the pattern is rent where the stitch is lost, Or marred where the tangled threads have crossed; And each life that fails of its true intent Mars the perfect plan ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... The ships got under way with the weather, or ebb, tide, a little before noon: latitude 8 deg. 52'. At four o'clock, the wind blew strong at south-east, with thick weather, and they anchored in 9 fathoms, blue mud; having made a course of E. N. E. nearly ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... under loss, to throb and pant with heavy sighs, to lie sleepless in the long dark night, to shrink with unutterable sadness at the wan light of dawn, to follow duty with a laggard sense, to feel the slow ebb of vitality and not to care, to suffer with a ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... being under necessity of thieving again in a week or two's time. Yet when he had in this manner got money, he was so ready to throw it away on women and at play, that in a short space his pocket was at as low an ebb as ever. When his cash was quite gone, he associated himself sometimes with a crew of footpads, and in that method got sufficient plunder to subsist until something offered in his own way, to which he would willingly ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... passing ships, for he was fully occupied with the many odd jobs which are sure to present themselves, when a ship gets under weigh. The wind was favourable, and the Paramatta ran down to the mouth of the Medway before the tide had ceased to ebb. She anchored for three hours, and then made her way up to Chatham, where she brought up ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... The ebb and flow of life remains much the same from day to day. The earliest street sound, before the dawn breaks, is the rattle of the trams, the meat-carts on their way to the markets, the dust-carts and the watering-carts; and then, just as ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... hundred talents, or ten million dollars; just one-half of which wras paid by the port of Alexandria. This was at a time when the foreign trade had, through the faults of the government, sunk down to its lowest ebb; when not more than twenty ships sailed each year from the Red Sea to India; when the free population of the kingdom had so far fallen off that it was not more than three millions, which was only half of what it had been in the reign of Ptolemy Soter, though Alexandria ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... inland lakes, or among inland mountains, but in some remote and unknown ocean on the other side of the continent, which ocean the advocates of this theory supposed might be subject to some great annual ebb and flow; and from this it might result that at stated periods an unusual tide of waters might be poured into the channel of the river. This, however, could not be true, for the waters of the inundation were fresh, ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... destination at little cost. I recall an occurrence that happened when the schooner was anchored in Carquinez Straits, opposite the soldiers' camp on shore. We were waiting for daylight and a fair wind; the schooner lay anchored at an ebb-tide, and about daylight Ord and I had gone ashore for something. Just as we were pulling off from shore, we heard the loud shouts of the men, and saw them all running down toward the water. Our attention thus drawn, we saw something swimming in the water, and pulled ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... memories of such things as Bourbon roses, rubies, and tropical midnights; her moods recalled lotus-eaters and the march in "Athalie"; her motions, the ebb and flow of the sea; her voice, the viola. In a dim light, and with a slight rearrangement of her hair, her general figure might have stood for that of either of the higher female deities. The new moon behind her head, an old helmet upon it, a diadem of accidental ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... origin from Montaigne. It is commonly supposed that Shakespeare must have borrowed this reference from the translation. He may have taken it directly from the French. 6. Show the bearing of Sebastian's phrase, 'I am standing water,' with its context. (That is, at the turn of the tide between ebb and full.) 7. 'The man i' the moon,' and the folk-lore about it. 8. Natural history on the island. (Poet-Lore, April, 1894. Notes ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... was preaching once a month. This was all. There were no prayer-meetings, no meeting together every first day of the week to break break and read the Holy Scriptures. Christian morality was at a low ebb, and ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... made a pathetic little joke. He said, "You once gave me shelter. Maybe I'll have to get one of the many mansions ready for you." Soon after that the ebb tide began to run out, and the preacher died in the ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... a tideless sea, upon the shore, is at once unrestful and monotonous; in this only too closely resembling the beat of the human heart, when the glory of youth has departed. The splendid energy of the flow and grateful easing of the ebb alike are denied it. Foul or fair, shine or storm, it pounds and pounds—as a thing chained—without relief of advance or of recession, always at the same level, always ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... all would seem To souls that from the aeonian ebb and flow Came down to hear once more the to and fro Swing o' the clock ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... free passage through it, cannot upon so short and quick mutations of pressure, be able to produce any sensible effect at such a distance. Besides that, to confirm this hypothesis, there are many Examples found in Natural Historians, of Springs that do ebb and flow like the Sea: As particularly, those recorded by the Learned Camden, and after him by Speed, to be found in this Island: One of which, they relate to be on the Top of a Mountain, by the small Village Kilken in Flintshire, Maris aemulus qui ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... wife and children with some approach to 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
... to her as the fruits of love, as the passionately eager fulfilling of her destiny. It had been thrust upon her. She had accepted it as a last resort at a time when her powers of resistance to misfortune were at the ebb. ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... remains that it was a deadly blow at military discipline. The fact that Kerensky's predecessor, Guchkov, had to appear at a convention of soldiers' delegates and explain and defend his policies showed that discipline was at a low ebb. It brought the army into the arena of politics and made questions of military strategy subject ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... "exhaustion" so freely are prepared to define it, is a matter for speculation. The idea seems to be a phase in which the production of equipped forces ceases through the using up of men or material or both. If the exhaustion is fairly mutual, it need not be decisive for a long time. It may mean simply an ebb of vigour on both sides, unusual hardship, a general social and economic disorganisation and grading down. The fact that a great killing off of men is implicit in the process, and that the survivors will be largely under ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... foundation. The exterior ornaments of the building, being of a light sandy stone, have been wasted, as described in the text. Lindisfarne is not properly an island, but rather, as the Venerable Bede has termed it, a semi-isle; for, although surrounded by the sea at full tide, the ebb leaves the sands dry between it and the opposite coast of Northumberland, from which it ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... disagreeably 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 war that ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... 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 in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... are you doing down here in the valley so late in the evening?" He tried to say it superiorly, paternally, as an older man might have said it—and was not altogether successful. The mere sight of her set his blood aswing in the old throbbing ebb and flow, though, if he had known it, it was pity now rather than passion ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... where the beach is entirely corn posed of small round boulders. They form a long ridge, the outer verge of which is always in motion, rolling to and fro with a crash like a volley of musketry at the rush and ebb of every wave. To climb over this ridge of moving stone balls is quite disagreeable; but after that one has only about twenty yards to walk, and the Sai-no-ike appears, surrounded on sides by wooded hills. It ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... that I had experienced the ebb of some vitality, for it is the saddest thing about us that this bright spirit with which we are lit from within like lanterns, can suffer dimness. Such frailty makes one fear that extinction is our final destiny, and it saps us with numbness, and we are less than ourselves. Seven nights had ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... On one side lay the impenetrable forest; on the other, Charnisay's fleet. On the night of June 12th, La Tour and his wife slipped from a little sally port in the dark, ran along the shore, and, evading spies, succeeded in rowing out to the store ship. Ebb tide carried them far from the four men-of-war anchored fast in front of the abandoned fort. Then sails out, the store ship fled for Boston, where La Tour and his wife appealed ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... cheerful prophecies of his early employment. To be sure, Max had taken little stock in this consoling optimism, but it had all helped to keep alive his spirits, which had sunk again to their lowest ebb ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... sentimental maids that the good who are weak defeat the wicked who are strong. We shattered many an assailant before the last stake was dared, but in the end they shattered my sword-arm, which left me helpless as a hull at ebb-tide. Then Godefroy, the craven rascal, must throw up his arms for surrender, which gave Le Borgne opening to bring down the butt of his gun on ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... waters, until, the banks gradually disappearing, the whole neighbourhood is converted into a morass. The Euphrates and its branches do not at all times succeed in reaching the sea: they are lost for the most part in vast lagoons to which the tide comes up, and in its ebb bears their waters away with it. Reeds grow there luxuriantly in enormous beds, and reach sometimes a height of from thirteen to sixteen feet; banks of black and putrid mud emerge amidst the green ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... a man vanishes in that sudden way his body is generally found in a clump of blackberry bushes, months afterwards, or left somewhere on the flats by an ebb tide." ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Spanish galleons from the Indies, rose on the ruins of a house of Our Lady in that beautiful valley through which the Thames, not yet defiled by the precincts of a great capital, nor rising and falling with the flow and ebb of the sea, rolls under woods of beech round the gentle hills of Berkshire. Beneath the stately saloon, adorned by Italian pencils, was a subterraneous vault, in which the bones of ancient monks had sometimes been found. In this dark chamber some zealous and daring opponents of the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... would soon 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 in the most ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... unknown land. A few years later and, with rhythmic sway of black bodies and dip of many oars, came the barges of the river planters. Right royally came the lords of the wilderness—members of the Council perhaps, and in brave gold-laced attire—dropping down with the ebb tide to the tiny capital in the island marshes. And up the stream came ships from "London Towne," spreading soft white clouds of canvas where sail was never seen before; and carrying past the naked Indian in his ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... degree in which it is continued. There is always the same flow from God. There are ebbs and flows in the spiritual power of the Church. Yes! and the tide runs out of your harbours. Is there any less water in the sea because it does? So the gift may ebb away from a man, from a community, from an epoch, not because God's manifestation and bestowment fluctuate, but because our receptivity changes. So we dismiss, and are bound to dismiss, if we are Christians, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... expresses elevated 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 ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... frequently behold men of the most sprightly genius, by giving the reins to their passions, lost to society, and reduced to the lowest ebb of misery and despair? Do we not frequently behold persons of the most penetrating discernment and happy turn for polite literature, by mingling with the sons of sensuality and riot, blasted in the bloom of life? Such was the fate of the ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... people's. Even if Owen's marriage is a mistake, and has to be paid for, I believe he'll learn and grow in the paying. Of course I can't make Madame de Chantelle see this; but I can remind her that, with his character—his big rushes of impulse, his odd intervals of ebb and apathy—she may drive him into some worse blunder if she ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... place to be at Chesterfield's inlet; that the reason of their coming back was they met the other boat which had been five leagues further, and the crew told them the water was much fresher and shallower there; but where he was the water was fifty fathoms deep, and the tide very strong; the ebb six hours and the flood two, to the best of his remembrance; that it is not common for the tide to flow only two hours; but he imagines it to be obstructed by another tide from the westward; that the rapidity of the tide upwards was so great, that ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... to hear that the old gentleman was going to lead a new life, for it was pretty evident that his old one would not last him much longer. The mere exertion of protracted chuckling reduced him to a fearful ebb of coughing and gasping; it was some minutes before he could find breath to remark that the girl was ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... desperate effort of every physical and moral nerve to throw off the weight; and hence the heaviest anguish often precedes a return tide of joy and courage. So was it now with Tom. The atheistic taunts of his cruel master sunk his before dejected soul to the lowest ebb; and, though the hand of faith still held to the eternal rock, it was a numb, despairing grasp. Tom sat, like one stunned, at the fire. Suddenly everything around him seemed to fade, and a vision ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... "when?" and "how?" were the burden of the child's eager speech. Nothing seemed to have escaped her quick ears or eyes, no natural phenomena of the open; life, birth, movement, growth, the flow, and ebb of tides, thunder pealing from high-piled clouds, the sun shining through fragrant falling rain, mists that grew ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... the life-blood seemed to ebb away from Ursula, and within the emptiness a heavy despair gathered. Her passion seemed to bleed to death, and there was nothing. She sat suspended in a state of complete nullity, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... had the control over our store-houses and granaries, to complete the master-piece, to reduce that Leipzig, which had once patiently sustained, without being entirely exhausted, the burdens of a war that lasted seven years—to reduce it, I say, in six months, to so low an ebb, that even the opulent were in danger of perishing with hunger; that reputable citizens could no longer procure the coarsest fare; and that, though their hearts overflowed with pity and compassion, they were absolutely incapable of affording the slightest relief, not so much as ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... the five dollars from the rock and slipped them into the pocket of Rufus's jacket as he spoke; then slipped himself off the rock, took the fishing tackle and baskets into the boat, and then his brother, and pushed out into the tide. There was a strong ebb, and they ran swiftly down past rock and mountain and valley, all in a cooler and fairer beauty than a few hours before when they had gone up. Rufus took off his hat and declared there was no place like home; and Winthrop sometimes pulled a few strong strokes and then rested on his oars and let the ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... exceeded two millions. Of this total about thirty-eight per cent came from the British Isles, twenty-six from Continental Europe, and thirty-four from the United States. This increase was not all net. There was a constant ebb as well as flow, many returning to their native land, whether to enjoy the fortune they had gained or to lament that the golden pavements they had heard of were nowhere to be seen. The exodus of native-born to the United States did ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... two or three trips between Wilmington and Nassau during the winter of 1862-3 encountering no extraordinary hazards. During one of them we arrived within ten or twelve miles of the western bar too early in the night to cross it, as the ebb tide was still running; and it was always my custom to cross the bar on a rising tide, if possible. All the usual preparations had been made on board for running through the fleet, and as no sail was in sight we steamed cautiously in toward the land until we arrived within a cable's length of ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... strand crowned with a palmetto hut and a little white tent. Two finely 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 tide arose, when in the darkness ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... gently treasure obtain; Shall spear and sword sooner beseem us, 60 Grim battle-play, ere tribute we give." Then bade he shield bear, warriors advance, So that on the burn-stathe[9] they all were standing. Might not there for the water one war-band to th' other, When flowing flood came after the ebb, 65 Sea-streams interlocked; too long seemed it them Till they together their spears should bear. Then Panta's stream with pomp[10] [?] they beset, East-Saxons' chief and the host from the ships: No one of them might do harm to the other, 70 But he who by dart's ...
— Elene; Judith; Athelstan, or the Fight at Brunanburh; Byrhtnoth, or the Fight at Maldon; and the Dream of the Rood • Anonymous
... as the boat floated. The Blue Wanderer, even with her new lug sail, does not work well to windward. It is possible by very careful steering to make a little by tacking if the breeze is good and the tide is running favourably. With a light wind and in the slack water of the ebb the most that can be done is not to go to leeward. Priscilla, with the necessity of meeting a train present in her mind, unstepped the mast and took her oars. In twenty minutes she was alongside the slip where Peter ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... both the king and country serves: Prerogative and privilege preserves: Of each our laws the certain limit show; One must not ebb, nor the other overflow: Betwixt the prince and parliament we stand; The barriers of the state on either hand: May neither overflow, for then they drown the land. When both are full, they feed our bless'd abode; Like those ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... tied up alongside the wharf, her bow upstream, and lay tugging at her mooring ropes in the swift run of the ebb tide. Merriman's first glance at her was one of disappointment. He had pictured a graceful craft of well-polished wood, with white deck planks, shining brasswork and cushioned seats. Instead he saw a square-built, clumsy-looking boat, painted, where the paint was not worn off, a ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... piers, the harbor widens into a stone basin, capable of holding two hundred vessels, and full of water at the flow of the tide; but at the ebb exhibiting little more than a sheet of mud, with a small stream meandering through it. Round the harbor is built the town, which contains above twenty thousand inhabitants, and is singularly picturesque, as well from its situation, ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... love of which history has noticed and described but the final fruits. From the earliest recorded period Indian culture manifested a natural tendency to expand, which was intensified at various times by the comparatively low ebb of civilisation in the adjoining countries. One can readily conceive, therefore, the effects of the strenuous and persevering efforts of one of the most powerful Indian monarchs, Acoka Piyadassi,[152] king of Magadha, to propagate that aspect of his country's civilisation which is indissolubly ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... 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, these semiannual changes of level are far more ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... 84. "And this faith will continually grow, by acquainting ourselves with our own nature."—Channing's Self-Culture, p. 33. "Monosyllables ending with any consonant but f, l, or s, and preceded by a single vowel, never double the final consonant; excepting add, ebb," &c.—Murray's Gram., p. 23; Picket's, 10; Merchant's, 13; Ingersoll's, 8; Fisk's, 44; Blair's, 7. "The relation of being the object of the action is expressed by the change of the Noun Maria to ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... sorrow; in early morning it is joyous as a young child. I have seen it from a distance piled up to the sky like a wall of hard sapphire. I have seen it near at hand faint away from the shore, colourless, lifeless, in the heart-searching of its ebb tide. It is all things, at all ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... to see both York and its Minster, and Scarboro' and its bay once more. There is yet no revival of bodily strength—I fear indeed the slow ebb continues. People who see her tell me I must not expect her to last long—but it is something to ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... Lord, be grave, In season, gay; Let me be faithful to Thy Grace, Just for today. And if today my tide of life Should ebb away, Give me Thy Sacraments ...
— The St. Gregory Hymnal and Catholic Choir Book • Various
... a little? on the belly less? Begin; a glutted hoard paternal; ebb the first. To this, the booty Pontic; add the spoil from out Iberia, known to Tagus' amber ory stream. Not only Gaul, nor only quail the Briton ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... noticed that the people from out there by the open sea are, in a way, a people apart? It is almost as if they themselves lived the life of the sea. There is the rush of waves, and ebb and flow too, both in their thoughts and in their feelings, and so they can never bear transplanting. Oh! I ought to have remembered that. It was a sin against Ellida to take her away from there, and ...
— The Lady From The Sea • Henrik Ibsen
... light, my curiosity at a low ebb: I had seen Captain Trent once, and had no delight in viewing him again. It was a photograph of the deck of the brig, taken from forward: all in apple-pie order; the hands gathered in the waist, the officers on ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... inner being, lulling a perturbed spirit to rest, or awakening longing and aspiration, joy and sadness, according to the nature of the music and the hearer's mood. Some even take pleasure in formulating into words the sensations evoked by the ebb and flow of the tonal waves, and fancy they are thus deriving intellectual profit ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... all directions strew'd with debris from a storm. Timber creek, as I slowly pace its banks, has ebb'd low, and shows reaction from the turbulent swell of the late equinoctial. As I look around, I take account of stock—weeds and shrubs, knolls, paths, occasional stumps, some with smooth'd tops, (several I use as seats of rest, from place to place, and from one I am now jotting these lines,)—frequent ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... their master-stroke of strategy came from a masculine source. Lena Dubarri, who was the captain-general of their thinking department, met Waldo Orpington in the Mall one afternoon, just at a time when the fortunes of the Cause were at their lowest ebb. Waldo Orpington is a frivolous little fool who chirrups at drawing-room concerts and can recognise bits from different composers without referring to the programme, but all the same he occasionally has ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... looking its best, a boy came out of a dwelling that was half farmhouse, half manor-house, and that lay in a cup of low hills on the edge of a tract of moorland. The house belonged to a man named Walter Raleigh, of Fardell, a gentleman of good family whose fortunes had sunk to a low ebb. It was one-storied, with thatched roof, gabled wings, and a projecting central porch. Here lived Mr. Raleigh of Fardell with his wife Katherine, four sons and a daughter. It was a large family for such a small estate, and already the father was wondering what would happen to ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... of Montesinos and the xcist of Garcilazo) became Ynca, he found morals at the lowest ebb. "Ni la prudence de l'Inca, ni les lois severes qu'il avait promulguees n'avaient pu extirper entierement le peche contre nature. I1 reprit avec une nouvelle violence, et les femmes en furent si jalouses qu'un grand nombre d'elles tuerent leurs maris. Les devins ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... caress of the sea, and, calmer now, could see the sombre and confused mass of the Raven on one side and on the other the long white streak of Molene sands that are left high above the dry bottom of Fougere Bay at every ebb. She turned round and saw far away, along the starred background of the sky, the ragged outline of the coast. Above it, nearly facing her, appeared the tower of Ploumar Church; a slender and tall pyramid shooting up dark and pointed into the clustered ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... 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 where the mushroom hides, The chicory blooms and Peace sits ...
— An Ode • Madison J. Cawein
... town, and its inhabitants made preparations to provide a fitting reception for the first train, the arrival of which would mark a turning-point in the wooden city's history. I can remember each incident of that day perfectly, because it also marked the change from ebb to flood in the tide of our own affairs. We sat up late the previous night calculating the amount to our debit, which proved sufficiently discouraging, and endeavoring to value on the credit side work we ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... about 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 ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... Street near the Five Points Mission, but they have not been used as living-rooms for a generation. In cellars near the river the tide rose and fell, compelling the tenants "to keep the children in bed till ebb-tide." The plumber had come upon the field, but his coming brought no relief. His was not a case of conscience. "Untrapped soil pipes opened into every floor ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... Radicofani suited his action to the word, and busied himself with preparations for the journey, taking care, however, as he strode from ante-room to bed-chamber to keep his prisoner constantly in sight. The latter's hope of escape had reached a low ebb when Malespini knocked timidly. He had brought certain papers which the Signor had left in the library. Captain Radicofani received the secretary distrustfully and bestowed the papers among his own effects. "I will look them over," he commented, "and if innocent pass them ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... sing in ceaseless monotone The songs and sagas of the long-ago; Many and mournful are the memories blown Across the tireless tides that ebb and flow. ...
— From The Lips of the Sea • Clinton Scollard
... instincts should be seized upon and transformed into habits before they fade away. Says James in his remarkable chapter on Instinct: "In all pedagogy the great thing is to strike while the iron is hot, and to seize the wave of the pupils' interest in each successive subject before its ebb has come, so that knowledge may be got and a habit of skill acquired—a headway of interest, in short, secured, on which afterwards the individual may float. There is a happy moment for fixing skill in drawing, for making boys collectors in natural history, and presently dissectors and ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... half miles from the above-mentioned point on the same 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 the offing ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... of Poole Harbour are salt as the sea outside though fed by the rivers Frome and Puddle, and so of course its best aspect is when the tide is full. The erratic ebb and flow is more pronounced here than at Southampton and there are longer periods of high than low water. Brownsea Island, that occupies the centre of this inland sea, with its wooded banks of dark greenery makes an effective ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... now clothed in purest rays! How could the smallest comfort here be flowing? The ebb and flood, the coming ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... have found the energy to aid her efforts and lurch upon an elbow. A white-hot lancet pierced his wound, and though he locked his teeth against it a groan forced out between them. The woman cried out at the rapid ebb of colour from ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... out of their hive at early dawn to bid us farewell, as with the first of the ebb we weighed anchor to drop down the river. Our new friend, Kalong, returned on board to act as pilot; and in spite of his knowing no other than the Dyak tongue, we were able to trust perfectly to his guidance. ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... "bravo!" but wisely refrained. Her eyes were full of tears, though, and her resolution at ebb tide. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... pursued these researches," he says, "I was in the situation of a natural philosopher who follows the various species of animals and insects from the height of their perfection down to the lowest ebb of life; when, arriving at the vegetable kingdom, he can scarcely point out to us the precise boundary where the animal ceases and the plant begins; and may even go so far as to suspect them not to be essentially different. But, recollecting himself, he compares, for instance, one of the human ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... unnatural either, namely, that, when a brief intercourse had sufficed to reveal a nature on the common level, it sufficed also to chill the feeling that had rushed to the surface to welcome a friend, and send the new-found floating far away on the swift ebb of disappointment. Any whom she treats thus, called her, of course, fitful and changeable, whereas it was in truth the unchangeableness of her ideal and her faithfulness to it that exposed her to blame. She was so true, so much in earnest, and, although ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... had marked the close of the gay epoch in Wallencamp. It was too warm now for the livelier recreations of the winter. Religious interest, especially, was at a low ebb. At the evening prayer-meetings, the number of worshippers appeared but as a handful compared with the number of the unconcerned who lingered outside in the pleasant moonlight. Conspicuous among these latter, replacing the fervid debates of the winter ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... paid, besides, for Mrs. Graham's board at the hotel. He did not gain rapidly, for his strength was at a low ebb, ...
— Andy Grant's Pluck • Horatio Alger |
