"Climax" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the day's experience had been, the climax came after camp was made, supper served and cleared away, when a big bonfire was lighted and all sat about it talking over the happenings of the day, singing and putting on stunts. In the tourists' minds the guide and the grizzly were classed together; both were wild, strange ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... events into which she permitted herself to be drawn. Father and son! Her actions were normal; her mental state was not observable; but inwardly she retained no clear recollection of the hours that intervened between this and the astonishing climax. As from a distance, she heard ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... regards clerical manners, growing, as they had been, for many generations, reached their climax in the early part of the sixteenth century. It was a common thing for priests to drive a roaring trade as moneylenders, landlords of alehouses and gambling dens, and even in some cases, brothel-keepers. Papal ukases had proved ineffective to stem the current of clerical abuses. The ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... Joseppi, tired and sore after his hard day's work, wept, and after weeping as publicly as possible created a profound sensation by kissing the great prima-donna in full view of the applauding spectators. Then, to cap the climax, he proclaimed in a voice charged with emotion that Madame Careni-Amori never had sung better in all her life! This to an artist who had the rare faculty for knowing when she was off the key,—and who knew that she was very badly off ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... be cultivation of fruits and grains; the taming of wild fowl, cattle, horses, sheep and goats—but no swine; and a regular evolution up through the stages again by which the society of the past had reached its climax. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... part in the Bartlett-Higgins episode was unknown to the townspeople. Sam and Gertie had considerately kept silence. Beriah had not learned who sent him the warning note, the unlucky missive which had brought his troubles to a climax. But he was bound to learn it, he would find out soon, and then—No ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the North to control the South and the whole country will be realized. No human being could have been a greater orator than Douglas was at Alton; while Lincoln, in spite of disadvantages of voice and manner and physique, rose to great heights of eloquence. The climax of his speech was when he spoke of the world-old struggle between right and wrong. I was swept off my feet for the moment and seemed to see in his face something of the genius of Pinturicchio. Now I wonder if I was not befooled both as ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... (Kinigumiut) Eskimo construct complete figures of their totems. These are worked by means of concealed strings by the performers, a climax of art which is supposed to be particularly pleasing to the spirits addressed. Then the shaman (Tungalik)[9] has his own set of masks, hideous enough to strike terror to even the initiated. Each one of these represents a familiar spirit (tunghat)[10] ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes
... to suffer many buffets from his shipmates, while the storms and dangers which he braved on board the "North Star" are set forth with minute knowledge and intense power. The wreck of the "Golden Fleece" forms the climax to a thrilling ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... hard, sometimes far into the night, and seven days a week, with microscope, scalpel, collecting-net, and pen, and almost entirely with reference to Pawkins. The European reputation he had won had come as an incident in that great antipathy. He had gradually worked up to a climax in this last controversy. It had killed Pawkins, but it had also thrown Hapley out of gear, so to speak, and his doctor advised him to give up work for a time, and rest. So Hapley went down into a quiet village in Kent, and thought ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... assistance; Annie was stubborn and would obviously, wherever she was, do her best to make of herself a barrier against the world, the world that Blanche must know if life were to be tolerable here. The climax, to Blanche's mind, had been a ball just given by a local magnate and his wife who lived on the outskirts of Penzance. Ishmael had been invited and she with him, under the chaperonage of an elderly cousin of the Parson's who was staying at the Vicarage. And the ball, from Blanche's point ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... did not end with the conquest of the land. His war with the Armenians, after Palestine was subdued, marked the climax of his heroic deeds. Among the thirty-one kings whom Joshua had slain, there was one whose son, Shobach by name, was king of Armenia. With the purpose of waging war with Joshua, he united the forty-five kings of Persia and Media, and they were joined by the ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... his misanthropic uncle, who is induced to take to himself a wife, young, fair, and warranted silent, but who, in the end, turns out neither silent nor a woman at all. In "The Alchemist," again, we have the utmost cleverness in construction, the whole fabric building climax on climax, witty, ingenious, and so plausibly presented that we forget its departures from the possibilities of life. In "The Alchemist" Jonson represented, none the less to the life, certain sharpers of the metropolis, revelling in their ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... Riario, the Cardinal of Saint George, had like tastes and drew about him the thinkers and the writers of his age, when the Renascence was at its climax and the Constable of Bourbon had not yet been shot down at the walls a few hundred yards from the Corsini palace, bequeathing the plunder of Rome to his Spaniards and Germans. Here Erasmus spent those hours of delight of which he eloquently wrote ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... the bridge at —— Junction, five miles away, tremble under it. I listen and wait, every nerve on edge. A mile and a half the other side of our station the engine will first snort, then begin a series of shrieks—shrieks suggestive of warning, imminent danger, supreme peril, the climax of a tragical catastrophe. For at least five minutes shall I be compelled to listen while the engineer—if it be a real living engine-man who impels this chorus of fiends—runs the full scale of his shrill tooting, perhaps deeming it essential to the safety of the town, which ought to be asleep, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... no answer, so he knocked violently. Then he knocked with one hand while he rang with the other, but no sound save that of the clanging bell came from the gloomy house. As they stood forlornly in front of their own hall-door, a soft rain began to rustle amidst the bushes. At this climax of their troubles Maude burst into such a quiet, hearty, irresistible fit of laughter, that the angry Frank ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... can, dears," said Agnes, gently. "Poor mamma's best friend must be showed the hospitality that she always found here. But, oh, girls, I did hope to finish that book to-day! It may be weeks before I'm keyed up to the pitch again where I feel equal to writing the climax as it should ...
— Cicely and Other Stories • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Testaments, the complexus oppositorum; the Old Testament a uniform Christian Book as in the Apologists; The Old Testament a preliminary stage of the New Testament and a compound Book; The stages in the history of salvation; The law of freedom the climax of the ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... terrace." Any one of these will serve as instance of the break-neck beginning which Kipling made obligatory. Once started, the narrative must move, move, move furiously, each action and every speech pointing directly toward the unknown climax. A pause is a confession of weakness. This Poe taught for a special kind of story; and this a later generation, with a servility which would have amazed that sturdy fighter, requires of all narrative. Then the climax, which must neatly, quickly, and definitely ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... not merely incidentally. Not to accept that spirit is not to accept Homer. The manner of describing the Olympian family at the end of the first book is quite continuous throughout, and simply reaches its climax in the fourteenth book. Nobody ever believed in Homer's gods, as he must believe in Hektor and Achilles. (Puritans like Xenophanes were annoyed not with the gods for being as Homer described them, but with Homer for describing them as he did.) Virgil is more decorous; ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie
... Laps was spoken of, he just dreamed of his marriage with beautiful Amalia, whose train was carried by six pages. I fancy Juffrouw Laps would have made a pretty face if she had learned of this interpretation of her mysterious climax. ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... dramatic power was, it has already been remarked, Poliziano's aim and achievement. The want of characterization in the hero, the insignificance of the part allotted to Euridice, the total inadequacy of the tragic climax, measure the author's power as a dramatist. It is the lyrical passages—Aristeo's song, Orfeo's impassioned pleading, the bacchanalian dance chorus—that supply the firm supports of art upon which rests the slight fabric ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... he cleared his throat, and flourished his pocket-handkerchief, and sucked his orange; he rounded his periods with "you know what I mean" and "all that kind of thing," and seemed actually to revel in an anti-climax—"I think the hon. member's proposal an outrageous violation of constitutional propriety, a daring departure from traditional policy, and, in short, a great mistake." It taxed all the skill of the reporters' ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... them to reveal more. The awe of the climax of the poem is heightened by supernatural interventions. At last the gods themselves received permission from Zeus to enter the fray. They took sides, the shock of their meeting causing the nether deity to start ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... could treat her with only the utmost deference. He saw with alarm himself the mother's nervous and trembling apprehension, for there was scarcely anything under heaven that he would not rather face than a scene with a hysterical woman. If this was to be the climax of his policy he would rather have lost the thousand dollars than have had it occur. Rising from ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... sufficiently deplorable. We were without food or water in the midst of a desert: so were our horses, which were nearly done up. Our bones ached from the Mexican saddles; and, to complete our misery, the two rangers began to turn restive and talk of returning with the horses. At this, the climax of our misfortunes, I luckily hit upon a Mexican, who gave us intelligence of our carriage; and with renewed spirits, but very groggy ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... The more active and ingenious will have the advantage; they do have the advantage; and this fact is a constant stimulus. It has been operating for thirty years past with ever-increasing power. We seem to be approaching a climax,—a point beyond which flesh and blood cannot go. The enterprise of the more active spirits of our day is astounding; we begin to ask, "Will they stop at anything? What will they not undertake?" There are a great ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... fit that we who endeavour to rise to an elevation so sublime, should study first to leave behind carnal affections, the frailty of the senses, the passions that belong to matter; secondly, to learn by what means we may ascend to the climax of pure intellect, united with the powers above, without which never can we gain the lore of secret things, nor the magic that effects true wonders.—Tritemius "On Secret ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... public won't stand for new things. They want the old scenes rehashed. The public don't want to think; it wants to laugh. This story is all right for a book, but won't do for a play. I don't see why you quit a good thing for a risk like this. It is foolish and will lose money," he added, as a climax. ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... was in men. He had never made such speeches, and long afterward Edith could hear those cheers and see the faces of those working-men aglow with the hope, the passion, the fervent religion of democracy. And those days came to their glad climax that night when they met at the office of the Post to receive the returns, in an atmosphere quivering with excitement, with messenger boys and reporters coming and going, and in the street outside an immense crowd, swaying and rocking ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... the place described by the sand-diviner, and here Domini knew that her love was to be crowned, that she would become a mother. She hesitated to tell her husband, for in this place his misery and fear of men seemed mounting to a climax. Nevertheless, as if in a frantic attempt to get the better of his mental torture, he had gone off, saying he wanted to see ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... little blue-grey books, whose covers opened like window-shutters to reveal the dusty sun-glare and blazing colours of the East; Mr. Barrie had demonstrated what could be done in a little space through the panes of his Window in Thrums. The National Observer was at the climax of its career of heroic insistence upon lyrical brevity and a vivid finish, and Mr. Frank Harris was not only printing good short stories by other people, but writing still better ones himself in the dignified pages of the Fortnightly Review. Longman's Magazine, too, represented ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... Spencer. He was by no means devoid of aesthetic perception. He says that the sight of a mountain, and music heard in a cathedral were two of the things that moved him most. He describes a particular sunset which he saw in Scotland, and describes the experience as the climax of his emotional sensations. He was devoted to music, and had a somewhat contemptuous enjoyment of pictures. But the arrogance and impenetrability of the man rise up on every page. He cannot say frankly that he does not understand art and literature; he dogmatises about them, and gives the reader ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... stage, and Tristan was wounded in Kurvenal's arms, with Isolde at his feet, and King Mark, the incarnation of masculine force and obligation, the masculine creditor of love and beauty, stood over him, and the second climax was ending in wreaths and reek of melodies; and then the curtain was coming down in a series of short rushes, the music had ended, and the people were stirring and breaking out into applause, and the lights of the auditorium ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... lover! What a shame! She had read so many books in which women, even mothers, had overstepped the bounds of propriety, to regain their honor at the pages of the climax, that she was not astonished beyond measure at finding herself enveloped in a drama similar to all those of her reading. The violence of her first grief, the cruel shock of surprise, had already worn off a little, in the confused remembrance of analogous situations. ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... the reaction against Pericles, which had begun with the first invasion of Attica, reached a climax, and on all sides he was loudly decried by the Athenians, as the author of all their miseries. Envoys were sent with overtures of peace to Sparta, and when these returned with no favourable answer, the storm of popular ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... "Come out and see my poppies." The story was rejected by other members who, while applauding the author's motivation of character, his theme, and his general treatment, yet felt a lack of emotion and a faltering at the dramatic climax. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... just escaped from prison after having been confined for eight long years seemed to them the climax ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... Courcy Castle," continued the countess, now carrying up the list of Frank's advantages to its great climax, "will make the matter so easy for you, that really, you will ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... of dropping into the sea at any moment. So, while he hesitated, he attached the machine to his wrist and leaned over the bulwarks to watch the progress of the storm. He might stay in the ship until it foundered, he thought, and then take his chances with the machine. He decided to wait until a climax arrived. ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... is the genuinely lethargic saleswoman whose mind doesn't seem to register a single syllable that you have said to her; who, with complete indifference to you and your preferences, insists on showing what you distinctly say you do not want, and who caps the climax by drawling "They" are wearing it this season! Does that sort of saleswoman ever succeed in selling anything? Does anyone living buy anything because someone, who knows nothing, tells another, who is often an expert, what an ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... the great dead, had compared him with Mr. Ruskin; and the comparison was in Katharine's mind, and led her to be more critical of the young man than was fair, for a young man paying a call in a tail-coat is in a different element altogether from a head seized at its climax of expressiveness, gazing immutably from behind a sheet of glass, which was all that remained to her of Mr. Ruskin. He had a singular face—a face built for swiftness and decision rather than for massive contemplation; the forehead broad, the nose long and formidable, the lips clean-shaven ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... which at that time were considered extraordinarily generous. Until recently, therefore, there has been no occasion for concern over the high rate of consumption. During recent years, however, the use and waste of water have increased, reaching a climax under unusual conditions in the winter of 1904-05. The maximum capacity of the aqueduct system is about 90,000,000 gal. The maximum daily consumption at the time mentioned arose almost to 100,000,000 gal., with the result that, before ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXXII, June, 1911 • E. D. Hardy
... climax at last, at half-past twelve!" cried Nastasia Philipovna. "Sit down, gentlemen, I beg you. Something is about ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... glanced up to emphasize a peculiarly touching line, he thought she had closed her eyes to hide her feelings; but at last, when he reached the particular and soul-melting climax that was to prepare the way for his own long-desired crisis, having given the final lines in a tone that he thought would move a marble heart, he laid the book down to prepare for action, and the dreadful truth dawned upon ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... Bill, throwing down his rifle in anger. And then this great, strong man collapsed with grief. When a soldier weeps it is sad. This was but the climax of a highly nervous day. Bill's heart, like every bushman's heart, was full of that faith and devotion which passes all understanding. Claud was a pal whom he loved like ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... conscientiously felt was my foremost duty. I never went near a recruiting meeting, so that I should not be carried away by enthusiasm to the recruiting office. I must decide when my thoughts were cool and collected. The second week in November brought the climax. I knew ...
— One Young Man • Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams
... had known since childhood alter thus before his eyes was unbelievably dreadful. To see your friend sufficiently himself still to be recognizable, yet in essentials, at the same time, grotesquely altered, would doubtless touch a climax of distress and horror for you. The changing of these two things, so homely and well-known in themselves, into something that was not themselves, involved an idea of destruction that was worse than even death, for it meant that the idea ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... manner of scrapes." added the captain, by way of climax. "However, I shall see you or hear of you every day, either at the house ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... pains not mortal, few are worse than this small silent agony of waiting for the post; letting all the day's hope climax upon a single minute, which passes by, and the hope with it, and then comes another day of dumb endurance, if not despair. This even with ordinary letters upon which any thing of moment depends. With others, such as this letter of Robert Roy's—let us not speak ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... couple had gone down splendidly before him, another had fallen over the prostrate ones; and in a moment, in positions more or less recumbent, eight people were on the floor. Fears were expressed for the tight dresses, and Violet had shown more of her thin ankles than was desirable; but the climax was not reached until a young man, whose unsteady legs forbade him this part of the fun, established himself in a safe corner, and commenced to push the people over as they passed him. This was the signal for ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... fine tragedy out of you," said Shakespeare. "Just think what a dreadful climax for a tragedy it would be, Johnson, to have Nero, as the curtain fell, ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... two ways of encountering an anti-climax, an heroic, an unheroic. Lucy did her best to be a heroine, but her temperament was against her. Her imagination was very easily kindled, and her reasons much at the mercy of the flames. By how much she was exalted, by so much was she dashed. ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... Then the train shot behind a heavily timbered point, and when the view of the river was again free, the Woodbridge shell was half a length behind and obviously beaten. A pang of disappointment shot through Tom. Oh, well, it was a fitting climax to the day. There they were, slipping back and back. They were splashing badly, and one of the Woodbridge men was obviously not pulling his weight. Then the Hartley boat flashed over the finish amid the tooting of countless automobiles along the banks, a winner by ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... reminders of the human race which had cast her out and pursued her with torture of body and soul, here in the wilderness her spirits were going up, and her young eyes were looking hopefully round and forward. The up-piling horrors of those two days and their hideous climax seemed a dream which the sun had scattered. Hopefully! That blessed inexperience and sheer imagination of youth enabling it to hope in a large, vague way when to hope for any definite and real thing ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... that he began to relate some of the deeds of this man; and his life, it seemed, was written in blood and filth—a tale of murders and rapes and worse. And when as a climax he told me of the horrible, inhuman outrage done to Cosimo Gheri, the young Bishop of Fano, I begged him to cease, for my horror turned me almost ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... climax, a Royal maid in the first blush of budding womanhood grossly repulsed and physically attacked when she appeals to her mother for protection; that child locked in a room with her would-be ravisher and obliged to defend her honor by a ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... and anticipations with which I concluded the last chapter underwent considerable modification from these experiences and events; but the climax of the day's disappointment and disillusionment was not reached till 11 p.m., when the Head of the French Military Mission at my Headquarters, Colonel Huguet, brought a French Staff Officer to me who had come direct from General Lanrezac. This officer reported the fighting of which Spiers had ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... name of army to a few masses of men destitute, dispirited, and exhausted by fatigue and privation. On the arrival of the troops at Mayence no preparation had been made for receiving them: there were no provisions, or supplies of any kind; and, as the climax of misfortune, infectious epidemics broke out amongst the men. All the accounts I received concurred in assuring me that ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... a mistake. Dickens had no real gift for the manufacture of these ingenious pieces of mechanism. He did not even many times succeed in disposing the events and marshalling the characters in his narratives so as to work, by seemingly unforced and natural means, to a final situation and climax. Too often, in order to hold his story together and make it move forward at all, he was compelled to make his personages pursue a line of conduct preposterous and improbable, and even antagonistic to their nature. ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... and gesture was approaching a climax; when suddenly, who should come sauntering into the midst of it but the young American man himself! He paused to light a cigarette, then waved his hand aloft toward ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster
... they have carried everything before them, and have sacked and taken possession of the city of Segovia, distant only one day's march from Madrid. From the aspect of things I should say that the miseries of this land, far from having reached their climax, are but commencing. Yet let no one mourn for Egypt: she is but paying the price of ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... separated for their daylight beds, without a climax to their orgy, something like the present scene."—The Crock of Gold, p. 13. "And straps never called upon to diminish that long whity-brown interval between shoe and trowser."—Ib., p. 24. "And he gave them victual in abundance."—2 ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... marks a climax of interest. Is any one so much more important than the others, that you can say it is the climax of the book? Are any of them merely episodes that might be omitted without ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... the coarsely wretched buffoonery that refined people were expected to sit through! Yet worse followed, for at their climax, the mimic Oswald having gone quite off his head, the Hobbs person, still with the preposterous affectation of taking me off in speech and manner, was persuaded by the stricken mother to sing. "Sing that dear old plantation ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... what a wonderful purifier is death! These who fell beside us varied in character; like other men, they had their strength and their weaknesses, their merits and their faults. Yet now all stains seem washed away; their life ceased at its climax, and the ending sanctioned all that went before. They died for their country; that is their record. They found their way to heaven equally short, it seems to us, from every battle-field, and with equal readiness ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... as well as the most important and those oftenest used are, Simile, Metaphor, Personification, Allegory, Synechdoche, Metonymy, Exclamation, Hyperbole, Apostrophe, Vision, Antithesis, Climax, ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... trained to pick up the minutest detail, and must be capable of doing this for hour after hour. For those on submarine patrol in a small ship there is not one second's rest. As is well known, the submarine campaign reached its climax in April, 1917. In that month British and Allied shipping sustained its greatest losses. The value of the airship in combating this menace was now fully recognized, and with the big building programme of Zero airships approved, the housing accommodation again reached ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... men were a little astonished at the run of his lines, the practical and unexpected climax threw them ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... Colonel's, a New-Yorker, and a graduate of Oxford. His father had sent him to England to be finished off, after Yale had done its best for him here. He and Percy fell in love immediately, and matters came to a climax. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... opposite page,) is one of the best known of the series. All are bold and strong in drawing, and several are very beautiful, as "Paul and John at the Beautiful Gate." One critic, in speaking of the cartoons, says they mark the climax of Raphael's art. ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... which Venters had found indeed a valley of surprises, the wounded girl's whispered appeal, almost a prayer, not to take her back to the rustlers crowned the events of the last few days with a confounding climax. That she should not want to return to them staggered Venters. Presently, as logical thought returned, her appeal confirmed his first impression—that she was more unfortunate than bad—and he experienced a sensation ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... it intend, with all its oily phraseology, that you should be imposed on. There is a scene in a "print-shop" over the authenticity of an engraving which gets to an exceedingly painful climax. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 26, 1919 • Various
... was translucent in Press columns where our public had been accustomed to the rhetoric of primed scribes. He did away with the Biscay billow of the leading article—Bull's favourite prose—bardic construction of sentences that roll to the antithetical climax, whose foamy top is offered and gulped as equivalent to an idea. Writing of such a kind as Rockney's was new to a land where the political opinions of Joint Stock Companies had rattled Jovian thunders obedient ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... dyed lips, his haunted eyes rolled, his thin hands gripped the side of the canoe and he began to sing, or rather howl like a dog baying at the stars. Jeekie hit him on the head and bade him be silent, but he took no notice, even when he hit him again more heavily. Presently came the climax. The man sprang up in the canoe, causing it to rock from side to side. He pointed to the full moon above and howled more loudly than before; he pointed to something that he seemed to see in the air near by and gibbered as though in terror. Then his eyes fixed themselves upon the ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... the fine dramatic work of the morning would have gone for naught. For a moment Dorothea staggered, but for a moment only. "I didn't tell you everything," she said mysteriously. "Your mother is not alone in the bed. She is holding something in her arms. She is saying—" she paused to give her climax its full effect— "'Oh, why doesn't Jennie come home ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... dinner. Such a dinner! Even after a lapse of all these years I am unable to think of it without a shudder. Half famished though we were, we could not do much more than look at the greater part of the dishes which were set before us; and the climax was reached when we were served with an astonishing compote, made up, so far as I was able to judge, of equal proportions of preserved plums and mustard, to which vinegar and sugar had been superadded. Both the signorina ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... reply should proceed from someone. She knew Mr. Faucitt so well. He looked on these occasions rather in the light of scenes from some play; and, sustaining his own part in them with such polished grace, was certain to be pained by anything in the nature of an anti-climax after he should have ceased to take the stage. Eloquent himself, he must be answered with eloquence, or his whole evening would ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... "The climax came when a posse of officers and detectives cornered Laramie Dave, and some lead was pumped into him. Colonel King was a gray-haired, respectable-looking man, while Laramie Dave wore long black hair and a drooping mustache. But Laramie Dave's mustache was false, and his long black ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... epidemics, earthquakes, clouds of midges and locusts, and nearly every calamity conceivable. He bore especially upon the fact that the comet of 1665 was coincident with the plague in London, apparently forgetting that the other great cities of England and the Continent were not thus visited; and, in a climax, announces the fact that the comet of 1663 "made all the ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... He has a father, an ancestral family, a mother. What a climax! In whom shall I henceforth find an interest? Whom shall I be able to love? After ten years of paternity, the loss ...
— Vautrin • Honore de Balzac
... chivalry very likely outran the feeling, but they served at least to keep it alive, while the false platonism and ultra-refined sentiment were simply moral protests against the coarse vices of the time. The prudery which reached a satirical climax in "Les Precieuses Ridicules" was a natural reaction from the sensuality of a Marguerite and a Gabrielle. Mme. de Rambouillet saw and enjoyed the first performance of this celebrated play, nor does it appear that she was at all disturbed ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... and I don't know when I have been as deeply happy. This hour with you will be the very climax of the day's perfections, I ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... darkening, and the wrongs of the "Uitlanders," real and apparent as they were, became a parrot-cry, which waxed and waned, but never died away, till the ultimatum of President Kruger, in October, 1899, brought matters to a climax. ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... of Mirth' conclude the present volume. It may be as well to say here that I have placed under this head any ballad that tells of a successful issue and has a happy ending or mirthful climax. ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... argument does not afford all I have made it say. You might, or rather you have varied the language a little, but the sentiment is preserved entire. The address to truth would, as before, extoll her existence, express the most ardent and constant love for her divinity and finish the climax by soaring down to non-existence, which you can contemplate with as much satisfaction as you could an eternal existence in the enjoyment of ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... devoured would be the climax of misfortune. I wished to know what animals would be likely to stop my wayfaring ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... daughter yourself, you know Jack's account of his wife's domestic creed! 'A good fire, a clean hearth, the children abed, and the husband at sea,' is supposed to be the climax of felicity." ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... him,—after a short medical career has found it so totally distasteful that he is wisely returning to an earlier love. As soon as he gets out of the army he and I are going to collaborate on a play. Of course I have technic at my finger-tips. Construction, dramatic suspense, climax are second nature to me. But I confess I have a fatal handicap, one that has doubtless cost me my place at the head of American dramatists to-day. I have never been able to achieve colloquial dialogue! My style is too finished, you ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... the wide-spreading breadth of its shade, which you may enjoy till winter comes to despoil it of its leafy tresses. An end to all excellence in poetry, in painting, in music, as soon as superstition has once wrought upon human temperament the effect of old age! It is the very climax of madness to propose to oneself the ruin of the passions. A fine design truly in your pietist, to torment himself like a convict in order to desire nothing, love nothing, feel nothing; and he would end by becoming a true monster, if he were to ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... delay ascending by a natural climax to that final consummation and perfect crown of my felicity—that almighty blessing which ratified their value to all the rest? Wherefore, oh! wherefore do I shrink in miserable weakness from——what? Is it from reviving, from calling up again into fierce and ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... Bruton Street, the welcome that met him was almost cordial. Lord Danesbury—not very demonstrative at any time—received him with warmth, and Lady Maude gave him her hand with a sort of significant cordiality that overwhelmed him with delight. The climax of his enjoyment was, however, reached when Lord Danesbury said to him, 'We are glad to see ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... captain of the schooner were working together. If they were responsible for Nancy's disappearance, as Dan was convinced, he had not succeeded in getting a scrap of evidence against them. And to cap the climax, he had stupidly allowed himself to be captured. The method of his capture seemed to him quite as ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... mysterious gentlemen left Alleheiligen the day after Virginia's encounter with the chamois hunter; but the Mowbrays lingered on. The adventure had begun so gloriously that the girl feared an anti-climax for the next step. Though she longed for the second meeting, she dreaded it as well, and put off the chance of it from day to day. The stay of the Mowbrays at Alleheiligen lengthened into a week, ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... This capped the climax of the Prince's wrath. He fell into a state bordering on despair, tore his hair, gnashed his ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... The acrobats climbed up by a ladder and swung from one trapeze to another. The business was commonplace enough, but I became aware that Ascher was very much interested in it. He became actually excited when we reached the final act, the climax of the performance. ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... Bacheet and Wat Gamma. The latter, being interpreted, signifies "Son of the Moon." This in no way suggests lunacy; but the young Arab had happened to enter this world on the day of the new moon, which was considered to be a particularly fortunate and brilliant omen at his birth. Whether the climax of his good fortune had arrived at the moment he entered my service I know not; but, if so, there was a cloud over his happiness in his subjection to Mahomet, the dragoman, who rejoiced in the opportunity of bullying the two inferiors. Wat Gamma was a quiet, steady, well-conducted ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... very climax of delicacy: the faintest thought of rose color alone prevents one from calling it lily-white. I am reminded of you, O flower-named friend! Vision of loveliness! which has in a few never-to-be-forgotten days oasised my Sahara life. Now I have reached ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the result of a magical contrivance; that he had great luck in killing giants; that he killed one in France that had the cheerful habit of eating some thirty men a day. That this giant had clothes woven of the beards of the kings he had devoured. To cap the climax, one of the authors of this book was promoted for having written the only reliable ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... whole union in as energetic a manner, as the authority of the state governments extends over the several states. To be fearful of investing congress, constituted as that body is, with ample authorities for national purposes, appears to me the very climax of popular absurdity and madness. Could congress exert them for the detriment of the people, without injuring themselves in an equal or greater proportion? Are not their interests inseparably connected with those of ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... touch, a climax long imagined, plotted and hilariously enjoyed in prospect, he next produced, before the bewildered eyes of Snorky Green, what in school-day parlance is known as a Trophy of Trophies; an incredible, amazing, ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... not, as he thought, this climax that silenced Hazel. It was the lucky hit about the young fellows and the reminiscence called up by the word 'abron.' He continued his advantage, mollified ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... David tuned his instrument. Mendelssohn used no copy. His memory was prodigious. The violin gave out a beautiful melody that soared passionately, yet gracefully, above an accompaniment, simple at first, but growing gradually more intense and insistent till a great climax was reached, after which the solo voice sank slowly to a low, whispering murmur, while the piano played above it a succession of sweetly delicate and graceful phrases. The movement was worked out with the utmost complexity and ...
— A Day with Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy • George Sampson
... Washington Square nobility or the landed gentry of Chelsea or from the purlieus of the Bronx, which is where they apparently belong! I can get that kind myself. I wanted automobiles and broughams and clothes, and I got one sea-going taxi, and the dirty end of the stick! And to cap the climax he strolled in himself with a girl whose face is familiar to everybody who looks at bath tubs in the back of the magazines—Valerie West! And I want to tell you I couldn't look my Shoe-trust tea-pourers in the face; and they're so mad ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... So far the entertainment, if not precisely novel, was better than anything they had hoped for, and everyone had an agreeable conviction that there was still something in the way of a sensation in store. Perhaps it was eagerness for the expected climax which induced them to keep tolerably quiet during the remainder of Mr. O'Rourke's speech. He set forth at some length the glorious achievements of his party in the past, and explained the opportunities of future ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... the Hartford papers. What a magnificent meeting you had! Splendid climax of the campaign—the two ablest and most eloquent women on one platform and the Governor of the State by your side. I was with you in spirit that evening; the chairman of the Committee had both telegraphed and written me all ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Several ladies solicited his autograph for their albums, and several gentlemen called a meeting of the inhabitants, and resolved to give him a public dinner; a craniologist requested to be permitted to take a cast of his head, and as a climax to his misery, when he was sitting in his bedchamber thinking himself at least secure for the present, the door being bolted; he looked towards the Malvern Hills, which rise abruptly immediately at the back of the boarding-house, and there he discovered a party of ladies eagerly gazing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various
... you won't hear me speak, perhaps you will allow me to sing you a song." I had a fairly strong voice, and could go up a good height; so I gave them "Tom Bowling." Directly I started you could have heard a pin drop. They gave, me a fair hearing all through; and when, as a final climax, I finished up with a prolonged B flat—a very loud and long note, which sounded to me something between a "view holloa" and the whistle of a penny steamboat, but which came in nicely as a sort of piece de resistance, fairly astonishing "Hodge"—their enthusiasm knew no bounds. They cheered and ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... wrought up his tale to a climax, he assumed a most belligerent look, and assured the council that he had devised an instrument potent in its effects, and which he trusted would soon drive the Yankees from the land. So saying, he thrust his hand into one of the deep pockets of his ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... death; then, on his return, he had been kept from work by the engrossments into which that calamity plunged them. The opening pages were all that existed; they were striking, they were promising, but they didn't unveil the idol. That great intellectual feat was obviously to have formed his climax. She said nothing more, nothing to enlighten me as to the state of her own knowledge—the knowledge for the acquisition of which I had conceived her doing prodigious things. This was above all what I wanted to know: had she seen the idol unveiled? Had there been a private ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... The climax of a century of arguments, futile only because of the proverbial dullness of the race to which they were addressed, the rising has lifted the Home Rule controversy at one stroke from the region of the village pump into the very midst of the ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... which would have been entirely too undignified for the father of a family. I simply affirm that while they were chatting pleasantly together Raff suddenly sprang from his seat, snapped his fingers, and performed two or three flourishes very much like the climax of a highland fling. Next he caught his vrouw in his arms and fairly lifted her from ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... they were to be torn apart, if they had not made quite such excellent breakfasts. She even suspected them of having slept well. Yet yesterday they had been deeply stirred. They had stayed out late last night, so late that she had not heard them come in. Perhaps then they had passed the climax of their emotions. Sir Richmond, she learnt, was to take the party to Exeter, where there would be a train for Falmouth a little after two. If they started from Bath about nine that would give them an ample margin of time in which to deal with a ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... or CLIMAX consists in heightening all the circumstances of an object or action, which we desire to ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... of which he was proprietor. Sunday after Sunday he made the most awful mistakes, and, in consequence, was continually warned of his probable dismissal. The Princess, with her invariable kindness, had been the cause of his staying so long as he had; but one Sunday the climax was reached and the Royal patience fairly exhausted. Mr. Gladstone (then in office) was on a visit, and his solemn, grim countenance as he stood in the church quite frightened the poor man, inasmuch as he lost his head completely. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... I do not see," cried Else, "the art-production of your life. Where is the climax, where the harmonious close? Is it aesthetic, is it dignified to pay court to frivolous actresses and ballet-dancers, and treat the cheap triumph, before and after, as though it were something important? Does not this humiliate a man of intellect ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... latter did not attach to the occurrence the same importance as did the worthy governor. Besides, Aramis rarely put himself out of the way for anything, and he had not yet told M. de Baisemeaux for what reason he had now done so. And so at the very climax of Baisemeaux's dissertation, Aramis suddenly ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... as Professor Osborn has named him, was the climax of evolution of the giant flesh-eating dinosaurs. It reached a length of forty-seven feet, and in bulk must have equalled the mammoth or the mastodon or the largest living elephants. The massive hind limbs, supporting the whole weight of the body, exceeded the limbs of the great proboscideans ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... struggle for something that was coming to life in us, a struggle that we were convinced would bring us to a new freedom, a new life, then it would be a creative activity, a creative activity in which death is a climax in the progression towards new being. ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... they will all be." When the King heard the prophecy he was troubled in mind, and called his sons and all his great knights to a council at which he pleaded with them to keep the peace. But though they promised, he was barely in his grave when riot and bloodshed filled the land. The climax was reached when Abel inveigled his brother to his home with fair words and, once he had him in his power, seized him and gave him over to his men to do with "as they pleased." They understood their master only too well, and took King Erik out on the fjord in ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... fruit of Mr. Gulvert's great zeal for his sect. His two hired men were gone, without having served one eighth of the two years they had agreed to work for the money advanced to them; both his sisters, pious things, yielding to temptation, were in a fair road to disgrace; and, to cap the climax of the unfortunate man's guilt and remorse, Eugene O'Clery, neglected in his prison in the old house, on the morning of All Saints' day, first of November, was found dead on its damp floor! Yes, this spotless, innocent, and almost ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... TRAGEDY. Fortieth Edition. 'The tender reverence of the treatment and the imaginative beauty of the writing have reconciled us to the daring of the conception. This "Dream of the World's Tragedy" is a lofty and not inadequate paraphrase of the supreme climax of the inspired ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... a novel. His novels, disfigured by tirades and dry attempts at philosophical excursions, are all failures. When his tramps begin to spout Nietzsche on their steppes the artificial note is too apparent. His plays are loose episodes without dramatic action or climax, sometimes moving, as in the case of Nachtasyl, and discordant in The Children of the Sun. Gorky had a natural talent; in his stories a submerged generation became eloquent. And he became a doctrinaire. Nietzsche finished the ruin that Marx had begun; his art, chiefly ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... to cap the climax of their imbecilities and blunders, the Irish Party allowed the first precious year of their mastery of Parliament to be devoted to the passage of an Insurance Act which nobody in Ireland outside the job-seekers wanted, which ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... companies of people, each of which 'keeps its poet,' and not content with that, proclaims from its small corner, with a most conceited air, that its poet is the man of the age.' Instances are mentioned, closing with this irresistible climax: 'One man thinks CORNELIUS MATHEWS has written the finest American poetry!' In allusion to the whimsical peculiarities of Mr. CARLYLE—a man of genius, learning, and humane tendencies—and their effect upon the servile tribe of imitators, the reviewer observes: 'The study of German became ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... up. 'Now,' he went on, 'if the servants are in the habit of going into one's room during the day when one is away, I can only say that—well, that I don't approve of it at all.' Conscious of a somewhat weak climax, he busied himself in opening the door (which was indeed locked) and in lighting candles. 'No,' ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... his seat at the piano, and says in French to Mrs. Gold). Madam, you have reached the climax of the beautiful in music. I count it one of the happiest moments of my artistic tour to be allowed to breathe out my soul at the piano, in the presence of one like yourself. What a loss, that your position must ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... of the ceremony, it was now evidently approaching a climax. The chanting grew louder and more furious and the cymbal players clashed their huge metal instruments together with a deafening clangor. Suddenly, from the passage from which the galleries branched off, there appeared six men clad in robes ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... whom Heaven had bestowed shrewdness to an extraordinary degree, perceived in the plan proposed to him higher, more artistic possibilities than had been perceived in it by its inventor. There was a dramatic instinct, an appreciation of surprise, of climax, in this man's mind that he proceeded to apply to the existing situation. With a wave of his hand he banished the suggested sign on the walking advertiser's back, and the suggested silken banner. His plan at once was simpler and more profound. Dressed ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... when she rose from the table and told her guests to go to their rooms, don their riding-clothes, pack what they needed for the long and adventurous camping trip that she hoped would be the climax of their Western experience, and to snatch a little sleep before the cowboys roused them for ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... arbitrarily interpreted. As a natural consequence, the aesthetic elements were more and more pushed into the background. Only recently have we begun to ridicule this craze for hypotheses, and returned to more sober methods of inquiry. Bible criticism reached the climax of absurdity, and the scorn was just which greeted one of the most important works of the critical school, Hitzig's "Explanation of the Psalms." A reviewer said: "We may entertain the fond hope that, in a second edition of this clever ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... Finally, as a climax to all the insults, his hated neighbour built a goose-shed right against his fence at the spot where they usually climbed over, as if with the express intention of redoubling the insult. This shed, ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... valuable commodities. They were not even self-supporting. The colony held on because constantly fed with men and provisions by the "Supplies." There was dissatisfaction in London; in James Towne misery and often despair. The climax of disappointment and suffering was reached in the spring of 1610, ever since known as the "Starving Time." In that season of horror, the settlement almost passed ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... week of April as his contribution to the comprehensive Allied advance. But local operations in March, which succeeded in linking up the Italians east of Avlona with Sarrail's left, did not lead up to the expected climax. The offensive was postponed until 24 April, and then it was only British troops that were sent into serious action. The desired economy of French blood was effected by a French commander-in-chief at the cost of general failure. ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... that were solemn and sedate, was mere extension of the miniature approach to a thousand semidetached suburban "residences"; and the appearance of The Towers, as we turned the corner with a rush, suggested a commonplace climax to a story that had begun interestingly, almost thrillingly. A villa had escaped from the shadow of the Crystal Palace, thumped its way down by night, grown suddenly monstrous in a shower of rich rain, and settled itself insolently to stay. Ivy climbed about the ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... to conceive a greater quantity of folly crammed into a short space of time than has been displayed by all parties in the last three or four days, and which reached the climax last night in the House of Commons. It began with O'Connell's speech at the 'Crown and Anchor,' when he denounced the perjury of the Tory Election Committees in such terms as he usually employs. ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... is passed, and it trails on through a long line of suburb, lying on the flat sea-shore, to Genoa, then, the changing glimpses of that noble city and its harbour, awaken a new source of interest; freshened by every huge, unwieldy, half-inhabited old house in its outskirts: and coming to its climax when the city gate is reached, and all Genoa with its beautiful harbour, and neighbouring hills, bursts ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... poverty made radiant by unselfish love. The plot of one main incident—Della's sacrifice of her hair in order to get a Christmas present for her husband—takes place in the short space of a few hours, and works out to a half-humorous, half-pathetic climax, when Della and Jim display their Christmas gifts for each other. This story has a conclusion of one paragraph in length where the author reflects upon what ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... Breck Overture. For a moment, his lips had curled into a complacent little smile; the next minute, he had sucked in his breath sharply between his clenched teeth. In her excitement, Cicely had mistaken her distance; she had flatted by a full half-tone the final upper note, reducing the tonal climax of the overture to the ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... so bitterly and with such emphatic disapprobation against the Southern States and their policy, that his sentiments evoked the hisses of his audience. Nothing discomfited, he pursued the even tenor of his way, until he reached the climax of his argument, when bearing down upon his opponents with irresistible force, he cried out, in a voice of triumph, "Hiss, noo, gin ye dare." On that occasion he created a profound impression by his eloquent appeal to Mr. Ward Beecher ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... French, and at one period were more valued than the best Amatis. It was not until the vast superiority of Italian Violins over all others was thoroughly recognised, that the love of the instrument as a curiosity reached its present climax. In Italy, the value set upon the chief Cremonese works, though great, was comparatively insignificant, as far as the Italians themselves are concerned, and when France and England came into competition with them for the possession of their ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... scenes were repeated, but the climax came when we got to Port Huron. I had to jump off the train about a quarter of a mile from the station which was situated out of town. I had paid a big Dutch boy to haul several loads of sand to that point, and ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... thousand nine hundred and twenty-six pounds seventeen shillings and twopence. The twopence seemed a ridiculous anti-climax; but business-men are necessarily as ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the road under the strong hand of the Bohemian, the night he had passed in the dungeon of Spychow, the uncertainty of his fate, and above all, that unheard-of and almost superhuman deed, had quite terrified him. All this had brought him to a climax. There were moments when his mind became so stupefied that he entirely lost his judgment and he did not know what he was doing. Then the fever awoke him and, at the same time awoke within him a certain dull feeling of despair, destruction, ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... unconscious lack of consideration for my comfort and peace of mind was torture. They were typical eighteen-dollar-a-month attendants. Another of the same sort, on one occasion, cursed me with a degree of brutality which I prefer not to recall, much less record. And a few days later the climax was appropriately capped when still another attendant perpetrated an outrage which a sane man would have resented to the point of homicide. He was a man of the coarsest type. His hands would have done credit to a longshoreman—fingers ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... right. He's out and has been to the office," was the brother's surprising answer. "Didn't you hear about Mr. Robinson wanting to send him away for his health? Robinson has taken a great fancy to Paul. The stolen document business is also near a climax. I had a fine time trying to keep Clip's name out of the paper, the day they had the hearing about Wren. You see, I - the great first person - ran into the courtroom just as the judge was dismissing the absurd case set up against ...
— The Motor Girls on a Tour • Margaret Penrose
... more formidable than the one above from which she had been removing her jewels, took out a document and returned to the two men. She had something of the ominous air of a tragedy queen who is foreshadowing an approaching climax. ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... his parish nine years, his age was thirty-two, he was in the prime of life, and at the climax of his power and his popularity. Three years before, he had been left a widower with three young children, one of whom became Rev. John F. Ware. That these two intensely religious natures, that ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... Mardi gras party at the Fishers'. For the past three weeks, this coming social event had been the chief theme of conversation in Blue Creek; for, taking place, as it did, at the very close of the season, it was intended to be a fitting climax to all the gayety which had gone before. Louise had entered into the spirit of the occasion as heartily as a young and pretty girl could do, and had spent long hours in planning the new gown which her father ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... little handful of defenders in an overwhelming flood. There was no need of the plank this time. Every man fell fighting and died sword in hand. To the two young prisoners, already sickened with the sight of blood, this wholesale murder of a band of gallant seamen came as a revolting climax. They stared at each other, white-faced as they thought of the fate that threatened them and all honest men who fell into such ruthless hands. It was Bob's first sight of a hand-to-hand sea-battle, and as the last merchant sailor went down under the howling ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... life which Verne allows his people in their starving, thirsting condition is proven possible by medical science and recent "fasting"' experiments. The dramatic climax of the tale wherein the castaways find fresh water in the ocean is based upon a fact, one of those odd geographical facts of which the author made such frequent, ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... The climax of this instance of the infallibility of the Church occurred when in his seventieth year Galileo was again brought before the Inquisition; he was forced to abjure under threats of torture and imprisonment by command of Pope Urban a truth which, in this day, ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... speak to him without calling him "darling." She had so absorbed Barrie's theory that the bravest man is but a "child," that "home" for her husband became a kind of glorified nursery. At last his spirit became bilious with the cloying sweetness of it all. The climax came one evening when, after accidentally treading on her best corn and begging her pardon, she got up, put her loving arms around his neck and, kissing him, whispered, "Granted, darling, granted before you did it!" Soon after that he left her for a woman who, herself, trod on every corn he ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... nothing on my affair," I decided, "with their masks and poisoned drinks and swords. For a fellow who leads a cut-and-dried existence generally, I've been having quite a lively time. And now, to cap the climax, I'm going to call on a girl about whom I know just one thing—her name. By Jove, it's exactly like a story! I've got the data. If I had any gray matter I could probably work ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... been a dramatic character, an individual revelation of theatric passion, a figure-piece single and alone; but the climax was at hand. The achievement of American independence had been an object-lesson most potent. Louis and his queen, Marie Antoinette, could not check the storm, and for the first time in one hundred and seventy-three years, France was to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... Until they declare themselves not a step will be made, and if they cannot gain adherents, why the matter is at an end; while if their example be followed, there is still a chance of averting the climax of all evils, the swamping the House of Lords and the permanent establishment of the power of the present Government. Wharncliffe is to go to the Duke of Wellington to-day, to entreat him not to let his party divide ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... which the loss of his friends occasioned to him was proportioned to the degree of affection which he entertained for them. By a curious fatality he had the misfortune to lose at an early age, almost all those he loved. This grief reached its climax on his ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... active in war. They lost no time in doing that. The drama of each drew to a splendid climax with the arrival in Newbern of a French officer—probably a general—bound upon a grave mission. Wilbur's general came to seek out the wife ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... their wars, a body was occasionally cooked by the Samoans; but they affirm that, in such a case, it was always some one of the enemy who had been notorious for provocation or cruelty, and that eating a part of his body was considered the climax of hatred and revenge, and was not occasioned by the mere relish for human flesh, such as obtained in the Fiji, New Hebrides, and New Caledonian groups. In more remote heathen times, however, they may have indulged this savage appetite. To speak of roasting ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... them—phenomena which, at this time also, cannot be understood from external conditions; so that the authorities themselves, while persecuting insignificant agitators, not only overlook these phenomena, but even let them stand as necessary accompaniments of our civilization, hail them as the climax of prosperity, and, on occasion, make appreciative and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... scholars. In the good old times, to drink lustily was the characteristic of all Englishmen, just as tuft-hunting is now. Eternal swilling, and the rank habits and braggadocio manners which it engendered, came to a climax in George IV's reign. Since then, excessive drinking has gone out of fashion, but an elaborate style of gastronomy has come in to fill the void; so there is not much gained. Byron used to boast of the quantity of wine he had drunk. He said, "We young Whigs imbibed ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb |
