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More "Swiftness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the way of the Alps to deliver death to their victims with a merciful swiftness, but here the rule failed. These men suffered the bitterest death that has been recorded in the history of those mountains, freighted as that history ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... miniature solar systems, with a ceaseless rapidity whose complex activity is enough to bewilder the imagination. The mass, as a mass, may lie inert upon the table; but so far from being destitute of the element of motion it is the abode of the never-tiring energy moving the particles with a swiftness to which the speed of an express train is as nothing. It is, therefore, not the mere fact of motion that is at the root of the distinction which we draw instinctively between spirit and matter; we must go deeper than that. The solution ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... overhead upon steel pulleys, with clumsy activity and many ghostly and fluttering sounds. In one corner I perceived a chair resting upon crystal feet, and curiously wreathed with wire. To this my mother advanced with a decisive swiftness. ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... yet seeking the trigger the first shadow was joined by a score of fellows—shades that materialised with like swiftness and silence from the surface of the earth—and before he could level the weapon Labertouche seized his wrist. For an instant he resisted, raging with disappointment; but the Englishman was cool, strong, determined; inevitably in the outcome ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... efforts to seize their tormentors, but not one could they touch; and they outdoubled them in numbers. Between every wild clutch came a peck of beak and a buffet of pinion in the face. Generally the bird would, with sharp-clapping wings, dart its whole body, with the swiftness of an arrow, against its singled mark, yet so as to glance aloft the same instant, and descend skimming; much as the thin stone, shot with horizontal cast of arm, having touched and torn the surface of the lake, ascends to skim, touch, and tear again. So mingled ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... he replied; "but you will find that the Sagoths can move with incredible swiftness, and as they are almost tireless they are doubtless much fresher than we. Then—" ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... voyage 120 miles up the river in canoes, to Silchar, the capital of the district of Cachar: the boats were such as I described at Chattuc, and though it was impossible to sit upright in them, they were paddled with great swiftness. The river at Silhet is 200 yards broad; it is muddy, and flows with a gentle current of two to three miles an hour, between banks six to twelve feet high. As we glided up its stream, villages became rarer, and eminences more frequent in the Jheels. The people are a tall, bold, athletic ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... to Greensboro has resulted in the creation of a city alongside of ancient Salem which is, in every respect the compeer of Durham in the swiftness of its growth and the amount of its trade and manufactures. Winston, Durham and Reidsville have arisen almost like magic, and are expanding into such importance that Charlotte, Salisbury and Greensboro have all felt the consequences of their ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... gradually the body would become weaker, the poor tortured lungs fail to clear themselves of the secretion that poured from their outraged tissue, and the fluid would accumulate slowly—oh, so slowly!—and the agonised victim died, not with the merciful swiftness of a bullet, but by ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... seemed strange, as the men were strong, and would take up loads such as two or three Englishmen could barely lift, and carry them without difficulty up or down hill for a mile together. They also ran with exceeding swiftness and for ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... the wood-crowned hill, the overtopping trees shot forth pinnacles and walls and streamers of arrowy fire. The entire hill-side was an ocean of glowing and surging fiery billows. Favored by the gale, the conflagration spread with lightning swiftness over an illimitable extent of country, filling the atmosphere with driving clouds of suffocating fume, and leaving a broad and blackened trail of spectral trunks shorn of limbs and foliage, smoking and burning, to mark the immense sweep of ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... third (Jupiter) had the whitest light—the fourth (Mars) was red—the sixth (Venus) was in whiteness second. The whole had one motion, but while this was revolving in one direction the seven inner circles were moving in the opposite, with various degrees of swiftness and slowness. The spindle turned on the knees of Necessity, and a Siren stood hymning upon each circle, while Lachesis, Clotho, and Atropos, the daughters of Necessity, sat on thrones at equal intervals, singing of past, present, and future, responsive to the music of the Sirens; Clotho from ...
— The Republic • Plato
... what hurt more, perhaps, in an unfavorable light. The war had changed standards, too. Men were being measured, especially by women, and those who failed to measure up were being eliminated with cruel swiftness, especially the ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... portion of respect. Their numbers also were great, and their valour could not be despised by those who had seen them fight at Durazzo, [Footnote: For the battle of Durazzo, Oct. 1081, in which Alexius was defeated with great slaughter by Robert Guiscard, and escaped only by the swiftness of his horse, see Gibbon, ch. 56.] and elsewhere. They might also, by the permission of Supreme Providence, be, in the long run, the instruments of advantage to the most sacred empire, though they approached it with so little ceremony. He had, therefore, mingling ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... electric swiftness to Jacques' side; from his sheltering arm she made declaration: "Never! I stay here with Jacques—always." Then struggling against emotion she added with finality: "I thank ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... settled upon the horse, and had their throwers found some purchase of stump or boulder by which they could hold them, then the man's brain might have won its wonted victory over swiftness and strength. But the brains were themselves at fault which imagined that one such rope would serve any purpose ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... trivial circumstance which occurs to my recollection will be sufficient to give an idea of her manner. Her brother had just obtained the command of a frigate cruising against the English. I spoke of the manner of fitting out this frigate without diminishing its swiftness of sailing. "Yes," replied she, in the most natural tone of voice, "no more cannon are taken than are necessary for fighting." I seldom have heard her speak well of any of her absent friends without letting slip something ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... on the assassin, and he brought forth long tales, intricate, incoherent, delivered with a chattering swiftness as from an old woman. "—great job out'n Orange. Boss keep yeh hustlin' though all time. I was there three days, and then I went an' ask 'im t' lend me a dollar. 'G-g-go ter the devil,' he ses, an' ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... monarchs of that name, but, from his temper and habits, we may suppose Edward IV.) sets forth with his court to a gallant hunting-match in Sherwood Forest, in which, as is not unusual for princes in romance, he falls in with a deer of extraordinary size and swiftness, and pursues it closely, till he has outstripped his whole retinue, tired out hounds and horse, and finds himself alone under the gloom of an extensive forest, upon which night is descending. Under the apprehensions natural to a situation so uncomfortable, the king recollects ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... was hammering away on the umbrageous tree under which Flora used to sit while busy with her sketches. He cocked his head to listen as they approached, and, at first sight of them, flew up into the clear blue air, with undulating swiftness. To Flora's great disappointment, they found all the doors fastened; but Mr. Jacobs entered by a window and opened one of them. The cottage had evidently been deserted for a considerable time. Spiders had woven their tapestry in all the corners. A pane had apparently been cut out of the window ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... ancient writers must have been imported from India and Arabia. White horses were especially prized, and those mentioned with peculiar praises were of the "Sindhawo" breed, a term which may either imply the place whence they were brought, or the swiftness of their speed.[5] In battle the soldiers rode chargers[6], and a passage in the Mahawanso shows that they managed them by means of a rope passed through the nostril, which served as a bridle.[7] Cosmas Indicopleustes, who considered the number of ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... gold pen, which his wife had given him, examined the nib, dipped it very slowly in the ink, and wrote with sudden swiftness. ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... automatically discontinued the suction ventilation. The underground thousands, in mortal terror of the non-existent third-rail danger, groped their way painfully to the stations. With inconceivable swiftness the mephitic vapors gathered. Strong men staggered fainting into the streets. When revived they told dreadful tales of stumbling over windrows of ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... There are two kinds of winter avalanches; the one, sheets of frozen snow sliding on the surface of others. The swiftness of these, as the clavendier of the Convent of St. Bernard told me, he could compare to nothing but that of a cannon ball of equal size. The other is a rolling mass of snow, accumulating in its descent. This, grazing the bare hill-side, tears up its surface like dust, bringing away soil, ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... mine was, but, then, should theirs fail them, they might dismount and follow me on foot. Notwithstanding this, I had no thought of giving in, and determined, should my horse fall, that I would try the speed of my legs. I could run as fast as most Indians, boasting as they do of their swiftness of foot. Some distance before me appeared a wood, bordering a stream: I determined to try and gain it, and dismounting, to leave my poor horse to his fate, when I would make my way along the bank, and then cross the stream, if it was sufficiently ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... glory faded, leaving a transparent lilac sky over which the darkness closed with all the swiftness of the tropics. ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... the crust, as a wave, or series of waves, of compression and rarefaction, much as a sound wave is transmitted through the elastic medium of the air. Each earth particle vibrates with exceeding swiftness, but over a very short path. The swing of a particle in firm rock seldom exceeds one tenth of an inch in ordinary earthquakes, and when it reaches one half an inch and an inch, the movement becomes ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... higher for it all. One would even say that, the farther we proceed in our conquest of matter, the more our morality recedes. The most advanced of our inventions consists in bringing men down with grapeshot and explosives with the swiftness of the reaper mowing ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... Trolls steal and carry off into their palace. Most never return: but here and there one escapes out again, and tells how the Trolls killed all his comrades: but tells too, of the wonders he has seen inside, of shoes of swiftness, and swords of sharpness, and caps of darkness; of charmed harps, charmed jewels, and above all of the charmed wine: and after all, the Trolls were very kind to him—see what fine clothes they have given ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... resumed. A lightning artist appeared, drawing caricatures and portraits with incredible swiftness. He even went so far as to ask for subjects from the audience, and the names of prominent men were shouted to him from the gallery. He drew portraits of the President, of Grant, of Washington, of Napoleon Bonaparte, of Bismarck, of Garibaldi, of ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... Stonewall Jackson, concerning whom most men spoke as if he had never known defeat, though it is, or it should be, notorious, that he was as often beaten as successful, that more than once he had to fly with wind-like swiftness to escape personal destruction, and that on one occasion he was saved from ruin only because of an exhibition on our side of more than a usual amount of stupidity. But he had repeatedly showed some of the best qualities of a dashing general, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... from the breeze, and nourish their natures far from swift-moving things. A true lover is not one of those melancholy flies that shoot and maze over muddy stagnant pools. He must be up in the great air. He must strike all the strings of life. Swiftness is his rapture. In his wide arms he embraces the whole form of beauty. Eagle-like are his instincts; dove-like his desires. Then the fair moon is the very presence of his betrothed in heaven. So for hours rode Farina in a silver-fleeting glory; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... be equally indignant if you saw a stout fellow thrust himself up to a table where some hungry children were being fed, and reach his arm over their heads and take their bread from them. But you are not the least indignant if, when a man has stoutness of thought and swiftness of capacity, and, instead of being long-armed only, has the much greater gift of being long-headed—you think it perfectly just that he should use his intellect to take the bread out of the mouths of all the other men in the town who are of the same trade with him; or use his breadth and sweep of ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... sort of animal instinct might lead him to attempt, and thus Komel was often startled by suddenly beholding him dangling by his feet from some lofty cypress, swinging to and fro like a monkey; or to observe him turning a series of summersets, in a broad circle, with such incredible swiftness as to cause all distinctness of his form to be lost, producing a most singular and magical appearance. Then, perhaps, after forming a circle thus on the green sod he would suddenly plunge into its ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... cry of "Help, help!—the Lady Eveline is murdered!" the seeming statue, starting at once into active exertion, sped with the swiftness of a race-horse to the brink of the moat, and was about to cross it, opposite to the spot where Rose stood at the open casement, urging him to ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... length higher she sent her phantom, and made him pause. Seeing this, sure now that his enemy could go no further, Curling Smoke shot up with lightning swiftness and stood above him at last, stretched to his full height, an immensely tall and straight and slender column, poised on tiptoe to spring and overleap him. His voice rang out hoarsely. "Ah, now you shall not escape me! At last your ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... the pressure on it already is enormous; soon it breaks, the great confused mass yields, and begins to move. All the men are on their guard now, holding back to see what is coming next; if the part they are standing on shows signs of breaking loose, they must leap with catlike swiftness to a safer spot. Their calling is one of daily and hourly peril; they carry their lives in ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... the ecstasy of that moment by the pound of hoofs and the crashing of brush. He could not disengage himself before a horse and rider were upon them. Nevertheless Pan recognized the intruder and leaped away from the bench with the instinctive swiftness for defense that had ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... finished statues, if without attributes, "Is this Bacchus or Apollo—Zeus or Poseidon?" There is a fact for you; noteworthy, I think! There is no personal character in true Greek art:—abstract ideas of youth and age, strength and swiftness, virtue and vice,—yes: but there is no individuality; and the negative holds down to the revived conventionalism of the Greek school by Leonardo, when he tells you how you are to paint young women, and how old ones; though a Greek would ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... on Shorty Bill's back." He faded rapidly away, and our friend was left alone, gazing with fascinated eyes at the miraculous phenomenon which was occurring under his very nose. Suddenly and with incredible swiftness a portion of the rubbish heap, with dock leaves, nettles, old cans, and bricks adhering to it, detached itself from the main pile and hurled itself into the trench. With a peculiar sliding movement it advanced along the bottom, ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... second miracle was that Reese Beaudin did not leap on him when he had fallen. He stood back a little, balancing himself in that queer fashion on the balls and toes of his feet. But no sooner was Dupont up than Reese Beaudin was in again, with the swiftness of a cat, and they could hear the blows, like solid shots, and Dupont's arms waved like tree-tops, and a second time he was off ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... the return of the pigeons every afternoon to their home. Every afternoon they came sweeping across the lawn, positively in clouds, and with a swiftness and softness of winged motion, more beautiful than anything of the kind I ever knew. Had I been a musician, such as Mendelsohn, I felt that I could have improvised a music quite peculiar, from the sound they made, which should have indicated all the beauty over which their wings ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... ordinary men and women. And to distinguish them from mortal beings, the artists of the East proceed in the manner of symbolism: they make additions to the human types which are to signify the divine attributes, but do not really embody them. They add wings to represent the swiftness of the deity, wings not meant for actual flight, but only symbols of rapid motion. They represent them as victoriously overthrowing wild beasts and monsters, which stand for the powers of evil, ever bent on thwarting their action. In some of their most archaic works, ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... shift, stripped as usual to the waist, set to work without an instant's delay; and the vigour and swiftness with which the blows fell upon the face of the rock would have told experienced miners that the men who struck them were working for life or death. Those unemployed, Jack took into the adjacent stalls and set them to work to clear a narrow strip of the floor next to the upper wall, then to cut a ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... much attention to the order as a tiger would to a dog whistle. He was off again in an instant, bent almost double, and bursting through the tangled bushes with amazing swiftness. ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... Kofirans seeing her appear Abroad to join in the publick Festivity, would relinquish the Suspicions they had harbour'd against her. But they were too inveterate, and the Event was quite different, for had it not been for the Dexterity of her Coachman, and the Swiftness of her Horses, she had infallibly fallen a Victim to the Fury of the Populace. This hazardous Experience of their Malice, brought her to lead a Life at Kofir very different to her Inclinations, being ashamed to shew herself in any Assembly, ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... masterpiece of human poetry, inspired or uninspired, only approached by the companion-Psalm, the 144th. From whence comes that cumulative energy, by which it rushes on, even in our translation, with a force and swiftness which are indeed divine; thought following thought, image image, verse verse, before the breath of the Spirit of God, as wave leaps after wave before the gale? What is the element in that ode, which even now makes it ...
— David • Charles Kingsley
... Mountain and the Cowpens, deprived Cornwallis of nearly all his light-armed troops, and he was just entering upon a game where swiftness was especially required. It was his object to intercept Morgan and defeat him before he could effect a junction with the other part of the American army. It was Greene's object to march the two parts of his army in converging directions northward across North ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske
... the utmost swiftness, expecting every moment to see the captain and Chris appear, but, luckily, those two, wearied by their hard work, had paused to rest before ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... address, and, placing it carefully in the desk, rose and leaned against the window, that the cool night air might fan her fevered brow. The hot blood beat heavily in her temples, and fled with arrowy swiftness through her veins. Continued mental excitement, like another Shylock, peremptorily exacted its debt, and, as she looked out on the solemn beauty of the night, instead of soothing, it seemed to mock her restlessness. Dr. Hartwell had been absent since ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... komatik runners, but even then the dogs would have to run their hardest to preserve a safe distance between them and us, and out on the smooth ice of the bays we would shoot, to skim along with exhilarating swiftness. As we proceeded south we were interested in observing signs of spring. Towards the end of our journey we encountered much soft snow and ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... craft had a splendid race to the mouth of that brook which, because of its swiftness, still remained unshackled by the frost. The shallow stream of water poured down over the rocks into the lake, but there was only a small open place at the point where the brook emptied into its waters into the larger and ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... thoughts wandered like that, and I ate and, from my pocket flask, washed my dry eating down, the weather changed with a swiftness familiar enough among the Scottish mountains. The heavens passed behind a veil of drifting clouds, through which the sun flared in red, angry bursts. The elements had declared hostilities, and when I looked ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... out of the vapor and grew with astonishing swiftness into dim tiers of slanted sailcloth swaying above a strip of hull that moved amid a broad white smear of foam. It was a brig under fore-course and topsails, and as the girl watched the vessel it sank ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... Go 'way an' lemme 'lone!" she screeched, and the next minute she dropped her empty basket and sped up the street with a swiftness that only fear could have ...
— The Woggle-Bug Book • L. Frank Baum
... "six years since I bought a horse in Hungary remarkable for its swiftness. The thirty-two that we shall use to-night are its progeny; they are all entirely black, with the exception of a ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the balance in favour of the French. Suvaroff, aware of his danger, collected all the troops within reach with the utmost despatch, and pushed eastwards to meet Macdonald on the Trebbia. Moreau descended from the Apennines in the same direction; but he had underrated the swiftness of the Russian general; and, before he had advanced over half the distance, Macdonald was attacked by Suvaroff on the Trebbia, and overthrown in three days of the most desperate fighting that had been seen in the ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... head, to recognise his assailant. Nor, having lost his knife, and believing doubtless that Adrian was only the first of a troop of rescuers, did he seem inclined to continue the combat, but, calling to his companion to follow him, he began to run after the woman with a swiftness almost incredible in a man of his build and weight, turning presently into the brushwood, where he and his two fellow ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... the pigmy horde following with incredible swiftness, Stoddard wheeled and fired time and again—and now his shots were answered by the ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... rippling torch upon the breeze Of his own glorious swiftness: in the grass He bruised no feathery stalk, and through the trees I ...
— Spirits in Bondage • (AKA Clive Hamilton) C. S. Lewis
... taken this picture from Ovid's description, and that he had, with great art, represented, by the very circumstance to which I objected, the swiftness of the motion with which the chariot was driven forward. The current of the morning wind blowing from the east was represented by the direction of the hair of Lucifer, and of the flame of his torch; while the rapidity of the motion of the chariot was such, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... Universe, its twigs are the Ether, spread over the World-all; the eagle is the Infinite glance, penetrating heaven and earth; and the squirrel the medium by which the deeds and condition of the Gods are brought to men. The stags, whose swiftness betokens the restless, rapid passions of man, are the ailments of the soul; and the green leaves which they devour, are sound, healthy thoughts.' According to Hauch (Die Nordische Mythenlehre, Leipsic, 1847, p. 28), these swift stags are the four winds of heaven which scatter the leaves. The ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... danger of her adventure was past, Melissy was aware too of a chill dread lurking at her heart. She was no longer buoyed up by the swiftness of action which had called for her utmost nerve. There was nothing she could do now but wait, and waiting was of all things the one most foreign to her impulsive temperament. She acknowledged too some fear of this quiet, soft-spoken frontiersman. All Arizona knew ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... running across the intervening distance with swiftness incredible in one of his bulk at this gravity. His blizzer was out. It was one of the very latest models of blizzers. Very destructive. Mr. Wordsley had always been afraid to ...
— The Marooner • Charles A. Stearns
... though you will be but five minutes walk from me, your face will not be at my breakfast table to help me begin each day with a courage it has always inspired. So I beg that you two will not delay your marriage; give no thought to me. You are young but once, and youth has wings of wonderful swiftness. Margaret and Christopher shall come to me; but although they are my own flesh and blood, they will never become to me what you two have been, and always ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... the baboon are the most skilled of all animals in making their flight. They use every method known to man, and because of their swiftness of action excel man in certain ways. Like man, in the face of danger, they show great bravery and never lose their presence of mind. The ape is fast disappearing before man, but against other animals and Nature he can well protect ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... both in drawing and colour. It was in the wall of the next room that the famous Bocca di Leone was placed, into which were dropped those anonymous charges against Venetian citizens which the Council of Ten investigated, and if true, or, very likely, if not true, punished with such swiftness and thoroughness. How a state that offered such easy temptations to anti-social baseness and treachery could expect to prosper one cannot imagine. It suggests that the Venetian knowledge of human nature was defective ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... by the banks of some other stream, a hundred miles off, on the morrow. The presence of his manada offered some guarantee, that he might still be near the ground where the vaquero had marked him. Once found, I trusted to the swiftness of my horse, and my own skill in the ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... us, but I did not get a glimpse of the deer. Soon we reached the bottom of the canyon, and struck into another trail. The air was full of the low roar of tumbling water. This mountain-torrent was about twenty feet wide, but its swiftness and foam made it impossible to tell its depth. The trail led up-stream, and turned so constantly that half the time Bill, the leader, was not in sight. Once the sharp crack of his rifle halted the train. I heard crashings in the thicket. Dick yelled for me to look up the ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... with the swiftness of light. He could not rush the group: the odds were too great, and besides, Judd's gun was already out. Nor could he dive at them with the Star Devil itself, or ray them from above: that would mean Friday's death too. It would have to be something else—and in a moment ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore
... arrogance of the performer who, having given only a fraction of his time to the acquirement of skill, reckons that he can beat the professional who has given the whole of his time. Lucas's glances at chauffeurs who hindered his swiftness were masterpieces of high disdain, and he would accelerate, after ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... compelled in the main to condemn;—as he was in the case of Senaca. He had the faculty of hitting off in a phrase the whole effect of a man's style; as when he speaks of the "milky richness of Livy," and the "immortal swiftness ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... tremendous Lover! Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see! I tempted all His servitors, but to find My own betrayal in their constancy, In faith to Him their fickleness to me, Their traitorous trueness, and their loyal deceit. To all swift things for swiftness did I sue; Clung to the whistling mane of every wind. But whether they swept, smoothly fleet, The long savannahs of the blue; Or whether, Thunder-driven, They clanged his chariot 'thwart a heaven, ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... deep, and the horses' hoofs were soundless as we plunged through the crisp and tingling air. The wind raced past me as I sat perched on my rickety seat, swaying wildly with every lurch of the coach. With every gust I seemed to drink in fresh strength and felt the very motion and swiftness enter into my blood. Across the white waste we tore, up a stiff ascent and down across the moorland again—still westward; and now across the stretches of the moor I could catch the strong scent of the sea upon the wind. Along the level we ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... brilliancy baffles all competition. Now it glows with a fiery hue, and again it is changed to the deepest velvety black. The upper parts of its delicate body are of resplendent changing green; and it throws itself through the air with a swiftness and vivacity hardly conceivable. It moves from one flower to another like a gleam of light, upwards, downwards, to the right, and ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... Personal influence in appointments can be annulled only by free and open competition. By that bridge we can return to the practice of Washington and to the intention of the Constitution. That is the shoe of swiftness and the magic sword by which the President can pierce and outrun the protean enemy of sophistry and tradition which prevents him from asserting his power. If you say that success in a competitive literary ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... you, my children, sound and rich:" for wealth sways all. It is not with us, as amongst those Lacedaemonian senators of Lycurgus in Plutarch, "He preferred that deserved best, was most virtuous and worthy of the place, [2231]not swiftness, or strength, or wealth, or friends carried it in those days:" but inter optimos optimus, inter temperantes temperantissimus, the most temperate and best. We have no aristocracies but in contemplation, all ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... With the swiftness of a deer the Indian maiden sprang through the reeds, and in a moment had disappeared. Rosa had no choice but to follow. Whilst making her way through the innumerable stems that barred her passage, she heard a loud cry, but it was not Canondah's voice. A noise like that of a heavy body falling ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... clutching him round the neck, and choking every attempt at a cry. Then falling himself in all his huge height, breadth, and weight, upon Wrotham's prone body he crushed it under and held it beneath him, while, with appalling swiftness and vehemence, he plunged a drawn claspknife deep in his victim's throat, hacking the flesh from left to right, from right to left with reckless ferocity, till the blood spurted about him in horrid crimson jets, and gushed in a dark pool on ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... balloon some thirty-five feet diameter (that is, of about 23,000 cubic feet capacity), to be made of linen lined with paper and this machine, launched on a favourable day in the following spring, rose with great swiftness to fully a thousand feet, and travelled nearly a mile ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... spirit is on fire. [The horizontal lines across the leg signify magic power of traversing space. The short lines below the foot denote flames, i.e., magic influence obtained by swiftness ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman
... fair; booths are erected upon the ice, with fires in them. The country people skate to market, with milk and vegetables; and every kind of sport is seen on the frozen canals. Sledges fly from one street to another, gaily decorated, and numberless skaters glide about with astonishing swiftness and dexterity. No people skate so well ...
— The World's Fair • Anonymous
... precaution, the noise alarmed the speakers; down slid the young lady's casement, and the shutters were barred in an instant. The dash of a pair or oars in the water announced the retreat of the male person of the dialogue. Indeed, I saw his boat, which he rowed with great swiftness and dexterity, fly across the lake like a twelve-oared barge. Next morning I examined some of my domestics, as if by accident. and I found the gamekeeper, when making his rounds, had twice seen that boat beneath the house, with a single person, and had heard the ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... over the great changes introduced into various animals by artificial or accidental cultivation, as in horses, which we have exercised for the different purposes of strength or swiftness, in carrying burthens or in running races; or in dogs, which have been cultivated for strength and courage, as the bull-dog; or for acuteness of his sense or smell, as the hound and spaniel; or for the swiftness of his foot, as the greyhound; or for his swimming ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... Pharo sprang with ox-like levity from the floor, and amid the giddy swiftness of the music I was occasionally conscious of hearing his mailed heels flow together with a clash that made the rafters ring. He descended at last ominously, but when the reverberations died away I looked, and saw ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... by such a day-mare as this? But the moment must come when Jacob would move his right hand to draw off the lid of the tin box, and then David would sweep the guineas into the hole with the utmost address and swiftness, and immediately seat himself upon them. Ah, no! It's of no use to have foresight when you are dealing with an idiot: he is not to be calculated upon. Jacob's right hand was given to vague clutching and throwing; it suddenly clutched the ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... historic and the imaginary parts of the idyl. According to this, Pheidippides himself tells his first adventure, to the assembled rulers of Athens: depicting, in vivid words, the emotions which winged his course, and bore him onwards over mountains and through valleys, with the smooth swiftness of running fire; and he also relates that Pan promised him a personal reward for his "toil," which was to consist in release from it. This release he interprets as freedom to return home, and to marry the girl he loves. It meant a termination ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... distance! Or he would hear that there was to be a hunt somewhere, that a rich landowner had arranged a meet in some outlying part of his land: he would be off there at once, and would canter in the distance, on the horizon, astounding all spectators by the swiftness and beauty of his horse, and not letting any one come close to him. Once some hunting landowner even gave chase to him with all his suite; he saw Tchertop-hanov was getting away, and he began shouting after him with all his might, as he galloped at full speed: 'Hey, you! ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... post, waiting some time in expectation of the governor's appearance, who narrowly escaped the fate intended for him, by its falling on another person accidentally passing that way. On being pursued, he fled with incredible swiftness to the Table Mountain at the back of the town, whence this single miscreant, still animated by the effect of the opium, for two days resisted and defied every force that was sent against him. The alarm and terror into which the town was thrown were inconceivable; for two days none ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... of war will suffice to desolate many homes, to destroy fertile fields, and to burn down prosperous villages, but it is long before that waste can be repaired, confidence restored, and prosperity and goodwill re-established. The devil will carry fire and sword through the world with the swiftness of a whirlwind, but Jesus Christ patiently waits and weeps over an irresponsive people, as he says, "Ye will not come to Me that ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... or left; heaven everywhere, liberty everywhere, and life everywhere. The horses, kept in check by a vigorous hand, went quietly as far as the middle of the faubourg. There they began to trot. Little by little, whether they warmed over it, or whether they were urged, they gained in swiftness, and once past Bercy, the carriage seemed to fly, so great was the ardor of the coursers. These horses ran thus as far as Villeneuve St. George's, where relays were waiting. Then four instead of two whirled the carriage ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... life did not seem worth a minute's reprieve, were pulled down; all were bunched with Morgan in the middle of the mob. Gray began again with his denunciation, Morgan hearing him only as the wind, for his attention was fixed on the activities of Dell Hutton, working with insidious swiftness and apparent success ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... Laughing inaudibly in sun and dew, Nor for the limbs that, fallen low And seeming faint and slow, Shall alter and renew Their shape and hue Like birches white before the moon Or a young apple-tree In spring or the round sea And shall pursue More ways of swiftness than the swallow dips Among ... and find more winds than ever blew The straining ...
— The New World • Witter Bynner
... not been mistaken; they were going faster, faster even than their efforts with the poles would account for. With the narrowing of the bed of the stream, the current was taking on a new swiftness. Shann said ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... long, and immediately at its foot is Gray Canyon, thirty-six miles long. Then comes Gunnison Valley, and it was there that Powell was to return to us. The first indication of descending waters was a slight swiftness, the river having narrowed up to its canyon-character. At one place it doubled back on itself, forming in the bend a splendid amphitheatre which was called after Sumner of the former party. This beautiful wall, about one thousand ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... the Institute he found every opportunity of increasing his professional knowledge. He was an untiring reader, and he read to learn. The wars of Napoleon were his constant study. He was an enthusiastic admirer of his genius; the swiftness, the daring, and the energy of his movements appealed to his every instinct. Unfortunately, both for the Institute and his popularity, it was not his business to lecture on military history. We can well imagine him, as a teacher of the art of war, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... dressed in dark-blue serge, and had peculiarly thick, coarse, black hair. I heard the unseen dogs growl furiously, and forthwith he ducked back,—coming into contact with the hand I put out to fend him off from myself. He turned with animal swiftness. ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... in strength, but not in swiftness and daring, and above all they had settled how to attack him. The moment he reared his axe, they flew at him like cats, and both together. If he struck a full blow with his weapon he would most likely kill one, but the other would ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... a young Man on the Back of it, advancing upon full Stretch after the Souls of about an hundred Beagles that were hunting down the Ghost of an Hare, which ran away before them with an unspeakable Swiftness. As the Man on the milk-white Steed came by him, he looked upon him very attentively, and found him to be the young Prince Nicharagua, who died about Half a Year before, and, by reason of his great Vertues, was at that time lamented ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... not be fickle. She had a loyalty in her that was Sicilian in its fervor, a sense of gratitude such as the contadini have, although by many it is denied to them; a quick and lively temper, but a disposition that responded to joy, to brightness, to gayety, to sunlight, with a swiftness, almost a ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... we had done we called all our men together by us, and about half an hour and fourteen minutes after three in the afternoon, to our great surprise, we all of us saw two men come running towards us with such swiftness that no living man could run half so fast as they did run, when all of us heard Captain Barnaby say, 'Lord bless me, the foremost is old Booty, my next-door neighbour;' but he said he did not know the other that run behind: he was in black clothes, and the foremost was in grey. Then Captain ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 70, March 1, 1851 • Various
... With unthinking swiftness, he threw his arm over her and drew her tight to him. His lips found hers in a long kiss—clung in ecstasy ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... exhausted, though the idea of her happy flight, by inspiring her with a strength which surprised even herself, for a long time had kept her insensible to fatigue. While her friends pressed on with a speed which allowed no more conversation than occasional inquiries of how she bore the journey, the swiftness of the motion and the rapidity of the events which had brought her from the most frightful of situations into one the dearest to her secret and hardly-breathed wishes, so bewildered her faculties, that hse almost feared she was only enjoying one of those dreams which since her captivity ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... and encircling this, in order, were the Heavens of Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jove, Saturn, the Fixed Stars, and the Crystalline or first moving Heaven. These nine concentric Heavens revolved continually around the Earth, and in proportion to their distance from it was time greater swiftness of each. Encircling all was the Empyrean, increate, incorporeal, motionless, unbounded in time or space, the proper seat of God, the home of the Angels, the abode of ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... October. As if pointedly to irritate Henry, he had placed himself under the conduct of the Duke of Albany.[624] He was followed two days later by his fair niece, Catherine de Medici; and the preparations for the marriage were commenced with the utmost swiftness and secrecy. The conditions of the contract were not allowed to transpire, but they were concluded in three days; and on this 25th of October the pope bestowed his precious present on the Duke of Orleans, ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... gave no further grace. His fingers tightened on the man's throat and the desperate face went black. Then, keeping the fellow ever before him, he suddenly flung him into the air by the waist, shifting holds with tigerish swiftness, and caught him by the ankles as he came down. He whirled the unfortunate wretch once, and three men went down under the terrible blow; the rest scattered with furious howls, bespattered with the blood of their comrade; but one more sight of the ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... was thinking of your strength rather than your swiftness. Come this way. Father has run ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... swiftness fleet, The road became a village street; And this, before men were aware, A city's crowded thoroughfare; And soon the central street was this Of a renowned metropolis; And men two centuries and a half Trod in ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... her thoughts with his lightest touch into newer channels. The talk had grown merrier now, and he soon discovered that she possessed a sharpened wit as well as a ready tongue. From subject to subject she passed with amazing swiftness, bearing down upon her favourite themes with the delightful audacity of the talker who is born, not made. She spoke of her own youth, of historic flirtations in the early twenties, of great beaux she had known, and of famous recipes that had been handed down for generations. Everywhere he felt her ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... relied on the superior seaworthiness of his vessels, those of Tyre and Sidon in particular, he immediately accepted battle. At the outset the Asiatics succeeded in sinking one of the Carthaginian vessels; but, when they came to grapple, Roman valour prevailed, and it was owing solely to the swiftness of their rowing and sailing that the enemy lost no more than 23 ships. During the pursuit the Roman fleet was joined by 25 ships from Rhodes, and the superiority of the Romans in those waters was now doubly assured. The enemy's fleet thenceforth kept the shelter of the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... respect man stands, I conceive, distinguished from, and superior to, all other earthly creatures; it is this privilege which, while he is inferior in strength to some, in swiftness to others; without horns or claws or tusks to attack them, or even to defend himself against them, hath made him master of them all. Indeed, in other views, however vain men may be of their abilities, they are greatly inferior ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... gun, but he had heard tales of the man's ability with the weapon. There lingered in his mind at this minute—as it had dwelt during all the days he had known Lawler—the knowledge that Lawler's father had been a gunman of wide reputation, and that he had taught his son the precision and swiftness that had made him famous ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... comfort her; but when at last they retired to rest, Ajut went down to the beach; where, finding a fishing-boat, she entered it without hesitation, and telling those who wondered at her rashness, that she was going in search of Anningait, rowed away with great swiftness, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... of that class which were approaching him. Some of his guns were so mounted that their muzzles could be greatly depressed, and aimed at an object in the water not far from the ship. But these were not discharged, and, indeed, the crabs, which were new ones of unusual swiftness, were alongside the Adamant in an incredibly short time, and out of the range of ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... not a bit like the prelude of high tragedy; yet that was on the way, and fell at once. Holgate's voice arrested the Prince, and he started, as if now for the first time aware of the presence of the mutineers. Till that moment he had merely been bent on rating a servant. With the swiftness of lightning he drew and levelled a revolver; I saw Holgate's fat bull neck and body lean to one side and drop awkwardly, and then an exclamation sprang up on my left, where Gray and another were holding Barraclough captive. The bullet had gone over Holgate's ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... honeysuckle. Here, when the weather was fine, and our labour soon finished, we usually sat together to enjoy an extensive landscape in the calm of the evening. On an afternoon about the beginning of autumn, when I had drawn out my family to the seat, dogs and horsemen swept past us with great swiftness. After them a young gentleman, of a more genteel appearance than the rest, came forward, and, instead of pursuing the chase, stopped short, and approached us with a careless, superior air. He let us know that his name was Thornhill, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... self-transporting commissariat in its flocks and herds. Constant practice in riding, scouting and the use of arms, physical endurance tested by centuries of exertion and hardship, make every nomad a soldier. Cavalry and camel corps add to the swiftness and vigor of their onslaught, make their military strategy that of sudden attack and swifter retreat, to be met only by wariness and extreme mobility. The ancient Scythians of the lower Danubian steppes ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... dwindled to scrubby thickets, covering great areas of comparative level. Long reaches of grassland opened before them, waving yellow in the autumn sun. They crossed other rivers of various degrees of depth and swiftness, swimming some and fording others. Hazel drew upon her knowledge of British Columbia geography, and decided that the big river where Bill hid his canoe must be the Fraser where it debouched from the mountains. And in that ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... places herself in opposition to a man, for whom all things are ordered in the society that he governs; her only chance of striking a telling blow being through his passions. If he were in love with her, then there might be some hope of making him wince. And Hadria, with a fierce swiftness had accepted the condition, with a mixture of confidence in her own power of rousing emotion, if she willed, and of scorn for the creature who could be appealed to through his passions, but not through his sense of justice. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... race with a cloud. Vapors are unreliable things at best, and are prone to roll up the sky with fateful swiftness. As Hubert and Theodora came under the first of the trees, the cloud came above them, and the moon vanished. Theodora was as plucky as a girl could be; but there was something rather fearful to her in this dark and lonely road, where she and Hubert were the only moving objects, ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... caporal that lay on the table with the oilskin cover. He struck a match and was about to apply it to the bowl, when one of his sudden ideas caused him to blow out the match and lay down the pipe. Then with his old lightning swiftness he strode to the door and flung ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... for the voices of animals—O for the swiftness and balance of fishes! O for the dropping of raindrops in a song! O for the sunshine and motion ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... before he arrive. If he come on them there, and they kill him! Oh, let me go quickly." At the thought of him, and the danger he might meet, all her fears of the men "rouge" returned upon her, and she was gone, passing with incredible swiftness over the rough way, to try to intercept him before ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... necessitated by the orders of the Chief of the Army. They were more severe, more crushing, than any that have ever been adopted even by a punitive expedition under British colours. They were successful. For that they were intended. Swiftness and thoroughness were of the essence of ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... him for exactly ten seconds, and then, clean and straight, with lightning swiftness, his one hand shot forward. It was a single hard blow, delivered full on the jaw with a force that nearly carried Nick with it, and it sent the offender staggering backwards on his heels in bellowing astonishment. The opposite wall saved ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... that there are stages in his life when his existence is more uncertain and much more weak than that of the other animals, or even of some inanimate things. Man is unwilling to admit that he possesses not the strength of the lion, nor the swiftness of the stag, nor the durability of an oak, nor the solidity of marble or metal. He believes himself the greatest favorite, the most sublime, the most noble; he believes himself superior to all other animals because he possesses the faculties of thinking, judging, and reasoning. But his thoughts ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... almost instantaneously to distances which were limited, with regard to the former, by restrictions imposed by the globe. To the speaker had been assigned the task of introducing to their notice electric energy in a different aspect. Although still giving evidence of swiftness and precision, the effects he should dwell upon were no longer such as could be perceived only through the most delicate instruments human ingenuity could contrive, but were capable of rivaling the steam engine, compressed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... dramatic swiftness, and in the negative. Anna approached her mistress, still with that curious look of beaming happiness in her round, fat, plain face, and after she had put down the coffee-jug she held out her work-worn ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... hell-beautiful than when he tore around his corral in a tantrum, as lithe and graceful as a black panther. His mane stood on end; his eyes and nostrils were of a colour; the muscles looked to be bursting through the silken gloom of his coat. His swiftness was something incredible. He caught and most horribly killed Jim Baxter's hound before the latter could get out of the corral—and a bear-hound is a pretty agile animal. We had to tie Jim, or he'd made an end of Geronimo. He left the ranch ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... his two-button cutaway, his well-fitting trousers, his scarf with a pin in it, had been too much for these young fellows in their long 'stoga boots and flannel shirts. They looked at him askance, and despatched their meal with more than their wonted swiftness, and were off again into the woods without any demonstrations ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... came upon me again, buried me at once twenty or thirty feet deep in its own body; and I could feel myself carried with a mighty force and swiftness towards the shore, a very great way; but I held my breath, and assisted myself to swim still forward with all my might. I was ready to burst with holding my breath, when, as I felt myself rising up, so to my immediate relief ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... the whip and with irresistible strength drew it from the Queen's hand. But she drew from her bosom a sharp dagger and with the swiftness of lightning aimed a blow at Inga's heart. He merely stood still and smiled, for the blade rebounded and fell clattering ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... architect will become increasingly the intelligent student of novelty. The steam engine, the coal yard, and the tail chimney, and indeed all chimneys, will vanish quietly from our urban landscape. The speeding up and cheapening of travel, and the increase in its swiftness and comfort will go on steadily—widening experience. A more systematic and understanding social science will be estimating the probable growth and movement of population, and planning town and country on lines that would seem to-day almost inconceivably wise and ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... preparatory to an attack, he knows that he runs a very great risk of being killed while he is deploying, and suspects that he is being thrown away to gain ten minutes' time. He may either deploy with desperate swiftness, or he may shuffle, or bunch, or break, according to the discipline under which he has lain ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... think we may probably enough conceive in general, that the Eye may be Variously affected, not only by the Entire Beams of Light that fall upon it as they are such, but by the Order, and by the Degree of Swiftness, and in a word by the Manner according to which the Particles that compose each Particular Beam arrive at the Sensory, so that whatever be the Figure of the Little Corpuscles, of which the Beams of Light consist, not only the Celerity or Slowness of their Revolution ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... a glory and a grace, Refashioning the sin-disfashioned face; A nobler bruit than hollow-sounded fame, A new-lit lustre on a tarnished name, One virtue pent within an evil place, Strength for the fight, and swiftness for the race, A stinging salve, a life-requickening flame. A salve so searching we may scarcely live, A flame so fierce it seems that we must die, An actual cautery thrust into the heart: Nevertheless, men die not of such smart; And shame gives ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... that went from his feet to his head; he could feel the roots of his hair tingle. The newcomer went quickly, with catlike tread, toward the girl. Fascinated he stood, wanting to speak, to laugh, yet powerless from the very swiftness ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... slow; that the Arabs trail along on labouring camels while the Europeans flash by on motors or mono-planes. But there is another and stranger sense in which we do seem to them slow, and they do seem to themselves to have a secret of swiftness. There is a sense in which we here touch the limits of a land of lightning; across which, as in a dream, the motor-car can be seen ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... slip by with incredible swiftness. The tragedy of Ermsted's death had ceased to be the talk of the station. Tessa had gone back to her mother who still remained a semi-invalid in the Ralstons' hospitable care. Netta's plans seemed to be of the vaguest; but Home leave ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... done make a dab at his ink-pot, enter up a cheque as credit, cross it out and make it a debit, then reverse the entry—all before Watson could interfere. The Bonehead was not slow; in fact, he was too rapid—but his swiftness was a serious detriment since the direction taken was usually wrong. Porter acted on impulses, and they seemed destined forever to be senseless. A swift inspiration came to him, he made a slash with his heavily inked ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... stream is the Tigris—a corrupted form of 'Idiklat.' It is only 1146 miles in length, and is marked, as the native name indicates, by the 'swiftness' of its flow. Starting, like the Euphrates, in the rugged regions of Armenia, it continues its course through mountain clefts for a longer period, and joined at frequent intervals by tributaries, both before it merges into the plain and after doing so, the volume of its ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... If a wireless telegraph instrument, sending its call into space, may be answered with lightning-like swiftness by another a thousand miles away, why should not a thought, without the clumsy medium of speech, instantly respond to another thought from a ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... coast lay some Indian towns, from which the inhabitants repaired to the ship, on floats made of sealskins, blown full of wind, two of which they fasten together, and, sitting between them, row with great swiftness, and carry considerable burdens. They very readily traded for glass and such trifles, with which the old and the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... increasing swiftness he felt his remaining mind growing numb and his will weaken. His body slumped against the ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... dissolved in a single thaw, so that the entire precipitation of months is in a few hours hurried down the flanks of the mountains, and through the ravines that furrow them; the natural inclination of the surface promotes the swiftness of the gathering currents of diluvial rain and of melting snow, which soon acquire an almost irresistible force and power of removal and transportation; the soil itself is less compact and tenacious ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... martyr, wished to know how a teeny little light like that could possibly hurt anything, and seemed incapable of understanding that if one flash of sunlight could make a picture, it could also destroy it with equal swiftness. Oswald was forced to comfort himself with the reflection that there were still three plates uninjured; and, when all was ready, the six operators squeezed themselves in the dark room, to watch the process of development, indulging the while in the ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... who leaped at me and stunned me with a blow on the temple. I am telling you this without any details, Monsieur le Juge d'Instruction, for the simple reason that I remember only the principal facts, and that these facts followed upon one another with extraordinary swiftness." ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... "Not with equal swiftness," said I. "I do assure you, friend, to be able to move at a good swinging pace over level ground is something not to be sneezed at. Not," said I, lifting up my voice, "that I would for a moment compare walking on the level ground ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... out of his childish simplicity, was for jumping down: No, (saies the other) let us rather swarm down, there being a bell rope then hanging down through that place to the clockhouse below. Now, this last they did, and a gentleman walking there beneath at that time, sees two children come with that swiftness down the rope, like arrows from a bow, who were both taken up for dead, on the place. This hapned on a Sunday ith' afternoon, in sermon time. The news coming into the parish church, that two children falling off from ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips
... For we have now no thought in us but France, Save those to God, that run before our business. Therefore, let our proportions for these wars Be soon collected, and all things thought upon That may with reasonable swiftness add More feathers to our wings; for, God before, We'll chide this Dauphin at his father's door. Therefore let every man now task his thought, That this fair action may on ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... than once seen the temperature fall to thirty and forty degrees below zero, and the Angara has still carried down drifting ice without entirely freezing. This is no doubt owing to the swiftness of its current. If therefore the Tartars have no other means of crossing the river, I can assure your Highness that they will not enter Irkutsk in ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... look, it constantly comes back in my dreams. I went farther down the valley. The full-rushing stream went with me like a dog. It made no murmur, only a low gurgle as it shot along. It seemed to draw me with it to its last leap. As I looked at its swiftness, I thought how hard it would be to get out of. The swiftness of it comes to me yet in ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... and Jackanapes sighed and went home again. That very afternoon he and Tony rode the two donkeys, and Tony managed to get thrown, and even Jackanapes' donkey kicked. But it was jolting, clumsy work after the elastic swiftness and the dainty mischief of the ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... Virginia with the unexpectedness and appalling swiftness of a bolt from the blue. From a tranquil state of contentment and comparative happiness she suddenly awoke to the fact that she had made a terrible mistake, and when she realized the full significance of her misfortune, she sank ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... moon, stars, comets, meteors, &c., have been introduced to denote glory, grandeur, power, &c.; lions, leopards, tigers, serpents, stags, have been employed to signify courage, strength, prudence, swiftness, &c. ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... detail, are more general characteristics, though in greatly varying degrees. As some critic has well said, the Anglo-Saxon poet seems to presuppose a knowledge of his subject-matter by those he addresses. Such a style is capable of great swiftness of movement, and is well suited to rapid description and narrative; but at ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... numbers could have gained the day Victory was ours, for the Hellenic fleet Counted in all but thrice a hundred sail, Of which were ten for swiftness set apart. But with a thousand galleys Xerxes came— His muster-roll I know—whereof the ships For swiftness picked two hundred were and seven. Think you herein ours was the weaker side? Some deity against us turned the scale, And ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... upon his errand, and sailed for Tintagel in 'The Swan,' and the journey did not take him long, for the ship flew through the waters like a real bird, as though she knew she was bound on her master's errand, and that his life depended on her swiftness. ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... uttered these words, with incredible energy and swiftness she flew upon Lothario with the naked dagger, so manifestly bent on burying it in his breast that he was almost uncertain whether these demonstrations were real or feigned, for he was obliged to have recourse to all his skill and strength to prevent her from striking him; ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... doors of England with the hammers of earthquake, and a white smoke went up into the black heavens. There one could thoroughly realise what an awful thing a wave really is. I talk like other people about the rushing swiftness of a wave. But the horrible thing about a wave is its hideous slowness. It lifts its load of water laboriously: in that style at once slow and slippery in which a Titan might lift a load of rock and ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... will often get away; they run with amazing swiftness, and in the heart of the jungle it is almost impossible to make them rise. A couple of sharp terriers, or a good retriever, will sometimes flush them, but the best way is to go along the edge of the jungle in the early morn, as I have described. The peachicks, about seven or ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... dark glen a spark of light suddenly shot—almost like a rocket in swiftness. Jack saw ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... take two steps per second, and be caught at once." Would not Nature have done better for the mouse had she suppressed the cat? Is it not a fact that small animals often owe their escape to their want of swiftness, which enables them to change their direction readily? A man can easily overtake a mouse in a straight run, but the ready ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... child has never been seen, and to this day I do not know whether it was the little one or his mother who received the kiss. In their young faces, in their eyes, their smile, their every movement, you could read the same deep and tender thought. Their arms were interlaced with such glad swiftness; they drew close together with such marvelous unanimity of impulse that, conscious of nothing but themselves, they did not so much as see me. A second child, however—a little girl, who had turned her back upon them in sullen discontent—threw me a glance, and the expression in her eyes ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... be careful whom I admitted, but I had scarcely withdrawn the latch when the door was pushed open, and a slim, thickly-cloaked figure glided past me into the room. I knew her by the supple swiftness of her movements. Ray sat still, and smoked with ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the ancients, especially contrived for swiftness; propelled both by sails and oars; of the latter ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... not easily discouraged by the swiftness of their prey; they count on their own resistance in order to tire the game; some of them also manage their pursuit in the most intelligent way, so as to preserve their own strength while the tracked animal's strength goes on diminishing until exhaustion and fatigue place ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... the free spirit of mankind at length Throws its last fetters off; and who shall place A limit to the giant's untamed strength, Or curb his swiftness in the forward race? Far, like the comet's way through infinite space, Stretches the long untravelled path of light Into the depth of ages; we may trace, Distant the brightening glory of his flight, Till the receding beams are ...
— The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society • William Withington
... the blackest coffee in the world. Now and then on the hillside, in some little clearing, the fodder stood in loose, bulging shocks bound with green withes, while some old man or half-grown lad plied his husking-peg in the corn spread out before him, working with the swiftness and the dexterity of a machine, ripping the husk with one stroke of the wooden peg bound to his middle finger, and snapping the ear at its socket, and tossing it into the air, where it gleamed like a piece ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... safety find, A pack of dogfish had him in the wind. He scours away; and, to avoid the foe, Descends for shelter to the shades below: There Cerberus lay watching in his den, (He had not seen a hare the lord knows when.) Out bounced the mastiff of the triple head; Away the hare with double swiftness fled; Hunted from earth, and sea, and hell, he flies (Fear lent him wings) for safety to the skies. How was the fearful animal distrest! Behold a foe more fierce than all the rest: Sirius, the swiftest of the heavenly ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... at first, for now one passed under our stern and raked us, now the other performed the same manoeuvre; while we, with our braces shot away, our masts and yards injured, and our sails shot through and torn, were unable to move with sufficient swiftness to avoid them. ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... him, that we want. Expende Hannibalem. Very good, but not in a scale capacious only of a single quality at a time, for it is their union, and not their addition, that assures the value of each separately. It was not this or that which gave him his weight in council, his swiftness of decision in battle that outran the forethought of other men,—it was Hannibal. But this prosaic element in Dryden will force itself upon me. As I read him, I cannot help thinking of an ostrich, to be classed with flying ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... she had played her ace of trumps and by some miracle lost the trick. If this grisly operation did not daunt the man, nothing, not even the transferring of honey, would. She watched him as he raised the frame and jerked it down with a strong swiftness which her less powerful wrists had never been able to achieve. The bees tumbled off in a dense shower, asking questions to the last; then, sighting the familiar entrance to the hive, they bustled in without waiting to investigate the cause of ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... was resumed. A lightning artist appeared, drawing caricatures and portraits with incredible swiftness. He even went so far as to ask for subjects from the audience, and the names of prominent men were shouted to him from the gallery. He drew portraits of the President, of Grant, of Washington, of Napoleon Bonaparte, of Bismarck, of Garibaldi, of ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... never in these books to be found wanting in swiftness and vigilance; when he cheers his comrades it is no longer in a half-hearted way, but as at the beginning of the eleventh book, with the utmost vigour and confidence, "Arma parate, animis et spe ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... and his Ogilvies in deciding it. But, after the battle, there was a pursuit of the foe for fourteen miles, and the slaughter was such as to give rise to the tradition of thousands slain on Baillie's side against six men on Montrose's. Many prisoners were taken, but the chief nobles escaped by the swiftness of their horses. Argyle was one of these. Carried by his horse to Queens-ferry, he got on board a ship in the Firth of Forth (the third time, it was noted, of his saving himself in this fashion), sailed down the Firth into the open sea, and did not come ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... a sad disadvantage, and were surrounded evidently by superior numbers. The red-shirted chief was on the point of being clubbed by one tall savage, while desperately engaged with another. Ralph, seeing this, leveled his gun with a swiftness that came of long practice amid the ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... of the great difficulties which would attend the siege of a great city, well stored with provisions and naturally defended by surrounding deserts; these deserts were infested by clouds of Arabs, who, appearing and disappearing with the swiftness and suddenness of a whirlwind, continually harassed her enemies. Thus defended without, and supported by a strong garrison within, Zenobia braved her antagonist from the towers of Palmyra as boldly as she had defied him in the field of battle. The expectation of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... the arts of peace, Whose restless motions less than wars do cease: Peace is not freed from labour, but from noise; And war more force, but not more pains employs. Such is the mighty swiftness of your mind, That, like the earth's, it leaves our sense behind, While you so smoothly turn and roll our sphere, That rapid motion does but rest appear. For as in nature's swiftness, with the throng Of flying orbs while ours ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... and confused by the suddenness of her action, and the swiftness of her departure, the King stood for a moment inert, gazing up the rocky height with the air of one who has seen a vision of heaven withdrawn again into its native element. Some darkening doubt troubled his mind, and it was with an altogether changed ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... committed the task of making man and all other animals, and of endowing them with all needful faculties. This Epimetheus did, and his brother overlooked the work. Epimetheus then gave to the different animals their several gifts of courage, strength, swiftness and sagacity. He gave wings to one, claws to another, a shelly covering to the third. Man, superior to all other animals, came last. But for man Epimetheus had nothing,— he had bestowed all his gifts elsewhere. He came to his brother for help, and Prometheus, ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... choice in them. The measure on one side had been taken, and it was in all men's hearts, but the abysses on the other no man had sounded. 'The danger of stirring things,'—the dangers, too, of that unscanned swiftness that too late ties leaden pounds to his heels were the dangers that were always threatening the Elizabethan movement, and defining and curbing it. The wisest men of that time leaned towards the monarchy, ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... whole forest was enveloped in flame. Afar up the wood-crowned hill, the overtopping trees shot forth pinnacles and walls and streamers of arrowy fire. The entire hill-side was an ocean of glowing and surging fiery billows. Favored by the gale, the conflagration spread with lightning swiftness over an illimitable extent of country, filling the atmosphere with driving clouds of suffocating fume, and leaving a broad and blackened trail of spectral trunks shorn of limbs and foliage, smoking and burning, to mark the ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... other. Paup-Puk-Keewiss agreed, and they ran before all the warriors. He was victor, and came in first; but, not to terminate the race too soon, he gave the bear-chief some specimens of his skill and swiftness by forming eddies and whirlwinds with the sand, as he leaped and turned about him. As the bear-chief came up, he drove an arrow through him, and a great chief fell. Having done this, he told his young men to take all those blackfish (meaning the bears), and ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... allowed to walk on the wide beach that stretched in front of the gay houses facing the sea. Cormorants dived under the long rollers that came crashing in from the Pacific; gulls wheeled and screamed in the soft wind; alert little birds darted here and there with incredible swiftness, leaving tiny footprints across the ribs and furrows of the wet sand. Far to the southward a dark barrier of mountains rose out of the sea. Sometimes I sat with my back against the dunes watching the drag of the outgoing water rolling the pebbles after it, making a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... mind that hereafter one might expect almost anything from Linda. She would no longer follow a suggestion unless the suggestion accorded with her sense of right and justice. It was barely possible that it might be required to please her inclinations. Eileen's mind worked with unbelievable swiftness. She tore at her subject like a vulture tearing at a feast, and like a vulture she reached the vitals swiftly. She prefaced her question with a dry laugh. Then she leaned forward and asked softly: "Linda, dear, why haven't you ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... were standing up. The nearer swifter platform he perceived was empty to the right of him, and far across the space the platform running in the opposite direction was coming crowded and passing away bare. With incredible swiftness a vast crowd had gathered in the central space before his eyes; a dense swaying mass of people, and the shouts grew from a fitful crying to a voluminous incessant clamour: "The Sleeper! The Sleeper!" ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... only perpetrated at night. The quarry was selected during the day, and arrangements made for a descent. After the victim was asleep the band dashed down upon him, and sheared him of his goods with incredible swiftness. Those near would raise the cry of "Raiders!" and attack the robbers. If the latter had secured their booty they retreated with all possible speed, and were soon lost in the crowd. If not, they would offer battle, and signal for assistance from the ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... everywhere in chains, everywhere cast down, wiped away her tears at the sight of thy earliest labours, and seemed to find a solace for all her woes in the hope of finding in thee her avenger. On the dread theatre of war thy swiftness, skill, and order amazed all nations. Thou wast regarded as the model of warrior-kings. There exists a still more glorious name: the name of citizen-king.... Once more open thy heart to the noble and virtuous sentiments that ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... had a training-chair in my hand, on which Timour had just been sitting, and I had time to thrust it into his face. Thrice with incredible swiftness he struck the iron-chair, right, left, and right, as a cat strikes, then seized it in his teeth. At the same moment I brought my loaded whip heavily ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... tablet commemorating the fact. For the place is infected with the patriotic disease of monumentomania. The drawback is that with every change of administration the streets are re-baptized and the statues shifted to make room for new favourites; so the civic landmarks come and go, with the swiftness of a cinematograph. ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... Down the road, running with silent, awful swiftness, he saw the long, low body of the leading wolf flashing through the bars of moonlight across the road, and ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... endears This silent spot to my advancing years, Here dwells eternal peace, eternal rest, In shades like these to live is to be bless'd. While happiness evades the busy crowd, In rural coverts loves the maid to shroud. And thou too, Inspiration, whose wild flame Shoots with electric swiftness through the frame, Thou here dost love to sit with upturn'd eye, And listen to the stream that murmurs by, The woods that wave, the gray owl's silken flight, The mellow music of the listening night. Congenial calms more welcome to my breast Than maddening ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... any suspicion of the state of things, but he had had too much sorrowful experience to be able to keep his unwilling eyes closed to this new consternation. The cold shower seemed to flood his soul; the bright drops descending with such swiftness of beauty, instinct with sun-life, turned into points of icy steel that pierced his heart. But he must not heed himself! he must speak to her! He must say something through the terrible ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... says Mrs. Ponto; and indeed it WAS a finger, as knotted as a turkey's drumstick, and splaying all over the piano. When she had banged out the tune slowly, she began a different manner of 'Gettin' up Stairs,' and did so with a fury and swiftness quite incredible. She spun up stairs; she whirled up stairs: she galloped up stairs; she rattled up stairs; and then having got the tune to the top landing, as it were, she hurled it down again shrieking to ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... melancholy, at this evidence of her long absence. The objects which we see habitually do not remind us of the rapidity of life; they decline insensibly with ourselves; but those which we behold again, after having for some years lost sight of them, impress us powerfully with the idea of that swiftness with which the tide of our days flows on. Paul was no less overwhelmed and affected at the sight of this great papaw tree, loaded with fruit, than is the traveller, when, after a long absence from his own country, he finds not his contemporaries, but their children, whom he left at the breast, ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... a singularly intelligent child, and so must often have wondered what has become of all the interesting things that you read about in the old fairy-tales—the shoes of swiftness, and the sword of sharpness, and the cloak that made its wearer invisible, and things like that. Well, the fact is all these things are still in the world, hidden about somewhere, only people are so busy with new inventions, ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... himself the seer. It was thus proved to him that he could not foresee all things. (19) However, Samuel's error was pardonable. God's first choice had rested upon Eliab. Only on account of his violent nature, his swiftness to anger against David, the position destined for him was transferred to his youngest brother. (20) Eliab was in a sense compensated by seeing his daughter become the wife of Rehoboam. Thus he, too, enjoys the distinction of being among the ancestors of the Judaic kings, and Samuel's ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... my heart and swiftness in my feet, I climbed over the first hill, and soon the second one. The moonlight upon the white country showed me a clear path to the white man's cattle. With my hand upon the knife in my belt, I leaned heavily against the fence while counting ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... the frontier pushed westward with magic swiftness. The Grass River Valley, once a wide reach of emptiness and solitude, where only one homestead stood a lone bulwark against the forces of the wilderness, now, after a decade and a half, beheld its prairie dotted with freeholds, where the foundations ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... Twice he refused obedience, and the matter being pressed, resorted to the simple expedient of retiring from the scene. Keith dropped everything and pursued. Gringo crawled under things, but was followed even to the dustiest and cob-webbiest farthest corner under the porch; he tried swiftness and dodging, but was trailed in all his doublings and twistings at top speed; he tried running straight away over the sand hills, and at first left his horrible master behind, but the horrible master possessed a horrible persistence. Finally he shut his eyes and squatted, ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... object must have been, for instance, the palace of Sennacherib, on the edge of its battlemented platform (mound of Koyunjik), rising directly above the waters of the Tigris,—named in the ancient language "the Arrow" from the swiftness of its current—into the golden and crimson glory of an Eastern sunset! Although the sameness and unwieldy nature of the material used must have put architectural beauty of outline out of the question, the general effect must have been one of massive grandeur and majesty, aided ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... twelve—say, "Gimme a ride;" some boys and a few girls—over twelve—say, "You look lonesome, mister." What the hoodlums of the cities say will hardly bear repetition. In spite of its swiftness the automobile offers opportunities for studying human nature appreciated ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... kept in check by a vigorous hand, went quietly as far as the middle of the faubourg. There they began to trot. Little by little, whether they warmed over it, or whether they were urged, they gained in swiftness, and once past Bercy, the carriage seemed to fly, so great was the ardor of the coursers. These horses ran thus as far as Villeneuve St. George's, where relays were waiting. Then four instead of two ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... with farr less compass move, Serv'd by more noble then her self, attaines Her end without least motion, and receaves, As Tribute such a sumless journey brought Of incorporeal speed, her warmth and light; Speed, to describe whose swiftness Number failes. So spake our Sire, and by his count'nance seemd Entring on studious thoughts abstruse, which Eve 40 Perceaving where she sat retir'd in sight, With lowliness Majestic from her seat, And Grace that ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... though, if this explanation was unsound, a deeper analyst than I must give the right one. Having launched our hero upon the current which was bearing him so rapidly along, she appeared but half-pleased at its swiftness. She had succeeded too well; she had played her game too cleverly and she wished to mix up the cards. Newman had told her, in due season, that her friend was "satisfactory." The epithet was not romantic, but Mrs. Tristram ...
— The American • Henry James
... them forty yards wide, and near the higher parts of the ledge which then rise about twenty feet, and terminate abruptly within eighty or ninety yards of the southern side. Between them and the perpendicular cliff on the south, the whole body of water runs with great swiftness. A few small cedars grow near this ridge of rocks which serves as a barrier to defend a small plain of about three acres shaded with cottonwood, at the lower extremity of which is a grove of the same tree, where are several Indian cabins of sticks; below the point of them the river ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... by main strength to keep her from falling from the sofa, and thanked Providence for the power vouchsafed to her. She reached the bell and rang it violently, and hearing it, Mrs. Cupp came upstairs with heavy swiftness. ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... on her, and showed him that her square and rugged face was pale and grave and, he thought, empty-looking, as if something had deprived it of its former possession, the ardent vitality, the generous enthusiasm, the look of swiftness he had loved. ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... nimble Composure than the fore-mentioned, and fitter for Chase. Yorkshire, Cumberland, Northumberland, and the North parts, breed the Light, Nimble, swift slender Dog. And our open Champaigns train up excellent Grey-Hounds, hugely admired for his Swiftness, Strength, and Sagacity. And lastly, the little Beagle bred in all Countries, is of exceeding Cunning, ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... whispered Helen, beginning suddenly with desperate swiftness; "why should you fail? Why can you not listen to me, pity me, wait until you are strong? You have won, you will not forget—and is there no peace, can you not rest in this faith, and fear no more?" The man ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... threw their radiance forward in overlapping cones; the four cantering horses swarmed and steamed; the body of the coach followed like a great shadow; and this lit picture slid with a sort of ineffectual swiftness over the black field of night, and was eclipsed by the buildings ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was so sudden and unexpected in Hugo that all were vague about details. They saw him in a catapultic lunge, mesmeric in its swiftness, and they saw Pilzer go down, his leg twisted under him and his head banging the floor. Hugo stood, half ashamed, half frightened, yet ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... Mexican woman, Maria. As Buck recognized her he rose quietly and moved swiftly toward the door. But if he had hoped to catch her unawares, he was disappointed. He had scarcely taken a step when, through the telltale mirror, he saw her straighten like a flash and move back with catlike swiftness toward the passage leading to the kitchen. When he reached the living-room she stood there calm and casual, with quite the air of one entering for ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... be soiled with what George said at the sound. With the swiftness and the scorching of flame his dreadful commination leapt from the tortured Rose, terrified in her basket, to the red- headed Pinner boy wrestling in prayer upon the haystack—from the roughness of the lane that laboured his passage to ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... that graceful, almost phantom-like swiftness of movement that was so much a part of his manner, Sah-luma escorted his visitor to the further end of the great hall. There,—throwing aside a curtain of rich azure silk which partially draped two large folding-doors,—he ushered him into a magnificent apartment ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... rebels. Others rebel with him, among them some who are too wise to be profitable on a council of war. War does not call for wisdom, but for swiftness in striking. Percy, who is framed for swiftness in striking, loses half of his slender chance because his friends are too wise to advise desperate measures. Nevertheless, his troops shake the King's troops. ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... moonlight without the lodge and very quiet. The night was far gone; already we could smell the morning, and it would come apace. Knowing the swiftness of that approach and what the early light would bring, I strove for a courage which should be the steadfastness of the Christian and not the vainglorious pride of ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... Soon, however, it became apparent that the prowess of the little Union craft had been entirely underestimated, and in the combat which ensued the very smallness of the "Monitor" gave her a great advantage, in the swiftness of her movements, over her gigantic opponent, not unlike an undersized but agile and skilful athlete in encounter with a large and lumbering, though more powerful, antagonist. Lieutenant Worden was the hero of the occasion in the rapidity of his manoeuvring, while Lieutenant ...
— Thirteen Chapters of American History - represented by the Edward Moran series of Thirteen - Historical Marine Paintings • Theodore Sutro
... her with bleak fingers; and one of Edith's chief functions was to comfort and reassure her for as long a while each time as was required to reach the stage of being able to shake them off. Here was one, however, too icily convincing to be shaken off. It fell upon her with the swiftness of a revelation. Something unpleasant was going to happen to her; something perhaps worse ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... closed carriage with her silvery voice in his ear instead of the keen silence of the winter air, would have been torture. Von Rosen wondered at himself for disliking Mrs. Edes in particular, whereas he disliked most women in general. There was something about her feline motions instinct with swiftness, and concealed claws, and the half keen, half sleepy glances of her green-blue eyes, which irritated him beyond measure, and he was ashamed of being irritated. It implied a power over him, and yet ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... that dinner was over that night with unusual swiftness, and that they had scarcely sat down when they rose again for the women to leave the room. Yet, short though it seemed, it had been a momentous hour, for in that hour all the perplexity and the anger that had made his very blood so bitter ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... reeds tied together on a strip of leather, which they stick in the backs of their girdle or hang over their backs. The magic rattling keeps them from falling asleep while running, so they say; besides, the deer-hoofs lend them the swiftness of the stag. Some runners adorn themselves with feathers from various birds, preferably the macaw and the peacock, tying them to short sticks. The few Tarahumares who have ever seen a peacock think a good deal of this bird, ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... surprising swiftness, not only in Palace Yard, but throughout Bridge Street and St. Margaret's Street, and the railings looking thence into the yard became gradually banked with rows of earnest faces. Little groups formed on the pavement about the corners of Parliament Street. Faces appeared at the ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... every species of animal body. But that which crowns our wonder in contemplating it is, that it rises from the utmost depths of the sea to the highest tops of the mountains, and flowing from the opened veins returns to the low seas; then once more, and with extreme swiftness, it mounts again and returns by the same descent, thus rising from the inside to the outside, and going round from the lowest to the highest, from whence it rushes down in a natural course. Thus by these two movements combined in a constant ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... the racers? All assembled together near the white columns. It is a beautiful sight. Forty boys and girls in picturesque attire darting with electric swiftness in and out among each other, or sailing in pairs and triplets, beckoning, chatting, whispering in the fullness of ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... will get across a pool and grab a bait before any other denizen of the place can possibly get to it. Their agility is the more surprising when one remembers that the grown hornpout is but a sluggish chap and that they are not built on lines that presage swiftness. You may catch the big horn pouts at any season, but these little chaps are peculiar to the dog days. I have an idea they hibernate in the mud at bottom until warm weather calls them forth, and that by next spring, so voracious is their ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... room to a small closet. Even in the strain of the moment he observed the extraordinary grace and swiftness of her movements. She was very slender, very lithe, and she moved like ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... at noon time, and they reached Sodom at the approach of evening. As a rule, angels proclaim their errand with the swiftness of lightning, but these were angels of mercy, and they hesitated to execute their work of destruction, ever hoping that the evil would be turned aside from Sodom.[169] With nightfall, the fate of Sodom was sealed irrevocably, and ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... instinctively to one of a number of books of reference which stood on his desk: they turned with practised swiftness to a page over which his eye ran just as swiftly. He ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... effusion of gratitude her most coaxing caresses, lavished fond names on him, saying again and again in the midst of her honeyed words, "Let me have it!" in a thousand different tones of voice; she wrapped him in tenderness, covered him with her looks with a swiftness that found him defenceless; at last she charmed away ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... fellows by his readiness and the extent of his information. In the life of another man, these boyish performances might be set down merely as signs of promise; but Douglas was so soon immersed in real politics, and rose to distinction with such astounding swiftness, that his performances as a schoolboy may well be accounted the actual beginning, and not merely a premonition, of his career. He was only twenty, when, in June, 1833, he set forth to ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... longer necessary or even possible to steer the Astronef. She was directed solely by the repulsive force which would carry her with ever-increasing swiftness, as the attraction of the earth diminished, towards that neutral point at which the attraction of the earth is exactly balanced by the moon. Her momentum would carry her past this point, and then the "R. Force" would be gradually brought into play in order to avert the unpleasant consequences ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... find a better example of hell-beautiful than when he tore around his corral in a tantrum, as lithe and graceful as a black panther. His mane stood on end; his eyes and nostrils were of a colour; the muscles looked to be bursting through the silken gloom of his coat. His swiftness was something incredible. He caught and most horribly killed Jim Baxter's hound before the latter could get out of the corral—and a bear-hound is a pretty agile animal. We had to tie Jim, or he'd made an end of Geronimo. He left the ranch right after that. ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... eighteen minutes past the hour. Fourteen minutes later, following brief tests of heart and pulse, the two attending physicians agreed that the half-breed was quite satisfactorily defunct. They likewise coincided in the opinion that the hanging had been conducted with neatness, and with swiftness, and with the least possible amount of physical suffering for the deceased. One of the doctors went so far as to congratulate Mr. Dramm upon the tidiness of his handicraft. He told him that in all his experience he had never seen a hanging pass off more smoothly, and that for an ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... the delicate ebb and flow of the rose tint in her cheeks, the bright flecks of gold in the otherwise brown hair, and the light poise of her dainty rounded figure as she stepped along beside him with an almost aerial grace and swiftness. ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... known, a hundred and fifty years after Glueck, how to make it speak, through music, to more modern ears. It was carried through without any lowering of the curtain, and the splendid story unfolded itself through a music at once sensuous and heroic, with a swiftness and a passion which ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... short, to all that he had learned, as a mercenary, under Robert the Frison, and among the highly civilized warriors of Flanders and Normandy, must be attributed the fact, that he and his little army defied, for years, the utmost efforts of the Normans, appearing and disappearing with such strange swiftness, and conquering against such strange odds, as enshrouded the guerilla captain in an atmosphere of myth and wonder, only to be accounted for, in the mind of Normans as well as English, by the supernatural counsels of ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... to cast some glances into the confused REICHS-History of the time;—timid glances, for the element is of dangerous, extensive sort, mostly jungle and shaking bog;—and we must travel through this corner of it, as on shoes of swiftness, treading lightly. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... a question that neither Harry nor Philip could answer; but they told what they knew, and could only suppose that he had walked out of his depth, when the swiftness of the current, and his own timidity, had prevented him from regaining his footing. So that the full explanation had to remain until Fred was in a condition to give ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... she squealed and added something in muffled French that strangely reminded him of what Hobbs had said in English. Then she deposited an armful of rugs and magazines at Robin's feet, and clutched wildly at a post actually some ten feet away but which appeared to be coming toward her with obliging swiftness, so nicely was the deck rotating for her. ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... stirring of the blood. Her recollections of the range were all of the heroic. She recalled the few times when she was permitted to go on the round-up, and to witness the breaking of new horses, and the swiftness, grace, and reckless bravery of the riders, the moan and surge of herds, the sweep of horsemen, came back and filled her mind with large and free and splendid pictures. And now it was ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... wolf is, to set a bloodhound on him, bred expressly for this particular sport; large greyhounds being placed in ambush, at proper distances, and slipped, when the wolf makes his appearance in crossing from one wood to another. These dogs, by their superior swiftness, are soon at his haunches, and worry and impede his flight, until their heavy friend the hound comes up; for the strongest greyhound could never manage a wolf, unless he was assisted in his meritorious ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... two hundred miles lay through a country infested with Utah and Apache Indians. Three or four days of swift riding would carry them through this dangerous region to a place of security on the Arkansas River. If they should meet a hostile band, it was agreed that they would trust for safety in the swiftness of their steeds, which had already proved themselves capable ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... and an aversion to others, even when they were absent. In the mean while he consider'd all the several sorts of Animals, and saw that they were all clothed either with Hair, Wool, or several sorts of Feathers: he consider'd their great Swiftness and Strength, and that they were all arm'd with Weapons defensive, as Horns, Teeth, Hoofs, Spurs, Nails, and the like. But that he himself was Naked and Defenceless, Slow and Weak, in respect of them. For whenever there happened any Controversy about gathering of such ripe Fruits as fell from ...
— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail
... With exemplary swiftness Bob Gliddery departed, and returned. Lizzie, following him, arrived as one of the two female domestics of the Fellowship Porters arranged on the snug little table by the bar fire, Miss Potterson's supper of hot sausages ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... better than he deserved; for, after much waste of time in tent pitching, flag flying, gold curtaining, and other such masquerading, he gave the French battle at a place called Guinegate: where they took such an unaccountable panic, and fled with such swiftness, that it was ever afterwards called by the English the Battle of Spurs. Instead of following up his advantage, the King, finding that he had had enough of real fighting, ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... a keen pleasure and an ample reward in teaching a pupil as apt and as eager to learn as Honora. And Mr. Spence, if he attempted at all to account for the swiftness with which the hours of that long afternoon slipped away, may have attributed their flight to the discovery in himself of hitherto latent talent for instruction. At the little Casino, he had bought, from the professional ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... wings," sing the wild swans. "Let us bear thee up to the great lakes, the perpetually roaring elvs (rivers), that rush on with arrowy swiftness; where the oak forest has long ceased, and the birch-tree becomes stunted. Rest thee between our extended wings: we fly up to Sulitelma, the island's eye, as the mountain is called; we fly from the vernal green ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... than boldness, for to be killed here was useless and foreign to his purpose, fame resting in the fort, and there the heads to be taken. Thus, when they sprang up at the call, he was unfatigued, with cartridges still in his gun, and wind in his body, and up the hill he raced with swiftness, so that scarcely two of his companions matched pace with him, and those who had cried: "Coward, coward!" panted in his rear, and perceived it was a hero ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... other side the Mississippi. It shone for a minute with an intense brightness, and then, to their amazement, began revolving in a circle of a foot or more in diameter. It sped round and round with such swiftness that it resembled a wheel of fire without the slightest break in ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... indistinguishable from the whirlwind of dust. Out of this they would emerge to stand panting in front of each other with tongues pendant and red eyes rolling. Finally the bear, nearly exhausted, made a sudden charge, the bull leaped aside, backed again with incredible swiftness, caught the bear in the belly, tossed him so high that he met the hard earth with a loud cracking of bone. The vaqueros circled about the maddened bull, set his hide thick with arrows, tripped him with the lasso. A wiry little Mexican in yellow, galloping in ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... "The swiftness, the strength, and the scent of the dog have enabled him to conquer other animals; and, without the dog, man perhaps could not have formed a society. The dog is the only animal which has followed man into every part ...
— True Stories about Cats and Dogs • Eliza Lee Follen
... morning of July 6th we reached the Seal Islands expansion. Around these islands the river flows with such force and swiftness that the water can be seen to pile up in ridges in the channel. Here we found Donald Blake's tilt. Donald is Gilbert's brother, and in winter they trap together up the Nascaupee valley as far as Seal Lake, which lies 100 miles from Northwest River post. Often in imagination ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... deprived of all danger. As they made, as it were a part of the programme of the fete, they had feared being compelled to fulfil their agreements, and had fled at the moment of ascension. Their courage had been in inverse ratio to the square of their swiftness ...
— A Voyage in a Balloon (1852) • Jules Verne
... Burgoyne had pointed out the possibility of an invasion, and the defenceless state of the coasts and of the country generally. The coup d'etat in France had also created considerable public uneasiness. The secrecy, sternness of purpose, swiftness of action, boldness, and indifference to bloodshed shown by the president of the French republic, caused most men to reflect upon the possibility of some terrible coup de main being attempted against England; the president, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Captain Swope from his surprise and terror. He had suddenly moved with catlike swiftness; when I lowered my eyes from the rigging, I saw he had left his refuge behind the mizzenmast and was standing in the open deck. Aye, there he stood in that light, which had reached its maximum, revealed to all eyes—and stamped upon his face was an expression of insane fury so terrible and deadly ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... view the huts. Full of indignation that none exerted himself to fall upon them, I took upon me with my men to go round and take the enemy in rear. They took to their heels, and I pursued; but we had need of the swiftness of deer to be able to come up with them. I came so near, however, that they threw away their cloaths, to run with the ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... next to the Pasiegos, are the best cudgel-players in Spain, and in the world. Francisco held in his hand part of a broomstick, which he had broken in the stable, whence he had just ascended. With the swiftness of lightning he foiled the stroke of Chaleco, and, in another moment, with a dexterous blow, struck the sword out of his hand, sending ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... descending into a little, ferny hollow, with a brook creeping along the bottom, along which a narrow footpath ran, when the crackle of a broken branch, and the quick tread of a foot, made her pause and look at the opposite bank, down which a young man was coming, with more swiftness than he seemed to desire, for he only saved himself from a plunge in the brook by leaping over it, with a bound that brought him to Clara's side. It was ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... listened long before he saw the apparition of a milk- white steed, with a young man on the back of it, advancing upon full stretch after the souls of about a hundred beagles, that were hunting down the ghost of a hare, which ran away before them with an unspeakable swiftness. As the man on the milk-white steed came by him, he looked upon him very attentively, and found him to be the young prince Nicharagua, who died about half a year before, and, by reason of his great virtues, was at that time lamented over all the western ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... we have a clue to the labouring-man's temper. The courage, the carelessness of discomfort, the swiftness to see what should be done, and to do it, are not inspired by any tradition of chivalry, any consciously elaborated cult. It is habitual with these men to be ready, and those fine actions which win our admiration ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... come with a swiftness that has outdone the hopes of the most sanguine optimists. In the first eleven days of November we have seen history in the making on a larger scale and with larger possibilities than at any time since the age of Napoleon, ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... the huntsman. "Have up the dogs. If that buck is the fiend himself, I'll have him before the day is out!" The twain were quickly in their saddles, and they had not been long in the wood before the one-horned buck was seen ahead, trotting with easy pace, yet with marvellous swiftness. ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... night to come, and to him the sun seemed fixed in the heavens. At Belle Plain Tom Ware was watching it with a shuddering sense of the swiftness of its flight. But at last the tops of the tall trees obscured it; it sank quickly then and blazed a ball of fire beyond the Arkansas coast, while its dying glory spread aslant the heavens, turning the flanks of the gray clouds to violet and purple ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... bedlam of shots: the planes of the 91st Squadron were diving from the heights. They came on a steep slant that seemed marking them for crashing death against the huge cylinder flashing past. And their stabbing needles of machine-gun fire made a drumming tattoo, till the planes, with the swiftness of hawks, swept aside, formed to groups, tore on down toward the ground and then curved in great circles of speed to climb back ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... bareheaded, and notwithstanding the swiftness with which he passed as has been described, the Knight of the Rueful Countenance observed and noted all these trifles, and though he made the attempt, he was unable to follow him, for it was not granted to the feebleness of Rocinante to make way over such rough ground, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... The swiftness of transition, the laughing tenderness of her eyes so moved him—and so potent in her was the magical essence of womanhood—that he, Sir Nevil Sinclair, Baronet, of Bramleigh Beeches, came near to taking the dust of ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... command, he reconnoitred the position. Its strength is as great as that of the vale of Tempe, although it wants the lovely meadows and groves of trees for which the latter is celebrated. The river Apsus runs in a deep ravine between vast and lofty mountains, like the Peneus in appearance and swiftness, and beside it, at the foot of the mountains, runs one narrow and rocky path, along which it is difficult for an army to proceed even if unmolested, and utterly impossible if it be ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... was believed to be valuable in exorcising the devil. That of a dog preserved the owner from "dropsy or pestilence;" a versatile ring indeed! An old French book speaks of an engraved stone with the image of Pegasus being particularly healthful for warriors; it was said to give them "boldness and swiftness in flight." These two virtues sound a ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... to the pleasure of the reader; and the greater the soul of him who reads, his transports are the greater. Horace is always on the amble, Juvenal on the gallop, but his way is perpetually on carpet-ground. He goes with more impetuosity than Horace, but as securely; and the swiftness adds a more lively agitation to the spirits. The low style of Horace is according to his subject—that is, generally grovelling. I question not but he could have raised it, for the first epistle of the second book, which he writes to Augustus ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... gunner up on the hill used the match, and an awful thing happened. With the loud roar the whole hillside of rock and gravel and sand split down, not ten feet in front of the gun, moved with horrible swiftness upon the river, filled its bed, turned it from its course, and, sweeping on, swallowed the Manor House of Beaugard. There had been a crack in the hill, the water of the river had sapped its foundations, and it needed only this shock to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... breaks, nor cuts the fingers. It renders the bearer invincible in battle against any one under eighteen. Half a crown to seven and sixpence, according to size. These panoplies on cards are for juvenile knights-errant and very useful—shield of safety, sandals of swiftness, helmet of invisibility." ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... would say, "Labour is not all; we do not object to the cessation of labour—a mere provision for bodily ends; but we fear the lightness and vanity of what you call recreation." Do these people take heed of the swiftness of thought—of the impatience of thought? What will the great mass of men be thinking of, if they are taught to shun amusements and the thoughts of amusement? If any sensuality is left open to them, they will think of that. If not sensuality, then avarice, or ferocity for ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... cutting off his retreat they closed on him and captured him. They learned how the Trojan host was quartered; at the extremity of it was Rhesus, the newly arrived Thracian King, whose white horses were a marvel of beauty and swiftness. In return for his information Dolon begged them to spare his life, but Diomedes deemed it safer to slay him. The two Greeks penetrated the Thracian encampment, where they slew many warriors and escaped with the horses back to the ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... can move with swiftness and precision, when requested by friendly and responsible governments, to help curb threatened aggression. The stabilizing influence of this capacity has been dramatically demonstrated more than once ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Dwight D. Eisenhower • Dwight D. Eisenhower
... creature, when full-grown, measures about 17 feet long from the extremity of the snout to the insertion of the tail, above 16 feet in circumference round the body, and stands above 7 feet high. It runs with astonishing swiftness for its great bulk, at the bottom of lakes and rivers, but not with as much ease on land. When excited, it puts forth its full strength, which is prodigious. "I have seen," says a mariner, as we find it in Dampier, "one of these animals open its jaws, and seizing a boat between ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... hasty-pudding into a leathern bag, and then ripping it up, to induce the giant to do the same with his own stomach, which he does, and so kills himself; or how he frightens the giant with three heads, and so gets the coat of darkness, the cap of knowledge, the shoes of swiftness, and the sword of sharpness, and uses these to escape from other and more terrible masters, and to kill them; and gets the duke's daughter for his wife, and lives honoured and ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... shooting along with vigorous strokes, while the English trembled as they saw the frail bark spinning and leaping amid the muzzles of the alligators, and the huge dog-toothed trout: but with the swiftness of an arrow she reached the northern bank, drove her canoe among the bushes, and leaping from it, darted through some narrow opening in the bush, and vanished ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... giant organ, a note so low in pitch that it seemed a full octave below the lowest bass note ever struck. Whatever it was, the thundering vibration of infra-bass was coming nearer with startling swiftness. ...
— Zehru of Xollar • Hal K. Wells
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