"Ebb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and that the tides were made to bring our ships into port (The Abbe Pluche in "The Spectacle of Nature"), were somewhat ashamed when the reply was made to them that the Mediterranean has ports and no ebb. Musschenbroeck himself fell ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... dry bones of the romantic poetry of former ages, or by telling them fables and the quaint stories of the "Seven Wise Masters." What beauty there was in a Meistergesang may be fairly seen from the poem of Michael Beheim; and the Easter play by no means shows the lowest ebb of good taste in the popular literature ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... should always seize his opportunity; but the changes of the times in which he has lived have never allowed him to have one. There has been no period of flood in his tide which might lead him on to fortune. While he has been waiting patiently for high water the ebb has come upon him. Mr. Prendergast himself had been a successful man, and his regrets, therefore, were philosophical rather than practical. As for Herbert, he did not look upon the question at all in the same light as his elderly friend, and on ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... of provisions, etc., was then very moderate, the discharging his lodgings, and the expense of his living, together with that of a change of dress, which safety as well as a proper regard to his external appearance rendered necessary, brought Brown's purse to a very low ebb. He left directions at the post-office that his letters should be forwarded to Kippletringan, whither he resolved to proceed and reclaim the treasure which he had deposited in the hands of Mrs. MacCandlish. He also felt it would be his duty to assume his proper character ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Glimmers a limpid labyrinth of dreams;"*6* and of the heavens reflected in the marsh waters: "Each winding creek in grave entrancement lies A rhapsody of morning-stars. The skies Shine scant with one forked galaxy, — The marsh brags ten: looped on his breast they lie."*7* Later, as the ebb-tide flows from marsh to sea, we are parenthetically treated to these two lines: "Run home, little streams, With your lapfuls of stars and dreams."*8* Finally, the heaven itself is thus pictured: "Now in each pettiest personal sphere of dew The summ'd morn shines complete as in ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... but it is that, and Dover Beach is very much more. Mr Arnold's theological prepossessions and assumptions may appear in it, and it may be unfortunately weak as an argument, for except the flood itself nothing is so certain a testimony to the flood as the ebb. But the order, the purpose, the argument, the subject, matter little to poetry. The expression, the thing that is not the subject, the tendency outside the subject, which makes for poetry, are here, and almost of the very best. Here you ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... writing, because I have no good news to communicate. My hopes ebb low indeed about Branwell. I sometimes fear he will never be fit for much. The late blow to his prospects and feelings has quite made him reckless. It is only absolute want of means that acts as any check to him. One ought, indeed, to hope to the very last; and I try ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... of truth, that the English genius won in that age the most memorable triumphs. John Wallis placed the whole system of statics on a new foundation. Edmund Halley investigated the properties of the atmosphere, the ebb and flow of the sea, the laws of magnetism, and the course of the comets; nor did he shrink from toil, peril and exile in the cause of science. While he, on the rock of Saint Helena, mapped the constellations ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... short periods of time. On the other hand, Pelvetia canaliculata, which marks the upper belt, is exposed for longer periods, and during neap tides may not be reached by the water for many days. Algae of more delicate texture than either Fucaceae or Laminariaceae also occur in the region exposed by the ebb of the tide, but these secure their exemption from desiccation either by retaining water in their meshes by capillary attraction, as in the case of Pilayella, or by growing among the tangles of the larger Fucaceae, as in the case of Polysiphonia fastigiata, or by growing in dense masses on rocks, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... idea for their master-stroke of strategy came from a masculine source. Lena Dubarri, who was the captain-general of their thinking department, met Waldo Orpington in the Mall one afternoon, just at a time when the fortunes of the Cause were at their lowest ebb. Waldo Orpington is a frivolous little fool who chirrups at drawing-room concerts and can recognise bits from different composers without referring to the programme, but all the same he occasionally has ideas. ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... ordered arrangement of rocks its bones, of which mountains are formed, the tufa its tendons; its blood the veins of water which surround its heart, which is the ocean; its breathing and increase and decrease of blood in the pulses the ebb and flood of the sea; and the heat of the spirit of the world is fire which pervades the earth, and the vital soul dwells in the fires which from various apertures of the earth issue in springs and sulphur minerals and volcanoes, as ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... flowed in the human heart, with its countless waves of hope and fear, beating against the shores and rocks of time and fate, was not born of any book, nor of any creed, nor of any religion. It was born of human affection, and it will continue to ebb and flow beneath the mists and clouds of doubt and darkness as long as love kisses the lips of death. It is the rainbow—Hope, shining upon the tears ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the tide of sound began to ebb, the volume lessened and grew distant, and he found himself, regretfully, abruptly, sinking back into what by comparison was mere noise. First, he became conscious that he listened—heard—saw; then, that Miriam's voice still uttered his name softly, but ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... the writer, as one of the departing generation, would answer yes; but it is to the last that his attention, possibly by constitutional bias, is more naturally directed. It appears to him that in the ebb and flow of human affairs, under those mysterious impulses the origin of which is sought by some in a personal Providence, by some in laws not yet fully understood, we stand at the opening of a period when ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... day there was an ebb; the old slippery rocks, the old weedy places reappeared. Naturally, there was a shrinking of courage as misfortune ceased to be a mere announcement, and began to disclose itself as a grievous tyrannical inmate. At first—that ugly ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... images, pictures, sutras, shastras and all the furniture thought necessary in a Buddhist temple. The course of thought and action in the Orient is in many respects similar to that in the Occident. In western lands, with the ebb and flow of religious sentiment, the iconolater has been followed by the iconoclast, and the overcrowded cathedrals have been purged by the hammer and fire of the Protestant and Puritan. So in Japan we find analogous, though not ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... and energy, Leo III; but the empire had sunk so low as a result of the misrule of his predecessors that his authority scarcely extended beyond the shores of the Sea of Marmora, and his resources were at a low ebb. The navy on which so much depended was brought to a high point of efficiency, but it was so inferior in numbers to the Saracen armada that he dared not attempt even a ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... favor; and weak as reason is, it has this unique advantage over its antagonists that its activity never lets up and that it presses always in one direction, while men's prejudices vary, their passions ebb and flow, and their excitements are intermittent. Our sand-bank, I absolutely believe, is bound to grow. Bit by bit it will get dyked and breakwatered. But sitting as we do in this warm room, with music and lights ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... the whole land, and the fortunes of the Germans were at a low ebb. Freedom seemed stifled forever when Arminius led his forces against the Roman hosts in the forest of Teutoburgium. Rightly does Creasy rate this important battle so highly, for it meant the final uplifting of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... quizzically, but with a little pity through the banter. They were alone in the common room of the Chien Noir, and on the table by which they sat were two bottles of the famous '63 wine, one empty, the other with its tide at a low ebb, but La Mothe's horn mug was still unemptied after its first filling. With some men this would have been an offence, but not with Francois Villon. "Good-fellowship is not in wine but in words, or surer still, in silence," he would say, "and another man's ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... I should think it a heinous sin in myself to act contrary to such a vote: And, if the same power should declare the same censure against those who wore Indian stuffs and calicoes, or woollen manufactures imported from abroad, whereby this nation is reduced to the lowest ebb of misery; I should readily, heartily, and cheerfully pay obedience; and to my utmost power persuade others to do the like: Because, there is no law of this land obliging us either to receive such coin, or ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... an ebb of the ocean of life, As I wended the shores I know, As I walked where the sea-ripples wash you, Paumanok, Where they rustle up, hoarse and sibilant, Where the fierce old mother endlessly cries for her castaways, I, musing, late in the autumn day, gazing off southward, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... ebb-tide swept the hats of the perishing wretches in such numbers down the stream, that the people at Embden knew the result of the battle in an incredibly short period of time. The skirmishing had lasted from ten o'clock till one, but the butchery continued much longer. It took time to slaughter ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... industrial pursuits with the ordinary branches of an elementary education. But all accounts of the days of the French regime go to show that, despite the zealous efforts of the religious bodies to improve the education of the colonists, secular instruction was at a very low ebb and hardly reached the seigniories. One writer tells us that "even the children of officers and gentlemen scarcely knew how to read and write; they were ignorant of the first elements of geography and history." Still, dull and devoid ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... them to their tables, and even to some degree of social intimacy. More frequently they presented them with their cast-off clothing, with new gowns for their wives at Christmas, or—when things were at a remarkably low ebb—with a hundredweight of flour or half a barrel of mess pork. Yet the recipients of these favours piqued themselves upon their good birth and high connexions, and would have felt themselves insulted if anyone had ventured to hint that they ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... revulsion of sentiment ensued, wherein sympathy for General Rene Laurance reigned supreme. Oh instability of human compassion! To-day at the tumultuous flood, we weep for Caesar slain; To-morrow in the ebb, we vote a ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... glare of the tropic sun, whose torrid beams fall from heavens that glow like hot walls of brass, and beat down through an atmosphere whose faint undulations in the breath of the desert wind ebb and flow over the parched travellers, like waves of a fiery sea; under a sun that seems to grow ever larger and brighter as the tired eyes, sick with beholding its yellow splendor overflowing all the world, yet ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... at a strange loss to understand this, and resolved to spend some time in the observing it, to see if nothing from the sets of the tide had occasioned it; but I was presently convinced how it was - viz. that the tide of ebb setting from the west, and joining with the current of waters from some great river on the shore, must be the occasion of this current, and that, according as the wind blew more forcibly from the west or from the north, this current came nearer or went ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... experience on the Northern Seas decided to risk going out, as the water on the bar was running down so fast that he feared that the steamer would be unable to cross over the bar. I may remark that the wind causes the waters of the lake to ebb and flow into the river with great rapidity, and that the bar is so serious an obstruction to an important navigation, that it ought to be examined with a view to ascertain the cost and practicability of its removal. Leaving our ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris
... the evening an abundant supply of pine-nuts, which we traded from them. When roasted, their pleasant flavor made them an agreeable addition to our now scanty store of provisions, which were reduced to a very low ebb. Our principal stock was in peas, which it is not necessary to say contain scarcely any nutriment. We had still a little flour left, some coffee, and a quantity of sugar, which I reserved as a ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... night in case he should call her or want for anything. But the hours wore on peacefully for him till the moon began her downward course towards the west, and the tide having rolled in to its highest mark, began to ebb and flow out again. Then—all at once—he awoke—smitten by a shock of pain that seemed to crash through his heart and send his brain swirling into a blind chaos. Struggling for breath, he sprang up in his bed, and instinctively snatched the handbell ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... avenue; He catches down and foolish painted flies That spider wary and wise. Each morn it hangs a rainbow strung with dew Betwixt boughs green with sap, So fair, few creatures guess it is a trap: I will not mar the web, Though sad I am to see the small lives ebb. 40 ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... so short and quick mutations of pressure, be able to produce any sensible effect at such a distance. Besides that, to confirm this hypothesis, there are many Examples found in Natural Historians, of Springs that do ebb and flow like the Sea: As particularly, those recorded by the Learned Camden, and after him by Speed, to be found in this Island: One of which, they relate to be on the Top of a Mountain, by the small Village Kilken in Flintshire, Maris aemulus qui statis temporibus ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... its usual midnight throng; there was the hubbub of loud voices and the ebb and flow of laughter. From midway of the gambling-hall rose the noisy exhortations of some amateur gamester who was breathing upon his dice and pleading earnestly, feelingly, with "Little Joe"; from the ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... appeared to have become a vast pool of brown faces and agitated white ihrams (pilgrim robes) of weaving brown hands, of gleaming weapons. This pool, roaring to heaven, showed strange, violent currents in flow and refluent ebb ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... running to and fro would have driven it as far back with the ebb as it brought it forward with ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... had found a producer after all. His hopes, considerably dashed by the Supreme Court of the United States of America, were at a low ebb when a practically unknown manager from the Far West concluded that there was more to his play than the wise men of the East were able to discern at a glance. With more sense than intelligence, the Westerner leaped into the heart of New York with a new play by a new author ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... sacrifice on the question of departure was repeated as many as three times, the victims were persistently unfavourable. Thereat the soldiers were in high dudgeon, for the provisions they had brought with them had reached the lowest ebb, and there was no ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... uniformity it becomes an easy matter for the natives to ascertain the height of the tide at any hour that the moon is visible. Whilst she appears to ascend the water falls and vice versa; the lowest of the ebb happening when she is in her meridian. The vulgar rule for calculating the tides is rendered also to Europeans more simple and practical from the same cause. There only needs to add together the epact, number of the month, and day of the month; the ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... bungling attempt to carry out the policies of Lincoln and had gone down in the strife. The Democratic Party had reached the ebb tide of its ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... increased, intensified by the strong attraction radiating from Bellward, and finally Desmond succumbed. He opened his eyes to dart a quick glance at Bellward and found the other's staring eyes, with pupils distended, fixed on his. And Desmond felt his resistance ebb. He tried to avert his gaze; but it was too late. That basilisk glare ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... his broad shoulder to the stout oak door, he forced it back. The wind moaned and hissed through the closing aperture. It was like the ebb of a broken wave to those who had heard the sea. Turning about, as the candles on the table blinked, the young man lazily dashed the rain and sleet from his beard and breast, and lay down again on the settle, with something between a shiver and a yawn. "Cruel night, this," he muttered, ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... was all prepared;—and from the rock A goat, the patriarch of the flock, Before the kindling pile was laid, And pierced by Roderick's ready blade. Patient the sickening victim eyed The life-blood ebb in crimson tide Down his clogged beard and shaggy limb, Till darkness glazed his eyeballs dim. The grisly priest, with murmuring prayer, A slender crosslet framed with care, A cubit's length in measure due; The shaft and limbs were rods of yew, Whose parents in ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... the same bearing. To avoid this danger, it is therefore necessary to haul over towards Quail Island, when the highest hummock on it bears South-West 1/2 West. The tides follow the direction of the channel, varying in velocity from one to two knots. The ebb ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... danger of collapse. The British nation will plan, and work and fight for ever, if need be. Our only danger is in the moral field. Though our power of action is undiminished, our power of endurance may ebb. We may begin to cry, in our impatience, "Lord, how long?"; to repine against the fate which condemns us to this protracted agony; to question within ourselves whether the cause which we profess to serve is ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... winter quarters. He divided it into small detachments, and for the sake of protecting and encouraging the loyalists, extended his line of communication for eighty miles. The fortunes of the insurgents were at low ebb. Not only were the loyalists strong in New Jersey, but crowds of the rebel party, many of them men of high standing, took advantage of the amnesty which Howe was empowered to offer. The Delaware would soon be frozen over, and, if the British crossed it, Washington ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... and dip of many oars, came the barges of the river planters. Right royally came the lords of the wilderness—members of the Council perhaps, and in brave gold-laced attire—dropping down with the ebb tide to the tiny capital in the island marshes. And up the stream came ships from "London Towne," spreading soft white clouds of canvas where sail was never seen before; and carrying past the naked Indian in his tepee the sweet-scented ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... itself. He arrayed the Upper South against the Lower and thus because of the ultimate purposes of men like Cheeves, with their ambition to weld the South into a genuine unit, he forced them all to stand still, and thus to give Northern pacifism a chance to ebb, Northern nationalism a chance to develop. A comprehensive brief for the defense on this crucial point in the interpretation of American history, is ...
— Webster's Seventh of March Speech, and the Secession Movement • Herbert Darling Foster
... all men, Peel is the last to favour any attempt to question the virtual supremacy of the House of Commons, and if he becomes Minister, and has a majority (as of course he must, to stay in), the high tide of the Lords will begin to ebb, and everything will be seen to settle down into the usual practice. If a victory is achieved, it will not be that of the Lords over the Commons, but of the Conservatives over ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... of any big town on the Western Front. The latter might be more important from a military standpoint, but among the people, especially neutrals, it would be regarded merely as a passing incident in the ebb and flow of the tide of war. Bagdad had an important influence on the Eastern mind; Jerusalem affected Christian, Jew, and Moslem alike the world over. The War Cabinet regarded the taking of Jerusalem by British ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... fact comes to be inquired into, the best attainable methods of eliciting the truth must be used. In default of any one of these securities, public liberty must be said to be proportionately at a very low ebb. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... wooded pathways dank on brown, The branches on grey cloud a web, The long green roller of the down, An image of the deluge-ebb:"— ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... shadow in unreality. Every positive seems to have a negative. The magnet has its opposite poles, one positive, the other negative. Jesus had his Nero. Truth has its opposing falsities. At the lowest ebb of the world's morals appeared the Christ. The Christian religion springs from the soil of a Roman Emperor's blood-soaked gardens. And so it goes. Harmony opposed by discord. Errors hampering the solving of mathematical problems. Spirit opposed by ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... the Serapeum; nay, as an amateur, he had often sung in the chorus there and acted as deputy for the regular leader. The theatre in his native town of Tauromenium had also been a famous one of old, but, at the time of his return, it had sunk to a very low ebb. Most of the inhabitants of the beautiful city nestling at the foot off Etna, had been converted to Christianity; among them the wealthy citizens at whose cost the plays had been performed and the chorus maintained. Small entertainments were ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... she said, smiling; "it was the revulsion of feeling. My life was at a low ebb: if your sentence had been against me it would have been ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... dress, or a new receipt for cake. Or they walked down to the shore and dug clams, some fine afternoon; or Mrs. Dashiell lent them a new book; or Mr. Dashiell preached an extraordinary sermon. It was a very slight ebb and flow of the tide of time; however, it served to keep everything from stagnation. Then suddenly, at the end of July, came Mrs. Wishart's summons to Lois to join her on her way to the Isles of Shoals. "I shall go in about a week," the letter ran; "and I want you ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... taking a light, went to the chamber with shaky knees and a palpitating heart. I listened before the door. Presently there was a movement in the room as of some one dragging a chain. My courage began to ebb. I was half resolved to retreat at once, and on the morrow advise the family to ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... with the pulse of human life. Yet life in the veins of these people flowed slow and cool; their sorrows and joys were few and life-long. The enduring air suited this woman, Margret Howth. Her blood could never ebb or flow with sudden gusts of passion, like his own, throbbing, heating continually: one current, absorbing, deep, would carry its tide from one eternity to the other, one love or one hate. Whatever power was in the tide should be his, in its entirety. It was his right. Was ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... them gracing the solid home-like houses on the Broadway, and in the fine grounds along the river front, where he strayed alter a time, having mistaken the way to King's College. He walked back through Wall Street, and his enthusiasm was beginning to ebb, he was feeling the first pangs of a lonely nostalgia, when he almost ran into Ned Stevens's arms. It was four years since they had met. Stevens had grown a foot and Alexander a few inches, but both were boyish in appearance still and recognized ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... sentence of death. Every time the bolts rattle, he believes his deliverance entering with the jailer. Whole years of slavery have not been able to wear out this consoling sentiment. These contradictions,—these differences of seeing,—these returns,—this stormy flow and ebb, are so many effects of hope, which plays upon us and never ceases. It is inherent in human nature to hope in adversity for a favorable change of fate, however the appearances may be ill-grounded of an end ...
— The Campaign of 1760 in Canada - A Narrative Attributed to Chevalier Johnstone • Chevalier Johnstone
... habits well. He eked out a scanty sustenance by fishing off the shore and would frequently come in on the ebb tide and leave his boat half way up the beach, going home to dinner and returning when the flood tide had about reached his boat, to bring ...
— Out of the Fog • C. K. Ober
... is at ebb, and the sound of her utmost word Is soft as the least wave's lapse in a still small reach. From bay into bay, on quest of a goal deferred, From headland ever to headland and breach to breach Where earth gives ear to the message that all days preach With changes of gladness ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... awoke, I somehow felt the day coming to me like a new gilt-edged letter, with some unheard-of news awaiting me on the opening of the envelope. And, lest I should lose any fragment of it, I would hurry through my toilet to my chair outside. Every day there was the ebb and flow of the tide on the Ganges; the various gait of so many different boats; the shifting of the shadows of the trees from west to east; and, over the fringe of shade-patches of the woods on the opposite bank, the gush of golden life-blood through the pierced ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... no adoptive parents can be found, the child is placed alive in the arms of the corpse and buried together with it" (125. II. 589). Of the Banians of Bombay, Niebuhr tells us that children under eighteen months old are buried when the mother dies, the corpse of the latter being burned at ebb tide on the shore of the sea, so that the next tide may wash away the ashes (125. II. 581). In certain parts of Borneo: "If a mother died in childbirth, it was the former practice to strap the living babe to its dead mother, and ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... stations except very large and important ones—are manned entirely by natives, and so are the posts and telegraphs. The rank and file of the police are natives. All these people are pleasant and accommodating. One day I left an express train to lounge about in that perennially ravishing show, the ebb and flow and whirl of gaudy natives, that is always surging up and down the spacious platform of a great Indian station; and I lost myself in the ecstasy of it, and when I turned, the train was moving swiftly away. I was going to sit ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... his marked effect on early Venetian art, Veronese painting fell for a time to a very low ebb; but Mantegna's influence was strongly felt here, and art revived in Liberale da Verona, Falconetto, Casoto, the Morone and Girolamo dai Libri, painters delightful in themselves, but having little connection with the school ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... blood seemed suddenly to chill. He was conscious of a sensible ebb as if the tide about his heart had suddenly sunk lower. Perhaps, it was the cooling of the atmosphere as the fire in his library died out,—or was it ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... ebb at that time of night; though the brain is quick to perceive, and so clear that its ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... memorable as being the first occasion upon which the mutineers and the British troops met. Hitherto the Sepoys had had it entirely their own way. Mutiny, havoc, murder, had gone on unchecked; but now the tide was to turn, never to ebb again until the Sepoy mutiny was drowned in a sea of blood. Upon this, their first meeting with the white troops, the Sepoys were confident of success. They were greatly superior in force; they had been carefully drilled in the English system; they were ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... cry burst suddenly from his lips; he felt the blood ebb from his cheeks—and surge back again in a burning, mighty tide. It was dark, he could not see; but those wonderfully sensitive finger tips, that were ears and eyes to Jimmie Dale, were telegraphing a wild, mad, amazing message to his brain. The Tocsin had been here—here ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... Formidable here, with her twelve and eighty guns, Think to make the river-mouth by the single narrow way, Trust to enter—where 'tis ticklish for a craft of twenty tons, 20 And with flow at full beside? Now, 'tis slackest ebb of tide. Reach the mooring? Rather say, While rock stands or water runs, Not a ship will leave the ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... it, and remained there for two hours, like besiegers in the approaches to a town, the balls passing over their heads harmlessly, though sometimes covering them with the earth which they threw up as they bounded by. At length the tide began to ebb, and the vice-admiral was in danger of being left aground. He weighed his anchors and withdrew, and the queen and her party were relieved. Such a cannonading of a helpless and defenseless woman is a barbarity which could hardly take place except in ...
— Charles I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... McPhearson objected instantly. "By the fourteenth century there were clocks that really began to be clocks. In 1326, for example, the Abbott of St. Albans made a marvelous clock which not only showed the course of the sun and moon but the ebb and flow of the tide. In the meantime more big clocks began to be put up on the church towers. But remember, none of these could boast any nice degree of accuracy; it was many, many years later before the secrets of correct time-keeping were mastered. ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... not dreaming a thing; for when a cow-puncher has nothing in particular to do, he sleeps to atone for the weary hours when he must be very wide-awake. An avalanche descended upon his unwarned middle, and checked the rhythmic ebb and flow of sound. He squawked and came to life ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... brother, already established in the service. His own start in official life was delayed, and took place under circumstances by no means auspicious. The tone, both in political and private life, was at that time at its lowest ebb in India. Drinking, gambling, and extravagance of all kinds were tolerated even in the best society, and Colebrooke could not entirely escape the evil effects of the moral atmosphere in which he had to live. It is all the more remarkable that his taste ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... thought and refinement of spirit, in whatever form it manifests itself, is at its lowest ebb among the Sakais and especially representative art, although it is curious to notice how much more they prefer (I speak of the male sex) this latter to that of sounds. Music may procure some moments of bliss to those who yield themselves to its charms but it is transitory ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... two hours past midnight and the ebb tide set in. The good wind was still blowing down the river. Two lanterns went aloft in the rigging of the Sutherland, and the signal for one of the great adventures of history was given. All the troops had gone into boats earlier in the evening, and now ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... at noon, ere night are down to lowest ebb, and, greatly humiliated, he almost wishes himself back on the old farmstead by Godalming. He is even again considering whether it would not be better to give it up and go back, when his eyes chance to stray to a flag on whose corner is a cluster of stars on a blue ground, ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... doubt that I had experienced the ebb of some vitality, for it is the saddest thing about us that this bright spirit with which we are lit from within like lanterns, can suffer dimness. Such frailty makes one fear that extinction is our final destiny, and it ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... Falls, which has been such a Bugbare, is rather a narrow place in the River than Falls, for at half tide it is as smooth as any other place in the River, the tide then just beginning to make and grows gradually stronger until high water, from that till two hours ebb a Vessell of 500 tons may go up or down. I know of very few Harbours in America that has not a barr or some other impediment at the entrance so as to wait for the tide longer than at St. Johns; here if you are obliged to wait you are in a good harbour out ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... fro in the rooms like an ebb and flow of turquoises, rubies, emeralds, opals, and diamonds. As usual, the oldest women were the most decorated, and the ugliest the most conspicuous. If there was a beautiful lily, or a sweet rose, you had to search for it, concealed in some corner behind a mother with a turban, or an aunt ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... country people, with the every-day habits and every-day pleasures of my youthful life left behind me—without plans or hopes to interest me in looking at the future—it is surely not wonderful that my spirits had sunk to their lowest ebb, and that I even failed to appreciate with sufficient gratitude the fortunate accident of ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... from Broadway into Madison, Fourth and Fifth avenues, and along their upper portions traverse the best quarter of the city. As the stages furnish the only conveyances on Broadway, they generally do well. The flow and ebb of the great tide down and up the island in the morning and evening crowd every vehicle, and during the remainder of the day, they manage by the exertions of the drivers to ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... been near the office of the Universe. He found boon companions among the wildest acquaintances of his Paris days, including Tony Mostyn and his set. But a fortnight had dispelled the glamour, and life looked blacker to him than it had ever looked before. Courage and manhood were at a low ebb. He laughed recklessly as he wondered ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... I am proud to see, Stands not as others stood; The prospects of posterity Are really rather good, Now that my zeal (not on the ebb) Has borne me ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... Carolina) from Charles-Town, being six English-men in Company, with three Indian-men, and one Woman, Wife to our Indian-Guide, having five Miles from the Town to the Breach we went down in a large Canoe, that we had provided for our Voyage thither, having the Tide of Ebb along with us; which was so far spent by that Time we got down, that we had not Water enough for our Craft to go over, although we drew but two Foot, or thereabouts. This Breach is a Passage through a Marsh lying to the Northward of Sullivans ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... of May we reached the Elizabeth; there was an old hut or two, but no people were now living there. The water was at a very low ebb. We got a few ducks the first day we arrived. As some work had to be done to the water-casks to enable us to carry them better, we remained here until the 2nd of June. The Elizabeth comes from the table-lands near the shores of Lake Torrens to the north-eastward and falls into the northern ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... felt at rather low ebb that he passed, rather disconsolately, the Flat Iron Building and remembered Martin. Having no other place to go, he decided to call upon that shrewd gentleman and gather from such a source of hard ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... privilege of rehearsing for ever upon earth his most mysterious perfection—Life, and the resurrections of Life—is it indeed true, that poor Kate must never see you more? Mutteringly she put that question to herself. But strange are the caprices of ebb and flow in the deep fountains of human sensibilities. At this very moment, when the utter incapacitation of despair was gathering fast at Kate's heart, a sudden lightening shot far into her spirit, a reflux almost supernatural, from the earliest effects ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... battlements, Silvered with light from the full summer moon, And heard his seneschal with loud replies Denying entrance, as his orders were; He would be left alone and undisturbed With memory and thought of Gwendolaine. "What sweetness infinite beneath the ebb And flow of moods," he said, half audibly; "What truth beneath her laughter and her mirth! I ask but that her nature be fulfilled, That is enough for me; it matters not If I may only see her from afar. My love was sent to vivify her life, Not to imperil, and to make ...
— Under King Constantine • Katrina Trask
... at least in maidens' hearts, of the nature of an intermittent fever. The tide of Solway flows, but the more rapid his flow the swifter his ebb. The higher it brings the wrack up the beach, the deeper, six hours after, are laid bare the roots of the seaweed upon the shingle. Now Winsome Charteris, however her heart might conspire against her peace, was ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... by the episode of the afternoon Carl McGregor returned home with spirits at a lower ebb than they had been for many a day. To be out of work was a very real tragedy in the world in which he lived. He knew only too well how indispensable was money and that the necessity of it was even greater in the Harling home than ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... account of weather had much ado to get ashore. The voyage down the Delaware was slow, for from want of proper lights we must needs lay by at night, and if winds were contrary were forced to wait for the ebb. ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... sure, Marie? Is yonder great rock, on which countless tides have beaten, sure? Is the mighty Gulf sure of its ebb and flow? Is anything sure in ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... Virginia bore with him. Such is the appointed lot of women. She tried to be just, and it occurred to her that she had never before been just. Again and again she repeated to herself that Eliphalet's devotion to the Colonel at this low ebb of his fortunes had something in it of which she did not suspect him. She had a class contempt for Mr. Hopper as an uneducated Yankee and a person of commercial ideals. But now he was showing virtues,—if virtues they were,—and she tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. With his great shrewdness ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... The boy sighed heavily. It was the hour in which hope reaches its lowest ebb and vitality is weakest. He was ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... watery waste, a prospect wild and new; The now receding billows give them space, On either side the growing shores to pace; And then returning, they contract the scene, Till small and smaller grows the walk between; As sea to sea approaches, shore to shores, Till the next ebb the sandy isle restores. Then what alarm! what danger and dismay, If all their trust, their boat, should drift away; And once it happen'd—Gay the friends advanced, They walk'd, they ran, they play'd, they sang, they danced; The urns were boiling, and the cups went round, And not a grave or thoughtful ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... be at a low ebb where there is but little knowledge of, or interest in, the history of its past. I was recently impressed with this in visiting a small inland community, which was not without many events of interest in its earlier development. I failed, however, to find any connected ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... so mysteriously out of the doctor's house. Dr Rider went to his hard day's work vaguely expectant, feeling sure he must hear of them somehow, and more interested in hearing of them than was to be expected from his former low ebb of fraternal affection. When he returned and found still no letter, no message, the blank disappointment of the former night closed still more blankly upon him. When one is all by one's self, and has nothing at best but an easy-chair to go home to, and goes home expecting a letter, or a message, ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... chestnut blight was studied at great length and at different seasons. Sometimes branches were inoculated with the fungus to test resistance more precisely. It was learned that blight resistance, in this group of trees, was at an apparently low ebb from March until May. After this period the fungus seemed to make almost no progress at all. This might suggest that the resistant substance was manufactured by the leaves. Of course, such conclusions cannot ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... jumped and fell, the shavings rustled strangely in the fireplace, the "Transfiguration" swung a little on its cord, the colour still lingering at its heart as the rest of the room moved restlessly under the ebb and flow of black shadows. Then the candle ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... sleep, appetite, and flesh," proceeded Moore, "but your spirits are always at ebb. Besides, there is a nervous alarm in your eye, a nervous disquiet in your manner. These peculiarities were ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... could see that tending a garden of the size we had planned—along, say, in July—was going to be a chore. No one as yet had come to replace our ex-domestic staff: if no one came that chore would fall to me. In the gray of the evening my enthusiasm was at rather low ebb. It was all I could do to make out an order for asparagus and sweet-potato plants. A cool, quiet bed, in a spring land where frogs are peeping in the moist places, is sweet after ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... o'clock that evening, he decided, in view of the infectious character of the disease of which the East Indian had died, that the cremation of the body should take place that very night, beneath the cliff, on the beach, at ebb tide. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... essentially an age of monks and of monasteries; perhaps one should say the end of the age of monastic influence. Pope Eugenius III., the great Suger and St. Bernard, all died when Hugh was a young man. The great enthusiasm for founding monasteries was just beginning to ebb. Yet a hundred and fifteen English houses were founded in Stephen's reign, and a hundred and thirteen in the reign of Henry II., and the power of the monastic bodies was still almost paramount in the church. It was to the monasteries ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... him hours since he had entered the house. In reality, the time was short. As he had crossed the threshold, Beatrix had raised her head and looked at him dully. Then her reaction had come. Like the ebb and flow of the waves, excitement had followed apathy; and, as she had met his eyes, the wave had risen again and swept her away upon its tossing crest. Thayer was here at last. He never forgot her, never forsook her. He had come to her in this moment of ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... afternoon, Before the sun was set, A fox and other country folk Upon the beach had met. The creeping tide far out had ebb'd, And by the shelving strand There stretch'd a wide and level plain Of ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... to what people said, or to the consequences which might possibly ensue. And indeed his audacity generally paid. Later on he carried it into politics, and with equal success. My readers may know that he came into power in 1848, when the affairs of the House of Austria were at their lowest ebb, Vienna in revolution, Hungary ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville |
