"Downhill" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... we could walk to Oppenau in one day, now that we were in practice; so we set out the next morning after breakfast determined to do it. It was all the way downhill, and we had the loveliest summer weather for it. So we set the pedometer and then stretched away on an easy, regular stride, down through the cloven forest, drawing in the fragrant breath of the morning in deep refreshing draughts, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... people around the various tables, and something approaching a big crowd clustered around the chemin de fer layout. But it was possible to breathe in the place, and even move from table to table without stepping into anybody's pocket. Las Vegas was definitely sliding downhill at the moment, ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... horseman, pulled in quietly to the side of the road. And Ruth did the same. She was too well trained in the things of the hills not to know that if there was trouble, then it was no time to be weakening horses' knees in mad and useless dashes downhill. ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... recently had done that they would have been happier now, or if they'd have broken into this library they would have read a few books and led a better life. Now they are in jail, and if they keep on they will go to Congress. When a person starts downhill you can never tell where he's going to stop. I am sorry for those burglars. They got nothing that they wanted and scared away most of my servants. Now we are putting in a burglar-alarm instead of a ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... topics, is that of considering this principle of selection. Of the principle itself, he remarks that it is neither a theory nor an hypothesis, but the expression of a necessary fact; that to deny it is very much like denying that round stones will roll downhill faster and farther than flat ones; and that the question of the present day in natural history is not whether there be natural selection, or even whether forms are derived from other forms, but to comprehend how, in what proportions, and by what means hereditary ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... thus little save hunger to fear so long as they were in the open country. They marched on, breaking into a trot whenever their course led downhill, during the whole of the day on which their retreat began. Each man still had a small supply of meat left, and portions of this they ate raw as they proceeded. At dusk the foremost of the Balotsi were some distance behind, ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... eyes of others. Now, in all families people go to perdition, without noticing their neighbours, some at an amble, others at a gentle trot, many at a gallop, and a small number walking, seeing that the road is all downhill. Thus in these times the devil had many a good orgy in all things, since that misconduct was fashionable. The poor old lady Virtue had retired trembling, no one knew whither, but now here, now there, lived miserably ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... people it was as if all their gods had crashed and the heavens still stood. Order and law had passed away from the universe; but the sun still shone, the wind still blew, the flowers still bloomed—that was the amazing thing about it. That water should continue to run downhill was a miracle. All the stabilities of the human mind and human achievement were crumbling. The one stable thing that remained was Goliah, a madman on an island. And so it was that the whole population of San Francisco went forth next day in colossal ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... lost now all feeling, save the will to get there. A flock of sheep came out of a field into the lane. He pushed through them somehow, but they lost him several seconds. More than a mile still; and he was blown, and his legs beginning to give! Downhill indeed they went of their own accord, but there was the long run-in, quite level; and he could hear the train, now slowly puffing its way along the valley. Then, in spite of exhaustion, his spirit rose. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... is hampered and thwarted in a great work by annoyances and disasters, he behaves like an Arab horse on a heavy march. At first it moves at a brisk trot, uphill and downhill, and it goes faster and faster as its strength begins to flag. And when at last it is thoroughly out of breath and ready to drop, it breaks ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... Hum. I suppose it's no worse than any other place in this weather, but it is watery rather—isn't it? In my mind's eye, I have the sea in a perpetual state of smallpox; and the chalk running downhill like town milk. But I know the comfort of getting to work in a fresh place, and proposing pious projects to one's self, and having the more substantial advantage of going to bed early and getting up ditto, and walking about alone. I should like to deprive you of the last-named ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... all the comforts and decencies of life, produced inaction, apathy, and at last, despondency, which was only alleviated by a constant and immoderate use of ardent spirits. As long as Captain N—- retained his half-pay, he contrived to exist. In an evil hour he parted with this, and quickly trod the downhill path to ruin. ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... do that?" asked Mirabell. "There isn't any snow now, though there was some for Christmas. How can you make a sliding downhill thing ...
— The Story of a Lamb on Wheels • Laura Lee Hope
... doing a little figuring on the margin of his map, "we're going downhill pretty fast, it seems to me, as we go north. The Grand Rapids drop only fifty-five feet. From Athabasca Landing to McMurray there is a drop of eight hundred and sixty feet in the two hundred and fifty-two miles. That's going some. And here we drop a hundred ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough
... may be, nor what the World at large may think of it. His Pleasure is not in Praise but Production; the last makes him now and then a little feverish; the other, or its want, never. Just at last, 'twas hard Work to us both; he was like a Wheel running downhill, that must get to the End before it stopped. Mother scolded him, and made him promise he would leave off for a Week or so; at least, she says he did, and he says he did not, and asks her whether, if the Grass had promised not to grow she ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... walking here, upon the summit; our way lay a little downhill, for, as I have said, the plateau tilted towards the west. The pines, great and small, grew wide apart; and even between the clumps of nutmeg and azalea, wide open spaces baked in the hot sunshine. Striking, as we did, pretty near north-west across the island, we drew, on the one hand, ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his job to protect his employers' property; that was what he was there for. He had taken ordinary precautions, too, so far as the dam was concerned. But he had entirely overlooked the fact, as obvious as that water runs downhill, that if his canal were cut at the coulee its contents must flow back into the river. Everything was now set back. With this second outrage land sales would stop altogether. It was a sickening jolt. He thought of the questions he would have to answer. He would be asked why he hadn't done ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... a sip. The boy spat it out, and made a face, then, pushing the barrel before them, they began to roll it downhill to the beach, Emmeline running before them crowned ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... was, I think, cards. Not that I cheated, you understand. I will allow no man to say that of me. But that was what was said. A gentleman of spirit, you understand, could not remain in a regiment when such things could be said. Then we tumbled downhill; and I've been at this for four years. And, you know, sir, it might ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... minutes to get him started again. A little later he made the end of the gaff, where, astride the spar itself, he had a better chance for holding on. He cleared the sheet, and was free to return, slightly downhill now, along the halyards to the mast. But he had lost his nerve. Unsafe as was his present position, he was loath to forsake it for the more unsafe ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... works downhill, a hunted Grizzly climbs. Jack knew nothing of the country, but he did know that he wanted to get away from that mob, so he sought the roughest ground, ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... facts which I have herein hastily set downhill dispel any apprehension as to the successful cultivation of the soil in the northern part of the territory. It has a health-giving climate which before long, I predict, will nourish as patriotic a race of men as gave immortality ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... him suspicious and bitter. He had been forced to put down his equipages and change his fashionable lodgings for cheaper ones; when he lounged in the park his old acquaintances failed to see him; when he gambled he lost. Downhill he was going, and there was naught to stop him. For one man in England he had, even in his most flourishing days, cherished a distaste—the man who was five inches taller than himself, who was incomparably handsomer, and whose rank was such, that to approach him as an equal ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... he said, softly. "I could hear no words, but I know that you have been wise. Between you and me," he added, in a lower tone, "she is going downhill. She is in with the wrong lot here. She can't seem to keep away from them. They are on the very fringe of Bohemia, a great deal nearer the arm of the law than makes for respectable society. The man to whom I saw you introduced is a millionaire one day and a thief ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... which separated the living-rooms of the bungalow from its bed-chambers. She heard him lift the latch of the outer door. She heard the outer door shut behind him. Then she waited for his footsteps to sound again on the sunken pathway which ran downhill beside her patch of garden, hidden by the cactus fence—or rather, deep below it. "He is standing on the doorstep," she said to herself, "lighting a cigarette"; and then, "but he is a long while about it. This is strange." Still as her ear caught no sound of ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... mother a ride on it, and she's too heavy— especially going downhill. She thought we were holding it, but it got away. We yelled to her to put on the brake, but she didn't, and it went bang into ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... feel the impact. He was drinking a cup of coffee and thinking about his own problems. But a delicately balanced rock a hundred yards below his camp site toppled over and slid downhill. It started a miniature avalanche of stones and rocks. The loose stuff did not travel far, but the original balanced rock bounced and rolled for some distance before it came ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... hardly have slaked their thirst with any convenience at a cavernous spring such as he describes. Caverns, moreover, are not always near the summits of hills; they may be at the foot of them; and water, even the Thames at London Bridge, always leaps downhill—more or less. Of more importance is old Chaupy's discovery of the northerly aspect of one of these springs—"thee the fierce season of the blazing dog-star cannot touch." There may have been a cave at the back of the "Fontana del Fico"; the ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... It's because we 're going uphill, and at the other locks, when we were going downhill, ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... just off Amsterdam, in the Eighties. It had been a shining new development once, but it was beginning to slide downhill now. The metal on the windowframes was beginning to look worn, and the brickwork hadn't been cleaned in a long time. Where chain fences had once protected lonely blades of grass, children, mothers and baby carriages ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... They were flying downhill now, and the giant's weight was telling. On the opposite side of the valley was another pinewood. If he could only reach that, between the good going and the up-gradient Anthony felt that there was a bare chance. The thing behind, however, ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... whimpering like a tormented child. But even as she wept, she turned her sledge about to follow the edge of the wood. She was too much downhill, she thought, and must ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... forth all his energies. Beds, furniture, cooking utensils—first the stores of the Dobryna, then the cargo of the tartan—all were carried down with the greatest alacrity, and the diminished weight combined with the downhill route to make the labor proceed ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... DOES NOT FLOW OFF THE EARTH. It was because people did not know about gravitation that they laughed at Columbus when he said the earth was round. "Why, if the earth were round," they argued, "the water would all flow off on the other side." They did not know that water flows downhill because the earth is pulling it toward its center by gravitation, and that it does not make the slightest difference on which side of the earth water is, since it is still pulled toward ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... round heads below, and miles away, in a curve of the range, glistened Bear Lake. The rest here at this height was counteracted by the fact that the altitude affected Joan. She was glad to be on the move again, and now the travel was downhill, so that she could ride. Still it was difficult, for horses were more easily lamed in a descent. It took two hours to descend the distance that had consumed all the morning to ascend. Smith led through valley after valley between foot-hills, and late in the afternoon halted ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... Garratt Skinner, indignantly. "Really, Barstow, your bachelor habits have had a bad effect on you. I would not think of sending a girl out to a public house on any consideration. It might be the very first step downhill for her, ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... Ziethen's Horse, who are rightmost of the Prussians: and are bare to the right,—ground offering no bush, no brook there (though Ziethen, foreseeing such defect, has a clump of infantry near by to mend it),—reel back under this first shock, coming downhill upon them; and would have fared badly, had not the clump of infantry instantly opened fire on the Nadasti visitors, and poured it in such floods upon them, that they, in their turn, had to reel back. Back they, well out ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... goes directly west and in a mile reaches Tillington, which has a Transitional church modernized and practically rebuilt by the Earl of Egremont; here are several interesting tombs and brasses. A divergence two miles further will take us downhill across the Rother to Selham (with a station close to the village). The Norman and Early English church has a chancel arch with finely carved and ornamented capitals. Proceeding westwards between high banks of red sandstone our road soon approaches Cowdray ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... our doings in Teneriffe from M—. The Canadas there is the one thing worth seeing, altogether unique. As a health resort I should say the place is a fraud—always excepting Guimar—and that, excellent for people in good health, is wholly unfit for a real invalid, who must either go uphill or downhill over the worst of roads if he leaves ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... virtues; you always have. I'm not half the fellow you think I am. I do love beautiful things, but I don't believe my poetry is any good." He paused a moment and then confessed mournfully: "I'll admit, though, that I have been going downhill. I'm going to do better from now on. ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... fearful of being thought a snob. "Only thirty acres—just the garden, all downhill, and ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... as I turned back the screw before unstrapping the knapsack, "do you understand how I took long walks, and leaped and jumped; how I ran uphill and downhill, and how the little donkey ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... into the city again, taking a new route past the Northern Club, a lofty and unsightly building, whose members are notoriously hospitable, and much given to whist and euchre. Downhill a short distance, and we come to the Albert Barracks, where newly-arrived immigrants are housed, and where most of our sometime shipmates now are. They are comfortably quartered here for the present, but no incitement is held out to them to remain long, and every inducement is given ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... the afternoon before you," replied Mr. Thimblefinger. "Besides it will be downhill all the way. I was just going to tell you a story, but if you really want to go I'll put off the telling of it until some of your grandchildren tumble in the spring when the wet water has run out and the dry water has taken ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris
... the wedding, nor was he even at church. The first year of Anders' marriage the only cow he owned was found dead beyond the north side of the house, where it was tethered, and no one could find out what had killed it. Several misfortunes followed, and he kept going downhill; but the worst of all was when his barn, with all that it contained, burned down in the middle of the winter; no one knew ...
— A Happy Boy • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... does not belong to it, when in practice and in its grasp the commune and department cease to be private companies in order to become administrative compartments.—According to the opportunity and the temptation, it glides downhill, now toward the surrender of its duty, and now toward the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... hedgerow, or follow a cart along a country road. You turn to the city, and see children, dwarfed by distance into pigmies, at play about suburban doorsteps; you have a glimpse upon a thoroughfare where people are densely moving; you note ridge after ridge of chimney-stacks running downhill one behind another, and church spires rising bravely from the sea of roofs. At one of the innumerable windows you watch a figure moving; on one of the multitude of roofs you watch clambering chimney-sweeps. The wind takes ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... How wondrous is this! Now, that I'm no longer young, that my hair is already half gray, that my strength is fading, now I'm starting again at the beginning and as a child! Again, he had to smile. Yes, his fate had been strange! Things were going downhill with him, and now he was again facing the world void and naked and stupid. But he could not feed sad about this, no, he even felt a great urge to laugh, to laugh about himself, to laugh about this ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... dreamed and planned the conquest of the air. His practical experiments began when, at the age of thirteen, he and his brother Gustav made wings consisting of wooden framework covered with linen, which Otto attached to his arms, and then ran downhill flapping them. In consequence of possible derision on the part of other boys, Otto confined these experiments for the most part to moonlit nights, and gained from them some idea of the resistance offered by flat surfaces to the air. It was in 1867 that the two brothers ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... there is, within certain degrees of latitude and longitude, an uphill and a downhill, made by the convexity of the globe, we, perhaps, may have reached the meridian of the great voyage, and may have begun to feel the inclination which will set us forward more swiftly to the end. The power of the great consummation will ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... the wheel, so that long ends extended about a yard on each side. If any straw remained, it was made up into torches at the top of tall sticks. At a given signal the wheel was lighted, and sent rolling downhill. If this fire-wheel went out before it reached the bottom of the hill, a very poor harvest was promised. If it kept lighted all the way down, and continued blazing for a long time, the harvest would be exceptionally abundant. ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... that!" exclaimed both the Englishmen together. "Always going downhill, and always ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... I headed downhill without regard for direction. I was becoming numb, but in half an hour I safely reached the dwarf trees at timberline and plunged through them to a dense grove of spruce. Occasionally there was a ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... when finished, would cross the muskeg with a slight ascent; but the bank sank as they worked at it, and the track now led downhill toward its end. The foreman failed to remember ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... somewhat discouraged at the result of some of his Fiume adventures said: "We are the only Idealists left." This remark may have been made in a moment of careless impulse, but if it is taken at its face value, the moment it was made that moment his idealism started downhill. A grasp at monopoly indicates that a sudden shift has taken place from the heights where genius may be found, to the lower plains of talent. The mind of a true idealist is great enough to know that a monopoly of idealism or of wheat is a ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... Boers must have been lying there almost under the feet of our men, if they did not actually join the ranks for a time to escape detection. But a sound greeted their ears at that moment, and knowing what it meant, they scampered downhill without waiting to hear more. It was a ringing British cheer followed by strident commands to "Fix bayonets and give the devils cold steel." Begun by Major Karri Davis, the order ran along from ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... our own delicious breakfast of grouse, bread, butter, and coffee, Gavotte took Chub and went for our venison. In a short time we were rolling homeward. Of course it didn't take us nearly so long to get home because it was downhill and the road was clearly marked, so in a couple ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... least, was our conclusion, from the absence of any subsequent motion or movement on board, the deck being as steady now as any platform on dry land, although rather downhill on one side, from the vessel heeling as ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... beach, climbed a road across the neck of the promontory, and rattled downhill into Port Nassau. Dusk had fallen before they reached the head of its cobbled street; and here one of the postillions drew out a horn from his holster and began to blow loud blasts on it. This at once drew the townsfolk into the road and ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Batty was right: it was like walking with a dumb man. They left the wood and walked downhill beside a ploughed field, and in the shelter of a high wall. An open lane brought them to a gate, the gate opened on a rough road through yet another wood of larch and spruce and fir. The road was deeply rutted ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... are there who go along heavily and creakingly, like carts taking stones downhill: they talk much of dignity and virtue—their ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... was," said Annie in answer to his query;" so I will make a favour of telling you. Do you remember the Rev. Mr. Darner, rector of Downhill Market?" ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... solely on the ever-fleeting present. Essentially, therefore, it has to take the form of continual motion without there ever being any possibility of our finding the rest after which we are always striving. It is the same as a man running downhill, who falls if he tries to stop, and it is only by his continuing to run on that he keeps on his legs; it is like a pole balanced on one's finger-tips, or like a planet that would fall into its sun as soon as it stopped hurrying onwards. Hence ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... beating, he felt that he now hated Odette, he would gladly have crushed those eyes which, a moment ago, he had loved so dearly, have torn the blood into those lifeless cheeks. He continued to climb with Mme. Verdurin, that is to say that each step took him farther from Odette, who was going downhill, and in the other direction. A second passed and it was many hours since she had left him. The painter remarked to Swann that Napoleon III had eclipsed himself immediately after Odette. "They had obviously arranged it between them," he added; "they must have agreed ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... applied and published. ADELAIDE ROAD leads also into the bush, to the banana patch and by a second bifurcation over the left branch of the stream to the plateau and the right hand of the gorges. In short, it leads to all sorts of good, and is, besides, in itself a pretty winding path, bound downhill among big woods to the margin ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tunnelled through mountains. "This goes to our brushwood-pile," said his companion; and all his trouble was at an end. He took a pony, because he understood that this was the Thirty-Mile Ride and he must ride swiftly, and raced through the clattering tunnels and round the curves, always downhill, till he heard the sea to his left, and saw it raging under a full moon, against sandy cliffs. It was heavy going, but he recognised the nature of the country, the dark-purple downs inland, and the bents that whistled in the wind. The road was eaten ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... party of phantom men and girls sliding downhill on their derrieres and ending in a heap at the bottom. A nice change from traveling under their own power. Their maximum speed while swift and incomprehensible to mortals, seemed relatively slow to one of Hell's ...
— Satan and the Comrades • Ralph Bennitt
... much furtheh to go, li'l' hawss," he chatted on. "Downhill all the way soon an' then a drink to wash out yore mouth an' the best feed in Caroca ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... starting on his long walk downhill a motor car passed him. Only one motor car that season had climbed the precipitous road from the plains. It must be Yae Smith's. Just as it was passing the girl leaned out of the carriage and blew a kiss ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... the downhill of life, when I find I'm declining, May my lot no less fortunate be Than a snug elbow-chair can afford for reclining, And a cot that o'erlooks the wide sea; With an ambling pad-pony to pace o'er the lawn, While I ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... began its long slither downhill, still through a whole necklace of tunnels, which fortunately no longer stank. So down and down, till the plain appears in sight once more, the Arno valley. But then began the inevitable hitch that ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... gets pale, but sharp an' deadly; an' his notion is to fight for a finish. Peets is haughty an' sooperior on the few o'casions when he onbends in battle, an' comports himse'f like a gent who fights downhill; the same, ondoubted, bein' doo to them book advantages of Peets which elevates him an' lifts him above the common herd a whole lot. Enright who's oldest is of course slowest to embark in blood, an' pulls his weepons—when he does ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... of the storm, do a good deal of the work; thawing and freezing of the water contained in the mass of detritus help the movement, for, although the thrust is in both directions, it is most effective downhill; the wedges of tree roots, which often penetrate between and under the stones, and there expand in their process of growth, likewise assist the downward motion. The result is that on ordinary mountain slopes the layer ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... being an engineer, you'll show us why the water doesn't run downhill in our bean patch, as it ought ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... report of the headlong rush of the fire and the direction of the wind that fanned it. He learned that all Genessee was out, fighting to keep the flames from sweeping down across the valley. Three hundred men were fighting it, the supervisor told him. They would check it on the downhill slope, where it would burn more slowly; and if the wind did not change in the night it would probably be brought under control by morning. After that the supervisor very discreetly inquired after the welfare of the young lady who had telephoned. Had she found any means of getting back to ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... and invigorated by nothing but the light, but, having that at least to strengthen us, we made at once for the main range, knowing very well that, once we were over it, it would be downhill all the way, and seeing upon our maps that there were houses and living men high in the further Andorran valley, which was not deserted like this vale of the Aston, but inhabited: full, that is, of Catalans, who would soon make us forget the inhuman ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... Jesse pointed to the ragged perspective ahead of them that plunged downhill into the fog. 'I lay there's a cord an' a half o' firewood, let alone faggots, 'fore we get anywheres ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... that it was best so. Of course, he was not a very old man, but he has for some years been a very feeble one, and now that Millicent and I have both given up our studies with him, I think that he would have felt that his work was done, and would have gone downhill very fast." ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... enough already. The Red Cross men were kept busy, staggering away downhill with stretchers laden with the wounded. There was no possibility of returning the enemy's fire, and in the darkness the ships could not help. All the Colonials could do was to crouch as low as possible, flattening ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... valley I ever see in the course of a long and more or less polka-dotted career that it is all up-hill and never no downhill. Be that as it may, we rambles on until it must be going on towards nine forty-five o'clock, and comes to a neat bungalow on a green slope inside of a high white fence. There's a venerable party setting on the front porch, in his shirt-sleeves. He looks ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... Ralph's side, and they started. For half an hour they kept on, then Ralph cried, "Halt. I am certain I am going downhill, it may be because I have changed my direction, or it may be because there is a change in the lay of the ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... forgotten, and the boys dashed off downhill as hard as they could go, neither of them hearing a shout, nor seeing the little monk come panting up, to stand gazing ruefully after them and wiping the great drops of perspiration off his face ...
— The King's Sons • George Manville Fenn
... seem to have real mud, after the long winter of snow! And it was nice to hear the brooks everywhere, making that dear little noise and to see them flashing every-which-way in the sun, as they tumbled along downhill. And it was nice to smell that smell . . . what was that sort of smell that made you know the sugaring-off had begun? You couldn't smell the hot boiling sap all the way from the mountain-sides, but what you did smell made you think ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... about a hundred feet in front of us was a road crossing the tracks and a little further, beyond the road, was some water. I guess it was an arm of the lake. Anyway, the tracks ran right downhill to the very edge of it. The car was going too fast for us to ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the others after it, holding the ends of each in her hand; and when she reaches the town, she finds a "ravelled hank" instead of her neat balls of worsted. In another version a man goes to market with two bags of cheese, and sends them downhill, like the Gothamite. After waiting at the market all day in vain, he returns home, and tells his wife of his misfortune. She goes to the foot of the hill ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... Randolph was driving through our town yesterday and was passing Captain Jones's sample-room, where the colonel lately shot Moses Widlake in the street, the horses took alarm and started violently downhill. The colonel kept his seat till rounding the corner by the Clayville Bank, when his wheels came into collision with that edifice, and our gallant townsman was violently shot out. He is now lying in a very precarious condition. ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... otherwise sound? Did he go limping about over the landscape, to attract enemies from afar, and be quickly shot by a man or torn to pieces by wolves? Not he! With the keen intelligence of the wounded wild ruminant, he chose the line of least resistance, and on three legs fled downhill. He went on down, and kept going, until he reached the bottom of the biggest and most tortuous coulee in his neighborhood. And then what? Instead of coming to rest in a reposeful little valley a hundred feet wide, he chose the most rugged branch he could find, the one with the steepest and ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... out lovely, and if my cough had not been so bad, I should have enjoyed the drive down from Mount Morgan. The pitches were just as steep, but they were nearly all downhill, which made our progress seem quicker and pleasanter. The country looked very pretty; the ferns were quite lovely, and the lilies in full bloom. The pleasure of the drive was further marred by the dreadful odours arising from ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... Halt!" My father struck spur and rode forward, in time to catch at and check the leader of two horses slithering downhill tandem-fashion before the weight of a heavy cart. "Confound you, sir! What the devil d'you mean by flinging stones in this manner across the middle of the ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... into a muddy road downhill," Kippy laughed. "Up there in Little Prairie Bend hit's caved right through the old levee, and they had to loop ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... turn most of my Navy bills into cash, and at the same time, to my great concern, am very deficient in my balance. This gives me great uneasiness, nor shall I live or die in peace till the whole is restored." He had, however, made the first false step, after which the downhill career of dishonesty is rapid. His desperate attempts to set himself right only involved him the deeper; his conscious breach of trust caused him a degree of daily torment which he could not bear; and the discovery of his defalcations, which ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... "After the war is over I shall repent and take up godly ways. For the present I am a lost soul, and given over to Satan. Andy, the lie I told yesterday about the river road was the beginning of my downfall. How easily we glide downhill." ...
— Then Marched the Brave • Harriet T. Comstock
... in a strong seaway, the omnibus crossed Seventh Avenue and sped downhill toward Sixth with dangerous momentum. Shortly, however, this began to be modified by the brakes, a precaution against mishap which even the fugitive must approve. Ahead loomed the gaunt structure of the Sixth Avenue "L," bridging the roadway at so low an elevation as to afford the omnibus little ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... downhill, the same pace alike—like the shadow of a cloud. His nearest direction, too, like Owen's, was through the dairy-barton, and as Owen entered it he saw the figure of Edward rapidly descending the opposite hill, at a distance of two ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... fellows somewhat shamefaced that they had seen that sudden madness in him; but was presently of better cheer than he had been yet. He rode beside Clement; they went downhill speedily, and the wilderness began to better, and there was grass at whiles, and bushes here and there. A little after noon they came out of a pass cleft deep through the rocks by a swift stream which had once been far greater than then, and climbed up a steep ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... at her heart, and a nameless dread as if a phantom of evil were pursuing her, Bryda fled downhill with a speed which surprised herself, and reached the ferry just as the Bristol clocks ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... refinement of a household is measured by the amount of water it uses. The poorer a family, the greater struggle it is to keep up the appearance of cleanliness, and no surer sign of rapid progress on a downhill road can be found than neglect of those practices which tend toward personal neatness. As the life of the farmer, then, becomes easier, as his condition becomes more prosperous, and as his family make more requirements, so, inevitably, is there in the farmhouse ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... your surprise, at your feet nestles the loveliest of smiling canyon-like valleys, filled with trees, aspen, oak, and pine, with here and there a tent or red roof gleaming through the green, and a noisy brook hurrying on its way downhill. By a steep scramble you reach the lower level, birds singing, flowers tempting on every side, and the picturesque, narrow trail leading you on, around the ledge of rock, over the rustic bridge, till you reach the back entrance of the camp. Before it, up the narrow valley, winds a ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... the scenery changed. The chestnut avenue opened into a road, smooth but narrow, which led into the untouched country. She followed it for over a mile. Its little hesitations pleased her. Having no urgent destiny, it strolled downhill or up as it wished, taking no trouble about the gradients, nor about the view, which nevertheless expanded. The great estates that throttle the south of Hertfordshire were less obtrusive here, and the appearance ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... downhill from the cleared space. Trix set off down it, swinging her hat airily by the brim the while. Presently the sense of uncanniness abated somewhat; the elfin in her went out to meet the ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... humour in the eyes, though they so often watered; the face had gone to flabbiness at last, but not without some lines and dents, as if the head had resisted the body for a space before the whole man rolled contentedly downhill. ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... in the afternoon when the Professor and I took our way towards the east whence I knew Jonathan was coming. We did not go fast, though the way was steeply downhill, for we had to take heavy rugs and wraps with us. We dared not face the possibility of being left without warmth in the cold and the snow. We had to take some of our provisions too, for we were in a perfect desolation, and so far as ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... sped as though downhill, and the driver's spirits rose with the exhilarating speed. The snow groaned ceaselessly under the prow of the pulk, and the frosty creaking under the hoofs of the flying Ren was like the gritting of mighty teeth. Then came the level ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... he has a special disposition for mission work, too. So Laughing Anne's boy will lead a saintly life in China somewhere; he may even become a martyr; but poor Davidson is left out in the cold. He will have to go downhill without a single human affection near him ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... only won by effort. It is a proof of man's corruption that if left alone, evil in some form or other springs spontaneously, and that the opposite good is hard to win. Uncultivated soil bears thistles and weeds. Anything can roll downhill. It is always the least trouble to go on as we have ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... time the cause of tariff reform was going rapidly downhill. Austen Chamberlain, the son of Joseph Chamberlain, strove hard to keep it to the fore, and frequently at intervals in the House of Commons the protectionist proposals were brought forward. Lloyd George had a characteristic ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... back to fear. Cuckoo! Cuckoo! All my blood Knocks through the heart whose every thud Chokes me, blinds me, drains my madness. As one half-drowned, I feel life's gladness Ooze from each pore. Towards the sun Downhill I reel that fain would run. Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Thornless seem Briars that part as in a dream. Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Hazel-boughs Hurt not though they ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... a curve.... Then some poultry demanded consideration. As we left them behind, the agitation of two led horses necessitated a still further reduction of speed. We lost such time as I had made, and more also. Still, we were going downhill, and, as if impatient of the check, the car sprang forward.... We rose from the bottom with the smooth rush of a non-stop elevator. As we breasted the rise, I saw another and steeper dale before us. The road ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... broad grass-grown path, not unlike a "ride" in an English wood, bordered by trees and thick undergrowth, but fairly lighted by the moonbeams, and, fortunately for us, rather downhill, with no obstacles more formidable than fallen branches, and here and there a prostrate monarch of the forest, ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... the old man, "This house here belonged to the same family at one time; though when I was born it was another branch of the family, second cousins or something, that lived in it. But even then it was something on to the downhill road, ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... dreams; with something in his looks, too, of the startled animal that would run away and dare not. There is no knowing how long we might have stood there staring at each other, but for a sudden gust of wind that whisked off my hat, whereupon the young man and I both started downhill in pursuit. The wind was playful, and led us a fine dance; we were obliged to laugh. When at last he caught and handed back to me my property, we were thoroughly exhausted and sat down at the foot of the hill on the mossy tree-roots. ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... how you followed her special path, which went in at the corner of the forest, until by and by the trees thinned on either side, and it widened into a glade, and you went downhill and crossed the brook at the bottom and went up the other side until it was all trees again, and the first and the biggest and the oldest and the loveliest was hers. And you turned round and sat with your back against it, and looked ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne
... weep; was not moved; received the impression but was not sensitive to it; felt the tug but did not respond to the pull. Rather, indeed, was apt to be a little impatient." It is not necessary to expand. Keggo was fast going downhill. Rosalie could have wept to see the downhill signs; but somehow, seeing them, did not weep; was not moved... rather, indeed... impatient. She had herself ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... Bellew had supplied her with plenty of money, saying it was Diana's, and that she would have wished it to be used. It was too early for a taxi to be got, even by telephoning, but the porter caught a stray rickshaw that chanced to be passing, and April had her first experience of flying downhill behind a muscular black man with feathers in his hair and bangles on his feet. Before she reached the station her veil and hair were in streamers, and her scalp was almost torn from her head, but the serpent jaune which had gnawed her vitals all night had ceased from troubling, and ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... uncertainly, with the disappearance of the focus for its concerted bloodlust. The police asked many questions but none of the right ones. Finally, Cam, Ev, and Curt escaped to the waiting limo and started the long slow crawl downhill. ...
— Telempathy • Vance Simonds
... shall I keep it?" and her heart would thrill, and then sink, and inside her she kept saying, "There is no harm in it?—It is all the same in the end." And then, almost before she knew what she was doing, she had taken the easy, crooked, downhill path, with its rocks and thorns ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... to lay out a subdivision if he wants," said Bobby. "But don't worry, Applerod. I've been over there and the thing is a joke. The tract is one-fourth the size of ours, it is uphill and downhill, only a little grading is being done, streets are cut through but not paved, and a few cheap board sidewalks are being put down. He's had to pay a lot more for his land than we have, and can not sell his ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... when, nearly at the top, I was thrown up the hill of the stairs as if it had suddenly become downhill. My feet flew from stair to stair to escape falling, and I flew, or fell, apparently upward, until, at the top, I hung on for dear life while the stern of the Elsinore flung skyward ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... that he had never enjoyed a run more than he did on this occasion. A brisk wind was blowing behind them, they found there was more downhill than up, the road was absolutely clear, and they were able to take the declines at a pace which took the sting ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... so that these habitual tumbles were taken with the best grace we could muster. I surprised myself during the afternoon, when my turn came as forerunner, by covering two and a half miles at a jog-trot without a break. The grade was slightly downhill and the sledges moved along of their own accord, accelerated by jerks from the dogs, gliding at right angles to the knife-edge crests ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... to argue it out at leisure, I went on. My cook, engaged through the kind offices of the Inland Mission, was a man of strong convictions; and in the last I saw of the dispute he was pulling the unfortunate coolie downhill by the pigtail. When he overtook me he was alone and smiling cheerfully, well satisfied with himself for having settled that little dispute. The road became more level, and we got over the ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... are not ready for that philosophy. They repeat it by rote, they are hypnotised by it, and they sink down into inertia, because there is nothing they desire enough to force them to exertion. The consequence is that the nation as a whole is going downhill. The old lesson of putting different objects before souls of different ages, is forgotten, and every one is now nominally aiming at ideal perfection, which can only be reached when the preliminary steps have been successfully ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... left your humble servant, and that's exaggeration—well, that was the way I spent four years in Moscow. I can't tell you, my dear sir, how quickly, how fearfully quickly, that time passed; it's positively painful and vexatious to remember. Some mornings one gets up, and it's like sliding downhill on little sledges.... Before one can look round, one's flown to the bottom; it's evening already, and already the sleepy servant is pulling on one's coat; one dresses, and trails off to a friend, and may be smokes a pipe, drinks weak tea in glasses, and ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... there was a splendid service of express trains running from London to Worcester without a stop, and coming downhill into the Vale, through the tunnel and towards Evesham, the speed approximated to a mile a minute. I was talking to one of my men, a hedger, working near the line which bounded a portion of my land, when ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... rush!—it is the river, like a mighty wind in the wood. A pheasant crows, and once and again falls the tap, tap of woodmen's axes—scarce heard, for they are high above. They strip the young oaks of their bark as far as they can while the saplings stand, then fell them, and as they all lie downhill there are parallel streaks of buff (where the sap has dried) drawn between the yellow-green masses of living leaf. The pathway winds in among the trees at the base of the rocky hill; light green whortleberries fill every ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... me than above me. Night is coming to me over the dark woods. The foam on the rocks below is like a milk-white robe. As I walk the first miles downhill I begin to hear the sound of the waves. The sea is beginning to roar, and the wind rushing up to me tells me that the lines of the sea are its stormy waves ridden forward to ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... putts in which it is not all plain sailing from the place where the ball lies to the hole. The line of the putt may be uphill or it may be downhill, or the green may slope all the way from one side to the other, or first from one and then the other. There is no end to the tricks and difficulties of a good sporting green, and the more of them the merrier. The golfer's powers of calculation ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... again, Tom, because we have no means of knowing how they got the money. Some of them are often supplied with larger amounts than seem to be good for them. Unless you know positively, don't start the snowball rolling downhill, because it keeps on growing larger every time some one tells ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... goes, Miles," added my companion, after promising to join the party in a few moments. "This arrangement about the schooner leaves us both captains, and prevents anything like your downhill work, which is always unpleasant business. Captain Marble and Captain Wallingford sound well; and I hope they may long sail in company. But natur' or art never ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... downhill and still downhill through openings among batches of great forest trees. The new leaves were just coming out in pinks and russets, so that the effect at a little distance was almost precisely that of our autumn ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... So Frank, running downhill, crossed a bridge, and came into the town of Plattville. On ordinary nights, doubtless, the place would be quiet enough at this hour; but Saturday was different. Quite a number of persons were on the main street, and cast curious glances at the lone traveler who had ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes |
