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More "Ripple" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... like flax-flowers in a south-wind, her tiny, round chin, and low, white forehead, were all adorned by profuse rings and coils and curls of true gold-yellow, that never would grow long, or be braided, or stay smooth, or do anything but ripple and twine and push their shining tendrils out of every bonnet or hat or hood the little creature wore, like a stray parcel of sunbeams that would shine. Her delicate, tiny figure was as round as a child's,—her funny hands as quaint as some fat baby's, with short fingers ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... us. If we throw a pebble into a quiet pool (Fig. 90), waves or ripples form and spread out in all directions, gradually dying out as they become more and more distant from the pebble. It is a strange fact that while we see the ripple moving farther and farther away, the particles of water are themselves not moving outward and away, but are merely bobbing up and down, or are vibrating. If you wish to be sure of this, throw the pebble near a spot where a chip lies quiet on the smooth pond. After the waves form, ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... said!" retorted she, with a ripple of dangerous laughter. "I will carry the comparison no farther. Still, I wager, Chevalier, that the game is not worth ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Honorable Percival concerned himself little with these petty details. To him China was only a pleasing background for Miss Roberta Boynton; he saw no further than her eager, smiling eyes, and heard nothing more distant than the ripple of ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... looks a little like a catalogue of disasters (except the building of the new capitol and the visits of Presidents Hayes and Cleveland), but it must be remembered that Minnesota is such an empire in itself, that such happenings scarcely produce a ripple on the surface of its steady and continuous progress. It is because these events can be particularized and described that they assume proportions beyond their real importance, but when compared with the colossal advances made by the state during the period ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... harmless occupations—if occupations they might be called—the breathless foliage rich in the depth of summer; behind, the old-fashioned house, unpretending, not mean, its open doors and windows giving glimpses of the comfortable repose within; before, the lake, without a ripple and catching the gleam of the sunset clouds,—all made a picture of that complete tranquillity and stillness, which sometimes soothes and sometimes saddens us, according as we are in the temper ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... when they climbed the alleys of the hanging park, resting in one of the little ruined temples, or watching, through a ripple of foliage, the remote blue flash of the lake, they did not always talk of Rendle or of literature. She encouraged Danyers to speak of himself; to confide his ambitions to her; she asked him the questions which are the wise woman's ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... Suddenly a little ripple of excited interest touched the groups in the street. The two soldiers rose and stared hard to their left; M. Perret of the Pharmacie Normale came out at a quick call from his wife, and stood, pestle in hand, as she struggled with a maddening ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... was not fulfilled. There was a little ripple on the water for a few minutes after sundown, but not enough breeze to fill out a sail, and the darkness came on with the brig swinging easily by the creaking cable, which ground ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... A ripple of laughter ran around the room that was now hot and stuffy from the glare and smell of the great oil-lamps. Code heard the laugh, and his brows drew ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... And a ripple of laughter passed round some gigantic whispering gallery in the sky. It set the trellis-work of golden threads all trembling. He felt himself perched dizzily in this shaking web that swung through space. And ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... curl like smoke among the dripping boughs, leaving a diamond on each sprouting bud where next year's leaf is hid; by the moorland river, on bright December mornings, when the grayling are lying on the shallows below the ripple where the rock breaks the surface; by the frozen shore where the land-springs lie fast, drawn into icicles or smeared in slippery slabs on the cliff faces, and hoar frost powders the black sea-wrack; on the lawns of gardens, ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... pool, ten or fifteen feet deep, with a smooth, circular wall of rock on one side worn by the water through long ages; or else into a deep, oblong pocket, into which and out of which the water glides without a ripple. ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... forth from the boat and went toward the strand with him; and the landsfolk met them where the water was shallower, and took him from their hands and bore him forth on to the yellow sand, and laid him down out of reach of the creeping ripple of the tide. Hallblithe withal slipped lightly out of the boat and waded the water after them. But the shipmen rowed back again to their ship, and presently Hallblithe heard the hale and how, as they got up ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... a situation favoring the bloody purposes of their hearts, than they fired upon them. Neal and Triplett were killed, and fell into the river.—Rowell was missed and escaped by swimming the Kenhawa, the Indians shooting at him as he swam. In a few days after the dead were found in a ripple and buried. The Indians had not been able to draw them from their watery grave, and obtain ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... stern of the craft, her fingers strained about the fatal packet. The slow glide of the boat, as almost imperceptibly it approached the low bank; the stillness of the mirror- like surface on which it moved, leaving only the faintest ripple behind it; the silence—for under the influence of emotion Count Hannibal too was mute—all were in tremendous contrast with the storm ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... the woak do overspread, The grass begloom'd below his head, An' water, under bowen zedge, A-springen vrom the river's edge, Do ripple, as the win' do blow, An' sparkle, as the sky do glow; An' grey-leav'd withy-boughs do cool, Wi' darksome sheaedes, the clear-feaeced pool, My chimny smoke, 'ithin the lew O' trees is there arisen blue; Avore the night do dim our zight, Or candle-light, a-sheenen ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... all turtles within hearing—whether terrapin or "snapper"—will put their heads above water. Both are welcome and are quickly sold to the market-men. The snapper slowly appears and disappears, leaving scarcely a ripple; and the hunter cautiously approaching usually takes him by the tail. The terrapin, on the contrary, is quick, and will descend in an oblique direction, so that a hand-net is needed unless he happens ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... repeated Betty. "One of the men at the dock warned me about them, and even told me how to locate them, by the peculiar ripple of the shallow water over them. But I forgot ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Florida - Or, Wintering in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... rudely-built bloto, merely the hollowed trunk of a tree, crosses the water, with a torch flickering at the prow, for the sun has set, and the crimson afterglow begins to fade from the serrated crests of the opposite heights. The ripple of the water in the reeds at the edge of the road, and the sigh of the evening breeze, fluttering the leaves and creaking the yellow canes of the great bamboos, alone stir the silence, which comes as a welcome relief after the toil and excitement of the day; but alas! ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... the middle of the night. The stars shone brightly, and there was but a slight ripple on ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... had been a clear, shining brown, with the pebbles showing white and yellow through it; but out here in the middle of the river it was all a blaze and ripple and sparkle of blue and gold. Hildegarde rested on her oars, and sat still for a few minutes, basking in the light and warmth; but soon she found the glory too strong, and pulled over to the other side, where high steep banks threw a shadow on the water. Here the water was very deep, and the rocks ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... sea-weed of pink, yellow or purple hue, and gem-like shells resting on a bottom of clearest sand; and while the waves are roaring on every side, and flinging their dampness into your very face, these fairy pools will lie at your feet without a breath or ripple on their surface. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... everywhere on every side she shines with colour, this wonderful sea-girt city. Her white marble palaces glow with a soft amber light, the cool green water that reflects her beauty glitters in rings of gold and blue, changing from colour to colour as each ripple changes its form. At sunset, when the sun disappears over the edge of the lagoon and leaves behind its trail of shining clouds, she is like a dream-city rising from a sea of molten gold—a double city, for in the pure gold is reflected each tower and spire, ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... the rosy torso of a woman which comes out living from the shadowy obscurity. Beyond, as far as the eye can see, marble gods and emperors extend away in files up to the windows through which flickers the light ripple of the Arno with the silvery swell ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... to himself, however, by a sudden little ripple of quick feminine laughter. Aghast, he dropped the manuscript among the chessmen and stared in bewilderment round the room. It was as empty and as still as ever. Again he stretched his hand out to the romance, and again came that roguish burst of merriment. He looked up at the ceiling, back at ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... him. Had Etty been on the spot he would have got a hint for one of his finest pictures; though I can give but little idea of it in writing, however, let me try. Before us was a long reach of deep, still water, unbroken by a ripple, so hemmed in on all sides by walls of deep green black wattle, tea-tree, and delicate silver acacia, that the water seemed to flow in a deep shoreless rift of the forest, above which the taller forest trees towered up two hundred feet, hiding the lofty ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... were playing orchestra to a banquet, while he watched the dart and splash of a fish from time to time about the surface, and the shadowy shapes of others deep down below the schooner's stern-post, clearly enough seen in the crystal sunlit water set a-ripple by the gentle gliding through it ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... the household, that when a long lost son appeared on the surface, during Ruth's absence at Chautauqua, proving, sturdy old Californian as he was, to have a home and place for his mother, and a heart to take her with him, her departure caused scarcely a ripple in the well-ordered household of ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... assured me, what everything conspired to assure me, that I was certainly in fairyland, not on the common earth. But I could not get on with my Bible at all. Again and again I began to read; then a bird or a bough or a ripple would catch my attention, and straightway I was off on a flight of fancy or memory, dancing over again my dances with Mr. Thorold, dwelling upon the impression of his figure and dress, and the fascination of his brilliant, changing ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... loveliness remains. All the surrounding country shimmers under the mysterious bloom of these heights, so vast that everything else is dwarfed beside them, and yet so curiously airy that they seem to perpetually ripple against the sky. The Great Blue Hill, especially—the one which bears an observatory on its summit—swims above one's head. It seems to have a singular way of moving from point to point as one motors, and although one may be forced to admit ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... one ripple on the boundless deep Feels that the deep is boundless, and itself For ever changing form, but evermore One with the ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... roaming, where the crested waves are foaming, And the shy mermaidens combing locks that ripple to their feet; When the Gloaming is, I never made the ghost of an endeavour To discover—but whatever were the hour, ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... attracted David's attention, and he soon found he could play upon Pepper as well as the fiddle, raising him and subduing him by turns; only, like the ocean, Pepper was not to be lulled back to his musical ripple quite so quickly as he could ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... Jacob Canfield. He left the shore one morning when it was as mild and fair as the brightest June day that ever dawned, and it was pleasant and calm all day. The sun went down as serenely as it rose, and not a ripple was on the sea—yes, it was a mild, lovely October day, from sunrise to sunset. Jake was seen to go out in his boat, but neither Jake nor the boat was ever seen afterward. I tell you I've never made up my mind ...
— Two Wonderful Detectives - Jack and Gil's Marvelous Skill • Harlan Page Halsey
... him; so he prayed that the silence and the holding of his hand might last a long while—for he might think of naught save her—and long it lasted forsooth, and still she spake no word, though whiles a little sweet chuckle, as of the garden warbler at his softest, came from her lips, and the ripple of her raiment as her swift feet drave it, sounded loud to his eager ears ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... as plainly as at noonday, until it disappeared from sight in a sweeping bend. From their stand-point it resembled a lake more than a river, the woods, apparently, shutting down in such a manner as to hide it entirely. Not a ripple was heard along the shore, and only once a zephyr hurried over its bosom, crinkling the surface as it passed, and rustling the tops of a few trees along the bank as it went on and was lost in the wood beyond. The great wilderness, ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... great glory. The cliffs rise there, tall, dark, majestic-grave, too, especially grave. When the sky is grey, they frown always, and even the warm rays of the setting sun but serve to light their grand solemnity. Very different is the changing sea at their foot. At times it will ripple all day, agog with smiling; anon, provoked by an idle breeze's banter, you shall see it black with rage. In the morning, maybe, it will sleep placidly enough in the sunshine, but at eventide the wind has ruffled its temper, so that it mutters and heaves with anger, breathing ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... part of the story, his mother would go off into a fit of uncontrollable laughter which left her helpless and crumpled up in a heap upon the nearest chair. Her laugh was very infectious; it began with a low, mirthful ripple, well down in the throat, and rose in rapid leaps of musical joy till it had traveled a whole octave of bubbling happy sounds, when it culminated in a peal of double forte shakes and trills, that made it ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... ripple of excited laughter; a bag was thrust into his hand, and like a bird escaped from a cage, Joan darted ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... her jewelled right hand she performed the ceremony of introduction between the three callers and Mrs. Frump—the fat young lady—who also carefully raised herself about two inches from her chair, and lowered herself again, without disarranging a ripple. ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... along without care or uneasiness; she was not afraid of losing it; each morning it shone upon her, with the same blue sky, the same smile, the same sweet words. That clear, still lake was unruffled by any breeze, even a zephyr; she would fain have seen a ripple on its glassy surface. Her desire had something so infantine about it that it ought to be excused; but society is not more indulgent than the God of Genesis. Madame de Vandenesse, having now become intelligently clever, was aware that such sentiments were not permissible, ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... of Paradise were weeping now by the fountain; the men gathered near, and their slow, hushed voices scarcely rose above the ripple of the stream where Robert the Lizard ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... was flung out by Aunt Hortense like a challenge, and the very set of her nostrils gave Marcia warning. But it was in a relieved voice that ended almost in a ripple of laugh that she answered quite assuredly: "Oh, yes, indeed. I can make beautiful bread. I just love ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... gully in front of you is brown and bare, but in the bottom, and clinging to the other side, are patches of moist and half-melted snow, and on all sides you hear the drip of falling moisture and the ripple of little streams of water which are running away to swell the creeks and rivers ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... you live to-day because you lived yesterday, and you do not forecast to-morrow. Perhaps you learn to assuage and deceive the hunger of your immortal soul by forcing your attention upon the petty ripple of daily events and duties, until you present, to the outsider, the appearance of a commonplace, non-tragic person, bearing no noticeable scars of the crime which society perpetrated on you. You perhaps lose, at last, the realization of your own inhuman plight, and ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... singular scene. Here a bird was observed swimming along, with its keen eye scanning the crystal below—there the broad tail of another stood vertically upwards, the rest of its body hidden below the surface—yonder, a third was altogether submerged, the ripple alone showing where it had gone down—a fourth was seen struggling with a large fish that glittered in its pincer-like beak—a fifth had already risen with its scaly prey, and was bearing it to the boat; and thus the twelve birds were all actively engaged in the singular occupation to which they ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... was the ripple and gurgle of some sleepy fountain. From far off, so faint and far that only a keen ear could catch, he heard a sound that made him smile with pleasure. He knew it for the distant, throaty bawl of King Polo—King ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... especially when the river is falling, for each year it alters its course and new sand-banks are formed, and it is not always easy to decide which is the right channel to steer for. The watermen, however, are very expert, and can usually determine their course by the nature of the ripple on the water, which varies according to its depth. Frequently, however, from accidents of light or other causes, it is not possible to gauge the river in this way, so every boat is provided with long sounding-poles called "midra," by means of ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... dimmer. So when a sly trout snatched off my bait I was in no mood to cover my hook again, but set the rod on the rocks and let the bright current waft my line as it would, harmless now as the dusty alder leaves dimpling yonder ripple. So I opened my book, idly attentive, reading The Poems of Pansard, while dappled shadows of clustered maple leaves moved on the page, and droning bees set ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... happiness is no higher than their's in their several occupations and delights. Sight and sense are fully as powerful for happiness as thought and ratiocination. Nature grows flowers wherever she can; she causes sweet waters to ripple over stony beds, and living wells to spring up in deserts, so that grass and herbs may grow and afford nourishment to some of God's creatures. Even the granite and the lava ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... early that year, and although it was not yet May, the green tassels were on the maples and the wild flowers made the ground gay in places. All around the clearing ran a ripple of bird song. The sunshine was 15 dreamy, ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... it seemed to me, something slightly uncanny about this lake, even in repose. The water seemed as translucent as a dark crystal, and as motionless as the surface of a mirror. Nothing stirred its placid surface, not a ripple, not an insect, not ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... in dealing with the small volume of 116 pages called Ionica, long ago ushered into the world so silently that its publication did not cause a single ripple on the sea of literature. Gradually this book has become first a rarity and then a famous possession, so that at the present moment there is perhaps no volume of recent English verse so diminutive which commands so high a price among collectors. When the ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... girl, who has the hill to climb," replied her brother, smoothing her hair with his hand. Her hair was long and smooth and glossy, with a wave like the ripple of a summer breeze upon the surface of still water. It was the girl's great pride, and had been sedulously cared for. "What lovely hair! It has just the ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... of steel, Under heaven's triumphant arch, The long lines break and wheel, And the order is "Forward, March!" The colors ripple o'erhead, The drums roll up to the sky, And with martial time and tread The regiments all pass by— The ranks of the faithful dead Meeting their president's eye. March on, your last brave mile! Salute him, star ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... striding away in the direction of a thicket of cottonwood where he heard the ripple of women's and children's voices. When he had penetrated it, he found his sister sitting on a stump, surrounded by a laughing, gesticulating crowd of young girls and old women, with a tightly swaddled papoose in her lap. Some of them had already half ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... temple; or perchance standing with Gertrude on the deck of the yacht watching the stars growing dim in the east; the sailors would be singing at the time, and out of the ashen stillness a wind would come, and again we would hear the ripple of the water parting as the jib filled and drew the schooner eastward. I imagined how half an hour later an island would appear against the golden sky, a lofty island lined with white buildings, perchance ancient fanes. 'What a delicious ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... father's death there was not a ripple in our affairs and none of the stocks known as "The Randolph's" fluttered a point because of that, to the financial world, momentous event. I inherited all of father's fortune other than four millions, which he divided up among relatives ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... acting for a long while in a painful dream. Her usually clear and tranquil soul was troubled and bewildered as she sat in the boat at the head of Felicita's coffin, with her dear face so near to her, yet hidden from her eyes. All around her lay the Lake, with a fine rapid ripple on the silvery blue of its waters, as the rowers, with measured and rhythmical strokes of their oars, carried the boat's sad freight on towards Lucerne. The evening sun was shining aslant down the wooded slopes ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... rounded the point to the left, passing just over the spot where, beneath the waves, lie the guns, cannon balls, ironwork, and all that was indestructible about our good old wreck. And would you believe it? Through the glassy clear water, undisturbed by a ripple, I actually saw many such things strewn ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... when it became known among the bankers and foreign agencies that a letter of credit for ten thousand pounds had been lost or stolen, there was more than a ripple of excitement. They searched records, but no loss as heavy as this came to light. Add to the flutter a reward of two hundred pounds for the recovery of the letter, and one may readily imagine the scrutinizing alertness ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... B.C.—Return to use of light ground. Brown lustrous paint, fine surface to clay. Decoration naturalistic, flowers, cuttle-fish, shells, spirals, ripple patterns, white and orange dots and bands occasionally super-imposed on dark glaze (Figs. 7, ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various
... circuit, and led Tetricus and Zenobia in triumph through its streets, and distributed elephants among the senators, and laid Etruria out in vineyards, and contemplated in leisure moments the suppression of Christianity as a subordinate detail of administration, a mere ripple on the broad ocean of his policy—at this period Bahram the First, King of Persia, naturally became disquieted in ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... of a rugged mountain, which dropped precipitately down just beyond the sleeping boy, to ripple off again in lesser lofty heights, with beautiful fertile valleys and tossing streams between. A little, lonely, helpless human soul he lay upon Nature's majestic bosom, with the Infinite hand ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... breakfast, the two vessels lay side by side, in complete readiness for sea, our ensigns hanging from the peaks, and our tall spars reflected from the glassy surface of the river, which, since sunrise, had been unbroken by a ripple. At length a few whiffs came across the water, and, by eleven o'clock the regular northwest wind set steadily in. There was no need of calling all hands, for we had all been hanging about the forecastle the whole forenoon, and were ready for a start ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... looking him through, with the same dark shade upon her face, in the same attitude even to the holding of the screen, with her lips a little apart, her brow a little contracted, but for the moment dead. He sees her consciousness return, sees a tremor pass across her frame like a ripple over water, sees her lips shake, sees her compose them by a great effort, sees her force herself back to the knowledge of his presence and of what he has said. All this, so quickly, that her exclamation and her dead condition seem to have passed ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... pond. Many reasons might be assigned for this. There is a wearisome monotony in the scenery along this plain. There are no hills, and but few trees to diversify the almost interminable prospect, stretching east, west, north, and south, like a broad ocean, without wave or ripple. The few trees scattered here and there stand alone, casting long shadows over the plain at nightfall, and adding solemnity to the mysterious stillness of that isolated place. It is not a place for human habitation, for the soil is sandy and sterile; neither is it a place for human hearts, so ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... was going on about him to the contemplation of the sea and the distant shores which he was approaching. The day, for a winter's day, was bright and sunny: the sky without a cloud; the atmosphere of a frosty clearness; and the sea so calm, that it appeared scarcely to swell into a ripple, except immediately in the ship's wake. The distant promontory, which he suspected to be the point whither he had been washed by the waves, after the explosion of the Halcyon, and which seemed the extremity of a small island, had now receded into an azure speck: the ship's course ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... Pericles requested him to go no further. The restraint of his presence prevented any parting less formal than that of friendship. But he stood watching the boat that conveyed them over the waters; and when the last ripple left in its wake had disappeared, he ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... The ripple of events which we have recorded may seem too insignificant; of still less import is the story of the efforts of Clairborne, from 1634: to 1647, to gain, or retain possession of Kent Island, in the Chesapeake, on which he had "squatted" before Baltimore got ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... this sophism for home consumption among his distant constituents on the 12th of June (a few days before the Lecompton delegates were elected), and in so unobtrusive a manner as scarcely to attract a ripple of public notice, was a light task compared with that which confronted him as Senator, at the meeting of Congress in December, in the light of John Calhoun's doings and powers, of the scandal of the Oxford fraud, and ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... roar Its waves dashed wildly on the rocky shore; While on its broad, expansive bosom lay The twinkling orbs in beautiful array; And every pearly drop shone clear and bright, Bathed in a flood of soft and silvery light. Scarcely a ripple stirred its quiet breast; For every sighing breeze was lulled to rest, And every sound was hushed on earth, in air, And silence ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... the periscope (for we had dived) that a lightship was within a few hundred yards of us upon the port bow. Two men were sitting on her bulwarks, but neither of them cast an eye upon the little rod that clove the water so close to them. It was an ideal day for submarine action, with enough ripple upon the surface to make us difficult to detect, and yet smooth enough to give me a clear view. Each of my three periscopes had an angle of sixty degrees so that between them I commanded a complete semi-circle of the horizon. Two British cruisers were steaming north from ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... cracked, fell in a heap of pulverized plaster. The car bucked as a blast sent a ripple down the street. A manhole cover popped up, clattered a few feet, dropped from sight. Brett swerved, gunned the car. It leaped over rubble, roared along the littered pavement. Brett looked in the rear-view mirror. A block behind them ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... on arrival. The night was beautiful and starlight, and, our repast over, the awning was removed, and we sat out enjoying our cigars in the cool night breeze blowing in fresh and strong from the sea. The quiet ripple of the waves as they broke on the sandy beach had a soothing effect very favourable to reflection (and baccy), and the lights of the little fishing village twinkling at the foot of the black and rugged peak of Santubong—which rose to a height of 1,500 feet above our heads, and behind ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... lay by the bank, tied to long stakes which the boys had driven in. The big Nubian sat at one end, cross-legged, a rifle on his knees. At the stern sat a brown boy. And so Arlee sank into the tired sleep that claimed her, and did not wake until the warm sunshine in her tiny window and the ripple of water against the sides told her that another morning was at hand and that they were on the ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... Perhaps the following incident will cause a smile to ripple the good-natured features of some of your readers:—In the county of M——, the Draft Commissioner held an extra appeal for the 'conscientious men.' Now, in said county, there dwelt one Barney Mullen, who, not ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... that apprehension, I said: "The business men are all debtors as well as creditors, and they cannot engage in a struggle over gold payments, and the small class of creditors who are not also debtors will not venture upon a policy in which they must suffer ultimately." The decision did not cause a ripple in ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... it out and held it hanging with such a careful carelessness that the lamplight, picking out each separate link, fired its length and breadth into a dazzling glimmer of living silver flame shot through by the colder blue of hammered steel. With every cunning, unseen movement of the fingers a ripple from the throat rolled downward and out at the edges in a white fire of fairy jewel-work. Then with a jerk he caught it in his open hands, shaking them till it settled so compactly down that it lay ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... Lake Erie. In this dilemma, his only resource was to paddle with his hands, and attempt by this tedious method to force his craft to the nearest shore. While he was thus awkwardly engaged, there came it ripple of laughter from close beside him, and he started up just in time to gaze squarely into the laughing face of an Indian girl, who instantly impressed him as the most graceful creature he had ever seen. She occupied, with a girl companion, a beautifully painted and ornamented canoe, which had ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... shining down on the red parasols, the light dresses, the joyous faces and on the ocean, barely stirred by a ripple. When we were out of the harbor, the little vessel swung round the big curve and pointed her nose toward the distant shore which was barely visible through the early morning mist. On our left was the broad estuary of the Seine, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... the range, before which winds the valley of the Black with miles of placid stream in view. Quite different is this from White river, which is ever hurrying, rushing along. The Black flows within its grassy banks for long distances with scarcely a ripple; then a whirling rapid is passed, beyond which glides another long stretch ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... logs on end, it was called Standing Fort, and in later years the town was called Stanford. In the Logan party was a priest who was a musician of rare ability. In his daily walks, he was accustomed to sit, meditating, at the mouth of the cave from which ran the water of this great spring. The ripple of the stream flowing from the cavern, over the rocks and through the spearmint, was music to the Father's ear, and to him it seemed the spirit of St. Asaph, the director of King David's choir. ...
— The story of Kentucky • Rice S. Eubank
... will pass to a certain night, the moon flooding her radiance all about me and the world very hushed and still with nought to hear save the murmurous ripple and soft lapping of the incoming tide, and I upon my bed (very wakeful) and full of speculation and the problem I pondered this: Adam (and he so precise and exact in all things) had named to my lady ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... muffler pinned close so that his evening dress escaped notice, he found his way down to the railing quite secure from recognition by any one at the peep-hole of the curtain or in the boxes, and there took his seat to watch the late-comers ripple down the aisles. He was experienced enough to know that "first-nighters" do not always count and that they are sometimes false prophets, and yet he could not suppress a growing exaltation as the beautiful auditorium filled with men and women such as he had himself ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... pleasant enough. Lionel Beauchamp and his confreres determined to fall into no such mistake. No sooner are their friends on board and the steamer cast off from her moorings than the signal is given for lunch. The day is so fine that it has been decided to go down nearly to the Nore. With scarce a ripple on the water, even those who have no confidence whatever in their sea-going capabilities can feel no terror of mal de mer. The whole affair is an undoubted success. Mr. Cottrell himself pronounces the luncheon ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... with black and yellow stripes. Patches of clear white sand were seen here and there for the floor, with dark hollows and recesses, beneath overhanging masses and ledges. All those, seen through the clear crystal water, the ripple of which gave motion and quick play of light and shadow to the whole, formed a scene of the rarest beauty, and left nothing to be desired by the eye, either in elegance of form or ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... the light fell upon a deer. He raised his head and gazed upon the light. Burr moved with the boat without making a ripple and finally he held the boat with his oar and ordered me to fire. This I did, and the deer ran for the shore, Burr pushed his boat to the quag, took the jack, and followed the track. At the distance of about fifteen rods ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... fellows, the pickerel. One might, if he were a lucky and persevering fisherman, take a trout in the swift waters of the brook; but for the pickerel, theirs was not the joy of such exertion. In the dark, silent places along Mill stream, where never a ripple disturbed their seclusion, you might see one, now and then, lying motionless in the shadow of an overhanging branch, at the surface of ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... that hung over the surface of the deep appeared to increase in intensity, and they could not see even the faint glimmer of a star to cheer them; while all they could hear was the lapping of the waves as they washed by them, and the ripple and swish of some billow as it overtopped its crest, and spent its strength in eddies of circling foam, as David could imagine—for the darkness rendered everything invisible now, even the platform ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... seemed to emanate from her. Her face expressed no emotion, either good or bad, beyond a voluptuousness at once sensual and divine. She doubtless noticed my suffering, for she asked with a voice as clear as the ripple ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... glided over each ripple, and reed, and closing water-lily; over her face, where the hood had fallen back from her loosened hair; over one hand trailing the water, and the other touching the flower at her breast; and, just above her ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... gone before Stanley had finished. "Pass, friend!" said the bass voice gently, and he slid away through the water with scarcely a ripple... But curse the fellow! He'd ruined Stanley's bathe. What an unpractical idiot the man was! Stanley struck out to sea again, and then as quickly swam in again, and away he rushed up ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... and so high that it is a hill, even among the hills that Nature planted around it. The very river, as though it shared one's feelings of compassion for the extinct tribes who lived so pleasantly here in their blessed ignorance of white existence hundreds of years ago, steals out of its way to ripple near this mound, and there are few places where the Ohio sparkles more brightly than in the Big ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... strange was the sight, so dire the fears it wakened. I looked right and left; the ground was so hard, it told no story. I stood and listened till my ears ached, but the night was hollow about me like an empty church; not even a ripple stirred upon the shore; it seemed you might have heard a pin drop in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... requires many pages to describe the fury of the storm, which Mr. Cruikshank has represented in one. First, he has to prepare you with the something inexpressibly melancholy in sailing on a dark night upon the Thames: "the ripple of the water," "the darkling current," "the indistinctively seen craft," "the solemn shadows" and other phenomena visible on rivers at night are detailed (with not unskilful rhetoric) in order to bring the reader into a proper frame of mind ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... returning: No second crossing that ripple's flow: "Come to me now, for the west is burning: Come ere ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... of the rose-like perfume that fills your hair, Of times when my lips were free of your soft closed eyes, While down in the tank the waters ripple and rise And the flying foxes silently cleave ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... husband entered she looked up, and her lips curved and parted; her eyelids fluttered twice or thrice—a movement remindful (Poesy forgive us!) of the tail-wagging of a faithful dog—and a little ripple went through her like the commotion set up in a weeping willow by a puff of wind. Thus she ever acknowledged his coming, were it twenty times a day. If they who sometimes sat over their wine in Coralio, reshaping old, diverting stories of the madcap career of Isabel Guilbert, could have seen the ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... in the Region of Mines, young and strong and ambitious. Rynason caught and held those impressions; he felt the muscles ripple strangely through his body as Tebron stretched, felt the cold wind of the flat cut through his loose garment. It was night, and he stood on the parapet of a heavy stone structure looking down across the immense stretch of the Flat, spotted here and there ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... the dry torrent-bed. The rocks were a perfectly flat red sandstone, which in many places resembled artificial pavement; this was throughout the district a peculiar geological feature, the surface of the stone being covered with ripple-marks, and upon this easy path Bisgaum now approached the body of the tiger, which lay apparently dead exactly ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... an army marching along the roads from the foothills to the mountains leading through mysterious, shadowy spruce forests, where the soil is covered with rich carpets of moss. Foaming streams ripple in among the moss-covered bowlders. Then the paths emerge on the cheerful, emerald-green pastures of the slopes, alive with the flocks of goats, sheep and cattle, attended by their shepherds. A little farther 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
... in expectation of a signal for the onset. The position of Willis could be ascertained now and then by an eye of fire, which opened and shut as he inhaled or exhaled the fumes of his Maryland. The ripple beat gently on the sea-line of the boat, which oscillated with the regularity and softness of ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... Mr. Stanton, "we reached the spot where President Brown lost his life. What a change in the waters! What was then a roaring torrent, now, with the water some nine feet lower, seemed from the shore like the gentle ripple upon the quiet lake. We found, however, in going through it with our boats, there was the same swift current, the same huge eddy, and between them the same whirlpool, with its ever-changing circles. Marble Canon seemed destined ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... excited jerk. The next instant I perceived the game, and did not need the unfeigned "dam" of Luke to convince me that I had snatched his felt hat from his head and deposited it among the lilies. Discouraged by this, we whirled about, and paddled over to the inlet, where a little ripple was visible in the tinted light. At the very first cast I saw that the hour had come. Three trout leaped into the air. The danger of this manoeuvre all fishermen understand. It is one of the commonest in the woods: three heavy trout ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... moody-looking bee-hunter exclaimed; "it is very well to talk of the other side of this ripple of a river, or brook, or whatever you may call it, but in my judgment it would be a smart rifle that would throw its lead across it—that is, to any ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... on slowly, the little laughing brook beside them seeming to rise like a thunder-voice upon the dead silence. Olive listened to every ripple, that fell as it were like the boom of an engulphing wave. Nothing else she heard, or felt, or ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... risen with a jingle of steel scabbard and a ripple of glitter on his gold-embroidered breast; a heavy sword-hilt appeared at his side above the edge of the table. In this gorgeous uniform, with his bull neck, his hooked nose flattened on the tip upon a blue-black, dyed moustache, he looked like a disguised and sinister ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... but something passes on and migrates to another equally transitory tenement. Neither Brahmans nor Buddhists seem to contemplate the possibility that the human soul may be a temporary manifestation of the Eternal Spirit which comes to an end at death—a leaf on a tree or a momentary ripple on the water. It is always regarded as passing through many births, a wave ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... his lips. "Ah, how angry I was then—but why be angry now? It all happened so long ago; and if it had not happened—who knows?—perhaps you would never have pitied me enough to love me as you did." She laughed softly, reminiscently, leaning back as if to let the tide of memories ripple over her. Then she raised her head suddenly, and said in a changed voice: "Are your plans ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... she swam on: and now a light wind had been drawn up from the west, and was driving a little ripple athwart the lake, and she swam the swiftlier for it awhile, but then turned over on her back and floated southward still. Till on a sudden, as she lay looking up toward the far-away blue sky, and she so little and low ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... Elinor laughed her low ripple. "We didn't find Francis Edward David till the middle of December, and it's now the third week in January. I don't think we've let much grass ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... except an occasional blow-up, their river steamers were really models of enterprise and skill; but it was gravely added, the Mississippi is not the Atlantic; icebergs are not snags; and an Atlantic wave is somewhat different from an Ohio ripple. These truisms were of course undeniable; but to them was quickly added another fact, about which there could be as little mistake—namely, the arrival at Southampton, after a voyage which, considering it ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... did not move from its orbit, but a light ripple of surprise appeared to cross its luminous convexity. ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... gave what in ordinary women would have been a shrug: with her it was a slow ripple. I vow if her neck had been bare one could have seen it ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... blue sea. In a field nearer they could barely make out two brown specks moving slowly back and forth. They were oxen, and Dromas was ploughing with them. It was so still that the children could plainly hear the breathing of the sheep as they cropped the grass, and the ripple of the little stream which spread out into a shallow river and ...
— The Spartan Twins • Lucy (Fitch) Perkins
... enough to heel her some six inches under every stitch of plain sail they could set upon her, was slipping along through the water at the rate of fully five knots, and that, too, so cleanly that the ripple under the bows was inaudible to the men on the forecastle unless they put their heads over the side and listened for it, whilst scarcely a whirl or a bubble was to be seen in the long smooth wake which she left ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... The slightest extra ripple of the waters at New Orleans brings them over the banks and floods the streets, but the ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, April 22, 1897, Vol. 1, No. 24 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... water's edge lay Balder's Ringhorn, the greatest of all the ships that sailed the seas, but when the gods tried to launch it they could not move it an inch. The great vessel creaked and groaned, but no one could push it down to the water. Odin walked about it with a sad face, and the gentle ripple of the little waves chasing each other over the rocks seemed a mocking ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... religion. One might almost have said that religion seemed to be a matter of concern. The audience wore a look of interest, and, even after their first gaze of admiration and whispered criticism at the splendors of their new church, when at length the clergyman entered to begin the service, a ripple of excitement swept across the field of bonnets until there was almost a murmur as of rustling cornfields within the many ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... but eight miles from Pittsburg, and scarce twelve by the course of the river. For three-quarters of a mile below the entrance of the creek the Monongahela was unusually shallow, forming a gentle rapid or "ripple," and easily fordable at almost any point. Its common level is from three to four hundred feet below that of the surrounding country; and along its upper banks, at the second crossing, stretches a fertile bottom of a rich pebbled mould, about a fourth of a mile in width and twenty feet above ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... the ripple of admiration on his passage to this room, now approached. His motions were exact and incredibly swift. It was his duty to remove full spools and replace them by empty ones, and he did this duty for sixteen spinning frames. Seeing the "new hand's" astonishment at his deftness he became reckless ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... Pat!' 'Go it, Jamie!' 'Well ridden!' A subdued hum runs round the excited spectators. The ardent racers are nose and nose. One swift, sharp cut, the cruel whip hisses through the air, and the black is fairly 'lifted in,' a winner by a nose. The ripple of conversation breaks out afresh. The band strikes up a lively air, and the saddling for the next race ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... police officials, capitalists, royalties, and others. They have been poisoned, shot, and dynamited, in the belief that their removal would benefit humanity. Yet nothing would seem to be quite so obvious as the fact that their removal has hardly caused a ripple in the swiftly moving current of evolution. Others, often more forceful and capable, have immediately stepped into their places, and the course ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... at heart a dreamer—was Charming Billy Boyle; perhaps an idealist—possibly a sentimentalist. He had never tried to find a name for the side of his life that struck deepest. He knew that the ripple of a meadow-lark swinging on a weed against the sunrise, with diamond-sparkles all on the grass around, gripped him and hurt him vaguely with its very sweetness. He knew that he loved to sit alone and look away to a far skyline and day-dream. ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... it, and capital fun they had till the tide began to turn. And then Tom heard all the other babies coming, laughing and singing and romping; and the noise they made was just like the noise of a ripple. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... their pink shadings than was the bloom on her rounded cheek, and the white, firm chin denoted an absence of weakness and frivolity. The upper lip, from where I sat, seemed one half of Cupid's bow. I could but barely catch a glimpse of a ripple of hair that, perhaps, had not been smoothed with sufficient pains, and thus seemed in league with the slightly worldly bonnet. In brief, to my kindled fancy, her youth and loveliness appeared the exquisite human embodiment of the June morning, ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... breaking out of the enchanted circle at a different point of the compass. But the spell of the calm is a strong magic. The following day still saw them scattered within sight of each other and heading different ways; but when, at last, the breeze came with the darkling ripple that ran very blue on a pale sea, they all went in the same direction together. For this was the homeward-bound fleet from the far-off ends of the earth, and a Falmouth fruit-schooner, the smallest of them all, was heading the flight. One could have imagined ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... of the story, his mother would go off into a fit of uncontrollable laughter which left her helpless and crumpled up in a heap upon the nearest chair. Her laugh was very infectious; it began with a low, mirthful ripple, well down in the throat, and rose in rapid leaps of musical joy till it had traveled a whole octave of bubbling happy sounds, when it culminated in a peal of double forte shakes and trills, that made it a joy to hear, and finally it died ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... to decrease. It was as if some noble orator had begun to speak in the midst of a tumultuous assembly. Those nearest him catch his utterances first, and become quiet; the wave of silence spreads like a great ripple in the water; until at last the whole audience is as hushed as death. So something—some extraordinary thing—had arrested the battle; down, down, dropped the tumult; and at last there were only a few scattering shots to be ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... first verse, then, nor in it anywhere else, do I find even an allusion to suicide. What Hamlet is referring to in the said first verse, it is not possible with certainty to determine, for it is but the vanishing ripple of a preceding ocean of thought, from which he is just stepping out upon the shore of the articulate. He may have been plunged in some profound depth of the metaphysics of existence, or he may have been occupied ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... called—the breathless foliage rich in the depth of summer; behind, the old-fashioned house, unpretending, not mean, its open doors and windows giving glimpses of the comfortable repose within; before, the lake, without a ripple and catching the gleam of the sunset clouds,—all made a picture of that complete tranquillity and stillness, which sometimes soothes and sometimes saddens us, according as we are in the ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... road, and tripped but little when the poor lady realized that neither John Henry nor Virginia was listening. She was so used to talking for the sake of the sound she made rather than the impression she produced that her silvery ripple had become almost as lacking in self-consciousness as the ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... Again that ripple of sound ascended the stairs, but this time there was an added note of apprehension. It broke very faintly but pitifully, before dying away to the sound of light footsteps. Half a dozen stairs were pressed, then came a stumble and a girlish "A-ah." She recovered herself as the ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... presence of all his children. "It was a beautiful day," we have been elsewhere told, "so warm that every window was wide open, and so perfectly still, that the sound of all others most delicious to his ear, the gentle ripple of the Tweed over its pebbles, was distinctly audible as we knelt around the bed, and his eldest son kissed and closed his eyes. No sculptor ever modelled a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... Michael's. The HUER, as we call him, for he gives the hue and cry from the hill-top lookout when the fish are coming, he stands on Michael's Crag just below there, as I stand myself so often, and when he sights the shoals by the ripple on the water, he motions to the boats which way to go for the pilchards. Then the rowers in the lurkers, as we call our seine-boats, surround the shoal with a tuck- net, or drag the seine into Mullion Cove, all alive with a mass of shimmering silver. The jowsters come down with their ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... distinctly heard. It changed continually, from profuse Gaelic maledictions to the simpler curses they know in English. As they spoke they could be seen writhing and twisting themselves with passion against the light which was beginning to turn on the ripple of the sea. Soon afterwards another set of voices began in front of us, breaking out in strange contrast with the dwindling stars and the silence ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... it had become, Gaston had not lost cognizance of the spot whither they were to direct their course; and one by one the strong swimmers plunged into the sullen waters without causing so much as a ripple or plash, which might betray their movements to suspicious ears upon the battlements (if indeed any sort of watch were kept, which appeared doubtful). They swam with that perfect silence possible only to those who are thoroughly at home in the water, till they had crossed ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... would come back, and urge, and help him; but it was of little use. He was not strong enough; and the last glimpse I always had of them was a foamy wake disappearing round a distant point, while far in the rear was a ripple where the little fellow still paddled away, doing his ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... a thousand flowers, but for Angela it was no longer "Parfait d'Amour." The two battleships had long ago finished their speed trial; and trails of floating kelp lay like golden sea-serpents asleep under the blue ripple of the sea. Everything was very beautiful. But it ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... Ruth would have resented such familiarity, but now something touched her spirit with an inexpressible pity, and she let a tiny ripple of a smile pass over her lovely face as her eyes traveled on down the platform in search of the tall form of John Cameron. In the moment of the oncoming train she had somehow lost sight of him. Ah! There he was stooping over a little white haired woman, taking her tenderly in his arms to kiss her. ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... and got breakfast, the two vessels lay side by side in complete readiness for sea, our ensigns hanging from the peaks and our tall spars reflected from the glassy surface of the river, which since sunrise had been unbroken by a ripple. At length a few whiffs came across the water, and by eleven o'clock the regular northwest wind set steadily in. There was no need of calling all hands, for we had all been hanging about the forecastle the whole forenoon, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... Canute-like, sitting here, one is often reminded of the sea. For not only do long ground-swells roll the slanting grain, and little wavelets of the grass ripple over upon the low piazza, as their beach, and the blown down of dandelions is wafted like the spray, and the purple of the mountains is just the purple of the billows, and a still August noon broods upon the deep meadows, as a calm ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... single mile a day. At length, however, on the sixth day, a few cat's-paws came playing at intervals over the surface of the glass-smooth water, momentarily ruffling it into little evanescent patches of tender blue, and causing a transient ripple to play over the stagnant cloths of our canvas. As the day wore on the cat's-paws increased in frequency, in area, and in strength; and shortly before sundown a gentle, dainty little air of wind came stealing softly ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... dance. It has charming melodies. Ornamental figurations in the accompaniment, now above, now below, give the effect of whispered questions and answers during the dance. The questions—put by the man—are pressing and ardent, the answers—from the girl—playful and parrying. Sometimes they even ripple with chaff. Yet, toward the end of the dainty little composition, they become tinged with sentiment, as if she were afraid she might have gone a little too far and might "spoil things" and thought it just as well to let him know in time that, after all, she was not turning a wholly ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... Elmwood was quiet and practically deserted when they drove into it. The farmers were too busy with the harvest to "come to town for trading" except on Saturdays, and the arrival and departure of the two daily trains did not cause more than a ripple of ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... form slowly, a shapeless, round blur in the pale light. Inch by inch it drifted toward them, until Chet moved one hand abruptly and found he had created a ripple of light by which he could see more clearly. And he saw before him ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... should appear—this is the true idea of a minister of the Gospel. Nor is the work confined to those who, being trained to it, and freed from other cares, may thereby be capable of conducting it on a larger scale. As every leaf of the forest and every ripple on the lake, which itself receives a sunbeam on its breast, may throw the sunbeam off again, and so spread the light around; in like manner, every one, old or young, who receives Christ into his heart may and will publish with his life and lips that blessed name. In the ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... like a breeze in the midnight of May. The tumbling of the seas makes a tune far away. She comes with closed eyes, with light footsteps she nears, And she sings the low song that each lipping ripple hears. "In love there is laughter, ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... over and over now, as she lay wakeful in bed, mixed up with the "forever—ever," and the dropping tinkle of that lovely trembling ripple of accompaniment, until the late moon got round to the south and slanted in between the white dimity curtains, and set a glimmering ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... himself and his own thoughts, he had become in a measure inhuman. The form of external things, black depths in woods, pools in lonely places, those still valleys curtained by hills on every side, sounding always with the ripple of their brooks, had become to him an influence like that of a drug, giving a certain peculiar color and outline to his thoughts. And from early boyhood there had been another strange flavor in his life, the dream of the old Roman world, those curious impressions that he had gathered from the white ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... the canticle again, went down the roof, and entered the water. It covered her softly, without a ripple. I had not ceased smiling. I looked with happiness upon the spot ...
— The Flood • Emile Zola
... made the bold Sir Bedivere: "I heard the ripple washing in the reeds, And the wild ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... Down where the mermaids Pluck and play On their twangling harps In a sea-green day; Down where the mermaids, Finned and fair, Sleek with their combs Their yellow hair ... Bates and Giles— On the shingle sat, Gazing at Turvey's Floating hat. But never a ripple Nor bubble told Where he was supping Off plates of gold. Never an echo Rilled through the sea Of the feasting and dancing And minstrelsy. They called—called—called: Came no reply: Nought but the ripples' Sandy sigh. Then glum and silent They sat instead, Vacantly brooding On home and bed, Till ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... dearly, but he was not inclined to "carolling;" and the repression and constraint were soon evident through all the conventional efforts to be "merry." It was the squire who finally hit upon the circumstance which tided over the evening, and sent every one to bed in a ripple of laughter. For, when the piano was closed, he opened his eyes, and said, "Sophia, your mother tells me she has had a very nice Christmas present from the little maid you took such a liking to,—little Agnes Bulteel. It is a carriage hap made of sheepskins white as the snow, and from some ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... the wave that laved the shore of the island with an almost inperceptible ripple, Lady ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... with a ripple of dangerous laughter. "I will carry the comparison no farther. Still, I wager, Chevalier, that the game ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... night. The next morning, as he rode down to business, that 'sweet face at the window' greeted him, more radiant than ever, but at the same time more puzzling; for mingling with the ripple of her smile, there was something that looked like triumph on her face. At all events, from the first hour of their meeting a capital flirtation was kept up on her part, although her victim was in downright earnest, ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... her bright hair But lieth floating in the moonlight air, Like the long moss, beside a silver spring, In elfin tresses, sadly murmuring. The worm hath 'gan to crawl upon her brow— The living worm! and with a ripple now, Like that upon the sea, are heard below, The slimy swarms all ravening as they go, Amid the stagnate vitals, with a rush; And one might hear them echoing the hush Of Julio, as he watches by the side Of the dead ladye, his ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... Margaret said, with a long sigh. She looked sideways at Rebecca,—the dainty, fast-forming little figure, the even ripple and curl of her plaited hair, the assured pose of the pretty head. Victoria Carr-Boldt, just Rebecca's age, as a big schoolgirl still, self-conscious and inarticulate, her well-groomed hair in an unbecoming "club," her well-hung skirts unbecomingly short. Margaret had half expected to find ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... bridegroom-to-be attended High Mass at the Catholic Church on Sunday, when the Rev. Father Wix, in apprising parishioners of the near approach of Lent, caused an irresistible smile to ripple over the faces of his hearers. Toujours perdrix may sate in the long-run, but perpetually to faire maigre is ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Kayser," she explained with a quick, upward glance, adding the next minute with a fresh ripple of laughter. ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... that she doesn't,' and then we walked forward, and I showed him that she didn't. I never saw a man so surprised. At first he thought that somebody had been squirting oil in front, but even if that had been the case, there would have been some sort of a ripple on each side of the bow, and there wasn't anything of the kind. The skipper took off his cap and scratched his head. Then he turned and sang out, 'Mr. ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... the dark hair, speciously waved, was as accurately parted in the middle as though the line had been run by an engineer. The voice of Inspector Val, low and lazy, fell on the ear as plausibly soft as the ripple of a brook. His eyes wore a sleepy, intolerant expression, as if tired with much seeing and inclined to resent the infliction of further spectacles. The nose was thin and high, and jaw and cheek bones were thin and high to ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... mould of the craft, it served to urge her through the water at the rate of some three or four knots in the hour; or quite as fast as an ordinarily active man is apt to walk. Her motion was nearly unobservable to all on board, and might rather be termed gliding than sailing, the ripple under her cut-water not much exceeding that which is made by the finger as it is moved swiftly through the element; still the slightest variation of the helm changed her course, and this so easily and gracefully ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... be gradually losing headway, and the throbbing of her engines was becoming less pronounced. I observed, also, that the smoke from her funnel was beginning to hang over her and curl down upon the bridge. But, in spite of her slowing down, the musical ripple at her bow increased, and Riggs said it was due to the set of the current against us, which came through the channel very strong, as the island cut out a deep current and brought it to the surface of the sea in the narrow passage ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... closely, and examined the badly bruised tubers. "Good gracious," she exclaimed, with a ripple of laughter. ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... half-past four and five that Miss Grierson, driving in the basket phaeton, made her appearance on the streets, evoking the usual ripple of comment among the gossipers on the Winnebago porch as she tooled her clean-limbed little Morgan to a stop in front of the ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... strong yellow sunlight poured over the plain, the bank and the river, gilding every ripple; and, as the light grew, hundreds of delicate shapes—the forms of the ibis and flamingo and crane, and other river-fowl—became visible, crowding down the dark banks, with flapping of white and crimson wings, and stretching of legs, and opening of beaks, rustling ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... thy joys in keeping of the Power Who holds these changing shadows in His hand; Believe and live, and know that hour by hour Will ripple newer ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... shuddering winds that murmur, 'neath the gleaming of the skies; Hark to the swollen river, how it moaneth in its flow, 'Mid the bridge's fallen arches, 'neath the bushes bending low, Now unbroken by a ripple, flowing silently and still, Gives again unto the heavens twilight ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... on the other hand, the author avails herself of all the agreeable traditions of English fiction: there are warm and well-lighted rooms, well-to-do people, regular meals, afternoon tea, plenty of bread-and-butter, and a gentle ripple of friendly, soft-voiced conversation. This may not be original or exciting, but, after a good deal of crude sensation through some thousand and odd pages, "ways of pleasantness and paths of peace" are refreshing to the critic, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... with an Indian crouching in its stern wielding a paddle, was skimming across the stream, not a sound or splash of paddle, nor hardly a ripple from it to ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... came the sound of wood knocking against wood, of exclamations of annoyance or triumph as the game proceeded, and every now and then a ripple of prolonged laughter, girlish, fresh, pure as the fragrant air, clear as the last notes of the cuckoo before he speaks ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... gallantly into the spirit of the thing, but she gracefully denudes it of its bareness and pedantry. Her bugle sings truce at midday for luncheon. She couches in the deep grass of the abbey ruins, and gathers in picturesque groups beneath castle walls. A flutter of silks, a ripple of feminine laughter, distract the audience from graver disquisitions. It is difficult to discuss the exact date of a moulding when soda-water bottles are popping beneath one's ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... little talk in the car. The secretary and typewriter sat together on the stamped Spanish-leather cushions by the plate-glass observation-window at the rear end, watching the surge and ripple of the ties crowded back behind them, and, it is believed, making notes of the scenery. Cheyne moved nervously between his own extravagant gorgeousness and the naked necessity of the combination, an unlit cigar ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... war gains in the temporary disappearance of cranks and faddists, some of whom have sunk without a ripple. And though the Press Censor's suppressions and delays and inconsistencies provoke discontent in the House and out of it, food for mirth turns up constantly in unexpected quarters. The Crown Prince tells an American ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... in a crimson glow; every window-pane seemed on fire, and the red roses lay like drops of blood upon the dark green climbers beneath. And nearer and nearer rolled on the black clouds, as if to shroud the bright pile from sight. Not a leaf stirred, not a ripple curled the water. The baron looked down into the water for some living thing, a spider, a dragon-fly, and started back from the pale face that met him, and which at first he did not recognize as his own. There was a sultry, boding, listless ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... sun was shining down on the red parasols, the light dresses, the joyous faces and on the ocean, barely stirred by a ripple. When we were out of the harbor, the little vessel swung round the big curve and pointed her nose toward the distant shore which was barely visible through the early morning mist. On our left was the broad estuary of the Seine, her muddy water, which never mingles with that of the ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... magnificent facade of the Temple of Antoninus Pius and Faustina, the most perfect of all the Roman temples. There are six splendid Corinthian columns in front and two at the sides, each composed of a single block of green ripple-marked Cipollino marble, about forty-six feet in height and five feet in diameter, with bases and capitals of marble, originally white, but now rusty and discoloured by age; all beautifully proportioned and carved in the finest ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... the green of the orange and lemon trees was as rich as when the year was young. The villa of white marble was built on a gentle rising knoll, prettily wooded, at the foot of which running through a glade was a tiny streamlet clear as crystal, which with its ripple and the singing of the birds lent music to the air. On the highest garden site was built a tower from whence an extensive view of the city is gained, with its spires and palaces, together with the ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... all Humbert's reply, and he now turned away and walked the deck alone and in silence. Meanwhile the bustle and movements of the crew continued, and soon the great ships, stripped of their white sails, lay tranquilly at anchor in a sea without a ripple. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... record with the most instantaneous apparatus. What remains of the vision of that long succession of streets called by successive names from Knightsbridge to Ludgate Hill is the rush of a human torrent, in which you are scarcely more aware of the single life than of any given ripple in a river. Men, women, children form the torrent, but each has been lost to himself in order to give it the collective immensity which ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... Europe, recently inured to the sands of Egypt and the scorched headlands of Arabia, is alike entranced by the vision of beauty which expands before him as the island rises from the sea, its lofty mountains covered by luxuriant forests, and its shores, till they meet the ripple of the waves, bright with the foliage ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... was augmented by a military escort, under command of Onder-Lieutenant J. Van Dijl, consisting of one Javanese sergeant and six native soldiers, most of them Javanese. At midday the surface of the water was absolutely without a ripple, and the broad expanse of the river, ever winding in large curves, reflected the sky and the low jungle on either side with bewildering faithfulness. At night the stars were reflected in the water in the ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... back the lock of crinkly brown hair that was always getting in her eyes, puckered her lips a little, and glanced at her brother Austin without replying, but with a slight ripple of concern disturbing her usual calm. She was plain and plump and placid, as sweet and wholesome as clover, and as nerveless as a cow, and she secretly envied her brother's lean, dark handsomeness; but she was conscious of a little pang of regret that the young, eager face beside her was ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... be any if I can help it," she answered with a light ripple of laughter. "Please go ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... strained hard as he got one of his feet under him. With a quick effort he got the other foot into position and rose slowly, lifting the white form out of the pool. The shaggy hair hung from the white goat, limp and reeking, numerous thin streams of water making a little ripple as they fell. The limbs of the Herd quivered under the weight, he staggered back, his heavy boots grinding in the gravel; then he set his teeth, the limbs steadied themselves, he swayed uncertainly for a moment, then staggered across the stable door, conscious of ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... near a river Where the darkened waters quiver. Where the ripple we can hear Bursting on the pebbly shore, Making music soft and clear For evermore, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... still sleeping. Jane stood watching her for a full minute with awe in her face. She could not but recognize the difference between herself and this fine sweet product of civilization and wealth. With the gold curls tossed back like a ripple of sunshine, and a pathetic little droop at the corners of her sweet mouth, nothing lovelier could be. Jane hurried to the window and turned her back on the bed while she perused the paper, her rage rising at the theories put forth. It was even hinted that her mother had been ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... summits. Suddenly we entered the belt of kelp, which extended for perhaps a quarter of a mile seaward, and, lo! a transformation indeed. Those loose, waving fronds of flexible weed, though swayed hither and thither by every ripple, were able to arrest the devastating rush of the gigantic swell, so that the task of landing, which had looked so terrible, was one of the easiest. Once in among the kelp, although we could hardly use the oars, the water was quite smooth and tranquil. The islanders collected ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... give therefore fair field to the tone of light. There is then no limit to the multitude, and no check to the intensity of the hues assumed. The whole sky from the zenith to the horizon becomes one molten, mantling sea of color and fire; every black bar turns into massy gold, every ripple and wave into unsullied, shadowless, crimson, and purple, and scarlet, and colors for which there are no words in language, and no ideas in the mind,—things which can only be conceived while they are ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... hand the reefs were numerous; but out beyond, nothing broke its polished mirror, from which arose a soft caressing ripple, light and intensified from the depths of its many bays. Its horizon seemed so calm, and its depths so soft! The great blue sepulchre of many Gaoses hid its inscrutable mystery; whilst the breezes, faint as human breath, wafted to and fro the perfume ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... valley of the Black with miles of placid stream in view. Quite different is this from White river, which is ever hurrying, rushing along. The Black flows within its grassy banks for long distances with scarcely a ripple; then a whirling rapid is passed, beyond which glides another long stretch of almost ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... the misery; at the "religious enterprise" and the heathen darkness; at the virtue, the decorum, and the beauty of woman well-born and well bred; and at the wild sea of prostitution, which swells and breaks and dashes against the bulwarks of society—every ripple was ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... 'mid woody braes, And lists the ripple of Glenkinnon's rill— Fair girdled by Tweed's ampler gleaming wave— His well loved home of early happy days, Ere noon of Fame, and ere dark Ruin's eve, When life lay unrevealed, with hopeful thrill Of all that might be in the reach of powers Whose very flow was a continued joy— Strong-rushing ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... pink, the sea was calm, and there was a lull in the breeze. Not a ripple broke the motionless surface of ocean on which the setting sun shed its golden light. Blue near the coast and mingled with the evening mist, the sea was scarlet everywhere else and deepened into a dark red line on the horizon. The sun had no rays left; they had fallen from its face and drowned ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... pulsation of the minutes is due to the touch of His finger on the pendulum, and how everything that we have, and the existence of us who have it, are results of the continuous welling out from the fountain of life, of ripple after ripple of the waters, everything would be more sacred, and more solemn, and fuller of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... 'the King'?" asked Flavia, leaning over my shoulder, so that the ripple of her hair played on my ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... along, smiling into the faces which met his kindly, and the brown spot on his eyelid gave him the mischievous look which always made folk laugh. It was amid a ripple of good-natured laughter that he and his pets made their way to the platform which had been erected in front of the palace. Here on a high seat sat the King, and beside him the Prince, with a flush of pleasure on his thin ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... unaffected modesty of his demeanor than by eclat of lineage or the romantic incidents which had befallen him. In the words of a distinguished writer, who well knew him at that day: 'So unostentatious was his deportment, so correct, so pure his life, that even the ripple of scandal can not appear plausibly upon its surface.' We have inquired of those who entertained him as their guest, of those who tended at his sick-bed, of the artist who painted his miniature, of ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... inquired after her eldest brother by the alternate names of Festus and Frank, and when she mentioned Lance's disaster as his coup d'etat. And here was the last of these pleasant afternoons, full of still sweet sounds, midsummer hum above, the soft ripple of the water close by, the cawing of the rooks in the Close— all such peace, that her heart quailed as she looked forward to the din of the High Street at Bexley, and she strangled a sigh ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... helplessly drifting with the powerful current toward the open waters of Lake Erie. In this dilemma, his only resource was to paddle with his hands, and attempt by this tedious method to force his craft to the nearest shore. While he was thus awkwardly engaged, there came it ripple of laughter from close beside him, and he started up just in time to gaze squarely into the laughing face of an Indian girl, who instantly impressed him as the most graceful creature he had ever seen. She occupied, ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... children too? You sentimental ass, Arthur!" Clarges laughed. It was a funny laugh, a kind of inane ripple that nevertheless tickled everybody who heard it. "But it's too smoky here. Come up stairs to the drawing room. There's a jolly big drawing room with a piano, and we can say what we want to, everyone ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... gazing sufficed to show that, thus far, the calm of the preceding night still continued unbroken, for the surface was as smooth and lustrous as that of plate-glass, save where, here and there, a steamer or two—dwindled to the dimensions of toys—ploughed up a ripple on either bow that swept away astern, diverging as it went, until it gradually faded and was lost a mile away. In addition to the steamers, there were perhaps a dozen sailing craft—colliers and fishing-smacks, mostly—in sight, the wrinkling canvas of which, as they rolled gently upon the invisible ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... EAGRE or AIGRE. Also, an eddying ripple on the surface of flooded waters. A tide swelling above another tide, as in the Severn. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... mid-ocean. Over the vast expanses of the oily sea no ripple was to be seen although Captain BABBIJAM kept his binoculars levelled at the silent horizon for three-quarters of an hour by the saloon clock. Far away in the murky distance of the mysterious empyrean, a single star flashed ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... Queen of May, the stream Dances her best before the holiday sun, And still, with musical laugh, goes tripping on Over these golden sands, which brighter gleam To watch her pale-green kirtle flashing fleet Above them, and her tinkling silver feet That ripple melodies: quick,—yon circling rise In the calm refluence of this gay cascade Marked an old trout, who shuns the sunny skies, And, nightly prowler, loves the hazel shade: Well thrown!—you hold him bravely,—off he speeds, Now up, now down,—now madly darts about,— Mind, mind your line ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... round, rosy, red-lipped, dimpled, merry- eyed; the aged pastor's wrinkled cheeks and furrowed brow and streaming silver beard; and the carved-ivory features of the governess, borrowing no color from the soft folds of her rich merino dress. As daylight ebbed, the ripple danced up to the ceiling and vanished, like the pricked bubble of a human hope; the mocking-bird hushed his vesper-hymn; and Edna closed the book and replaced it ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... those on a pond. They spread out and reached places where there were instruments to detect them, and that was that. Radar made the same kind of waves, only smaller, which bounced back to where there was an instrument to detect them. These were ripple waves. ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... fought on its convenient spaces; women wandered on the serious business of food-getting. The camps stood a pace or two above high-water mark in the meagre shelter of sighing casuarinas, and were often changed, for there were six miles of gently curving, ripple-embroidered shore on which to rest. To this day most of the traffic is regulated by the tide. High water drives the wayfarer to the loose, impeding sand, over which the great convolvulus sends its tireless tentacles, to be ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... hesitated to call her beautiful, his eyes dwelt with pleasure on the noble lines of her relaxed figure. Better than beauty, he admitted the moment afterward, was the charm that shone for him in her wonderfully expressive face—a face over which the experiences of many lives seemed to ripple faintly in what was hardly more than the shadow of a smile. She had loved and suffered, he thought, with his gaze upon her, and from both love and suffering she had gained that fulness of nature which is the greatest good that either has ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... the river was! Not a ripple stirred on the glassy surface, broken only by the sharp cutwater of our tiny craft. The sun, as round and red as an August moon, was by this time peering ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... balcony, this flag and this speech was a calm, magnificent prospect-trees green and charming, mountains of superb shape, a cloudless sky, the ocean without a ripple. ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... rusticates her foundations. Smooth sheets of rock, glistening like sea waves, and that ring under the hammer like a brazen bell,—that is her preparation for first stories. She does rusticate sometimes: crumbly sand-stones, with their ripple-marks filled with red mud; dusty lime-stones, which the rains wash into labyrinthine cavities; spongy lavas, which the volcano blast drags hither and thither into ropy coils and bubbling hollows;—these she rusticates, indeed, when she wants ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... transacted its business with him, and he turned aside to a quiet spot, to a seat behind a clump of shrubs, to smoke a cigar and to picture Warren's surprise and delight. The cigar burned out and he was about to go, when he heard the ripple of skirts on the soft grass. A woman came across the sward, and in the light of a neighboring lantern Lyman recognized Eva. She saw him ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... am disposed to credit your explanation," boomed the colonel, frowning down a ripple of giggles that had its rise in Miss Gault. "And I am disposed to acquit you of consciously dishonest intent. I am glad to do so. Here is the situation: Early last spring, Mr. Gault," indicating the sport-suit wearer at his left, ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... eyes turn towards the Christ? Was there a ripple of interest and expectancy through the crowd? Did any realize the unearthly beauty and spiritual power of his presence? We know not. Scripture is silent, only telling us that on the following day, when, with two disciples, he looked on Jesus ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... water passed above the girl's mouth and nose—her eyes and forehead all that showed—yet still she walked on after the retreating Mahar. The queen's head slowly disappeared beneath the surface and after it went the eyes of her victim—only a slow ripple widened toward the shores to ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the mist of ideas in which his mind groped vaguely he would have said that for themselves the deeds of the Quintards had been given the touch of finality, and that whether for good or for evil, the consequences, like the ripple which rises from the surface of placid waters when a stone is dropped, still ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... a pause. The faint ripple of the tide was followed by the hiss of the water as it surged round the rocks and fell back. Not daring to move in the silence, Alan ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... against the rough bark of a teakwood tree to protect his rear and to face out toward the pitch-black night. More than once the big cadet felt the sudden ripple of a crawling thing moving around him, across his toes or down the tree trunk. There was a sudden thrashing in the underbrush near by and he brought the shock rifle up quickly, ears tuned for the growl, or scream, or hiss of ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... it, anyway. We liked him best of all for the unconscious slip he made. "This reception," he said, "I understand is for the splendid soldiery of America that played such an important part in the war with our Allies." A respectful ripple of laughter passed over the stand at this, but he did not notice it. He was fighting too hard to think what to say next. We liked him, too, for saying "such an important part." A man who had been further ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... a golden flicker, into which the oars held by our new acquaintance, Nick Vernon, dipped silently and rose dripping as his practiced arms drew the boat through the water, causing a musical little ripple at ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... have their origin in the action of the wind striking the surface of the water commence as a series of small and slow undulations or wavelets—a mere ripple. As the strength, and consequently the pressure, of the wind increases, waves are formed; and a numerical relation exists between the length of a wave, its velocity of progress, and the depth of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various
... the bacon. "We ain't been followed up with stampedes so far," he pointed out. "Burro Lode never caused a ripple in the Bend, you recollect. And I'll tell a sinful world it ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... equilibrium. Silence is the absolute poise or balance of body, mind, and spirit. The man who preserves his selfhood ever calm and unshaken by the storms of existence—not a leaf, as it were, astir on the tree; not a ripple upon the surface of shining pool—his, in the mind of the unlettered sage, is the ideal ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... alert at. The swing and lure of the music, the swift movement, the fluttering of airy draperies as slim sister nymphs flew past her, set her pulses beating with sweet young joy. A brief, uncontrollable ripple of laughter broke from her before she ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... now, moreover, that an undercurrent of circumstance existed which did not even ripple the surface of that apparently facetious brutality hurled at J. ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... of her rose taller hills, of which Storm was the forerunner, the first small ripple of the Cumberlands as they broke upon the plain. At her feet stretched mile after rolling mile of summer green, and gold, and brown. There were dappled pastures of bluegrass, clover-fields, beech-woods, great golden ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... practical that will stand the test of your criticism. And I desire to say, in the outset, that in this lecture I shall endeavor to lift my subject above the plane in which it is ordinarily treated. I don't believe I ever announced a lecture on Matrimony, that I did not detect the ripple of a smile on the face of my audience, as if they regarded the whole subject as a huge practical joke, something wonderfully funny, on no account ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... bar of cloud was rising higher and higher, and by degrees extinguishing the stars. Before long half the sky was overspread. Evidently motive power lay in the cloud itself, for there was not a breath of wind. Absolute calm reigned in the atmosphere; not a leaf stirred on the tree, not a ripple disturbed the surface of the water. There seemed to be scarcely any air even, as though some vast pneumatic machine had rarefied it. The entire atmosphere was charged to the utmost with electricity, the presence of which sent a thrill through the whole ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... fact that no priest had ever preached there. He felt very curious to see a priest. A synagogue in the town he could not find. He was sorry. He had a great desire to lay eyes on a synagogue—temple of that ancient faith which had flowed on its deep way across the centuries without a ripple of disturbance from the Christ. He had made up his mind that when he began to preach he would often preach especially to the Jews: the time perhaps had come when the Father, their Father, would reveal his Son to them also. ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... rowed off southwards with his wife. And while they were rowing, they saw a black ripple on the sea ahead. When they came to the place, they saw that it was the sea-lice. And the outermost layer of skins on the boat was eaten away before ...
— Eskimo Folktales • Unknown
... originality he did not dream of questioning, took profound hold of his conviction and admiration; and two or three times that evening, as his canoe glided homeward in the twilight, its one long, smooth ripple gleaming on this side and that as it widened away toward the bayou's dark banks, he rested for a moment on his tireless paddle, and softly broke the silence of the wilderness with its three simple words, so trite to our ears, so strange ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... never so lightly, on the life of a fellow-mortal, the touch of our personality, like the ripple of a stone cast into a pond, widens and widens, in unending circles, through the aeons, till the far-off gods themselves cannot tell ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... at odd hours in the backyard of the Institute was a phenomenon more than sufficiently remarkable to be talked about in Rockland. The viscous intelligence of a country-village is not easily stirred by the winds which ripple the fluent thought of great cities, but it holds every straw and entangles every insect that lights upon it. It soon became rumored in the town that the young master was a wonderful shot with the pistol. Some said he could hit a fo'pence-ha'penny at three rod; some, that ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... soul-stirring mornings in which Nature seems to smile. There was just enough of motion in the air to relieve the effect of what is called a dead calm. The ripple on the water caught the sun's rays, and, breaking them up, scattered them about in a shower of fragmentary diamonds. Fleecy-white clouds floated in the blue sky, suggesting dreams of fairy-land, and scents of sprouting ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... first the tones were pure And tender as a summer night, The full moon climbing to her height, The sob and ripple of the seas, The flapping of an idle sail; And then by sudden and sharp degrees The multiplied, wild harmonies Freshened and burst into a gale; A tempest howling through the dark, A crash as of some shipwrecked bark. A loud and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... when he was among the English Jacobites in France. The result was that he danced all of a piece, with as near the poetry of movement as a man might attain, and then there was the intimate, intriguing ripple of his tartans. ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... round and round, like a caged beast, when the stars grew faint and the silver ripple of the dayspring broke over the sea. For two hours and more he had been thinking hard, and he rested his elbows on the balcony and paused for a minute or two to watch the red ball of the sun as it heaved ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... world is moving in the direction of a greater frankness. I do not mean that a man has not a right to live his life privately, in his own house and his own circle, if he wills. But if that life is lived simply, generously and bravely, I welcome any ripple or ray from it that breaks in light and fragrance upon the harsher and ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Mary repeated, still in the dream that was made of music and moonlight, the ripple of the sea and the stirring of something new in her nature of which all these sweet and beautiful things seemed part. "Love! I never thought this could ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... removed his pipe from his mouth and regarded me with intense earnestness. He is not the sort of person who lets his emotions ripple to the surface, so his serious mien surprised me. He raised his hand in a prophetic attitude and began to speak. 'Dr. Johnson has rightly said that the incommodities of a single life are necessary and certain, but those of a conjugal ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... prison, and the earth seemed to have closed over him. Hardly a ripple of indignation was perceptible on the calm surface of affairs, although in the States-General as in the States of Holland his absence seemed to have reduced both ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... discovered that all the beautiful heads were like Miss Fitzherbert. 'It is the same line,' he exclaimed, 'the line of lilies and flowing waters—the gracious ineffable upward returning ripple of the true retrousse nose, the divine flou, the loveliness which has lain dormant for centuries—nay, was at one period of debased art scorned and trampled under foot by the porcine multitude, as akin to the pug and the turn-up, until discovered and enshrined ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... without clammy-cold shroud on it Hitherward comes, or a flower-like star! Only the hiss of the tempest is loud on it— Hiss, and the moan of a bitter sea bar. Here on this waste, and to left and to right of it, Never is lisp or the ripple of rain: Fierce is the daytime and wild is the night of it, Flame without limit and frost without wane! Trees half alive, with the sense of a curse on them, Shudder and shrink from the black heavy gale; Ghastly, with boughs like the plumes of a hearse on them: Barren ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... as winter lasted these had to be held in the Bala Hissar, where a sound of music and a ripple of laughter was to be heard day and night; but as spring began once more to carpet the barren hills with millions of flowers, Humayon's amusements went further afield. One day he and his Court, a glittering cohort of merry men, flashing with diamonds, and prepared to enjoy everything, would ride ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... the granite rock, spread deep and still and cool over its white sandy bottom, in the stone-walled inclosure where it was confined (over half of which stood the ample milk-house), and then gurgling along the stony outlet ran away over the ripple-marked sands of its worn channel, to join the waters of ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... had now gained off the southern coast of Africa, and was about one hundred miles from the Lagullas coast; the morning was beautiful, a slight ripple only turned over the waves, the breeze was light and steady, and the vessel was standing on a wind, at the rate of about four ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of her father carries a lamp to light her to him through densest fogs as well as over deserts,' etc. She declaimed a long sentence, to set the ripple running in his features; and when he left the room for a last word with Armandine, she flung arms round her mother's neck, murmuring: 'Mother! mother!' a cry equal to 'I am sure I do right,' and understood so by Nataly approving it; she too on the line of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... out another vent, springs the Flora River, whose waters ripple over limestone bars in miniature cascades, from pool to pool, like pigmy reproductions of the lost terraces of New Zealand. Follow the edge of the great tableland around, and amongst the deep seams and fissures of its abrupt descent coastward, we suddenly come, midst rugged ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... Now wavelets ripple gently along the quiet strand, While summer's sunshine broodeth soft o'er all the sea and land. O mighty waves! as chainless, as free, as birds that skim! There's One who rules the stormy sea—thy song ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... drizzling, discouraging rain. Most of the wagons had been left at the lake, and the mules and oxen had been packed with provisions and necessary articles. Even at this day some of the survivors are unable to repress a ripple of merriment as they recall the manner in which the oxen bucked and bellowed when the unaccustomed packs were strapped upon their backs. Stanton had stoutly insisted upon taking the mules over the mountains. Perhaps he ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... over the calm and quiet street, basking in the sunlight, peacefully minus a ripple of breeze to break the beauty of it, her large ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... about standing rye, when one is close enough to see the individual stalks. They are so tall and slim that you cannot understand why the lightest wind does not lay them flat. Yet all day long they sway and ripple and billow in the summer wind, and unless the heavy, driving storm comes the ranks remain unbroken to the last and face the sickle in golden ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... to glades, where ripple by Clear streams, where feed my lambkins, come; And when the shades of eve are nigh, I'll bear thee safely to my ...
— Favourite Welsh Hymns - Translated into English • Joseph Morris
... him that I was going for a fish, and then on down to the beautiful river, whose waters are green and very much the color of the Niagara River. I cast the fly over on the water, and instantly a large fish came up, took the fly, and went down again so easily and gracefully that he scarcely made a ripple on the water until he felt the pull of the line. That was when I forgot everything connected with camp—Faye, horse thieves, and Indians! I had no reel, of course, and getting the big fish out of the water was a problem, for I was standing on a rather high ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... moments when they are more than usually acute Lloyd began to be aware of a vague, unwonted movement in the City itself, outside there behind the drawn curtains and half-opened window—a faint, uncertain agitation, a trouble, a passing ripple on the still black pool of the night, coming and going, and coming again, each time a little more insistent, each time claiming a little more attention and notice. It was about half past three o'clock. But the little patient's temperature was ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... would lie in her chair under the deodars by the delicate splash and ripple of the stream. Living imprisoned in the crystal sphere of the intellect she saw the world outside, painted in few but distinct colours, small, comprehensible, moving on a logical orbit. I never knew her posed for an explanation. She had the contented atheism of a certain ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... breath, he got up, they had crossed the plain and were in a grove of beeches. Directly in front of him ran a swift stream, which was divided at the rocky head of what appeared to be a wooded island. There was only a slight ripple and fall of the water, and, after a second glance, it was evident that the point of land was not an island, but a portion of the mainland which divided the stream. The branches took ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... worst of fears, leaned from the window towards him. A slanting ray caught the floating cloud of her amber hair, her face glowed rosily, her eyes beamed on the new-comer, and she broke into such an enchanting ripple of laughter as he had never heard from those soft lips since it had been his privilege to kiss them. Then something happened within him. Upon his lonely walk he had been overcome by a depression against which he had every day been struggling. He had been disappointed in ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... mother would come back, and urge, and help him; but it was of little use. He was not strong enough; and the last glimpse I always had of them was a foamy wake disappearing round a distant point, while far in the rear was a ripple where the little fellow still paddled away, doing ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... beside the river Long ago, my Love and I, Where the willows droop and quiver 'Twixt the water and the sky. We were wrapped in fragrant shadow, 'Twas the quiet vesper time, And the bells across the meadows Mingled with the ripple's chime. With no thought of ill betiding, "Thus," we said, "life's years shall be For us twain a river gliding ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... pleasing aspect, but it lacks the grandeur, the stern sublimity of Quebec. The fine mountain that forms the background to the city, the Island of St. Helens in front, and the junction of the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa—which run side by side, their respective boundaries only marked by a long ripple of white foam, and the darker blue tint of the former river—constitute the most remarkable features in ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... been keyed up to the pitch of his nerves, for to me the night remained as voiceless as a subterranean cavern. I became intensely irritated with him; within my mind I cried out against this infatuated pantomime of his. And then, of a sudden, there was a sound—the dying rumour of a ripple, somewhere in the outside darkness, as though an object had been let into ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... sunk beneath the ocean in a refulgence of glory, its parting rays throwing a ruddy glow over the surface, unbroken by a single ripple. ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... sing In silent silver chords I too could hear? Or smile to see a starlet shake with fear Whenever winds disturbed the lake's repose, Or when in mocking mood they form in rows, And stare up at their parents—so sedate— Then break up laughing 'neath a ripple's weight? ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... spread deep and still and cool over its white sandy bottom, in the stone-walled inclosure where it was confined (over half of which stood the ample milk-house), and then gurgling along the stony outlet ran away over the ripple-marked sands of its worn channel, to join the waters of ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... character, with nothing bold in its aspect; but I think its beauties will grow upon us, and make us love it the more, the longer we live here. There is a brook, so near the house that we shall be able to hear its ripple in the summer evenings, . . . . but, for agricultural purposes, it has been made to flow in a straight and rectangular fashion, which does it infinite damage as a picturesque object. . ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the reports of the Weather Bureau it appears that the average number of calm days at Key West is only ten per annum. In 1895 only three days were calm, and in 1894 there were only twenty-seven hours, of day or night, in which there was not breeze enough to ripple, at least, the pale-green water of the harbor. For all practical purposes, therefore, the sea-breeze at Key West may be regarded as perennial and incessant. It varies in strength, of course, from day to day and from hour to hour; but in the two weeks that ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... way all questions about man may be considered from two standpoints; the physical and the spiritual. The danger is in making the physical alone interpret the spiritual and in declaring that "man is simply a ripple on the sea of human events and human life, merely on episode marking a particular stage in the cooling of a nebula." This method of interpretation leads to the ruling out of any personal responsibility on the part of man for his ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell
... was a little shy, and more so at having been discovered by so grand a gentleman with her petticoats gathered a little high about her bare shins. She looked down, therefore, upon the water at her feet, and then she saw a ripple of blood, and then another, ring after ring, coming and going to and from her feet. She cried out the sacred name in horror, and, lifting her eyes, the courtly gentleman was gone, but the blood-rings about her feet spread with the speed ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... looked fifty. In that face there was no childishness whatever. It was a thin, peaked, sallow face, with a discontented expression; her features were small and pinched, her hair, which was of inky blackness, fell on her shoulders in long, straight locks, without a ripple or a wave in them. She looked like an elf, but still this elfish little creature was redeemed from the hideousness which else might have been her doom by eyes of the most wonderful brilliancy. Large, luminous, potent eyes—intensely black, and deep as the depths of ocean, they seemed to fill her ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... southern pole To break upon Japan. Thou bid'st the fires, That smoulder under ocean, heave on high The new-made mountains, and uplift their peaks, A place of refuge for the storm-driven bird. The birds and wafting billows plant the rifts With herb and tree; sweet fountains gush; sweet airs Ripple the living lakes that, fringed with flowers, Are gathered in the hollows. Thou dost look On thy creation and pronounce it good. Its valleys, glorious with their summer green, Praise thee in silent beauty, and its woods, Swept ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... age of the most lasting impressions. Dr. Carmichael, of the Hobart School of Finance of Manhattan University, came and went, but he made no appreciable ripple in the placid surface of Jerry's philosophy. He cast stone after stone into the lovely pool of Jerry's thoughts, which broke the colorful reflections into smaller images, but did not change them. And when ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... sparrow is, like the poor, always with us, at least near the coast, but we think none the less of him for that, and besides, that fact is true in only one sense. A ripple in a stream may be seen day after day, and yet the water forming it is never the same, it is continually flowing onward. This is usually the case with song sparrows and with most other birds which are present summer and winter. The individual sparrows which flit from bush to bush, ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... traditions in school life as firmly established as the doctrine of infant damnation in the good old days of theology. Secretly, however, Skippy adored the first warm contact of the tentative toes, the slow ecstasy of the mounting ripple over the sinking body and the long, drowsy languor of complete submersion. It was the apotheosis of happiness when all the aches and vexations of the day disappeared in a narcotic reverie, when he could forget ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... fountain moves without a wind: but shall The ripple of a spring change my resolve? No. Yet it moves again! The waters stir, Not as with air, but by some subterrane 80 And rocking Power of the internal world. What's here? A ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... his back against the rough bark of a teakwood tree to protect his rear and to face out toward the pitch-black night. More than once the big cadet felt the sudden ripple of a crawling thing moving around him, across his toes or down the tree trunk. There was a sudden thrashing in the underbrush near by and he brought the shock rifle up quickly, ears tuned for the growl, or scream, or ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... marsh and emerged mud-spattered and indignant. Briers tore at him. Below the sun-mottled river glided endlessly on in sylvan peace. The other shore looked better. There the wind-bent shag of trees was greener save when, with a hint of rain, the breeze turned up an under-leaf ripple of silver. He met no one; no one but a madman, he reflected, would explore the tangled ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... in the skies; the Square was quiet and deserted; I listened with delight to the song of the Lady fair, as it mingled with the ripple of the fountain. All at once I perceived a white figure approach from the opposite side of the Square and go directly toward the little garden door. I peered eagerly through the dazzling moonlight—it was ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... My horse's breath rose like steam, and whenever we stopped he smoked all over. The cornfields got back a little of their colour under the dazzling light, and stood the palest possible gold in the sun and snow. All about us the snow was crusted in shallow terraces, with tracings like ripple-marks at the edges, curly waves that were the actual impression of the stinging lash in ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... he put the photograph back in his pocket, and filled his pipe again, while it was almost dark before he had smoked it out. The thrush had gone, and only the ripple of the water broke the silence, until he heard footsteps on the stones behind him. Then, looking round, he saw a young woman moving towards the river, and he watched her with a quiet interest, for ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... the weird spot as the noise of their spades became monotonous, relieved only by the throwing aside of the great lumps of moist earth; a mist was rising from the river flowing near, of which in the first stillness of our coming I could just catch the ripple of the water. It seemed to me that those who were long buried there had in life perhaps had some association with the river—even an affection for it—and had wished to be laid there near its soft murmur while ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... and joined the group. The padre smiled. It was a situation such as he loved to study: a strong man and a strong woman, at war. But nothing happened; not a ripple anywhere to disclose the agitation beneath. The man laughed and the woman laughed, but they spoke not to each other, nor looked once into each ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... Snail from a green, shelving bank, and shoved her off with the long sticks we carried. The wind caught her sail and drove her forward in fine style; she made a great ripple as she went. Once she caught in a drowned bush; but the current swung her clear, and she cut across the course of the brook like a Falmouth Packet. Hugh and I ran along the causeway, and over the bridge, to catch her on the other side. We had our ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... a laugh, but dangerous, for it is the greatest test of an orator's control of his audience to be able to land them again on the solid earth of sober thinking." I have known him at the very end of a sermon have a ripple of laughter sweep freely over the entire congregation, and then in a moment he has every individual under his control, listening soberly ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... wondrously old! Babble such as this fell from a child's lips thousands of years ago, in the morning of the world; it sounded on through the ages, infinitely reproduced; eternally a new beginning; the same music of earliest human speech, the same ripple of innocent laughter, renewed from generation to generation. But he, listening, had not the merry, fearless pride of fathers in an earlier day. Upon him lay the burden of all time; he must needs ponder anxiously on his child's heritage, ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... only idol was her father, and for him she would have done anything in her power. She counted on him being good to live for ever, along of his cautious habits, and she'd give over all thought of any change in the home when the crash came and the even ripple of their lives was broke for her by a ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... interesting, no doubt, to have dined with him in Paris; to have quarried lions in their African fens; to have heard archaic hymns ripple through the rushes of the Nile; to have lounged in the Academe, to have scaled Parnassus, and sailed the AEgean Sea; but, a history and an arm-chair aiding, the traveller has but to close his eyes and the past returns. Without disturbing so ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... Bellingham in 1840. The sleepy old town in its previous existence had never felt a ripple of excitement more moving than a sewing bee, a travelling phrenologist or temperance lecturer, a summer picnic or a winter revival. Now it was invaded on one hand by Millerism and on the other by the Dorr War. ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... with the powerful current toward the open waters of Lake Erie. In this dilemma, his only resource was to paddle with his hands, and attempt by this tedious method to force his craft to the nearest shore. While he was thus awkwardly engaged, there came it ripple of laughter from close beside him, and he started up just in time to gaze squarely into the laughing face of an Indian girl, who instantly impressed him as the most graceful creature he had ever seen. She occupied, with a girl companion, ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... of Elmwood was quiet and practically deserted when they drove into it. The farmers were too busy with the harvest to "come to town for trading" except on Saturdays, and the arrival and departure of the two daily trains did not cause more than a ripple of ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... revelation of the wonderful works of God in creation her acquaintance with us had been. She would gaze through the microscope at awful forms, and would persevere until the silver rim which marked the confines of the drop of water under inspection would ripple inwards with a flash of light and vanish, because the drop itself had evaporated. 'Well, I can only say, how marvellous are Thy doings!' was a frequent ejaculation of Miss Wilkes, and one that was very well received. She learned the Latin names of many of the species, and it seems quite pathetic ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... turned her face a little and nodded. "Yes, Alaska," she said, and the old captain fancied there was the slightest ripple of a tremor in her voice. "Your Alaska, ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... When Pao-yue raised his eyes, he noticed that Shih Jung, Prince of Pei Ching, wore on his head a princely cap with pure white tassels and silvery feathers, that he was appareled in a white ceremonial robe, (with a pattern representing) the toothlike ripple of a river and the waters of the sea, embroidered with five-clawed dragons; and that he was girded with a red leather belt, inlaid with white jade. That his face was like a beauteous gem; that his eyes were like sparkling stars; and that he was, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... on a pond. They spread out and reached places where there were instruments to detect them, and that was that. Radar made the same kind of waves, only smaller, which bounced back to where there was an instrument to detect them. These were ripple waves. ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... up in that sack, row her well out across the lake, fix a weight to her feet, and drop her quietly overboard. She was to wear everything which she had brought with her to the house. Mlle. Celie would have disappeared for ever, and left not even a ripple upon the water ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... her laughter and being part of it, until her teeth were only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill. I was drawn in by short gasps, inhaled at each momentary recovery, lost finally in the dark caverns of her throat, bruised by the ripple of unseen muscles. An elderly waiter with trembling hands was hurriedly spreading a pink and white checked cloth over the rusty green iron table, saying: "If the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden, if the lady and ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot
... know if he had heard a noise or not, Jake looked round and saw a long gray object slide out of the mist. It was indistinct and very low in the water, but he knew it was a shooting punt. It drifted up the channel towards him; a faint ripple indicating that somebody was steering it with a short paddle. A blurred figure lay in the well behind a bunch of reeds, and the only bold line was the barrel of the big punt-gun that would throw a pound of shot. Jim could not see the punt, because he was looking the other ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... the battle of Pydna the Roman state enjoyed a profound calm, scarcely varied by a ripple here and there on the surface. Its dominion extended over the three continents; the lustre of the Roman power and the glory of the Roman name were constantly on the increase; all eyes rested on Italy, all talents and all riches flowed thither; it ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... brilliancy in the deep blue atmosphere; and now muttering peals of thunder were faintly heard rolling behind the mountains. The river, hitherto still and glassy, reflecting pictures of the sky and land, now showed a dark ripple at a distance, as the breeze came creeping up it. The fish-hawks wheeled and screamed, and sought their nests on the high dry trees; the crows flew clamorously to the crevices of the rocks, and all nature seemed conscious ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... answer made the bold Sir Bedivere: "I heard the water lapping on the crag, And the long ripple washing in ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... end of two years, when she was twenty-two, a ripple of excitement came into her life; another Shelton girl married, and caused even greater relief to her family than had Deena, for she married a Boston man with money. He had been a student at Harmouth and had fallen in love with Polly Shelton's violet eyes ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... no effect upon my mind of what he uttered, no emotion, however transitory, in myself, escaped his notice, though not from any positive vigilance on his part, but because his faculty of observation was so penetrative and delicate; and to say the truth, it a little confused me to discern always a ripple on his mobile face, responsive to any slightest breeze that passed over the inner reservoir of my sentiments, and seemed thence to extend to a similar reservoir within himself. On matters of feeling, and within a certain depth, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... all rank with rotting weeds, Close by the pines there at the highway side; No ripple on its green and stagnant tide, Where only cold and still the horse-leech breeds— Ugh! might not here some ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... this, that he would come Whenever Nala called—for everywhere Hutasa shineth, and all worlds are his; Yama gave skill in cookery, steadfastness In virtue; and Varuna, King of Floods, Bade all the waters ripple at his call. These boons the high gods doubled by the gift Of bright wreaths wove with magic blooms of heaven; And those bestowed, ascended to their seats. Also with wonder and with joy returned The Rajas and the Maharajas all, Full of the marriage-feast; for ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... length fairly come, Throgmorton was led to a room overlooking an angle of the moat. Thence he was lowered with every precaution; the ripple of his swimming was audible for a brief period; then a black figure was observed to land by the branches of a willow and crawl away among the grass. For some half-hour Sir Daniel and Hatch stood eagerly giving ear; but ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fountain of the Central Heart; a scintillation, from how afar off! of the Immeasurable Love, of the Eternal Pity; though it seemed hardly more human than the play of kits and puppies, or than the anerithmon gelasma (the soulless, uncontrollable titter) of the tossed spring spray, or the blue, breezy ripple, for which overhaul your Prometheus, master Tom, and when found, make a ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... off the southern coast of Africa, and was about one hundred miles from the Lagullas coast; the morning was beautiful, a slight ripple only turned over the waves, the breeze was light and steady, and the vessel was standing on a wind at the rate of ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... meadows as of yesteryear. The moon will fee the world with silver coin. And all across the earth men will traffic on their little errands until nature calls them home. I am a stone cast in a windy pool where scarce a ripple shows. Life 's but a candle in the wind. Mine ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... barked, far away, raising a ripple on the placid night; there a cock crowed, and there another caught his cry; it passed on, on, fading away eastward, traveling like an alarm, like a spreading wave, until it spent itself against the margin of ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... pause. From the kitchen region came much slamming of light wire door, and the sound of hissing and steaming, high-keyed remarks from the Chinese and the Portuguese girls, and now and then the ripple of Manzanita's laughter. A farm-hand crossed the yard, with pails of milk, and presently a dozen or more men came down the steep trail that led ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... dark about thy ways, Shot through and through with arrows; let thine hair Lighten as flame above that nameless shell Which was the moon, and thine eyes fill the world And thy lips kindle with swift beams; let earth Laugh, and the long sea fiery from thy feet Through all the roar and ripple of streaming springs And foam in reddening flakes and flying flowers Shaken from hands and blown from lips of nymphs Whose hair or breast divides the wandering wave With salt close tresses cleaving lock to lock, All gold, or shuddering and unfurrowed snow; And all the winds about thee with their ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... joy within, that she strove in vain to hide. And every now and then her eyes grew a little brighter, and there came a flush over her face, and a little tremor ran as it were all over her, like the ripple that comes and goes upon the bosom of a lake, stirred by ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... children took a walk to the lake. At this early hour there were few of those superb equipages to be seen that appeared later in the day. The lake was lovely, with white swans dotting it here and there, and now and then a gentle ripple shook its surface, and miniature waves dashed against the fringe of old willows on ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... us, up to the trenches and back again! We have slept in the same old barns with cobwebs in the roof and straw (p. 233) deep on the floor. We have sung songs, old songs that float on the ocean of time like corks and find a cradle on every wave; new songs that make a momentary ripple on the surface and die as their circle extends outwards, songs of love and lust, of murder and great adventure. We have gambled, won one another's money and lost to one another again, we have had our disputes, but were firm in support of any member ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... space and air soft with colour were about him. Across this space, on a little sloping plateau near him, there crept an animal. It seemed to Lawless that he could see the lithe stealthiness of its muscles and the ripple of its skin. But that was imagination, because he was too far away. He cried out, and swung his gun shoulderwards in desperation. But, at the moment, Pourcette turned sharply round, saw his danger, caught his gun, and fired as the puma ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... hard at the two men, so sour in his wrath, so comical in his unmatched ugliness, that Lambert could not restrain a most unusual and generous grin. Taterleg bared his head, bowing low, not a smile, not a ripple of a ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... pronounce a burial-service. It was an ocean grave. The mists alone shrouded the burial-place. No spade prepared the grave, nor sexton filled up the hollowed earth. Down, down they sank, and the quick returning waters smoothed out every ripple, and left the sea as if it had not been. ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... stirred into mild excitement by our expected departure. Exchanges of farewells, amid occasional shouts and a continuous ripple of laughter, were passing between those on board and those ashore. The usually quiet life of St. Mary's was bubbling up in its periodical agitation. By the outgoing and incoming of the steamer the islanders touched the great ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... round a stone, reed, or other obstacle. Take the greatest pains to get the curves of these lines true; the whole value of your careful drawing of the reflections may be lost by your admitting a single false curve of ripple from a wild duck's breast. And (as in other subjects) if you are dissatisfied with your result, always try for more unity and delicacy: if your reflections are only soft and gradated enough, they are nearly sure to give you a pleasant effect.[35] When you are taking pains, ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... then perhaps these limitations of time and space, which suspended friendships, would exist no longer, and he could wait for that with a quiet hopefulness. But if it all passed away, and was as though it had never been, if life was but a leaping flame, a ripple on the stream, then how could one have the heart to ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... wings took hold of me. Sometimes a field became fairyland as I walked through it; or a tree poured out a scent that its blossoms never had before or after. I think now that those must have been moments when you too were in like contact with earth,—had your feet in grass which felt a faint ripple of wind, or stood under a lilac in a drench of fragrance that had grown ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... think that many of the gentle and pure-souled people who read this amiable writer go on their way through his pages without discerning this quiver, this ripple, this vibration, of "miching mallecho." On softly-stepping feline feet, the great sleek panther of psychological curiosity glides into very perverse, very dubious paths. The exquisite tenuity and flexibility of his style, light ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... swiftly and greatly to the delight of Sam was speeding over the smooth waters. Scarcely a ripple was to be seen. The reflection of the sunlight increased the discomfort of the Go Ahead boys and all four were rejoiced when at last Cape Vincent was ...
— Go Ahead Boys and the Racing Motorboat • Ross Kay
... stars. Before long half the sky was overspread. Evidently motive power lay in the cloud itself, for there was not a breath of wind. Absolute calm reigned in the atmosphere; not a leaf stirred on the tree, not a ripple disturbed the surface of the water. There seemed to be scarcely any air even, as though some vast pneumatic machine had rarefied it. The entire atmosphere was charged to the utmost with electricity, the presence of which sent a thrill ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... with the lovely scene upon which the curtain rises. Again the wide summer-land lies stretching away over sunlit moor and woodland. In the foreground wave the forest trees, and I hear the ripple of the woodland streams. Invariably throughout the drama, in the midst of all human pain and passion, great Nature is there, peaceful, harmonious in all her loveliest moods, a paradise in which dwell souls who make ...
— Parsifal - Story and Analysis of Wagner's Great Opera • H. R. Haweis
... timidly at first, he dipped, and catching Quick breath, with tingling shudder, as the waters Swirled round his limbs, and deeper, slowly deeper, Till on his breast the river's cheek was pillowed; And deeper still, till every shoreward ripple Talked in his ear, and like a cygnet's bosom His white, round shoulder ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... and young love-laughter Ripple and run among the roses; Memory's echoes, murmuring after, Fill the dusk when the long ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... detached rocks present varied and life-like forms. The air has suddenly become still. The butterflies hover over the foxgloves. The wild strawberry is at your feet. The sloeberries ripen around you. The sea before you might be the Mediterranean, so gently does it ripple up to the very edge of the hundred tiny plants that force their way amid the sand. Great rock bastions shut you in on either side, and behind, the green slope you had descended rises upward till it meets the blue sky beyond. You might be in the south of England ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... the ignominious flight of the plotters. Then from behind a tree stepped a white figure and a cautious voice called softly: "Come on, girls. They have gone. We must hurry and let Elfreda out of that awful house." At this command a ripple of subdued laughter rose from all sides and the ghosts began to appear from their ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... afraid beneath that overpowering serenity, watched him turn his head slowly from side to side with a "majestical countenance," as his enemies confessed, as if he were on the point of speaking. Silence seemed to radiate out from him, spreading like a ripple, outwards, until the furthest outskirts of that huge crowd was motionless and quiet; and then without apparent effort, his ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... silence. Everything is hushed and still; but, by listening attentively, the number of faint sounds that reach the ear in an undertone is surprising. The soft soughing of the wind in the trees; the gentle rustle of the grass as it is swayed by the passing breeze; the musical ripple of water as it gurgles from the spring; the piping of the quail as it calls to its mate; the twitter of little birds flitting from bush to bough; the chirp of the cricket and drone of the beetle are among the sounds that are ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... shout of warning, and with the shout Barry sprang below to his cabin. He returned on the run with a big-game rifle in time to hear a ripple of relief run from end to end of the ship; and his eyes opened wide with astonishment when ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... will help to make it clear to us. If we throw a pebble into a quiet pool (Fig. 90), waves or ripples form and spread out in all directions, gradually dying out as they become more and more distant from the pebble. It is a strange fact that while we see the ripple moving farther and farther away, the particles of water are themselves not moving outward and away, but are merely bobbing up and down, or are vibrating. If you wish to be sure of this, throw the pebble near a spot ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... battles, often destroying property and sometimes even killing their employers. Those who have read Charles Reade's novel, "Put Yourself in his Place," have not forgotten the terrible scenes depicted. While those starving men sometimes bettered their condition financially, they never made a ripple on the surface of political thought. No member ever championed their cause on the floor of Parliament. If spoken of at all, it was as our politicians used to speak of the negroes before the war, or as they speak of the Chinese today—as nuisances ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... the children wandered here and there over the island. It was larger than they at first supposed, and Bunny was glad of this. It was very still and quiet there, the ripple of the water, the wind in the trees, and the birds making the ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... laborer, the door open, and the single room exposed to the view. The man ruddy and yellow-haired, stood leaning upon the spade wherewith he had been at work upon the garden patch. From behind him came the ripple of a happy woman's laughter, and two young urchins darted forth from the hut, bare-legged and towsy, while the mother, stepping out, laid her hand upon her husband's arm and watched the gambols of the children. The hermit frowned at the untoward ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... observed to be broadly rippled. (M. Siau on the "Action of Waves" "Edin. New Phil. Journ." volume 31 page 245.) One may, therefore, be allowed to suspect, from the appearance just mentioned in the New Red Sandstone, that at greater depths, the bed of the ocean is heaped up during gales into great ripple-like furrows and depressions, which are afterwards cut off by the currents during more tranquil weather, and again furrowed during ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... alone, think not of the rushing torrents of this world! Envy not even the crystal stream which winds among the meadows. The ripple of its waters is sweet indeed, but it can be heard by creatures. Besides, the Field-flower could never contain it in its cup. One must be so little to draw near to Jesus, and few are the souls that aspire to be little and unknown. "Are not the river and the brook," they urge, "of more ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... save them," replied Katherine with a ripple of laughter. "And incidentally we also saved the lives of a ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... with us. Having washed down decks and got breakfast, the two vessels lay side by side, in complete readiness for sea, our ensigns hanging from the peaks, and our tall spars reflected from the glassy surface of the river, which, since sunrise, had been unbroken by a ripple. At length a few whiffs came across the water, and, by eleven o'clock the regular northwest wind set steadily in. There was no need of calling all hands, for we had all been hanging about the forecastle the whole forenoon, and were ready for a start ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... lisp of the lip of the ripple just under— The half-awake nightingale's dream in the yews— Came up from the water, and down from the wonder Of shadowy foliage, drowsed with the dews,— Unsteady the firefly's taper—unsteady The poise of the stars, and their light in the tide, As it struggled and writhed in caress ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... modesty of his demeanor than by eclat of lineage or the romantic incidents which had befallen him. In the words of a distinguished writer, who well knew him at that day: 'So unostentatious was his deportment, so correct, so pure his life, that even the ripple of scandal can not appear plausibly upon its surface.' We have inquired of those who entertained him as their guest, of those who tended at his sick-bed, of the artist who painted his miniature, of his lady friends (and he was known to some who ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... Dick. I remember Tom's wife right well, and she was allers a right good housekeeper. Ye can't do too much for her, son. But about that ere fishin' hole, dye know I believe 'twas the same I used to hook 'em out of thirty-odd year ago. Is it the ripple just back o' Banker ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... They have been poisoned, shot, and dynamited, in the belief that their removal would benefit humanity. Yet nothing would seem to be quite so obvious as the fact that their removal has hardly caused a ripple in the swiftly moving current of evolution. Others, often more forceful and capable, have immediately stepped into their places, and the course of events ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... which Sheila had placed a garden-seat, lo! all the west was on fire, the mountains in the south had grown dark on their eastern side, and the plain of the sea was like a lake of blood, with the heavy hull and masts of the coaster grown large and solemn and distant. There was scarcely a ripple around the rocks at their feet to break the stillness of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... England; and villages full of picturesque old houses, thatched, and ivied, or perhaps overrun with roses,—and a stately mansion in the Elizabethan style; and a quiet stream, gliding onward without a ripple from its own motion, but rippled by a large fish darting across it; and over all this scene a gentle, friendly sunshine, not ardent enough to crisp a single leaf or blade of grass. Nor must the village church be forgotten, with its square, battlemented tower, dating back to the epoch of the ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... stretched out along that trunk, with the Berbalang's knife still pinned through my hand. I was staring down into the water. Aoodya and my child never rose again; but the Berbalang came to the surface at once and floated, bobbing for a while on the ripple, his head thrown back, his brown chest shining up at me, and the blood spreading on the water ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... their means of expression among those last refinements of shadow, which are almost invisible except in a strong light, and which the finest pencil can hardly follow. The whole essence of their work is EXPRESSION, the passing of a smile over the face of a child, the ripple of the air on a still day over the curtain of a ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... if shame, surprise, wonder, and joy filled her heart too full and made a few happy tears drop on the hands so worn with hard work, when they ached to be holding a pen and trying to record the fancies that sung in her brain as ceaselessly as the soft sough of the pines or the ripple of the brook murmured in her ear when she sat here alone. She could not express the vague longings that stirred in her soul; she could only feel and dimly strive to understand and utter them, with no thought of fame or fortune,—for she was a humble creature, and never ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... unknown. The scarcely audible whisper of soft airs through the trees morning and evening, rain drops falling gently, and the murmur of drowsy surges far below, alone break the stillness. No ripple ever disturbs the great expanse of ocean which gleams through the still, thick trees. Rose in the sweet cool morning, gold in the sweet cool evening, but always dreaming; and white sails come and go, no larger ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... perhaps, you now regret, And crave a titled suitor yet; Hearts that are anchored side by side, No surface-ripple can divide." ...
— Daisy Dare, and Baby Power - Poems • Rosa Vertner Jeffrey
... that offers to the shore Accumulated opulence and force, So does my heart, which thought it loved of yore, Carry increasing passion down the course Of time to proffer thee. Oh! not the faint First ripple of the sea should be its pride, But the great climax of its unrestraint, Which ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... of dazzling white coral sand, and all through its water extended reefs of living coral of the more delicate and elaborate kinds. These corals gave the lake a wonderful variety of colors, forming a picture impossible to paint or describe, and with the least ripple from a passing breeze the whole scene changed to new groups of color. The water was very clear, and in some places deep; in others so filled with coral that a boat could barely skim over the surface without scraping the keel. After crossing a long reef, one day, they entered on a sheet of water ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... off southwards with his wife. And while they were rowing, they saw a black ripple on the sea ahead. When they came to the place, they saw that it was the sea-lice. And the outermost layer of skins on the boat was eaten away ...
— Eskimo Folktales • Unknown
... sad thoughts came to him as the voices floated out to him, mixed up with the low ripple of waves on ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... adaptation of the crane to get his living in that manner. "See," said he, "how his legs are formed for wading! What a long slender bill he has! Observe how nicely he folds his feet when putting them in or drawing them out of the water! He does not cause the slightest ripple. He is thus enabled to approach the fish without giving them any notice of his arrival." "My son," said he, "it is impossible to look at that bird without recognizing the design, as well as the goodness ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... dove!" and Sah-luma, rising from his couch, kissed her neck lightly, thus causing a delicate flush of crimson to ripple through the whiteness of her skin—"Think no more of such folly— thou wilt anger me. That a doting graybeard like Khosrul should trouble the peace of Al-Kyris the Magnificent, ... by the gods— the whole thing is absurd! Let me ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... crocodiles to-night," he finally said, pointing toward the log where a slight ripple, widening into vanishing rings, closed over a ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... sea which trembles.—Ver. 136. The ripple, or shudder, which runs along the surface of the sea, when a breath of wind is stirring in a calm, is very beautifully described here, and is ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... week there were daily bulletins of her condition published always in more and more remote corners of the paper, until the little ripple that had been made in the stream of life passed; and no further mention was made of the matter save occasionally when they sent for some famous specialist: when they took her to the shore to try what sea air might do; or when they brought ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... outline. There was a Spartan vigor and severity in the lean, uncorseted shape, with the bust thrown out against the sky—the bust of a young warrior rather than a woman. There was a hardy, masculine freedom in the pliable motion of her straight back, a ripple with muscles that played easily beneath the close bodice, in her arms, and her finely turned ankles and legs, that were bared below the knee. The very simplicity of her costume helped to mark the Greek severity of her figure. She wore a short skirt of some coarse hempen stuff, covered with a ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... and harmless occupations—if occupations they might be called—the breathless foliage rich in the depth of summer; behind, the old-fashioned house, unpretending, not mean, its open doors and windows giving glimpses of the comfortable repose within; before, the lake, without a ripple and catching the gleam of the sunset clouds,—all made a picture of that complete tranquillity and stillness, which sometimes soothes and sometimes saddens us, according as we are in the temper to ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... nature, that even he, who knew him as did none other, was momentarily taken by surprise. For suddenly, inexplicably, Nap's hardness had gone from him. It was like the crumbling of a rock that had withstood the clash of many tempests and yielded at last to the ripple of ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... something almost terrifying in the pleasures that besieged me in the darkness. Wonderful tremors filled me; my head swam in the most delirious but enjoyable manner; and the bed softly oscillated with me, like a boat in a very gentle ripple. It does not make me write a good style apparently, which is just as well, lest I should be tempted to renew the experiment; and some verses which I wrote turn out on inspection to be not quite equal to Kubla Khan. However, I was happy, and the recollection ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... away to conceal the broad grin of triumph that spread over her vast face, like a ripple on a lake. "Little simpletons!" she muttered to herself, as she marched up to the house. ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... a bank of fog through which his ear caught the lazy ripple of water. He woke up with a start. The fog was ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... swimming pond in the neighborhood of his residence, which is always located in the river's bank. This is not true; for, in every stream which he inhabits, if this was his sole object, he could select many natural places where the water is without a ripple and where it is both deep and broad. The animal has a wiser object in view; and, it consists in providing against the pinching wants of hunger during winter, when nearly everything green has lost its sap and nutrition, and is, as a body, without blood and animation. He therefore chooses a place ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... her hands around her knees, and watching the grass ebbing and flowing in the wind, sang, "O Spring!" and Maurice, listening, his eyes following the brown ripple of the river lisping in the shallows around the sandbar, and flowing—flowing—like Life, and Time, and Love, sighed with satisfaction at the pure beauty of her voice. "The notes are like wings," he said; "give us ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... servant who was driving his master's gig to the Cartmel shore, and was to return with the horse the same evening. He had of course no time to lose, and had begun his journey at the earliest possible hour. We found the sands firm and level, except the slight wrinkles produced by the ripple of the waves; but they were still wet, having only just been left by the sea. The guide appeared to drive with caution, and in no place went farther than a mile from land. We had a good deal of conversation, and I found him intelligent and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... N. roughness &c adj.; tooth, grain, texture, ripple; asperity, rugosity^, salebrosity^, corrugation, nodosity^; arborescence^ &c 242; pilosity^. brush, hair, beard, shag, mane, whisker, moustache, imperial, tress, lock, curl, ringlet; fimbriae, pili, cilia, villi; lovelock; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Indeed, all the world was silent. The calm valley lay unwinking in the sun. The grave mountains stood about unperturbed, unagitated, calm. The blue sky swept above, peaceful, unflecked by any moving cloud. There was not a leaf in all that land to give a rustle, nor any water which might afford a ripple. It was a world silent, finished, past and beyond life and its frettings, with nothing to trouble, and with nothing which bade one think of any world gone by. Here was no place for memories or dreams. The ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... pull!" but he could not speak, only watch the thin, keen, yellow man, whose eye glittered beneath his rough hairy cap as he slowly tightened the line, drawing it up till it was above the surface of the water, which began to ripple and play about it in long waves running off in different directions. There was so great a length that it was impossible to draw it tight without moving the spreader poles; and as the lads both thought of what the consequences would be if the line broke, the movement at ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... delegates asked if, in view of the great scarcity of men to take the various fields, and the increased number of vacancies, the theological course in their colleges would be opened to women? And the report said, "A ripple of amusement ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... dreaming lies, Idly abloom, and nothing sings or moves, Nor bird, nor bee; and even the butterflies, Languid with noon, forget their painted loves, Nor hath the woodland any talk of doves. Only at times a little breeze will stir, And send a ripple o'er the sleeping stream, Or run its fingers through the willows' hair, And sway the rushes momently agleam— Then all fall ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... thing that was going on about him to the contemplation of the sea and the distant shores which he was approaching. The day, for a winter's day, was bright and sunny: the sky without a cloud; the atmosphere of a frosty clearness; and the sea so calm, that it appeared scarcely to swell into a ripple, except immediately in the ship's wake. The distant promontory, which he suspected to be the point whither he had been washed by the waves, after the explosion of the Halcyon, and which seemed the extremity of a small island, had ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... my will all saturated with, and so made pliant by, the will and commandment of Jesus Christ? If He is my treasure, then thoughts, affection, obedience will all turn to Him, and the current of my being, whatever may be the surface-ripple—ay, or the surface-storm—will be ever sliding surely, though it may be silently, towards Himself. Ah! brethren, if we would be honest with ourselves and look into this mirror, we should have cause ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... a faint ripple of mirth drift across the room. But, of course, he had to be mistaken. "I think the governor replied wisely. I expect to return home and confer with him ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... Head had silently scaled the tree. Two tail feathers alone remained to show an awed game-keeper that Red Head had passed that way. A woodcock floated silently on the bosom of the tiny lake. He did not note the ripple which showed that a powerful animal was swimming towards him. A scream, and the woodcock, trumpeting shrilly, is drawn ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various
... exchanged elbow-thrusts and winks. But the ripple of laughter behind did not take the ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... God. If we only realised how the slow pulsation of the minutes is due to the touch of His finger on the pendulum, and how everything that we have, and the existence of us who have it, are results of the continuous welling out from the fountain of life, of ripple after ripple of the waters, everything would be more sacred, and more solemn, and fuller of God ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... anything, for Anteek was essentially truthful in spirit. Nothing would induce him to lie or to give a false impression if he could help it, but the vivid play of his fancy and the sparkling flow of his young imagination were such that he kept his audience in a constant ripple of amusement and fever of anticipation. He was particularly strong on Aglootook, and whatever that wily magician gained in the esteem of the adults, he certainly lost ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... evening, a long ripple is seen in the still water, where a musk-rat is crossing the stream, with only its nose above the surface, and sometimes a green bough in its mouth to build its house with. When it finds itself observed, it will dive and swim five or six rods under water, and at ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... future development of his native town, failed in any wise to depress him, or check the prodigal casting of his optimistic daily bread on the placid social waters where, as the years multiplied, his enthusiasms scarce made a ripple. ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... to the public, however, and in the Patterson home it being supposed that you could never tell about motion-picture actors, his disappearance for the night caused absolutely no slightest ripple. Public attention as regarded the young man remained at a mirror-like calm, unflawed by even the mildest curiosity. He had been seen, perhaps, though certainly not noted with any interest, to be one of the group watching a night scene ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... they walked on slowly, the little laughing brook beside them seeming to rise like a thunder-voice upon the dead silence. Olive listened to every ripple, that fell as it were like the boom of an engulphing wave. Nothing else she heard, or felt, or thought, ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... presents to me; they are all alike to me, I never design to go through any of them; for I never see all of anything: neither do they who so largely promise to show it others. Of a hundred members and faces that everything has, I take one, onewhile to look it over only, another while to ripple up the skin, and sometimes to pinch it to the bones: I give a stab, not so wide but as deep as I can, and am for the most part tempted to take it in hand by some new light I discover in it. Did I know myself less, I might perhaps venture to handle something or other to the bottom, and to ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... the river that wus sweepin' along under sun and moon, bearing on every wave and ripple the glory ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... his finger over the side, so that it made a ripple in the water (the most delightful experience of childhood). Emmeline, with one hand clasped in her uncle's, watched Mr Button with a grave sort of ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... into a merely animal stratum of existence; you live to-day because you lived yesterday, and you do not forecast to-morrow. Perhaps you learn to assuage and deceive the hunger of your immortal soul by forcing your attention upon the petty ripple of daily events and duties, until you present, to the outsider, the appearance of a commonplace, non-tragic person, bearing no noticeable scars of the crime which society perpetrated on you. You perhaps lose, at last, the realization of your own ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... unstudied, intuitive, fitful—when once gone, no more to be reproduced as it had been than the glancing ray of the meteor, than the tints of the dew-gem, than the colour or form of the sunset cloud, than the fleeting and glittering ripple varying the flow of ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... oration delivered in the city of Baltimore in the year 1791, advancing the most extreme opinions, and it created not a ripple on the surface of ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole
... once more on breezy shore, at sunset in this glorious June. I hear the dip of gleaming oar. I list the singer's merry tune. Beneath my feet the waters beat and ripple on the polished stones. The squirrel chatters from his seat: the bag-pipe beetle hums and drones. The pink and gold in blooming wold,—the green hills mirrored in the lake! The deep, blue waters, zephyr-rolled, along ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... here, one is often reminded of the sea. For not only do long ground-swells roll the slanting grain, and little wavelets of the grass ripple over upon the low piazza, as their beach, and the blown down of dandelions is wafted like the spray, and the purple of the mountains is just the purple of the billows, and a still August noon broods upon the deep meadows, ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... might easily have killed himself and his two companions, but he came out of the crash quite unhurt except for a severe chill contracted by a forced sojourn in the icy waters of a shallow pond. Pinned beneath the wreckage of his machine with an unpleasant ripple of water in close proximity to his chin, Killem had an excellent opportunity to think over his past sins while his companions in misery, who had been thrown clear for no other reason apparently except ...
— Night Bombing with the Bedouins • Robert Henry Reece
... it wouldn't,' said she, and went off into another ripple of pretty contralto laughter. There is a soft, deep, rich laugh, which some women have, that is ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... young man, examining the wing of the storm-bird, said, "Grandfather, it is much better; move it but a little now, that I may see!" So he moved it; he gave a flap, and lo! a slight ripple passed over the surface of the sleeping sea. And striking lightly with his wings, again there came a breeze, and the Ogokpegeak, or the scum, was blown away, and the Indians fished again, and ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... remained as voiceless as a subterranean cavern. I became intensely irritated with him; within my mind I cried out against this infatuated pantomime of his. And then, of a sudden, there was a sound—the dying rumour of a ripple, somewhere in the outside darkness, as though an object had been let into the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... she met at Coppet, called up a passing ripple on the surface of her heart, sufficiently strong to lead her to suggest a divorce to her husband, whose relations to her, though always friendly, were only nominal. But he appealed to her generosity, and she thought of it no more. Why she permitted her princely suitor to cherish ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... Hollies thrown open, and Mr. Grant's figure was silhouetted by the lamp behind him. He seemed to be listening for something, so I, who must have heard any unusual sound, listened too. There was nothing. I could hear the ripple of the river beneath the bridge, so everything was very still. After a minute, or two, perhaps—no longer—Mr. Grant went in, and closed the window. Then ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... lifted in applause. Slowly the big, awkward man slouched back across the platform and sank into his seat, and yet there was no sound of approval, of recognition from the audience; only a long sigh ran like a ripple on an ocean through rank after rank. In Lincoln's heart a throb of pain answered it. His speech had been, as he feared it would be, a failure. As he gazed steadily at these his countrymen who would not give him even a little ...
— The Perfect Tribute • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... been watching the clock for Willard. Presently, as if she really had, she tossed the cushions back on the couch, drew the shades over the window, turned off the lights, and disappeared upstairs. Muffled sounds of a methodical but unhurried preparation for bed drifted faintly down, one last ripple of song, and then it ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... my book and listened. It was only the choking gurgle of a broken rain-pipe outside: then it was the ripple and swish of a meadow stream. To make out the voices of redwings and marsh-wrens in the rasping notes of the city sparrows behind the shutter required much more imagination. But I did it. I wanted to hear, and the splash ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... always entertaining itself, always engaged in a game of hide and seek in the region in which it seemed to him, that the game could best be played—among the shadows and substructions, the dark-based pillars and supports, of our moral nature. Beneath this movement and ripple of his imagination—as free and spontaneous as that of the sea surface—lay directly his personal affections. These were solid and strong, but, according to my impression, they had the place very much ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... eyes dwelt with pleasure on the noble lines of her relaxed figure. Better than beauty, he admitted the moment afterward, was the charm that shone for him in her wonderfully expressive face—a face over which the experiences of many lives seemed to ripple faintly in what was hardly more than the shadow of a smile. She had loved and suffered, he thought, with his gaze upon her, and from both love and suffering she had gained that fulness of nature which is the greatest good that ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... town for a few hours, while Leone took her different lessons and studied. They met again at lunch, and they spent the afternoon out-of-doors. An ideal life—an idyl in itself. Leone, while she lived, retained a vivid remembrance of those afternoons, of the shade of the deep woods, of the ripple of the river through the green banks, of the valleys where flowers and ferns grew, of the long alleys where the pleasant shade made a perfect paradise. She remembered them—the golden glow, the fragrance, the music of ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... They have drunk in the warmth and life of the sun, they quiver beneath his burning glance, they lie steeped in color, gorgeous, tremulous, passionate, rosy red dropping away into pale gold, emeralds dim and sullen where they ripple down towards the darkness, dusky browns and broad reaches of blue-black massiveness, till the silent starlight wraps the scene with blessing, and the earth ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... hard desert outline, which they knew so well, vanished and gone, and in its stead a smooth, shining lake, fringed with trees and dotted with feathery, fairy islands. So near it seemed, and so real, that it was as though they heard the ripple of the water and the rustling of the wind in the tree-boughs. Mustapha stared as though his eyes would burst from his head; then he gave a wild cry, and was rushing away; but his father held ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... those words, but his untutored language, coming from a pure heart, is heard by the Most High. And so the breeze blows gently o'er the bark thus followed by black John's prayers—the skies look brightly down upon it—the blue waves ripple at its side, until at last it sails into its destined port; and when the apple-blossoms are dropping from the trees, and old Hannah lays upon the grass to bleach the fanciful white bed-spread which her own hands have knit for Maude, there comes a letter to the lonely household, telling them that ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... Trinity lay in her beauty, Not a ripple was on her breast, Her borders of hemlocks and mosses With beautiful flowers were dressed; Clear as the air on her bosom Were her waters so pure and deep, They seemed like the magical mirror That Flora ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... verse immortalizes an event that caused great excitement in the period in which it occurred, although at the present date it would not be considered of much account, or cause the smallest ripple on the glassy calm of ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 27, October 1, 1870 • Various
... courage again and stolen back to the balcony that opened upon the Canal Grande from the vast upper salon, impelled by her longing for freedom and light. The ripple of the water to the plash of passing gondolas took on the note of distance and soothed her like a lullaby, as the charming maid yielded herself to the golden daydream—the soft breezes lifting the bright rings of hair that clustered about her dainty head, while the wonderful ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... the Throg was going to make very sure. The second flyer halted, remaining poised long enough to unleash a second bolt—dazzling any watching eyes and broadcasting a vibration to make Shann's skin crawl when the last faint ripple reached his lookout post. ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... party was augmented by a military escort, under command of Onder-Lieutenant J. Van Dijl, consisting of one Javanese sergeant and six native soldiers, most of them Javanese. At midday the surface of the water was absolutely without a ripple, and the broad expanse of the river, ever winding in large curves, reflected the sky and the low jungle on either side with bewildering faithfulness. At night the stars were reflected in the water in ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... now of people in light summer dress, and in the luminous evening a constant ripple of laughter and gay voices came up to them. Peer looked curiously at the crowd, all strangers to him, and asked his companion the names of some of the people. Langberg pointed out one or two celebrities—a Cabinet Minister sitting ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... a stone dropped into water, the implications of the anti-discrimination memorandum continued to ripple outward. The commander of Brookley Air Force Base, Alabama, canceled the sale of subsidized tickets to the Mobile Bears baseball games by the base's civilian welfare council on the grounds that the ball park's segregated seating of Air Force personnel violated the secretary's order. ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... of those soul-stirring mornings in which Nature seems to smile. There was just enough of motion in the air to relieve the effect of what is called a dead calm. The ripple on the water caught the sun's rays, and, breaking them up, scattered them about in a shower of fragmentary diamonds. Fleecy-white clouds floated in the blue sky, suggesting dreams of fairy-land, and ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... fellows who can sit in the mud and crack jokes, and sing standing in water to his arm-pits. And what is better, he possessed the happy faculty of imparting his exuberance to his long-faced, homesick, and downcast fellow-privates. His temper was as smooth as a becalmed sea, and seldom was it that a ripple passed over the smooth surface. There was just one word in the soldier's vocabulary that would disturb him, but this word never failed to bring on a typhoon. This innocent yet magic word was "carabao," the name of the water buffalo, the ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... glides smoothly along through low meadow lands, and again it plunges into some dense thicket or brawls through some briery dell where the foliage is so thick that one can only see the glint and ripple of its waters at rare intervals, shining between the lapping leaves and tangled vines. Then again it sweeps onward through cleft rocks and jutting banks until, lost at last in the very heart of the primeval forest, its twilight waters reflect the images of giant trees which ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... in Spain, on a July night of the same summer, the air being hot and heavy. In the darkness the ripple of the river Tormes can be heard over the ford, which is near the ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... gradually losing headway, and the throbbing of her engines was becoming less pronounced. I observed, also, that the smoke from her funnel was beginning to hang over her and curl down upon the bridge. But, in spite of her slowing down, the musical ripple at her bow increased, and Riggs said it was due to the set of the current against us, which came through the channel very strong, as the island cut out a deep current and brought it to the surface of the sea in the narrow passage between ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... specimen of muscular strength, stood up in the canoe with a bow and arrow in his hands and one foot on the gunwale, quite motionless. Suddenly he drew the bow, the arrow pierced the water without causing a ripple, and next moment a transfixed fish was ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... to what sort of a looking individual it is who has crossed America awheel, and furthermore proposes to accomplish the greater feat of the circumlocution of the globe. A small sea of hats is enthusiastically waved aloft; a ripple of applause escapes from five hundred English throats as I mount my glistening bicycle; and, with the assistance of a few policemen, the twenty-five Liverpool cyclers who have assembled to accompany ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... was a glimpse of blue sea. In a field nearer they could barely make out two brown specks moving slowly back and forth. They were oxen, and Dromas was ploughing with them. It was so still that the children could plainly hear the breathing of the sheep as they cropped the grass, and the ripple of the little stream which spread out into a shallow river and ...
— The Spartan Twins • Lucy (Fitch) Perkins
... causes them. Looking out again near the hour of midnight, they see his prediction verified. The late swollen and fast-rushing stream has become reduced to nearly its normal dimensions, and runs past in gentle ripple, while the moon shining full upon it, shows not a flake ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... the Backs of Horse Plays, Flounderings of Absurdities, Irresistibilities of Iterations, Significances of Jargons, Wailings of Pretended Woes, Roarings of Laughter, and Hubbubs of Animal Spirits, all appear, singly or in companies, to flash, ripple, dance, shoot, effervesce, and sparkle, in prose and verse, vignettes, sketches, or elaborate pictures, on the ever-shifting and always entertaining pages of the London Charivari. Of one prominent form of the exhibition of this inexhaustible arsenal, namely, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... Ripple-marks on Snow or Sand.—The Siberians travel guided by the ripples in the snow, which run in a pretty fixed direction, owing to the prevalence of a particular wind. The ripples in a desert of sand are equally good as guides; or the wind itself, if it happens to be blowing, especially to a person ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... and ripple, turned over and swam down. I followed his progress through the water-glass, which is merely an oblong box a couple of feet long, open at the top, the bottom sealed water-tight with a ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... Were the laws of nature suspended? Did the sexes change places? Was everything turned upside down? No, life went on as smoothly in New Jersey as in any other State in the Union. And the fact that women did vote there, created so slight a ripple on the popular wave, and made so ordinary a page in history, that probably nine-tenths of the people of this country never heard of its existence, until recent discussions in the United States Senate ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... for the mist that hung over the surface of the deep appeared to increase in intensity, and they could not see even the faint glimmer of a star to cheer them; while all they could hear was the lapping of the waves as they washed by them, and the ripple and swish of some billow as it overtopped its crest, and spent its strength in eddies of circling foam, as David could imagine—for the darkness rendered everything invisible now, even the platform ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... sinking upon nature's night time and strengthened the dawning will and opening intellect. For as a ship furls her spread of sail on entering harbour, so age reduces the scope of the mind and its energies to catch every fresh ripple of the breeze that blows out of progress and change. The centre of the stage, too, gradually reveals new performers; the gaze of manhood is turned on new figures; the limelight of human interest throws up the coming forces ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... mermaids Pluck and play On their twangling harps In a sea-green day; Down where the mermaids, Finned and fair, Sleek with their combs Their yellow hair ... Bates and Giles— On the shingle sat, Gazing at Turvey's Floating hat. But never a ripple Nor bubble told Where he was supping Off plates of gold. Never an echo Rilled through the sea Of the feasting and dancing And minstrelsy. They called—called—called: Came no reply: Nought but the ripples' Sandy sigh. Then glum and silent They sat ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... there partially mantled with ivy, stretched along the verge of the dark rock which rose on Mannering's right hand. In his front was the quiet bay, whose little waves, crisping and sparkling to the moonbeams, rolled successively along its surface, and dashed with a soft and murmuring ripple against the silvery beach. To the left the woods advanced far into the ocean, waving in the moonlight along ground of an undulating and varied form, and presenting those varieties of light and shade, and that interesting ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... hundredth door!" Then they bade me farewell and departed, leaving me alone in the palace. When the evening drew near, I opened the first door and found myself in an orchard, full of blooming trees, laden with ripe fruit, and the air resounded with the loud singing of birds and the ripple of running waters. The sight brought solace to my soul, and I entered and walked among the trees, inhaling the odours of the flowers and listening to the warble of the birds, that sang the praises of God the One, the Almighty. I looked upon the apple, whose colour ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... an instant fancy, as Patsy knew she would, to the little Dresden china shepherdess of a lady who would never grow older. Everything about her was irresistible—the soft grey ripple of hair about her brow, the shy girlish eyes, the long delicate hand with the fingers which, in spite of their declared readiness to work, trembled a little, and the voice which spoke the Northern speech with such clear-cut gentility, that the words fell on the ear with a certain ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... my fishin'-worms! er steal My best "goggle-eye!"—but you Can't lay hands on joys I feel Nibblin' like they ust to do! So, in memory, to-day Same old ripple lips away At my cork and saggin' line, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... isn't anything of them, in the end. Of course, it would have been different if they could have got hold of you in the beginning. But now," said Pinney, forgetting what he had already said of it, "the whole thing has blown over, so that that letter of yours from Rimouski hardly started a ripple in Boston; I can't say how it was in Hatboro'. No, sir, I don't believe that if you went back now, and your friends stood by you as they ought to,—I don't believe you'd get more than a mere nominal sentence, if ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... distressed, and the unconquerable Christian hero: but when death came to pluck him from the tree he dropped like a ripe fruit, smiling, into his hands: or, even as a gentle stream steals unperceived into the ocean, so calmly that its surface is not fretted with a ripple, his soul glided into eternity. To die upon the field of battle, amidst the shouts of victory, in presence of an admiring throng, surrounded by the badges of honor and respect, bequeathing to history a celebrated name, may ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... deep silence now, save the ripple made by the boat in going through the water, which it did at a fairly rapid rate, seeing how it was submerged; but the wind having filled the portion of the sail, seemed to be raising it more and more from where it lay in the water, and as a natural consequence the more surface was raised and filled, ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... no returning; No second crossing that ripple's flow: "Come to me now, for the west is burning; Come ere ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... midnight, bearing, as it flows, The sails of pleasurable barks! These gleam To-day, to-morrow other passing sails Catch the like sunshine of the vernal morn. 50 Our pleasant days are as the moon's brief light On the pale ripple, passing as it shines! But shall the pensive bard for this lament, Who knows how transitory are all worlds Before His eye who made them! Cease the strain; And welcome still the social intercourse That soothes the world's loud jarring, till the hour When, universal darkness ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... as Captain Hurricane Jones, probably a step in the evolution of the later name of Stormfield. The best feature of the series (there were four papers in all) is a story of a rescue in mid-ocean; but surely the brightest ripple of humor is ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... occasion that Nelson first met Lady Hamilton, who exercised so marked an influence over his later life; but, though she was still in the prime of her singular loveliness, being yet under thirty, not a ripple stirred the surface of his soul, afterward so powerfully perturbed by this fascinating woman. "Lady Hamilton," he writes to his wife, "has been wonderfully kind and good to Josiah [his stepson]. She is a young ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... Pantalon join in the dance; and the somewhat sombre face of the Italian would ripple all over with laughter as he watched her efforts to subdue the creature's motions to grace and harmony, and to cultivate in his bestial brain her own innate ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... that crossed the brook, she stopped a moment to watch the water ripple over the bright pebbles, the ferns bend down to drink, and the funny tadpoles frolic in quieter nooks, where the sun shone, and the dragon-flies swung among the rushes. When Nelly turned to go on, her blue eyes opened wide, and the handle of the ambulance ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... their frost holds fire; The snowiest bosom covers soft desire, And these are snowy, verily. As blanched—and bare—as Himalaya's peaks, Light-vestured as a troop of dancing Greeks. Waltz-measures ripple merrily. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various
... above the heads of the crowd. His voice had coarsened and taken on a raw edge, but every gesture was flung from the socket, and from where they had forced themselves into the tight circle Gertie Slayback, her mouth fallen open and her head still back, could see the sinews of him ripple under khaki and the ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... long I lay stretched out along that trunk, with the Berbalang's knife still pinned through my hand. I was staring down into the water. Aoodya and my child never rose again; but the Berbalang came to the surface at once and floated, bobbing for a while on the ripple, his head thrown back, his brown chest shining up at me, and the blood spreading on ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... had now taken complete possession of the body as well as the limbs, and a strange ripple ran ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... two years, when she was twenty-two, a ripple of excitement came into her life; another Shelton girl married, and caused even greater relief to her family than had Deena, for she married a Boston man with money. He had been a student at Harmouth and ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... ridden!' A subdued hum runs round the excited spectators. The ardent racers are nose and nose. One swift, sharp cut, the cruel whip hisses through the air, and the black is fairly 'lifted in,' a winner by a nose. The ripple of conversation breaks out afresh. The band strikes up a lively air, and the saddling for ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... moments, broken only by the ripple of water under the bow of the canoe, the persistent patter of the rain all around us, and the SLISH, SLISH of the paddle with which Ferdinand, my Canadian voyageur, was pushing the birch-bark down the lonely length of Lac Moise. I knew that there was one of his stories on the way. But I must keep ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... long while in a painful dream. Her usually clear and tranquil soul was troubled and bewildered as she sat in the boat at the head of Felicita's coffin, with her dear face so near to her, yet hidden from her eyes. All around her lay the Lake, with a fine rapid ripple on the silvery blue of its waters, as the rowers, with measured and rhythmical strokes of their oars, carried the boat's sad freight on towards Lucerne. The evening sun was shining aslant down the wooded slopes of the lower ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... soldiers, had left the room. The sentry on the landing presented arms. Hirsch went on screaming all alone behind the half-closed jalousies while the sunshine, reflected from the water of the harbour, made an ever-running ripple of light high up on the wall. He screamed with uplifted eyebrows and a wide-open mouth—incredibly wide, black, enormous, full ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... awning that covered the upper deck. We were taken to the bathing grounds twice a week at 5 a.m. They supplied us with coffee and light lunch. We enjoyed the gentle breeze that came up generally in the afternoon. When the ripple on the water was observed the men shouted, "The doctor is coming!" and the boatswain's whistle was heard calling the hands to the capstan to swing the ship broadside to get the zephyr as much as possible to enter the port-holes of the monster. Commodore ...
— A Soldier's Life - Being the Personal Reminiscences of Edwin G. Rundle • Edwin G. Rundle
... soundly than he had done for weeks. When he awoke next morning he went out. After a good night he found a pleasant exhilaration in the freshness of the early air. The sea was a more vivid blue, the sky more brilliant, than on most days, the trade wind was fresh, and there was a ripple on the lagoon as the breeze brushed over it like velvet brushed the wrong way. He felt himself stronger and younger. He entered upon the day's work with zest. After luncheon he slept again, and as evening drew on he had the bay saddled ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... granite to its confluence with the main canon stream. During the greater portion of the year, however, not a single water sound will you hear either at head or foot of the lake, not oven the whispered lappings of ripple-waves along the shore; for the winds are fenced out. But the deep mountain silence is sweetened now and then by birds that stop here to rest and drink on their way across ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... there was scarcely a ripple to break its silvery surface. It seemed indeed hardly to move, reflecting the shadowy cottonwoods like a long, clear, curving mirror which was dimmed only by the breath of the approaching dusk. Out in the current beyond the shadows of the trees, there still lingered a faint glimmer of the afterglow's ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... river, leaped on my eyes. And in the midst of the still bay three beautiful ships were heading for the land, the long oars rising and falling swiftly, while the red and white striped sails hung idly in the calm. One could see the double of each ship in the water, broken wonderfully by the ripple of the oars, and after each stretched a white ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... assembled at the dinner we were miserably tired and worn—but we were posted. Yes, it is fair to claim that. In fact, erudition is a pale name for it. New Zealand was the only subject; and it was just beautiful to hear us ripple it out. And with such an air of unembarrassed ease, and unostentatious familiarity with detail, and trained and seasoned mastery of the subject-and oh, the grace and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... unvarying laugh in yon glossy laurels! Do those tints charm us like the play in the young leaves of the lilac,—lighter here, darker there, as the breeze (and so slight the breeze!) stirs them into checker,—into ripple? Oh, sweet green, to the world what sweet temper is to man's life! Who would reduce into one dye all thy lovely varieties? who exclude the dark steadfast verdure that lives on through the winter day; or the mutinous caprice of the gentler, younger tint that came fresh through the tears ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and throwing up his heels, he made one vain dive after her, then he knew that the pit was too deep for the bottom to be reached in that way. He swam to the trunk from which Dolly had leaped, and judging the distance by the sullen ripple, dashed in with a dive like a terrified frog. Like a bullet he sank to the bottom, and groped with three fathoms of water above him. Just as his lungs were giving out, he felt something soft and limp and round. ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... sonori. Ring ringo. Ring (a circle) rondo. Ringleader instigulo, instiganto. Ringlet buklo, harleto. Ringworm favo. Rinse laveti, gargari. Riot tumulto, ribelo. Riotous tumulta, ribela. Rip sxiri. Ripe matura. Ripen (intrans.) maturigxi. Ripple ondeto. Rise (ascent) altajxo. Rise (origin) deveno. Rise (in price) plikarigxo. Rise (get up) levigxi. Risible ridinda. Risibility ridindeco. Rising (revolt) ribelo. Risk riski. Rite ceremoniaro. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... upon the calm sea, which lay like a sheet of glass, without a ripple on its surface, I could scarcely believe what he had said. But before many minutes had passed I was convinced ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... hawks pursue, A barge across Loch Katrine flew; High stood the henchman on the prow, 290 So rapidly the barge-men row, The bubbles, where they launched the boat, Were all unbroken and afloat, Dancing in foam and ripple still, When it had neared the mainland hill; 295 And from the silver beach's side Still was the prow three fathom wide, When lightly bounded to the land The messenger ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... involved in her laughter and being part of it, until her teeth were only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill. I was drawn in by short gasps, inhaled at each momentary recovery, lost finally in the dark caverns of her throat, bruised by the ripple of unseen muscles. An elderly waiter with trembling hands was hurriedly spreading a pink and white checked cloth over the rusty green iron table, saying: "If the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden, if the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden..." ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot
... and the Owl gravely watched this operation and nodded approval when Woot's silky green fur shone clear and bright in the afternoon sun. The Canary seemed much amused and laughed a silvery ripple of ...
— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... from this day, Come to me, if by any means he may, And let me, if I live, pay back my best, As he pays me. What think you of the jest?" He said; and made a courteous bow,—the while Lighting his features with a bright green smile; As when June breezes, after rain-clouds pass, Ripple in sunlight o'er the ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... to the repose of that great man, whom science owed so much, and then without waiting for the joy in every breast to burst forth, he began to read. It was curious to watch his triumph with the house. His carefully studied effects would reach the first rows in the orchestra first, and ripple in laughter back to the standees against the wall, and then with a fine resurgence come again to the rear orchestra seats, and so rise from gallery to gallery till it fell back, a cataract of applause from the topmost rows of seats. He was such a practised speaker that he knew all ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... along in November and December recorded the political ripple of the contest, but the fight was a dead affair, and nobody enthused. The play came to a tame ending when Beardslee nominated Stanton for the Speaker's job and got the Chairmanship of the important Committee on Ways and Means ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... occasional vicinity troubled me but little. But now and then of an evening, when thick and fleet the shadows were falling, dim glimpses of a canoe would be spied; hovering about the place like a ghost. And once, in the stillness of the night, hearing the near ripple of a prow, I sallied forth, but the phantom ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... there passed a cripple Maimed from before its birth; On the strange face gleamed a ripple Like a half ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... assembled. For four years Maddy Clyde has been mistress there, and in looking back upon them she wonders how so much happiness as she has known could be experienced in so short a time. Never but once has the slightest ripple of sorrow shadowed her heart, and that was when her noble husband, Guy, said to her, in a voice she knew was earnest and determined that he could no longer remain deaf to his country's call—that where the battle storm was raging he was needed, and like a second Sardanapalus he must not stay ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... accordingly, and getting his hands beneath the arms of the corpse, dragged it to one of the flights of steps that led down to the water. Kate sat watching him with her hands clasped in her lap. She heard a splashing sound and a ripple. Sir Archibald came back, picked up the pistol, and flung ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... back with the ripple writing of stormy high tides crawling out in wrinkles all over her face and her head, that he had never seen low, wilting there ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... to the facts that inform, we have not been unmindful of the fancy that stimulates. The steady flow of description is frequently interrupted by the ripple of story and verse. While we have made no effort to secure the favor of Mr. Gradgrind by looking at facts only on their lower side, we trust that our effort may prove of some service in the anxious work of parent ...
— Friends in Feathers and Fur, and Other Neighbors - For Young Folks • James Johonnot
... a Spartan vigor and severity in the lean, uncorseted shape, with the bust thrown out against the sky—the bust of a young warrior rather than a woman. There was a hardy, masculine freedom in the pliable motion of her straight back, a ripple with muscles that played easily beneath the close bodice, in her arms, and her finely turned ankles and legs, that were bared below the knee. The very simplicity of her costume helped to mark the Greek ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... once said, 'If all that Christ said and did were written in books, the world could not contain them. This is an exageration, (a ripple of laughter dances over the congregation), having a great meaning, however." * * * * "David gives us only his intense life." (The audience smile). (11:35). The preacher becoming dramatic in gesticulation and oratorical in delivery, walks back and forth upon the elevated platform. While ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... pool all rank with rotting weeds, Close by the pines there at the highway side; No ripple on its green and stagnant tide, Where only cold and still the horse-leech breeds— Ugh! might not here ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... Growler swiftly and greatly to the delight of Sam was speeding over the smooth waters. Scarcely a ripple was to be seen. The reflection of the sunlight increased the discomfort of the Go Ahead boys and all four were rejoiced when at last Cape Vincent was ...
— Go Ahead Boys and the Racing Motorboat • Ross Kay
... rest for a spell. But the minutes added themselves one on top of another. The sun slipped behind clouds banking in the west. It grew cooler, while within him he was consumed by a burning thirst. He could hear the ripple of running water, the laughter of it among pebbles a few yards away. And the river itself became even more desirable than his medicine case, or his blankets, or his rifle. The song of it, inviting and tempting him, blotted thought of the other things out of his mind. And he continued his ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... than he is with our beautiful neighbour, Miss Stapleton. And yet the course of true love does not run quite as smoothly as one would under the circumstances expect. Today, for example, its surface was broken by a very unexpected ripple, which has caused our friend considerable perplexity ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... was cut short by a mingled roar and ripple of laughter, and Miss Audrey Craven paused before announcing herself. Through the half-open doorway she saw a girl standing before an easel. She had laid down her palette and brushes, and with bold sure strokes ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... breakfasted on the island, the squadron of boats, led by their gallant commodore, pulled down with the ebb towards the mouth of the river, up which a stiffish breeze was blowing, just sufficient to ripple over the surface of the water glittering in the rays of the rising sun. On either hand rose a forest of tall trees, their feathery tops defined against the clear blue sky. In a short time the ships could be discerned in the ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... vast wild land, an ocean on which each littlest sound was afloat, so that each was given its true value almost like a musical tone. An awful, beautiful silence this, brooding back of every sound; nothing in such a place gives forth mere senseless noise; the ripple of frogs in marsh and spring branch fall upon the sense as sweet as bird-songs. The clamour of little falls, the solemn suggestion of wind in the pines, the sweet broken jangle of cow-bells, a catbird in a tree—a continuous yet ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... watched him. From somewhere came the distant knocking of a woodpecker. This sound did not disturb the hush and awe of the place. Quiet woods, noises belonged there and made the solitude complete. The tiny bubbling ripple of the spring and the gray flash of tree-squirrel were as yardsticks with which to measure the ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... in agony. She heard the sisters pass up the echoing stone staircase to their dormitories, and then the silent house became as dumb as a vault. Not a ripple flowed into this still tarn from the great stream of the world that rushed and surged and swelled with the clangor of a million voices ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... Then I'll come to you and pour down your windsails, and dry your washed clothes as they hang on the rigging, and just ripple the waves as you glide along, and hang upon the lips of my dear love, and press him in my arms. Promise me, then, on no account ever to recollect or mention any other ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... the winter storms and hot and weary in the summer ones. But if you really loved the sea you wouldn't care—you wouldn't care, just so you could be rocked to sleep by it at night, and wake to hear it ripple against ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... stood to pronounce a burial-service. It was an ocean grave. The mists alone shrouded the burial-place. No spade prepared the grave, nor sexton filled up the hollowed earth. Down, down they sank, and the quick returning waters smoothed out every ripple, and left the sea as if it had not been. ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... without imagination. His thoughts had travelled easily back to a few weeks ago. He saw Virginia sitting there, watched the delightful smile coming and going, the large grey eyes that watched him so ceaselessly, the little ripple of pleasant conversation, which he had never dreamed that he could ever miss. After all, what a child! As a matter of justice, and he told himself that it was justice only which had power to sway his judgment, what right had he to blame her for what was really nothing but a freak of ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... its tune; Her mirror told her, 'Marry soon!' So did a certain wish within, With more of secrecy than sin,— A wish that dwells with even prudes, Annihilating solitudes. This maiden's choice was past belief, She soothing down her restless grief, And smoothing it of every ripple, By ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... it say 'the King'?" asked Flavia, leaning over my shoulder, so that the ripple of her hair played on my cheek. "Is ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... beneath that overpowering serenity, watched him turn his head slowly from side to side with a "majestical countenance," as his enemies confessed, as if he were on the point of speaking. Silence seemed to radiate out from him, spreading like a ripple, outwards, until the furthest outskirts of that huge crowd was motionless and quiet; and then without apparent effort, his voice ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... that also disappeared, leaving no trace, and the same fate befell a number of others. At a certain point of their development they vanished as completely as a bubble of air coming to the surface of water, except that they caused no ripple, leaving merely a small depression where they ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... are glimpses of steep, reed roofs among the cocoa-palms. A long, deserted-looking jetty runs far out into the shallow sea, a few Chinese junks lie at anchor, in the distance a few Malay fishermen are watching their nets, but not a breath stirs, the sea is without a ripple, the gray clouds move not, the yellow plumes of the palms are motionless; the sea, the sky, the town, look all alike asleep in a ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... care and sultry heat, memory recalls to his imagination the scenes of his boyhood, the ever pleasing recollections of infancy, when he reclined upon the flowery bosom of old father Thames, or sought amusement in the healthful exercise of bathing, or calmly listened to the murmuring ripple of the waters, or joined the merry group in gently plying of the splashing oar. With what eager delight are these reminiscences of youth dwelt on! With what mingled sensations of hope, fear, and regret, do we revert to the happy ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... after sensation, I came back slowly, blessing the God of life, and plunged in the joy of the infinite. One thing only I lacked, a soul with whom to share it all—for emotion and enthusiasm overflowed like water from a full cup. The Milky Way, the great black poplars, the ripple of the waves, the shooting stars, distant songs, the lamp-lit town, all spoke to me in the language of poetry. I felt myself almost a poet. The wrinkles of science disappeared under the magic breath of admiration; the old ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... got it yesterday,' he said, 'was an unassuming picture of General Petain presenting military medals. There wasn't a scratch or a ripple on its surface. But I got busy with it, ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... and white, even more beautiful than those exquisite little shells one picks up sometimes on the seashore, her clear green eyes sparkled and flashed like the waves with the sun on them, while her hair was the colour of rich gold, like the sun in its glory, and with a ripple in it such as one sees on the ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... "The golden ripple on the wall came back again, and nothing else stirred in the room. The old, old fashion! The fashion that came in with our first garments, and will last unchanged until our race has run its course, and the wide firmament is rolled up like a scroll. ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... attitude even to the holding of the screen, with her lips a little apart, her brow a little contracted, but for the moment dead. He sees her consciousness return, sees a tremor pass across her frame like a ripple over water, sees her lips shake, sees her compose them by a great effort, sees her force herself back to the knowledge of his presence and of what he has said. All this, so quickly, that her exclamation ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... the sea being at all times so smooth that one might almost have made the entire trip in a racing shell, and that without shipping water enough 'to do any damage. It was blue above and blue below, the sky being without a cloud and the water without so much as even a gentle ripple, save at the bow of the boat where the water parted to let us through, and at the stern, where it was churned into masses of foam by the revolving screw of the steamer. But if the days were beautiful the nights were simply grand, and the ladies were to be found on deck ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... as I gazed out, the whole prairie was bathed in rose-coloured light that appeared to ripple over it in pink waves. The tall grass, tall as that of an English hay-field, seemed touched with fire; far on every side stretched the open plain, absolutely level, bounded at last in the far distance by that deep purple wall of mountains, flat-topped, level-lined also, against the sky, the great ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... is sweet: thy breath is in the air, I feel it on my face; thy tender eyes Look love upon me from yon starry skies! They bring to me, those glancing moonbeams fair, The shine and ripple of thy silken hair. And in the silent whispers and the sighs That from the throbbing heart of Nature rise, I hear thee, feel thee,—own thy ...
— Sonnets • Nizam-ud-din-Ahmad, (Nawab Nizamat Jung Bahadur)
... to the contemplation of the sea and the distant shores which he was approaching. The day, for a winter's day, was bright and sunny: the sky without a cloud; the atmosphere of a frosty clearness; and the sea so calm, that it appeared scarcely to swell into a ripple, except immediately in the ship's wake. The distant promontory, which he suspected to be the point whither he had been washed by the waves, after the explosion of the Halcyon, and which seemed the extremity of a small island, had now receded into an azure speck: the ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... to scream came over her, but the tight muscles of her throat let out no sound. But if Wilbur were not here, where had he gone? He could not have vanished into thin air. The ripple of the water washing on the sand replied. Yes, that Current might have rolled ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... stillness: the ripple suffused in golden moonlight: the dark edges of the leaves against superlative brightness. Not a chirp was heard, nor anything save the cool and endless carol of the happy waters, whose voices are the spirits of silence. Nature seemed consenting that their hands should be ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to quarters. Swarms of men set the head-sails and brought the frigate round, while the gun-crews threw off their jackets and shirts, tightened their belts, and ran out their eighteen-pounders, peering through the open portholes at the stately French man. The wind was very light. Hardly a ripple showed itself upon the clear blue water, but the sails blew gently out as the breeze came over the wooded banks. The Frenchman had gone about also, and both ships were now heading slowly for the sea under fore-and-aft canvas, the Gloire a hundred yards in advance. ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... self-annihilation, Edwards is unconsciously troubled by the strange contrast between the effect and the stupendous cause assigned for it. When the angel of the Lord comes down to trouble the waters, one would expect rather to see oceans upheaved than a trifling ripple in an insignificant pond. There is something almost pathetic in his eagerness to magnify the proportions of the event. He boasts that in six months 'more than three hundred souls were savingly brought ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... through the water at the rate of some three or four knots in the hour; or quite as fast as an ordinarily active man is apt to walk. Her motion was nearly unobservable to all on board, and might rather be termed gliding than sailing, the ripple under her cut-water not much exceeding that which is made by the finger as it is moved swiftly through the element; still the slightest variation of the helm changed her course, and this so easily and gracefully as to render her deviations and inclinations like those of ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... sale began. The auctioneer was a rustic humorist, who knew the practical value of a joke in his business. Aware of the foibles and characteristics of the people who flocked around and after him, he provoked many a ripple and roar of laughter by his telling hits and droll speeches. I found that my neighbor, Mr. Jones, came in for his full share, but he always sent back as good as he received. The sale, in fact, had the aspect of a country merrymaking, at which all ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... noticed with approval that it was correct mourning: simple, severe, Parisian. Nothing could have been more becoming to the exquisite bloom of the young face than the soft, clear folds of filmy veiling; under the small, close-set hat there showed a ripple of rich golden hair. The watching woman thought that she had never seen such self-possession; at twenty-two it was almost uncanny. The modulated, bored young voice, the lazily lifted, indifferent young eyes, the ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... words, and from the manner in which she uttered them, Chayne had to build up the terrible scene which had taken place between Sylvia and her father in the little back room of the house in Hobart Place. He looked round the lighted room, listened to the ripple of light voices, and watched the play of lively faces and bright eyes. There was an incongruity between these surroundings and the words which he ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... deportment when he was among the English Jacobites in France. The result was that he danced all of a piece, with as near the poetry of movement as a man might attain, and then there was the intimate, intriguing ripple of his tartans. ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... pressed against her breast, her eyes filled with fear, she was watching in fascinated horror a thin ripple of phosphorescence that moved leisurely and steadily out ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... gone from the day, though the last crimson petals had scarce dropped from the rose of sunset. Upon the sea beneath there was not a ripple; it was a lake of molten silver, shading into a leaden silence far away. The tide was high, and the ragged rocks of the Banc des Violets in the south and the Corbiore in the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... evening, from every village within three or four miles of the metropolis, may be remarked a tide of young men wending diurnal way to and from their respective desks and counters in the city, preceded by a ripple of errand-boys, and light porters, and followed by an ebb of plethoric elderly gentlemen in drab gaiters. Now these individuals compose—for the most part—that particular, yet indefinite class of people, who call themselves "gentlemen," and are called by everybody else ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... did not know if he had heard a noise or not, Jake looked round and saw a long gray object slide out of the mist. It was indistinct and very low in the water, but he knew it was a shooting punt. It drifted up the channel towards him; a faint ripple indicating that somebody was steering it with a short paddle. A blurred figure lay in the well behind a bunch of reeds, and the only bold line was the barrel of the big punt-gun that would throw a pound of shot. Jim could not see the punt, because he was looking ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... and Daisy was left alone. Very weary and exhausted, she sat leaning her head against the stone at her side, in a sort of despairing quiet. The little ripple of the water on the pebbly shore struck her ear; it was the first thing eye or ear had perceived to be pleasant that day. Daisy's thoughts went to the hand that had made the glittering river, with all its beauties and wonders; then they went to what Mr. Dinwiddie had said, that God ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... out upon the calm sea, which lay like a sheet of glass, without a ripple on its surface, I could scarcely believe what he had said. But before many minutes had passed I was convinced ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... skies; the Square was quiet and deserted; I listened with delight to the song of the Lady fair, as it mingled with the ripple of the fountain. All at once I perceived a white figure approach from the opposite side of the Square and go directly toward the little garden door. I peered eagerly through the dazzling moonlight—it was the queer painter in his white cloak. ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... fortunate that we took such a precaution. The morning of the 7th proved extremely dark, and much rain fell. We commenced our journey in the midst of it, and soon gained the tail of the rapid. Our attempt to pull up it completely failed. The boat, as soon as she entered the ripple, spun round like a toy, and away we went with the stream. As I had anticipated, our ropes were too short; and it only remained for us to get into the water, and haul the boat up by main force. We managed pretty well at first, and drew ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... and walked the deck alone and in silence. Meanwhile the bustle and movements of the crew continued, and soon the great ships, stripped of their white sails, lay tranquilly at anchor in a sea without a ripple. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... Thousand Islands—the Archipelago of the St. Lawrence? Nothing can exceed the beauty of this spot. The river is here several miles in width, studded with innumerable islands, of every variety of form. The moon shone brightly on this lovely scene: not a ripple stirred the mirror-like bosom of the stream—"There was not a breath ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... like curd. At last the evil people, Worn out by her resistance, Flung back her penny, kicked their fruit Along whichever road they took, 440 Not leaving root or stone or shoot; Some writhed into the ground, Some dived into the brook With ring and ripple, Some scudded on the gale without a sound, Some vanished in ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... they might be called—the breathless foliage rich in the depth of summer; behind, the old-fashioned house, unpretending, not mean, its open doors and windows giving glimpses of the comfortable repose within; before, the lake, without a ripple and catching the gleam of the sunset clouds,—all made a picture of that complete tranquillity and stillness, which sometimes soothes and sometimes saddens us, according as we are in the temper to ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... full now of people in light summer dress, and in the luminous evening a constant ripple of laughter and gay voices came up to them. Peer looked curiously at the crowd, all strangers to him, and asked his companion the names of some of the people. Langberg pointed out one or two celebrities—a Cabinet Minister sitting near by, a famous explorer a ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... southwards with his wife. And while they were rowing, they saw a black ripple on the sea ahead. When they came to the place, they saw that it was the sea-lice. And the outermost layer of skins on the boat was eaten away before ...
— Eskimo Folktales • Unknown
... eyes the region is celestial in its horizon-wide quiet. Only the ripple of water in leafy ravines—only the music of birds breaks the silence that is so welcome, ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... beautiful, though hot. As it wanted some time to dinner at Tunis, I made a detour on my return to the ruins, and it requires a fine air to make you enjoy fine scenery. There was scarcely a ripple on the blue Mediterranean. Beautiful trees of every description, olive and orange trees, oleanders, and others, grew to the very base of the mountain, and sent up a delicious perfume. I visited the chapel ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... wind disturbs the sleeping lake, And bids it ripple pure and fresh; It moves the green boughs till they make Grand music ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... has been successful, both in regard to the properties of the engines and those of the 'lines' on which she has been constructed. Nothing can exceed the beauty of her passage through the water, without even a ripple, far less the wave which ordinary steamboats occasion." That success, however, was to be followed by a long series of disasters. The weight of the Janus had been miscalculated, and though she could proceed admirably in smooth water, she was found to lie so low that there was constant ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... make a languorous gloom, And heavy-headed poppies drip perfume In secret arbours set in garden close; And all the air, one glorious breath of rose, Shakes not a dainty petal from the trees. Nor stirs a ripple on the Cyprian seas. ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... where Severance got precisely his combination of qualities. His father was simply what is called a handsome man, with stately figure and curly black hair, not without a certain dignity of manner, but with a face so shallow that it did not even seem to ripple, and with a voice so prosy that, when he spoke of the sky, you wished there were no such thing. His mother was a fair, little, pallid creature,—wash-blond, as they say of lace,—patient, meek, and always fatigued and fatiguing. But Severance, ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... rested upon; and the falling flood dragged them with it across the fields and through the Jungle by the long hair. All night, too, going North, I heard the guns, and by day the shod feet of men crossing fords, and that noise which a heavy cart-wheel makes on sand under water; and every ripple brought more dead. At last even I was afraid, for I said: 'If this thing happen to men, how shall the Mugger of Mugger-Ghaut escape?' There were boats, too, that came up behind me without sails, burning continually, as the cotton-boats sometimes burn, ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... a halt; of such continuance, as to make the captives suppose they have arrived at some place where they are to pass the remainder of the night. Or it may be but an obstruction; this probable from their hearing a sound, easily understood—the ripple of running water. They have arrived upon ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... sheet of glittering snow-white salt, girded on three sides by huge hot-looking mountains, that dip their basins into its very bowl, and on the fourth by crude, half-formed rocks of lava, broken and divided by chasms. No sound broke on the ear, not a ripple played on the water. The molten surface of the lake lay like burnished steel, the fierce sky was without a cloud, and the angry sun, like a ball of metal at a white heat, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... finikin details, Lorenzo passes, however, to details which are a good deal more than details, things little noticed until almost recently: the varying effect of the olives on the hillside—a grey, green mass, a silver ripple, according as the wind stirs them; the golden appearance of the serene summer air, and so forth; details no longer, in short, but essentially, however minute, effects. And then, suddenly leaving ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... his gaiters, And in he goes: Down where the mermaids Pluck and play On their twangling harps In a sea-green day; Down where the mermaids, Finned and fair, Sleek with their combs Their yellow hair ... Bates and Giles— On the shingle sat, Gazing at Turvey's Floating hat. But never a ripple Nor bubble told Where he was supping Off plates of gold. Never an echo Rilled through the sea Of the feasting and dancing And minstrelsy. They called—called—called: Came no reply: Nought but the ripples' Sandy ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... doubtless, yet their frost holds fire; The snowiest bosom covers soft desire, And these are snowy, verily. As blanched—and bare—as Himalaya's peaks, Light-vestured as a troop of dancing Greeks. Waltz-measures ripple merrily. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various
... anguish during this matinal performance of her husband. She suffered a tight-throated sort of anguish that could have been no keener had it been of larger provocation. Her toes and her fingers would curl and a quick ripple of flesh rush ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... north there were islands, long stretches of sea opening between their green shores, far up into the coast land. The wind freshened and died, until at last in the twilight with scarcely a ripple the Swallow floated into a sheltered cove on the outermost of all the islands. A forest of stiff little spruces covered the sea point, and behind this was a smooth green field, and above on the crest of the ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... the little dainty creature, I must plead for a daintier Latin name than it has now—'Podiceps.' No one seems to have the least idea what that means; and 'Colymbus,' diver, must be kept for the great Northern Diver and his deep-sea relatives, far removed from our little living ripple-line of the pools. I can't think of any one pretty enough; but for the present 'Trepida' may serve; and perhaps be applied, not improperly, to all the Grebes, with reference to their subtle and ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... While showing off his learning, and displaying his capacity to dispose of the deep questions of theology, he let fall seeds of division and doubt that ripened into contention in subsequent generations. The only ripple on the surface of the Village Church during its long record of peace, since the close of his disastrous ministry, was occasioned by differing opinions on this subject. It required all the wisdom of his successors to quiet them. From time to time, formulas had to be constructed, half-way covenants ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... kept, Shall it pass like the ripple, unhonour'd, unwept: Unknowing the lance, and the victim unknown, Far from Aberffraw's halls and Eryri ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... glided over the blue sea, like a swan skimming over a tranquil lake. As seen at that distance, she appeared a mass of white canvas; nor did she cause a ripple on the calm, mirror-like surface. On she came, till her deck seemed almost beneath the rock, and the young Italian fancied, in her eagerness, that she could see the countenances of those who walked it, and could distinguish ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... up the canticle again, went down the roof, and entered the water. It covered her softly, without a ripple. I had not ceased smiling. I looked with happiness upon the spot where she had ...
— The Flood • Emile Zola
... of the life-boat coiled in its proper place. Soon she experienced a steady pull on the rope. Her little fleet was in motion. Gray began to help in the paddling. Ere long they came under the influence of the tide, and she heard the ripple of the water against the planks of the boat. Then Suarez called a halt and ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... the rush of life in the trees and in the very air itself. Pierre swung along with Jean by his side, his heart full of happiness. He had had a good winter's hunt and his wife had money for everything necessary. But more than anything else he wanted the golden sunshine, the ripple of the waters in the stream, the curved body of the salmon as they darted out of the water in their eagerness to get up the streams. He told his boy that though they had come out for game, he really just wanted to be in the woods when the buds were coming out and when he could feel ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... years! There comes a time, no doubt, in the relationship of old and young, when the guardian is all at once changed into the cherished one. 'Tis a tragical thing—a thing to be resolved, to be made merciful and benign, only by the acquiescence of the failing spirit. There is then no interruption—no ripple upon the flowing river of our lives. As for my uncle, I fancy that he kept watch upon me, in those days, to read his future, to discover his achievement, in my disposition. Stand by? Ay, that I would! And being young I sought ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... servant, and fancied the album a present from Lady Constance. When she saw the signature on the first page she stared, for Lord Hunsdon was the last person she would have suspected of cultivating the muse. She began the sonnet with a ripple of laughter, but paled before she finished. Trifling as it was she recognised it as the work of Byam Warner. She could never be mistaken there. It resembled nothing of his that she knew, but the ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... noise began to decrease. It was as if some noble orator had begun to speak in the midst of a tumultuous assembly. Those nearest him catch his utterances first, and become quiet; the wave of silence spreads like a great ripple in the water; until at last the whole audience is as hushed as death. So something—some extraordinary thing—had arrested the battle; down, down, dropped the tumult; and at last there were only a few scattering shots ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... massive, a score of feet above them, swayed to and fro, gently, like the ripple of wheat in light summer airs. But Corliss gazed at it unheeding. Just to lie there, on the marge of the mystery, just to lie there and drink the air in great gulps, and do nothing!—he asked no more. A dervish, whirling on heel till all things blur, may grasp the essence of ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... it rolled along without care or uneasiness; she was not afraid of losing it; each morning it shone upon her, with the same blue sky, the same smile, the same sweet words. That clear, still lake was unruffled by any breeze, even a zephyr; she would fain have seen a ripple on its glassy surface. Her desire had something so infantine about it that it ought to be excused; but society is not more indulgent than the God of Genesis. Madame de Vandenesse, having now become intelligently clever, was aware that such sentiments were not permissible, and she refrained from ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... air, laden with the perfumes of a thousand fragrant shrubs and flowers that bloom along that coast in the rich luxuriance of nature, was hushed and breathless. In its stillness every sound was audible, the rustling of a leaf, the ripple of a wave. She heard the murmur of whispered voices below, and in a few moments she recognised, emerging from the foliage, the form of Pausanias; but he was not alone. Who were his companions? In the deep lustre ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... The laughing ripple shoreward flew, To kiss the shining pebbles; Loud shrieked the swarming Boys in Blue Defiance to ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... each a link in an endless chain. It is but a mirage; those who look down know that they are dancing on a silken thread stretched over an abyss that swallows up all who fall and shows not even a ripple on its surface. What foot is sure? Nature herself seems to deny you her divine consolation; trees and flowers are yours no more; you have broken your mother's laws, you are no longer one of her foster children; the birds of the field ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... and perfect manner of sitting still; now he saw that her beauty was of that rare kind that is most beautiful in movement. He would have liked that walk to last for ever, for the pure pleasure of following, now the delicate poise of her head, now the faint ripple of her shoulders under her thin coat, now the lines of her skirt breaking and flowing with the almost ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... stretches along the south bank of the Piscataqua, about two miles from the sea as the crow flies—three miles following the serpentine course of the river. The stream broadens suddenly at this point, and at flood tide, lying without a ripple in a basin formed by the interlocked islands and the mainland, it looks more like an island lake than a river. To the unaccustomed eye there is no visible outlet. Standing on one of the wharves at the foot of State Street or Court Street, a stranger ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the old spring-house on the hillside. You will not find him swimming about like the minnows in the still, deep water of the stream, but where the clear, cold water is rushing rapidly over the stones of a ripple he makes his home. There he rests quietly on the bottom, waiting patiently for his food, the larvae or young of gnats, mosquitoes, and other ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... within them, seemed to follow me, when, taking to my boat again, I rowed off to a kind of garden or public walk in the sea, where there were grass and trees. But I forgot them when I stood upon its farthest brink—I stood there, in my dream—and looked, along the ripple, to the setting sun; before me, in the sky and on the deep, a crimson flush; and behind me the whole city resolving into streaks of red and ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... inexpressible joy," they emerged upon the bosom of the great river. During all this time they had seen no human being, though, probably, many a wandering savage had watched them from the covert of the bank, as they floated silently between the forests. It was an unbroken solitude, where the ripple of their paddles sounded loudly on the ear, and their voices, subdued by the stillness, were sent back in lonely ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... mind is as large as the universe. When I think of hills, I think of the upward strength I tread upon. When water is the object of my thought, I feel the cool shock of the plunge and the quick yielding of the waves that crisp and curl and ripple about my body. The pleasing changes of rough and smooth, pliant and rigid, curved and straight in the bark and branches of a tree give the truth to my hand. The immovable rock, with its juts and warped surface, bends beneath my fingers into ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... flash of teeth behind the veil, followed by the ripple of soft laughter. "It is difficult to believe you to be English. You are more like ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... Pool, past the floating Custom House at Gravesend, and onwards, skirting the little creeks and mudbanks where the Thames widens to the sea—when every sound of the tide flapping heavily at irregular intervals against the shore, and every ripple, were fraught with the terror of pursuit—exemplifies in the most striking way the rapidity and instinctive ease of Dickens's ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... chair between Segur and Berersford and it was presently filled by a fat, middle-aged woman, neither blonde nor brunette, with a large, serene face. Upon it was written a frank confession that she had never in her life had an original thought capable of creating a ripple of interest. She was Mrs. Sidney, rich, of an "old" family—in the New York meaning of the word "old"—both by marriage and by birth, much courted because of her position and because she entertained a great deal both in town and at a large and ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... backs of the Captain and first mate, was thinking what a curious and fortunate thing it was that the bales had fallen on Zachary just at the right time, and when there was not a ripple on ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... There was a ripple of laughter, in the midst of which the colonel's voice was heard saying, "I guess you were, Mr. Simms, I ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... of Major Kingman; perhaps he would be ordered to close the bank on account of the loss of the securities. It was not the first crime the examiner had unearthed. Once or twice the terrible upheaval of human emotions that his investigations had loosed had almost caused a ripple in his official calm. He had seen bank men kneel and plead and cry like women for a chance—an hour's time—the overlooking of a single error. One cashier had shot himself at his desk before him. None of them had taken ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... lived amongst the booming of cannon had even a disquieting effect. Both were particularly alert on this night when vigilance was never less needed. If a gust of wind caught the fire and drove the red flare of the flame like a ripple across the grass, one would be sure to look quickly over his shoulder, the other perhaps would lift a warning finger and listen to the shivering of the trees behind them. Then with a relaxation of his attitude he would say "All right" and light his ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... and Matty Cann, the bone man, drowsed in his chair. Madame Marve was sleeping, too, and the ripple of a monotonous snore ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... half his face submerged, his powerful arms and legs working like pistons. Such was the power in him that at each stroke his great body seemed to lift and fling itself forward, and behind him broadened a long, diamond shaped ripple that slid whispering to the shore. The next moment sounded a voice, as from a ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... crowd of handsomely dressed men and women, drinking tea at little tables set under the trees and among the shrubbery. Christina merely glanced at the brave show of shifting colour, and passed more quickly onward, the murmur of conversation and the ripple of laughter pursuing her a little way, for the evening was warm ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... her purple drops forgivingly And sadly, breaking not the general hush; The maple-swamps glow like a sunset sea, Each leaf a ripple with its separate flush; All round the wood's edge creeps the skirting blaze Of bushes low, as when, on cloudy days, Ere the rain fall, the cautious ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... while I could feel that we were moving toward the ship, for though I could not hear a splash aft nor a ripple of the sea against the bows, the boat rolled slightly, so that I had to spread my legs apart ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... poor young girl, who has the hill to climb," replied her brother, smoothing her hair with his hand. Her hair was long and smooth and glossy, with a wave like the ripple of a summer breeze upon the surface of still water. It was the girl's great pride, and had been sedulously cared for. "What lovely hair! It has just the ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... of time; the fissile results of the frost; the wavering line of ripple-marks of Seas that shall ebb no more; growth of lichen; an army of ants in full march; a passion-flower trailing from a crevice, its purple blooms lying upon the gray stone near where it is stamped with the fossil imprint ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... took in at a glance the rich Southern landscape. Immediately below him, and sloping in well kept terraces to the banks of the Coosa, was a trim garden, filled with flowers, among which, in fine bloom, were numerous varieties of the rose. The sluggish waters of the Coosa flowed without a ripple between its well wooded banks, the trees on opposite sides often interlocking their branches. Beyond the river was a wilderness of forest; the slaves were going to their labor in the cotton fields, singing and chatting gaily ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... summer day in the everlasting quietness, unbroken even by a wandering wind or the ripple of a stream, some inkling of that old Roman life, always at its best in such country places as this, comes to you, yes, from the time when Juno was yet a little maid among the mossy fountains and the noise of the brooks. Tacitus in his Agricola, that consoling ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... name, Bertha, which was beautiful and dignified, instead of that silly "Rilla"? She did not mind Walter's version, but nobody else was allowed to call her that, except Miss Oliver now and then. "Rilla-my-Rilla" in Walter's musical voice sounded very beautiful to her—like the lilt and ripple of some silvery brook. She would have died for Walter if it would have done him any good, so she told Miss Oliver. Rilla was as fond of italics as most girls of fifteen are—and the bitterest drop in her cup was her suspicion that he told Di ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... book and listened. It was only the choking gurgle of a broken rain-pipe outside: then it was the ripple and swish of a meadow stream. To make out the voices of redwings and marsh-wrens in the rasping notes of the city sparrows behind the shutter required much more imagination. But I did it. I wanted to hear, and the splash of ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... we would soon touch the bank. The colour of the water entirely changed, a circumstance even remarked by the ladies. About three in the afternoon, being in 19 deg. 30' north latitude, and 19 deg. 45' west longitude, an universal cry was heard upon deck. All declared they saw sand rolling among the ripple of the sea. The Captain in an instant ordered to sound. The line gave eighteen fathoms; but on a second sounding it only gave six. He at last saw his error, and hesitated no longer on changing the ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... sob and for a moment only the gentle ripple of the waves on the shore and the crickets were to be heard Levine, elbow on knee, chin in hand, looked through the dusk at the shadowy sweetness of Lydia's face, his own face ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... admiration broke from the lips of both boys, for never before had they beheld such a lovely sheet of water. The surface of the lake was unbroken by a ripple, and the water, into which the heated horses thrust their noses, ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... from south-west: this shows how difficult it sometimes is to perceive the direction of the vibrations. There was no difficulty in standing upright, but the motion made me almost giddy: it was something like the movement of a vessel in a little cross-ripple, or still more like that felt by a person skating over thin ice, which bends under the weight of ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... young love's laughter Ripple and run among the roses; Memory's echoes, murmuring after, Fill the dusk when the long ...
— Music and Other Poems • Henry van Dyke
... make out two brown specks moving slowly back and forth. They were oxen, and Dromas was ploughing with them. It was so still that the children could plainly hear the breathing of the sheep as they cropped the grass, and the ripple of the little stream which spread out into a shallow river and ...
— The Spartan Twins • Lucy (Fitch) Perkins
... him, smiling as though he loved him, and laid his brown finger lightly on the four empty corners of the cabinet. And Hyacinthe saw the squares of reddish wood ripple and heave and break, as little clouds when the wind goes through the sky. And out of them thrust forth the little birds, and after them the lilies, for a moment living; but even as Hyacinthe looked, settling back into the sweet reddish-brown wood. Then ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various
... have slipped down into a merely animal stratum of existence; you live to-day because you lived yesterday, and you do not forecast to-morrow. Perhaps you learn to assuage and deceive the hunger of your immortal soul by forcing your attention upon the petty ripple of daily events and duties, until you present, to the outsider, the appearance of a commonplace, non-tragic person, bearing no noticeable scars of the crime which society perpetrated on you. You perhaps lose, at last, the realization of your own inhuman plight, ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... but here and there open lanes of water, and elsewhere lakes and little ponds upon the melting ice caught the full orb of the rising sun, and sent its reflection into the man's eyes with dazzling refulgence, while the ripple or rush of ice-born water-falls and the plaintive cries of wild-fowl gave variety and animation to the scene. In a mind less religiously disposed than that of our seaman, the sights and sounds would have irresistibly aroused ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... lady Chia chimed in, "in the water-pavilion of the Lotus Fragrance Arbour, for (the music) will borrow the ripple of the stream and sound ever so much more pleasant to the ear. We can by and bye drink our wine in the Cho Chin Hall; we'll thus have ample room, and be able ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... weigh about 4.30 on Saturday afternoon, July 31st, being tugged out of the harbour at Granton. The Firth of Forth was then as calm as a lake, scarce a ripple to be seen on its surface. A previous thunderstorm had freshened the air, the rain which had fallen had ceased, and those lovely mists and tints usually to be seen after a storm, had taken the place of the dark clouds now rolling away in the distance. Inchkeith was spanned by a lovely ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... and round, like a caged beast, when the stars grew faint and the silver ripple of the dayspring broke over the sea. For two hours and more he had been thinking hard, and he rested his elbows on the balcony and paused for a minute or two to watch the red ball of the sun as it heaved above the waters. To the north, beyond the ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... seventeen or eighteen, who was standing before a carved leggio, or reading-desk, such as is often seen in the choirs of Italian churches. The hair was of a reddish gold colour, enriched by an unbroken small ripple, such as may be seen in the sunset clouds on grandest autumnal evenings. It was confined by a black fillet above her small ears, from which it rippled forward again, and made a natural veil for her neck above her square-cut ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... island, in the third summer of its yellow green, that we built our watch-fire; not in the thicket of dancing willow wands, but on the level terrace of fine sand which had been added that spring; a little new bit of world, beautifully ridged with ripple marks, and strewn with the tiny skeletons of turtles and fish, all as white and dry as if they had been expertly cured. We had been careful not to mar the freshness of the place, although we often swam out to it on summer ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... surge, eagre, bore, swell, billow, breaker; ripple; whitecap; signal, flourish; swelling, excitement, tide. Associated Words: rote, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... solitary cloud grows dark and wide, While distant thunder rumbles in the air, A fitful ripple breaks the river's tide— The lazy cattle are no longer there, But homeward come in long procession slow, With many a bleat and ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... entertaining itself, always engaged in a game of hide and seek in the region in which it seemed to him, that the game could best be played—among the shadows and substructions, the dark-based pillars and supports, of our moral nature. Beneath this movement and ripple of his imagination—as free and spontaneous as that of the sea surface—lay directly his personal affections. These were solid and strong, but, according to my impression, they had the place ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... last refinements of shadow, which are almost invisible except in a strong [65] light, and which the finest pencil can hardly follow. The whole essence of their work is expression, the passing of a smile over the face of a child, the ripple of the air on a still day over the ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... alike. It exercises no selective action. Now the cause of this may be that the cloud particles are so large, in comparison with the waves of aether, as to reflect them all indifferently. A broad cliff reflects an Atlantic roller as easily as a ripple produced by a seabird's wing; and in the presence of large reflecting surfaces, the existing differences of magnitude among the waves of aether may disappear. But supposing the reflecting particles, instead of being very large, to ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... mischievously aiming an arrow downwards. These Sprite Columns express the gay, frolicsome mood of the waters. Their feeling harmonizes more with the sea-weed and shell decorations of the court itself and its falling-water motif than with the weightier sculpture it contains. They create a pleasing ripple of merriment. Their light and airy modeling has the beauty of unconscious and unforced artistry. The columns stand just within the northern entrance of the court, guarding ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... cloudy skies; and nights no less beautiful when all the world seemed shrouded in black velvet, when the dusky sea parted silently to let the boat pass through, and then closed behind it with no laugh or ripple of water to speed it onward, breathlessly still nights of fathomless darkness. The ship's master, burdened with visions of coral reefs on a chartless coast, failed to appreciate the aesthetic beauty of sailing unknown seas in limitless darkness, and either anchored on such nights, ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... me, and I stood and smoked upon it, listening to the ripple of the half-golden, half-shadowy water, watching the revolutions of the green old wheel. I had laid out my plan of action. On my return to the inn I would insist on an interview with Miss Falconer, and would ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... lonely night! And there is not a braid of her bright hair But lieth floating in the moonlight air, Like the long moss, beside a silver spring, In elfin tresses, sadly murmuring. The worm hath 'gan to crawl upon her brow— The living worm! and with a ripple now, Like that upon the sea, are heard below, The slimy swarms all ravening as they go, Amid the stagnate vitals, with a rush; And one might hear them echoing the hush Of Julio, as he watches by the side Of the dead ladye, ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... been brought to the bank, and they were just mooring it, when something out on the water attracted the attention of Leon and Leona. It was a small, darkish object, and would not have been observed but for the ripple that it made on the smooth surface of the river, and by this they could tell that it was ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... weather promised to be almost as perfect as it had been that spring day when the wild geese came to Skane. There was hardly a ripple on the water; the air was still and the boy thought of the good passage the geese would have. He himself was as yet in a kind of daze—sometimes thinking he was an elf, sometimes a human being. When he saw a stone hedge alongside the road, he was afraid to go farther until he had made sure ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... Flags, in that wind, are like nations enskied. See, how they grapple the night as it rolls And trample it under like triumphing souls. Over the city that never knew sleep, Look at the riotous folds as they leap. Thousands of tri-colors, laughing for France, Ripple and whisper and thunder and dance; Thousands of flags for Great Britain aflame Answer their sisters in Liberty's name. Belgium is burning in pride overhead. Poland is near, and her sunrise is red. Under and over, and fluttering between, ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... there breath'd a wind on me, Ne sound ne motion made: Its path was not upon the sea In ripple or in ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... I got in another blow so well delivered that the rascal yelled, and turning fled back to the village. Hot and panting from my exertions, I stood still, but sooner still the pheasant had pulled herself up and stood there, about three yards from my feet, as if nothing had happened—as if not a ripple had troubled the quiet surface of her life! The serenity of the bird, just out of that storm of violence and danger, and her perfect indifference to my presence, was astonishing to me. For a minute or two I stood still watching her; then ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... of my story, forgotten under the dry sky, this ever- restless, ever-swelling tide of life swirled and eddied-swirled and eddied, but touched it not. On the west it swept even to the foot of the grim mountain wall. On the east one far-flung ripple reached even to the river—when Rubio City was born. But the Desert waited, silent and hot and fierce in its desolation, holding its treasures under the seal of death against the coming of the strong ones; waited until the man-making forces that wrought through those long ages should have done also ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... sufficient openings to admit the passage of its fading light. The canopy overhead was heavy and dense, promising another night of darkness, but the surface of the lake was scarcely disturbed by a ripple. There was a little air, though it scarce deserved to be termed wind. Still, being damp and heavy, it had a certain force. The party in the castle were as gloomy and silent as the scene. The two ransomed prisoners ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... harbours of the world," he replied. "And I'd say it's not without advantages many of the finest of 'em lack. Those headlands we passed away back. Why, the Atlantic couldn't blow a storm big enough to more than ripple the surface here inside." He laughed. "What a place to fortify. Think of this in war ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... centre of the room, on the bare earth floor, stood a big, deep, brass basin, with a pale blue-green light floating in the centre like a night-light. Round that basin the man on the floor wriggled himself three times. How he did it I do not know. I could see the muscles ripple along his spine and fall smooth again; but I could not see any other motion. The head seemed the only thing alive about him, except that slow curl and uncurl of the laboring back-muscles, Janoo from the bed was breathing seventy to ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... leaving barely a ripple behind, that head sank from view. It had vanished in an instant before the eyes of the two thoroughly startled high ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... our minor war gains in the temporary disappearance of cranks and faddists, some of whom have sunk without a ripple. And though the Press Censor's suppressions and delays and inconsistencies provoke discontent in the House and out of it, food for mirth turns up constantly in unexpected quarters. The Crown Prince tells an American interviewer that there is no War Party in Germany, nor ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... her, started valiantly on its familiar road, and tripped but little when the poor lady realized that neither John Henry nor Virginia was listening. She was so used to talking for the sake of the sound she made rather than the impression she produced that her silvery ripple had become almost as lacking in self-consciousness as the ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... verge of the dark rock which rose on Mannering's right hand. In his front was the quiet bay, whose little waves, crisping and sparkling to the moonbeams, rolled successively along its surface, and dashed with a soft and murmuring ripple against the silvery beach. To the left the woods advanced far into the ocean, waving in the moonlight along ground of an undulating and varied form, and presenting those varieties of light and shade, and that interesting ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... baffled, and in a few seconds the ray slowly, and with infinite caution, "flew" (and that is the correct term to apply to a fish the movements of which in the water are analogous to the flight of a bird) into such meagre depths that the shark would have been stranded had it followed. No ripple indicated its discreet course within a few feet of the water line and it maintained its way for about two hundred yards parallel with the beach, while the shark furiously quartered the sea ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... the speaker's face from beneath her drooping lids, making no effort to read his thoughts, but weighing his words and impressing every detail of his story upon her mind. When he had done there was silence for a time, broken only by the plash and ripple of the ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... mare to death for pure whimsy. Only Judith Rodney, who said nothing, felt that he was spurring across the wilderness at breakneck speed to see a girl at Wetmore's. But her lack of comment caused no ripple of surprise in the flow of loose-lipped speculation that served, for the time being, to inject a casual interest into the talk of these folk, bored to the verge of demoralization by long ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... rare type of figure that never becomes encumbered with fat. The grace of youth and the strength of maturity met there. He would make a pattern colonel if he lived. Under the simple lines of his uniform one apprehended the ripple and play of unclogged muscles. If all men were like Stonor the tailor's ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... it, Jamie!' 'Well ridden!' A subdued hum runs round the excited spectators. The ardent racers are nose and nose. One swift, sharp cut, the cruel whip hisses through the air, and the black is fairly 'lifted in,' a winner by a nose. The ripple of conversation breaks out afresh. The band strikes up a lively air, and the saddling for the next race ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... proves that you've not seen Mistress Judith Ogilvie." A faint ripple, that might have been laughter, shook the boy's words. "All men are servants to Mistress Ogilvie, all men who have laid eyes on ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... on account of the loss of the securities. It was not the first crime the examiner had unearthed. Once or twice the terrible upheaval of human emotions that his investigations had loosed had almost caused a ripple in his official calm. He had seen bank men kneel and plead and cry like women for a chance—an hour's time—the overlooking of a single error. One cashier had shot himself at his desk before him. None of them had taken it with the dignity and coolness of this stern old Westerner. Nettlewick ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... She would have no English-made linen in that household. "If mine scratch your back, Richard," she would say, "you must grin and bear, and console yourself with your virtue." It was I saw to the flax, and learned from Ivie Rawlinson (who had come to us from Carvel Hall) the best manner to ripple and break and swingle it. And Mr. Swain, in imitation of the high example set by Mr. Bordley, had buildings put up for wheels and the looms, and in due time ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... a roar of applause and a ripple of hand clapping ran over the arena from the appreciative performers. They wholly forgot themselves in their surprise ...
— The Circus Boys On the Mississippi • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... "shipmaster," a peasant whose costume might have come out of a Gilbert and Sullivan opera. He launched us, however, and the boat shot out into the lake, with Jimmie and me at the oars, and then we saw a sight that none of us had ever seen before. The air was wonderfully calm and still. The only ripple on the lake was that which was left by our boat as we rowed out to where there was a break in the hills. On the east and west, there the tallest hills fall away from the Achensee and make an undulating line on the horizon. As we reached this break, ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... island. Between this solidly frozen press of pans and the dissolving field in Anxious Bight there had been a lane of ruffled open water before the frost fell. It measured perhaps fifty yards. It was now black and still, sheeted with new ice which had been delayed in forming by the ripple of that exposed situation. Doctor Rolfe had encountered nothing as doubtful. He paused on the brink. A long, thin line of solid pan ice, ghostly white in the dusk beyond, was attached to the rocks of the Little Spotted Horse. It led all the ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... by a long rustling of the water on the sand, and a silence till the next wave fell. He waded on till he could swim, and then struck out to where the Isles stood, all sharp and bright in the moon. He swam with long quiet strokes, hearing the water ripple past; and soon the great crags loomed out above him, and he heard the waves fall among their rocky coves. At last he felt the ground beneath his feet; and coming out of the water he dressed himself, and then—for he would not ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... town of Elmwood was quiet and practically deserted when they drove into it. The farmers were too busy with the harvest to "come to town for trading" except on Saturdays, and the arrival and departure of the two daily trains did not cause more than a ripple of ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... forth over the land, Hemming ordered the sail to be lowered. By this they had a better chance of seeing the felucca without being seen. The lieutenant stood up and slowly moved round, scanning every part of the horizon. The land breeze had now completely died away, and there was not a ripple on the water, though the slow moving glassy undulations which came rolling in and constantly rocking the boat, showed that they were not floating on an inland lake. Jack and Adair began to fear that the felucca was not in sight, ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... he rose to the surface again, as if he were swimming between two sides. As he moved softly out across the middle, and a little ripple moved before him, the water was invisible. There was only a fathomless gulf, as deep below as the sky was high above, pricked with stars. As he turned his head this way and that the great trees, high overhead, seemed less real than those two immeasurable spaces above and beneath. ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... green grass comes creeping So soft beneath their feet; The frogs begin to ripple A music clear ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... attention, working with feverish rapidity. Suddenly the watchers saw a little ripple break over the last speck of dry land on the globe, and De Beauxchamps standing up to his shoe-laces in water. Cries of dismay came from the Ark. De Beauxchamps now gave over his work, and, with apparent reluctance, ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... lyrics, the history of Frederick the Great's magnificent achievements and the account of Goethe's life. I was sorry to finish "Die Harzreise," so full of happy witticisms and charming descriptions of vine-clad hills, streams that sing and ripple in the sunshine, and wild regions, sacred to tradition and legend, the gray sisters of a long-vanished, imaginative age—descriptions such as can be given only by those to whom nature is "a feeling, ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... scent of the pines almost hurt your nostrils. One side of the gully in front of you is brown and bare, but in the bottom, and clinging to the other side, are patches of moist and half-melted snow, and on all sides you hear the drip of falling moisture and the ripple of little streams of water which are running away to swell the creeks and rivers in ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... get up there on that plateau, I didn't find any man at all," I ventured faint-heartedly, but with a ripple of my risibles; the last ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... that lightly Ripple the silence deep! No; the swans that, circling nightly, Through ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... the harp to Sigurd, and he looked on the ancient man, As his hand sank into the strings, and a ripple over them ran, And he looked forth kind o'er the people, and all men on his glory gazed, And hearkened, hushed and happy, as the King his voice upraised; There he sang of the works of Odin, and the hails of the heavenly coast, ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... to be broadly rippled. (M. Siau on the "Action of Waves" "Edin. New Phil. Journ." volume 31 page 245.) One may, therefore, be allowed to suspect, from the appearance just mentioned in the New Red Sandstone, that at greater depths, the bed of the ocean is heaped up during gales into great ripple-like furrows and depressions, which are afterwards cut off by the currents during more tranquil weather, and again furrowed ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... Aristotle. Yet we will have to offer this fact in the interests of stirpiculture: the inconstant Philip and the termagant Olympias brought into the world Alexander; whereas the sons of Aristotle lived their day and died, without making a ripple ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... powerful current toward the open waters of Lake Erie. In this dilemma, his only resource was to paddle with his hands, and attempt by this tedious method to force his craft to the nearest shore. While he was thus awkwardly engaged, there came it ripple of laughter from close beside him, and he started up just in time to gaze squarely into the laughing face of an Indian girl, who instantly impressed him as the most graceful creature he had ever seen. She occupied, with a girl companion, a beautifully painted ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... trees and undergrowth along the river. They moved cautiously in this shelter for a rod or two, and then the three, without word from any one of them, stopped simultaneously. They heard in the water the unmistakable ripple made by a paddle, and then the sound of several more. They crept to the edge of the bank and crouched down among the bushes. Then ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... me; they are all alike to me, I never design to go through any of them; for I never see all of anything: neither do they who so largely promise to show it others. Of a hundred members and faces that everything has, I take one, onewhile to look it over only, another while to ripple up the skin, and sometimes to pinch it to the bones: I give a stab, not so wide but as deep as I can, and am for the most part tempted to take it in hand by some new light I discover in it. Did I know myself less, I might perhaps venture to handle something or other ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... love of Miss Emily. It was wheeled in front of her room window, from whence she could look out upon the wide expanse of the ocean. It was a gloriously bright, calm morning, and the water lay clear and still, with scarce a ripple, to the far distant pearly horizon. She seemed to be looking at it in a kind of calm ecstasy, and murmuring the ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... is music in the ripple Of thy wave, O purest sea; Here we sing the songs of Zion, ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... beach. Rose hardly knew her brother in his fisherman's garb. The time was short, and their hearts were too full for many words, as that little party stood together in the light of the crescent moon, the sea sounding with a low constant ripple, spread out in the grey hazy blue distance, and here and there the crests of the nearer waves swelling up ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was just stirring the leaves, and every now and then a sort of ripple of sunlight seemed to streak the sombre foliage with gold. On the terrace there was a wealth of sunshine, and the stones felt hot to the feet. Only under the chestnuts tiny flickering shadows seemed to dance in and ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... have been led to remove hundreds of police officials, capitalists, royalties, and others. They have been poisoned, shot, and dynamited, in the belief that their removal would benefit humanity. Yet nothing would seem to be quite so obvious as the fact that their removal has hardly caused a ripple in the swiftly moving current of evolution. Others, often more forceful and capable, have immediately stepped into their places, and the course ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... night is sweet: thy breath is in the air, I feel it on my face; thy tender eyes Look love upon me from yon starry skies! They bring to me, those glancing moonbeams fair, The shine and ripple of thy silken hair. And in the silent whispers and the sighs That from the throbbing heart of Nature rise, I hear thee, feel thee,—own ...
— Sonnets • Nizam-ud-din-Ahmad, (Nawab Nizamat Jung Bahadur)
... sublimity of Quebec. The fine mountain that forms the background to the city, the Island of St. Helens in front, and the junction of the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa—which run side by side, their respective boundaries only marked by a long ripple of white foam, and the darker blue tint of the former river—constitute the most remarkable ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... fixed with unusual firmness in the blue, and flashed back such a ripple of light into her eyes that she found herself thinking that to-night the stars were happy. Without knowing or caring more for Church practices than most people of her age, Katharine could not look into the sky ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... and stolen back to the balcony that opened upon the Canal Grande from the vast upper salon, impelled by her longing for freedom and light. The ripple of the water to the plash of passing gondolas took on the note of distance and soothed her like a lullaby, as the charming maid yielded herself to the golden daydream—the soft breezes lifting the bright ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... Berg knew well that all this geniality was like the ripple and sparkle that play above deep waters. Occasionally he found Miss Burton's eyes directed towards himself in a way that caused him deep anxiety, and he had an uneasy consciousness that she was reading his innermost thoughts. While he exerted ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... got credit for poorer appetites than we possessed. Uncle Eb took no chances and refused everything that had a look of mystery and a suggestion of peril, dropping a droll remark, betimes, that sent a ripple of ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... explode,' said Monkey in a whisper. But, of course, everybody 'heard' it; for the faintest whisper of thought sent a ripple through that sea of delicate colour. The Laugher bent behind the cupboard to hide her face, and the Gardener by the window stooped to examine his flower-pots. The Woman of the Haystack drew back a little ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... mouth asked, calmly enough, how he was to be protected against further demands. The young man explained very clearly. The president had managed thoroughly well: in a few days the recent transaction would be a ripple under water. But during those few ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... prelude, pours forth his voice at once, launches into the most daring modulations, pursues the freshest and most delicate melodies, cadences, pauses, and trills; now you heard the notes murmuring at the bottom of its throat, like the ripple of the brook as it loses itself among the pebbles; now you heard them rising and gradually swelling and filling the air, and lingering long-drawn in the skies. It was tender, glad, brilliant, pathetic; but his music was not ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... never return to the fair hills of Erin. But cheer up, Cuglas, there are mossy ways and forest paths and nestling bowers in fairyland. Lonely they are, I know, in your eyes now," said the little woman; "but maybe," she added, with a laugh as musical as the ripple on a streamlet when summer is in the air, "maybe you won't always think ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... occasionally in the street or at the Whitcomb House; and several times he had caught a glimpse of him passing through the reception room of the law office into Mr. Fitch's private room. On these occasions Dan was aware that Bassett's presence caused a ripple of interest to run through the office. The students in the library generally turned from their books to speak of Bassett in low tones; and Mr. Wright, coming in from a journey on one of these occasions and anxious to see his partner forthwith, ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... glad to see you," she went on slowly and gropingly, her face a ripple of smiles. "My English you will please excuse. It is not good. I am English like you," she gravely assured him. "My father he is Scotch. My mother she is dead. She is French, and English, and a little Indian, too. Her father was a ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... eyed; the aged pastor's wrinkled cheeks and furrowed brow and streaming silver beard; and the carved-ivory features of the governess, borrowing no color from the soft folds of her rich merino dress. As daylight ebbed, the ripple danced up to the ceiling and vanished, like the pricked bubble of a human hope; the mocking-bird hushed his vesper-hymn; and Edna closed the book and replaced ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... not ruffled by a ripple. A bridal party was following in the wake of their boat—and nuptial music was floating past ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... merrily. A voice, and no mere echo, thine, Of many tones, but manly ever. Thy rustic Biglow's rugged line A grateful world neglecteth never! It smote hypocrisy and cant With flail-like force; sleek bards that ripple Like shallow pools—who pose and pant, And vaguely smudge or softly stipple,— These have not brain or heart to sing As Biglow sang, our quaint Hosea, Whose "Sunthin in the Pastoral line," Full primed with picture and idea, Lives, with "The Courtin'," unforgot, And worth whole volumes of sham-Shen-stone. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 22, 1891 • Various
... by geology in the various strata and rocky layers piled upon the primitive granite of the globe, the bursting through of eruptions from the central fire, extruding and uplifting mountains, and the subsidence of the ocean from one ripple-marked sea-beach to another lower down. In those dim geologic epochs, where annals are written on Mica Slate, Clay Slate, and Silurian Systems, on Old Red Sandstones and New, on Primary and Secondary Rocks and Tertiary ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... saturated with, and so made pliant by, the will and commandment of Jesus Christ? If He is my treasure, then thoughts, affection, obedience will all turn to Him, and the current of my being, whatever may be the surface-ripple—ay, or the surface-storm—will be ever sliding surely, though it may be silently, towards Himself. Ah! brethren, if we would be honest with ourselves and look into this mirror, we should have cause to be ashamed, some of us, of our very profession of being Christians, and all of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... job," said Oliver Ripple, quickly, and brought forth his money. Hamilton Dart took it, and ...
— From Farm to Fortune - or Nat Nason's Strange Experience • Horatio Alger Jr.
... the true way to life and eternal happiness. It was 9.30 p.m. when we paddled back to our camp. We met as usual around the camp fire, and each one repeated a verse of Scripture; then we knelt in the shade of the dark bush, with the ripple of the water in our ears, and God's heaven lighted up by His silvery moon, nearly at its full, and offered up our confessions, and prayers, and praises to Almighty God before ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... street-noises made her! It was foolish, she knew, and so she told herself often, to vex herself with idle fancies. But sometimes there came back to her, with a vividness which for the moment was like reality, the memory of familiar sights and sounds. Sometimes it was the wind waving the trees, or the ripple of the brook over the stepping-stones; sometimes it was the bleating of the young lambs in the pastures far-away. She caught glimpses of familiar faces in the crowd, as she used to do in the home-sick days when she first came; and she could not ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... her beautiful, his eyes dwelt with pleasure on the noble lines of her relaxed figure. Better than beauty, he admitted the moment afterward, was the charm that shone for him in her wonderfully expressive face—a face over which the experiences of many lives seemed to ripple faintly in what was hardly more than the shadow of a smile. She had loved and suffered, he thought, with his gaze upon her, and from both love and suffering she had gained that fulness of nature which is the greatest good ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... throat, a peculiar ray of green light flashed out over the water. In answer, a green light flashed back, and presently, something low and black, like the body of a whale half submerged, stole towards the beach. Scarcely a ripple marked its progress, and the nose of it slid up on the sand. "Good Lord!" whispered Miles, grasping Ward by the ...
— The Heads of Apex • Francis Flagg
... calling voices of fabled nymphs and sirens, till, floating still higher, it breathed itself out to the night,—a night curiously heavy and sombre, with a blackness of sky too dense for any glimmer of stars to shine through. The hum of talk, the constant ripple of laughter, the rustle of women's silken garments, the clatter of plates and glasses in the dining-room, where a costly ball-supper awaited its devouring destiny,—the silvery tripping and slipping of light dancing feet on a polished floor—all these sounds, ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... the river Long ago, my Love and I, Where the willows droop and quiver 'Twixt the water and the sky. We were wrapped in fragrant shadow, 'Twas the quiet vesper time, And the bells across the meadows Mingled with the ripple's chime. With no thought of ill betiding, "Thus," we said, "life's years shall be For us twain a river gliding To a calm, ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... stretched flat, east and north and west to the horizon, the Cayuga warriors said farewell and turned again to their own lands. It was at noon of a bright day. The water lay close to the white beach, with hardly a ripple to mar the long black scallops of weed and drift which the last storm had left on the sand. The sky was fair ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... other hand, the author avails herself of all the agreeable traditions of English fiction: there are warm and well-lighted rooms, well-to-do people, regular meals, afternoon tea, plenty of bread-and-butter, and a gentle ripple of friendly, soft-voiced conversation. This may not be original or exciting, but, after a good deal of crude sensation through some thousand and odd pages, "ways of pleasantness and paths of peace" are refreshing to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... thing to work wid. He cudn't undhershtand her, an' bedad, many's the man that's caught be not undhershtandin' thim. There's rivers that's quiet on top bekase they're deep, an' more that's quiet bekase they're not deep enough to make a ripple, but phat's the differ if ye can't sound thim, an' whin a woman's quiet, begorra, it's not aisy to say if she's deep or shallow. But Nora was a deep wan, an' as good as iver drew a breath. She thought a dale av Paddy, only she'd be torn limb from limb afore she'd let him know it ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... out upon the river that wus sweepin' along under sun and moon, bearing on every wave and ripple the glory and ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... pictures. It did not occur to Stephen that he was an object of pity, but he felt that through his own folly and that of another, he had become a kind of scarecrow, a figure of fun: and because until now the world had laughed with instead of at him, he would rather have faced a shower of bullets than a ripple ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... foremost statesmen, the great Tory in January, the great Whig in September; but while, big with import, history traced the tale of such giant upheavals in the national life, in strange contrast comes the quiet ripple of contemporary gossip. ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... harshly across the ripple of the water, broke the spell and set every tongue free again. Aye, it was good ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... to the ripple clear, Look at the grass beyond! Lo ye the dainty band and dear Of maidens ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... of great strength. The ship, as I have said before, stopped moving when some hundred feet from it. Then her engines were rung on slow ahead, and immediately rung off again. The propeller made just about five turns, I should say. She began to move, stealing on, so to speak, without a ripple; coming alongside with the utmost gentleness. I went on looking her over, very much interested, but the man with me, the pilot, muttered under his breath: "Too much, too much." His exercised judgment had warned him of what I did not even suspect. But I believe ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... source of pleasure, solace, and recreation, then, is open to him who knows how to distinguish and appreciate the beautiful in Nature! He hears in every breeze and every ripple of water a voice which the uncultivated ear cannot hear; and he sees in every fleeting cloud and varied aspect of Nature some beauty which ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter
... down, our adventure was far from over, and gasolene might at any moment be a prime necessity. So we kept her going, with her beautiful sails filled out against the bluest sky you can dream of, and the ripple singing at her bow—the loveliest sight and sound in the world for a man who ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... of the detachment sent to approach the fire-lighted horse lot, coming from a different angle than the main body of the force. It was the old, old game of letting a dozen do the work of fifty. But before they had reached the rail fence about that enclosure, there was a ripple of ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... believes profoundly in silence—the sign of a perfect equilibrium. Silence is the absolute poise or balance of body, mind, and spirit. The man who preserves his selfhood ever calm and unshaken by the storms of existence—not a leaf, as it were, astir on the tree; not a ripple upon the surface of shining pool—his, in the mind of the unlettered sage, is the ideal attitude ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... produces an ever-widening ripple of reminiscences. Those which circle about the recollection of Thackeray in this country are very many, but generally unrecorded. They linger, and appear occasionally in allusions like those of Lester Wallack. But whenever they are told they pay homage to the humorist. They recall his ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... could be distinguished in the gloom, now crawling along some prostrate trunk, now half mounted upon the protruding knees of the cypresses, or swimming with slow and stealthy stroke through the black liquid. Huge water-snakes could be seen, causing a tiny ripple as they passed from tree to tree, or lying coiled upon the projecting buttocks. The swamp-owl hovered on silent wing, and large brown bats pursued their insect prey. Sometimes these came near, fluttering in our very faces, so that we could perceive the mephitic odour of ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... dressed men and women, drinking tea at little tables set under the trees and among the shrubbery. Christina merely glanced at the brave show of shifting colour, and passed more quickly onward, the murmur of conversation and the ripple of laughter pursuing her a little way, for the ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... a long weary sigh, and that painful dizziness passed off in some degree. All she wanted was air, she thought, if there had been any air to be got that sultry night. She rose from the sofa presently, and went out upon the balcony. Below her was the river; not a ripple upon the water, not a breath stirring the rushes on the banks. Between the balcony and the river there was a broad battlemented walk, and in the embrasures where cannon had once been there were great stone vases of geraniums ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... sound, however, but the ripple of the waves on the beach and the "hoot hoot" of an owl somewhere back in the woods on ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... would have brought a glow of delight to the face of those Hellenic masters of training who saw in the human body the most sacred temple of the human soul, and paid tribute to physical perfection. The flow and ripple of these strong, justly modeled sinews were like the play of steel under satin and their smoothness was as rhythmic and full of power as some young gladiator's, who might have stirred the appreciation of Phidias or Praxiteles. When at last he had burned his mental restlessness ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... the bridge rail, I quickly focused them upon it. Through the glasses it looked very like the top of a ship's galley funnel, though not quite so stout, and it was moving as though to cross our hawse, for with the help of the glasses I could see the little ripple of scintillating foam it ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... impossible to her, started valiantly on its familiar road, and tripped but little when the poor lady realized that neither John Henry nor Virginia was listening. She was so used to talking for the sake of the sound she made rather than the impression she produced that her silvery ripple had become almost as lacking in self-consciousness as ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... still, no draperies were stirring, no wind whistled, and they returned to their chairs, talking for a moment over the mysterious sound, then relapsing into their former quiet. Hawthorne meantime sat dreaming, apparently not noticing the light ripple in the quiet of the evening; but not long after—when my friend read the Mosses from an Old Manse, she found that the incident had made an impression upon him and that he interpreted the sound as a ghostly happening. She told me another story which she said she had ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... smoothed the sand down round it, and capital fun they had till the tide began to turn. And then Tom heard all the other babies coming, laughing and singing and shouting and romping; and the noise they made was just like the noise of the ripple. So he knew that he had been hearing and seeing the water babies all along; only he did not know them, because his eyes and ears were ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... imitation of European musical instruments. Just an hour before I had emerged from a dense forest, abundantly adorned with exquisite foliage, and where majestic trees, flourishing in gorgeous profusion, afforded a gratifying shelter from the scorching sun. Not a sound was heard but the gentle ripple of a limpid stream, breaking over the boulders on its course towards the ravine below. But it was hardly the moment to ponder on the poetic scene, for fatigue and hunger had almost overcome sentimentality, and I got ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... when they founded it, with the hardships and the sorrow, and the sickness and the pain, and the joy that had hallowed it as no other spot in all the universe—the place where their first love had nursed them in its tenderness, where they had sat hand in hand in the gathering dusk, drinking the ripple of the water and the whirr of the wild duck's wing; where she had gone down into the valley of the shadow and their little children had come into their arms. And it was gone. He had sold it. Without so much as by-your-leave from the partner of his labours and his life ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... refused to let his voice again be heard. Disraeli did neither—he continued to speak on various occasions, and expressed himself so courteously, so modestly, so becomingly, that the members listened in awe and curiosity. Then soon it was discovered that beneath the mild and gentle ripple of his speech ran a deep current of earnest truth, tinged with subtle wit. When he spoke, the loungers came in from the cloakrooms, fearing to miss ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... than I knew for, and it was with unbelieving wonder, and delight, that I came suddenly upon the shore of the sea. A little while, and its gentle billows were flowing beneath the hoofs of my beast, but the hearing of the ripple was not enough communion, and the seeing of the blue Propontis was not to know and possess it—I must needs plunge into its depth and quench my longing love in the palpable waves; and so when old Moostapha (defender against demons) ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... every village within three or four miles of the metropolis, may be remarked a tide of young men wending diurnal way to and from their respective desks and counters in the city, preceded by a ripple of errand-boys, and light porters, and followed by an ebb of plethoric elderly gentlemen in drab gaiters. Now these individuals compose—for the most part—that particular, yet indefinite class of people, who call themselves "gentlemen," and are called by everybody else "persons." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various
... was no sound from the younger son, now heir to his father's title and estates. For the first time Selwyn caught the ripple of the river's current eddying about the steps at the bottom. From the great bridges spanning the river there was the distant ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... breeze," he exclaimed, as a light blue ripple was seen advancing over the mirror-like surface of the ocean. The sails were trimmed, and the boat once more glided on at the rate of three or four knots an hour. Even should the breeze continue, however it would take them many days to ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... index finger in the plane of human advancement and limit its progress to the strides made in civilization within the last forty years, it will be readily acknowledged that the woman movement during these years has made no insignificant ripple in the tide of human achievements. There is scarcely a profession which has not felt the impress of her presence; scarcely a moral reform, from the antislavery cause of the past to the great temperance movement of to-day, which has not received her ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... of Mrs. Gilson lost forever. It was simultaneously torpedoed, mined, scuttled, and bombed. It went to the bottom without a ripple, while Mrs. Gilson snapped, "Aunt ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... green and purple under the sunshine; and, thinking of them thus, picture to yourself a new rising of the land, a new withdrawal of the waters, the waves falling and ever falling, till all the hills come forth again, and the salt tides roll and ripple away from the valleys, leaving their faces for the winds to dry; let this go on till the land once more takes its familiar form, and you will easily call up the visible image of ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... the bold Sir Bedivere: "I heard the water lapping on the crag, And the long ripple washing ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... not alert at. The swing and lure of the music, the swift movement, the fluttering of airy draperies as slim sister nymphs flew past her, set her pulses beating with sweet young joy. A brief, uncontrollable ripple of laughter broke from her before she had circled the ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... few seconds of time Sara contrived to work herself up into a condition bordering upon panic. And then a very low contralto voice, indescribably sweet, and with an audacious ripple of laughter running through it, swept all her scruples into the rubbish heap. There was no doubting the ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... forward. There was no break in it now, but one could see a kind of uneasy ripple, almost as though it held its mob breath tensely and waited to see ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... her came back to him. Where would those eyes be, conspirators with the lids above them and the merry fluctuations of the brows; where would those lips be, from which the laughter never quite vanished, even as the ripple of the ocean's edge tries how small it can get but never dies outright; where the great coils of black hair that would not go inside any ordinary oilskin swimming-cap; where the incorrigible impertinence and flippancy be we never liked to miss a word ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... towed across the lake, then taken out and carried along the Trail of the Seven Cedars to the ravine. All the family went along to see the fun and take part in the last rites. But at the entrance to the ravine there was a ripple of astonishment. The cedar tree which had stood half way up the side, the largest and oldest of the seven, had been uprooted by the storm and lay at length in the bottom of the ravine. Where it had been there was a great gaping hole ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... was the summer air that the one cloud in the eastern quarter of the heaven was the smoke cloud left by a passing steamer three miles distant and more on the invisible sea. When the voices of the pleasure party were still, not a sound rose, far or near, but the faint ripple at the bows, as the men, with slow, deliberate strokes of their long poles, pressed the boat forward softly over the shallow water. The world and the world's turmoil seemed left behind forever on the land; the silence was the silence of enchantment—the delicious interflow of the soft ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... Miss Berber. A small, slim woman, obviously light-boned and supple, she seemed to move forward like a ripple. Her naturally pale face, with its curved scarlet lips and slanting eyes, was set on a long neck, and round her small head a heavy swathe of black hair was held by huge scarlet pins. Her dress, cut in a ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... find such calm weather in Ross Sea; in the two months we have been here we have hardly had a strong breeze. Thus, when I was relieved at 2 a.m. on the 25th, I wrote in my diary '. . . It is calm, not a ripple on the water. The three men forming the watch walk up and down the deck. Now and then one hears the penguins' cry, kva, kva, but except these there is no other sound than the tuff, tuff of the motor, 220 times a minute. Ah, that motor! it goes unweariedly. It has now gone for 1,000 hours without ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... water's edge. The sun was just sinking behind the green hills in the west, reflecting the shadows of the beautiful gold and purple clouds upon the surface of the silver lake. A gentle breeze was blowing down the valley, and the little waves broke with a musical ripple upon the pebbly sands. It was a lovely hour and a lovely scene, and Charles felt the sweet influence of both. He looked out upon the lake, and wished he was ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... ma's notable ways. This incarnation of sweet selfishness was hateful in my eyes, and I have often queried, in the twenty years which have passed since I saw her, what sort of woman she made. As a girl she was vexatious, though no ripple of annoyance crossed the white brow, no frown obscured it, and no flurry of impatience ever tossed the yellow curls. She had no aspirations which candy and a rocking-chair could not gratify. It is not so with girls of a larger mind and greater ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... in nature, a thing is echoed and repeated throughout its parts. Each leaf on a tree is itself a tree in miniature, each blossom a modified leaf; every vertebrate animal is a complicated system of spines; the ripple is the wave of a larger wave, and that larger wave is a part of the ebbing and flowing tide. In music this law is illustrated in the return of the tonic to itself in the octave, and its partial return in the dominant; also in a more extended sense in the repetition of a ...
— The Beautiful Necessity • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... Our crew, as you may suppose, raised a loud cheer at the sight, and redoubled their efforts to be ready, should a breeze spring up, for again getting within range of our opponent. Scarcely had the hands reached the deck, when we saw a ripple playing over the ocean; the sails were trimmed, and once more, with eager hearts, we steered towards the French ship. We did not suppose that she would hold out long, but after the pluck her captain had exhibited, we fully expected to be at it ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... There they laid him, and the stream of life, checked for a moment, flashed on again with turbulent and sparkling waves. Ah me!—yet why should we sigh at the merciful provision, which causes that the very best of us, when we die, leaves but a slight and transient ripple on the waters, which a moment after flow ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... rock's St. Michael's. The HUER, as we call him, for he gives the hue and cry from the hill-top lookout when the fish are coming, he stands on Michael's Crag just below there, as I stand myself so often, and when he sights the shoals by the ripple on the water, he motions to the boats which way to go for the pilchards. Then the rowers in the lurkers, as we call our seine-boats, surround the shoal with a tuck- net, or drag the seine into Mullion Cove, all alive with a mass of shimmering silver. The jowsters come down with their carts on to ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... river here was deeply impressed with ripple marks, and also dipped N.N.E. or northward. It consisted of a yellow sandstone in thin strata, covered in some parts with beds of waterworn pebbles. These consisted chiefly of quartz, felspar, and a silicious petrifaction of woody appearance. We proceeded along my horse track ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... the swallows are asleep; The bats are flitting fast in the gray air; The slow soft toads out of damp corners creep, And evening's breath, wandering here and there Over the quivering surface of the stream, 5 Wakes not one ripple from ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... very curious to see a priest. A synagogue in the town he could not find. He was sorry. He had a great desire to lay eyes on a synagogue—temple of that ancient faith which had flowed on its deep way across the centuries without a ripple of disturbance from the Christ. He had made up his mind that when he began to preach he would often preach especially to the Jews: the time perhaps had come when the Father, their Father, would reveal his Son to them also. Thus he ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... lad, "this floe is of snow-ice, probably pierced by dozens of hidden cavities. I fancied the other night that I heard a ripple of water beneath me, as I have heard it in winter when seeking the hidden streams beneath the glaciers, but I did not hear it again, and may ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... with his hastily drawn handkerchief. Then the eccentric Mr. Clark would laugh nervously, and pouncing on some subject so vividly unlike the one just preceding it as to daze the listener, he would ripple ahead with a tide of eloquence that positively overflowed and washed away all remembrance of ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... move from its orbit, but a light ripple of surprise appeared to cross its luminous convexity. The ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the whole hill country of the south, a hundred lochs, a myriad streams, and a forest of hill-tops. There on the very crest lies the old man, in the heart of his own land, at the fountain-head of his many waters. If you listen you will hear a hushed noise as of the swaying in trees or a ripple on the sea. It is the sound of the rising of burns, which, innumerable and unnumbered, flow thence to the silent ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... wilderness, from Mooween the bear down through a score of gradations, to Kagax the bloodthirsty little weasel, but will sniff under every old log in the hope of finding a wood mouse; and if he takes a swim, as he is fond of doing, not a big trout in the river but leaves his eddy to rush at the tiny ripple holding bravely across the current. So, with all these enemies waiting to catch him the moment he ventures out, Tookhees must needs make one or two false starts in order to find out where ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... Vernon opposite; Phyllis on her mother's knee; the others in the car on ahead—including a tourist of note—outriders before and behind, clearing a pathway through the press. Vernon, jigging on his feet, was lost in wonder. Roy, like Aruna, said little. Only Thea kept up a low ripple of talk with ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... footstep coming; O sister, look.'— 'The ripple flashes, the white foam dashes; No one cometh ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... alternate names of Festus and Frank, and when she mentioned Lance's disaster as his coup d'etat. And here was the last of these pleasant afternoons, full of still sweet sounds, midsummer hum above, the soft ripple of the water close by, the cawing of the rooks in the Close— all such peace, that her heart quailed as she looked forward to the din of the High Street at Bexley, and she strangled a sigh half way ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... bird's-eye view of charming Mentone; the towns and little villages on the distant shore as far as Bordighera; dimpling in the glowing sunshine, and before us, the long stretch of inimitable blue sea, with just a feathery ripple on the golden sandy shores below, winding in and out in a series of tiny bays and creeks; while beyond us, like a realized dream of Paradise, lay the beautiful plague-spot of the Riviera—the town of Monte Carlo, nested amid ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... the fruit of it a daily good, and not a bitterness; if she could begin by holding herself undisturbed, though obliged to wear a collar that stood up behind and turned over in front with those lappet corners she had always thought so ugly,—yes, even though the waterfall should leak out and ripple over stubbornly,—though these things must go on for twenty-four hours at least, and these twenty-four hours be spent unwillingly in a dull country tavern, where the windows looked out from one side into a village street, and from the other into stable and clothes yards! There would be something ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... docks are all deserted and the derricks all are still, And the wind across the anchorage comes singing sad and shrill, And the lighted lanthorns gleaming where the ships at anchor ride Cast their quivering long reflections down the ripple of the tide, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... condition laid down, to which all women must conform—they must be beautiful, no getting out of that. They simply had to have starry eyes and golden hair, or else black as a raven's wing; they had to have pale, white, and haughty brow, and a laugh like a ripple of magic. Then they were all right and armored knights would die for them quick ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... bureaucracy which relieved the titular shoguns from all responsibility and allowed them to live in profitless voluptuousness. So that one died and another reigned in his stead without causing more than a ripple upon the surface ...
— Japan • David Murray
... laughed a delighted laugh so infectious that before Celestina or Willie were conscious of it they had joined in its mellow ripple. After ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... ten or fifteen feet deep, with a smooth, circular wall of rock on one side worn by the water through long ages; or else into a deep, oblong pocket, into which and out of which the water glides without a ripple. ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... with triumph, when suddenly a ripple of laughter ran along the front tier of the gallery, and a hundred heads were turned upward to ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... bitterness came on Stane's face, for the song brought to him memories of other times and scenes which he had done his best to forget. He started to his feet and stepping outside the tent began to walk restlessly to and fro. The music ended and he stood still to listen. Now no sound except the ripple of the river broke the quiet, and after a moment he nodded to himself. "Now, ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... bridge that crossed the brook, she stopped a moment to watch the water ripple over the bright pebbles, the ferns bend down to drink, and the funny tadpoles frolic in quieter nooks, where the sun shone, and the dragon-flies swung among the rushes. When Nelly turned to go on, her blue eyes opened wide, and the handle of the ambulance dropped with a noise that caused a ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... stood by the margin of the wood, listening and looking. The soft murmur of the forest and the ripple of the current, as it twisted around some gnarled root along shore or struck against the dipping branch of a tree overhanging the water, were the sounds which first fell on their ears. But a moment later the wailing scream of a panther came from the depths of the wilderness, answered ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... we are acquainted—the Lower Laurentian [Footnote: The age of granite is uncertain.—Lyell'a Student's Geology, p. 548.]—were formed under water, but had begun to be elevated before the next series, the Upper Laurentian, were deposited. Ripple marks are found in the Cambrian group [Footnote: Ibid. p. 470], indicating that the parts where they occur formed a sea-beach, and, consequently, that dry land was in ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... white of the roadway. The moon was shining brightly, so that it was as light as day; and I could see her face distinctly as she looked up into mine every now and then to answer some remark. Her honest, lustrous, grey eyes sparkled with fun, while a little ripple of silvery laughter came occasionally from the rosebud-parted coral lips! We chatted merrily, exchanging notes touching ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... in November and December recorded the political ripple of the contest, but the fight was a dead affair, and nobody enthused. The play came to a tame ending when Beardslee nominated Stanton for the Speaker's job and got the Chairmanship of the important Committee on Ways and Means for being good, or taking ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... small, open place was selected, where the long moss made a beautiful carpet, and the tall trees on every side entwined their arms as lovingly together as if they, too, were about to take each other 'for better for worse,' while the ripple of a brook hidden in the woods lent a pleasant melody ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... mind, it was like a ripple, up and down, down and up, up and down. Bidding the landlord be very kind to her, and keep her a prisoner without letting her feel it, the friends went out: and lo! as they stepped into the street they saw two processions ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... did neither—he continued to speak on various occasions, and expressed himself so courteously, so modestly, so becomingly, that the members listened in awe and curiosity. Then soon it was discovered that beneath the mild and gentle ripple of his speech ran a deep current of earnest truth, tinged with subtle wit. When he spoke, the loungers came in from the cloakrooms, fearing to miss something ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... miles in length. They end at the mountain Roganora. Two rocks, twelve or fifteen feet above the water at the time we were there, may in flood be covered and dangerous. Our chief danger was the wind, a very slight ripple being sufficient to ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... in a line were making a long ripple on the swell. They were the heads of three sea elephants moving like one. Then the line became the segment of a circle bending in shore. But the swimmers were not going to land; they kept parallel to ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... grew conscious of a faint, gradual revealing of the mountain-tops, which for a time had been black, jagged pieces cut out from the spangled fabric of a starry sky. A ripple of pearly light wavered over them, like the reflection of the unseen river mirrored for ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... nerves, for to me the night remained as voiceless as a subterranean cavern. I became intensely irritated with him; within my mind I cried out against this infatuated pantomime of his. And then, of a sudden, there was a sound—the dying rumor of a ripple, somewhere in the outside darkness, as though an object had been let into ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... pacing it, round and round, like a caged beast, when the stars grew faint and the silver ripple of the dayspring broke over the sea. For two hours and more he had been thinking hard, and he rested his elbows on the balcony and paused for a minute or two to watch the red ball of the sun as it heaved above the waters. To the north, beyond the roofs ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... relic in the church itself is the font, which appears to belong to the tenth century; three typical Norman pillars support the northern arcade of the roof, and there is a very fine Norman door at the south porch. The Vicar loved to interpret the zigzag moulding as the "ripple of the lake of Gennesareth, the spirit breathing upon the waters of baptism"; he was doubtless more correct in reading a symbolic meaning into the carved vine that creeps from the chancel down the church. On the furze and bracken-clad slope above the cliffs, ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... here—quiet, order, beauty, power, life. It affected one to enter it unprepared in much the same way, only with a greater variety and richness of emotion, as to push through dense brush and suddenly behold a mountain lake upon whose bosom there is not so much as a ripple, and in whose silver mirror surrounding forests, flying water-fowl and the bright disk of ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... in the ripple of the flowing water the weeping of Cucuduri, and throws three small fish to him. If he should not do this, he would catch nothing. Cucuduri would throw stones into the water and drive the fish off, or he would even throw stones at ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... placed on arrival. The night was beautiful and starlight, and, our repast over, the awning was removed, and we sat out enjoying our cigars in the cool night breeze blowing in fresh and strong from the sea. The quiet ripple of the waves as they broke on the sandy beach had a soothing effect very favourable to reflection (and baccy), and the lights of the little fishing village twinkling at the foot of the black and rugged peak of Santubong—which rose to a height of 1,500 feet above our heads, and behind ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... upon the river that wus sweepin' along under sun and moon, bearing on every wave and ripple the glory ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... still there, the trees being quite motionless, and the only sounds heard being the hum of some insect and the ripple of the water a dozen yards away. High above us through the thin tracery of an overhanging tree the sky looked of a brilliant blue, and away to left ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... awful speech could be felt. The Prime Minister gasped, flushed to the eyes, and half rose to dismiss Dawson from the room. He himself thought for a moment that all was lost, when through the tense atmosphere ran a ripple of gay laughter. It was the First Lord who, with instant decision, had taken the only means to save his new friend Dawson. He has a delightfully infectious silvery laugh, and the effect was electrical. The War Minister opened his great mouth, and bellowed Ha! Ha! Ha! The Minister ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... across the glassy surface of the bay, propelled by six stalwart oarsmen each, a little jet of phosphorescent water spouting up under their sharp stems, a long ripple spreading out and undulating away on either side of them, and half a dozen tiny whirlpools of liquid fire swirling in the wake of each as their crews strained at the stout ash oars until they bent again. The night had grown black as pitch, not a solitary ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... silver in the gold. Two different metals and where they're not well fused. That sword blade, too. Just the misalignment of molecules in the surface of the steel makes it look wavy, and ripple when the light changes or you move. Different even in two parts of the same material. That's why you can't get the stereo cube to reproduce color-feel exactly." Breathing heavily, Jason had to let ...
— Zero Data • Charles Saphro
... enough? Holy God!" she cried with increasing vexation. "You are in love—in love, I say!" A ripple of laughter bubbled over the two rosy petals of Chiquita's lips, revealing the pearly whiteness of her teeth. Now that she realized the real cause of the Senora's anger, it was impossible to become angry herself. The Senora, however, was by no means abashed ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... it," said Bonner. Then callers put a stop to the chat. Then the colonel himself came home to his cosey quarters, and silence had settled down over the beautiful plain. The lights were dimmed in the barracks; the sentries paced their measured rounds; from the verandas of the hotel came the ripple of murmured words and soft laughter, and a tinkle of banjo and guitar. At the gate the colonel exchanged good-night greetings with a happy-faced, motherly looking woman whom Bonner had noticed overwhelmed with pride and emotion during the ceremonies in the morning. He did not at first recognize ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... turned to walk away, just as the babbling ripple of laughter began to flow downstairs, and a whole mass of little girls intertwined together was descending. 'I always hop,' said a voice new to him, 'except on the great staircase, and mother doesn't like it there. But this is such a ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lips to cry, "Now, Dave, pull!" but he could not speak, only watch the thin, keen, yellow man, whose eye glittered beneath his rough hairy cap as he slowly tightened the line, drawing it up till it was above the surface of the water, which began to ripple and play about it in long waves running off in different directions. There was so great a length that it was impossible to draw it tight without moving the spreader poles; and as the lads both thought of what the consequences would be if ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... to see you," she went on slowly and gropingly, her face a ripple of smiles. "My English you will please excuse. It is not good. I am English like you," she gravely assured him. "My father he is Scotch. My mother she is dead. She is French, and English, and a little Indian, too. Her father was a great man in the Hudson Bay Company. Brrr! It is cold." She slipped ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... same voice with which the exercises on Ah have been sung, and to have them all of the same size, easily and loosely pronounced. Never permit the pronunciation to be too broad for the voice. The pronunciation should never be mouthed, but should flow into the stream of the breath without causing a ripple. This is ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... been different if they could have got hold of you in the beginning. But now," said Pinney, forgetting what he had already said of it, "the whole thing has blown over, so that that letter of yours from Rimouski hardly started a ripple in Boston; I can't say how it was in Hatboro'. No, sir, I don't believe that if you went back now, and your friends stood by you as they ought to,—I don't believe you'd get more than a mere nominal sentence, if you ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... plashing of night birds and reptiles. Then the train was halted. Jones left Nasmyd in command and plunged into a thick skirt of bushes. Now Barney, hot and dirty from the march, had shot ahead when he heard the ripple of the water. He had taken off his shoes to bathe his blistered and swollen feet, and sat quite still and restful under the leafy sprays of an odorous bush that even in the dark he knew to ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... length of figure on the sloping ground near by, and flung aside his cap; thus revealing more clearly the rugged contour of his head, and the black hair whose obstinate ripple no amount of brushing could subdue. With leisurely deliberation he filled his pipe, and surrendered himself to the enchantment of the hour, before it slipped from him into the region of accomplished things. And it is this very evanescence, this rainbow quality of our hill-top ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... dispel. And at he same time he looked at her, slim, tall, and elegant, daintily clothed from her shapely shoes to her sailor hat, her brown hair, parted in the middle, escaping a little from its confinement to ripple about her forehead, and show more clearly the delicacy of her complexion. Trent was an ignorant man on many subjects, on others his taste seemed almost intuitively correct. He knew that this girl belonged to a class from which his descent and education had left him far apart, a class of which ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... but with tears that we wring his hand and part from him on the lake shore" as "The Pathfinder." Glowing and brave proved his Mabel, as "the bubble of a boat floated on the very crest of a foaming breaker,"—yet not for him. But the ripple of the lake's waves and rustling of forest leaves are as unforgettable as the low, sweet tones of "Dew-of-June." Of "The Pathfinder" and Cooper Balzac wrote: "Its interest is tremendous. He surely owed us this masterpiece after the last two or three ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... call a vivacious man," said Mangles, looking dismally across the room. "There was a sort of ripple on his serene calm ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... battlement,[11] Which round about the wave inthralls: A double dungeon wall and wave Have made—and like a living grave. Below the surface of the lake[12] The dark vault lies wherein we lay: We heard it ripple night and day; Sounding o'er our heads it knocked; And I have felt the winter's spray Wash through the bars when winds were high 120 And wanton in the happy sky; And then the very rock hath rocked, And I have felt it shake, unshocked,[13] Because I ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... streamers flying, and the music of men's voices cheering her on her career. Happy and prosperous be her course! We think not of winter's cold in the fervent summer time, and wreck and ruin seem impossible on the smooth surface of the laughing sea; yet cold and winter come, and the smiling, sweet-tempered ripple can awaken from slumber, and battle and storm with the heavens. Never had bark left haven with finer promises of success. We will follow her from the port, and keep watchfully in the good ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... sweet and clear from some tea-garden near, A ripple of laughter steals out to your ear; Anon the wind brings from a samisen's strings The pathos that's born of a smile and ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... on the bench permitted the slightest ripple of anxiety to disconcert his steadfastness of gaze just then pandemonium was ripe for breaking in his courtroom. But the judge looked down with imperturbable calm as though this were the accustomed procedure of his court, and when a margin of pause had intervened to give his words greater effect ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... wave of her jewelled right hand she performed the ceremony of introduction between the three callers and Mrs. Frump—the fat young lady—who also carefully raised herself about two inches from her chair, and lowered herself again, without disarranging a ripple. ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... its streets, and distributed elephants among the senators, and laid Etruria out in vineyards, and contemplated in leisure moments the suppression of Christianity as a subordinate detail of administration, a mere ripple on the broad ocean of his policy—at this period Bahram the First, King of Persia, naturally became disquieted ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... her resistance, Flung back her penny, kicked their fruit Along whichever road they took, 440 Not leaving root or stone or shoot; Some writhed into the ground, Some dived into the brook With ring and ripple, Some scudded on the gale without a sound, Some vanished ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... I dreamed of you, I assure you I did, and now to find you in the morning, oh, so changed!' She clasped her little hands and inclined her head, while the sweet voice sank into a cadence of melancholy which seemed so genuine that the mocking ripple of a laugh immediately following was almost a shock to me. Where had this creature of the dull English countryside learnt all such frou-frou ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... pages to describe the fury of the storm, which Mr. Cruikshank has represented in one. First, he has to prepare you with the something inexpressibly melancholy in sailing on a dark night upon the Thames: "the ripple of the water," "the darkling current," "the indistinctively seen craft," "the solemn shadows" and other phenomena visible on rivers at night are detailed (with not unskilful rhetoric) in order to bring the reader into a proper frame of mind for the deeper gloom and horror which is to ensue. ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... covered the spot again and again in our circling machines, we were joined by two more pilots, and finally by a fast clipper steam yacht. The surface of the water was literally covered with oil, breaking up the ripple of the waves, and smoothing a huge area into gleaming bronze. Here and there floated a cork belt, odd bunches of cotton waste, a strip of carpet, and a wooden three-legged stool. These fragments alone remained to testify to ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... these gray and moss-grown walls, This ivied porch, and trelliced vine, The lattice with its narrow pane, A relic of the olden time; The willow with its waving leaves, Through which the low winds murmuring glide, The gurgling ripple of the stream That whispers softly at ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... room. Himself is his dungeon. If he feels it not now, he will yet feel it one day—feel it as a living soul would feel being prisoned in a dead body, wrapped in sevenfold cerements, and buried in a stone-ribbed vault within the last ripple of the sound of the chanting people in the church above. His life is not in knowing that he lives, but in loving all forms of life. He is made for the All, for God, who is the All, is his life. And the essential joy of his life lies ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... emerged from a dense forest, abundantly adorned with exquisite foliage, and where majestic trees, flourishing in gorgeous profusion, afforded a gratifying shelter from the scorching sun. Not a sound was heard but the gentle ripple of a limpid stream, breaking over the boulders on its course towards the ravine below. But it was hardly the moment to ponder on the poetic scene, for fatigue and hunger had almost overcome sentimentality, and I got as quickly ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... a yard of her. She stirred the fire, so that a ripple of light broke from the disturbed coal: the glare, however, as she sat, only threw her face into deeper shadow: ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... like a sigh from the darkening clouds. Rand looked out over field and forest to the massed horizon, then shook the reins, and Selim picked his way down the ridge to a woodland bottom through which flowed a stream. Rand heard the ripple of the water. A jutting boulder, crowned by a mountain ash, hid the road before him; he turned it and saw the stream, some yards away, flowing over mossed rocks and beneath a dark fringe of laurel. He saw more than the stream, for a horseman had paused upon the little rocky ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... Fourth goes on watch, and we lie listlessly under our awning, praying for a breeze. On the face of the blazing vault there is not a single cloud, on the face of the waters not a ripple. The sea is a vast pond of paraffin. The hot gases from the funnel rise vertically, and the sun quivers behind them. The flaps of the windsail hang dead, the sides of the canvas tube have fallen in like the neck of a skinny old man. Slowly the sun mounts over our heads and the air grows hotter and ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... of the river seemed to cause a correspondent stir in his uneasy reflections. He would have laid them asleep if he could, but they were in movement, like the stream, and all tending one way with a strong current. As the ripple under the moon broke unexpectedly now and then, and palely flashed in a new shape and with a new sound, so parts of his thoughts started, unbidden, from the rest, and revealed their wickedness. 'Out of the question ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... moment. The ripple of amusement was gone; the iron, so near the surface, cropped through. "I can't answer that," he said. "I do not know. A man is not always able to control a first impulse, and before that pine tree fell there ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... pulpit, half-fearfully sitting down upon the minister's chair, or standing on tip-toe to peep over the sacred desk at the busy group below. Young girls moved silently about "helping." Over their pale lips not a ripple of laughter broke. The fire of youth seemed to have died out of their sad eyes, quenched for a time ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... Notes" Wakeman appears as Captain Hurricane Jones, probably a step in the evolution of the later name of Stormfield. The best feature of the series (there were four papers in all) is a story of a rescue in mid-ocean; but surely the brightest ripple of humor is the reference to ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... to use of light ground. Brown lustrous paint, fine surface to clay. Decoration naturalistic, flowers, cuttle-fish, shells, spirals, ripple patterns, white and orange dots and bands occasionally super-imposed on dark glaze (Figs. 7, 10, ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various
... basin, with a pale blue-green light floating in the centre like a night-light. Round that basin the man on the floor wriggled himself three times. How he did it I do not know. I could see the muscles ripple along his spine and fall smooth again; but I could not see any other motion. The head seemed the only thing alive about him, except that slow curl and uncurl of the laboring back-muscles, Janoo from the bed was ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... up to the pitch of his nerves, for to me the night remained as voiceless as a subterranean cavern. I became intensely irritated with him; within my mind I cried out against this infatuated pantomime of his. And then, of a sudden, there was a sound—the dying rumour of a ripple, somewhere in the outside darkness, as though an object had been let into ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... which had been placed in the boat, had set down the lighted lanthorn, jumped into the boat again and vanished in the darkness. And in the silence, broken only by the drip of water from the retreating oars, and by the scarcely-noticed ripple of the waves, Audrey voiced exactly ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... vain attempts to trace the old lady. It had never made much difference to anyone before where Miss Ann had gone. For many years she had been leaving one relation's home and arriving at another's, and the comings and goings of Cousin Ann had created but a small ripple in family affairs. She had never deigned to say where next she intended to visit, so why now should the cousins be so disturbed ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... really you at last," she cried again, and there was a tremor, the surface ripple of a sob in that clear voice. She fetched a deep sigh: "And I thought I'd lost you forever. Wait a moment. I'll ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... the hill toward the cliffs on her left hand, she descended till she reached a spot from which she could look down on the pebbly beach lying some three hundred feet below her, and on the soft shining ripple of the quiet waters as they moved themselves with a pleasant sound on the long strand which lay stretched in a line from the spot beneath her out to the point of the island. The evening was warm, and almost transparent in its clearness, and very quiet. There was no sound even of a breeze. When ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... the innumerable aloe-plants of colossal proportions, give the scene a truly African character. Villefranche reflects herself and her palms upon the surface of the most mirror-like of bays, for even in the stormiest weather no ripple stirs its waters—waters so deep that the largest ships of war can anchor in them close to the shore. The American frigates cruising in the Mediterranean usually make Villefranche their winter resort, and the stately presences of the Richmond, Plymouth, Shenandoah and Juniata ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... to kiss the still boisterous wind—the sunlight broke in a wide smile of springtide glory over the world! With the burden of my agony upon me—with the utter exhaustion of my overwrought nerves, I beheld all things as in a feverish dream—the laughing light, the azure ripple of waters—the receding line of my native shores—everything was blurred, indistinct, and unreal to me, though my soul, Argus-eyed, incessantly peered down, down into those darksome depths where SHE lay, silent forever. ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... she said. "I was only thinking that one of those low-necked English bodices would have made it perfect." Not only her mouth and eyes, but her whole body seemed to ripple with suppressed laughter as she left ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... a ripple broke upon the shore. The old stars of the old East were all out, each in its accustomed place; and there was summer everywhere—on land, on ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... began to decrease. It was as if some noble orator had begun to speak in the midst of a tumultuous assembly. Those nearest him catch his utterances first, and become quiet; the wave of silence spreads like a great ripple in the water; until at last the whole audience is as hushed as death. So something—some extraordinary thing—had arrested the battle; down, down, dropped the tumult; and at last there were only a few scattering shots to be heard, here ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... Cattleland. She had already met most of them at the launching of the machine from the flat car, and had directed their perspiring energies as they labored to follow her orders. Now she nodded a recognition with a little ripple of ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... Rabelaisian before Rabelais. But there is a freedom and hilarity in much of his writing that gives it a singular attraction. A breath of cheerfulness runs along the slender stream of his verse, under which it seems to ripple and crinkle, catching and casting back the sunshine like a stream blown on ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... object of their own in view, the five wise virgins of Miss Ladd's first class had waited an hour, in wakeful anticipation of the falling asleep of the stranger—and it had ended in this way! A ripple of laughter ran round the room. The new girl, mortified and offended, entered ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... band of successors, suggests an unpreparedness for the discovery when it came. Thus Calisto and Melibaea (1530), an imitation of a Spanish comedy of the same name, though it contained a definitely evolved plot, sent barely a ripple over the surface of succeeding authorship. It represents the steadfastness of the maiden Melibaea against the entreaties of her lover Calisto and the much more crafty, indeed almost successful, wiles of the procuress, ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... obstacle to the ascent of a good boat. In very high water warping might be required. Six miles below these rapids are what are known as 'Rink Rapids,' This is simply a barrier of rocks, which extends from the westerly side of the river about half way across. Over this barrier there is a ripple which would offer no great obstacle to the descent of a good canoe. On the easterly sides there is no ripple, and the current is smooth and the water apparently deep. I tried with a 6 foot paddle, but could ...
— Klondyke Nuggets - A Brief Description of the Great Gold Regions in the Northwest • Joseph Ladue
... water hissed and ran over the baked earth; where had been dry channels, rents and scars, full of dust, were now singing torrents and broad pools fetlock deep. Prosper let his good beast go his own gait, which was a sober trot, and ever and again as he heard the ripple of running water and the swirl and suck of the eddies in it, he judged that he must soon or late touch the Wan river, whereon stood the Abbey and his bed. What to do with the girl when he got there? That puzzled him. "A well-ordered abbey," he thought, "has no place for a girl, and one ill-ordered ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... uplands of hope once more. Now, as twenty years ago, this feeling covered the whole world, was most pronounced in the newer and more progressive lands, and was voiced by Captain Tolliver, the grizzled swashbuckler of the land market. In it I recognized the ripple on the sands heralding the approach of another wave of speculation, which must roll shoreward in splendor and might, and, like its predecessors, must ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... creation her acquaintance with us had been. She would gaze through the microscope at awful forms, and would persevere until the silver rim which marked the confines of the drop of water under inspection would ripple inwards with a flash of light and vanish, because the drop itself had evaporated. 'Well, I can only say, how marvellous are Thy doings!' was a frequent ejaculation of Miss Wilkes, and one that was very well received. She learned the Latin names of many ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... dark, the yard was thronged with people. They listened with smiles or a faint ripple of merry feeling ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... the slope. A moment of suspense—and a long-drawn breath. We are first. There are the Boers dismounting a hundred yards away. "Action front, the pom-pom." "Down men, down!"—come the hoarse orders, and a ripple of fire crackles along the summit of the rise. "Let them have the whole belt." Pom-pom-pom-pom-pom-pom! The little gun reels and quivers as it belches forth its stream of spiteful bombs. For a moment the Boers return the fire. Then they rush for their horses, and in as many seconds ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... time the light fell upon a deer. He raised his head and gazed upon the light. Burr moved with the boat without making a ripple and finally he held the boat with his oar and ordered me to fire. This I did, and the deer ran for the shore, Burr pushed his boat to the quag, took the jack, and followed the track. At the distance of about fifteen rods he found the deer unable to move. ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... warm and blond Beside a wheat-shock in the white-topped mead, In her hot hair the yellow daisies wound,— O bird of rain, lend aught but sleepy heed To thee? when no plumed weed, no feathered seed Blows by her; and no ripple breaks the pond, That gleams like flint within its rim of grasses, Through which the dragonfly forever ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... phosphorescent, and I remember that the phrase "wan water," so familiar in the Scottish ballards, struck me just then as peculiarly appropriate, though its real meaning is quite different. A gentle breeze, from which I had hoped for a ripple, had utterly died away, and it was a warm, breathless Southern night. There was no sound but the faint swash of the coming tide, the noises of the reed-birds in the marshes, and the occasional leap of a fish; and it seemed to my overstrained ear as if every footstep of my own must ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... known to God alone, think not of the rushing torrents of this world! Envy not even the crystal stream which winds among the meadows. The ripple of its waters is sweet indeed, but it can be heard by creatures. Besides, the Field-flower could never contain it in its cup. One must be so little to draw near to Jesus, and few are the souls that aspire ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... Saronia was thoughtful and calm. Not a ripple of agitation crossed her face as she gave her orders to a ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... Homer, dwelt upon these coasts, although later poets have increased the number of the fatal sisters to three or even four. Singing the most enchanting songs to the sound of tortoise-shell lyres, there used to bask in the sunlight beside the gentle ripple the Sirens, their nether limbs well hidden from the gaze of passing seamen, who, attracted by the tuneful notes, hastened hither to discover the whereabouts of the musicians. Innocent eyes, angelic faces, flowing golden locks and white beckoning hands had ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... of Douglas began to cause no little uneasiness. Brown paid tribute to his influence, when he declared that if the Senator from Illinois had stood with the administration, "there would not have been a ripple on the surface." "Sir, the Senator from Illinois gives life, he gives vitality, he gives energy, he lends the aid of his mighty genius and his powerful will to the Opposition on this question."[655] But Douglas paid a fearful price for this power. ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... Buenos Ayres," Rochester heard him conclude, amidst a ripple of laughter. "I can assure you that I saw the incident with my ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the old man was stark enough to have waded the water waist-deep. She was no longer in her war-gear, but was clad after her wont of Shadowy Vale, in nought but a white woollen kirtle. So she stood in the stream beside the stones, and let the swift water ripple up over her ankles, while the elder leaned on her shoulder and looked down upon her kindly. The Sun-beam followed after them, stepping daintily from stone to stone, so that she was a fair sight to see; her face was smiling and happy, and as she stepped ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... consequences. So, for that matter, was the gangsman. Knowing well that Jack would make a break for it the first chance he got, he hovered about the ship both day and night, alert for every movement on board, watchful of every ripple on the water, taunting the woebegone sailors with the irksomeness of their captivity or the certainty of their capture, and awaiting with what patience he could the hour that should see pratique restored and the crew at his mercy. Whether the ship had "catching" disease on board or not ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... somewhat delicate-looking gentleman seated beside him turned upon the big man an expansive smile, a mischievous smile, and, pushing his goggles up on his forehead, burst into such a ripple of laughter that his drooping moustache, which seemed so natural, fell from its place, instantly transforming him. It was the jovial, yet cautious, Henri enjoying this amazing adventure ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... hills of Erin. But cheer up, Cuglas, there are mossy ways and forest paths and nestling bowers in fairyland. Lonely they are, I know, in your eyes now," said the little woman; "but maybe," she added, with a laugh as musical as the ripple on a streamlet when summer is in the air, "maybe you won't always ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... down the tide,— The waters gurgling along her side,— Down where the bay glows vast and wide,— A beautiful sheet of water; With scarce a ripple about her prow, The oyster-smack floated, silent and slow, With Keyport far on her starboard bow, And South Amboy ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... an Indian crouching in its stern wielding a paddle, was skimming across the stream, not a sound or splash of paddle, nor hardly a ripple from it to be ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... are in Spain, on a July night of the same summer, the air being hot and heavy. In the darkness the ripple of the river Tormes can be heard over the ford, which is near the foreground ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... that trunk, Johnnie," came her mother's caution, with a girlish ripple of laughter in the tones. "Hit's a borried one. Now don't you roach up and git mad. I had obliged to have a trunk, bein' wedded and comin' down to the settlement this-a-way. I only borried Mildred Faidley's. She won't never ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... [To CHANTECLER, tossing and twisting her head so that the colours ripple at her throat.] Have you noticed these two shades? They are our own especial colours—the Dawn's and mine! Princess of the underbrush, queen of the glade, I am pleased to wear the yellow locks of an adventuress. Dreamy and ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... appealed to the public with manifest approval. "But this," Weed said, "did not suit the Tribune and a class of politicians with whom it sympathised. They demanded a candidate with whom abolition is the paramount consideration."[838] Morgan's letter created a ripple of applause, after which the presentation of Wadsworth's name aroused an enthusiasm of longer duration than had existed at Albany. Nevertheless, Charles G. Myers of St. Lawrence did not hesitate to speak for "a more available ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... was driving his master's gig to the Cartmel shore, and was to return with the horse the same evening. He had of course no time to lose, and had begun his journey at the earliest possible hour. We found the sands firm and level, except the slight wrinkles produced by the ripple of the waves; but they were still wet, having only just been left by the sea. The guide appeared to drive with caution, and in no place went farther than a mile from land. We had a good deal of conversation, and I found him intelligent and communicative. His name is Thomas ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... great," replied Patricia with a ripple of mirth. "I honestly do, Bruce. I'm going to have a gorgeous time, and I'm awfully ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... ships were heading for the land, the long oars rising and falling swiftly, while the red and white striped sails hung idly in the calm. One could see the double of each ship in the water, broken wonderfully by the ripple of the oars, and after each stretched a white wake like a ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... thinking of the little people who had just gone—how would it be with them in the years to come?—they were so sweet and pure and lovely now. Unconsciously she bowed her head on her hands, and a cry quivered from her heart. The yellow sunlight made a ripple of golden water on the wall behind her and threw a wavering radiance on ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... way the wind blew before the Deluge by marking the ripple and cupping of the rain in the petrified sand now preserved forever. We tell the very path by which gigantic creatures, whom man never saw, walked to the river's ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... Gascoigne followed them, looking as if he had gathered up all the gloom of the deserted spot, and was hearing it as a burden of inestimable treasure. But still they rambled on, and soon found themselves in a rocky dell, through the midst of which ran a streamlet, with ripple, and foam, and a continual voice of inarticulate joy. It was a wild retreat, walled on either side with gray precipices, which would have frowned somewhat too sternly, had not a profusion of green shrubbery rooted itself into their crevices, and wreathed gladsome foliage around their ...
— The Lily's Quest (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... But,"—he added after a pause—"his works do follow him. Look there!" He took a large stone and threw it into the Silverburn stream; there was a great splash, and the ever-widening circles of blue ripple broke the surface of the water, dying away one by one in the sedges on the bank. "There," he said, "see how long those ripples last, ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... Sky, sea, beach, and village, lie as still before us as if they were sitting for the picture. It is dead low-water. A ripple plays among the ripening corn upon the cliff, as if it were faintly trying from recollection to imitate the sea; and the world of butterflies hovering over the crop of radish-seed are as restless in their little way as the gulls ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... creek? Not likely! Link's been crabbin' for thirty years in these waters. Water was smooth. Not a ripple, even out on the bay. Even if he fell over, he could almost walk ashore. Tide was out and he was settin' lines in about six feet, and he's better than two yards high. Shore wasn't more ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... the sunshine, her white shoulders expanding in youthfulness, her whole being so fraught with the gladness of life, that she leaped from her stem and darted upon his mouth, scenting him with her long ripple ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... pleasures that besieged me in the darkness. Wonderful tremors filled me; my head swam in the most delirious but enjoyable manner; and the bed softly oscillated with me, like a boat in a very gentle ripple. It does not make me write a good style apparently, which is just as well, lest I should be tempted to renew the experiment; and some verses which I wrote turn out on inspection to be not quite equal to Kubla Khan. However, I was happy, and the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... she suddenly broke into a little ripple of laughter, and, upon being questioned severely as to the reason of such unseemly mirth, she said, gaily, "I was just wondering what poor Phil will do with three girls, and one his sister, ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
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