"High-water mark" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that certain sorts of shells live in deep water, and certain in shallow. You may prove this to yourselves, on a small scale, whenever you go to the seaside. You will find that the shell which crawl on the rocks about high-water mark are different from those which you find at low-tide mark; and those again different from the shells which are brought up by the oyster-dredgers from the sea outside. Now, the lower part of the clay, near here, contains shallow-water shells: but if you went forty miles to the eastward, ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... the policy set forth in Circular 124 reached a high-water mark in mid-1948. By then black troops, for so long limited to a few job categories, could be found in a majority of military occupational fields. The officer corps was open to all without the restrictions of a racial quota, and while a quota for enlisted men still existed all ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... of the harbour lies open only to two points of the compass; and even these are covered by islands in the offing, so that no sea can fall in to hurt a ship. The appearances on shore confirmed this; for we found grass growing close to high-water mark, which is a sure sign of a pacific harbour.[113] It is high-water here, at the full and change days, about ten o'clock; and the tide rises and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... it was very stout-built but its planks wofully shrunk with the sun, and though much stove forward, more especially to larboard, yet its main timbers looked sound enough. Then, too, it lay none so far from high-water mark and despite its size and bulk I thought that by digging a channel I might bring water sufficient to float it, could I but make good the breakage and caulk the ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... Steelyard portraits are too many to even catalogue here, covering many years. But Gyze's may be taken as their high-water mark. For that matter it could not, in its own way, be surpassed by any portrait. Holbein himself greatly surpassed it in the matter of subtle and noble simplicity, in his two greatest extant pieces of portraiture—the Morett of Dresden and the Duchess of Milan, ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... poet on that rainy day in the tavern at Ouchy. Even the level of the dungeon, below the water of the lake, turns out to be a mistake, although Bonivard believed it: the floor of the crypt is eight feet above high-water mark. As for the thoughts of the prisoner, they seem to have been mainly occupied with making Latin and French verses of an objectionable sort not adapted for general publication. (See Ls. Vulliemin: Chillon, Etude ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... the high-water mark was still above their heads. "It's getting exciting, isn't it?" she observed. "But I don't feel nasty. Having you here makes—makes a difference, ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... lightened, was found to have stranded quite close to land. The depth here was eleven metres. At this place we lay till the morning of the 10th. The beach, was formed of a sandbank,[235] which immediately above high-water mark was covered with a close grassy turf, a proof that the climate here, notwithstanding the neighbourhood of the pole of cold, is much more favourable to the development of vegetation than even the most favoured parts of the west coast of Spitzbergen. Farther inland was seen ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... nail driven into an apple-tree behind his house. One of his descendants has shown this to me, and I judged it to be at least seventeen or eighteen feet above the level of the river at the time. According to Barber, the river rose twenty-one feet above the common high-water mark, at Bradford in the year 1818. Before the Lowell and Nashua railroad was built, the engineer made inquiries of the inhabitants along the banks as to how high they had known the river to rise. When he came to this house he was conducted to the apple-tree, and as ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... his assistants and students were doing all in their power to keep the work of the Museum at high-water mark. The publications, the classification and arrangement of the more recent collections, the distribution of such portions as were intended for the public, the system of exchanges, went on uninterruptedly. The working ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... were thus preparing our designs, and had first, by main strength, heaved the boat upon the beach, so high that the tide would not float her off at high-water mark; and besides, had broken a hole in her bottom too big to be quickly stopped, and were sat down musing what we should do, we heard the ship fire a gun, and make a waft with her ancient, as a signal for the boat to come on board; but no boat stirred; and they fired several times, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... One of the finest of the endemic flowering plants of the group is the boraginaceous "Chatham Island lily" (Myositidium nobile), a gigantic forget-me-not, which grows on the shingly shore in a few places only, and always just on the high-water mark, where it is daily deluged by the waves; while dracophyllums, leucopogons and arborescent ragworts are characteristic forms in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... buzzing of youthful mumblers, might have been a chafing task to one who felt not the rowel of a spurring ambition, was to him a pleasure full of thrilling promises. To him the reporter stood at the high-water mark of ambition's "freshet." But when years had passed and he had scrambled to that place he looked down and saw that his height was not a dizzy one. And instead of viewing a conquered province, he saw, falling from ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... of searching criticism. It indicates the high-water mark of Shakespearean scholarship. All recognized authorities are represented in the notes and explanatory matter, among them being Dyce, Coleridge, Dowden, Johnson, Malone, White and Hudson. The sets are in thirteen handsome volumes—size 7-1/2 x 5-1/2 inches—containing 7,000 ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various
... selfishness, till other times. I have still one great consolation here, and that is the rage and fury of the sqireens at the poor rates; six and sixpence in the pound with an estate mortgaged right up to high-water mark and the year's income anticipated is not the very most ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... hard sand; and such a sun as we gazed upon yesterday setting over these distant sands passes description. On the first of these beaches are ranged more than a hundred bathing machines at about a hundred yards above high-water mark, looking like sentry boxes on a large scale, with fine dry sand between them and the sea. We went down on Saturday to see the bathing, which is here quite a public affair; and having fixed our eyes on a machine ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... landing-places. Rosewarne, on the other hand, as Lady Killiow's steward, flatly refused to execute repairs upon another person's property. The Duchy, being appealed to, told the two parties (in effect) to fight it out. The Highway Board was ready enough to maintain the road down to high-water mark, but, on legal advice, declined to go farther. The Harbour Commissioners held that to repair a private ferry was no business of theirs, and, although the condition of the slipway had for years been a scandal, refused to meddle. The whole dispute raised ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Pitra's influence, the book was reviewed without making known that it supported the authorship of Hippolytus, which is still disputed by some impartial critics, and was always rejected by Newman. Hippolytus und Kallistus, the high-water mark of Doellinger's official assent and concurrence, came out in 1853. His next book showed ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... is; but it's the square thing. It don't cost anything to say you're well and happy, and sorry you can't make a remittance this mail; and if you don't, I'll tell you what I think it is—I think it's about the high-water mark of being a ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Peterkin as we all assisted to drag the boat above high-water mark. "We'll light our candle and set about it this very night. Hurrah, my ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... complete-indifference as the interest zero, and with the 'exploding-point'-of-enthusiasm as the highest interest mark, where would the score mark of my class stand? And if I cannot reasonably hope to keep my class at the high-water mark of interest at all times, what shall I call an attainable standard? If one hundred per cent is to represent the supreme achievement of interest, shall I be satisfied with fifty per cent, with twenty-five per cent, or with complete indifference? If the minds of my pupils can ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... surrounding rocks, occasion violent eddies and whirlpools, so as to render the boat unmanageable, and if upset the best swimmer could not live in these places. The rocks are serpentine and grey limestone, presenting angular masses which project into the stream; the former in all places within high-water mark is of a dark-brown colour. Micaceous slate? likewise occurs, although rarely. The depth is of course enormous, in the low state of the river, when Bayfield passed up, in many places no bottom was found, at 25 or even 40 fathoms, ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... cried Peterkin, as we all assisted to drag the boat above high-water mark; "we'll light our candle and set about it this very night. Hurrah, my ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... instance, in which he had found some eggs a day or two before I got to Guernsey, quite the end of May, he found there was a slight attempt at a nest, a few bents of the rough herbage which grew in the sand just above high-water mark having been collected and the nest lined with them. I have not found any eggs in Alderney, but I have no doubt they breed in some of the sandy bays to the north of the Island occasionally, if not always, as I have seen them there in the breeding-season, both in 1876 and in 1866. This summer (1878) ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... and philosophic developments of the later centuries. Walt Whitman also tells us "that nothing can happen more beautiful than death," and he has exprest the humanist view of mortality in a hymn which his admirers regard as the high-water mark of modern poetry. But will this rhapsody bear thinking about? Is death "delicate, lovely and soothing," "delicious," coming to us with "serenades"? Does death "lave us in a flood of bliss"? Does "the body gratefully nestle ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... of Napoleon III just before the debacle of 1870 is a matter of history, and it reached its high-water mark during the Exposition year of 1867, when emperors, kings, and princes journeyed to Paris to do homage to the man of the hour. Court balls, receptions, gala performances at opera and theatre, and military reviews followed each other in bewildering but well-ordered confusion, and Morse, as a man ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... it has subterraneous passages, to which the sewers of London are a mere song; and they all lead to a small cave at high-water mark on the sea-beach, covered with brambles and bushes, and just large enough at its entrance to admit of a man ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... providing an outlet for the drains. This can only be done by artificial means, as the water must be removed from a level lower than high-water mark,—sometimes lower than low-water. ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... his noblest, Lucan's criticism is just. In these passages not only is the thought singularly pure and noble, and the expression felicitous, but the actual metre represents almost the high-water mark of the post-Vergilian hexameter. Here, as in other writers of the age, the influence of Ovid is traceable in the increase of dactyls and the avoidance of elision. But the verse has a swing and dignity, together with ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... course, in general outline, as an impersonation of "surviving force:" he has a certain amount of kingcraft also, a real fitness for great opportunity. But still true to his leading motive, Shakespeare, in King Henry the Fourth, has left the high-water mark of his poetry in the soliloquy which represents royalty longing vainly for the toiler's sleep; while the popularity, the showy heroism, of Henry the Fifth, is used to give emphatic point to the old earthy ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... turned without a word, four determined bare legs ploughing through the water, four scared eyes straining toward the land. Through an eternity of toil and fear they kept dumbly on, death at their heels, pride still in their hearts. At last they reach high-water mark—six ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... submarine—said cormorant kindly obliging with quick diving act when approached; a food-ship laden with bananas represented by rushes culled from the banks; and a smuggler running cargoes of French wine contained in an elderly empty bottle discovered in the mud above high-water mark. It was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 • Various
... villages through which I passed had heard in the distance, day and night, the guns of the long battle-line, like the breaking of an endless exterior sea of night upon the very borderland of the world. I felt it most as we passed the noble towers of Amiens, so near the high-water mark of the high tide of barbarism, in that night of terror just before the turning of the tide. For the truth which thus grew clearer with travel is rightly represented by the metaphor of the artillery, as the thunder and surf of a sea beyond the world. Whatever else the war was, it was like the resistance ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... showed that men had once hewed stone therefrom. On one side was that passage through which we had come in, and on the other opened a sort of door which gave on to a stone ledge eight fathoms above high-water mark. For the cave was cut out just inside that iron cliff-face which lies between St. Alban's Head and Swanage. But the cliffs here are different from those on the other side of the Head, being neither so high ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... again, but we must also postpone that part of his story to another hour. In a later lecture I will also give the end of the experience of Henry Alline, a devoted evangelist who worked in Nova Scotia a hundred years ago, and who thus vividly describes the high-water mark of the religious melancholy which formed its beginning. The ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... therefore the simple incidents of his narrative are forced into a growth of many instead of few chapters, and the long-drawn cord becomes weak, and will not easily lead us to the end. He also betrays his lack of art by printing verses which stick like deep sea-shells far below the high-water mark of poetry. Nevertheless, there is a fine New England color and flavor in the book which attract us, and a gentle, high-minded peace reigns throughout ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... Ernst is that this has not been accomplished by the transport of seeds alone. "Tree stems and branches played an important part in the colonisation of Krakatau by plants and animals. Large piles of floating trees, stems, branches and bamboos are met with everywhere on the beach above high-water mark and often carried a considerable distance inland. Some of the animals on the island, such as the fat Iguana (Varanus salvator) which suns itself in the beds of streams, may have travelled on floating ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... remained without the cave, he seemed stupefied and dazzled by the sudden change from the darkness of his cavern. While others were superintending the removal of Meg Merrilies, those who remained with Hatteraick attempted to make him sit down upon a fragment of rock which lay close upon the high-water mark. A strong shuddering convulsed his iron frame for an instant as he resisted their purpose. 'Not there! Hagel! you would not ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... baronet, pointing to their footprints in the sand; "behold the first human footprints ever impressed upon this soil." And stepping rapidly forward until he had passed beyond the high-water mark, he unfurled a small union-jack which he carried in his hand, and, forcing the butt-end of the staff into ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... of siege by river and by land, came the capture of Vicksburg, coincident with the Battle of Gettysburg, that was the high-water mark of the war. The announcement of these two victories, on July 4, 1863, intoxicated the North ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... taking in ballast, one of the men employed in this work, had scalded his fingers in taking a stone up out of some water. This circumstance produced the discovery of several hot springs, at the foot of the cliff, and rather below high-water mark. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... his early work Milton appears as the inheritor of all that was best in Elizabethan literature, and his first work, the ode "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity," approaches the high-water mark of lyric poetry in England. In the next six years, from 1631 to 1637, he wrote but little, scarcely more than two thousand lines, but these are among the most exquisite and the most perfectly finished ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... of fourteen and ten years, respectively, in teaching English reading, our success has reached high-water mark in using Harper's Young ...
— Harper's Young People, May 25, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... they, and more than a score, men and women, went with him, some in the wain, and some afoot. Thus they came down to the sea-shore, and laid the timber on the strand just above high-water mark; and straightway Hallblithe fell to work shaping him a boat, for well he knew the whole craft thereof; and the folk looked on wondering, till the tide had ebbed the little it was wont to ebb, and left the moist ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... our president in this instance has hit a high-water mark. He has taken hold of a very important idea and has developed it. After making an observation or two I am going to move a vote of appreciation to our president and accompany it with a vote of thanks to Senator Penney for coming down here from Michigan and ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... menacing, and formidable. At its base was a steep beach, disclosed by the retreating tide, which had been formed by the accumulated masses of rock that had fallen in past ages from the cliffs above. These now, from the margin of the water up to high-water mark, were covered with a vast growth of sea-weed, which luxuriated here, and ran parallel to the line of vegetation on the summit of the cliff. On the other side of the strait the scene was different. Here the shores were more varied; in one place, rising high on steep precipices, in others, thrusting ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... expect to keep your advertising receipts up to the high-water mark, you can't always do ALL SOLICITING and NO HELPING. You must assist the advertiser to get the full value of the money he spends with you. How? ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... to one another; but the most of each man's soul was given to basking. Their attitudes said: "This is as far as I have lived. I am not living to-morrow or next day. The past has reached this instant as high-water mark, and here I rest. Move me if you can. ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... everything except the heavy and unbroken smoke that poured out of their chimneys. Slimy gaps and causeways, winding among old wooden piles, with a sickly substance clinging to the latter, like green hair, and the rags of last year's handbills offering rewards for drowned men fluttering above high-water mark, led down through the ooze and slush to the ebb-tide. There was a story that one of the pits dug for the dead in the time of the Great Plague was hereabout; and a blighting influence seemed to have proceeded from it over ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... in the theological atmosphere of Alexandria, and on the purely human side ended in Stoicism with an amalgam of universal philosophy and Roman law. The Stoic Empire of the second century A.D. was the high-water mark of the joint efforts of Greeks and Romans to attain unity and humanism in thought and practice. Its brilliance while it lasted the nobility of its leading men, the persistence of the main lines of its structure, are the measure of our debt to the ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... friend the Policeman," or "On Going a Journey," or "The Deceased"—this last is perhaps the high-water mark of the book. To vary the figure, this essay dips its Plimsoll-mark full under. It is freighted with far more than a dozen pages might be expected to carry safely. So quietly, so quaintly told, what a wealth of humanity ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... affair. In the first place I considered the manner in which the parchment had come into my possession. The spot where we discovered the scarabaeus was on the coast of the main land, about a mile eastward of the island, and but a short distance above high-water mark. Upon my taking hold of it, it gave me a sharp bite, which caused me to let it drop. Jupiter, with his accustomed caution, before seizing the insect, which had flown towards him, looked about him for a leaf, or something of that nature, by which to take hold of it. It was at this ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... thoughts and mind (the latter getting quiet from the former, I suppose) than for the whole of me to rest a while in such a little scollop of the shingle as a new-moon tide, in little crescents, leaves just below high-water mark. And now it was new-moon tide again, a fortnight after the flooding of our fly by the activity of the full moon; and, feeling how I longed to understand these things—which seem to be denied to all who are of the same sex as the moon herself—I sat in a very nice ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... swallowed to float recklessness up to the high-water mark. There is another fight going on in the vestibule. One of the women has been caught up by the crowd and tossed bodily into the proscenium box, where she is caught and dragged by half a dozen brutes in over the sill and furniture in such a manner as to disarrange ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... things happened. The high-water mark of domination by the Roman Church is reached when King John surrendered England to the pope, and took it back as a fief of the pope for a tribute of one thousand marks. The same year the other early ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... better'n none.' And although the trench was already a foot deep in water, Beefy stated no more than bald truth in saying, 'Come to-morrow there's plenty will put up glad wi' their knees bein' below high-water mark for the sake o' havin' their ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... had a wide range in San Francisco,—rotten at times, petty at others, with the saving grace of occasional idealism. The consolidation act and the People's Party touched high-water mark in reform. With the lopping off of the San Mateo end of the peninsula in 1856, one board of supervisors was substituted for the three that had spent $2,646,000 the year before. With E.W. Burr at ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... Baghdad as we know it to-day is old. By tradition it was founded in 762 A.D., and became the renowned capital of the Arab empire. It is said that the city grew till it covered some 25 square miles, reaching its high-water mark of splendour and magnificence under the Sultan Haroun-al-Raschid. The fame of its schools and learning was world-wide, and Baghdad became to the East what Rome became ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell
... had never been happier than as she prepared for her first Christmas at Enderby. But that festival seemed the high-water mark of her happiness. The close of the day found her strangely depressed and thereafter she had more frequent periods ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... a writer, not upon me as an American. Do not regard me as the exponent of American culture, or as anywhere near the high-water mark of American letters. I am not one of the select few, but of the promiscuous many. Born and bred in a farm-yard, and pattering about among the hens and geese and calves and lambs when other children were learning to talk like gentlemen ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... doors than at other times. We had stowed our new vessel as secure as we could, bringing her up into the creek, where, as I said in the beginning, I landed my rafts from the ship; and hauling her up to the shore, at high-water mark, I made my man Friday dig a little dock, just big enough to hold her, and just deep enough to give her water enough to float in; and then, when the tide was out, we made a strong dam across the end of it, to keep the water out; and so she lay dry, as to the tide, from ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... she were merely human, there would be no conflict. If she were merely ascended from below, merely the result of the finest religious thought of the world, the high-water mark of spiritual attainment, again she could compromise, ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... the kingdom of the Vertebrata, at which we are able to obtain an obscure glance, apparently consisted of a group of marine animals (32. The inhabitants of the seashore must be greatly affected by the tides; animals living either about the MEAN high-water mark, or about the MEAN low-water mark, pass through a complete cycle of tidal changes in a fortnight. Consequently, their food supply will undergo marked changes week by week. The vital functions of such animals, living under these conditions for many generations, can hardly fail to run their ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... bowsprit and rubbed his cramped knees before climbing the hill. He parted with his young listener at the top and took a lonely path across the shore-pasture to a little cabin, where no light shone, built like the nest of a sea-bird on the edge of high-water mark. ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... among which Dick was accustomed to take his pick, in return for errands run and other services rendered to their owners; but on this particular morning not one of them all was available. Some were fastened with ugly chains and padlocks. Two were hauled away above even high-water mark, and so Dick could not have got either of them into the water even if he had dared to try; and as for ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... hopes always died hard. "There's still the Government yacht," he said, going to a huge iron punt that lay far above high-water mark. Mac called it a forlorn hope, and it looked it, as it lay deeply ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... goal of his hopes. Looking back, he for the first time realized the frightful peril he had escaped, and shuddered. To this shudder succeeded a thrill of triumph. "Why had he stayed so long, when escape was so easy?" Dragging the carcases above high-water mark, he rounded the little promontory and made for the fire. The recollection of the night when he had first approached it came upon him, and increased his exultation. How different a man was he now from then! Passing up the sand, he saw the stakes which ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... only lessen the danger of floods, but they conserve our waterways, preventing a dangerous high-water mark in the season of heavy rains and melting snows, and then preventing a shrinkage in dry seasons when the only feeders of the rivers are the underground sources. In the summer of 1911, prolonged drought in North Carolina lowered the rivers to such an extent that towns dependent ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... civilians had been drafted into the service for the occasion; and so accurate was the information given, that within a couple of hours of the time several boat-loads of contraband were landed above high-water mark. Three carts came along, and while the process of transhipping into them was going on, the "Preventer" men, led by Turnbull, quietly came from their concealment, and with a sudden rush surrounded the smugglers. Those of their accomplices who had smelt the scent of battle fled behind the hills, and ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... upon me, when I kept more within doors than at other times. We had stowed our new vessel as secure as we could, bringing her up into the creek, where, as I said in the beginning, I landed my rafts from the ship; and hauling her up to the shore at high-water mark, I made my man Friday dig a little dock, just big enough to hold her, and just deep enough to give her water enough to float in; and then, when the tide was out, we made a strong dam across the end of it, to keep the water out; and so she lay, dry as to the tide from the sea: and to ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... Hastings, "has grown rapidly since Harry took hold. The old part represents the high-water mark of his father's efforts. Of course," she added reflectively, "Harry has had command of some capital since a relative of his died, but I never thought that ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... was trying a case, and when it was concluded we steamed out to sea and hugged all day the most monotonous coast I ever saw, only just, if just, above high-water mark, with a great level of mangrove swamps and dense jungle behind, with high, jungle-covered hills in the very far distance, a vast area of beast-haunted country, of which nothing is known by Europeans, and almost nothing by the Malays themselves. So ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... with the bar of the prororoca, that terrible eddy which, for the three days preceding the new or full moon, takes but two minutes instead of six hours to raise the river from twelve to fifteen feet above ordinary high-water mark. ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... as I arrived at Utiroa village with my new boat, I had her hauled up above high-water mark, close to the boat-shed, and then turned her over so as to get a good look at the bottom in the morning. Then without telling either Tematau or Niabon the reason for my purchase, I bade them open my trade-room door, and in a few minutes we were engaged in paying the late owners their tobacco, ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... early part of the sixteenth century, Mont St Michel seems to have reached the high-water mark of its glories. After this time a decline commenced and Cardinal le Veneur reduced the number of monks to enlarge his own income. This new cardinal was the first of a series not chosen from the residents on the mount, for after 1523 the system of election ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... set themselves about the perilous task. The bed of the river at this place is rocky and shelving. At low water, these facts offer no great obstacles in crossing. The case is very different when the torrent has reached high-water mark—then, a single step will often plunge horse and rider into the angry waters beyond their depth. Kit Carson boldly took the lead, and before the infantry had all passed, the horses of the dragoons had to be sent back to assist them. To facilitate ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... ledge the old bear led the way, pausing to nose at a patch of seaweed here and there or to glance shrewdly into the shallow pools among the rocks. The cub obediently followed her example, though doubtless with no idea of what he might hope to find. But the upper stretches of the ledge, near high-water mark, offered nothing to reward their quest, having been dry for several hours, and long ago thoroughly gone over by earlier foragers. So the bears pushed on down toward the lower stretches, where the ledges were still wet, and the long, black-green weed-masses still dripping, ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... suddenly occurred to him. When sailing along the coast with Bill, the latter had one day pointed out to him a hole in the cliff some twenty feet above high-water mark. "Do you see ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... most persevering labor, and by the most unremitting care and watchfulness is it kept from destruction. The sea is higher than the land, the lowest ground in the country being from twenty-four to thirty feet below high-water mark. The keel of the Young America, floating in some of the waters of Holland, would be higher than the ridge-pole of the Dutchman's cottage on the other side ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... suppose that amount of wisdom or strength had been an endowment of our nature from the outset, is there any conceivable way in which we should have been the worse for it? For even as it is there are some people who do make a fairly wise and right choice, and whose high-water mark of excellence is not reached through the crime and folly of the revival meeting convert. Are they the worse because they have never yielded to evil? Is the naturally good man really a less worthy character than the one whose ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... the bow with a mock flourish, and began rolling down his shirt-cuffs; a thrill quivering through him—that thrill only felt by a painter when he is conscious that some work of his brush has reached the high-water mark of his abilities. For only the artist in him had been at work. What stirred him was not the personality of the Countess—not her charm nor beauty but the harmony of the colors playing about her figure: the reflected ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... common with most Englishmen, the present writer has a sincere respect. It has been said, however, of the "Elegy" by one critic that the subject of the poem gives it an unmerited popularity, and by another—and that quite recently—that it is the "high-water mark of mediocrity." Although Gray's own modest dictum was the foundation of the first of these harsh criticisms, we are unable to allow the truth of the one and must strongly protest against the other. It has been reported ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... suffering it may have been, but of the beauty of a soul that was all radiant with a lustre of loveliness that shames the fragmentary and marred virtues of the best of us, and stands before the world for ever as the supreme type and high-water mark of the grace that is possible to a human spirit. God has lodged in men's nature the apprehension of Himself, and of all that flows from Him, as true, as good, as beautiful; and to these three there correspond wisdom, morality, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... seems to be shut out. This may be seen by his reference to Shelley in his last book, "Letters and Social Aims," and by his preference of the metaphysical poet throughout his writings. Wordsworth's famous "Ode" is, he says, the high-water mark of English literature. What he seems to value most in Shakespeare is the marvelous wit, the pregnant sayings. He finds no poet in France, and in his "English Traits" credits Tennyson with little but ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... preparing our designs, and had first, by main strength, heaved the boat upon the beach so high that the tide would not float her off at high-water mark, and besides had broke a hole in her bottom too big to be quickly stopped, and were set down musing what we should do, we heard the ship fire a gun, and make a waft with her ensign as a signal for ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... of Negro officers in command of troops of their own color will prove the wisdom of a policy entered upon with much distrust and misgiving. It is just here that Professor Miller reaches the high-water mark. Here is a story never told before, because the world has never before witnessed Negro officers in large numbers participating in the directive side of war waged on the high level ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... For instance, many planters build mounds large enough to accommodate their barns, and all their live stock. Likewise, when floods are coming, they construct false floors in their houses, elevating their furniture above high-water mark, so that, if the whole house is not carried away, they may return to something less than utter ruin. It is the custom, also, to place ladders against trees, in the branches of which provisions are kept in time of danger, and to have skiffs, containing food and water, ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... the gong carried the order to take up everything and bear it beyond high-water mark, and the flare-lamps broke out by the hundred between the webs of dull iron as the riveters began a night's work racing against the flood that was to come. The girders of the three centre piers—those that stood on the cribs—were all but in position. They needed just as many rivets as could be ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... ever attends great grief, And silently walks beside it; And I always know when I see such woe That Invisible Helpers guide it. And I know deep sorrow is like a tide, It cannot ever be flowing; The high-water mark in the night and the dark - Then ...
— Poems of Optimism • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... fossil flat-iron." This antediluvian relic was found imbedded in a Sandy deposite opposite Surrey-street, near high-water mark. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... bound to get a high-water mark this term, aren't you?" went on Gus Plum, as he brought the rowboat up to the dock, so that ...
— Dave Porter and the Runaways - Last Days at Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... up to the chiefs village of Waisoma, a cloud of blue smoke rolling up among the palms told us that the fire was newly lighted. We found a shallow pit, nineteen feet wide, dug in the sandy soil, a stone's throw from high-water mark, in a small clearing among the cocoanuts between the beach and the dense forest. The pit was piled high with great blazing logs and round stones the size of a man's head. Mingled with the crackling roar of the fire were loud reports ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... didn't," I replied, and pointed out to him what must have been obvious to both of us. "Compare the keel-marks with high-water mark. There is less than half a boat's length of keel-mark, and it is just up above high-water mark. This craft, which appears to have been a small rowing-boat, was run ashore at high tide, or very near it, and run out again very ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... But I think the Johnnies have made their high-water mark. Great work our army did down there at Vicksburg, and we'll have the chance to do just as well against Bragg. We'll defeat him, of course. Now, Mason, notice that light flickering ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and artistic study of striking power and literary quality which may well remain the high-water mark in American fiction for the year.... Mr. Harrison definitely takes his place as the one among our younger American novelists of whom the most enduring work may ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... to serve the ideal. We strove to become what organically we felt the "Human with his drippings of warm tears" may become. We were the standard-bearers of the advancing margin of the world. We were the high-water mark toward which all the tides forever make. ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... is this merry group doing in the farther corner? These are the babies, bless them! and they are modeling in clay. What an inspired version of pat-a-cake and mud pies is this! The sleeves are pushed up, showing a high-water mark of white arm joining little brown paws. What fun! They are modeling the seals at the Cliff House (for this chances to be a California kindergarten), and a couple of two-year-olds, who have strayed into this retreat, not because there was any room for them here, but because there wasn't any ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... and what little light of the fading day was left was obscured by the masses of storm clouds. The fisherman's hut was on the beach, not far from the high-water mark, and the booming of the surf on the shore came as a sort of melancholy accompaniment to the firing of ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis
... however, formed the favourite food and favourite model of the pre-Glacial artists. Perhaps it was a better sitter than the mammoth; certainly it is much more frequently represented on these early prehistoric bas-reliefs. The high-water mark of palaeolithic art is undoubtedly to be found in the reindeer of the cave of Thayngen, in Switzerland, a capital and spirited representation of a buck grazing, in which the perspective of the two horns is better managed than a Chinese artist would manage it at the present day. Another ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... duties paid under this tariff were about 30 per cent. on all imports, or 33 per cent. on dutiable goods. In 1824 and 1828, under the lead of Clay, tariffs were adopted which made the tariff of duties still higher and more systematically protective; they touched high-water mark in 1830, being 40 per cent. on all imports, or 48.8 per cent. on dutiable goods. The influence of nullification in forcing through the compromise tariff of 1833, with its regular decrease of duties for ten years, has been stated in the ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... Down at the bunk-house she called me Ford twice—and she said it meant a lot to her, whether I make good or not. I wonder—Lordy me! A man could make good, all right, and do it easy, if she cared! She doesn't know what to think—that jug staying right up to high-water mark, like that!" He laughed then, silently, and dwelt upon the picture she had made while she had ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... had reached its highest point, for, after remaining stationary an hour, it had begun to fall, and was now a couple of inches lower than "high-water mark." ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... fluviatile and land-shells are met with in the loam as well as in the gravel, but there are no marine shells associated, except at Abbeville, in the lowest part of the gravel, near the sea, and a few feet only above the present high-water mark. Here with fossil shells of living species are mingled the bones of Elephas primigenius and E. antiquus, Rhinoceros tichorhinus, Hippopotamus, Felis spelaea, Hyaena spelaea, reindeer, and many others, the bones accompanying the flint implements in such a manner as ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... tide through his whole body; and he became very passionate and excitable, and spent much time in rushing about the woods in search of other deer, fighting those of his own sex, and making love to the does. The year was at its high-water mark, and the Buck was nearing his prime. Food was plenty; everywhere the beechnuts were dropping on the dry leaves; the autumn sunshine was warm and mellow; the woods were gay with scarlet and gold and brown, ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... this masterpiece of simple and direct emotion, which to me has always seemed the high-water mark of Hugo's lyrical achievement as well as the most human of his utterances, one might pass on to masterpieces of another inspiration: to the luxurious and charming graces of Sara la Baigneuse; to the superb crescendo and diminuendo of les Djinns; to 'Si vous n'avez rien a me dire,' ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... the struggle in the heart of Julia Anderson? Did he guess that her pride and defiance had by this time reached high-water mark? Did he divine this from seeing her there? He rose and started in through the door of the upper hall, the only opening to the porch, except the window. But this was a feint. He turned back and sat himself ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... of Schummel's "Empfindsame Reise" in Frankfurter Gel. Anz. represents the high-water mark of understanding criticism relative to individual work, but represents necessarily no grasp ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... that expression Christ's consciousness that He is the light, and enmity to Him darkness. Mark, too, His meek submission, as bowing His head to let the black flood flow over Him. Note that Christ brands enmity to Him as the high-water mark of sin, the crucial instance of man's darkness, the worst thing ever done. Mark the assurance that animated Him, that the eclipse was but for an 'hour.' The victory of the darkness was brief, and it led to the eternal triumph of the Light. By dying He ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... but one on the way to accomplishment. The achievements of which we can boast are relatively like those of a child of five who boasts that he can count. Our whole world-condition shows us to be racially incompetent, and able to produce no more than incompetent leaders. That is our present high-water mark, and with our high-water mark we must learn ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... a sheep fall with a plunge and splash into the sea, shot by a man in a boat. This appeared to be the local way of slaughtering the sheep which are put on the rocks to crop the sparse herbage which grows above high-water mark. After a fortnight among the rocks sheep will get so agile and surefooted, that a man has no chance with them in running or climbing, hence the rifle has to ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... "a primal eternal Being, author of all things, the father and the friend of man, the invisible omniscient guardian of morality," a definition which, while it fixes the high-water mark of monotheism, yet only states with formidable distinctness what, according to Mr. Lang, is found confusedly in the apprehension of the rudest savages. There are two senses in which we can understand an evolution ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... answered. "The whole thing's a mystery—so far. But, as you live hereabouts, perhaps you can suggest something. The doctors are of the opinion that he was murdered—here—yesterday evening: that his body had been lying here, just above high-water mark, since, probably, eight or nine o'clock last night. Now, what could he be doing down at this lonely spot? He went inland when ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... about as completely at twenty-one or twenty-two. Instead of being in a position to begin his real education on graduating from college, that event meant the close of it for the average student, and was the high-water mark of his life, so far as concerned the culture and knowledge of the sciences and humanities. In these respects the average college man never afterward knew so much as on his graduation day. For immediately thereafter, unless of the richest class, he must needs plunge into the ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... is a long bed of oysters, growing up to high-water mark, the upper ones poor, called "raccoon oysters" by the natives, but the lower ones, which are mostly covered with water, large, fat and delicious. We gathered about a bushel of these, built a fire of dead mangrove ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... contained one street, and nearly or quite six houses. It contains but one house now, and this one, in a state of ruin, is getting ready to follow the former five into the river. Doubtless Marion City was too near to Quincy. It had another disadvantage: it was situated in a flat mud bottom, below high-water mark, whereas Quincy stands high up on the slope ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... go as far into the cave as possible—for Alan had told her that the end of it was above high-water mark—and remain there till the tide went down. It would certainly be very horrid, but it was better than going alone in the boat, or Alan trying ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... flat ground, considerably within the mountains, and, as far as could be judged, had every appearance of being volcanic. That they were so, indeed, was in some measure corroborated by the quantity of pumice stone which was lying at high-water mark upon the eastern shore of the river, on which Mr. Flinders had landed to mark the nature and appearance of the country, not being able from the strength of the ebb tide to proceed ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... at a good distance from the sea-beach; for you see, William, the sand by degrees filters the sea-water fresh, and very often when the sand runs in a long way from the high-water mark, if you dig down, you will find good fresh water, at other times it is a little brackish, but ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat
... behold how Heinrich Bach had educated his people into the belief that there was only one way to play, and that was as he did it. It is not at all probable that Heinrich put forward any claims of perfection, but the people regarded his playing as high-water mark, and any variation from his standards was considered ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... trees above the high-water mark and the flames back on the ridge still thrust and flared, but were unable to cross the wide, wet flood-belt. The settlement and the "big woods" ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... the Captain to Bobby Little, as the contrite Robb is removed. "Keen as mustard. But his high-water mark for beer is somewhere in his boots. All right, now ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... classification that starts with preconceived values or that works up to sentimental satisfactions is self-condemned as unscientific. A linguist that insists on talking about the Latin type of morphology as though it were necessarily the high-water mark of linguistic development is like the zooelogist that sees in the organic world a huge conspiracy to evolve the race-horse or the Jersey cow. Language in its fundamental forms is the symbolic expression of human intuitions. These may shape themselves ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... publication as L'Art. In six years it has not abated by one tittle the perfection with which it first burst upon the world. Its standard is as high, its subjects are as inexhaustible, as ever. We hear now and then of a decline in French art: the great artists who carried it to the high-water mark of modern times have all, or nearly all, passed away, but there is certainly no sign of a vacuum. The activity of production is as great as ever, the interest in art as vital. L'Art draws its material from past as well ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... shots were heard up the river, and after a while a body came floating down the stream. It was hauled on shore and buried in the sand a little above high-water mark. It was a poor Confederate who had attempted to desert to the enemy, but was shot while swimming for the opposite bank of the river. His grave was the centre of the beat of one of the picket posts on the river bank, and there were few men so indifferent to the presence of the ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... attitude towards France was greatly facilitated through the friendly position adopted towards Great Britain by Count Caprivi (the successor in 1890 of Prince Bismarck in the Chancellorship of the German Empire) and his Minister of Foreign Affairs, Baron Marschall. This period indicates the high-water mark of friendly relations between Germany and Great Britain; and though Count Caprivi retired in 1894, when he was succeeded by Prince Hohenlohe, who had special ties with Russia, these friendly relations may be said to have been prolonged, so ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... demand arose a short time since for this branch of ingenuity; but it has probably ere now subsided, having been in response to a call for the artist by one or two collectors. Of course, the prices advanced instantaneously to high-water mark, from the certainty that the craze ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... are flooded every spring by the melting of the snow as regularly as the famous old Nile. They begin to rise in May, and in June high-water mark is reached. But because the melting does not go on rapidly over all the fountains, high and low, simultaneously, and the melted snow is not reinforced at this time of year by rain, the spring floods are seldom very violent or destructive. The thousand falls, however, and the cascades in the ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... go. As they were hungry they sought out a fisherman's cottage, where, for a small sum, they had a fine meal. Starting out again, they turned an intervening point of land about three o'clock, and then came in view of a lighthouse, located on a pile of rocks, not far from the high-water mark. ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the Coast • Victor Appleton
... the ledges and planted the level firmly on its tripod above the high-water mark of the spring floods. He called down to Ashton: "Hate to leave the old monkey up here; but it will serve as a memento of our present visit, when we come down again to locate the ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet |
