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Torrentine   Listen
adjective
Torrentine, Torrential  adj.  Of or pertaining to a torrent; having the character of a torrent; caused by a torrent. (R.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Torrentine" Quotes from Famous Books



... by the crash and bellowing of a great thunderstorm. The lightning flashed fearfully all about us, killing two oxen quite near to my wagon, and the thunder rolled and echoed till the very earth seemed to shake. Then came a wail of cold wind, and after that the swish of torrential rain. Although I was well accustomed to such natural manifestations, especially at this season of the year, I confess that these sights and sounds did not tend to raise my spirits, which were already lower than they should have been on that eventful day. ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard

... spiritualize everything, and pass over, as if unworthy of consideration, His bodily pain. For this Thirst of the Crucified is the final sum of all the pains of crucifixion: the physical agony, the fever produced by it, the torrential sweat, the burning of the sun—all these culminated in the torment of which this Cry is ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson

... a woman, hurrying forward, her hands twisting nervously in her apron. And a torrential outpouring in Spanish greeted the ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory

... various magnitudes, who did all in their power to refute the romantic principles by reductiones ad absurdum. Endowed for the most part with considerable facility of composition, the poetasters poured forth their feelings with torrential recklessness, demanding freedom for their inspiration, and cursing the age that fettered them with its prosaic cares, its cold reason, and its dry science. At the same time the dramatists and novelists created heroes of immaculate character and angelic purity, ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... the night I was awakened by a torrential downpour and by the roar of a heavy gale as it swept over the cliffs high above our heads. Despite the tarpaulins the wet found its way in and soaked us to the skin, so that with daylight we were glad to make preparations for ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready

... heavy rain set in, and there was nothing for the baffled ape-man to do but wait in the partial shelter of a huge tree until morning; but the coming of dawn brought no cessation of the torrential downpour. ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... fluctuating clamor—he could distinguish low pitched drums—brought him the vision, pale and remote and mysteriously smiling, of Cytherea. He thought of that torrential discord rising around her belled purple skirt, the cool yellow of her waist crossed with fragile lace, beating past her lifted slender hand, the nails stained with vermilion, to the pointed oval of her face against the black hair and streaming gold ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer

... real Italian pink, so that whole villages blush as you look them in the face. Sometimes, too, there's a blue or a green, or a golden-ochre house; here and there a high, broken wall of rose or faded yellow, with torrential geraniums boiling over the top. And the effect of this riot of colour, in contrast with the silver gray of the velvety thatch, or lichen-jewelled slate roofs, under great, cool trees, is even more beautiful than Italy. If all England is a park, ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... we must travel far, penetrate the openings just indicated by the dark- blue shadows in the distance, and descend the lofty walls of the Causses to find silvery cascades, impetuous rivers, and fountains gushing from mossy clefts. The showers of spring, the torrential rains of autumn, the snows of winter, have filtered to a depth of several ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... tried a last torrential rush, but the sergeant withstood it, and they merely locked themselves together. Nay, they were now so exhausted that they could only hang on to each other for support, a spectacle which brought me to their side. Their bulging eyes ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne

... a true boiler, a torrential pool never at rest. It charges down amongst huge masses of rock, and just where the descent is comparatively easy the inevitable salmon trap is fixed. Sometimes the salmon takes in the very boil, if ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior

... potently intelligent and understanding expression, by ejaculating "Nong, nong!" and a profoundly understanding "Ah, wee!" at intervals in the one-sided conversation. He tried this method when called upon by a puzzled private to interpret the torrential speech of a Frenchman, who wished to know whether the Towers had any jam to spare, or whether they would exchange a rum ration for some French wine. 'Enery interjected a few "Ah, wee's!" and then at the ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)

... wet feet; whale oil was rubbed in, and arrangements made in the village for drying 400 pairs of socks every 24 hours, while the R.A.M.C. provided hot baths in the factory by the pond. Unfortunately, most of the dugouts, after a short resistance, succumbed to the alternations of frost and torrential rain. Sometimes the roof and sides collapsed, as the Oxfords found to their cost when an iron girder killed four men. Sometimes the pressure of water merely caused leakage, but in either case the result was eventually the same. The plight of the ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell

... are regular earthen fortifications set up within short distances of each other on all the heights overlooking the torrential rivers of Roumania. These intrenchments, generally of round or oval form, are protected by deep fosses, parapets, and palisades. Masses of cinders and burnt earth bear unmistakable evidence to the cause of their destruction. ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... per cent who were fit for any kind of work. All the clothes were in rags; even the officers had neither socks nor underwear. The lithe college athletes had lost their spring; the tall, gaunt hunters and cow-punchers lounged listlessly in their dog-tents, which were steaming morasses during the torrential rains, and then ovens when the sun blazed down; but there ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt

... get round it best none of us knew. We "tossed up" and went to the eastward—the wrong side, of course. We soon struck a river, and at once surmised that if we followed it, it must bring us to the head of the bay, which meant only three miles of salt water ice to cover. Alas, the stream proved very torrential. It leaped here and there over so many rapid falls that great canyons were left in the ice, and instead of being able to dash along as when first we struck it, we had painfully to pick our way between heavy ice-blocks, which sorely tangled up our traces, and our dogs ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... paused for rest near a torrential stream. Some lingered to drink. The blackness in the sky was yielding itself to the spectral glow of the new day when Kahn Meng gave the order ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... Long-drawn, sweetly-penetrating, yet with some strident accent of power and command, this voice of Earth rushed upon them over the quiet water—then died away again among the mountains and the night. Its passage through the sky was torrential. The whole pouring flood of it dipped back with abrupt swiftness into silence. The Irishman understood that but an echo of its main volume had ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood

... strewn with loose slabs of coral stone, pure white in colour and giving forth a clear, resonant sound to the slightest disturbing movement On our right hand was a scrub of puka trees, which afforded no shelter from the torrential rain; on our left the ocean, whose huge, leaping billows crashed and thundered upon the black, shelving reef, and sent swirling waves of whitened foam up to ...
— Susani - 1901 • Louis Becke

... In it, Marx for the first time shows his complete confidence in the theory. It needed confidence little short of sublime to challenge Proudhon in the audacious manner of this scintillating critique. The torrential eloquence, the scornful satire, and fierce invective of the attack, have rather tended to obscure for readers of a later generation the real merit of the book, the importance of the fundamental idea that history must ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo

... stretches of tropical forest to be found anywhere. The forests of tropical West Africa, and of portions of the Farther-Indian region, are the only ones that can be compared with them. Much difficulty has been experienced in exploring these forests, because under the torrential rains and steaming heat the rank growth of vegetation becomes almost impenetrable, and the streams difficult of navigation; while white men suffer much from the terrible insect scourges and the deadly diseases which ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt

... sun rays fell like torrential rain. It was as if the triumphant orb seized upon the shadowless ground, and strained it to his blazing breast. Albine grew faint, staggered, and turned to Serge ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

... fastened to a framework of poles by means of creepers and climbing plants. Thus, by the time the deluge was fairly upon us, we were quite snugly ensconced. We did not, however, remain in-doors throughout the whole of the day, but went in and out, hunting for food and catching game just as usual; the torrential rain which beat down upon our naked bodies being rather a pleasant experience than otherwise. At this time we had a welcome addition to our food in the form of cabbage-palms and wild honey. We also started ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont

... may think of this volcanic force, of this torrential stream of youth and passion, it is impossible to deny them; one might as ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland

... springing of bush and forest so portentous that a few hands are helpless and hopeless. Such is the case with the great wooded belt north of the Gold Coast, where even the second-growth becomes impenetrable without the matchet, and where the swamps and muds, bred and fed by torrential rains, bar the transit of travellers. The Whydah and Gaboon countries are notable specimens of once populous ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron

... to twitch curiously. I thought at first he was really intending to make the best of things, but suddenly two great tears squeezed from his eyes and rolled lumberingly over his cheeks; then, as an unbridled torrential storm breaks in the tropics, he threw himself face down upon the cushions ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... to move away from the window. But Smith held my wrist as in a vice. He was listening raptly to the torrential speech of the Chinaman who sat in the chair; and I perceived in his eyes the ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... was blazing upon him torrential fury and contempt. Yet she did not give him her truest reasons in her answer. She had no longer any fear of him for herself, but she trembled inwardly at the menace of his treachery ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... there was not the faintest chance of gaining the least shelter. All round them the earth was covered with low-growing bushes; there was neither tree nor hedge nor fence to break the force of the torrential downpour. A mile in front the road ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore

... Precautions against fires and their control. Reforestation. Maintenance of forests on what are called essential areas, such as high altitudes and slopes, as tending to prevent floods and erosion. (France here gives most impressive example in planning to bring under conrol about three thousand torrential streams in the Alps, Pyrenees, Ardennes, and Cevennes by means, partly at least, of afforestation, $14,000,000 out of $40,000,000 being provided for this purpose. [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 247.] Italy, ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... here was quite a lively time. Torrential showers followed by bursts of sunshine, rainbows, and rain-dogs in the sky, and the delicious perfume of all manner of growing things on ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... fallen. A torrential rain had set in. The car slid from one side of the road to the other like a Scotchman coming home from celebrating Bobbie Burns's birthday and repeatedly threatened to capsize in the ditch. The mud was ankle-deep and the ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell

... first it seemed to twitch with each opening of the heavens; but this must have been a trick of eyesight, for his head lay quiet against her arm as she raised him a little, shielding him against the torrential rain which now hissed down, in ten seconds drenching her to the skin, blotting out river and meadow in a sheet of grey. It forced her to stoop her shoulders, and, so covering him, she put out a hand and laid it over his heart. Yes, it ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... has heavy surf and no natural harbors; during the rainy season torrential flooding ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... spring is not the shift from winter to summer, from cold to heat, but from a long, arid, and barren season to a season short and often irregular in recurrence of torrential rain and sudden fertility. The dry steppes of Central Australia are the scene of a marvellous transformation. In the dry season all is hot and desolate, the ground has only patches of wiry scrub, with an occasional parched acacia tree, all is stones ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison

... torrential rain, when she was a girl living in her father's house in Cheshire, she and her sister saw a carriage and pair coming through the park towards the house. The coachman and footman on the box were soaking wet, and ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie

... great gorge is tenanted at the present time by Pickering Beck, an exceedingly small stream, which now carries off all the surface drainage and must therefore be only remotely related to its great precursor that carved this enormous trench out of the limestone tableland. Compared to the torrential rushes of water carrying along huge quantities of gravel and boulders that must have flowed from the lake at the upper end, Newton Dale can almost be considered ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home

... platforms, in secret assemblies, in private interviews. The famous terrorist had never in his life raised personally as much as his little finger against the social edifice. He was no man of action; he was not even an orator of torrential eloquence, sweeping the masses along in the rushing noise and foam of a great enthusiasm. With a more subtle intention, he took the part of an insolent and venomous evoker of sinister impulses which lurk in the blind envy and exasperated ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... friend from foe, and who in countless instances used a false appearance of friendship for ambush and assassination. They were obliged to deal with problems of communication and transportation in a country without roads and frequently made impassable by torrential rains. They were weakened by tropical heat and tropical disease. Widely scattered over a great archipelago, extending a thousand miles from north to south, the gravest responsibilities, involving the life or death of their comrades, frequently devolved upon young and inexperienced ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt

... opening into the subterranean burrow system, each hole from 4 to 5-1/2 inches in diameter. These holes are nearly all situated a little above the surface of the surrounding soil, and as Price has suggested (in Allen, 1895, 213), this is doubtless a wise provision against flooding, as torrential rains sometimes occur ...
— Life History of the Kangaroo Rat • Charles T. Vorhies and Walter P. Taylor

... in the midst of the cyclone scene, as the dust storm was ending and the torrential rain succeeded. For the storm, a miniature village had been constructed in break-away fashion, partially sawed through and tricked for the proper moment. Many objects were controlled by invisible wires, including an actual ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve

... leaden clouds; then the air was filled with the roar of driving hail. It swept the woods, rending leaves and smashing twigs, while a constant blaze of lightning flickered about the grass. Then the thunder died away and the hail gave place to torrential rain, while the slender trees rocked in the blast and small branches drove past the tent, where the men crouched inside. After the rain ceased, suddenly, a fierce red light streamed along the saturated grass ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss

... aid, Travis would never have been able to track the clan. The drizzle alternated with slashing bursts of rain, torrential enough to drive the trackers to the nearest cover. Overhead the sky was either dull bronze or night black. Even the coyotes paced nose to ground, often making wide casts for ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton

... as we reckon time. This is especially the case with meadows circumstanced like the one we have described—embosomed in deep woods, with the ground rising gently away from it all around, the network of tree-roots in which all the ground is clasped preventing any rapid torrential washing. But, in exceptional cases, beautiful lawns formed with great deliberation are overwhelmed and obliterated at once by the action of land-slips, earthquake avalanches, or extraordinary floods, just as ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir

... forms a corrugated surface consisting of more or less parallel mountain ranges and broad intervening troughs that are filled to great depths with rock waste washed from the mountains. These great deposits of rock waste were in large part laid down by torrential streams and are relatively coarse and porous. Because these deposits are porous the rain that falls upon them and the run-off that reaches them from the mountains sinks into them, and the valleys in which they lie are exceptionally arid. These ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton

... of its name,[110] by no means showed itself formidable. First there were thick, continuous fogs, succeeded by torrential rains, which melted the white snowdrifts before one's eyes; and in the intervals there were very high winds as is usual in the month of March; then the tempestuous clouds were suddenly torn asunder by the wind which now drove them ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... splendours of the Pleiades and Orion, as he kept watch over his flocks by night, and had seen the thick darkness on the wide uplands thinning away as the morning stole op over the mountains across the Dead Sea, and the day dying as he gathered his sheep together. He had cowered under the torrential rains which swept across his exposed homeland, and had heard God's voice summoning the obedient waters of the sea, that He might pour them down in rain. But the moral government of the world also calls on men to seek Jehovah. 'He causeth destruction to flash forth ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... regularity in the march occasional short halts were necessary; but at 2 a.m. there was a more serious check. The torrential rain had clogged Major Benson's compass, and he became uncertain whether the column had not trended away towards the left. Major-General Wauchope sent back for Lieutenant-Colonel Ewart. After a brief consultation, a slight change of direction ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice

... until in following downward a tunnel of great size and length he sensed before him the thunderous rush of subterranean waters, and presently came to the bank of a great, underground river, tumbling onward, no doubt, the length of a world to the buried sea of Omean. Into this torrential sewer had unthinkable generations of ulsios pushed their few handsful of dirt in the excavating of ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... the usual torrential rains set in. During the worst of it we put in at Salt River village. It was amusing to see the rubbish about the doors of these temporarily deserted cabins. The midden-heaps of the Cave-men are our principal sources of information about those by-gone races; ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton

... be observed, that the surface of this vast interior is entirely exempt from the coarse superficial drift that encumbers so many countries, as derived from lofty mountain-chains from which either glaciers or great torrential streams have descended. In this respect, it is also equally unlike those plains of Germany, Poland, and Northern Russia, which were sea-bottoms when floating icebergs melted and dropped the loads of stone which they were transporting ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... the first man that offered! This was his chance, I told him; the one chance of his life; he was letting a piece of idiotic pride wreck the probable happiness of years. He agreed with me with moans and weeps. He had the candor of a child and the torrential sentiment of a German musician. Three hundred and four dollars and seventy-five cents stood between him and eternal bliss, and yet he waved my pocketbook from him! And all the while I saw ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various

... great, torrential downpour. It came in sheets, with an impetuous, though genial, clatter. It seemed as though the valley was swiftly filling with water and in less than an hour's time it would reach the tops of the trees. I thought of Noah's flood. I could almost ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... of music, and he could hand on what he had learnt of Carissimi's technique. Humphries, highly gifted, swift, returned to England knowing all Lulli could teach him. He had not Purcell's rich imagination, nor his passion, nor that torrential flow of ever-fresh melody; but it cannot be doubted that he was of immense service in indicating new paths and new ways of doing things. He had—at second hand we must admit—Carissimi's methods and new impulse; ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman

... torrential flow of passion, and those who listen are roused at once to a savage enthusiasm. There are no interruptions. The oration is received in complete silence. These are Indians taken into their sovereign's council; they are there ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum

... stared at her. At first she hardly understood, then, suddenly grasping what was in Ellen's mind, she took in her breath for a torrential explanation of the whole matter. But the next minute she realized that this was hardly the moment to say anything which would prejudice her sister against Arthur Alce. If Ellen would value him more as a robbery, then let her persist in her delusion. The effort of silence ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith

... Place du Chateau d'Eau having spoken of surrender, the by-standers mobbed and were near killing him. While the army, its endurance exhausted, feeling the end was near, called for peace, the populace clamored still for the sortie en masse, the torrential sortie, in which the entire population of the capital, men, women, and children, even, should take part, rushing upon the Prussians like water from a broken dyke and overwhelming them ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... either of them to attempt a word they would make a sorry showing, and this would throw her into a torrential storm of tears. Of all three in the editor's office, her shoulders carried the heaviest burden. Each of the men was losing but one whom he loved; she was losing two—and, besides these two, there was Jeb! Jeb, who had thought ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris

... soldered-up tins, and enclose the whole in a stout wooden case, by which means I hoped to preserve effectually my entire stock of powder from the ordinary accidents of travel in a country subject at certain seasons to torrential downpours of rain, and intersected at pretty frequent intervals by rivers deep enough to flood a wagon during its passage across. The case of powder, which also contained the necessary complement of wads and percussion caps, arrived at Somerset East ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood

... encourage them. She did not see their need. Their home was beautiful; they were happy; he could do his work in deliberation and comfort. She knew the value of money better than he, cared more for it in her own way; but she had not his desire to heap up vast and sudden sums, to revel in torrential golden showers. She was willing to let well enough alone. Clemens could not do this, and suffered accordingly. In the midst of fair home surroundings and honors we find him writing ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... Temple appeared at once, for the torrential rains which annually since the deluge had fallen for forty days beginning with the month of Marheshwan, for the first time failed to come, and thenceforward ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... But, say!" he exclaimed, "the storm's over an' the sun is out, an' here we are loafin' in here yet. Vamoose, boys! scatter!" and they all piled out into a fresh and made-over world. Everything was washed clean by the torrential rainfall, and, strange to say, comparatively little damage had been done by the terrific wind. The ranchmen set about repairing whatever had been destroyed, and the three comrades walked toward the ranchhouse, discussing Sandy's tale ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield

... conquered and tamed me. And I abide, I abide. Silent, brooding, unwitting of your noisy incursions, I lie absorbed in my dream under my own illimitable skies. But soon or late, when the moment comes, I wake, I rouse, I see my inviolate desolations invaded. Then I gather my strength, I drown you with my torrential rivers, I torture you with my burning sun, I obliterate you with my flying sand. So shall my cactus bloom once more, my jeweled lizards crawl unmolested and the cry of the coyote echo again through the vast, soundless spaces of my desolation. Then to my looms, to ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... and composed of sand and rock. Our way followed the sand-bottoms between the hills. And the sand-bottoms were bare, save for spots of scrub, with here and there short tufts of dry and withered grass. Water there was none, nor sign of water, except for washed gullies that told of ancient and torrential rains. ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... Torrential rain woke him in the morning. Kenny stared out at the wet valley in tragic unbelief. It simply could not be; for he wanted a dusk flecked with stars. But the rain gave no promise of abating and late that afternoon he altered the detail of his rebellion. Fortunately there ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... extremes, of extreme dryness during which flowers failed to bloom, the grass shriveled and died, and even the trees refused to put forth leaves; or, more rarely, of extreme wetness, when the country was drowned beneath torrential rains. Sometimes, during unusual winters, the heavens opened and spilled themselves, choking the narrow watercourses, washing out roads and destroying fields, changing the arid arroyos into raging river beds. At such times life for the country people was scarcely less burdensome than during ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... again. Tarzan felt the giant muscles relax beneath him. Sheeta was dead. Rising, the ape-man placed a foot upon the body of his vanquished foe, raised his face toward the thundering heavens, and as the lightning flashed and the torrential rain broke upon him, screamed forth the wild victory ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... the two. He was a dreamer, but he never dreamed merely for the sake of dreaming; he always rushed to translate his dreams into acts. The practical side of him was so strong that he might have been a great statesman or reformer, had not his imagination, stimulated by a torrential fluency of language, overborne his will. He was like a boat (the comparison would have pleased him) built for strength and speed, but immensely oversparred. His life was a scene of incessant bustle. Glancing through his poems, letters, diaries, and ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow

... no Sharp family appeared—and at last I knew I had missed them somehow—a very easy thing in that path-bisected wood. So I told him he could drive like hell to my appartement in the Place des Etats Unis—and off we rushed in the now torrential rain—It was one of the worst thunder storms I have ever seen in ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn

... hands rather timidly, for Miss Jessie Stone was torrential in her speech. There wasn't a chance to "get a word in edgewise" when once she was started upon a subject that ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe

... scenes were witnessed along the route, as the torrential rain and the vast zone of mud increased the misery of the moving multitude. Food was scarce and many went without it for days, while sleep was impossible as the throng trudged westward. The military hospitals ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... roads to transport an army to the rear of Tsing-tao. The forces landed composed a division numbering 23,000, and commanded by Lieutenant-General Mitsuomi Kamio. An advance-guard was sent forward without delay, but soon found its way rendered impassable by torrential floods which at this time swept down upon and devastated the province of Shantung, bridges, roads, and even villages being submerged and destroyed, with great loss of life, largely owing to Chinese official incompetence. The Japanese, after covering ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various

... highroad. A few miles outside Sidon, we passed an inn which could not have changed much in character since the time of Christ. It formed a bridge across the road, and thus gave shelter to the passer-by from the noonday heat in summer and the torrential rains in winter; on one side there were the living rooms for the traveller and on the other side the stables wherein his ass or his horse could rest for the night. There were a few men lying in the shade of the "bridge" as we passed, and, peering into the stable, I could just see a donkey ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett

... exertions. But French is never tired. The very day that Cronje surrendered news came through that a rescue party was coming to Cronje's assistance, and already held a hill on the south-east of the Modder. Although the river was in flood, as the result of torrential rains, French forthwith led out two brigades with their batteries to make a reconnaissance. In forcing the stream both French and his A.A.G. very nearly lost their lives. Losing its foothold the ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm

... on, "came into my possession last autumn while my wife was away. I need not explain how I got it, for that has no importance; but it was the genuine fluid extract, and I could not resist the temptation to make an experiment. One of its effects, as you know, is to induce torrential laughter—" ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... talents, for he was a very poor man; for the greater part of his life his income was less than L200 a year. But those were the days of patrons and jobs, pocket-boroughs and sinecures; they were the days, too, of vigorous, bold living, torrential talk, and splendid hospitality; and it was only natural that Mr. Creevey, penniless and immensely entertaining, should have been put into Parliament by a Duke, and welcomed in every great Whig House in the country with open arms. It was only natural that, spending his whole political life ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... generations of opera-goers had passed away without experiencing anything like the sensation caused by this opera. They had witnessed the production, indeed, of great masterpieces, which it would be almost sacrilegious to mention in the same breath with Mascagni's turbulent and torrential tragedy, but these works were the productions of mature masters, from whom things monumental and lasting were expected as a matter of course; men like Wagner and Verdi. The generations had also seen the coming of "Carmen" and ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... entrance constantly invited, undertook to fill it up. This they accomplished after years of heroic effort and an enormous expenditure of money, leaving the harbor only the slender, tortuous entrance of Boca Chica—"little mouth"—dangerous to incoming vessels because of the almost torrential flow of the tide through it, but much more readily defended. The two castles of San Fernando and San Jose, frowning structures of stone dominating this entrance, have long since fallen into disuse, but are still admirably preserved. Beneath the former, and extending far below the surface ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... except as a medium for quenching his thirst. He hated it because he connected it with the chill and discomfort of the torrential rains, and he feared it for the thunder and lightning and wind ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... become disheartened. Constantly at the breach he lived at his works, going from the gigantic adit of Goschenen to the inundated one of Anolo, constantly on the mountain, having no heed of the icy and perilous crossing, and passing days in the torrential rain that was flooding the tunnel. Who of us does not picture him in mind as he reached the inn at night, with his high boots still soaking wet, and his gray beard full of icicles to take his accustomed seat at the table, and, between courses, to tell ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various

... a grand review by the Duke of Cambridge. Unfortunately the day was a very wet one, and, in consequence, the review turned out a failure. In those days the Volunteers were not provided with great coats, and a torrential downpour soon wet every man to the skin. Reviewing under these conditions would have been decidedly uncomfortable and unsatisfactory; consequently, the whole battalion was dismissed, and told to seek shelter in the best ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End

... the Ramblin' Kid forced her back toward the Cimarron, into its raging flood, multiplied a hundredfold by the torrential rain of the night; side by side she and Captain Jack swam the stream, and in the gray dawn, while the Quarter Circle KT still slept, he turned the mare and Captain Jack into the circular corral. He removed the saddle from Captain Jack, took the rope from the filly's neck, threw the horses ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman

... even ants; the character of the assumed flood or the species of the supposed burrower depending to some extent upon locality, but principally upon the theorizer's insufficient knowledge of animal industry or of the action of torrential waters. Others are convinced they are formed by the piling up of earth around a bush, clump of grass, stone, or other object acting as a nucleus about which wind-borne material may accumulate—overlooking the fact that clay, gravel, or gumbo soil can not be carried ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke

... it caught at the snowy crests of the bigger waves, spinning them out like silver manes of leaping horses. These flashed in the sunlight, till, over the central ridge of water, the air was full of a fine, misty spray that hung palpitating and luminous. Here was a torrential life—born of the endless and icy leagues of ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan

... its fiery embrace, while about where it had been, rose a column of dust from the ground beneath. The horses were so frightened that luckily they stood quite quiet, as I have often known animals to do in such circumstances. Then came the rain, a torrential rain as I, who was out in it holding the horses, became painfully aware. It thinned after a while, however, as the storm ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard

... The two walked on, now in sun, now in shade, upon the quiet road. The drouth was broken. There had been a torrential rain, then two days of sunshine. A cool wind now stirred the treetops; the mountains drew closer in the crystal air, and the washed fields renewed their green. So bright and sunny was the morning that the late ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston

... arc around the marshes, which, it will be remembered, have been described as a pocket of clay, low-lying lands mainly reclaimed, but which become miry during heavy rains. It was General von Buelow's misfortune, that, on the very night that his flank was exposed, there should come a torrential downpour. These same marshes had figured more than once before in France's military history, and General Foch, as a master strategist, was determined that they should serve again. When the rain came, he thanked his lucky stars and ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan

... my dear Marmaduke, was ever mine, until I was swept, I thought for ever, out of your path by a torrential ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... some of her sago bread, and vowed it was excellent. They unearthed two bottles of champagne, the last of the case, and promised each other a hearty toast at dinner. Nothing would content Iris but that they should draw a farewell bucketful of water from the well and drench the pitcher-plant with a torrential shower. ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... geology; monumental caprice of Nature in megalithic structure, as shown by the remarkable basalt columns of the profound Gorge of Itzala. Vari-coloured lichens cover these basalt pillars, affording singular contrast of light and shade. Through the gorge a torrential stream flows, and the floor of the valley is covered with fragments of obsidian, or volcanic glass, gleaming black and brilliant, which has been brought down by the waters from the Cerro de Navajas. ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... struck N.E. by N., and marched alternately through sandy and fertile country, across mountains of no great height, and plains with herds of ostriches and fine cattle. The low grounds were frequently intersected by the beds of torrential streams. One day, we crossed a rocky plain with the soil strongly impregnated with salt, and pastured by large herds of camels which the Arabs here keep for their milk and flesh alone, seldom using ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various

... balanced to risk its loss. So Mrs. Croix might be driven to rest her hopes on a trick of chance or a coup de theatre. But she was a very clever woman; and she was not unlike Hamilton in a quite phenomenal precocity, and in the torrential nature of ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton



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