"Debris" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to carry outside and pile neatly at the blind end of the building all the boards, boxes and other debris littering up the room, swept it, and selected two packing cases and nailed them up into a convenient impromptu desk, manufactured a bench seat out of some loose boards, set his pen, ink and paper in order, and felt quite ready ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... comparatively easy. He stood then upon a bench or terrace cumbered with rocks, and so broad that few persons casually looking would have suspected it artificial. Facing fully about from the piers, he walked forward following the terrace which at places was out of line, and piled with debris tumbled from the mountain on the right hand side; in a few minutes that silent guide turned with an easy curve and disappeared in what had yet the appearance hardly distinguishable of an area wrenched with enormous labor from a low cliff of solid ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... surface, and the ones from which the fine specimens are to be and have been obtained are exposed by the railroad cutting about a thousand feet north of the station at West Paterson, and on the west side of the rails. Near or below the beds is a small pile of debris, prominent by being the only one in the vicinity near the rails. In this loose rock and the veins which are by this description readily found and identified, they are about three inches in thickness, and in some places widen ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... is such a Sisyphus-effort visible in dragging them aloft so far: and the nimble wicked Voltaire so seizes his moment, trips poor Sisyphus; and sends him down, heels-over-head, in a torrent of roaring debris! 'From gradual transpiration of our vital force comes Death; which perhaps, by precautions, might be indefinitely retarded,' says Maupertuis. 'Yes, truly,' answers the other: 'if we got ourselves japanned, coated with resinous varnish (INDUITS DE POIX RESINEUX); who knows!' Not a sublime ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... him. "Just what went on?" I asked casually. "Did you have a clean-up squad following me all the time, picking up the debris? Or did you just pick up the ones you wanted? Or did the Highways make you indulge in ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... sat torpid in the waiting-room, he paced the platform eagerly from end to end. He saw the train pushed slowly into position beside the platform, watched porters sweep the accumulated debris of yesterday's traffic from the floors of the carriages, and rub with filthy rags the brass doorhandles. Little groups of passengers began to arrive—first a company of cattle-jobbers, four of them, red-faced men with keen, crafty eyes, ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... with an air of distaste at Phipps and Rees, at the debris of the presumed debauch, and stooped over the body stretched upon the sofa. His examination lasted barely a minute. Then he ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... small stream trickled its way from the moorlands above. The shelving platforms of the cliff were here comparatively easy to climb, and the action of water and weather combined had carried down a mass of stones and debris that would be worth investigation. Miss Roberts was as active and enthusiastic as any of the girls; she jumped lightly from stone to stone, tapping likely spots with her hammer, and finally, seeing something protruding from a rock above, began to scale the face ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... finally dominant over its servant, and he was smiling as when, half stunned and in agony—and ashamed of the fact—he had risen from the debris of cloth and twisted braces. "It's all ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... wreckage, Mallare turned to his Journal. A precise smile was on his lips and his eyes slanted toward the debris on the floor as if he were watching the fragments, fearfully. His hair made a black triangle against his forehead. He ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... For they and their kind all over America working in the darkness of their own selfish desires, were laying footing stones—quite substantial yet necessary—for the structure of a growing civilization which in its time, stripped of its scaffolding and extraneous debris, was to stand among the nations of the earth as a tower of ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... north by a short sandspit and a submerged reef; and southwards by a projection of sandstone conglomerate. The latter, running from north-east to south-west, subtends this part of the coast, and serves to build up the land; after a few years the debris swept down by the watercourses will warp up the shallows, dividing shore from outlier. Such, in fact, seems to be the general origin of these sandspits; beginning as coralline reefs, they have been covered with conglomerates, and converted into terra firma by the rubbish ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... from vinous fermentation consist of mineral salts, tartaric acid, and organic matters. Of these the 'organic substances are the most to be dreaded, and for this reason, that they are very prone to rapid decomposition. They consist of yeast-cells, cells of other micro-organisms, of DEBRIS and minute particles of grape stalks and skins, and of other bodies, all readily liable to decompose. All these various materials, therefore, are continually a source of peril, for the slightest thing may start action in them, which spreads throughout the wine and ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... with its covered aisles, was the place where he habitually walked.[1] This portico consisted of two galleries, formed by three rows of columns, and covered by a ceiling of carved wood.[2] It commanded the valley of Kedron, which was doubtless less covered with debris than it is at the present time. The depth of the ravine could not be measured, from the height of the portico; and it seemed, in consequence of the angle of the slopes, as if an abyss opened immediately beneath the wall.[3] The other side of the valley even at that time was ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... sprang to pull them apart, but Roger was there first. He hung onto his father in desperate silence, while others pulled Oscar away. Mr. Wolf and Ernest followed the Moores as Roger led the way to a seat on a heap of debris. ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... and logs. He had hardly begun before the whole mass gave way, and slid down on him. Fortunately, there was not much of it, and, though he was nearly smothered by dust and ashes, he quickly scrambled from the debris, and listened with loudly beating heart. He realized that he had found an opening to the surface, and was wildly exultant over the discovery, but could hardly believe that the noise of the sliding material, which had sounded to him like an avalanche, should ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... find herds of wild horses, wild donkeys, wild camels, and wild sheep. All these mammals live in societies and nations sometimes numbering hundreds of thousands of individuals, although now, after three centuries of gunpowder civilization, we find but the debris of the immense aggregations of old. How trifling, in comparison with them, are the numbers of the carnivores! And how false, therefore, is the view of those who speak of the animal world as if nothing were to be seen in it but lions and ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... Lieutenant Robert de Broqueville, son of the prime minister of Belgium, go into Dixmude on the afternoon when the town was leveled by German guns. He remained there under one of the heaviest bombardments of the war for three hours, picking up the wounded who lay on curbs and in cellars and under debris. The troops had been ordered to evacuate the town, and it was a lonely job that this youngster of twenty-seven years ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... finished," Cora remarked, "we would like to clear up the debris. Also, we have a sad announcement to make. We have lost ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... after an early frost. But perhaps the most terrifying thing about her aspect was her complete indifference to it. A recollection suddenly came to Mr. Lanley of a railway accident that he and Adelaide had been in. He had seen her stepping toward him through the debris, buttoning her gloves. She was far ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... In front of this guest, doubtless with a view of indicating his extreme wealth and the consideration in which he stood, was placed a floral decoration representing a broken bank, with the figure of a ruined depositor entwined among the debris. ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... kept no appurtenances for dressing, but in lieu of them a large collection of old spuds and sticks and horse's-bits. There was a broken spade here, and a hoe or two; and a small table in the corner was covered with the debris of tradesmen's bills from Penrith, and dirty scraps which he was wont to call his farm accounts.—"Grandpapa," said Alice, rushing away at once into the middle of her subject, "you told me the other day that you ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... thus:—Et outre cela, je trouve que vous ecrivez encore des redactions. Vous avez ecrit sur l'ouvrage de M. Darwin une critique dont je n'ai trouve que des debris dans un journal allemand. J'ai oublie le nom terrible du journal anglais dans lequel se trouve votre recension. En tout cas aussi je ne peux pas trouver le journal ici. Comme je m'interesse beaucoup pour les idees de M. Darwin, sur ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... about for a place where he might purchase food. A near-by eating house had been completely wrecked, its floor a debris of broken crockery. Beyond, a baker's shop had been deserted, its window shattered but the interior intact. The shelves, however, had been swept bare of loaves. Elim searched behind the counters—nothing remained. But in walking out his foot struck against a round object, wrapped in paper, ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... could devise. We all know the abominable adjuncts of a new building,—the squalid half-used heaps of bad mortar, the eradicated grass, the truculent mud, the scattered brickbats, the remnants of timber, the debris of the workmen's dinners, the morsels of paper scattered through the dirt! There had from time to time been actual encroachments on the Vicarage grounds, and Mrs. Fenwick, having discovered that the paint had been injured on the Vicarage gate, had sent an angry ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... glorious young general as he turns into the forest. A grim look settles on the general's face. He runs his eye over the map. As the tiger's approach is heralded by the clatter of the meaner animals, so from out that forest the human debris tell of Hood's battle hammer crashing down on that left "in air." Is there yet time to reform a battle, now fighting itself in sudden bloody encounters? All is at haphazard. A sigh of relief. McPherson is there. His ready wit, ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... hole was, there was no help for it. I could perceive nothing below, not even my hand when held within a foot of my eyes; nor had I the slightest previous knowledge of the place to guide me, even had not the fire ruins above effectually blocked every passage-way with fallen debris. Listening however intently, my ears could distinguish only the faint lapping of the river as it crept about the log piling on which the house had been built; but beyond this dim guidance, I had to feel my way forward with ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... and I agree there—that it was worth while—that the energizing, revealing power behind the world was in the confusion and the dislocation; and that England gained more than she lost when she made for herself an English and a national Church in these islands, out of the shattered debris of the Roman System." ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... person. A lively contest followed, in which the Rebels were thoroughly beaten and driven from the field, losing, according to their own accounts, about two hundred and fifty in killed, wounded, and captured. They left twenty-five dead horses on the field, with the debris of two caissons, disabled and exploded by the well-directed fire of Easton's battery, which accompanied the expedition. The Rebels, who had undoubtedly come out for the purpose of forage as well as ourselves, having a long ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... situated that no large animals can run at large on the grounds. Prepare your soil in the most thorough manner; underdrain, if necessary, to carry off surplus water; dig deep, large holes; fill in the bottom with debris; in the very bottom put a few leaves, clam and oyster shells, etc., then sods; above and below the roots put a good garden or field soil; do not give the trees fresh manure at the time of setting, but the following fall manure ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... adjoining they, with Blakeman's assistance, found three hams, matches, a sack of flour, some tea, half a sack of beans and a few cooking utensils. Everything else had been stolen, including possibly the new stock of provisions Thayor had telegraphed for, the debris of two new boxes and the gray ashes of excelsior giving little doubt that the new provisions had arrived. Holt and Skinner had only time to bundle these valuables together when the fire reached them. Heavily loaded they managed to regain ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... finished the sentence. The words were stifled on his lips by a tremendous explosion that seemed to shake the very ground, and rattled and thundered far away into the heart of the wilderness. A crash of falling debris followed, and then the night rang with ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... beds now lie on the mountain sides overhanging the valleys of to-day. Some of the volcanoes sent forth melted stones and ashes from their summits, and streams of lava from their sides, while the craters of others cracked and then sank in, throwing their debris over the neighboring country. In the Eifel there are many such funnels which now contain water forming beautiful lakes (Maaren), which add much to the scenery of the Eifel. The Laachersee is the largest of these lakes. In the mean time the channel ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various
... are even, and they rise with a very gentle slope up the valleys: hence, also, they are easily cultivated by irrigation. They may be traced up to a height of between 7000 and 9000 feet, where they become hidden by the irregular piles of debris. At the lower end or mouths of the valleys they are continuously united to those land-locked plains (also formed of shingle) at the foot of the main Cordillera, which I have described in a former ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... chamber, but, instead of seeking this now, she went straight from the parlor to the supper-room, where she found, as she had expected, Mrs. Sutton in the height of business, directing the setting of the breakfast-table, clearing away the debris of the evening feast, and counting the silver with unusual care, lest a stray fork or spoon had, by some hocus-pocus known to the class, been slipped into the pocket of ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... scene of the disaster was approached there was revealed upon the plates a confused mass of debris; a mass whose individual units were apparently moving at random: yet which was as a whole still following the orbit of Roger's planetoid. Space was full of machine parts, structural members, furniture, flotsam ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... the halt at the road house. Half-obliterated by the debris of snowslide and melting torrents, the trail was hard to follow. In some places the pack burros scrambled for a footing or skated awkwardly with tiny hoofs desperately set to check their descent, to be steadied and encouraged by the booming voice, deep as a bell, of the ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... second explosion, far more furious than the first. In the downward rush Kathlyn stumbled and fell, the debris falling all ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... ahead at a fearful pace on a very good road, lined with poplars, and running through a neat park-like country. Over to the right we could see the church-spire of Oyarzun, and the smoke curling from the chimneys; a little farther on we passed the debris of a diligence on the wayside; the telegraph wires along the route were broken down, and the poles taken away for firewood; we dived under a railway bridge, but never a Carlist saw we during the continuous brief ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... Vandersee himself stood for a moment gazing down the river from the top of the remaining part of the deckhouse, then he turned to the Padang, waved a hand cheerily, and vanished inside the blackened shell of debris. Barry stared in surprise for an instant, for Vandersee's disappearance reminded him that six men were also there, hidden somewhere. All had vanished as utterly as if the ship were complete and built ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... slowly round the room, examining the pictures of celebrated criminals with which every wall was adorned. Finally, in my aimless perambulation, I came to the mantelpiece. A litter of pipes, tobacco-pouches, syringes, penknives, revolver-cartridges, and other debris was scattered over it. In the midst of these was a small black and white ivory box with a sliding lid. It was a neat little thing, and I had stretched out my hand to examine it ...
— The Adventure of the Dying Detective • Arthur Conan Doyle
... The great swimmers, supplied with formidable mandibles and immense and elastic stomachs, prefer the fortunes of war, the pursuit of living prey, and devour,—as the carnivorous devour the herbivorous on land,—all the little feeders on debris and plancton. This word of recent scientific invention presented to Captain Ferragut's mind the most humble and interesting of the oceanic inhabitants. The plancton is the life that floats in loose clusters or forming cloud-like ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... for explanations. Through the debris of the door there sprang into the room half-a-dozen of the loiterers from the room below. They faced the King, standing like a giant in the centre of the floor with his long military sword flashing grey in ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... pouring through the dismantled gateway, their horses surging over the ugly ground-rifts and debris as if possessed ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... Libya deserta fuerunt; ultraque Troglodyta, nunc Berdoa desertum. Hos tegit ab Austro Ater mons, et trans eum Garamantes populi clari, nunc Borno regnum. Caput gentis fuit Garama, quam hodieque eodem nomine exstare tradunt. Debris inclyta affuso fonte, cujus aqua ex coelesti quidem vertigine mutant qualitatem, at controversa siderum disciplina; quidpe qui friget calore, calet frigore; a medio scilicet die ad noctem mediam aquis ferventibus, totidemque horis ad ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... only in the moment of their dissolution that we really learn anything about meteors, for these bodies are much too small to be seen before they enter our atmosphere. The debris arising from their destruction is wafted over the earth, and, settling down eventually upon its surface, goes to augment the accumulation of that humble domestic commodity which men call dust. This continual ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... greed. Around the door flowers bloomed and kittens played; while at the door of the dive broken bottles, swarms of flies, and heaps of refuse menaced every corner, and the mill immured itself in its own debris ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... the midst of a confusion of baggage and lying cheek by jowl with the mangled remains of the dogs. He cleared the debris, and dragged the dogs aside. Then he stood and gazed down at the figure ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... trail. All this, without his being a civil or a mining engineer, understand; merely a man trained in constructive mechanics. On the other hand, the mining or the civil man would view the wreckage of a locomotive accident and see in the debris, select from the snarl of tangled wheels and driving-arms and axles a ready picture of the nature of the accident and how much of the wreckage offered possibilities for repair. Again, the engineer sees in a tree, with its tapering trunk, the symbol of all tower construction, just ...
— Opportunities in Engineering • Charles M. Horton
... before it was over. A woman who had been lying in wait for tourists at the gate, guided them to the bend of the glen, where they were to climb up to pay their respects to the waterfall. The ascent was not far from perpendicular, only rendered accessible by the slope of fallen debris at the base, and a few steps cut out from one projecting rock to another, up to a narrow shelf, whence the cascade was to be looked down on. The more adventurous spirits went on to a rock overhanging the fall, and with a curious chink or cranny, forming a window with a seat, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and roofed by three large oblong sheets of gray rock, whose form seems not to be considered of the slightest consequence. Those which form the cheeks of the windows are generally selected with more care from the debris of some rock, which is naturally smooth and polished, after being subjected to the weather, such as granite or syenite. The window itself is narrow and deep set; in the better sort of cottages, latticed, but with no affectation of ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... oranges, and other fruits may be given. The return to a meat diet should be gradual. The patient should drink freely of mineral waters, ordinary water or lemonade, these keep the kidneys flushed and wash out the "debris" from the tubes. One dram of cream of tartar in a pint of boiling water, add the juice of half a lemon and a little sugar; this when taken cold is a pleasant satisfactory diluting drink. Cream of tartar one dram, juice of lemon, sugar sufficient, water one pint, may be given whenever desired. ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... left her resting place, she saw the way the cub had gone. Leading upward from the extreme end of the ledge, at the right, there was a deep seam or crevice in the granite, almost filled and choked with fallen rocky debris from above, but affording a trail that even a man might travel to the top of the cliffs another fifty feet above. There was a quantity of fine sandy soil at the lower end of the narrow cut and on the edge of the ledge, and her trained eyes had slight ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... away until the glorious fabric of American institutions, whose foundations were laid by God-fearing people, shall be utterly destroyed, and the Capitol, where his noblest efforts were made, shall become a mass of broken and prostrate columns beneath the debris of the nation's ruin! No, not then shall they perish, even if such gloomy changes are possible, any more than the genius of Cicero has faded among the ruins of the Eternal City; but they shall shine upon the most distant works of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... it held up, with a flat side toward Dan. There was no sound, but a flash of green light came from it, cutting a wide swath into the jungle, and littering its path with smoking and flaming debris. ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... to enter, but the smoke and dust which filled the air seemed to preclude this, and, besides, a high wall above the cleared space in the building threatened to fall. An architect who had directed with great skill the removal of the debris was standing close beside me and gave orders to tear down the wall, whose fall would cost ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... entirely into the hands of the council of state, which was at that period composed of nine members. The principal of these was Philip de Croi, duke of Arschot; the other leading members were Viglius, Counts Mansfield and Berlaimont; and the council was degraded by numbering, among the rest, Debris and De Roda, two of the notorious Spaniards who had formed part ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... mill-race. The column of foam, thirty feet high, falls with a furious din, and its glaucous waves, heaped together in the deep ravine, dash against each other and are broken upon a line of fallen rocks. Other enormous rocks, debris of the same mountain, hang above the road, their squared heads crowned with brambles for hair; ranged in impregnable line, they seem to watch the torments of the Gave, which their brothers hold beneath ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... ladder ended we climbed on our bellies some forty feet higher up a ledge of rock to another "heading." Along this we made our way another hundred yards or more to where a dozen naked peons were operating compressed-air drills, then wormed our way like snakes over the resultant debris to the present end of the passage, where more peons were drilling by hand, one man holding a bar of iron a few feet long which another was striking with a five-pound sledge that luckily never missed its mark. This was indeed ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... California, extending from Cape San Lucas to the Bay of Todos Santos, in lat. 32 deg. N., on the Pacific, and to the mouth of the Colorado on the Gulf side, is a pile of volcanic debris and scoriae. Much of the surface is still heated by subterranean fires. No craters are in action; but hot springs of water and bitumen, and frequent earthquakes, and the scorched face of the whole region, demonstrate it to be a mere mass upheaved from the sea, and burned to cinders. ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... feeding ground, become the food of these shells. We do not find that the sand mixed with seaweed has been petrified, because the weed which was mingled with it has shrunk away, and this the Po shows us every day in the debris of ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... would then at once explain themselves—caused naturally by the violent shock. They had apparently been enlarged in the course of time by erosion of water and wind, and possibly by the friction of the debris of the masses of rock settling down when the stratum was severed. The quantity of debris of shattered rock minutely broken into cubes and other angular forms would suggest that some great shock had occurred. Then the usual yellow ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... woman, mother of two children, commenced suit against the railway company, alleging that her husband had perished in that disaster. The evidence adduced was only of a circumstantial nature, as the body which had been destroyed by flames, could not be found. Searching in the debris at the fatal spot, she had found a bunch of keys, that she positively recognized as belonging to her husband, and in his possession when he died. One key fitted the clock in her house, and a mechanic was ready to swear that he had made such a key for the deceased. Another ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... working; for Miss Dwyer's refusal had come upon him as a sudden squall that carries away the masts and sails of a vessel and transforms it in a moment from a gallant bounding ship to a mere hulk drifting in an entangled mass of debris. Of course she had a perfect right to suit herself about the kind of a man she took for a husband, but he certainly had not thought she was such an utter coquette. If ever a woman gave a man reason to think himself as good as engaged, she had ...
— Deserted - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... Count Cobenzl stared at the debris of the precious cup, which so long had been the pride and ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... obtain a footing he could not make out; for the path was no path, but merely a zig-zag track on the surface of the loose shingle—shingle so loose that he could see it yield to her every step, while the debris rolled away down to the bed of the burn. But still she fought her way upward, and at last she stood face to face with him, ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... exhibit properties similar to that of the Club Moss; and a marine plant known as the Californian Rock-rose is still more curious. Clinging closely to the rocks, and feeding upon some invisible debris, or, like certain orchids, drawing its sustenance from the air (for the rocks upon which it grows, sometimes are lifted far above the water), it attains an enormous size, being in some instances as large as a bushel ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... Conniston looked the freed waters which had chafed in the great dam leaped forward, a monster river of churning white water and whirling debris, and like a live thing, wrathful, vengeful, was charging downward through the steep ravine. Hapgood had heard. They had seen his white face turned for an instant over his shoulder. And then his shriek rose high above the thunder ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... man like a speared fish. Pincers closed upon the neck of another, half tearing his head from his body. With the strength of desperation the men wrecked the pillars-and-diaphragm apparatus and from the debris tore metal fragments to serve as clubs. Their blows against the thing's pistonlike legs failed to even shake it. Two more men died before the grim efficiency ...
— The Cavern of the Shining Ones • Hal K. Wells
... few minutes we were all hard at work preparing our first meal in Andersonville. The debris of the forest left a temporary abundance of fuel, and we had already a cheerful fire blazing for every little squad. There were a number of tobacco presses in the rooms we occupied in Richmond, and to each of these was a quantity ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... slid down, finding a partially closed door at the bottom, the passage-way blocked by a litter, the exact nature of which could not be determined in the darkness. With some difficulty, and more than ever conscious of his weakness, and the pain of bruises, he managed to crawl over this pile of debris, and crouch down finally in the intense blackness within. He felt like a trapped rat, still gasping for breath, his body quivering ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... destruction into the crowded mass. Some gained the boats that still remained uninjured, and rowed for the opposite shore; the greater number rushed into the water and strove to recross it either by swimming or by the aid of the debris of the shattered boats. Their total loss was greater even than that suffered by them in the first attack, between two and three thousand being either killed or drowned, among them a number of their best officers. ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... forced its black pessimism upon their thoughts. They watched the heavy grey clouds scuttling overhead, watched the rain dropping from off each man's steel helmet, and gazed across the long desolate stretch of watery earth, tangled debris and ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... the "Hotel Binda," the next day I visited the site of the great Paris Exposition. Few of the buildings were in their entirety, but what remained of the classic beauty of their construction shone the more vivid amid the debris of demolition that surrounded them. The French were not enthusiastic in relation to the ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... traces of recent floods, roots washed bare and places where the swirling waters had heaped up their debris of sticks and mud-stained leaves. All along the damp ground the lowest branches of the trees, weighted with tangled moss, trailed, broken and bruised by the fierce rush of the current. The trees themselves seemed centuries ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... growth would take place almost exclusively around the circumference of the reef, this being the only region in which the coral polypes would find the conditions favourable for their existence. The bottom of the lagoon would be raised, in the main, only by the coral debris and coral mud, formed in the manner already described; consequently, the margins of the reef would rise faster than the bottom, or, in other words, the lagoon would constantly become deeper. And, at the same time, it would gradually increase in breadth; as the rising sea, covering ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... be expected many men were killed during the building of this railway. Once a runaway engine crashed into a derrick car on the top of a bridge and the debris can be seen in the valley below to this day. Several Americans lost their lives in this one accident. It is quite remarkable, however, that there has not been a single accident where a life was lost since the construction was completed years ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... not mean to have the new house just where this one stands, but farther to the right. We can fill up the cellar with the debris, and have loads of earth brought in and make a kind of plateau, with it terrace all around it. We can make that plateau so lovely with shrubs, and flowers, and grass. I once saw one like what I have in mind, at a country place in England, and in one ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... living structure. The Apostle's comparison distinctly marks these several changes as the one process of passing from death unto life. He saw in this wonderful provision of nature, the still more wonderful prevision of God. To his mind it was over the debris of the dead past that the living present is constantly marching towards a higher and more perfect life—the ultimate fruition and joy of an eternal home in the skies! And he saw that the two grand instrumentalities and co-accessory agencies to this end, were Life and Death, both ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... another, and then the whole side of the ridge seemed to open up and move slowly skyward with a world-wrecking, soul-paralyzing crash. A murky red glare lit up the smoke screen, and against it a mass of tossed-up debris, and for an instant I caught the black silhouette of a whole human body spread-eagled and spinning like ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... tumultuous flow of conversation, together with its occasional negligences, its careless periods, its sudden turns, its encumbered phrases. Misguided she sometimes was, and carried away by the resistless rush of ideas that, like the mountain torrent, gathered much debris along their course. But her rapid judgments, which have the force of inspiration, are in advance of her time, though in the main correct from her own point of view, while her flaws in workmanship are more than counterbalanced ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... surface of a flat table-rock, which jutted out from the face of the towering cliff and overhung the valley that was spread out like a map beneath us. About twenty feet back from the edge of the rock was a pile of debris heaped up against the face of the cliff; but the remaining surface of the stone was clean bare and weather-beaten. The talus against the cliff was composed of loose fragments of stone and other products of wash and erosion. This was overgrown with a thicket of stunted shrubs, wry-necked ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... pool which was deep under the high scaur, but sloped gradually from the grassy bank on the other side. Quiet and transparent as the Jed was, it one day came down with irresistible fury, red with the debris of the sandstone scaurs. There had been a thunderstorm in the hills up-stream, and as soon as the river began to rise, the people came out with pitchforks and hooks to catch the hayricks, sheaves of corn, drowned pigs, ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... Convent of St. Clara. In the background appears a partly demolished convent building, from which a gang of workmen are carrying out timber and debris. At the left is a mortuary chapel. Its windows are lighted from within, and whenever the door is opened, a brilliantly illuminated crucifix on the chancel wall, with a sarcophagus standing in front of it, becomes visible. ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... single room of old MRS. LEMMY, in a small grey house in Bethnal Green, the room of one cumbered by little save age, and the crockery debris of the past. A bed, a cupboard, a coloured portrait of Queen Victoria, and—of all things—a fiddle, hanging on the wall. By the side of old MRS. LEMMY in her chair is a pile of corduroy trousers, her day's sweated ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to their old home, he related, he was awakened one night by the voice of his wife calling in agonized tones, "John! John!" precisely as she had cried to him through the smoke and steam and twisted debris at Ashtabula. He leaped from his bed, heard a mighty roar, saw a great light flash on his window, and the midnight ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... the pasteboard enclosing the mine, bomb or whatever kind of fireworks it was," Dick suggested. "But let's look for other debris around here." ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... turning sharply northward, began our ascent toward the pass. The snow we struggled over was so soft and deep that we sank into it up to our waists. Occasionally there was a change from snow to patches of loose debris and rotten rock. The fatigue of walking on such a surface was simply overpowering. Having climbed up half a dozen steps among the loose, cutting stones, we would slide back almost to our original point of departure, followed by a small avalanche of shifting ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... boards. A woman has been assistant State Librarian, and there have been women deputies and clerks in county and city offices. At present in the offices of the Attorney-General, Board of Examiners, State Department of Highways and Debris Committee women hold positions as clerks at salaries of from $1,200 to $1,800. They may serve ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... Ilife a pleasantly dignified character. If, however, I am to summarize all the life and activities of this city of palms and divinities, I cannot, indeed, speak of anything great and sublime, because that lies buried too deep beneath the soil and debris of centuries, yet I can say that it has a ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... as had thousands of others, with nothing in my hands, and only a few days' rations accorded by the enemy in my haversack; had come back to a mass of smoking debris and a wide area of ruin which opened unrecognized vistas that puzzled, dazed, and ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... mostly destroyed, bureaus, desks, closets, receptacles of all kinds had been broken open, and their contents stolen or rendered worthless; the carpets, soaked with a trampled conglomerate of mud and water, oil and filth, the debris left by the feet of the maddened, howling crowd, were entirely ruined; beds and bedding, mirrors, and smaller articles had been carried away, the grand piano had had a fire kindled on the key-board, as had the sofas and chairs upon their velvet seats, fires ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... the consistency of ice and spotted with boulders that had lodged there. The peak itself was torn and shattered, so that it revealed great gleaming surfaces and pits, in which glittered mica, or some other mineral. The vast gulf behind was half filled with the avalanche and its debris. But for the rest, it seemed as though nothing had happened, for the sun shone sweetly overhead and the solemn snows reflected its rays from the sides of a hundred hills. And we had endured it all and were still alive; ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... what remained of the city was further reduced to a mass of debris. One of the main bridges from Goritz across the Isonzo was blown up by the Italians and the enemy ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... understand existed beneath the floor of the main building; indeed, so far as their discoveries went, there might have been no such chambers at all, although Phil was most positive as to their existence. But they made a beginning of a kind, by setting the labouring gang to work to clear away all the debris and rubbish which lay piled high upon the temple floor; and in the course of a fortnight sufficient progress had been made to lay bare about one-fourth of the marble floor at the eastern end of the building, including the once beautiful ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... had only possessed somewhat more imaginative power, I should have taken the forest for a fairy wood, for besides the merry monkeys, I saw many remarkable things. The rock sides and debris to the left of the road, for example, had the most singular and varied forms. Some resembled the ruins of temples and houses, others trees; indeed, the figure of a woman with a child in her arms, was so natural, that ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... acquiring what it is the chief function of all higher education to impart, the art, namely, of so relieving the ideal or poetic traits, [54] the elements of distinction, in our everyday life—of so exclusively living in them—that the unadorned remainder of it, the mere drift or debris of our days, comes to be as though it were not. And the consciousness of this aim came with the reading of one particular book, then fresh in the world, with which he fell in about this time—a book which awakened the poetic or romantic ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... the landing was made on what is known as Watling's Island, one of the Bahamas. This island is about thirteen miles long, north and south, and six wide, and is made up of coral, shell and other marine debris. A monument was erected on it by a Chicago newspaper in 1892, with this inscription: "On this spot Christopher Columbus first set foot on the soil of the New World." The monument is said already to be in a state of decay, having been poorly constructed. Watling's Island lies about 200 ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... going to fire nuclear bombs. Most of the highly radioactive fission products would be blown into space, but some would be drawn back by the asteroid's slight gravity. The craters would be highly radioactive and some radioactive debris would be scattered around, too. Every particle ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... the most part, no doubt, brings to the surface only the debris of lapsed memories and half-formed impressions which have never reached the focus of consciousness—the stuff that dreams are made of. But there are indications in some cases of something more than ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... Crimpdom eyed and tempted me, but it was always with whales or seals, and never with pearls or copra. I rubbed shoulders with eager necessity, scrambled for free lunches in frowsy bar-rooms, and amid the scum and debris of the waterside found much food for sober thought. Yet at times I blamed myself for thus misusing my days, and memories of Glengyle and Mother and Garry loomed up with ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... which had once been German trenches faced and reinforced by concrete and steel plates. Many of these last lay here and there, awfully bent and twisted, but of trenches I saw none save a few yards here and there half filled with indescribable debris. It was, indeed, a place of horror—a frightful desolation beyond all words. Everywhere about us were signs of dreadful death—they came to one in the very air, in lowering heaven and tortured earth. Far as the eye could reach ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... camp, one that had been long used. A conical tepee or wigwam, a wide space cleared of snow, much debris, racks and scaffolds for the accommodation of supplies, all these attested ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... in the very gorge of that chain. Below us, in the valley, I observed some prodigious trees growing close to a Hor (ravine), in which was running water, and the sides of the valley under the mountains being as usual a mass of debris of huge detached rocks, were thronged with villages, all strongly fortified with thick bamboo palisades. The whole country was a series of natural forts, ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... progress, and she listened—oh! with a kind of urged attention, and her brow a little more knitted, very earnestly. The little curate desisted from the appendices and refuse heaps and general debris of his story, and made himself look ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... thistles, and a few wiry dwarf larches of native growth; dust from the adjacent highway had invaded it, with a few scattered and torn handbills, waste paper, rags, empty provision cans, and other suburban debris. Yet it was the site of 'Lige Curtis's cabin, long since erased and forgotten. The bed of the old creek had receded; the last tules had been cleared away; the channel and embarcadero were half a mile from the bank ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... be told, you have now a clear field; the thorns and brambles have all been extirpated, the debris of others' buildings has been carted of, the rough places have been made smooth; come, do a little construction yourself, and show that you are not only good at destroying, but capable of yourself planning a model, in which criticism ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... seen its traces. It carried great rocks of several cubic yards as though they had been small stones, and among other mischief it had knocked down the garden wall of the convent of S. Rocco and covered the garden with debris. As I looked at it I remembered what Signor Bullo had told me at Faido about the inundations of 1868, "It was not the great rivers," he said, "which did the damage: it was the ruscelli" or small streams. So in revolutions it ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... over. The tents which had been dotted thickly athwart the castle island were already mostly struck, and the ground was littered with miscellaneous debris, soon to be carried off in trail carts with square wooden bodies set on boughs of trees, and flung into the river, by the Earl's ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... fire from heaven to savage man? Did it not sleep in the flint at his feet? How often, at the master stroke of life, has some text of Holy Scripture, which lay in the mind from childhood almost like the debris of memory, illuminated the remorseful darkness of the mind, or interpreted the sweetness of God's sunshine in the happy heart! Common as light is love, sang Shelley; and equally common with beauty and truth and love is all that is most vital to the soul, all that feeds it and gives ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... space under the cliff to near the entrance of the mine, intending to live in the tunnel until the melting snows of the spring released us from our prison. But when we had tunneled through the snow to near the entrance of the mine, we found our way blocked by a debris of rock and trees which would require weeks of labor to remove. Tunnels in other directions gave us no better results, and we became resigned to our fate, returning to the cabin to while away the dreary hours until the ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... were scrambling over the debris; gaunt men with dishevelled hair, practically naked, covered with dirt and the greasy brown dust of the disintegrator ray. In the lead, hardly recognizable, his menore awry upon his tangled locks, was ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... river, all were certain that the dam above Camptown Falls had burst. The water ran with great rapidity and was filled with dirt and debris of various kinds. On the rocks that were low they had all they could ...
— Dave Porter and the Runaways - Last Days at Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... curiously at the dirty yards with their debris of lard buckets and tin cans. Space—air, earth and sky—was cheap and plentiful in the mountains. It seemed strange to be sparing of it, down here ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... the investigations conducted by the international Polar observations of 1882-83, that there was a continuous drift of the ice across the Arctic Ocean from the north-east shore of Siberia. He was confirmed in this opinion, by the fact that debris from the Jeannette, a ship abandoned in 1881 off the Siberian coast, drifted across to the east coast of Greenland by 1884. He had a vessel built for him, the now-renowned Fram, especially intended to resist the pressure of the ice. Hitherto it had been the chief aim of Arctic explorations ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... mouth of the creek on the Yellowstone is a hot sulphur spring, the odor from which is perceptible in our camp to-day. At the base of the fall we found a large petrifaction of wood imbedded in the debris of the falling cement and slate rock. There are several sulphur springs at the mouth of the creek, three of them boiling, others nearly as hot as boiling water. There is also a milky white sulphur spring. Within ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... there's some big move on tap, and that to-morrow a battle will be commenced? And all for the possession of some old ruined fort, perhaps, that is now only a mass of crumpled masonry and debris!" ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... I groped my way along round to the back, stumbling over various bits of debris on the ground, until I found the opening into what must be the room where Hudson had elected to live. Not a light showed anywhere, which was as it should be, for a light would be easily seen by the Boches not far away, and if they did see one there ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... the children, waste his earnings and leave his situation under some futile pretext, while his courageous wife, although suffering from hunger and destitution, holds firm and manages to save the debris which has escaped the excesses and egoism ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... risen on the ashes of the old, after the war's end. Use of thermo-nucs had been limited, fortunately, so radioactivity did not linger, and the vast craters hollowed out by ordinary warheads had been partially filled by rubble and debris. Artificial fill had done the rest of the job, so that now New Chicagee was merely a flat prairie as it must have been hundreds of years ago—a flat prairie on which the city had been resurrected. There were almost ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... at the same time made a violent movement, as if to get away from the abyss. It was impossible on account of the girder. His hands groped over the fragments of wall, then they stiffened as it were in a mighty clasp over the debris, and he began to strike his forehead against the wreckage with a regular beat, and moaned: "Lord God, ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... and varied, but he did not trust his hopes or even his fears; all that he was certain of was just the actual passage of his thought and his emotion; he formed no views about the future, and he abandoned the past as one might abandon the debris of ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... natives were idling and drinking spirits as before, and seemed hardly to have moved since we left. This plateau of Atotonilco el Grande, called for shortness Grande, is, like most of the high plains of Mexico, composed mostly of porphyry and obsidian, a valley filled up with debris from the surrounding mountains, which are all volcanic, embedded in reddish earth. The mountain-torrents—in which the water, so to speak, comes down all at once, not flowing in a steady stream all the year round as in England—have left evidences of their immense ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... many bombs, but about three days after the arrival of D.H.Q. a delay-action mine went off on the railway at 7.30 p.m., and two days later again at 7 a.m. Fortunately on both occasions no men were working on the line, and D.H.Q. suffered no worse harm than some injuries to staff cars from falling debris. The total captures by the Division since the 8th October now amounted to 45 officers, 1,839 other ranks, 15 guns, 20 ...
— A Short History of the 6th Division - Aug. 1914-March 1919 • Thomas Owen Marden
... illusions of life. It descends so far, with its huge human foundations, that it gives one the impression of a monstrous concrete Base, sunk into eternity, upon which, for all its accumulated litter and debris, man will be able to build, perhaps has begun already, to build, his Urbs Beata. And Dickens entered with dramatic clairvoyance into every secret of this Titanic mystery. He knew its wharfs, its bridges, its viaducts, its alleys, its ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... mistake. But, as he walked from his home to Quartpot Alley, he little dreamed of the treachery with which he had been treated. "Has Phineas Finn been here?" he asked as he took his accustomed seat within a small closet, that might be best described as a glass cage. Around him lay the debris of many past newspapers, and the germs of many future publications. To all the world except himself it would have been a chaos, but to him, with his experience, it was admirable order. No; Mr. Finn had not been there. And then, as he was searching among the letters for one ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... the direct down-slope from the peak, with nothing to break a snow-slide, or to carry off the bulk of the debris. ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... medium—at the gateway of the human system. The mouth is never out of service and is almost never in a state of true cleanliness. Solid particles from the breath, saliva, food between the teeth, and other debris form a deposit on the teeth and decompose in a constant temperature of ninety-eight degrees Fahrenheit. In the normal mouth from eight to twenty years of age the teeth present from twenty to thirty ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... language are being now put back into their foreign forms, and our speech is being thus gradually impoverished. This process of de-assimilation generally begins with the restoration of foreign accents to such words as have them in French; thus 'role' is now written 'role'*[A]; 'debris', 'debris'; 'detour', 'detour'; 'depot', 'depot'; and the old words long established in our language, 'levee', 'naivety', now appear as 'levee', and 'naivete'. The next step is to italicize these words, thus treating them ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 3 (1920) - A Few Practical Suggestions • Society for Pure English
... more than near a creeping flame. The two Scots beat out that fire. Glenfernie heaved away the beam, Ian drew out the man, badly hurt, moaning of wife and child. Glenfernie lifted him, mounted with him, over heaped debris, by uncertain ledge and step, until other arms, outstretched, could take him. Turning back, he took from Ian a woman's form, lifted it forth. Down again, the two worked on. Others were with them, there was made a one-minded ring, ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... grim and weird-looking in the moonlight, rose the framework of the derrick, formed of heavy timbers, and apparently solid enough to resist any pressure that might be brought to bear upon it. Near by were scattered pieces of machinery, tools and such debris as would naturally accumulate around a ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis |
