"Gigantic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Department. The latter accompanied his superior toward Washington as far as Cincinnati, and there, in a parlor of the Burnet House, the two victorious generals, bending over their maps together, planned in outline that gigantic campaign of 1864-65, which was to end the war; then, grasping one another warmly by the hand, they parted, one starting east, the other south, each to strike at the appointed time his half ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... Seizing this from its bracket, Sir Frank retraced his way along the passage to the pink parlor, followed closely by Hope and timorously by Jane. A dreadful scene presented itself. The dainty little room was literally smashed to pieces, as though a gigantic bull had been wallowing therein. The lamp lay on the floor, surrounded by several extinguished candles. It was a mercy that all the lights had been put out when overturned, else the gim-crack cottage would have been ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... period of three months, during which, in many places, one must wear a mask as protection against the swarms of mosquitoes; but, on the other hand, the night is a time of darkness and horror, lasting nine months. Everything there is on a gigantic scale without the gradual transitions between extremes, upon which the quiet life here in the south is built; in other words, there are more occasions for fancy, adventure and chance, than for calm reasoning, and ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... enchained the attention of the multitude, and excited afresh their shouts and derisive laughter. And, in fact, nothing could be more striking or fantastic than this man. Notwithstanding the cool October weather, his gigantic figure was clothed from head to foot in gray linen, harmonizing strangely with the gray color of his skin and hair, which latter fell in long locks from his uncovered head down on his shoulders, and gave to the apparition the semblance of ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... wore white, and long, thread gloves which went above her elbows. Maddalena regarded her with awe when Amedeo mentioned a rumor that she was going to be "promised" to Dr. Marinelli, who was to be seen at her side, wearing a Gibus hat and curling a pair of gigantic black mustaches. ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... and in the Royal Academy and other galleries the works of the greatest living artists. Perhaps there is no one who has ever found time to see the British Museum thoroughly. Yet consider what it contains; or rather, what does it not contain? The most gigantic of living and extinct animals; the marvellous monsters of geological ages; the most beautiful birds, shells, and minerals; precious stones and fragments from other worlds; the most interesting antiquities; curious and fantastic ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... the idiot contracted herself by a mighty effort, while Lady Bassett attacked the fastenings, and, with infinite difficulty, they unhooked three bottom hooks. The fierce burst open that followed, and the awful chasm, showed what gigantic strength vanity can command, and how savagely abuse it to ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... companion to the Lions and Tigers and Panthers of the forest and jungle. This last may seem a strange assertion; but to any one who has listened critically to their sounds and analyzed their voices, the roar of the Lion is but a gigantic miau, bearing about the same proportion to that of a Cat as its stately and majestic form does to the smaller, softer, more peaceful aspect of the Cat. Yet, notwithstanding the difference in their size, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... since their seeds were first scattered over the infant soil, had felt the ax, but had grown up and flourished through its long generation, had fallen beneath the weight of years, been buried in green moss, and nourished the roots of others as gigantic. Hark! A light paddle dips into the lake, a birch canoe glides around the point, and an Indian chief has passed, painted and feather-crested, armed with a bow of hickory, a stone tomahawk, and flint-headed ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... and we'll threaten to put him out of business unless he comes to our terms.' But you overlook one important fact: that you are not mentally equipped to get away with this amusing impersonation! What! Do you expect me to accept you as leading spirits of a gigantic criminal system—you, Popinot, who live by standing between the police and your murderous rats of Belleville, or you, Wertheimer, sneak-thief and black-mailer of timid women, or you, De Morbihan, because you eke out your income by showing a handful of second-storey ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... tun? to the account of free personality. It is for this reason that at the periods when we find much strength and abundant sap in humanity, true greatness of thought is seen associated with what is gigantic and extravagant, and the sublimest feeling is found coupled with the most horrible excess of passion. It is also the reason why, in the periods distinguished for regularity and form, nature is as often oppressed as it is governed, as often outraged ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... indeed a scene of desolation into which the Rifle Brigade—the first regiment to enter the village, I believe—raced headlong. Of the church only the bare shell remained, the interior lost to view beneath a gigantic mound of debris. The little churchyard was devastated, the very dead plucked from their graves, broken coffins and ancient bones scattered about amid the fresher dead, the slain of that morning— gray-green ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... little girl who was very fond of adventure stories carried her family through all sorts of perils by land and sea. At one time they were shipwrecked and lived like the Swiss Family Robinson. At another time they were exploring Central Africa, and traveled about with three years' supplies in a gigantic caravan with fifty elephants. Yet another little girl had for her family any characters out of books that particularly fascinated her. Thus, when she was reading The Heroes, her family was reduced to one daughter, Medea, a rather terrible ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... the water; and soon in the slimy bottom, yards below, huge fat salamanders, long-lost and forgotten tadpoles as large as rats, gigantic toads, enormous flat beetles, all kinds of hairy, scaly, spiny, blear-eyed, bulbous, shapeless monsters without name, mud-colored offspring of the mire that had been sleeping there for hundreds of years, woke up, and crawled in and out, and wallowed and ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... people in the English kingdoms of Wessex and Mercia beheld to their dismay a number of strange, piratical craft upon the shores. The prows of the boats were shaped like dragons' heads, and round shields ran along the gunwales beside the rowers. From these boats came pouring out a wild horde of gigantic and bloodthirsty men, heavily armed, ravens' wings attached to their helmets and long hair streaming over their armor. The Saxons quickly learned that it was well to flee when these men appeared. Otherwise they ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... each by separate doors; Baba led Juan onward, room by room, Through glittering galleries, and o'er marble floors, Till a gigantic portal through the gloom, Haughty and huge, along the distance lowers; And wafted far arose a rich perfume: It seemed as though they came upon a shrine, For all was vast, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... field of action and the realm of the spirit. Had he lived in an earlier age he would now be a mythological personage; and even without the looming exaggeration and glamour of myth he still imposes. The men of to-day seem all of little stature, and less consequence, beside the gigantic creature who made his way with equal address and audacity in courts and councils, ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... noises made by hidden colossal things. The infantry tramplings, the heavy rumbling of the artillery, made the earth speak of gigantic preparation. Guns on distant heights thundered from time to time with sudden, nervous roar, as if unable to endure in silence a knowledge of hostile troops massing, other guns going to position. These sounds, near and remote, defined ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... lamp, and said to her son, "Here it is, but it is very dirty; if it was a little cleaner I believe it would bring something more." She took some fine sand and water to clean it; but had no sooner begun to rub it than in an instant a hideous genie of gigantic size appeared before her, and said to her in a voice of thunder, "What wouldst thou have? I am ready to obey thee as thy slave, and the slave of all those who have that lamp in their hands; I and the other slaves ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... Bog had made his second detour, and was approaching the corner of the favored block, when a novel idea struck him. The very night before, Bog had posted bills of the play, "Faint Heart Ne'er Won Fair Lady." The gigantic lettering arose in his mind's eye, like the cross in Constantine's. He had never seen the drama, and he did not know to what extent Ruy Gomez pushed his audacity, and won the Countess by it. But the name of the drama held the moral of it; and the moral, as applied to Bog's case, was: "Stop ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... main burden of her aunt's society, and a heavy burden she had begun to find it. Aunt Philippa had apparently determined to spend her time in transforming her young niece into a practical housewife—a gigantic task which she tackled with praiseworthy zeal. She had already instituted several reforms in the household, and her thrifty mind contemplated several more. Chris's attitude, which had at first been one of indifference, had gradually developed into one of passive resistance. She was, ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... Territory there are everywhere gigantic mounds raised by these termites, long, narrow, high, and always pointing due north and south. You can tell infallibly the points of the compass from the mounds of this white ant, which has ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... the late rain, already began to shoot, four emus were observed quietly feeding at no great distance, apparently heedless of our party. I approached them with my rifle, on a steady old horse, and found that this large quadruped, however strange a sight, did not in the least alarm those gigantic birds, even when I rode close up. I alighted, leveled my rifle over the saddle and fired but missed, as I presumed, for the bird merely performed a sort of pirouette, and then recommenced feeding with the others as before. I had no means of reloading without ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... such as a gentleman of the middle classes exhibits on suddenly discovering that he has been in familiar converse with a person of title, or a small trader on being brought into unexpected connection with a merchant prince. The gigantic character of the "operation" had invested this young man with an increased interest ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... so nice a body, father let it stand as monarch of the clearing. But few came into our clearing without seeing his majesty's presence. His roots were immense. They had been centuries creeping and feeling their way along, extracting life from mother earth to sustain their gigantic body. The acorn, from which that oak grew, must have been planted long before, and the tree which grew from it have been dressed many times in its summer robe of green, and it was, doubtless, flourishing when the ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... couldn't help but feel glad for him, while cold chills of misgiving crept up and down his own spine. Their voyage was ending at a far different place that he had pictured in his mind, and quite the opposite of the description which Morquil had given of gigantic mechanical development. ...
— Wanted—7 Fearless Engineers! • Warner Van Lorne
... I. But what I want to do is to find out who is marked out for the victim of this gigantic swindle. I want to put the victim wise. I'd be wild if I failed to find Don Luis's intended dupe and tell him just what he's ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock
... day before did not appear long enough to the people; they desired the destruction of thirty-six palaces of the nobility, and many were consumed by the flames. Houses were burning in the principal streets of the town, and the squares blazed with gigantic piles of furniture, pictures, books, and manuscripts—everything that was found was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... Kat took her book and went off to the farthest corner of the back-yard, where a gigantic apple-tree stood, with a magnificent seat of curled branches up in its centre, into which, Kat found her way, with some speedy climbing, and then sat down and looked thoughtfully at nothing for nearly half an hour. ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... far up in the north country, where the turbulent waters of the Little Vermilion cut through lanes of pointed fir and dark spruce, a gigantic moose stood, his ungainly body and huge antlers silhouetted against the sky of sunset. Below him the noisy, hurrying waters were churned into foam over innumerable hidden rocks; to the rear lay the wilderness, green, shadowy ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... 1757 being, in several respects, the greatest of his Life. From nearly the topmost heights down to the lowest deeps, his fortunes oscillated this year; and probably, of all the sons of Adam, nobody's outlooks and reflections had in them, successive and simultaneous, more gigantic forms of fear and of hope. He is on a very high peak at this moment; suddenly emerging from his thick cloud, into thunderous victory of that kind; and warning all Pythons what they get by meddling with the Sun-god! Loud enough, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... of such a gigantic idea from a brain supposed to be extinct came as a great but pleasant shock ...
— Skiddoo! • Hugh McHugh
... checked by granite boulders, lent an additional charm. Towards the centre of the forest these streams united to form a lake, or rather a natural moat, surrounding an island in the midst of which stood a gigantic oak. This was the only tree on the island; round it, at even distances, were placed twelve stones, beyond which a meadow glittering with varied hues ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... a deceitful wretch of the most reprehensible conduct, shall never escape from me today with life." Hearing these words of Drona's son, the (Kuru) army rallied. Then many foremost of men blew their gigantic conchs. And filled with delight, they beat their drums and dindimas by thousands. The earth resounded with loud noises, afflicted with the hoofs of steeds and the wheels of cars. That loud uproar ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... hand in one of hers, and with Mark on the other side walked down the path to the road. The darkness was intense there, because of the gigantic pine-tree which towered above the little house. "Are you there, Paul?" she called through the blackness. The little boy's voice came back, "Yes, with Toucle, we're ahead." The two men ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... background of whose childish imagination the astonishing Munchausen has not at one time or another, together with Robinson Crusoe, Jack-the-Giant-Killer, and the Pied Piper of Hamelyn, assumed proportions at once gigantic and seductively picturesque. ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... in this matter, although as long as the struggle lasted our discipline was always far from perfect. I do not intend to imply that the burghers were unwilling or unruly; it was only that they were quite unaccustomed to being under orders. When I look back upon the campaign I realize how gigantic a task I performed in regulating everything in accordance with ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... barren upland region for a couple of hours, reach the verge of the descent upon Caprese. Here the landscape assumes a softer character. Far away stretch blue Apennines, ridge melting into ridge above Perugia in the distance. Gigantic oaks begin to clothe the stony hillsides, and little by little a fertile mountain district of chestnut-woods and vineyards expands before our eyes, equal in charm to those aerial hills and vales above Pontremoli. Caprese ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... seemed a red-hot spot in the dense smoke before them, and set them the example by heaving a gigantic mass ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... wouldn't have had any letter at all; that great, grave face, coupling the seriousness of childhood and of philosophy, simply offered an irresistible temptation to the writer of the letter. There was something pathetic in the way the gigantic savage folded up his treasure and replaced it in his coat. I think Forsythe would have weakened had he seen it. Still, after we laughed, we felt all the better disposed toward Jimmy, so I don't know but it ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... eyes, such rays they cast, So prominent his eagle's beak is placed. But most their looks on the black monarch bend, His rising muscles, and his brawn commend; His double-biting axe, and beamy spear, 480 Each asking a gigantic force to rear. All spoke as partial favour moved the mind; And, safe ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... about her lay scattered like gigantic ruins. She stood upon a high boulder and peered around her. There was certainly something awe-inspiring about the place, the bright sun notwithstanding. It seemed to lie beneath a spell. She wondered if she would come across any bits of wreckage, and suppressed a shudder. The Gothic archway ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... together, with a gigantic effort: "No, no! You needn't be afraid, my dear. But, oh! what wouldn't I give for a ...
— Evening Dress - Farce • W. D. Howells
... the new-comer warmly and began to help off her enveloping furs. When these—coat, stole, and a muff of gigantic proportions—were at last shed, Mrs. Barry Seymour revealed herself as a small, plump, fashionable little person with auburn hair—the very newest shade—brown eyes that owed their shadowed lids to ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... part of the men in the town.'" He answered: "Well, by God, I'll do it—it would serve the scoundrels right!" And he tried to get out of bed and get his pants and his pistols—so that in the end it was necessary to telephone for the major, and then for Barry Chilton and two of his gigantic ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... in the doorway, blocking it with his gigantic form, his long-barreled revolvers holding the crowd at bay, while ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... were like a regiment of gigantic soldiers standing at ease under the sky and whispering together while they awaited the word of command. Their fragrance was like a benediction on the air. The moon, low down in the south-east, ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... of life! Hush! and I need it; Northern, gigantic,- Questing the silences, herding the sudden foam Down the Atlantic; Leaves from the autumn's store Shrill at my desert door, They and I out of one ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... the brain, spinal cord and sympathetic nerves, is not unlike a gigantic and complicated galvanic battery. The number of cells in the brain and spine are more numerous, by many millions, than ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... not tell; but a deadly sickness came over me—a cold clammy perspiration bedewed my limbs. I could only see as through a mist, but plainly enough I could make out that fold was gliding over fold in a horrible lacing and enlacing of gigantic knots, till slowly the reptile's head was thrust forward, with a gentle waving motion, rising from amidst a tuft of leaves; and then, as the gliding of the folds continued, the head descended in a slow, waving, swinging ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... noble form. 270 The third of whom the venerable king Inquired, was Ajax.—Yon Achaian tall, Whose head and shoulders tower above the rest, And of such bulk prodigious—who is he? Him answer'd Helen, loveliest of her sex. 275 A bulwark of the Greeks. In him thou seest Gigantic Ajax. Opposite appear The Cretans, and among the Chiefs of Crete stands, like a God, Idomeneus. Him oft From Crete arrived, was Menelaues wont 280 To entertain; and others now I see, Achaians, whom I could recall to ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... of light left behind her by the swimmer was visible on the calm surface of the lake. Suddenly it made an abrupt turn, and began to form a gigantic V. Evidently the little maid was impelled by desperate terror to reach the protecting canoe. When she came abreast of it she uttered a second cry, convulsively grasped the edge of the boat, and ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... a time, that at their hostelry they met an arrogant, overbearing knight, of gigantic stature and powerful frame, whose speech and carriage proved him to be not of German but foreign birth. He appeared to come from the land of Bohemia. He cast a contemptuous smile on Froda, who, as usual, had opened the ancient book of Aslauga's ...
— Aslauga's Knight • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... trees which so thickly and beautifully cover both banks: several sorts of large growth were noticed, among which was a tree of the trichillieae, natural order Jussieu (Trichillia glandulosa), which the colonists have flattered with the name of rosewood, and a ficus of gigantic growth, both of which are very abundant. We landed at Point Elizabeth and walked a mile back through a fine open country, well timbered and richly clothed with luxuriant grass and apparently much frequented ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... equality—the extirpation of one and the ruin of the other would be inevitable. This humanity, conceived in wrong and born in civil strife, would be baptized in a people's blood. It was, that our people might know, in time to guard against the mad onset, the full extent of this gigantic conspiracy and crusade against their institutions; and of necessity upon their lives with which they must sustain them; and their fortunes and prosperity, which exist only while these institutions exist, that ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... century. I think the American Revolution bought its glory cheap. If the problem was new, it was simple. If there were few people, they were united, and the enemy three thousand miles off. But now, vast property, gigantic interests, family connections, webs of party, cover the land with a net-work that immensely multiplies the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Gilgad and Ruler of the Dominion of Rinkitink was escorted by a grand procession to his boat and seated upon his golden throne. The rowers of the fifty boats paused, with their glittering oars pointed into the air like gigantic uplifted sabres, while the people of Pingaree—men, women and children—stood upon the shore shouting a royal ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... departure, and journeyed eastward. On the frontier of Nottinghamshire the Lord Lieutenant of the county, John Holles, Duke of Newcastle, with a great following, met the royal carriages and escorted them to his seat at Welbeck, a mansion surrounded by gigantic oaks which scarcely seem older now than on the day when that splendid procession passed under their shade. The house in which William was then, during a few hours, a guest, passed long after his ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... put out my hand to touch it, and fell back on the narrow floor with a scream of anguish. An inch farther, and these lines had not been written. As it was, the fall caught me by the fingers with the suck of a cat-fish, and it was only a gigantic wrench that saved me from slipping off the ledge. The jerk brought my head against the rock with a stunning blow, and for some moments I lay dizzy and confused, daring hardly to breathe, and conscious only of a burning and blistering agony ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... new Pont Louis Philippe. Strange masses peopled the river, a sleeping flotilla of small boats and yawls, a floating washhouse, and a dredger moored to the quay. Then, farther down, against the other bank, were lighters, laden with coals, and barges full of mill stone, dominated as it were by the gigantic arm of a steam crane. ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... Czar of Russia, some potentate presented him with a full-blooded Negro of gigantic size. Peter, the most eccentric ruler of modern times, dressed this Negro up in soldier clothes, christened him Hannibal, and made him a ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... a colossal one, and any sane man would think that gigantic efforts would be made to keep him amply supplied with food for his soldiers. But such is not the case. The men are absolutely starving. Many of the infantrymen are so weak that they can barely stagger along under the weight of their ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... couchant at the feet of a lady, is the valiant Laurcalco, lord of the silver bridge. He in the armor powdered with flowers of gold, bearing three crows argent in a field azure, is the formidable Micocolembo, the great duke of Quiracia. That other, of a gigantic size, that marches on his right, is the undaunted Brandabarbaran of Boliche, sovereign of the three Arabias; he is arrayed in a serpent's skin, and carries instead of a shield a huge gate, which they say belonged to the temple which Samson pulled down at his death, when he revenged himself upon ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... world? Jesus asked. Joseph had spoken casually; he regretted the remark, and while he sought for words that would explain it away a train of camels came through the dusk rocking up the hillside, swinging long necks, one bearing on its back what looked like a gigantic bird. A strange burden, Joseph said, and what it may be I cannot say, but the camels are my camels, and thou art safe out of sight under the ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... which we were reclining? Whose is that letter of your mistress? Do these belong to the cardinal? Upon my honor, this man fancies the world belongs to him. There you stood, stammering, stupefied, annihilated. One might have supposed the Bastille appeared before you, and that the gigantic Medusa had converted you into stone. Is being in love conspiring? You are in love with a woman whom the cardinal has caused to be shut up, and you wish to get her out of the hands of the cardinal. That's a match ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... morning in the hardwood forests of the mountains of Tennessee, when for half an hour every gorgeous tint of red and yellow was lavishly flaunted—and then the whole pride and splendour of it wiped out at once by a wind that sprang up; the encircling and towering reds and pinks of a gigantic amphitheatre of rock in the Dolomites; a patch of flowers right against the snow in the high Rockies, so intensely blue that it seemed the whole vault of heaven could be tinctured with the pigment that one petal would distil. And, more inspiring than them all, there came the recollection of ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... His gigantic specimen of theological argument is as near to perfection as we may expect any human composition to approach. He unites the sharpness of the scimetar and the strength of ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... young barbarian, who had, at seventeen years of age, become the autocrat of the immense region stretching from the confines of Sweden to those of China, and whose education had been inferior to that of an English farmer or shopman, had planned gigantic improvements, had learned enough of some languages of Western Europe to enable him to communicate with civilised men, had begun to surround himself with able adventurers from various parts of the world, had sent many of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in New Zealand, which was contemporaneous with the prehistoric Maoris and was largely used by them for food. One of the finest of the endemic flowering plants of the group is the boraginaceous "Chatham Island lily" (Myositidium nobile), a gigantic forget-me-not, which grows on the shingly shore in a few places only, and always just on the high-water mark, where it is daily deluged by the waves; while dracophyllums, leucopogons and arborescent ragworts are characteristic forms in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... gigantic form seemed convulsed by some horrible sensation; the deepest gloom darkened every feature; the wind from the unclosed window agitated his raven locks, and every hair appeared to writhe itself. His eyeballs glared, his teeth chattered, his lips trembled; ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... extent, proclaiming its real character—brule, as it is called, where the fires of the previous year had raged for weeks, and the blackened stumps now rose gaunt and ugly, bereft of branches, like gigantic match heads stuck into the ground, savage and desolate beyond words. The perfume of charcoal and rain-soaked ashes ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... a corner one, was part of a gigantic modern structure, with a decorated facade in pinkish terra-cotta, and topped by four pinkish cupolas. It was brutally, tyrannously imposing. It towered above its neighbours, dwarfing the long sky-line ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... on "the modern changes of the earth, as illustrative of geology;" but we now seldom hear the action, for instance, of the coast-waves, called a trifling and insignificant cause, when applied to the excavation of gigantic valleys or to the formation of the longest lines of inland cliffs. Natural selection can act only by the preservation and accumulation of infinitesimally small inherited modifications, each profitable ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... stands against the level reaches of the horizon. Upon the clear background of the sky, shew, distinctly, lateral spurs and a cone like to the mystic representation of Tanit. Towards the south, crumbling isolated crags appear, scattered about like gigantic pedestals uncrowned of their statues, or like the pipes of an organ raised there to capture and attune the cry of the ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... us a step nearer to the realization of the Rukh. Dr. Haast discovered in a swamp at Glenmark in the province of Otago, along with remains of the Dinornis or Moa, some bones (femur, ungual phalanges, and rib) of a gigantic bird which he pronounces to be a bird of prey, apparently allied to the Harriers, and calls Harpagornis. He supposes it to have preyed upon the Moa, and as that fowl is calculated to have been 10 feet and upwards in height, we are not so very far ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... was a large, irregular edifice of dark red sandstone with its walls covered closely with the clinging ivy, that had been clipped away only from a few of the doors and windows, and its roof over-shadowed by the top branches of gigantic oaks and elms that clustered around and nearly ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... left the precincts of the villa, and twilight stole upon us, wrapping all the landscape on which we looked back in softer folds of shade, and resolving its features into large, calm masses, as the horses labored up the narrow, stony road into a mysterious wood of gigantic olives, gnarled, twisted and rent as no other tree could be and live. The scene was wild and weird in the dying light, and it grew almost savage as we wound upward among the robber-haunted hills. Night ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... and, as they were rowed towards the shore, the scene every moment grew more beautiful. Gigantic trees draped in luxuriance of foliage hitherto unimagined, rose in the soft valleys and upon the towering hills. In the sheltered groves, screened from the sun, the picturesque dwellings of the natives were ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... beneath, that was seizing me in order to drag me downwards—and a hundred times, as the long flame from the candle flared up tremulously, and shook the deep shadows that encompassed me around, did I fancy that there were very hideous faces indeed mouthing at me amidst the gloom—and my own gigantic shadow—it was a vast horror of itself personified! It was a cruel thing, even in Mr Root, to leave me alone so many hours in that stupendous gloom; but his ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... measures 170 feet by 329 feet, supported by a central avenue of twelve massive columns, 62 feet high (without the plinth or abacus), and 36 feet in circumference; besides 122 of smaller, or, rather less gigantic dimensions, 42 feet 5 inches in height, and 28 feet in circumference, distributed in seven lines, on either side of the former. It had in front two immense courts, adorned by ranges of columns, some of which were ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... his training in the schools. Four of these windows represent what is called, for want of a better name, the New Alliance; the dependence of the New Testament on the Old; but Pierre's choice in symbols was as masculine as that of Blanche was feminine. In each of the four windows, a gigantic Evangelist strides the shoulders of a colossal Prophet. Saint John rides on Ezekiel; Saint Mark bestrides Daniel; Saint Matthew is on the shoulders of Isaiah; Saint Luke is carried by Jeremiah. The effect verges on the grotesque. The balance of Christ's Church seems uncertain. ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... Cape Ann, and the New Englanders had become well habituated to it before the growing scarcity of the fish compelled them to seek the teeming waters of Newfoundland banks. The value of the whale was first taught them by great carcasses washed up on the shore of Cape Cod, and for years this gigantic game was pursued in open boats within sight of the coast. From neighborhood seafaring such as this the progress was easy to coasting voyages, and so to Europe and ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... a brush and comb (between us), a toothbrush (each), a basin, some tooth- powder, some shaving tackle (sounds like a French exercise, doesn't it?), and a couple of big-towels for bathing. I notice that people always make gigantic arrangements for bathing when they are going anywhere near the water, but that they don't bathe ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... remaining there for the night; for she had brought a rushlight and shade with her, which with praiseworthy precaution against fire, she had stationed in a basin on the floor, where it was glimmering away, like a gigantic lighthouse, in a ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... loved Wally's way; he was always so pleased and interested over any plan that might be formed. Jim was wont to remark that if you arranged to clean out a pigsty, Wally would probably regard it as a gigantic picnic, and enjoy his day hugely. She smiled at him gratefully in ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... hexynitrate will break human eardrums at an incredible distance. But no sound came, though the seconds went by.... Then, two miles away, there was a second gigantic flash.... Then a third.... But there was no sound at all. The quiet of the hills remained unbroken, though Thorn knew that such cataclysmic detonations should be audible at twenty miles or more. Then lights flashed on above. Two—three—six of them. They wavered all about, ...
— Invasion • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... tried them. Oh, no, if it came to shooting he would give a different account of himself this time. Mr. James must look to himself. So must Abe Conroy. He would have no mercy. And he frowned darkly down at the gigantic weapons. ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... scoop out tortuous furrows upon the bottom, and hollow out rounded cavities against the walls, acting especially along preexisting fissures and upon the softer parts of the rock,—while the glacier, moving as a solid mass, and carrying on its under side its gigantic file set in a fine paste, will in course of time abrade uniformly the angles against which it strikes, equalize the depressions between the prominent masses, and round them off until they present those smooth bulging knolls known as the "roches ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... heels of my recital came the sound of hoofs in a hurry; and presently loomed in the doorway the gigantic figure of Tom Thorne, the sheriff. He peered, seeing nothing through the smoke and the twilight; and the old ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... it. The asphalt was like varnished ebony. Indistinct masses and huge dim shadows stood for the houses on either side. From the eucalyptus trees and the palms the water dripped like rain. Far off oceanward, the fog-horn was lowing like a lost gigantic bull. The gray bulk of a policeman—the light from the street lamp reflected in his star—loomed up on the corner as they descended ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... house-door from the keyhole, and put it in her pocket. Satisfied that her dwelling was safe, she drew one hand through the old man's arm, and prepared to ply her crutch-stick with the other. But the key was of such gigantic proportions that before they started, Riah proposed ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... like spokes of a gigantic wheel, from their fiery centre, were huge embankments, like those of Titanic railways, whose summits and sides, especially towards their extremities, glowed in patches with all the hues of the rainbow. As I gazed wonderingly on one of these,—a real mountain of light, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... as large as a pumpkin, and fever-and-ague fits had dyed his face of a corresponding color. He wore an old white hat, tied under his chin with a handkerchief; his body was short and stout, but his legs of disproportioned and appalling length. I observed him at sunset, breasting the hill with gigantic strides, and standing against the sky on the summit, like a colossal pair of tongs. In a moment after we heard him screaming frantically behind the ridge, and nothing doubting that he was in the clutches of Indians or grizzly bears, some of the party caught up their rifles and ran ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... when I was hunting in Ceylon, I was terrified to see a gigantic lion approaching, with the evident intention of devouring me. My gun was only loaded with bird-shot, and I had no other about me. The savage animal shook his head several times, uttered a loud roar, and prepared to spring. I turned to ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... knotty and uneven trunk. In obedience, however, to the order for silence, no one asked a question of the Mochuelo, who alone seemed aware of the meaning of this manoeuvre. Soon the two climbers reached the uppermost limits of the gigantic tree, and creeping cautiously along one of them, landed safely at the top of the precipice. For an instant they were visible like dark shadows against the starry sky, and then ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... The present gigantic struggle in Europe has no parallel in history. Not only will the equilibrium of Europe be affected and its effect felt all over the globe, but its results will create a New Era in the political and social world. Therefore, whether ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... silver mist. He moved softly, keeping to the shadows; but the streets were all deserted and very silent; the doors were closed, the shutters fastened. Not a soul was astir. The hush of night lay over everything; it was like a town of the dead, a churchyard with gigantic ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... with which the law was executed emphasized the remarkable flexibility, adaptability and efficiency of our system of government and the devotion of our people. Here was a gigantic project in which success was staked not on reliance in the efficiency of a man, or an hierarchy of men, or, primarily, on a system. Here was a bold reliance on faith in a people. Most exacting duties were laid with perfect confidence ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... give most thrilling and grand descriptions of the storms of the Atlantic, which broke upon the rocky coast with gigantic force, and tell thrilling stories of shipwrecks; how he saved the lives of some of the sailors, and how he recovered the bodies of others he could not save. Then in the churchyard he would show you—there, ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... dwelling upon a cloudy hill. Rather they are all the more visible for being large. They come all the closer because they are colossal. Their queer features and weaknesses stand out large in a sort of gigantic domesticity, like the hairs and freckles of a Brobdingnagian. We feel the sombre Murdstone coming upon the house like a tall storm striding through the sky. We watch every pucker of Peggotty's peasant face in its moods of flinty prejudice or whimsical hesitation. We look up and ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... druidical remains should be destroyed is, indeed, greatly to be lamented. At one of the late meetings of the Royal Irish Academy a communication was made of the intention of the proprietor of the estate at New Grange to destroy that most gigantic relic of druidical times, which has justly been termed the Irish pyramid, merely because its vast size 'cumbereth the ground.' At Mellifont a modern cornmill of large size has been built out of the stones of the beautiful monastic buildings, some of which still adorn ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... varied magnitudes of the stars. And the characteristics of the various savage races differ as widely as their varied physiognomy. There is no equality among them, mental or physical,—not even equality of degradation. The gigantic Patagonian, and the dwarfish Laplander; the wild Feejeeian, and docile Guinea Negro; the stolid Indian, and ant-like plodder of teeming India,—are but the outward symbols of that contrariety of moral, or rather ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... with cries, when the captain came to tell us that the boat was ready. It was a welcome sound. Forcing our way once more through the still squabbling crowd, we gained the landing place. Here we encountered a boat, just landing a fresh cargo of lively savages from the Emerald Isle. One fellow, of gigantic proportions, whose long, tattered great-coat just reached below the middle of his bare red legs, and, like charity, hid the defects of his other garments, or perhaps concealed his want of them, leaped upon the rocks, ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... giant. A ferocious-looking moustache and whiskers will greatly add to his appearance. If some ready-witted member of the party will undertake to act as showman, and exhibit the giant, holding a lively conversation with him, and calling attention to his gigantic idiosyncrasies, a great deal of fun may be produced. The joke should not, however, be very long continued, as the feelings of the "legs" have to be considered. If too long deprived of air and light they are apt to wax rebellious, and either carry the giant ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... that God made Man, and that Man has not to make God: we should fare badly, judging by the specimens already produced—Frankenstein Monster Gods, formed out of the worst and rottenest scraps of humanity—gigantic—and to turn destructively ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... the Germans sought vainly to get their vessel under way; but the movement came too late, as the torpedo from the Monitor cleft the waters like an arrow and buried its nose against the hull of the gigantic mother ship just abaft the conning tower. With a mighty roar and a flash that illumined the night the speeding projectile crashed through the hull of the Bergerhof and rent the vessel like ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... of various parts of tropical America, chiefly Mexico and Central America, where they are found generally growing, in company with Bromeliads and Orchids, upon the trunks of gigantic forest-trees. Phyllocactuses are therefore epiphytes when in a wild state, but under cultivation with us, they thrive best when planted in pots or in baskets—the latter method being adapted for one or two smaller kinds. It is easy to imagine the gorgeousness of a group of these plants when seen ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... gently and leaned over the balustrade. My eyes were met at first by the darkness above me, where, like gigantic spiders, the big chandeliers rotated slowly, hanging from the ceiling. Only one of them was lit, and its Murano-glass pendants, its carnations and roses, shone opalescent in the light of the guttering wax. This chandelier lighted ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... his companion, he led him in silence and at a brisk pace to the door of a quiet establishment in Rupert Street, Soho. The entrance was adorned with one of those gigantic Highlanders of wood which have almost risen to the standing of antiquities; and across the window-glass, which sheltered the usual display of pipes, tobacco, and cigars, there ran the gilded legend: ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... been the erect image of a gigantic coal-porter turned miraculously white, was now no more than a medley of disjected members; the quadragenarian torso prone against the pedestal; the lascivious countenance leering down the kitchen stair; the legs, the arms, the hands, and even the ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... moral and political condition, all this prodigious activity of thought and work was brought to a complete stand. Such a shock was never before experienced, because such a social and material momentum had never before been acquired by any nation, and then been arrested by so gigantic a calamity. It was as if the earth had been suddenly stopped on its axis, and all things on its surface had felt the destructive impulse ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... just an ordinary hill road of Lorraine, but the fact that it was the direct road to the trenches invested this climbing, winding, silent length with extraordinary character. The gate of the zone of violence, every foot of it bore some scar of the war, now trivial, now gigantic—always awesome in the power and volition it revealed. One passed from the sight of a brown puddle, scooped in the surface of the street by an exploding shell, to a view of a magnificent ash tree splintered by some projectile. It is a very rare thing to ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... attempts to recall our past doings, into our insights into the meaning of others' words and actions as related to ourselves (forming the natural disposition to enjoy flattery), and finally into our wild dreams as to our future achievements. It is thus the principal root of that gigantic illusion of self-conceit, which has long been recognized by practical sense as one of the greatest obstacles to social action; and by art as one of the most ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... future! Think of that awful drain; think, if applied in other channels, what good could be done! We are proud of our battleship Texas. She is a noble war dog; yet do you realize that if we had applied the money spent on her in our own state we could have had one gigantic paved highway twice the distance from El Paso to Galveston? We could have had two hundred high schools, representing $75,000 each. We could have raised our institutions of higher learning to a level ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... followed him, much puzzled. He led them between a couple of gigantic trees, glanced around ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... places, woods worthy of being each metropolis of the Druids, vales connected to hills by other woods, the noblest lawn in the world fenced by half the horizon, and a mausoleum that would tempt one to be buried alive; in short, I have seen gigantic places before, ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... was at last rung down on a smug, grinning group of bookmakers, a deservedly ruined spendthrift, and a mob of indifferent lookers-on. So minutely circumstantial were the newspapers, that we may say that all England saw a gigantic robbery being committed, and no man, on the Turf or off, interfered by so much as a sign. Decidedly, the Ethics of the Turf offer an odd study for the moralist; and, in passing, I may say that the national ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... incorporating with it the Quirinal, Viminal, and Esquiline Hills.[9] He surrounded the whole with a stone wall, called after him the wall of Servius Tullius; and from the Porta Collina to the Esquiline Gate, where the hills sloped gently to the plain, he constructed a gigantic mound nearly a mile in length, and a moat 100 feet in breadth and 30 in depth, from which the earth of the mound was dug. Rome thus acquired a circumference of five miles, and this continued to be the legal extent of the city till the time of the emperors, ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... at its upper end a stair; so they descended and came to an underground chamber, a hundred cubits long by forth wide and a hundred high. In the midst stood a throne of gold, whereon lay a man of gigantic stature, filling the whole length and breadth of the throne. He was covered with jewelry and raiment gold and silver wrought, and at his head was a tablet of gold, bearing an inscription. So they took the tablet and bore it off, together with as many bars ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... commanded the captain, the ship's carpenter, and myself, to enter their boat, and sent us with an armed escort of four men, who handled us most roughly, to the schooner, where the pirate captain received us with deep curses. He was a gigantic, powerful, well-formed man, of a pale, sallow complexion, large prominent eyes, a hooked nose, and a huge mouth, and glossy hair and beard. He might be about thirty years old, and spoke broken English ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... what are known to sailors as the Yarmouth Roads—a grand stretch of sea protected by the sands, where an armada might anchor secure; and it was a sight not to be seen now, when gigantic steamers do all the business of the sea, to watch the hundreds of ships that would come inside the Roads at certain seasons of the year. There, in the winter-time—that is, from Lowestoft to Covehithe—I have seen the beach strewed with wrecks, chiefly ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... the whole interior of the cottage was illumined with a brilliant light and became a frightful brasier, a gigantic fiery furnace, whose glare streamed out of the narrow window and threw a glittering ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... colleges of crime. In the light of social science it were better for the world if every one of them were destroyed than that this work should be continued. Experience shows that the system of imprisonment of minor offenders for short terms is but a gigantic measure for the manufacture of criminals. Freedom, not confinement, is the natural state of man, and the only condition under which influences for reformation can have their full efficiency.... Prison life is unnatural at best. Man is a social creature. Confinement tends to lower ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... day drew near to move we became most agitated as to ways and means. It seemed a gigantic task to crate and barrel everything and move from one town to another, and while we discussed ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... The action of this gigantic press is as follows. The Mattress A A having been filled with water, an additional quantity is supplied by a force pump, capable of forcing in water with a pressure of one ton to the square inch; thus ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... houses of De Graff, Walton & Co., and Cary & Dows, on the Mohawk river and Erie canal. This early training in the elements of commerce and navigation was the nucleus of his subsequent pursuits, and the foundation of his commercial success, although his operations were not on the gigantic scale of many others, who either amassed great fortunes, or sank into bankruptcy; he managed his affairs with such prudence, sagacity and integrity, that he never had occasion to compound with his creditors, or ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... TV sets, an electric train, a spring-wind Victrola. Sam threw the nails onto the table and crossed the room, running his fingers along the silent keyboard of the player piano. He looked out the window. The bulldozers had made the ground rectangular, level and brown, turning it into a gigantic half-cent stamp. He remembered the mail and raised the window and reached down into the mailbox. It was on this side of the house, because only this side was technically within ...
— The Last Place on Earth • James Judson Harmon
... words, and saw himself thus, and thus, and thus!—a sea-dog confessed, a gatherer of riches, a dealer of death from the poop of the Star! In his mind's eye the lost bark swelled to a phantom ship, gigantic, terrible, wrapped with the mist of the sea; while he ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... near. I am even out of humor with pictures; a bit of broken stone or a fragment of a bas-relief, or a Corinthian column standing out against this lapis-lazuli sky, or a tremendous arch, are the only things I can look at for the moment,— except the Sistine Chapel, which is as gigantic as the rest, and forces itself ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... street, rushed screaming upstairs, roused them all out of bed, howling, "It burns!—there's gunpowder!" Yet, hurried as I was, I caught up a small hand-bag, which contained my money, as I got the girls and their mother downstairs. I was just in time to see a gigantic butcher burst open the two-inch door with an axe, and roll out the barrel containing two hundred pounds of gunpowder, as the flames were licking it. I ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... Falsehood was of a gigantic stature, and advanced some paces before the front of the army; but as the dazzling light which flowed from Truth began to shine upon her, she faded insensibly; insomuch that in a little space she looked rather like a huge phantom than a real substance. ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... on one hand, and a chance of escape on the other, seven men proved unable to resist the two great passions of Fear and Hope on a scale so gigantic and side by side. Bayliss, a midshipman, and five sailors stole the only available boat and ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... gigantic farce of the most ingenious construction. The whole comedy hinges on a huge joke, played by a heartless nephew on his misanthropic uncle, who is induced to take to himself a wife, young, fair, and warranted silent, but who, in the end, turns out neither silent nor a woman at all. In "The ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... Fraenkischer Herold, copies of which were delivered at his front door with the regularity of the sun. The attacks consisted of sly, caustic sneers, secrets that had been ferreted out with dog-like keenness, gigantic broadsides based on hearsay evidence, and perfidious suspicions lodged against Daniel Nothafft, the artist, and Daniel Nothafft, ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... Smith, the gigantic or Taur-elephant Arnee, appears to be rare; found only single, or in small families, in the upper eastern provinces and forests at the foot of the Himalaya. A party of officers of the British Cavalry, stationed in the north of Bengal, went on a three months' hunting expedition to the eastward, ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... that held it to the bank, threw the oars into their locks, and, with a vigorous stroke, turned the boat's nose to the south shore. As he did this, his eye glanced upward at the city. There it stood above him, silent and unconscious. The gigantic rock of Cape Diamond towered over him as if exultant in its own strength, and in mockery of his forebodings. He rowed under the stern of the war-sloop. A solitary lantern hung from her bows, but no watchman ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... to play the dance. The pale blurr in the darkness stirred. The moonlight fell on the girl now, standing with arms spread, holding out her drapery—a white, winged statue. Then, like a gigantic moth she fluttered forth, blanched and noiseless flew over the grass, spun and hovered. The moonlight etched out the shape of her head, painted her hair with pallid gold. In the silence, with that unearthly gleam ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... woman tremblingly handing over treasures that had come down probably for two or three generations—treasures that had never been worn except on high days and festivals, weddings, and perhaps on the day of the local fair. Particularly sad is this self-sacrifice in view of the gigantic profits of the food usurers and war profiteers. The matter is no secret in Germany or Austria. It is denounced by the small Socialist minority in the Reichstag, to whose impotence I have often referred. It is stoutly defended in good Prussian ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... Revolution, when there was distress for firewood, the British officer, Simcoe, having placed a sentinel beneath it for protection. It was prostrated by the wind on the night of Saturday, March 3, 1810. It was of gigantic size, and the circles around its heart indicated an age of nearly three centuries. A piece of it was sent to the Penn mansion at Stoke Poges, in England, where it is properly commemorated. A marble monument, with suitable inscription was "placed by the Penn Society A.D. 1827 to ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... lightly lowering his voice, "that to have any genuine insight to-day, any special human feeling to-day, means perforce to devote these gifts to the social problem, instead of to art and to beauty. That is the curse of being born into this Age. The gigantic ghastliness of modern Western civilisation successfully engulfs every superior brain that comes ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... result. The failure has doubtless been a severe disappointment to him. He fled from Australia and reappeared in America, where he resumed his victorious career, distinguishing himself specially by throwing a gigantic opponent in some dreadful fashion that these men have, and laming him for life. ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... moment, for my two white companions, whose characters and limitations will be further exposed, as surely as my own, as this narrative proceeds. But already we have enrolled certain retainers who may play no small part in what is to come. The first is a gigantic negro named Zambo, who is a black Hercules, as willing as any horse, and about as intelligent. Him we enlisted at Para, on the recommendation of the steamship company, on whose vessels he had learned ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... bitter against intellect, it is the latter that succumbs. The determined will forces itself through all opposition that rests only on intelligence, reasoning, contrivance. Intellect does not count for nothing; allied to a strong will, as in Calvin, Cromwell, Napoleon, it helps to effect gigantic results. But in the sphere of action, it is will-power that tells in immediate results. Even here, reason may conquer stupid obstinacy in the long-run. But you must give it time; and you must have honesty of character. ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... existed, which could expose infants or kill off old men because the State was the supreme ethical end; it is the revival on a greater scale of the mediaeval city commune, which sucked its vigorous life from the veins of its citizens. Even so Prussia, by welding its subservient citizens into one gigantic machine of aggression, has given a new reading to the Gospel: "Blessed are the meek, for they ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill
... in advance pointed out a figure perched on the topmost rail of a fence overlooking the road and field, and said it was Jackson. Approaching, I saluted and declared my name and rank, then waited for a response. Before this came I had time to see a pair of cavalry boots covering feet of gigantic size, a mangy cap with visor drawn low, a heavy, dark beard, and weary eyes—eyes I afterward saw filled with intense but never brilliant light. A low, gentle voice inquired the road and distance marched that day. "Keazletown road, six and twenty ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... of stature, she does not tell you that her gigantic Angel was as tall as Pompey's Pillar; much less that he was twelve cubits, or twelve hundred cubits high; or that his dimensions equalled those of Teneriffe or Atlas;—because these, and if they ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... and they grappled with one another. The man from the clouds was gigantic in stature and very powerful. But Stone Boy was both strong and unnaturally heavy and hard to hold. The great warrior from the sky sweated from his exertions, and there came a heavy shower. Again and again the lightnings flashed about them as ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... state of mind. At this very moment the storm broke forth with renewed violence. From the town-hall tower it struck one. The sound of the bell whimpered in the grip of the storm which dragged it along in its wild chase. Apollonius stepped to the window as if to see what was happening outside. A gigantic, sulphur-blue tongue leaped into the room, sprang twice trembling upon stove, wall and people, and then, leaving no trace, was swallowed up in itself again. The tempest raged on: but, even as the storm had seemed born out of the last sound of St. George's ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... the low voice. There are two bodies, one above the other. The one underneath must be gigantic—his arms are thrown backward in a hurricane gesture; his stiff, disheveled hair has crowned him with a broken crown. His eyes are opaque and glaucous, like two expectorations, and his stillness is greater than anything one may dream of. On the other the moon's ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... adversaries of the Thirty-sixth, Fifty-seventh, and Tenth. Wasting no time in explanations, hardly a sound being heard, each soldier drew his sword, and for more than an hour they fought in a cool, deliberate manner which was frightful to behold. A man named Martin, grenadier of the Guard, and of gigantic stature, killed with his own hand seven or eight soldiers of the Tenth. They would probably have continued till all were massacred if General Saint-Hilaire, informed too late of this bloody quarrel, had not sent out in all haste a regiment of cavalry, who put an end to the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... torments of Hell, we can turn to them in our despair because we know that their glory will ease our pain, will help us to forget awhile, will give us renewed courage to go on fighting until the end. But where all is blackness, those inner-torments must assume gigantic proportions. Nothing can take them away—except time and the weariness of a soul too utterly weary to care any longer. But time works so slowly, and the utter weariness of the soul is often so prolonged before, as it were, the spirit snaps and the blessed numbness of indifference ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King |
