"Descent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... themselves gradually and gracefully, with all their clouds of canvas. A swan in mid air, with her drooping wings broken by a shot, slowly descending, might give you some idea of the view. But after the descent of the multitudinous sails, the beauty was wholly destroyed. Where before there careered gallantly and triumphantly before the gale a noble ship, now nothing but a wreck appeared painfully to trail along laboriously its tattered ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... language was becoming daily more pedantic and inflexible, and English letters more colourless and slack, there was another dialect in the sister country, and a different school of poetry, tracing its descent, through King James I., from Chaucer. The dialect alone accounts for much; for it was then written colloquially, which kept it fresh and supple; and, although not shaped for heroic flights, it was a direct and vivid medium for all that had to do with social life. Hence, whenever Scottish poets ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sort, "and nothing can console me for their transiency. I am appalled and disconcerted at its being possible." And so with most of us: a little cooling down of animal excitability and instinct, a little loss of animal toughness, a little irritable weakness and descent of the pain-threshold, will bring the worm at the core of all our usual springs of delight into full view, and turn us into melancholy metaphysicians. The pride of life and glory of the world will shrivel. It is after all but the standing quarrel of hot youth and hoary eld. Old age ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... the stream; it evaded the slope and took him by its own milder descent to the sands. Over these it flowed smooth as ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... later, the motor, with Hannah at the wheel, was thundering down the road to the Glen. The power was on to the full, and the demented girl clung tight to the steering-gear as the machine rocked and thundered down the descent. The storm was raging again, and the thunder mingled with the roar of the machine as it coursed madly towards the sea. The great eye of the motor blazed in front. The lurid light of it flashed a second on the trees and the burn as it passed, and flashed blinding on the eyes of Oyster ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... ungrateful public know all it owed to the untiring watchfulness and activity of Mr Sharp and his men. If he and his compeers were to be dismissed from our lines for a single week, the descent of a host of thieves and scoundrels to commit wide-spread plunder would teach the public somewhat severely how much they owe to the efficient management of this department of railway business, and how well, constantly ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... who was the proximate cause of the River War was born by the banks of the Nile, not very far from Dongola. His family were poor and of no account in the province. But as the Prophet had claimed a royal descent, and as a Sacred Example was sprung from David's line, Mohammed Ahmed asserted that he was of the 'Ashraf,'(descendants of the Prophet) and the assertion, since it cannot be disproved, may be accepted. His father was a humble priest; yet he contrived to give ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... seemed to receive particular pleasure on being informed of the arrival of two Esquimaux interpreters at Slave Lake, on their way to join the party. The circumstance not only quieted their fears of opposition from the Esquimaux on our descent to the sea next season, but also afforded a substantial proof of our influence in being able to bring two people of that ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... not debased and we were not lured by all the fineries from the foreign countries, we were satisfied with the cloth produced by the men and women in India, and if I could but in a moment revolutionize the tastes of India and make it return to its original simplicity, I assure you that the Gods would descent to rejoice at the great act of renunciation. That is the first stage in non-co-operation. I hope it is as easy for you as it is easy for me to see that if India is capable of taking the first step in anything like a full measure that step will ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... mother to refer to him with circumspection, seeing that, in her eyes at least, Maister Jeames was now far on the way to becoming a great man, being a divinity student; for in the Scotch church, although it sets small store on apostolitic descent, every Minister, until he has shown himself eccentic or incapable of interesting a congregation, is regarded with quite as much respect as in England is accorded to the claimant of a phantom-priesthood; and ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... again to-day by the princes, and other chief men. In the afternoon the high-priest visited me. He was a fine-looking man—Arab by descent—with a well-developed forehead, and easy, gentlemanly bearing. He wore a sword, and was evidently looked upon with great respect by his attendants. He expressed much sympathy with our cause, and said he would pray to Allah for our success. The Yankee ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... were stars in the sky and the new moon shone out amid the smoke that screened it. On the sloping descent to the Dnieper Alpatych's cart and that of the innkeeper's wife, which were slowly moving amid the rows of soldiers and of other vehicles, had to stop. In a side street near the crossroads where the vehicles had stopped, a house and some shops were on fire. This fire was already burning ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... stands for Quaere ( "investigate"), a frequent marginal note in manuscripts of all ages. A number of instances of Q for quaere are given by A.C. Clark, The Descent of Manuscripts, Oxford 1918, ...
— A Sixth-Century Fragment of the Letters of Pliny the Younger • Elias Avery Lowe and Edward Kennard Rand
... know whether Browning had any Jewish blood in his body by descent, but he certainly had Jewish elements in his intellect, spirit and character. His sense of an ever-victorious Righteousness at the centre of the universe, whom one might always trust and be untroubled, was Jewish, but he carried it forward with the New Testament and made the Righteousness identical ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... hope the heights that would scale Reproached not a hapless descent. He stands here just now, so mild, but so pale; — In time he shall ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... called Winifred's Well is very clear, and so copious, that it yields one hundred tuns of water in a minute. It is all at once a very great stream, which, within perhaps thirty yards of its eruption, turns a mill, and in a course of two miles, eighteen mills more. In descent, it is very quick. It then falls into the sea. The well is covered by a lofty circular arch, supported by pillars; and over this arch is an old chapel, now a school. The chancel is separated by a wall. The bath ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... so-called Darwinian" theory advisedly, for the struggle for existence as the law of evolution has been exaggerated out of all likeness to the conception of Darwin himself. In "The Descent of Man," for instance, Darwin raises the point under review, and shows how, in many animal societies, the struggle for existence is replaced by cooeperation for existence, and how that substitution results in the development of faculties which ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... commence this perilous descent in dismay; but, though much alarmed, they were unable to ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the steamer had not been idle. As soon as the yawl was seen approaching slings were prepared, and no sooner was the hawser securely fixed, than the slings were attached to it and a woman placed in them. The hawser was tight and the descent sharp, and without a check the figure ran down to the deck of the Seabird. She was lifted out of the slings by Tom and Jack Harvey, who found she was an old woman and had ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... off a drizzling dew,—which falling chill 521 On soft Adonis' shoulders, made him still Nestle and turn uneasily about. Soon were the white doves plain, with necks stretch'd out, And silken traces lighten'd in descent; And soon, returning from love's banishment, Queen Venus leaning downward open arm'd: Her shadow fell upon his breast, and charm'd A tumult to his heart, and a new life Into his eyes. Ah, miserable strife, 530 But for her comforting! unhappy sight, But meeting her blue orbs! Who, who can ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... daunted by the stranger's appearance, made for his father's chair, and proceeded to dislodge his sister Jessie from her seat, and to establish himself in her place. Jessie screamed, and scratched, and pulled in vain. Frank, though younger, was much the strongest, and the fight ended by the sudden descent of Miss Jessie to the floor, and the ascension of Master Frank ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... merely external events, the very inmost recesses of the minds of the dramatic personages are laid open to us. It is as if the drags were taken from the wheels of time and they roll along without interruption in their descent. Nothing can equal the picture in its power to excite terror. We need only allude to the circumstances attending the murder of Duncan, the dagger that hovers before the eyes of Macbeth, the vision of Banquo at the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... 'and fall no further than you can help. You were best to slide down.' I marvelled whither I were going; but I took his avisement, and grasping the door-sill with mine hands, I slid down into the darkness. At length my feet found firm ground, though I were a little bruised in the descent; but I lighted on no floor, but a point only—all the walls sloping away around me. 'Are you there?' growls the gaoler—but his voice sounded far above me. 'I am some whither,' said I, 'but I can find no ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... long and arduous, but not a perilous, descent from the window by the thick-grown greenery that cumbered the walls. But I determined to wait awhile before venturing,—wait, too, till I could see plainly where Rosinante had made her night-quarters. By good fortune ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... "there is not much to fear from that fellow!" and he resolutely descended, eyes alert, pistol in hand. Halfway down, he stopped in amazement, for the front door swung wide open. But at last he finished the descent and ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... Cashel.—Any information respecting the family, the arms, or descent of Doctor Theophilus Bolton, Archbishop of Cashel, in the early part of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 64, January 18, 1851 • Various
... the two distances differ from each other with respect to the ascent and descent, or fall, if you like. Are not all bodies inclined to obey the laws of gravitation unless they are held back ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the seignorial rights of capital to vanish before the still more general principle of labor. Property has been demolished from top to bottom: the economists could only keep silent; but, powerless to arrest itself in this new descent, socialism has slipped clear to the farthest boundaries of communistic utopia, and, for want of a practical solution, society is reduced to a position where it can neither justify its tradition, nor commit itself to experiments ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... kinship. She laughed at it herself, but, nevertheless, I was "her dear cousin Emily" always. "Little Lady" was my name for her, but she forced me call her "Clara." Her mother, it seemed, had married a gentleman of rank and fortune of French descent, and although she told me she was the picture of her mother, the graceful ways of which she was possessed, her natural urbanity and politeness, together with her fascinating word-emphasis accompanied with so many gestures, were all ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... his credit be it said—for Seymour was of Scotch descent, a point in his favor with old Captain Barkeley, who was Scotch on his mother's side, and, therefore, somewhat canny—was most religiously kept, he living within his ample means—or Kate's, which was the same thing—discharging the duties of father, citizen, ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the history of mental activity, manifest a character of nationality, although certain historical occurrences have been the means of diffusing idioms of the same family of languages among nations of wholly different descent — ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... action of His laws.'" On page 428, he speaks of the laws which God has impressed on matter; and at the end of his work, on page 429, he says: "There is grandeur in this {218} view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one." In his "Descent of Man," he also protests against the reproach that his views are irreligious, and says: "The birth both of the species and of the individual are equally parts of that grand sequence of events which our minds refuse to accept as the result of blind chance." ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... inscribe their names in books belonging to them; and it immediately occurred to me that these could be no other Lees than members of the family of Lee of Southwell, in Nottinghamshire, who claimed to descent from a kinsman of Edward Lee, who was Archbishop of York in the reign of Henry VIII, and who is so unmercifully handled by Erasmus. The name of Gervase was much used by this family of Lee, and as there was in it an Edward Lee who had curious ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.01 • Various
... the doors was out of the question; flight from the windows, had they been free, was equally so; for whoever had dared their dangerous descent, would have been devoured the very moment he ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... English party. Not a single Prime Minister has claimed the confidence of the country on the ground that his colleagues were, or were not, English, Scottish, or Irish. That a Premier should glory in his pure Scottish descent is an innovation; it is an innovation ominous of revolution; it betrays a spirit of disintegration. If at the moment it flatters Scottish pride, Scotchmen and Irishmen would do well to recollect that it is a certain presage of a time ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... but trust," said the Marquis, politely, "that your course of life has qualified you for a superior flight, since Achon's departing, I apprehend, is not unakin to a descent." ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... those wide indentations along the eastern shore of the Schuylkill River, there opens out in tranquil seclusion a spacious cove. The waters wander here to rest, it seems, before resuming their voluminous descent to the Delaware and the sea. Trees and saplings wrapped about with close-clinging vines hang far over the water's edge like so many silent sentinels on guard before the spot, their luxuriant foliage weighing their bending twigs almost to the surface. ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... "No luck at all—just a bit of good common-sense thinking on the part of a shrewd woman. But you'll want to know what we did. I was so absolutely certain of the truth of Miss Penkridge's theory that I immediately made preparations for a descent on Cortelyon's house. I got a number of our best men—detectives, of course—and we went round to Markendale Square, back and front. Inquiry showed that Cortelyon was out, but we'd scarcely got that fact ascertained when he drove up in a taxicab ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... great law of things, "Hereditary Descent," fully proves and illustrates in any required number and variety of cases, showing that progeny inherits the constitutional natures and characters, mental and physical, of parents, including pre-dispositions to consumption, insanity, all sorts of disease, etc., as well as longevity, strength, stature, ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... air at the equator is supposed to cause the equatorial rains; and the drought of the tropics is also explained by that descent of the air, in these latitudes, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... first to oppose the descent, was now the first to help, by seizing the back lead left upon the barrel head, and, with cat-like agility, leaping to the ladder and going down ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... place for which Laura had given up all her former ease and magnificence—her $8,000 apartment, her crystal bathtub, her French maid, her automobile, and every other conceivable luxury. The descent from affluence to actual want had been gradual, but none the less swift and sure. It had cost her many a bitter pang, many an hour of keen humiliation, but she had made the sacrifice willingly, cheerfully, feeling in her heart ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... language; "and he has hopes that the head of the firm, who is a foreigner, will take him into partnership soon. Besides, as his future home is in America (and mine, if I marry him), what signifies his descent?" ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... nine dogs made such excellent time that we had to ride in level places or we could not have kept pace with them. When there was a hill to climb we pushed on the komatik or hauled with the dogs on the long bridle to help them along. When we had a descent to make, the drag—a hoop of walrus hide—was thrown over the front end of one of the komatik runners at the top, and if the place was steep the Eskimos, one on either side of the komatik, would cling on with their arms and brace their feet into the ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... on the part of the old American citizens nor of the German, Scandinavian and Irish settlers—they would all remain faithful to the Star Spangled Banner. But the others, the thousands and hundreds of thousands of Romanic and Slavonic descent, the Italian and Russian proletariat, and the scum of the peoples of Asia Minor, all these elements, who regarded the United States merely as a promising market for employment and not as a home, ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... when they drove out of the station, up a Dorset ridge of hill, steep, high, terraced and bleak; but it was slow climbing up, and every one was baked and wearied before the summit was gained, and the descent commenced. Even then, Ethel, sitting backwards, could only see height develop above height, all green, and scattered with sheep, or here and there an unfenced turnip-field, the road stretching behind like a long white ribbon, and now and then descending ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... streets seemed alive. On some boys had built huge bonfires from barrels and boxes that had been saved religiously for weeks or surreptitiously purloined from the grocer or the patient house-holder. About the fires, they kept an ever watchful eye for the descent of their two sworn enemies— the policeman and the rival gang privateering in the name of a ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... States Deputy Marshal Ellis, and a large body of assistants, went on Monday to the place where his fugitives were concealed. Arriving at the premises, word was sent to the fugitives to surrender. A firm and decided negative was the response. The officers, backed by a large crowd, then made a descent. Breaking open the doors, they were assailed by the negroes with cudgels and pistols. Several shots were fired, but only one took effect, so far as we could ascertain. A bullet struck a man named John Patterson, one of the Marshal's deputies; tearing off a ...
— The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 18 • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Abner Graves, of Dow City, in which the breed was duly extolled. An interesting discussion followed, in the course of which it was stated that the polled breeds have two anatomical peculiarities in common with the American bison, indicating a close relation to, or possible descent from the buffalo family. The officers elected were: President, Abner Graves, of Dow City; Vice-Presidents, Messrs. Bryan, of Montezuma, D. J. Moore, of Dunlop, and Charles Farwell, of Montezuma; Secretary and Treasurer, H. G. Gue, of Des Moines. Liberal subscriptions were made to the articles of ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... to work!" cried the little boy, his hazel eyes shining, and his poor, narrow body beating with unconscious fervor, half suspended on his crutches, as if he were of that good descent and natural spirit which could assert itself without bashfulness in the presence of older people. "I like to work for my mother. If I was strong, like other little boys, I would make money for her, so that she shouldn't keep any boarders—except Mr. Reybold. Oh! she has ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... coming downstairs in her own sweet way, which was accomplished by putting her two feet close together, and jumping two steps at a time. It didn't expedite her descent at all, but it was delightfully noisy, and therefore agreeable from Marjorie's ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... serf, the prince becomes a serf himself, and all his children were serfs. Bertulphe, the richest, wisest, and bravest man in Flanders, was provost of Bruges. His beautiful daughter, Constance, married Sir Bouchard, a knight of noble descent; but Bertulphe's father had been Thancmar's serf, and, according to the new law, Bertulphe, the provost, his daughter, Constance, and the knightly son-in-law were all the serfs of Thancmar. The provost killed the earl, and stabbed himself; Bouchard ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... ancestor-worship was of a decidedly primitive kind. This is suggested also by the peculiar Shinto horror of death as pollution: even at this day to attend a funeral,—unless the funeral be conducted after the Shinto rite,—is religious defilement. The ancient legend of Izanagi's descent to the nether world, in search of his lost spouse, illustrates the terrible beliefs that once existed as to goblin-powers presiding over decay. [41] Between the horror of death as corruption, and the apotheosis ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... to take counsel upon the matter. The Estates asked for time to deliberate; on which the Emperor, replying that he would first give them his own opinion, produced a document written in his own hand. Beginning with the statement of his descent from Emperors, Kings of Spain, Archdukes of Austria, and Dukes of Burgundy, all of whom had lived and died faithful sons of the Church and defenders of the Catholic faith, it announced the identity of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... a writ of right, Lord Norbury observed that it was not sufficient for a demandant to say he "claimed by descent." "Such an answer," he continued, "would be a shrewd one for a sweep, who got into your house by coming down the chimney; and it would be an easy, as well as a ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... door stood wide he would not have paused then. There was not a second to be lost; to wait was to increase the already overwhelming danger. Cautiously, and leaning well upon the stout baluster, he began the descent. Kenneth followed him mechanically, with white face and a feeling of suffocation in ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... was governed by Hohodemi, the fourth Mikoto (or Augustness) in descent from the illustrious Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess. He was not only as handsome as his ancestress was beautiful, but he was also very strong and brave, and was famous for being the greatest hunter in the land. Because of his matchless skill as a hunter, he was called ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... and causes the index of the dial to glisten like gold as it points to the gilded figure of the hour. Now the loftiest window gleams, and now the lower. The carved framework of the portal is marked strongly out. At length the morning glory in its descent from heaven comes down the stone steps one by one, and there stands the steeple glowing with fresh radiance, while the shades of twilight still hide themselves among the nooks of the adjacent buildings. Methinks though the same sun brightens it every fair morning, yet the steeple has a peculiar ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sink down with it into bottomless depths of blackness where no light had ever been, into an underworld, airless, peopled with invisible violence. And it seemed to her as if it was her previous flight upward which had caused this descent into a place which had surely never before been visited by a human soul. All the selflessness suddenly vanished from her, and was replaced by a burning sense of her own personality, of what was due to it, of what ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... they continued their descent in silence, and came out at last before Sir Daniel's forest stronghold, where it stood, low and shady, flanked with round towers and stained with moss and lichen, in the lilied waters of the moat. Even as they appeared, the doors were opened, the bridge lowered, and Sir Daniel himself, with Hatch ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on a hundred yards up an ascent, with the sun full upon us once more, to descend a precipitous path, holding on tightly by the mule, which one expected to slip and hurl one down a gulf at the side; but the descent was safely made, and then we stood gazing at a belt of cultivated ground—the forest and river lying off to ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... W. H. Carroll, of Garvin, one of the instructors of the Academy, discussed in an able manner a number of questions relating to the educational and church work among the negroes; and he was followed by Prof. P. A. Parish, of Idabel, the well-known "Kansas negro," but of full-blood African descent, who seemed at his best in the discussion of current and ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... did not suggest even a thought of peril. I had always been accustomed, by the practise of gymnastics, to keep up my schoolboy powers as a daring and expert climber; and knew that my head, hands, and feet would serve me faithfully in any hazards of ascent or descent. I had already got one leg over the window-sill, when I remembered the handkerchief filled with money under my pillow. I could well have afforded to leave it behind me, but I was revengefully determined that the miscreants ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... observing the approaches to the walls and the general features of the country outside. They now stole out, keeping in the shadow of the building, until they reached the staircase leading up to the battlements, close to the point Wulf had fixed upon for making their descent. This had been chosen chiefly because no sentry was placed on that part of the wall, the watch generally being careless, as Normandy was at present at peace with its neighbours. When they reached the top of the steps they ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... W. H. Hudson on page 257 of his interesting book entitled "The Naturalist in La Plata," fourth edition, 1903: "It is true that Daines Barrington's notion that young song birds learn to sing only by imitating the adults, still holds its ground; and Darwin gives it his approval in his 'Descent of Man'. It is perhaps one of those doctrines which are partly true, or which do not contain the whole truth; and it is possible to believe that, while many singing birds do so learn their songs, or acquire a greater ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... its descent I had thrown myself upon the Indian nearest me. It was not a time for overniceness. If I could have done so, I would have struck him in the back while he thought no harm; as it was, some subtle instinct ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... them particularly against carnal intercourse with each other. But after the fall of Eve, Satan, in the guise of the serpent, approached her, and the fruit of their union was Cain, the ancestor of all the impious generations that were rebellious toward God, and rose up against Him. Cain's descent from Satan, who is the angel Samael, was revealed in his seraphic appearance. At his birth, the exclamation was wrung from Eve, "I have gotten a man through ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... prayed AEneas, clinging to the shrine, When thus the prophetess: "O Trojan Knight, Born of Anchises, and of seed divine, Down to Avernus the descent is light, The gate of Dis stands open day and night. But upward thence thy journey to retrace, There lies the labour; 'tis a task of might, By few achieved, and those of heavenly race, Whom shining worth extolled or Jove hath deigned ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... calf is the only really authentic example of spontaneous generation, of effect without cause. Nobody expected it. Nobody wanted it. Everybody was surprised to see it when it came. It was the Melchizedek among cattle—without father, without mother, without descent. Unfortunately it seems also to have been without beginning of days or end of life. Every generation simply puts in its gold and there comes out this calf—it is a way such ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... bill on which, after what has recently passed elsewhere, I feel myself irresistibly impelled to say a few words. I allude to that wise, that benevolent, that noble clause which enacts that no native of our Indian empire shall, by reason of his colour, his descent, or his religion, be incapable of holding office. At the risk of being called by that nickname which is regarded as the most opprobrious of all nicknames by men of selfish hearts and contracted minds, at the risk of being called a philosopher, I must ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... resist, but remained gazing half nervously, half dreamily at him, whereupon he smoothed her cheek, and then kissed her. Her father's returning step put an end to this; but from this point on ascent or descent to a perfect understanding ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... Salle. The Embarcation. Navigating the Lakes. Sunshine and Storm, Beauty and Desolation. Ruins at Crevecoeur. Steps Retraced. Christian Character of La Salle. Arrival at Mackinac. The Enterprise Renewed. Travelling on the Ice. Descent of the Illinois River. Entering the Mississippi. Voyage of the Canoes. Adventures ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... were to be turned into draught-oxen. The agility, nerve, and prowess of the ranch workmen, the herders or gauchos, were noteworthy. The dark-skinned men were obviously mainly of Indian and negro descent, although some of them also showed a strong strain of white blood. They wore the usual shirt, trousers, and fringed leather apron, with jim-crow hats. Their bare feet must have been literally as tough as horn; for when one of them roped a big bull he would ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... now the gratification of finding that they were descending the slope, and of knowing that this descent took them every minute further from the regions of snow, and nearer to the sunny plains of Italy. Minnie in particular gave utterance to her delight: and now, having lost every particle of fear, she begged to be allowed to drive in the foremost ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... predestined eminence. Occupying Eurasia from the Channel to the Ganges, together with the most favored portions of Africa and America, he was the author and agency for law and order for the world. St. Augustine, first archbishop and lawgiver of Canterbury, himself of African descent, the son of Monica and Patricius of Carthage, had left the Anglo-Saxon from semi-barbarism to his position of world renown. Would this Anglo-Saxon ever degrade the sons of ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... from obtaining the essential condition of individual freedom and development—viz. the highest possible standard of living. But this absurdity becomes really critical and dangerous, in view of the fact that the American people, particularly those of alien birth and descent, have been explicitly promised economic freedom and prosperity. The promise was made on the strength of what was believed to be an inexhaustible store of natural opportunities; and it will have to be kept even when those natural resources are ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... course, included the selling out of his share in the mines,—should join him, Richard, at Para, thence to take ship for England. That instead of going round by Cape Horn, or across the isthmus, by Panama, Ralph should make the descent of the great Amazon River, which traverse would carry him latitudinally across the continent ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... making such a sacrifice, Don Pedro?' said I.—'I am, Father Anselmo,' replied he: 'I will always act as a man of honour and of family, although I cannot prove my descent.' ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... has leavened the whole mass; if you look at the leaders of Radicalism in England you will find they bear, almost without exception, true Celtic surnames. Chartists and Socialists of the first generation were marshalled by men of Cymric descent, like Ernest Jones and Robert Owen, or by pure-blooded Irishmen like Fergus O'Connor. It is not a mere accident that the London Socialists of the present day should be led by Welshmen like William Morris, or by the eloquent brogue of Bernard Shaw's audacious oratory. We Celts now lurk in every corner ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... The long descent from the stand gave him time. No trace of emotion showed on his face when he appeared in the paddock. Blacksmith the trainer ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... firearms, and besides, this pistol at that price was a great bargain, and any of the boys might pick it up. Poor Hughie! He did not know how ancient was that argument, nor how frequently it had done duty in smoothing the descent to the lower regions. The pistol was good to look at, the opportunity of securing it was such as might not occur again, and as for the half-dollar, there could be no harm in borrowing that ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... the range and began the descent on the eastern side. But he descended only a short distance before he swung out of the saddle. From the slicker pack on the rear of his saddle he took a pair of heavy leather gloves. He cut these open in the palms with his ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... the baskets into the depths of the cellar, watching them glide down the rails laid over the steps, and listening to the rasping noise which the casters of these osier waggons made in their descent. Down below there was a scene of exquisite horror. They entered into a charnel-house atmosphere, and walked along through murky puddles, amidst which every now and then purple eyes seem to be glistening. At times the soles of their ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... married the same sister; VII also subsequently married his niece; VIII married two of his own sisters consecutively; XII and XIII were brothers and consecutively married their sister, the famous Cleopatra." "The line of descent was untouched by these intermarriages, except in the two cases of III and VIII." The close intermarriages were sterile. The line was continued by others.[1689] The Peruvian Incas, but not other Peruvians, married their sisters.[1690] ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... Pretoria was named. He was a born leader of men: he was a Cromwell in his way. At that date he was forty years of age, in the prime of strength and manhood. He was tall, and vigorous in mind as well as in body, calm and deliberating in counsel, but prompt and fiery in action. His descent is traced from one Johannes Pretorius, son of a clergyman at Goeree in South Holland, one of the very early settlers—a pious and worthy man, whose piety and worth had been inherited by several generations. Like the rest ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... enough known to-day, was new to us, and we did not quite know how to manage it. However, we got onto the thing somehow, and away we went down the slide. The slide was all right and the inclined plane was all right, so we made the descent and the ascent all right, soaring over the brook like a bird, but the landing on the far side was all wrong. We hit the snowbank like a battering ram, the snow piling up in front of us as hard as stone; the shock was terrific! Mr. Hosmer got the worst of it as he catapulted into the drift, ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... the plantations of the valley, and were mounting a certain canyon in the hills, narrow, encumbered with great rocks, and echoing with the roar of a tumultuous torrent. Cascade after cascade thundered and hung up its flag of whiteness in the night, or fanned our faces with the wet wind of its descent. The trail was breakneck, and led to famine-guarded deserts; it had been long since deserted for more practicable routes; and it was now a part of the world untrod from year to year by human footing. Judge of our dismay, when turning suddenly an angle of the cliffs, we found a bright ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... origin of the Masai, of whom it has already been said that they were not negroes, but a bronze-coloured race showing the Hamitic type. Plainly the Masai are Egyptians, who, in a forgotten past, were cut off from the rest in the highlands south of the Baringo lake. Their martial habits would suggest descent from the ancient Egyptian warrior caste, possibly from those discontented warriors who, twenty-five centuries ago, in the days of Psammetichus I., migrated to Ethiopia, when Pharaoh had offended them by the ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... Sens, at the descent to the bridge of Montereau, while the eight horses, lashed to a gallop, were bearing the carriage rapidly along (the First Consul already traveled like a king), the tap of one of the front wheels came off. The inhabitants ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... guardian of law and order, Sergeant Healy. These are grave charges indeed, and who will gainsay that a man gifted with the spirit of destruction like Mr. Fennell is a menace to the peace-abiding town of Ballybraggan? Not since the heartless barbarians made their ruthless descent upon the Roman Empire was there such havoc wrought in any one house, or did any individual member of society suffer so much from nervous ...
— Duty, and other Irish Comedies • Seumas O'Brien
... see we were approaching a stagnant water. There was no perceptible descent, but the dank damp odour of the swamp, the noise of the piping frogs, the occasional scream of some wading bird, or the bellowing of the alligator, admonished me that some constant water— some lake ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... from the Moselle (which is here broad and torrential and falls in steps, running over a stony bed with little swirls and rapids), and they lead it along at an even gradient, averaging, as it were, the uneven descent of the river. In this way they have a continuous stream running through fields that would otherwise be bare and dry, but that are ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... moralize—which he didn't—upon the discovery, he would have laid it all at the door of his lucky star; and would have been wrong. We who have never stooped to petty larceny know that the oars had been placed there at the direction of his evil genius bent upon facilitating his descent into the avernus of crime. Let us, then, pity the poor young man ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... Their descent was opportune. Some of the local guests were preparing to make their departure, and Dominey was in time to receive their adieux. They all left messages for Lady Dominey, spoke of a speedy visit ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... at seven P. M., on the nineteenth, and after a forced march during the night made a descent at daylight in the morning upon the Virginia Central Railroad at Beaver Dam Creek, twenty-five miles north of Hanover Junction and thirty-five miles from Richmond. They destroyed the railroad and telegraph line for several ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... so singular an appearance, we were told, that in the then last month of Owarahew, which answered to our December, 1768, about four or five months before our arrival, the people of Tiarrabou, the S.E. peninsula which we had just visited, made a descent at this place, and killed a great number of people, whose bones were those that we saw upon the shore: That, upon this occasion, Oberea, and Oamo, who then administered the government for his son, had fled ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... down the kind of street, or rather goat's-path, which leads to the Japanese Nagasaki—with the prospect, alas! of having to climb up again at night; clamber up all the steps, all the slippery slopes, stumble over all the stones, before we shall be able to get home, go to bed, and sleep. We make our descent in the darkness, under the branches, under the foliage, among dark gardens and venerable little houses that throw but a faint glimmer on the road; and when the moon is absent or clouded over, our lanterns are by ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... gain time is everything with us, I propose, that they shall come to a resolution of adjournment, 'in order to go home and consult their constituents on the great crisis of American affairs now existing.' Besides gaining time enough by this, to allow the descent on England to have its effect here as well as there, it will be a means of exciting the whole body of the people from the state of inattention in which they are; it will require every member to call for the sense of his district by petition or instruction; it will show the people ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Basil the son of Richard gather himself together and draw breath, while Culver, sure of his man, steps back for a mighty blow. Dick sees it coming, and marks with a quick cool eye its fierce descent. With half a step he avoids it, and as the solid form sways past he greets it right and left with well-aimed blows, which send it headlong to the dust two long ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... treated dramatically; whilst a higher and a philosophic interest belongs to it as a case of authentic history, commemorating a great revolution, for good and for evil, in the fortunes of a whole people—a people semi-barbarous, but simple-hearted, and of ancient descent. 30 ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... a ridge. Part of it was rather steep and the boys found themselves panting as they got to the top and began the descent to the next little lake beyond. They found Mr. Waterman and Pierre already there and with the canoes in ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... forth, watchfully and warily. On the left side of the precipice the ground sloped down, and at the bottom of this there was a narrow valley. It seemed to him that this might be the course of some spring torrent, and that by following its descent he might come out upon some stream. With this intention he descended to the valley, and then walked along, following the descent of the ground, and keeping himself as much as possible among the thickest growths ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... Greeks of Sogdiana, whose descendants must have blended with the western Tartars and with whom the Mantchoos were connected, may have communicated this cast of countenance. Tchien-lung, whose nose was somewhat aquiline and complexion florid, used to boast of his descent from Gengis-khan: these, however, are exceptions to the general character, which is evidently the same ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... Mythology" to William Morris' "Sigurd the Volsung" (1877), but to Mallet belongs the credit of first exciting that interest in Scandinavian antiquity which has enriched the prose and poetry not only of England but of Europe in general. Gray refers to him in his notes on "The Descent of Odin," and his work continued to be popular authority on its subject for at least half a century. Scott cites it in his annotations on "The Lay of the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... relented when my father took to himself another wife, my mother, the lady of noble birth whom the Jam Saheb had desired for him—and sojourned for a season at Mekran Kot. But after I was born of this union (I am of pure and noble descent) his heart wearied, being with the fair woman at Kot Ghazi, for whom he yearned, and with her son, his own son, yet so white of skin, so blue of eye, the fairest child who ever had a Pathan father. Yea, my brother ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... description of the Witch's hut is given in advance of the actual descent of the personally conducted gentleman for the somewhat ambiguous reason that he was to find it not ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... to repose, and to enjoy these grand but savage and awful scenes, they began to descend the eastern side of the mountain. The descent was rugged and romantic, along deep ravines and defiles, overhung with crags and cliffs, among which they beheld numbers of the ahsahta or bighorn, skipping fearlessly from rock to rock. Two of them they succeeded in bringing down with their rifles, as they peered ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... ride to examine the ford at Wyabry, (Mr. Parnell, Jun.'s station,) which I found practicable for our drays, although, for their descent and ascent, it was necessary to cut better approaches on each side. The Macquarie, although the channel was so attenuated and ditch-like, was likely to prove also an obstacle without some work of the same kind. Accordingly, ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... not affected by scenery. Walking along the brink to the west she at last reached the upper end, where twelve days ago she had ascended, and where the brook, swollen by late rains, now gushed down the ledges in a series of murmuring cascades. Here she began her descent, and as the sun disappeared behind threatening clouds over the western mountains, she entered her home again. Shotaye had spent nearly the whole day on the mesa, had spent it profitably, and was—so she fancied—in complete security as regarded her ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... descent as they came down. Streets seemed to stop suddenly, and you had to make a curve to get into the next one. From Main they turned into Fish Street, and here the wind from the harbor swept across to ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... most miserable English-speaking creatures in Tahiti; and beyond their misery, they knew next to nothing of each other, not even their true names. For each had made a long apprenticeship in going downward; and each, at some stage of the descent, had been shamed into the adoption of an alias. And yet not one of them had figured in a court of justice; two were men of kindly virtues; and one, as he sat and shivered under the purao, had a tattered ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... last night, and found twenty letters at least. I only think of getting home as fast as I can. Left the Simplon in torrents of rain, which lasted the whole day. The descent is uncommonly grand, wild, savage, and picturesque, the Swiss side the finest. All along the valley of the Rhone fine scenery; and yesterday, in the most delightful weather I ever saw, the drive from Martigny, along the lake and under the mountains, is as beautiful ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... o'erhead, Yea every where, in shapes grotesque and grim, Towering they rose, encompassing my path, As 'twere in savage mockery. Lo, a chasm Yawning, and bottomless, and black! Beneath I heard the waters in their sheer descent Descending down, and down; and further down Descending still, and dashing: Now a rush, And now a roar, and now a fainter fall, And still remoter, and yet finding still, For the white anguish of their boiling whirl, No resting-place. Over my head appear'd, Between ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... H. Harrison, long familiar with the North West Indians, in an official letter to the secretary at War, dated H.Q. Cincinnati, March 22d, 1814, giving an able view of the Indian tribes, makes the following remarks on the descent of this northern confederacy, upon ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... plainly proved from the holy Scriptures, and the Writings of the Fathers of the Primitive Church: And acknowledged by several learned Fathers and great Divines of the Church of England and others since the Reformation. To which is added, an Appendix concerning the Descent of the Soul of Christ into Hell, while his Body lay in the Grave. Together with the Judgment of the Reverend Dr Hickes concerning this Book, so far as relates to a Middle State, particular Judgment, and Prayers for the Dead as it appeared ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... of the old school, which this lady retained, were the following: First, that of never mixing in the society of those of plebeian descent, such as Ganguernet: and secondly; that of always being carried in a sedan-chair by porters, when she went abroad. One evening she went to a ball, given by the first president of the court of assizes, a ball at which Ganguernet was also present. ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... pictures, with the exception of landscape. It usually serves to unite a group of people among whom there is no one especially striking—or the object of whose attention is in the center of the picture, as in the case of the Descent from the Cross. It imparts a certain amount of movement, but an equable and regular one, as the eye returns in an even sweep from ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... spend the night in, and I decided to go to one which seemed quite near, just across a gully. Had I known what an undertaking it would be, I would not have started, for the ravine was very deep and the sides unpleasantly steep; but my boys managed the descent, over rocks and fallen trees, with their usual cleverness. At the bottom we were rewarded by a beautiful sight. Beneath us, in a narrow cut it had eaten through the rock, roared a river, foaming out of the depths of the dark wilderness. It was like ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... Mrs. Giles, with the idea of making a gradual descent after her sudden aerial flight. "But, then," she ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... we find a marked and progressive descent of the apex toward the equator with the increasing swiftness of the objects serving for its determination, leading to the suspicion that the most northerly may be the most genuine position, because the one least affected by stellar ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... sunset, down into a valley, where I was to rest. In the course of my descent to it, by the winding track along the mountain-side, from which I saw it shining far below, I think some long-unwonted sense of beauty and tranquillity, some softening influence awakened by its peace, moved faintly in my breast. I ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... INHABITANTS OF THE MARIAN ISLANDS, which were discovered in 1521, had no idea of fire. Never was astonishment greater than theirs when they first saw it, on the descent of Magellan, the navigator, on one of their isles. At first they thought it a kind of animal, that fixed itself to and fed upon wood. Some of them, who approached too near, being burnt, the rest were ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... sometimes descending a broken slope that grew more and more precipitous until it became dangerous, and then, fearing to go farther—not knowing what lay before—they had to retrace their steps and search for a more gradual descent. Now crossing a level patch that raised their hopes, inclining them to believe that they had reached the bottom of the valley; anon coming suddenly upon a steep ascent that dashed their hopes, and induced them to suppose they had ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... around a slender peak where he was hidden completely from their view, and then dropped down in a forest of larch and pine. "So far as I know," he said, when the plane rested on the snow, "nobody has seen our descent. We're well beyond the French lines here, but you'll find German forts four or five miles ahead. As you see, this is exceedingly rough ground, not easy for men to occupy, and so the French stay on one side of this little cluster of mountains while the ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... lay a stone, so large that it required their united strength to move it. By hard work they rolled it to the edge of the canyon and tumbled it over, carefully watching its descent. A curious thing followed. At first it shot straight downward for a hundred feet, when it impinged against a projecting point of the mountain wall, knocked the fragments in every direction, as if it were a ball fired from a thousand-pounder, and bounded against the ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... was as moral a being as one unrenewed by Divine grace could be expected to be. Unfortunately, this statement involves no definition of what might be considered moral, under the circumstances. Now, there will be disagreeing estimates of what a moral character, upon which there has been no descent of heavenly grace, or where grace has not supervened to essay its recreation, or its moulding anew, should be; and there will also, I think, be divergent views as to a code of morals to be practised ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... the tail of the hammer head during its descent when the key is raised, and prevents it coming back violently on the carriage and rest. The tail is curved so as to wedge against the check without jamming in any way. The moment the carriage begins ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... on whom depended the easing of the fate of the Petersburg prisoners was an old General of repute—a baron of German descent, who, as it was said of him, had outlived his wits. He had received a profusion of orders, but only wore one of them, the Order of the White Cross. He had received this order, which he greatly valued, while serving in the Caucasus, because a number of Russian peasants, ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... column into an endless host that appeared to stretch from the rising to the setting of the sun. They seemed making for the Tiber, which they would have speedily choked; but ere they could arrive there a huge rift opened in the earth, down which they madly precipitated themselves. Their descent, it is affirmed, lasted as many hours as Vulcan occupied in falling from Heaven to Lemnos; but when the last tail was over the brink, the gulf closed as effectually as the gulf in the Forum closed over Marcus Curtius, not leaving the ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... last and she took her place at the piano. Her hands fell softly on a group of dreamy ascending chords. Her face, then, in a long pause, took on a rapt expectancy and power. She was the priestess waiting before her altar for the descent of the god, glorious and dreadful. And it was as if with the chill and shudder of a possession that, breathing deeply, drawing her shoulders a little together, she lifted her hands and played. She ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Logic has served as an introduction to Philosophy that is, to Metaphysics and speculative Ethics. It is of old and honourable descent: a man studies Logic in very good company. It is the warp upon which nearly the whole web of ancient, mediaeval and modern Philosophy is woven. The history of thought is ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... in mainland, Azores, Madeira Islands; citizens of black African descent who immigrated to mainland during decolonization ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... and brilliant blue eyes. He was good-looking, but if his features had been absolutely plain he could never have looked commonplace, for this was Lord Lester Leighton, son of the Earl of Kyneston, and twenty generations of unblemished descent had made him the aristocrat ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... franchise upon the colored man. If it does not, then our opposers must give it up, for colored men rightfully vote. What does this article say? That the elective franchise is conferred upon persons of African descent, or those who have suffered from a previous condition of servitude? Not a word of it. It does say: "The right of citizens"—not the right of persons of African descent—"the right of citizens of the United States to vote, shall not be denied." That is what it says—"Shall ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... afternoon, and I weakly accompanied her, a burly policeman being our guide. The track is only a scramble among rocks and holes, concealed by grass and ferns, and we had to cross a stream, full of great holes, several times. The Fall itself is very pretty, 110 feet in one descent, with a cavernous shrine behind the water, filled with ferns. There were large ferns all round the Fall, and a jungle of luxuriant tropical ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... defeated and unpopular section to be punished for its "treason" by being made over to Mongolian masters. Indeed, Congress, while rejecting Sumner's argument, made a concession to his monomania on the subject of Negroes, and a clause was inserted in the Act whereby no person "of African descent" should be excluded—with the curious result that to this day, while a yellow face is a bar to the prospective immigrant, a black face is, theoretically at any rate, ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... cause of her misfortune, but, also, her companion who had shared it with her, had been promised to him by her parents as his wife; still had he not dared to avow it to our father, because her family was poor, and of low descent. My father, however, was a stern man; as soon as his sorrow had subsided a little, he called Mustapha before him, and thus spake ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... Hurstmonceux, was situated about seven miles south of Edinboro', on the north banks of the Esk. It was an elegant modern edifice, raised upon the ruins of an ancient castle, overhanging a perpendicular precipice, with a sheer descent of several hundred feet to the river. It looked down upon the course of the Esk, winding between rocks of lofty height, whose sides were fringed with a tangled mass of shrubs, ferns, and thistles, ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... most important in the comparison, is the way by which the order of science has entered into our notions of life, through a great theory, the theory of evolution or the doctrine of descent. In this we find a solid basis for the co-ordination of facts: it was the rise of this theory in the hands of one thinker of unconquerable patience and love of truth which has put the study of biology in the pre-eminent position which it now holds. But ...
— Progress and History • Various
... admitted; when it was discovered that the ear is furnished with the means of dealing with the three characteristics of sound—its tympanum for intensity, its cochlea for pitch, its semicircular canals for quality; when it was seen that the air brought into the great air-passages by the descent of the diaphragm, calling into play atmospheric pressure, is conveyed upon physical principles into the ultimate cells of the lungs, and thence into the blood, producing chemical changes throughout the system, disengaging heat, and permitting ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... in the court long enough to explain to the Sleeping Beauty and his friends that he was setting forth on an important mission with Will o'Dreams; and then the two companions set forth from the castle and began the descent of the road which led down ...
— Everychild - A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret to the Old • Louis Dodge
... inquire into his ancestry, and two or three hints may be given of the currents that met in this poet. On his father's side he came from a succession of New England men who for the previous three generations had been in professional life. The Lowells traced their descent from Percival Lowell,—a name which survives in the family,—of Bristol, England, who settled in Newbury, Massachusetts, in 1639. The great-grandfather was a minister in Newburyport, one of those, as Dr. Hale says, "who preached ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... a distinguished part in the great events of that time, His Majesty ordered Mr. West to insert his own portrait among the spectators represented in the gallery, and immediately over the shield bearing the arms of the Earl of Delawarre. Mr. West himself was not, at that period, acquainted with the descent of his pedigree; but it happened in a conversation one day with Lord Buckingham, that His Lordship enquired from what part of England his family had been originally, and upon Mr. West telling him, His Lordship said, that the land which his ancestors had formerly possessed was become ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... she was dressing for the very simple meal that only Mrs. Denton dignified by the name of "dinner," Laura reminded herself that Mr. Williams must have arrived, and that she would probably find him in the hall on her descent. ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... old city of Limerick, about ten Irish miles under the range of mountains known as the Slieveelim hills, famous as having afforded Sarsfield a shelter among their rocks and hollows, when he crossed them in his gallant descent upon the cannon and ammunition of King William, on its way to the beleaguering army, there runs a very old and narrow road. It connects the Limerick road to Tipperary with the old road from Limerick to Dublin, ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... was of a noble though ruined French family, and a certain nameless elegance and dignity attested, spite of her fallen condition, the purity of her descent. She was accomplished—possessed of that fine perception and sensitiveness, and that ready power of self-adaptation to the peculiarities and moods of others, which we term tact—and was, moreover, gifted with a certain natural ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... him, and even Mrs. Spruce's manner of relating it was not without a certain rough eloquence. The ancient history of the Vancourts he knew as well as he knew the priceless archaeological value of their old Manor-house as a perfect gem of unspoilt Tudor architecture,— but though he had traced the descent of the family from Robert Priaulx de Vaignecourt of the twelfth century and his brother Osmonde Priaulx de Vaignecourt who had, it was rumoured, founded a monastery in the neighbourhood, and had died during a pilgrimage ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... slipping on the fatal descent, listens to that voice: "Stop, stop; there is still time, raise ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... bridge, covered in and painted red, not unlike an amazingly long Noah's ark; the high hills rising almost from the very banks of the river, the old monastery crouched between the river and the heights, the water that seethed and whitened, flinging itself in wild descent down the staircase of a giant. But to see this young man after seven years, and to hear his name spoken, aroused in Maria memories clearer and more lively than she was able to evoke of the events and ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... gates were open flung, The quivering drawbridge rocked and rung, And echoed loud the flinty street Beneath the coursers' clattering feet, As slowly down the steep descent Fair Scotland's King and nobles went, While all along the crowded way Was jubilee and loud huzza. And ever James was bending low To his white jennet's saddle-bow, Doffing his cap to city dame, ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott |
