"Wrecking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to compare with this one! Herr Freudenberg deliberately, and of his own free choice, was accustomed to take huge risks. When they came he accepted them, but when they were not inevitable he as sedulously avoided them. The wrecking of Julien's apartments in the Rue de Montpelier was by far the most hazardous enterprise which had been attempted since the days of the toymaker's first secret visits to Paris. Half a dozen human beings had been done to death ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the Frenchman, with a shrug of his shoulders, "there is not much more to tell, though it may mean the wrecking of two lives, mine and that of Jeanette. My father and I had many words, calm on my part, enraged on his, and during the interview I learned that our great secret had been discovered by that old witch, the housekeeper, the week before, when ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... space flier in the cavern was like trying to navigate a one-hundred-thousand-ton freighter in a pond. But Captain Crane did it—she whom I had once accused, to myself, of misnavigating and wrecking our other ship. The Orconites had formed themselves in a dense group. We went into them, mowed them down, stopped under the great arch which led to the inky black power rooms, backed up, and, as the screaming lines reformed, crunched ...
— The Winged Men of Orcon - A Complete Novelette • David R. Sparks
... seek the head of the train where the wrecking timbers lay was John Eddring, who arrived on the early train from the city. By virtue of his office as agent of the personal injury department, he at once began to possess himself of such facts as ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... year (1660) the central spire, which had been injured by lightning in 1593, fell through the roof, wrecking many of the beautiful canopies of the stalls. The damage to the choir and other parts of the church, estimated at L6000, was repaired with money raised under a brief from Charles II., but the spire was never rebuilt, and in 1664, to avoid any further catastrophe, the western spires, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... Christianity. If any of you are building upon the notion that a man can come into loving and familiar friendship with God as long as he loves and cleaves to any sin, you have got hold of a delusion that will wreck your souls yet,—is, indeed, harming, wrecking them now, and will finally destroy them if you do not got rid of it. Let us always remember that the declaration of my first text lies at the very foundation of the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... as a young woman, radiant in her Latin- American beauty, opened the door, hesitated at sight of us, then entered at a nod from him. We did not need to be told that this was the Dolores whom Kenmore's rumor had credited with almost wrecking Everson's expedition at the start. She was a striking type, her face, full of animation and fire, betraying more of ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... together and drove us to the arena to witness the punishment of the slaves who killed the guardsman. I wish now that I had not left the arena for by this time my friends and I might have made good our escape, whereas this delay may mean the wrecking of all our plans, which depended for their consummation upon the continued sleep of the three Mahars who lay in the pit beneath the building in ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... were in the centre, at Cambridge, with Generals Putnam and Heath. Lee was not allied with the great Virginia family of that name. He was an Englishman by birth, somewhat of a military adventurer. Conceited, vain, and disobedient, he afterwards came near wrecking the cause which he had ambitiously embraced. Ward was a native of Massachusetts, a worthy man, but not distinguished for military capacity. Putnam was a gallant hero, taken from the plough, but more fitted to head small expeditions than for patient labor ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... home, and followed him. She forsook her home, where she was provided with every comfort, to follow this man who had inspired her with such a strange affection. Is there anything more to be deplored," concluded the client, in a trembling voice, "than the wrecking of a home by a ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... covetousness and ambition. And then, when the Sun-King looked with favour upon her opulent charms, when at last she saw the object of her ambition within reach, that husband of hers went very near to wrecking everything by his unreasonable behaviour. This preposterous marquis had the effrontery to dispute his wife with Jupiter, was so purblind as not to appreciate the honour the ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... of the islands were once known for their smuggling and wrecking propensities. A fisherman whom we fell in with—a venerable-looking man, with white hair streaming under his cap—pointed out several spots on which ships with rich cargoes had run on shore, and assured us that coin was still to be picked ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... not angry with me, Ned? You won't think it mean of me to withdraw my money? How are you going to go on without my money? You see I am wrecking your political career." ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... the popular pressure upon them was too great to be resisted." This determination is rightly characterised by Mr. Farrelly, the late legal adviser to the Government of the South African Republic, as the "fiendish project of wrecking the mines and plunging into hopeless misery for years tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children." But that is not all. He has put upon record[105] the sinister fact that the man entrusted with the execution of this infamous design was Mr. Smuts himself. ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... darting hand a thought flashed through my brain. In a few seconds the paso would be moving on; the bearers were bracing themselves for a new effort. That bouquet! if it should hold the threatened bomb? This was the moment for such an attempt at wrecking the royal box, for the King was a member of the next brotherhood that must pass; and soon he would be leaving his sister and friends to walk with it, perhaps not returning to his box ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... explanation must be found before morning, or the happiness and honour of more than one person now under this unhappy roof would be wrecked. He knew it was late—that she had been obliged to take a long and dreary ride alone, but her success with the problem which had once come near wrecking his own life had emboldened him to telephone to the office and—"But you are in ball-dress," he cried ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... work had told upon him. Whether it was the effort of digging into the literature of the past every week, or the strain of reading B. Henderson Asher's "Moments of Mirth" is uncertain. At any rate, his labors had ended in wrecking his health to such an extent that the doctor had ordered him three months' complete rest, in the woods or mountains, whichever he preferred; and, being a farseeing man, who went to the root of things, had absolutely declined to consent to Mr. Renshaw's suggestion that he keep ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... "It must be simply wrecking their business," said the Poet to himself, as he walked to Bedford Row to see how the claim for disturbance was progressing. "It serves them right, though, for talking drains when I wanted to go ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... undulating rush seemed capable of scouring out a channel for itself through solid granite while you looked. But had it flowed through Razumov's breast, it could not have washed away the accumulated bitterness the wrecking of ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... says Skid, puttin' his finger on a dot, "Mustapha! Well, it was about six miles east from there that we had our worst job. Talk about messes! Those Turks may not know how to build a decent railroad, but believe me they're stars at wrecking a line thoroughly! At Mustapha they'd ripped up the rails, burned the ties, and blown great holes in the roadbed with dynamite. But I soon had a dozen grading gangs at work on that stretch, and new bridges started, and then I pushed on alone ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... interested auditors. For Prescott's benefit Reade first sketched a brief outline of the troubles that had led up to the present, including an account of the wrecking of substantial portions of the retaining wall. Then he came down to the ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... at least the smaller outbounding boulders. For a minute or two the shocks became more and more violent—flashing horizontal thrusts mixed with a few twists and battering, explosive, upheaving jolts,—as if Nature were wrecking her Yosemite temple, and getting ready to build a still ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... another low room, this time brown panelled and looking through French windows on a red-walled garden, graceful even in its winter desolation. And there the conversation suddenly picked up and became good. It had fallen to a pause, and the doctor, with an air of definitely throwing off a mask and wrecking an established tranquillity, remarked: "Very probably you Liberals will come in, though I'm not sure you'll come in so mightily as you think, but what you do when you do come ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... his earliest acts had been the purchase of a horse noted in town as being so powerful, spirited, and even vicious, that few dared to drive or ride him. He had finally brought his ill-repute to a climax by running away, wrecking the carriage, and breaking his owner's ribs. He had since stood fuming in idleness; and when Graham wished him brought to the unused stable behind his aunt's cottage, no one would risk the danger. Then the young man went after ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... in "flattening" part of the jam about eight or ten rods below the face of it. When they finally understood that the affair was one of escape, they ran towards the jam, hoping to climb out. Then the crash came. They heard the roar of the waters, the wrecking of the timbers, they saw the logs bulge outwards in anticipation of the break. Immediately they turned and fled, ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... hasn't succeeded in wrecking the Three Bar up to date," Deane said. "It's probable they see you're too strong ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... unwearied Proteus, changing names, costumes, language, multiplying himself in many forms, scattering deceptions and lies from one end of France to the other; and finally, after so many efforts, such prodigies of calculation and activity, end by wrecking himself against ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the cupboard," said Nightspore. "Arcturus is still below the horizon, and you would succeed only in wrecking the house." ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... this rapid was surmounted, and all hands, dog-tired with the long day's pull, were glad to camp at the foot of the Boiler Rapid, the next in our ascent, and so called from the wrecking of a scow containing a boiler for one of the Hudson's Bay Company's steamers. It was the most uncomfortable of camps, the night being close, and filled with the small and bloodthirsty Athabasca mosquito, by all odds the most vicious of its kind. This rapid ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... wrecking of his laboratory, in which accident poor Eradicate was injured, had built himself another—two others, in fact, after having shared Mr. Baxter's temporary one for a time. Tom put up the most completely equipped laboratory that could be devised, and he also erected a ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... effect against almost every competitor standing in his way. If he could not coerce the owners of a railroad, the possession of which he sought, to sell to him at his own price, he at once brought into action the wrecking tactics his father had ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... one from some passing guard, and, shouldering it, stamped solemnly after the shouting columns of halberdiers which were, by this time, parading the streets. He had, however, nothing to do with the wrecking of the statue of General Wilson, which took place ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... the pianist sitting down to play the Moonlight Sonata, and the grimaces of Mme. Verdurin, in terrified anticipation of the wrecking of her nerves by Beethoven's music. "Idiot, liar!" he shouted, "and a creature like that imagines that she's fond of Art!" She would say to Odette, after deftly insinuating a few words of praise for Forcheville, as she had so often done for himself: "You can make room ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... its very nature capable of indefinite increase, and as containing in itself the supply of all which we need for life and blessedness, is fitted to be what nothing else can pretend to be, without wrecking the lives that are unwise enough to pursue it—the sovereign aim of a human life. In following it, and only in following it, the highest wisdom says Amen to the aspiration of the lowliest faith. 'This one ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... friends, that he might much better be engaged in some gainful occupation. The grate tackled by the doughty challenger last night was one of the fine-tooth comb variety (the "Non-Sifto" No. 114863), in which the clinker is caught by a patent clutch and held securely until the wrecking-crew arrives. At the end of the bout Mr. Flerlie was led away to his dressing room, suffering from lacerated hands and internal injuries. "I'm through," was his ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... recurring fear of death; whilst that of his father is one of intense physical suffering, blended with an eager desire to continue living, even at the cost of yet greater torture. Again, the story of the heroine is one of blighted affections, the wrecking of all which might have made her life ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... procession went past the gates of the Mellah, two companies came out into the town. The one was a company of soldiers returning to the Kasbah after sacking and wrecking Israel's house; the other was a company of old Jews, among whom were Reuben Maliki, Abraham Pigman, and Judah ben Lolo. At the advent of the three usurers a new impulse seized the people. They pretended to take the procession for a triumphal progress—the departure of a Kaid, ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... equitable lines, without prejudicing the future application of superfluous Church revenues, and it was a somewhat perverse obstinacy which persisted in coupling the two objects year after year. The ingenuity of Lyndhurst in wrecking sound reforms should have been left without excuse; whereas, in this case, the peers could not have accepted what they regarded as a confiscation bill without a sacrifice ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... promised to abolish the Inquisition in the Netherlands, but soon repented of his promise. For meanwhile mobs of fanatical Protestants, far more radical than the respectable "Beggars," were rushing to arms, breaking into Catholic churches, wrecking the altars, smashing the images to pieces, profaning monasteries, and showing in their retaliation as much violence—as their enemies had shown cruelty in persecution. In August, 1566, this sacrilegious iconoclasm reached its climax in the ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... "Why this wrecking?" asked the philosopher. "Is it wisdom thus to mutilate these poor dwellers in your garden? Drop that merciless tool, your pruning hook. Leave the work to the scythe of time. He will send them, soon enough, to the shores of ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... Nan read aloud, Laura recounted excitedly to Nan how Dr. Prescott had found that Linda was responsible for the wrecking of the steam plant and that Linda's father would undoubtedly be asked to pay the ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... if it had been made of almond-paste. Master Pedro kept shouting, "Hold hard! Senor Don Quixote! can't you see they're not real Moors you're knocking down and killing and destroying, but only little pasteboard figures! Look—sinner that I am!—how you're wrecking and ruining all that I'm worth!" But in spite of this, Don Quixote did not leave off discharging a continuous rain of cuts, slashes, downstrokes, and backstrokes, and at length, in less than the space of two credos, he brought the whole show to the ground, with all its ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Judaism, and who therefore see no harm in hastening its disintegration. But those of us who are profoundly concerned about the future of the two and one-half million Jews who are now in America, and of twice that number who may one day be here, cannot but view with the utmost anxiety the danger of wrecking what promises to become the greatest Jewish center in the history of ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... was working in the Wallace yard that day and was the first man to look things over. He put a report on the wire promptly and had a wrecking outfit there to minister to these two injured box cars, and a gang of Swedes repairing the track in no time at all. Then someone with presence of mind said they ought to look for Ed, and Ben agreed; so everybody searched and they found him in this sawdust. He looked ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... said Andre-Louis, wrecking his chances on an irresistible impulse to say the unexpected. But he didn't wreck them. M. des Amis burst into laughter; and having laughed his fill, confessed himself charmed ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... God, three-numbered form; Wring thy rebel, dogged in den, Man's malice, with wrecking and storm. Beyond saying sweet, past telling of tongue, Thou art lightning and love, I found it, a winter and warm; Father and fondler of heart thou hast wrung: Hast thy dark descending and most ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... out: "I was a man before I was a Commissioner,"—when Mr. Giddings says of the fall of slavery, quoting Adams: "Let it come. If it must come in blood, yet I say let it come!"—that their associates on the platform are sure they are wrecking the party,—while many a heart beneath beats its ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... docility, which wrecks every civilization as it is wrecking ours, is inhuman and unnatural. We must reconsider our institution of the Coming of Age, which is too late for some purposes, and too early for others. There should be a series of Coming of Ages for every individual. The mammals have their first coming of age when they are weaned; ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... successfully, save that a German operator in a Bleriot came to grief, crashing down to the ground, wrecking his machine, and breaking an arm. But he only laughed at that, and coolly demanded another cigarette, as he crawled out of the tangle of wires, ...
— Tom Swift and his Sky Racer - or, The Quickest Flight on Record • Victor Appleton
... garden, and Anthony slipped back into his chair; yet for the first time in his life he was dreaming of disobeying the command of John Woodbury. Woodbury—yet the big man had risen automatically in answer to the name of Bard. John Bard! It struck on his consciousness like two hammer blows wrecking some fragile fabric; it jarred home like the timed blow of a pugilist. Woodbury? There might be a thousand men capable of that name, but there could only be one John Bard, and that was he who had disappeared down the steps leading to ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... drama, though prompted by the events of 1830, makes no mention of Poland. It is a double tragedy in which the central figure, Henryk, after wrecking his home life by his egotism, assumes the leadership of his class, aristocratic and decadent, against a communistic rising led by Pankracy, a Mephistopheles who is not sure of himself. Henryk goes down in the struggle, but his conqueror falls in ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... best to restrain my comrades, and when they were burning the hayricks, throwing the meal on the dunghill, and wrecking the property of the farmer, I cut the cords with which they had bound the poor fellow to his chair and let ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... during these night watches that Wilson had many long talks with Stubbs—talks that finally became personal and which in the end led him, by one of those quick impulses which make in lives for a great deal of good or wrecking harm, to confide in him the secret of the treasure. This he did at first, however, without locating it nearer than "Within five hundred miles of where we're going," and with nothing in his narrative to associate the idol with the priest. Truth to tell, Wilson ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... peon, or Indian, may take articles of small value which are left about, but he does not commit crime in order to rob; and the extraordinary outrages constantly perpetrated in the "Wild West" of the United States, in the shootings, "holding-up" of passenger trains, wrecking of express cars by dynamite, bank robbery, and the like exploits of the Anglo-American desperado, to steal, are unknown to the temperament of the Spanish-American. The latter are creatures of impulse, and lack the "nerve" for a well-planned murderous ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... the wrecking of the lab had gone about it in a workmanlike way. Whoever had done the job was no amateur. The vandal had known his way about in a laboratory, that was obvious. Leads had been cut carefully; equipment had been shoved aside without care as to what happened to it, but with great care that the ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett
... he had taken as booty from the heathen places of worship during his campaigns used for the sanctuary at Jerusalem, because he feared that the heathen would boast, at the destruction of the Temple, that their gods were courageous, and were taking revenge by wrecking the house of the Israelitish God. Fortunately Solomon was so rich that there was no need to resort to the gold inherited from his father, and so ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... who knows, this wrecking of London Bridge so many hundred years ago by Olaf, the boy viking of fifteen, may have been the origin of the old song-game dear to so many generations ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... out her income by acting as a nurse in the dull seasons, but her real occupation in life was attending to other people's business. She had a divine meddlesomeness. She was inquisitive after the fashion of a sympathetic arch-angel. It appalled her to see people wrecking their lives by indecision, vacillation, incapacity, by poor judgment and crass stupidity. Her homely wisdom, the fruit of observant years, her native common sense, her strength and discernment were all at the service of ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... the deep, expeditions have been organised, ships have sailed, divers have descended, and crews have braved great dangers. Many great wrecking companies have been formed which accomplish wonders in the saving of wrecked vessels and cargoes. But in certain places all the time and at others part of the time, wreckers have had to leave valuable ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... the plot," continued Cranford, earnestly. "I hope you will believe me. That it should have come so near wrecking my own life was bad enough; that it should wreck another's—an innocent person's—that would be frightful! She warned me explicitly that she would no longer be a party to the deception, that she was going to tell you—I thought she had told you. I remember well how warmly ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... fence-rails would furnish ample fuel to render the rails useless. In this way a good deal of the track was effectively broken up, and communication by rail from Corinth to the south entirely cut off. While we were still busy in wrecking the road, a dash was made at my right and rear by a squadron of Confederate cavalry. This was handsomely met by the reserve under Captain Archibald P. Campbell, of the Second Michigan, who, dismounting a portion of his command, received the enemy with such a volley from his Colt's ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... and urging them to fight to their last drop of blood in defense of their country. But the English fleet, under Sir Francis Drake, put the Spanish ships to flight and sunk a great number of them. And a gale of wind did the rest, wrecking the unwieldy Spanish boats and drowning thousands of Spanish soldiers ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... showed on his twisted lips was voiced in a low, involuntary cry. Because she loved him! His hands clenched hard. Where was she? Who was it that dogged and haunted her, that was wrecking and ruining her life? God knew! And God knew, employing every resource he possessed, he had done everything he could to reach her. And all that he had accomplished had been the creation of a new character in the underworld! That was all—and ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... ever hurt anybody. She took it herself, often enough. Within five minutes he had laid the matter before her—up in that solemn office, where they made you feel so uncomfortable. She had said: "Pudge Sheridan, you're killing yourself! Not one cent more for wrecking your stomach!" ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... set out on a leisurely cruise for South America, where, in view of Japan's entry into the war, the German Admiral may have felt that he would secure a clearer field of operations and, with the aid of German-Americans, better facilities for supplies. After wrecking on their way the British wireless and cable station at Fanning Island, and looking into Samoa for stray British cruisers, the trio of ships were joined at Easter Island on October 14 by the Leipzig and also by the Dresden, which had fled thither from ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... dumbhead. You may think this adventure is over. Well, so did I, but I tell you now it's only just beginning. If you are not mighty careful you will be wrecking a home. So keep your mouth shut," he charged her, "and do nothing ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... chair. Oh, how could he free himself from this millstone at his neck? What relief could he gain anywhere? To what power appeal? He could keep her out of his house, out of his office, but not out of his life. She had come here with the deliberate intention of wrecking that, and she would succeed probably, for she would have the blind, hideous force of conventional morality on her side. She would destroy his life—that life till lately so valueless to him; that dreary stretch made barren so many years by her hateful influence, ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... welcome to the farmer. It was a comparatively anxious time, for the cattle grazing at large upon the prairie loved the sweet flavor of the growing grain, and had no scruples at breaking their way through the carelessly constructed barbed wire fencing, and wrecking all that came within their reach. The fences needed "top railing," and Kate could not trust the work to her two men without supervision. So she spent the morning in ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... a quick stir of boughs and a flash of tawny fur above them. Then the young painter landed full on the back of Tunkhannock Hosely. There was a wild yell; the horse leaped and ran, breaking through a fence and wrecking the wagon; the painter spat, and made for the woods, and was seen no more of men. Tunk had picked up an axe, and climbed a ladder that stood leaning to the roof. Trove and Allen ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... it that the management meant to launch it southwestward, mails, express, buffet, chair-car, and sleepers complete, if they had to cram its roofs and platforms with deputies armed with Winchesters. Could it be that already wrecking-trains were clearing a passage, and that this hated train, the reddest rag that could be flaunted in the face of the raging bull of the strike, was to burst the blockade and cover the strikers with derision? Perish all thought ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... with St. Augustin, most of them do not recognize such feelings in the "pagan savage." Moreover, while early Christianity, like all other religions, was an appeal to the broadly human feelings of mutual aid and sympathy, the Christian Church has aided the State in wrecking all standing institutions of mutual aid and support which were anterior to it, or developed outside of it; and, instead of the mutual aid which every savage considers as due to his kinsman, it has preached charity which bears a character of inspiration ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... made the acquaintance of several old salts, both white and black, one or two of whom time and their neighbours had invested with a legendary savour of the old "wrecking days," which, if rumour speaks true, are not entirely vanished from the remoter corners of the islands. But either their romantic haloes were entirely due to imaginative gossip, or they themselves were too shrewd to be drawn, for I got nothing out of them ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... to see who would make the first dive, and the lot fell to Rick and Tony. They donned their equipment, then Rick picked up a spear gun while Tony selected a wrecking bar from his equipment. ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... he went on, "tell me—are you, English and moralist and believer in a good and righteous God as you are, are you really going to encourage this abominable adultery, this open, ruthless wrecking of a good man's home? You surprise me; this is a new light on your otherwise rather ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... verge of starvation. Hite kept a record of all known parties who had attempted the passage through the canyons above. Less than half of these parties, excepting Galloway's several successful trips, succeeded in getting through Cataract Canyon without wrecking ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... after a time, and began walking aimlessly through the bushes towards the hill again. "Patience," said I to myself. "If you want your machine again you must leave that sphinx alone. If they mean to take your machine away, it's little good your wrecking their bronze panels, and if they don't, you will get it back as soon as you can ask for it. To sit among all those unknown things before a puzzle like that is hopeless. That way lies monomania. Face this world. Learn its ways, watch it, be careful of too hasty guesses ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... he cried, "daughter of Aegis-bearing Jove, unweariable, hear me now, for you gave no heed to my prayers when Neptune was wrecking me. Now, therefore, have pity upon me and grant that I may find friends and be hospitably ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... downwards, nearer and nearer to my terrible feet, and hear in my ears above the roar of my waters the ultimate cry of the ship; for just before I drag them to the floor of ocean and stamp them asunder with my wrecking feet, ships utter their ultimate cry, and with it go the lives of all the sailors and passes the soul of the ship. And in the ultimate cry of ships are the songs the sailors sing, and their hopes and all their loves, and the song of the wind among the masts and timbers ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... boat without a crew, but if he is armed he will be able to defend himself even if he is attacked. I don't know how many boats there were at La Dorada, but I would lay my life that Purvis took the precaution of sending them adrift or wrecking them ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... "Now, Reade, I guess you'll admit yourself beaten. An electric spark has touched off a charge of giant powder under the roadbed. The rails have been blown skyward and a big hole torn out of the roadbed itself. Even if you had a wrecking crew at the spot at this moment the road couldn't be prepared for traffic inside of twenty-four hours. NOW, will your through train reach Lineville tonight? Can your road save ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... hole through her, and when she's loaded light that hole is above water line. The wrecking vessel that goes down to salve her will have steel plates, tools and mechanics aboard, and new plates can be put in temporarily. And if that cannot be done those holes can be patched with planking and ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... thinking of Uncle Joshua, whose money had supported her all these years and of her obligation to heed his wishes. It was all settled for her now. And all the while Victor was thinking of his own limited means as the rock that was wrecking him with her. ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... on the veranda promised to be a lively one, since, in addition to the departure of old Mr. Penrose, who had sounded as if he was wrecking the furniture while packing his boxes, the return from the war of Will Smith, the gardener's son, was anticipated, and the guests as an act of patriotism meant to give him a rousing welcome. There was bunting over the doorway and ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... of the assembly groups, ordering supplies and machinery as they were needed from the wrecking crews and seeing that they were sent to the right place at the right time. One of his first jobs was the assembling of materials for the construction of the Administration Building of the colony. Less than five days after the foundation had been dug, the last gleaming sheets of ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... troubled me most. To have him rendered homeless at eighty-two with winter coming on seemed to me an intolerable cruelty, and so with a driving haste I set to work with my own hands to clear away and restore. Wielding the wrecking bar and the spade each day, I toiled like a hired man—even after the carpenters were gone at night I scraped ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... knights was the waylaying and robbing of merchants; but the wrecking of ships was their favorite, most ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... seems almost to have for its aim the wrecking and the destruction of the mental faculties. The production of insanity is, if not its object, certainly its result. That is a well-ascertained fact. Its causes are obvious. Deprived of books, of all human intercourse, isolated from every humane and humanising influence, condemned to eternal silence, ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... association with the Moravians, and established a new circle of societies, himself ordaining the ministers who served them. These societies flourished for a while, but about 1759 Ingham became imbued with the doctrines of a certain Sandeman, and the result was the almost total wrecking of his societies. This broke Ingham's heart, and affected his mind, so that his last days were very sad. He passed away in 1772, and his societies gradually merged themselves into ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... all my life,— When I was led to look on her again, That queen of women pledged to be my wife. To look upon the beauty of her face, The still closed eyes, the lips that knew no breath; To look, to learn,—to realize my place Had been usurped by my one rival—Death. A storm of wrecking sorrow beat and broke About my heart, and life shut out its light Till through my anguish some one gently spoke, And said, "Twice did she ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... showed signs of having been upset? Well, you must make allowances for these disturbances in your calculations. Of course, if some one had deliberately made hay with the lot, you would be nonplussed. The chances are, however, that, given enough heaps of clothes, and bar intentional and systematic wrecking of them, you would be able to make out pretty well which boy preceded which; though you could hardly go on to say with any precision whether Tom preceded Dick by half a minute or half ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... carefully kept by the Phoenician merchants of Cadiz, who alone held the clue. So jealous were they of it that long afterwards, when the alternative route through Gaul had already drawn away much of its profitableness, we read of a Phoenician captain purposely wrecking his ship lest a Roman vessel in sight should follow to the port, and being indemnified by ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... I am that they'll nivver come together again, and so—and—so, just only for the moment, my thoughts had gone away from thee. And now thou knows this, lad, won't thou make some effort to save 'em from wrecking their lives? Maybe we can't do much, John, but we mun try and do something. Now, if we can prevent the maister from going away to-night, something may turn up to-morrow that'll give 'em a chance to talk ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... we are now considering, the total destruction of the sense of the holiness of labour and of joy in work. It extended far beyond the limits of pure industrialism; it moulded and controlled society in all its forms, destroying ideals old as history, reversing values, confusing issues and wrecking man's powers of judgment. Until the war it seemed irresistible, now its weakness and the fallacy of its assumptions are revealed, but it has become so absolutely a part of our life, indeed of our nature, that we are unable to estimate it by any sound ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... Upon this father took his bed, languished, sank, and died, leaving myself and my brother alone in the world. O, how I wished I could die, too! But it seemed that God determined that I should see the end of my work in wrecking our family, and I was compelled to still remain, and reap the harvest of my ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... afterwards was given at Prague. It has not yet found its way to London. The scene is laid in Cornwall in the eighteenth century. The inhabitants of that wild coast, though fervent Methodists, live by 'wrecking,' in which they are encouraged by their minister. Thurza, the minister's faithless wife, alone protests against their cruelty and hypocrisy, and persuades her lover, a young fisherman, to light fires ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... hers would have no shadow in it to- morrow, and her soul no unpardonable sin. A warm peace passed through her veins, and she drew nearer still. She did not know that this new ardent confidence came near to wrecking her. For Valmond had an instant's madness, and only saved himself from the tumult in his blood by getting to his feet, with strenuous resolution. Taking both her hands, he kissed her on ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... path, getting dressed more or less on the way. The Devagas dome was solidly invested by now, its transmitters blanked out. It hadn't tried to communicate with its attackers. On their part, the Fed ships weren't pushing the attack. They were holding the point, waiting for the big, slow wrecking boats to arrive, which would very gently and delicately start uncovering and opening the dome, taking it apart, piece by piece. The hierarchy could surrender themselves and whatever they were hiding in there at any point in the process. They didn't have a chance. Nobody and nothing ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... people's expenses, the Push found new cares and duties thrust upon them, the chief of which was chastising anyone who interfered with their pleasures. Their feats ranged from kicking an enemy senseless, and leaving him for dead, to wrecking hotel windows with blue metal, if the landlord had contrived to offend them. Another of their duties was to check ungodly pride in the rival Pushes by battering them out of shape with fists and ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... labor laws, mining rights, reciprocity in trade, revision of the agreement respecting naval vessels in the Great Lakes, a more complete marking of parts of the boundary, provision for the conveyance of criminals, and for wrecking and salvage. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... and Daeche, were convicted of conspiracy to attach explosive bombs to the rudders of vessels, with the intention of wrecking the same when at sea, and were sentenced, on May 9, 1916, to terms of eight, four and two years respectively, in the federal penitentiary at Atlanta. Dr. Herbert Kienzle and Max Breitung, who assisted Fay in procuring explosives, ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... attacking is this. Living in an entangled civilization, we have come to think certain things wrong which are not wrong at all. We have come to think outbreak and exuberance, banging and barging, rotting and wrecking, wrong. In themselves they are not merely pardonable; they are unimpeachable. There is nothing wicked about firing a pistol off even at a friend, so long as you do not mean to hit him and know you won't. It is no ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... coming out so bitterly in all that her mother had said, was like a cold hand on Emily's heart. She sat again in the chair from which she had risen, and let her head lie back. Her vitality was at a low ebb; the movement of indignation against the cruelty which was wrecking her life had passed and left behind it a weary indifference. Happily she need not think yet. There were still some hours of respite before her; there was the night to give her strength. The daylight was a burden; it must be borne with what patience she ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... doubt that he had made a tangle; that the big job as a whole was not under his hand, but was just running itself as best it could. Bannon, who, since the days when he was chief of the wrecking gang on a division of the Grand Trunk, had made a business of rising to emergencies, was obviously the man for the situation. He was worn thin as an old knife-blade, he was just at the end of a piece of work that would have ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... started for the city, the shells still falling unpleasantly thick and near. One of them struck right under our coffee-pot, and, exploding, sent it in a hundred directions. The horses which drew it did not happen to be hit, but they took fright and dashed off, wrecking what was left of the coffee-pot wagon. We got back to town as fast as we knew how that day. We tried to go out again at night, but could make no headway against the crowd of wagons, artillery and the retreating army on the roads. It was an utterly demoralized mob. We barely escaped ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... German shops were being attacked soon spread, and youths gathered in bands, going from one shop to the other and wrecking them in the course of a few moments. Further riots occurred near the Gare de l'Est, a district which is inhabited by a large number of Germans. A great deal of damage ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... ask you frankly, girls, on your word of honor, was there ever more than one man in ten went through your hands who didn't turn out soft somewhere before you were through with him? Mawking about your 'sweet eyes' while you're wrecking your optic nerves trying to decipher the dose on a poison bottle! Mooning over your wonderful likeness to the lovely young sister they—never had! Trying to kiss your finger tips when you're struggling to brush their teeth! Teasin' you to ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... killed while in the act of attempting to assassinate Justice Stephen Field, an old, weak, helpless, and unarmed man. If Terry holds any significance in history, it is that of being the strongest factor in the complete wrecking of the Law ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... both been shot dead, in December 1917, the machine continued to fly in wide left-hand circles, and ultimately, when the fuel was exhausted and the engine stopped, fell near St.-Pol, some thirty miles from the scene of combat, without completely wrecking itself. When the war broke out Mr. Busk was more than ever needed at the factory. On the 5th of November 1914 he mounted in an experimental B.E. 2c machine to a height of about eight hundred feet. Exactly what happened will never be known; the petrol vapour must have been ignited ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... repeated, disdainfully. "Excuse me, Rosalind. No woman ever had the power of wrecking my life. Indeed, I have been far more fortunate and prosperous since Lady Alice chose to leave me ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... grievous disasters are apt to alter the disposition and debase worthy minds, it has not been so with the fair destroyer of my hopes, for with more fortitude and invincibility than can well be told, she has passed through the wrecking sea of her disasters and the encounters of my ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... The wrecking of old Dobbins' house had remained a mystery. Some thought the rope had been cut, while others were of the opinion that it had broken because of the heavy strain put ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster
... A white man who settles down in one of the South Sea Islands and lives by trading with the natives for copra—the dried kernels of cocoanuts—pearl shells, and the sea slug Beche de mer; often living by wrecking, kidnapping the natives, or any nefarious scheme. Many of them have been drunken, unprincipled scoundrels, their ranks in the old days having been recruited from the convicts escaped from Botany Bay or ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... of the kingdom of Solomon into two weak and hostile states is, in one aspect, a wretched story of folly and selfishness wrecking a nation, and, in another, a solemn instance of divine retribution working its designs by men's sins. The greater part of this account deals with it in the former aspect, and shows the despicable motives of the men in whose hands was the nation's fate; but one sentence (verse 15) draws ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... quickly took the lines: I hooked the traces up, jumped in, grabbed for the lines and waved my last farewell from the road afar off. Even at that they got away from us once or twice and came very near upsetting and wrecking the buggy; but nothing serious ever happened during the winter. I had to have horses like that, for I needed their speed and their staying power, as the reader will see if he cares to follow ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove |
