"Fathom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... what became of him, for the woods were wide and deep, and it must be a long way to the other side. There surely could be no habitation within their precincts, and Florence's curiosity was strongly excited to fathom the mystery, which in her eyes ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... wandering saint, called St. Brendan, was not without its influence upon an enthusiastic mind. Moreover, there were many sound motives urging the Prince to maritime discovery; among which, a desire to fathom the power of the Moors, a wish to find a new outlet for traffic, and a longing to spread the blessings of the faith may be enumerated. The especial reason which impelled Prince Henry to take the burden of discovery on himself was that neither mariner nor merchant would be likely ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... overthrow are not hard to find. The lack of timely pursuit of Bluecher and Wellington on the 17th enabled those leaders to secure posts of vantage and to form an incisive plan which he did not fully fathom even at the crisis of the battle. Full of overweening contempt of Wellington, he began the fight heedlessly and wastefully. When the Prussians came on, he underrated their strength and believed to the very end that Grouchy would come up and take ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... barrister on the circuit, or wandering artist, accompanied any of the neighbours,—to him Lucretia gave more earnest and undivided attention. Him she sought to draw into a conversation deeper than the usual babble, and with her calm, searching eyes, bent on him while he spoke, seemed to fathom the intellect she set in play. But as yet, this evening, she had not made her appearance,—a sin against etiquette very unusual in her. Perhaps her recent conversation with Dalibard had absorbed her thoughts to forgetfulness of the ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... language of its own; it scratches the head, slaps the thigh, and sits down to eat like a man. I then said, "But they are not really men?" "Well, not exactly, but very near it; they are hairy all over, and some are perfectly black." The tail, according to his description, must be about a fathom long. We are to see them, and must, he says, secure one or two, dead or alive. Our spirit is out in his prognostications, the wallaby-hunters have not returned, and we ...
— Adventures in New Guinea • James Chalmers
... Thorndale Park, Captain Morville returned to make his farewell visit at Hollywell, before joining his regiment at Cork, whence it was to sail for the Mediterranean. He reckoned much on this visit, for not even Laura herself could fathom the depth of his affection for her, strengthening in the recesses where he so sternly concealed it, and viewing her ever as more faultless since she had been his own. While she was his noble, strong-minded, generous, fond Laura, he could bear with his ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mother moved away. The father bent his head upon his hand with closed eyes. The girl came back to her work, but the song on her lips had died. She worked silently with a far look in her eyes, trying to fathom it. ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... a great kettledrum, formed like a brazen caldron, tapering to the bottom and covered with buffalo-hide—at least 3-1/2 or 4 feet in diameter. Bernier, indeed, tells of Nakkaras in use at the Court of Delhi that were not less than a fathom across; and Tod speaks of them in Rajputana as "about 8 or 10 feet in diameter." The Tartar Nakkarahs were usually, I presume, carried on a camel; but as Kublai had begun to use elephants, his may have been carried on an elephant, as is sometimes the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... are the gntang, a cylindrical wooden vessel with a capacity of from 10 to 15 liters; the kabn,[1] which contains 25 gntang; the yard, measured from the end of the thumb to the middle of the sternum; the span, the fathom, the finger, ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... below. I had just relieved the deck, for in this blowing weather we must keep watch in harbour. The men were all at their dinner, when I heard the boat thumping under the main channels. I got into her to ease off a fathom or two of the painter; but as I hauled her ahead to get at the bend, it appears that the monkey of a boy who made her fast, and has been but a few months at sea, had made a 'slippery hitch,' so away it went, and I was adrift. I hailed them on board; but they did not hear me, ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... understand life, and his own place in life. And when you do not see your place, and are unable to appraise your own value, it seems that you are the only, the inimitable cucumber on the face of the earth, and that no one can measure, no one can fathom your worth, and that all are eager only to eat you up. After a while you'll find out that the hearts in other people's breasts are no worse than a good part of your own heart, and you'll begin to feel better. And somewhat ashamed, too! Why ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... the hard note in his voice at once, and seating herself on the window-seat set to work to fathom it. ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... be charmed to comply with Monseigneur's desires in every respect. Really, the elder Delgrado seemed to be even more approachable than his son; for the President was unable to fathom many of the social views propounded by Alexis III. This unheralded advent of the King's parents, too, betokened some secret move. He was sure of that, and, being a man to whom political intrigue was the breath of ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... degrading influences of Jones Minor and the First Book of Euclid. Some men find the modern English boy stimulating, and the old Egyptian humorous. Such are the born schoolmasters, and schoolmasters, like poets, nascuntur non fiunt. What I was born passes my ingenuity to fathom. Certainly not a schoolmaster—and my many years of apprenticeship did not make me one. They only turned me into an automaton, feared by myself, bantered by my colleagues, and sometimes good-humouredly ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... not fly from this, but try to fathom it. The more he thought of it, the clearer it became: ABSALOM'S HISTORY WAS HIS OWN. He began with rebellion. Naturally rebellion is the first step in a course which leads one from the highway—leads to passion and its ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... not given to a humble man like myself, occupying a position of no authority, to fathom what may be in the minds of those great Princes of the Church, the Archbishops. In effect they rule the country, and it is possible that they prefer to place on the throne a drunken nonentity who will offer no impediment to their ambitions, rather than to elect a moral young man who ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... eyes. "Oh, poor Wallace! Poor boy!" she mourned. And to Sue, "I hope you're satisfied! You started out yesterday to stop this wedding—your own brother's wedding!—and you've succeeded. I can't fathom your motives—except that some women, when they fail to land husbands of their own, simply hate to see anybody else have one. It's the envy ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... banisters led to this unknown region, but an oaken door forbade access to the stairs. We had to get around the obstacle by passing from the railing to the banisters, and walk down the outside of the worm-eaten balusters. There was a dark void below us whose depth we could not fathom. We had only a little taper (a "rat"), and that hardly let us see more than the first steps of ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... benumbing the men. One of the augurs, in consequence, advised that they should sacrifice to the wind; and a sacrifice was accordingly offered, when the vehemence of the wind appeared to every one manifestly to abate. The depth of the snow was a fathom; so that many of the baggage-cattle and slaves perished, with about thirty of the soldiers. They continued to burn fires through the whole night, for there was plenty of wood at the place of encampment. But those who came up late could get no wood; those therefore ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... fathom him," confessed Hodge. "If ever I saw a deceptive young scoundrel, it's that chap. At times he's so meek and modest that he dazes me. At other times he's so flippant and forward that I want to collar him and shake him ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... who seemed shy, nervous, and unstrung, something Stuyvesant had hitherto attributed to the startling and painful experience of the fire, and who, furthermore, seemed desirous of dodging the lieutenant, which circumstance Stuyvesant could not fathom at all, and if ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... physic in Chelsea, but without success. He wrote, however, an essay "On the External Use of Water," in which he seems to have partly anticipated the method of the cold-water cure. In 1753 he published his "Adventures of Count Fathom;" and, two years later, encouraged by a liberal subscription, he issued a translation of "Don Quixote," in two quarto volumes. While this work was printing, he went down to Scotland, visited his old scenes and old companions, ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... will never be weary of hearing and reading them? How much hangs upon the three little words! Love: it is the magic word which transforms a life. It means a heaven too great for mortals to imagine, or a hell too deep to fathom. To Nell the words spoke of a mystery which she could not penetrate, but which filled her heart with a joy so great as almost ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... scores of Johnson's airs for the songs 'Full Fathom Five' and 'Where the Bee sucks,' are preserved in Wilson's Cheerful Ayres or Ballads set for three ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... not fair, I say, to allow them to keep these secrets to themselves, and I think you will agree with me it was in the highest degree consonant with justice that we should make them reveal them all to us." Small wonder that we missed this vital point, that we failed to fathom the force behind the German chemical war, if such an eminent authority was left groping for the truth. There was no time for mature reflection with the problems of war supply pressing forward in an endless ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... finished his host introduced him to the prettiest of the girls and he paid them as many compliments as their heads would stand. He even took some trouble to talk to them, if only to fathom the sources of their unlikeness to Concha Arguello. He concluded that the gulf that separated her from these charming, vivacious, shallow young girls was not dug by education alone. Individualities were rare enough in Europe; out here, in earthly, but sparsely settled paradises, ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... after that ride. And being lectured was not at all what he had expected from the schoolma'am—and who can fathom the mind of a man? Weary gave her one complex glance, laid his hand upon the bridle and discovered that Glory, having done what mischief he could, was disposed to be very meek. At the corral ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... and the sides of our old friends the Eads gunboats, the four survivors of which were here, as ever where danger was. This iron, for want of wagons, could not be hauled round, so the boats ran up the river and dumped it overboard in a five-fathom hole, where the shifting sand would soon swallow it up. Iron plating was then too scarce and valuable to the Confederates to let it fall into their hands. Eleven old 32-pounders were also burst ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... her condition, she had certain breeding and inherent culture—in Woodhouse. The young men of the same social standing as herself were in some curious way outsiders to her. Knowing nothing, yet her ancient sapience went deep, deeper than Woodhouse could fathom. The young men did not like her for it. They did not like the tilt ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... be about eight miles per second; but if it should meet the earth in a head-on collision, the speed, when it struck, would be forty-five miles per second, a momentum beyond the power of the brain to fathom—indeed, man can not think of sixty miles per minute. Let a solid nucleous collide with the earth and imagination ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... all over!" she said, at the end, "and we know," she went on, with one of her rare revelations of the spiritual deeps that lay so close to the surface of her life, "we know that she is safe and satisfied at last, in His care." For a moment her absent eyes seemed to fathom far spaces. Barry abruptly broke ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... Wings; he only valued the smiling Babies in Belvira's Eyes. His Generosity was boundless, as his Love, for no Man ever truly loved, that was not generous. He thought his Estate, like his Passion, was a sort of a Pontick Ocean, it could never know an Ebb; But now he found it could be fathom'd, and that the Tide was turning, therefore he sollicits with more impatience the consummation of their Joys, that both might go like Martyrs from their Flames immediately to Heaven; and now at last it ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... lad, don't be a fool!" he said, with slow force. "You're consuming your own happiness—and hers too. You can't measure a woman's feelings like that. They are immeasurable. You can't even begin to fathom a woman's restraint—a woman's reserve. How can she offer when you are always demanding? As to her love, it is probably as infinitely great, as infinitely deep, as infinitely selfless, as yours is passionate, and fierce ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... word—"all right," Tom started them with his short, shrill "t'chit, t'chit," and a crack of his two-fathom whip right over the ears of the leaders, as loud as the report of a pistol. They sprang forward with a maddening energy, almost terrifying; but the coach was hung and balanced with such precision, and the Windsor road kept in ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... the thoughts that surged through Van's mind as he and Bob settled themselves into their places on the train and began the attempt to fathom the reams of directions Mr. Blake had sent them; pages and pages there were of what to do and what not to do on the long trip, the letter ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... Relations, acquaintances, strangers, even enemies, could be found who would do so. But who will so love me as to carry my crushing burden of sin? Who can fully understand its exceeding sinfulness I Who can fathom the depths into which I have fallen, or enter the body of death which imprisons my spirit. One only, the truest, the best, the most loving of all, my Saviour! And His hatred of my sin, and His sorrow for it, is just ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... which he had entered the harbour. However, in doing this, he was in imminent danger of striking on the rock. The master, who by his order had kept continually sounding in the chains, suddenly called out, 'two fathom.' Though our commander knew that the ship drew at least fourteen feet, and consequently that the shoal could not possibly be under her keel, he was, nevertheless, justly alarmed. Happily, the master was ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... This resolution, like every thing great and entire, was admirable; the motive sufficient and justified by success; the devotedness unparalleled, and so extraordinary, that the historian is obliged to pause in order to fathom, to comprehend, and to ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... Charley Seguis, her sudden abduction of Jean. There was something about these things that presented to his understanding a wall of insurmountable height. Then, he recalled his last interview with Jean and the suspicions that had been cast upon himself, suspicions he had vainly endeavored to fathom. What was in the wind, anyhow? he asked himself. There seemed to be forces at work over which he had no control, forces big with portent, heavy with menace. Like a towering thunder-cloud that casts its sickly green over all about, so these ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... the afternoon he drew out of the roar and commotion with a look of dumb terror on his countenance. He was defeated, puzzled, discomfited, frightened. Other cities had been to him as long primer to read; as country maidens quickly to fathom; as send-price-of-subscription-with-answer refuses to solve; as oyster cocktails to swallow; but here was one as cold, glittering, serene, impossible as a four-carat diamond in a window to a lover outside fingering damply in his pocket his ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... tried not to fathom her purpose for the head is useless when the heart usurps its functions, and Turan knew only that the woman he loved had denied him, and though he tried not even to think it his foolish heart urged but a single explanation—that she refused ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... glanced furtively at the pale face shrinking austerely behind the net-work of black silk leaves and flowers, and wondered at some change which he felt but could not fathom. He scarcely knew that she had never worn the veil before. And Richard Alger, had he known, could never have fathomed the purely feminine motive compounded of pride and shame which led his old sweetheart to unearth from the depths of a bandbox her mother's worked-lace veil, and tie its ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... fields of branching coral trees of luxuriant growth, among which, numbers of large fish were moving sluggishly about, as if they had got up too early, and were more than half inclined to indulge in another nap. As we passed over a sort of bar, where there was not more than a fathom and a half of water, we espied an immense green turtle at the bottom, quietly pursuing his way across our track, and though by no means a beautiful creature, looking infinitely happier and more lively than the dull-eyed wretches ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... now environed by a coffee plantation. Here are found three basins—results of erosion, most likely—that are described as natural bath-tubs. The middle and largest of these pools is partly filled with silt, probably occluding the entrance to a cavern which formerly opened into it, a fathom or so below the water-surface. This cave was the hiding-place of a native woman whose father had discovered her love for one of Ponce de Leon's soldiers. He forbade her to have anything to do with the enemies of his country, ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... skipper and the laborer's boy. No one saw it but the skimming sea-gulls and the fishes beneath the water; and even they did not see it properly, for they darted back with terror as the boat filled with water and sank. There it lay, scarcely a fathom below the surface, and those two were provided for, buried, and forgotten. The glass with the foot of blue wood was the only thing that did not sink, for the wood floated and the glass drifted away to be cast upon the shore and broken; where and when, is indeed of no consequence. It had served ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... me some account of his plantations. I understand from him that, like every wise man, he planted land that would not let for 5s. per acre, but which now produces L3000 a year in wood. He talked of the trees which he had planted as being so thick that a man could not fathom[209] them. Withers, he said, was never employed save upon one or two small jobs of about twenty acres on which every expense was bestowed with a view to early growth. So much for Withers. I shall have a rod in pickle for him if worth while.[210] After sitting to Chantrey for the last time, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... married their daughter, helping himself promiscuous, besides, to anything he fancied, with nobody daring to cross him nor complain. Stanley and I were afraid of him and that's the truth, and gave him a little credit for peace and quietness' sake, which was well worth an occasional can of beef or a fathom or ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... 'Steer for the three-fathom creek then,' said the mate. 'When we are on the other side of the point, Captain Clarke, we shall be able to land your horse and yourself. You will then be within a few hours' ride of ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... this to me? When clearly was disclosed what before I could fathom not, what joy was mine to find my friend was free from fault! In haste to wed thee to my hero with flying sails I followed thy track: but howe'er can happiness o'ertake the swift course of woe? More food for Death did I make: more wrong grew ...
— Tristan and Isolda - Opera in Three Acts • Richard Wagner
... had been granted in the lower court, and public opinion went with the decree, and was in a great measure satisfied by it. But this fight had really only just begun; it would go on in the higher courts, with new resources and infinite devices, which the public would be unable to fathom or follow, until by-and-by it would come out that a compromise had been made, and the easy public would not understand that this compromise gave the looters of the railway substantially all they ever expected to get. The morning after the granting ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... shuddering over the blue fire. Whatever logicians may say, we do not reason life's conclusions out. Clouds blacken the heavens till there comes the lightning-flash. So do our intuitions leap unwarned from the dark. 'Twas thus I seemed to fathom the mystery of those interlopers. Ben Gillam had been chosen to bring the pirate ship north because his father, of the Hudson's Bay Company, could screen him from English spies. Mr. Stocking, of Boston, was another partner to the venture, who could shield Ben from punishment ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... cardynalle, that translatede the Bible and the psaultere from Ebrew in to Latyn: and witheoute the mynstre; is the chayere that he satt in, whan he translated it. And faste besyde that chirche, a 60 fedme, [Footnote: Fathom.] is a chirche of Seynt Nicholas, where oure Lady rested hire, aftre sche was lyghted of oure Lord. And for as meche as sche had to meche mylk in hire pappes, that greved hire, sche mylked hem on the rede stones ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... When he was on his feet Droom was more than six feet tall; as he sat in the low-backed, office chair he looked to be less than five feet, over all. What became of that lank expanse of bone and cuticle when he sat down was one of the mysteries that not even James Bansemer could fathom. ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... reformers,—these attributing the general distress to governmental cowardice and incapacity, those to conspirators and emeutes, still others to ignorance and general corruption,—and weary of the interminable quarrels of the tribune and the press, I sought to fathom the matter myself. I have consulted the masters of science; I have read a hundred volumes of philosophy, law, political economy, and history: would to God that I had lived in a century in which so much reading had been ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... fathom the meaning of the rapid movement of these small bodies of rebels, but could get nothing out of it, except the supposition that our cavalry had pushed on up the road after we had passed Old Church. There might be, and doubtless were, several attempts made this day to ascertain ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... her and listening with affected interest to her mechanical answers, while trying to fathom those unsmiling, unearthly eyes that looked so ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... cried I, turning to the negro postillion, but that sable worthy could not understand my question. The most expressive pantomimes were as unavailable as words, and so in despair I turned again into the porch, and stood in a reverie. I was clearly a fathom deep in love, and as my extreme height is but five feet eleven and a half, that is equivalent to saying that I was over head and ears in love with the strange lady. I began to talk to myself. 'By Venus!' said I, aloud, 'but she is an angel, regular built, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... is the great poem of the Great Author. Not to learn how to read it, to spell out its meaning, to appreciate its beauties, or to attempt to fathom its mysteries, is ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... Holland, have jumped to the conclusion with, I fear, too much haste and eagerness. Besides many other insuperable difficulties, which an investigation of such a nature presents, there was one quite sufficient to defeat all attempts to fathom the subject, namely, the syntactic ignorance of the language to which the inquiry related. Indeed, to any man who knows and speaks four European languages, it will be at once apparent, that to seize upon, and note from the ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... the theory of logic generally. I grappled at once with the problem of Induction, postponing that of Reasoning, on the ground that it is necessary to obtain premises before we can reason from them. Now, Induction is mainly a process for finding the causes of effects: and in attempting to fathom the mode of tracing causes and effects in physical science, I soon saw that in the more perfect of the sciences, we ascend, by generalization from particulars, to the tendencies of causes considered singly, and then reason downward from those separate tendencies, to the effect of the ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... well content to leave it in 'the Dean's' hands, for he was most astute in management of men, and loved to fathom a mystery. ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... seeing that 'tis the custom of the country to eat off the floor and sit upon nothing. A pot to cook victuals in is about all we need in that way. But how we are to get anything to cook in it is one mystery, and" (clacking his tongue) "what we are going to drink is another, neither of which I can fathom. For, look you, Senor, if one may judge of men's characters by their faces or of their means by their habitations, we may dance our legs off ere ever these Moors will bestow a penny piece upon us, and as for ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... wholly without hope, and is only thinking of throwing away everything and flying to some foreign land. The commissioners say there is a spell upon him that makes him hopeless—yes, and that it is shut up in a mystery which they cannot fathom." ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... in books; were there such things actually in the family, and she had never known of them? A few hours ago and she had been unable to think of anything but her first ball, her new dress, her flowers; but she was seized now with the most intense desire to fathom this mystery. That it bid fair to be a sad mystery only made her more eager and curious. She was so young, so ignorant, there was still a halo of romance about those unknown things, ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... knew its value to the minutest ray of the diamond; that he had sharply challenged the enchantment of his first conception, and heard the right watchword, yet recognized that no human conception can fathom the marvels of the superhuman. I believe that the men we admire most, in the small group of great minds, are sufficiently necromantic to look two ways at once—to appreciate and to condemn themselves. So my ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... disappeared," Frank went on, "and Jasper came on the scene. There was some association between this girl and Jasper, which I have never been able to fathom. All I know is that he took a tremendous interest in her and tried to find her, and, so far as I remember, he ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... London during the riots of June, 1780. The poet had been introduced to her by Sir William Forbes, and frequently visited Gordon Castle. We find him, whilst London was blazing, sending thither a parcel of Mirrors, the fashionable journal, "Count Fathom," "The Tale of a Tub," and the fanciful, forgotten romance by Bishop Berkeley, "Gaudentio di Lucca," to amuse her solitude. "'Gaudentio,'" he writes, "will amuse you, though there are tedious passages ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... reason that Mr. Fenelby could not fathom Kitty laughed merrily at this, and then they all went in to dinner. It was a very good dinner, of the kind that Bridget could prepare when she was in the humor, and they sat rather longer over it than usual, and then Mr. ...
— The Cheerful Smugglers • Ellis Parker Butler
... that they are primarily not of human origin, but owe their existence and progress to those inherent faculties of man which have been bestowed upon him by an Almighty Being—faculties given not only to fathom the works of creation, and adapt them for man's use and benefit, but also that they might show forth the praise and honour of their Creator, as "the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... busy trying to fathom the cause of Pete's untimely mirth, the long-drawn howl of the big timber wolf floated over the valley and sent a new lot of shivers down my back. It was the rallying call used by the wolves to call the band together ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... muttered the farmer. Whereupon he lighted a candle, and turned towards the door leading to the second story. He was evidently in a great hurry to get his guests up-stairs. Watson, Macgreggor and George looked at one another, as if trying to fathom the cause of their peculiar reception at the hands of Farmer Hare. But each one silently decided that their only cue was to be as polite as possible, and refrain from any altercation ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... could not be. His own conception of history made this impossible. It is well said that he planned his history "on the scale of an ordnance map." He did what a German professor does when he tries to fathom English society by studying the Times newspaper day by day. The enormous mass of detail, the infinitesimal minuteness of view, beat him. As he complained about Samuel Johnson, he runs into "big words about little things." Charles's mistress, ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... vessel. The translator went entirely astray in this passage. See Thacher's Columbus, II. 388. The figure here given and the use of word pasos, normally, a land measure of length, instead of braza, "fathom," would seem to indicate that the 65 paces refers to the extent of shore laid bare, and not to the height of the tide. The corresponding passage in the Historie reads: "so that it seemed a rapid river both day and night and at all hours, notwithstanding the fact that the water rose and fell ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... and it is against the economy of nature to misuse it, or bestow it upon natures foreign to its own. If we pity the slave because he is not like ourselves, we shall probably receive his pity, in return, for some weakness or power in us, that covers an abyss which he cannot fathom, and from which he turns away in terror. He is adapted to his place, and so are we, if ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... movement by which the complex vision of the soul plunges into the abysses of stellar space, seeking to fathom, at least in a mental act, immensity beyond immensity, and gulf beyond gulf, is a definite human experience. It is the actual experience of the soul itself, dropping its plummet into immensity, and finding immensity ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... the expressive way his comrades had of urging him on. Nor could he fail to be deeply touched by their confidence in his ability to fathom the puzzle. ...
— In Camp on the Big Sunflower • Lawrence J. Leslie
... question: the only question before us, being, whether his language contained that meaning, or not.... To what extent the Prophets,—who, (we know,) studied their own prophecies[558],—were ever permitted to fathom their depth, is a mere matter of speculation[559]; delightful indeed, but in the present case quite irrelevant. In the meantime, we know for certain that Moses prophesied ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... the companion of her literary life. And yet two years afterward—at the age of fifty-nine—she surprised her friends by marrying John Walter Cross, a man much younger than herself. No one can fathom that mystery. But Mrs. Cross did not long enjoy the felicities of married life. In six months from her marriage, after a pleasant trip to the Continent, she took cold in attending a Sunday concert in London; and on the 22d of December, 1880, she passed away from earth to join ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... that be the case, and if this offer be made in all sincerity, may God reward you!" for it was impossible for his generous disposition to suspect his brother of treachery and to fathom the wiles of a crafty nature; hence it happened that he was so soon ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... after farce and comedy after comedy, until I wrote you something that would run. You do me justice when you give me credit for good intentions; but the extent of my good-will and strong and warm interest in you personally and your great undertaking, you cannot fathom nor express. ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... in great abundance upon this Island. They run like Honey-suckles either upon the Ground, or up Trees, as it happens, near Twenty fathom in length. There is a kind of a shell or skin grows over the Rattan, and encloseth it round. Which serves for a Case to cover and defend it, when tender. This Skin is so full of prickles and thorns, that you cannot touch it. ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... Jean spoken to her of Father Austin; she loved him already, but she had yet to fathom the nobleness of his soul. His single-heartedness and abnegation of self, his tenderness and quick sympathy (virtues tempering his fierce abhorrence of Paganism), his stern reprobation of the evil, and his yearning for the good, in the untutored ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... some in dreams assurd were Of the Spirit that plagued us so; Nine fathom deep he had followed us From the land of mist ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... me, but I now felt plainly that my principal was endeavouring (for reasons best known to himself—at that time I could not fathom them) to excite ideas and wishes in my mind alien to what was right and honourable. The iniquity of the instigation proved its antidote, ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... day came, however, at length when Julie flashed out before her aunt's astonished eyes into a complete forgetfulness of her marriage; she recovered the wild spirits of careless girlhood. Mme. de Listomere then and there made up her mind to fathom the depths of this soul, for its exceeding simplicity ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... the rocks in three-fathom water, watching the pollock catch prawns, and the wrasses nibble barnacles off the rocks, shells and all, when he saw a round cage of green withes; and inside it, looking very much ashamed of himself, sat his friend the lobster, twiddling his ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... how strong our arms are. And a strange thought comes to us: we wonder, for the first time in our life, what we look like. Men never see their own faces and never ask their brothers about it, for it is evil to have concern for their own faces or bodies. But tonight, for a reason we cannot fathom, we wish it were possible to us to know the likeness of ...
— Anthem • Ayn Rand
... knows he can be no other than Grettir, and he asks Grettir what had become of the men who were lost. Grettir bids the priest come with him to the river. There was a waterfall, and a sheer cliff of fifty fathom down to the water, and under the force was seen the mouth of a cavern. They had a rope with them. The priest drives down a stake into a cleft of the rock and secured it with stones, and he sate by it. Grettir ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... left leg; that he had the motive for which we have been looking; that he may or may not have the habit of biting his nails; that he is crafty, and that if he were to do murder it is almost certain his methods would be novel and surprising, as well as extremely difficult to fathom—in short, that suspicion points unmistakably to Rama Ragobah. That is easily said, but to bring the deed home to him is quite another thing. I shall analyse the poison of the wound and microscopically examine the nature of the abrasion this afternoon. To-night I take the ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... paying a very long call, and I could not understand it. All the time I was haunted with a vague and ever present idea that she meant to sell me. The more I tortured my brain to consider how, the less I was able to fathom her intentions. ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... over the Republic during the winter of 1860-'61. The impending danger was that war would break out before Lincoln could be inaugurated. Such secrecy was observed by the Republican leaders that even Horace Greeley could not fathom their intentions. Late in December John A. Andrew and George L. Stearns went to Washington to survey the ground for themselves, and the latter wrote to William Robinson, "The watchword is, keep quiet." He probably obtained this from Sumner, and it gives the ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... me too effeminate and languid to exert his will in the slightest particular. I had learnt to know his face better now; and to see that some vehement depth of feeling, the cause of which I could not fathom, made his grey eye glitter with pale light, and his lips contract, and his delicate cheek whiten on certain occasions. But all had been so open and above board at home, that I had no experience to help me to unravel any mysteries among those who lived under ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... such a compass towards the land as might be sufficient for a haven, wherein the great ships might lie in safety; and this he effected by letting down vast stones of above fifty feet in length, not less than eighteen in breadth, and nine in depth, into twenty fathom deep; and as some were lesser, so were others bigger than those dimensions. This mole which he built by the sea-side was two hundred feet wide, the half of which was opposed to the current of the waves, so as to keep off those waves ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... then seem that, in dealing with such a man as Andrew Johnson, it is the part of wisdom to suspect the worst. Without any special knowledge of the treasonable intrigue now going on in Washington, it is still possible to fathom the President's designs, and to understand the resources on which he relies. In the first place, his conceit makes him believe that he is the first man in the nation, and that he is not only adored at the South, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... will. And now stay, Lumley Ferrers, and hear me. I neither accuse nor suspect you, I desire not to pierce your heart, and in this case I cannot fathom your motives; but if it should so have happened that you have, in any way, ministered to Lady Florence Lascelles' injurious opinions of my faith and honour, you will have much to answer for, and sooner or later there will come a day of reckoning ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... could she have got that name? Well, I make no doubt, Ursula, that you are quite as good as she, and she as her namesake of ancient Rome; but there is a mystery in this same virtue, Ursula, which I cannot fathom; how a thief and a liar should be able, or indeed willing, to preserve her virtue is what I don't understand. You confess that you are very fond of gold. Now, how is it that you don't barter your virtue for gold sometimes? I am a philosopher, Ursula, and like to know ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... again? How full of the joy of life! Its currents swept by her unheeded now. Why had not God been merciful to her, that she could have died there upon the sea, she thought. Ah, poor humanity never learns His mercy; perhaps it is because we have no measure by which to fathom its mighty depths. She saw herself old and lonely, forgotten but not forgetting. But even then lacked she not opportunity; woman-like, in spite of her constancy, she took a melancholy pleasure in the thought that there was one still who hungered for the shattered remnants of her broken heart, ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Another had climbed over the tender and ordered the runner to hold up. All this was regular programme, as I had explained to Miss Cullen, but here had been a variation which I had never heard of being done, and of which I couldn't fathom the object. When the train had been stopped, the man on the tender had ordered the fireman to dump his fire, and now it was lying in the road-bed and threatening to burn through the ties; so my first order was to ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... but unexplained. The most formidable men are her friends, and why? Nobody dares to fathom the mystery. Then is this person the ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... help me! God help me, I will speak!" said John, as he caught the girl to his breast in a fierce embrace. "I love you, I love you! God Himself only knows how deeply, how passionately! I do not know. I cannot fathom its depths. With all my heart and soul, with every drop of blood that pulses through my veins, I love you—I adore you. Give me your lips, my ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... for all-men who were now driven forward with a whip, laughed to scorn by their new masters, and forced to drink the bitter draught of humiliation along with the sweet poison of bribery. They were warned to study well the intercepted letters of Curiel, in order fully to fathom the deep designs and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Gods are just— But how can finite measure infinite? Reason! alas, it does not know itself! Yet man, vain man, would, with this, short-lined plummet, Fathom the vast abyss of heavenly justice. Whatever is, is in its causes just, Since all things are by fate. But purblind man Sees but a part o'the chain; the nearest links; His eyes not carrying to that equal beam, That poises ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... with very great attention. After the action I shifted my flag to her, so that I might the more easily communicate my orders to, and collect the ships, and towed the Royal Sovereign out to seaward. The whole fleet were now in a very perilous situation; many dismasted; all shattered; in thirteen fathom water off the shoals of Trafalgar; and when I made the signal to anchor, few of the ships had an anchor to let go, their cables being shot. But the same good Providence which aided us through such a day preserved us in the night, ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... all that came in his way. It struck me as being a remarkable mixture of shrewdness and of absurdity. The reasoning was close and intense, but the deductions appeared to me to be far-fetched and exaggerated. The writer claimed by a momentary expression, a twitch of a muscle or a glance of an eye, to fathom a man's inmost thoughts. Deceit, according to him, was an impossibility in the case of one trained to observation and analysis. His conclusions were as infallible as so many propositions of Euclid. So startling ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... very much impressed with the idea that the destroyed brasses never had been used at all; but had been engraved, and then, from circumstances that of course we cannot hope to fathom, thrown on one side till the metal might be used for some other purpose. This, I think, is a more probable, as well as a more charitable explanation than the one usually given of the so-called ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.04.06 • Various
... widely when he saw his master go out into the dark, for his only escort a black Carthaginian sailor with a dirk a cubit long. Democrates did not even ask for a lantern. None of the servants could fathom their master's doings of late. He gave strappings when they asked questions, ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... that this pestilence is a chastisement upon a blind and foolish people; and if it strikes the innocent as well as the guilty, if it falls as heavily upon the spotless virgin as upon the hoary sinner, remember that it is not for us to measure the workings of Omnipotence with the fathom-line of our earthly intellects; or to say this fair girl should be spared, and that hoary sinner taken. Has not the Angel of Death ever chosen the fairest blossoms? His business is to people the skies rather than to depopulate the earth. The innocent ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... their uncanniness there is no doubt. We do not, and never shall, fathom the depth of a Chinaman's brain. After mutually looking at the same object from widely-different points of view we express our ideas, talk them over and invite criticism, while he—is silent. He listens to us and agrees, but keeps his own views to himself. We want to explain everything; ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... searchingly at the girl, as if striving to fathom her thoughts; then throwing her head back, with the haughty air which Edna had remarked in St. Elmo, she compressed her lips, lowered her veil, and remained silent and abstracted until ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... so useful and necessary for a commander as to be able to see through the intentions and designs of his adversary. And because it is hard to come at this knowledge directly, the more credit is due to him who reaches it by conjecture. Yet sometimes it is easier to fathom an enemy's designs than to construe his actions; and not so much those actions which are done at a distance from us, as those done in our presence and under our very eyes. For instance, it has often happened that when a battle has lasted till nightfall, ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... of preserving liberty, when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder. I have not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion, to see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depth of the abyss below; nor could I regard him as a safe counsellor in the affairs of this government, whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering, not how the Union should be best preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... other side of Gideon Vetch—of that man of ignoble circumstances and infinite magnanimity! How could any one understand him? How, above all, could any one judge him? How could one fathom his power for good or for evil? She beheld him suddenly as a man who was inspired by an exalted illusion—the illusion of human perfectibility. In the changing world about her, the breaking up and the renewing, the dissolution and readjustment of ideals; in the modern conflict ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... fathoms, sixteen cattees; white Parcallas twelve cattees; Salalos Ytam twelve and fourteen cattees; Turias and Tape Turias one and two cattees; Patola of two fathoms, fifty and sixty cattees; those of four fathoms and of one fathom at proportional prices; for twenty-eight pounds of rice, a dollar; Sago, which is a root of which the natives make their bread, is sold in bunches, and was worth a quarter of a dollar the bunch; velvets, sattins, taffetics, and other silk goods of China ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... gazed upstream. All seemed peaceful in that direction, but he suddenly realized that the sound he had heard was increasing in volume. He could now hear a succession of hollow reports, the meaning of which he could not fathom. He asked his ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... Jeudy-Dugour sold copies or originals, and whether he made the copies, if copies they were, from the Library, which was, however, rigorously closed during the reign of Nicholas I., are literary secrets which it is impossible to fathom. So far as Diderot is concerned, some of the spirit of mystification that haunted literature in the eighteenth century still hovers about it in the nineteenth. This we shall presently find in a still more interesting ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... Saint-Denis. Instead of the ancient stone, instead of the antique architecture, haughty and royal even in the sewer, with pavement and string courses of granite and mortar costing eight hundred livres the fathom, he would have felt under his hand contemporary cheapness, economical expedients, porous stone filled with mortar on a concrete foundation, which costs two hundred francs the metre, and the bourgeoise masonry ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... back to the room, passing through the sea of faces to get there; for all; except his helpless father, had come from their seats to gather round and about that strange mystery in the hall, to try to fathom it. Mr. Channing gave one long, keen glance at Arthur's face—which was very unlike Arthur's usual face just then; for all its candour seemed to have gone out of it. He did not speak to him; he called in one ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... and, by being real pleasant to all the car men, I found out, quite by the way and private, how she might have got on, and where any girl had got off, till by patience and perseverance I got on your track; and I've been eight months trying to fathom your deepness and win your affections. The more fool I! For to try to win what hasn't any more existence than the pot at the rainbow's tail is clear waste of time. Deep you are; but you haven't got any of the commodity of affection in ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... strain" (rejoins the Drawer of the Wine)* "The dizzy depths of Inf'inite Power to fathom with your foot ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... fellow, with a voice rendered hoarse and rough by constantly shouting his wares. But by the whispered words that had passed I knew that Ambler was in his confidence. The nature of this I had several times tried to fathom. ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... is growing with unprecedented vigour, is their home. There, the place to which every race on earth sends a representative, the pulse of the whole world is throbbing. There, whoever does not run with the rest is run over; there, but one thing is important—actual life. Science has undertaken to fathom it, and the results which it gains with measures and numbers is of a different value and more lasting than that which the idle sport of the intellects of the older philosophers obtained. But art, her nobler sister, must pursue the same paths. To copy life as it is, to reproduce ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... peace, and that such was not the love she needed. Keith alone could give her true love. And she was in Keith's arms, puzzled and lethargic with something that was only not despair because she could not fathom her ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... broad, open forehead, a nose somewhat delicately cut, a wide mouth, with thin lips, and teeth of dazzling whiteness. Her whole aspect was that of physical and mental health,—not only removed from morbid sensitiveness, but as far from sentiment even as a breezy spring wind, and yet as prompt to fathom it in others as the wind ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... in your speech; your eyes now veiled, Where the light leaped to hear me voice his fame, Your blushes and your pallor have betrayed That which should lie uncounted fathom deep— The secret ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... another; his bodyguard consisted of mutually hostile mercenaries; his captains in the field were watched and thwarted by commissioners appointed to check them at the point of successful ambition or magnificent victory. The historian has a hard task when he tries to fathom the Visconti's schemes, or to understand his motives. Half the Duke's time seems to have been spent in unravelling the webs that he had woven, in undoing his own work, and weakening the hands of his chosen ministers. Conscious that his power was artificial, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... pondered over it a moment and then said, "I don't understand what you want me to do, Willett," and his tone was very cold. "I don't see how I can help you. From your own account you have behaved either like a fool or a blackguard, and what I can't fathom is why Davies's commanding officer, or some friend or comrade, did not ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... at him with that aggravating, meaning smile; that smile which he could by no means fathom and of which she scarcely knew the meaning. "No," she said, "I don't want your money. You couldn't hire me to leave the bluegrass till I've ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... double-lock the doors, and begin to study timetables with a view to quitting Paris on the first train leaving for anywhere, the only drawback to a speedy consummation of this happy prospect being that no living creature can fathom ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... mysteries. But he was content to thank God for having admitted him to the truth, without rashly or profanely lifting the veil of the sanctuary, and scrutinizing that which is within. He was persuaded that the attempt to fathom the secrets of God, or to measure his designs, would prove as hopeless as it would be impious, and therefore he bowed to the truths of faith with implicit submission. From this attachment of our saint to the virtue of faith, proceeded his zeal to instruct the ignorant in ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... likely to be settled in five minutes of a sermon of mine. But the practical point that I have to urge is simply this: there are two mysteries, the one that men can, and the other that men do, resist Christ's pleading voice. As to the former, we cannot fathom it. But do not let any difficulty deaden to you the clear voice of your own consciousness. If I cannot trust my sense that I can do this thing or not do it, as I choose, there is nothing that I can trust. Will is the power of determining which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... for granted that you would welcome a chance to brush Landis out of your path. It appears that I am wrong. I admit my error. Only fools cling to convictions; wise men are ready to meet new viewpoints. Very well. You wish to spare Landis for reasons of your own which I do not pretend to fathom. Perhaps, you pity him; I cannot tell. Now, you wonder why I wish to have Landis in my care if I do not intend to put an end to him and thereby become owner of his mines? I shall tell you frankly. I intend to own the mines, if not through the death of Jack, then through a legal ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... the lantern and dug a hole between four tombs, the length and breadth of the chest, Kafour plying the spade and Sewab clearing away the earth by basketsful, till they had reached a depth of half a fathom, when they laid the chest in the hole and threw back the earth over it: then went out and shutting the door, disappeared from Ghanim's sight. When he was sure that they were indeed gone and that he was ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... company by a female friend, and not daring to go home to her relatives; or else there was some still more intricate drama beneath it all; something horrible, inexplicable, the truth of which he would never fathom. All these hypotheses increased his perplexity. Meanwhile, he went on sketching her face, studying it with care. The whole of the upper part, the clear forehead, as smooth as a polished mirror, the small nose, with its delicately ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... got hold of a thought which no man has ever yet been able to fathom. Free will is a great mystery, nevertheless every child knows that it ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... fifty feet farther out. Some of them seem to be thirty feet out of the water; at one end they touch the cliff, and at the other there is a free passage. The water is very clear, but as far as I can judge I should say there is a depth of a fathom or a fathom and a half between the rocks and the cliff. Certainly a boat could row in to a position underneath ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... be his mental equal. She might be unable, with her small feminine mind, to fathom the depths and heights of that great intelligence, but still she was his wife. Perhaps, though she did not know it, it troubled her to see him so absorbed in his sister, for she was sure it was of Hester and her book that ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... There is a hammering and buzzing, and if you look around in the large open yard, amongst great up-turned copper boilers, for steam-boats and locomotives, Bloodless also here stretches out one of his fathom-long fingers, and hauls away. Everything is living; man alone stands and is ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... unable to fathom the mystery of the fanatical hearts of the colony, ventures to think that her love for the Japanese hero and his equally great devotion to her is the important human relation on the horizon. She flouts his obscure work, pits her charms against ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... lief not sing it. 'Twasn't made for singing. We chose it once when the gipsy stole the pa'son's mare, thinking to please him, but pa'son were quite upset. Whatever Servant David were thinking about when he made a Psalm that nobody can sing without disgracing himself, I can't fathom! Now then, the Fourth Psalm, to Samuel Wakely's ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... struck against the sands of Ceylon, and the mariners gave themselves for lost, without hope of recovery; when the Father coming out of his cabin, asked the pilot for the line and plummet, with which he was accustomed to fathom the sea; having taken them, and let them down to the bottom of the ocean, he pronounced these words: "Great God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, have mercy on us!" At the same moment the vessel stopped, and the wind ceased; ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... the air, Boyle was led to believe that there were many "latent qualities" due to substances contained in it that science had as yet been unable to fathom, believing that there is "not a more heterogeneous body in the world." He believed that contagious diseases were carried by the air, and suggested that eruptions of the earth, such as those made by earthquakes, might send up "venomous exhalations" that produced diseases. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... closer to me with an air of briskness which had been foreign to him before. For some reason, which I was unable to fathom, the introduction of Atherton's name seemed to have enlivened him. However, I was not long to remain in darkness. In half a dozen sentences he threw more light on the real cause of his visit to me than he had done in all that had gone before. His bearing, too, was more businesslike and to ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... result is one in which pity and terror, carried perhaps to the extreme limits of art, are so blended with a sense of law and beauty that we feel at last, not depression and much less despair, but a consciousness of greatness in pain, and of solemnity in the mystery we cannot fathom. ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... cease paddling, during which the boat lost considerable way, I was unwilling to discourage the men, and reluctantly gave up my intention of ascertaining the depth and the character of the bed. There was a general shout in the boat when we found ourselves in one fathom, and we soon after landed on a low point of mud, immediately under the butte of the peninsula, where we unloaded the boat, and carried the baggage about a quarter of a mile to firmer ground. We arrived just in time for meridian observation, and ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... they had were not light, but were big and square; nor were they planed smooth, but were rough and strong. Upon the shields with mighty strength they smote each other with their sharp weapons, so that a fathom of each lance passes through the gleaming shields. But neither touches the other's flesh, nor was either lance cracked; each one, as quickly as he could, draws back his lance, and both rushing together, return to the fray. One ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... Smollett's characters. The resemblance to Don Quixote is only just enough to make it interesting to the critical reader, without giving offence to any body else. The indecency and filth in this novel are what must be allowed to all Smollett's writings.—The subject and characters in Count Fathom are, in general, exceedingly disgusting: the story is also spun out to a degree of tediousness in the serious and sentimental parts; but there is more power of writing occasionally shewn in it than in any ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... "I cannot fathom it," he said on returning to his master, "and, to tell truth, I wish we were well back in the forest again, for I like not this mysterious city and its ways. We have kept this town as close sealed as a ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... banks of the river gradually draw together and hearing unwelcome word of the freshening of its waters—on past the "gorge of the gloomy Saguenay with its towering cliffs and sullen depths, depths which no sounding-line can fathom, and heights at whose dizzy verge the wheeling eagle seems a speck"; on past frowning promontory and wild vineyards, to the foot of the scarped cliff of Quebec, now "rich with heroic memories, then but the site of a nameless barbarism"; thence, after ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... of necessity good confidential agents, or whether a fire-proof man was as a matter of course trustworthy, Frederick Trent threw himself into a chair, and, burying his head in his hands, endeavoured to fathom the motives which had led Quilp to insinuate himself into Richard Swiveller's confidence;—for that the disclosure was of his seeking, and had not been spontaneously revealed by Dick, was sufficiently ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... Shih-yin continued; "I have just heard the conversation that passed between you, on causes and effects, a conversation the like of which few mortals have forsooth listened to; but your younger brother is sluggish of intellect, and cannot lucidly fathom the import! Yet could this dulness and simplicity be graciously dispelled, your younger brother may, by listening minutely, with undefiled ear and careful attention, to a certain degree be aroused to a sense of understanding; and what is more, possibly find the means of escaping the anguish of ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... "Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange, Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Hark, now I hear ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... one another and up and down, and they wondered. For the ways of elephants are beyond the wit of any man, black or white, to fathom. ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling |
