"Blast" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... make it and drive out to sea. But the Misi and Cactus, unable to get clear of each other, went ashore on the atoll half a mile from the passage. The wind merely increased on itself and continued to increase. To face the full blast of it required all one's strength, and several minutes of crawling on deck against it tired a man to exhaustion. Hermann, with his Kanakas, plodded steadily, lashing and making secure, putting ever more gaskets on the sails. The wind ripped and tore their thin undershirts ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... Phlegethon. Anon there appeared a few scattered shreds of smoky scud speeding swiftly athwart the fiery canopy, and almost immediately afterwards, with a low, weird, wailing sound, there swept over us a scurrying blast that came and was gone again in a second. It came out from the north-west, and judging that this was probably the direction from which the gale itself would come, we at once rigged out over the stern one of the two oars remaining in the boat, and swept the bows ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... die in sight of Amstel's walls, And gallant Joost to die beside him?— O foolish blast, such fate that calls! O river that the heart appalls! Dear Joost may live. And they bestride him? "By hell! ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... them a farewell blast," chuckled Jane. With that she climbed into the car, and, with a honk of the horn, drove down that street and into the next, keeping the horn going almost continually. As they passed the home of each girl the young women gave the yell ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... constructed on a theory opposed to grand scenic effects and to one of the two bases of tragedy, namely, compassion, would certainly not say what was far from the truth. And yet, with all this, Alfieri will still remain that dry, harsh blast which swept away the noxious miasms with which the Italian air was infected. He will still remain that poet who aroused his country from its dishonorable slumber, and inspired its heart with intolerance of servile conditions and with regard for its dignity. ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... with his hand. A wave of pure heat swept over the boat, blistering what paint it still boasted. The blow had been directed at Dor, and she showed that she had absorbed most of it by wilting visibly—but Farmer felt as much of it as he wanted. It was as if a blast furnace had suddenly opened beside him; sweat popped out on his brow and filmed his eyes. He wondered ...
— Stairway to the Stars • Larry Shaw
... for some of those points, and the whole land was alive with explorers for a hundred miles around—all had tended to give Gate City a remarkable boom. Cheyenne and Laramie, thriving frontier towns with coroners' offices in full blast from one week's end to the other, and a double force on duty Sundays, confessed to and exhibited pardonable jealousy. Yet there was wisdom in the warning of an old friend and fellow frontiersman, who said to Folsom, "You are throwing yourself and your money ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... his future, shipwreck his whole life, blast his every hope. But he himself was to blame. When that hoidenish, hair-brained girl had made such a daring wager, he should have declined to accept it; then this harvest of woe would not have ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... heat, at the post-house of Pasangan, a few miles south of Kom. The bodies were brought in of two poor men, who had tried to start some hours before sunset, and were struck down by the poisonous blast within half-a-mile of the post-house. "It was found impossible to wash them before burial.... Directly the limbs were touched they separated from the trunk." (Oc. Highways, ut. sup.) About 1790, when Timur Shah of Kabul ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... being something? Shall we pride ourselves on health and strength? A tile falling off the roof, a little powder and lead in the hands of a careless child, can blast us out of this world in a moment—whither, who can tell? What is our cleverness—our strength of mind? A tiny blood vessel bursting on the brain, will make us in one moment paralytic, helpless, babblers, and idiots. What is our knowledge of the world? That of a man, who is forcing ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... and went over her saddle, even turning the cheek straps of the bridle inside out, and pawing through her heavy mane and tail. He looked and felt in her ears. He held her nostrils with his fingers until she jerked up her head and snorted out a blast of held-in air. ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... midnight. It is dark, very dark, little keys; but perhaps you will not fail me. Now I leave this cursed place; yes, leave it, I hope, to walk the earth again in freedom. Blast my accusers!" whispered the excited prisoner as he softly applied the mysterious, slender-looking key to the heavy lock. "Ha! how the lock yields to this delicate spring! Softly! softly! or I may disturb some sleeping inmate! God knows how many weary vigils are kept ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... civilization; on the other, the stately and vigorous form of Holden, in a clean but coarse gray frock, girt around the waist with a sash, with long hair falling on his neck, and unshorn beard, looking like one better acquainted with the northern blast than with the ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... the waves permitted them to go Across the smooth white rocks, they to it went; The raging brine had torn off half the bow, Its starboard shivered and its cordage rent; The warring waters had their anger spent And flung its fragments to the cruel blast, Its iron bands were burst apart and bent, And all around in dire disorder cast; There, shattered, at some little distance, ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... by a man of nerve. I availed myself of the instantaneous silence that followed my act, and before the captain could think or speak, I leaped to the boom with my sharp knife, cutting the reef-points slowly and carefully, so as not to allow the foresail to be inflated and torn by a single blast. ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... "Courage—Persevere." This is the motto of a friend and worker. Not because the eyes of Europe are upon them, for I don't in the least believe it; nor because the eyes of even England are upon them, for I don't in the least believe it; not because their doings will be proclaimed with blast of trumpet at street corners, for no such musical performances will take place; not because self- improvement is at all certain to lead to worldly success, but simply because it is good and right of itself, and because, being so, it does assuredly bring with it its own resources ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... crouching; And low is the whisper of leaves and the sough of the wind in the branches; And low is the long-winding howl of the lone wolf afar in the forest; But shrill is the hoot of the owl, like a bugle blast blown in the pine-tops, And the half-startled voyageurs scowl at the sudden and saucy intruder. Like the eyes of the wolves are the eyes of the watchful and silent Dakotas; Like the face of the moon in the skies, when the clouds chase each other across ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... He slewed himself a little to sweep the country over beyond the railroad station with his sullen red eyes. The heat was wavering up from the treeless, shrubless expanse; the white sun was over it as hot as a furnace blast. From the cattle pens the dusty, hoarse cries of the cowboys sounded, "Ho, ho, ho!" in what seemed derision of the judge's ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... destructive earthquake in so long that the danger need not be considered. And there are no volcanoes near enough to do any harm. It is true, there might be a slight earthquake shock, but the dam would stand that. The only thing that might endanger it would be a blast of dynamite." ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... certain, at any rate, is the exchange of talk of home and hair-raising stories of this wilderness between the old colonists and the new! And certain is the relief and the renewed hopes. Mourning turns to joy. Even a conflagration that presently destroys the major part of the town can not blast that felicity. ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... The blast wrenched an iron bed from a house and wrapped it around a tree trunk as no human ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... cold and stormy. The wind roared round the house, and the rain beat against the windows; but Elinor, all happiness within, regarded it not. Marianne slept through every blast; and the travellers, they had a rich reward in store, for ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... very dull and cold; snow threatened, should the weather moderate. Overhead was a suspended drift of gray clouds. The earth was stark as a corpse in utter silence. The stillness of the frozen air was like the stillness of death and despair. A fierce blast would have given at least the sense of life and fighting power. "Suppose she ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... lawyer said indignantly, looking a half air of patronage towards Chamilly, and breathing in for a steady blast of eloquence: "It is time these ridiculous ideas which forbid us so many successes were sent back to Paradise, and that such elections as the present were governed upon rational principles. We cannot offer the people directly what is good for them; because it is not what they want. What ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... in a section of massive apartment buildings. His lungs felt like a blast furnace and his left side seemed to be sewed together with red-hot wire. There was no help for it, he ...
— Forever • Robert Sheckley
... dead letter in the Bowery. Here, on the Sabbath, one may see shops of all kinds—the vilest especially—open for trade. Cheap clothing stores, concert saloons, and the most infamous dens of vice are in full blast. The street, and the cars traversing it, are thronged with the lower classes in search of what they call enjoyment. At night all the places of amusement are open, and are crowded to excess. Roughs, thieves, fallen women, and even little children throng them. Indeed it is sad to see how many children ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... turnpike gates: with what deferential hurry, with what an obedient start, they fly open at our approach! Look at that long line of carts and carters ahead, audaciously usurping the very crest of the road. Ah! traitors, they do not hear us as yet; but, as soon as the dreadful blast of our horn reaches them with proclamation of our approach, see with what frenzy of trepidation they fly to their horses' heads, and deprecate our wrath by the precipitation of their crane-neck quarterings. Treason they feel to be their crime; each individual ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... no preparedness; no quiet. Instead were heartaches and regrets and wild wishes; sometimes in dull and steady force, like a still rain storm; and sometimes sweeping over me with the fury of a tempestuous blast. I had not strength to resist; my utmost was to keep a calm front before my friends. I did that, I think. But what torture is it not, to be obliged to hear and answer all manner of trifling words, to enter into every trivial thought, of people at ease around one, when ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Denys solemnly, and trembling now with rage, "look on the sockets out of which thou hast picked the eyes, and let them blast thine eyes, that crows shall pick out ere this week shall end. Now, hold thou that while I search on. Hold it, I say, or here I rob the gallows—" and he threatened the quaking wretch with his naked sword, till with a groan he took the skull and ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... The blast that swept him came off New Hampshire snow-fields and ice-hung forests. It seemed to have traversed interminable leagues of frozen silence, filling them with the same cold roar and sharpening its edge against the same bitter black-and-white ...
— The Triumph Of Night - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... And your face is lifted Like a white sail to the blast, And your hands are shifted Into fists: and, towering ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... the night, when the darkness is deepest and sleep the soundest, they were both awakened by the opening of the door, and the cold blast of wind it produced. The earl and his squire started up and sat upright on ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... my men had entirely surrounded the city. Klow's men were putting up a plucky fight, and showing no signs of fearing us. Seeing this, I blew a blast on my engine's whistle, so that my bullies might know that I ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... interest, as they assumed fresh forms much more rapidly under their new conditions of restricted food and limited enemies. Many kinds I observed which came originally from Europe, sometimes in the larval state, sometimes in the egg, and sometimes flying as full-grown insects before the blast of the angry tempest. Several of these changed their features rapidly after their arrival in the islands, producing at first divergent varieties, and finally, by dint of selection, acting in various ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... vigorous races, with thick clubs and short spears, but edged them out with the more biting weapons of modern civilization,—overworked and under-eaten them into more languid surroundings remote from the tanks of the gas-house and the blast furnaces of the rolling-mill. ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... meaneth this? A marvel beyond dreams! The face ... 'tis she; Mine, verily mine! Or doth God mock at me And blast my vision with some ...
— Alcestis • Euripides
... and a passage of intermittent puffs of white steam across the further view. And to the left, between the railway and the dark mass of the low hill beyond, dominating the whole view, colossal, inky-black, and crowned with smoke and fitful flames, stood the great cylinders of the Jeddah Company Blast Furnaces, the central edifices of the big ironworks of which Horrocks was the manager. They stood heavy and threatening, full of an incessant turmoil of flames and seething molten iron, and about the feet of them rattled the rolling-mills, and the steam-hammer beat heavily ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... Sumtner Rising and looked down on the village of Sumtner Barton, which lies just across a single railway line, spanned by a red brick bridge. The thick, thunderous June airs brought us gusts of melody from a giddy-go-round steam-organ in full blast near the pond on the village green. Drums, too, thumped and banners waved and regalia flashed at the far end of the broad village ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... vermilion hue, Her amber locks she crowned with roses red, In Eden's flowery gardens gathered new. When through the camp a murmur shrill was spread, Arm, arm, they cried; arm, arm, the trumpets blew, Their merry noise prevents the joyful blast, So hum small bees, before their ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... soon fulfilled. There was a cold blast of wind, carrying a few big drops, and then a sudden, drumming downpour that tore up the dust of the street and swiftly converted it into a sea of ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... Another blast gives the order to "Mount!" Soon after, the "Forward!" Then the troop files off from the front of the jacal, disappearing under the trees like a gigantic glittering serpent. The white drapery of a woman's dress is seen fluttering ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... politics, and still corresponded freely with prominent men. Of late, too, a slight revival of the June war scare had made its mark on her in a certain rejuvenescence, which always accompanied her contemplation of national crises, even when such were a little in the air. At blast of trumpet her spirit still leaped forward, unsheathed its sword, and stood at the salute. At such times, she rose earlier, went to bed later, was far less susceptible to draughts, and refused with asperity any food between meals. She wrote ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... describe or conceive the scene that ensued! the horror, the shrieking of women and children, and the yelling of the blast through the rigging,—for it was an absolute hurricane,—while tons of water fell over the decks continually, sweeping them from stem ...
— Battles with the Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... concealed as my mother brings a blood-stained stiletto which she purposes to make you bathe in the lifeblood of your enemy. Never mind the Death-demons and skeletons dripping with the putrefaction of the grave, that occasionally may blast your straining eyeballs. Persevere even though Hell and destruction should yawn ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... in some experiments made by Professor Langley in 1878.[724] Using means of unquestioned validity, he found the sun's disc to radiate 87 times as much heat, and 5,300 times as much light as an equal area of metal in a Bessemer converter after the air-blast had continued about twenty minutes. The brilliancy of the incandescent steel, nevertheless, was so blinding, that melted iron, flowing in a dazzling white-hot stream into the crucible, showed "deep brown by comparison, presenting a contrast like that of dark coffee poured into a white ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... ornamental spun-brass casing. The smokestack is of the bonnet type commonly used on wood-burning locomotives in this country between about 1845 and 1870. The exhaust steam from the cylinders is directed up the straight stack (shown in phantom in fig. 27) by the blast pipe. This creates a partial vacuum in the smokebox that draws the fire, gases, ash, and smoke through the boiler tubes from the firebox. The force of the exhausting steam blows them out the stack. At the top of the ...
— The 'Pioneer': Light Passenger Locomotive of 1851 • John H. White
... calling purposes. It consists of an internode of bamboo with one partition wall removed. An opening large enough for the mouth is made on the side of the bamboo near the other node. In using it the mouth is applied to this aperture and a good pair of lungs can produce a loud booming blast. After the occurrence of a death, especially if the deceased has been slain, it is customary to use this instrument as a means of announcing the death to near-by settlements, thereby putting them on their guard against ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... secure and presumptuous hypocrites. One of two things has to be done: Either the Law must be covered with a veil and then it loses its full effectiveness, or it must be unveiled and then the full blast of its force kills. Man cannot stand the Law without a veil over it. Hence, we are forced either to look beyond the Law to Christ, or we go through life as ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... John Chambers, or your own Gen. Carey (applause) they greet her with hisses. Theodore Parker said: "The acorn that the school-boy carries in his pocket and the squirrel stows in his cheek, has in it the possibility of an oak, able to withstand, for ages, the cold winter and the driving blast." I have seen the acorn men and women, but never the perfect oak; all are but abortions. The young mother, when first the new-born babe nestles in her bosom, and a heretofore unknown love springs up in her heart, finds herself unprepared for this new relation in life, and she sends ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the blast of Peter's automatic now attracted the earnest attention of a gray little river gunboat, just down from up-stream, and inured to such ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... blare; the leaves, rustling shrilly, all sere now, so long the weather had held dry, fled in myriads before the gusts. Soon they lay on the ground in dense masses, and in the denudation of the trees the brilliant tints of the little coat, swinging so high in the blast, caught the eye of a wandering hunter. At first sight, he thought it but a flare of the autumnal foliage, and gave it no heed, but some days afterward its persistence struck his attention. It seemed a tragic and piteous thing when he discovered its nature. He cut the tree down, too high it was ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... the ancient county carried on its census. Indeed, one is perplexed at every point to know whence the South draws its prodigious armies. Some English officers have been visiting Dinwiddie during the week, and one of them said, curtly: "Blast the country! it isn't worth such a row, you know. A very good place to be exiled, to be sure, but what can you ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... one side. From a point a few yards below them and almost directly along their former line of flight, a burst of flame appeared in the air. The plane lurched and reeled as the blast of the explosion reached it. From other points on the ground ...
— The Solar Magnet • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... has to be conveyed in heavy and cumbersome cylinders, a hot air balloon could be rapidly carried by hand anywhere where a few men could push their way. It is of strong material, readily mended if torn, and could be inflated for short ascents, if not by mere brush wood, then by a portable blast furnace and petroleum. ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... modelled somewhat after the fashion of a whale-boat, scudded well and no longer shipped any water; our condition, therefore, was greatly improved, and running before the gale, as we now were, the strength of the wind was not so severely felt, nor did the chill of the blast penetrate our saturated clothing so cruelly as while we were hove-to. Our clothes gradually dried upon us, we baled out the boat, and in the course of an hour or so began to experience something approaching a return to comfort. Meanwhile, at frequent intervals, the bearing ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... voice was interrupted by a sound that was like the roar of wind coming across the lake. The trees overhead shook their tangled branches. The blazing fire bent its flames as before a blast. And something swept with a terrific, rushing noise about the little camp and seemed to surround it entirely in a single moment of time. Defago shook the clinging blankets from his body, turned towards the ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... horn to his lips and winded a blast that went echoing sweetly down the forest paths. "Ay, marry," quoth he again, "thou art a tall lad, and eke a brave one, for ne'er, I bow, is there a man betwixt here and Canterbury Town could do the like to ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... company with a hundred other boys, was thus anxiously awaiting the welcome sound of the shutting-down whistle, at the first blast of which the torrents of coal would cease to flow, and they would all rush for the stairway that led out-of-doors, the air gradually became filled with something even more stifling than coal-dust—something that choked them and made their eyes smart. It ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe
... it in the furnace, And he laid it on the anvil, Blew a blast, and then a second, And he blew again a third time, 160 Till the Iron was fully softened, And the ore completely melted, Like to wheaten dough in softness, Soft as dough for ryebread kneaded, In the furnace of the smithy, By the bright ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... me, to start for the mines even if I went alone. The majority of the male inhabitants of this town had gone to the mines, and this accounted for the unusual proportion of women. We learned that they would return in November, and then the gambling houses would start up in full blast, for these native Californians seemed to have a great natural desire to indulge in games of chance, and while playing their favorite game of monte would lay down their last reale (12-1/2 cents) in the hope of winning the money in sight ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... and marry some rich fool's absurd daughter. Sometimes at a dinner party or a reception he would find himself the centre of interest, and feel unutterably uncomfortable in the discovery. Being obliged to say something, he would mine his brain and put in a blast and when the smoke and flying debris had cleared away the result would be what seemed to him but a poor little intellectual clod of dirt or two, and then he would be astonished to see everybody as lost in admiration as if he had brought up a ton or two of virgin gold. Every remark he made ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... heat, scorching the jewel Gleaming so cruel on his venomous head, That worm, whose tongue, as the blast burns along, Licks it for coolness—all discomfited— Strikes not his ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... more acrimonious, as the violator had been more loved or more trusted. But here the anger might have stopped; the injury was private, and there was little danger from the example. Bolingbroke, however, was not yet satisfied. His thirst of vengeance excited him to blast the memory of the man over whom he had wept in his last struggles; and he employed Mallet, another friend of Pope, to tell the tale to the public, with all its aggravations. Warburton, whose heart was warm with his legacy and tender ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... the fame and antiquity of his family. He has himself bequeathed to posterity an apology for his life, and from his word we are bound to take so much, but only so much, as may accord with the statements of others in mitigation of the heinous facts which blast his memory with ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... tear them from the branches; and flung himself against the Tree, as if he would even loose his rooted hold on the ground. But the leaves clung closer and closer, trembling and shivering; and the great Tree braced himself, and met the fierce blast bravely, never losing an inch of his foothold, and giving back blow for blow with his long powerful arms. At last the Wind was tired and flew away, howling and moaning with anger and disappointment. The little leaves were sadly frightened, but their father Tree comforted them, and ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... instead of a blessing, sleep became a curse, and the hours of darkness became hours which seemed days of misery. For many consecutive nights I dared not undress myself nor put out the light, lest the moment I lay down some "monstrum horrendum, informfe, ingens" should blast my sight with his hellish aspect! I had a double sense of sight and sound; one real, the other visionary; both equally strong and apparently real; so that while I distinctly heard imaginary footsteps ascending the stairs, the door opening and my curtains ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... man leaped fallen golems, wrestled with the door, disappeared into the smoke. Brett and Dhuva sprinted for the corner. As they rounded it a tremendous blast shook the street. The pavement before them quivered, opened in a wide crack. A ten-foot section dropped from view. They skirted the gaping hole, dashed for safety as the facades along the street cracked, ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... violinist is rarely a great singer. To write a poem is to expend the vital force which would have made one brilliant for an hour or two, and to expend it on an instrument with more pipes, reeds, keys, stops, and pedals than the Great Organ that shakes New England every time it is played in full blast. ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... might learn something from that myself—" Willett was beginning, when a long-continued whistle blast sounded from the station. Eric was off like a shot. Quick as he was, however, he was only just in time to scramble into the ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... ship afloat, though three feet yet Kept two hand and one chain-pump still in use. The wind blew fresh again: as it grew late A squall came on, and while some guns broke loose, A gust—which all descriptive power transcends— Laid with one blast the ship on her ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... street shone before him. There was darkness round about him, but it flamed with hissing jets of light and naphtha fires, and great glittering lamps swayed very slowly in a violent blast of air. A horrible music, and the exultation of discordant voices, swelled in his ears, and he saw an uncertain tossing crowd of dusky figures that circled and leapt before him. Thee was a noise like the chant of the ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... to remove it from their path. Hard rocks are more or less easily assailable with gunpowder, and the numerous joints and fissures by which they are traversed enable the workmen to wedge them out often in considerable lumps. But till has neither crack nor joint; it will not blast, and to pick it to pieces is a very slow and laborious process. Should streaks of sand penetrate it, water will readily soak through, and large masses will then run or collapse, as soon as an opening is made ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... but as the words were not distinguished they required no painful attention; but when the soda water and brandy and cigars made their appearance in Mr Longestaffe's own back room, then the trumpet was sounded with a full blast. 'I mean to let the fellows know what's what,' said Melmotte, walking about the room. Lord Alfred had thrown himself into an arm-chair, and was consoling himself as best he might with tobacco. 'Give ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... planted farm than he could possibly have learned shut up in a studio, French fashion. As a little boy he came to know all the signs of the heavens; the clouds gathering for storm or shine; the bending of the trees in the blast; all of these he loved, and later on made the principal subjects of his art. He learned to observe these things as a matter of business and at his father's command; thus we may say that he studied his life-work from his very infancy. All about him were beautiful hedgerows, picturesque cottages with ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... down and passed Within the gateway, whence no blast Rang as the sheer portcullis, cast Suddenly down, fell, and made fast The gate behind him, whence he spied A sudden rage of men without And ravin of a murderous rout That girt the maiden hard about With death ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... a trampling in the snow and a sound of voices, followed after, an interval by a knocking at the door. It swung open, and two whitened objects loaded with bags and packages strode into the room. The blast that came in with them set the lamp flickering, and sent a chill through the girl, but she rose with a smile when rancher Alton stood, a shapeless figure, with the moisture on his bronzed face, ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... moral proof, young man," said Mr. Colquhoun's dry voice. "Quite enough to blast your reputation. And what does this empty bottle mean and this broken glass? Perhaps your wife ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... out errors in our national government which call for correction, and which threaten to blast the fruit we expected from our tree of liberty. The correction proposed by Virginia may do some good, and would, perhaps, do more if it comprehended more objects. An opinion begins to prevail that a general convention for revising the Articles ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... Epistles of the New Testament were written, the reappearance of Christ for the last judgment was almost universally supposed by the Church to be just at hand. At any instant of day or night the signal blast might be blown, the troops of the sky pour down the swarms of the dead surge up, and the sheep and the goats for ever be parted to the right and left. Each day when they saw "the sun write its irrevocable verdict in the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... City, and their blood stirred to the call. These were the impressions that led them, in common with the rest of the Division, to surmount appalling obstacles, natural and devilish. They soaked in the snow, and froze in the keen blast; they starved and toiled on the way, but "stuck it," and their reward was the fall of Savy village. There was fighting all along the 50 mile front just then, and Savy did not loom very large in the chronicles of the time, but those who took part in its capture, and in ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... West of Scotland were then few and comparatively uninviting. The iron trade was in its infancy, and those engaged in it lacked the resources for the acquisition of wealth that were evolved from the discovery of blackband mineral deposits by Mushet, the application of the hot blast by Neilson, and the introduction of other more economical modes of working. Mr. James Baird did more than any other ironmaster in Scotland to carry out to its full and perfect development the principle of hot blast, and he greatly aided the success of Mr. Neilson's invention by designing ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... agony of it, the haunting horrors of imagination, the bitter days, the sleepless nights? To see you so beautiful, so glorious, and know you so base! Indeed, I think it came near driving me mad. It has sent me out into the night; I have held out my arms for the lightning to blast me; I have wished myself a thousand deaths. If Black George had but struck a little harder —or a little lighter; I am not the man I was before he thrashed me; my head grows confused and clouded at times—would to God I were dead! But now—you ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... The minister and Diccon moved nearer to me, and the King's ward, still and white and braver than a man, stood beside me. From the pirates that we faced came one deep breath, like the first sigh of the wind before the blast strikes. Suddenly the Spaniard pushed himself to the front; with his gaunt figure and sable dress he had the seeming of a raven come to croak over the dead. He rested his gloomy eyes upon my lord. The latter, very white, returned the look; then, with his head held high, ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... her gesture, the growl of the blast in the chimney and in the grove; the groaning, tapping, and creaking of the tree branches; the pelting sleet and the rattle of casements all over the house brought to the least imaginative a picture of out-door desolation and fireside comfort that prolonged the hush of attention. Tom Barksdale's ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... is well nigh destroyed; his family, after falling into poverty, is extinct; the Palais-Cardinal has assumed the name of Palais-Royal; and pure monarchy, the aim of all his efforts and the work of his whole life, has been swept away by the blast of revolution. Of the cardinal there remains nothing but the great memory of his power and of the services he rendered his country. Evil has been spoken, with good reason, of glory; it lasts, however, more durably than material ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... into which I am embarked and the position I sustain to it, to make this record with all Christian (or African, if you please) forgiveness, against this most glaring and determined act of theirs to blast the negro's prospects in this his first effort in the Christian Era, to work out his own moral and political salvation, by the regeneration of his Fatherland, through the medium of a self-projected scheme; and thereby take the credit to themselves. It was too great an undertaking ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... evening. We didn't know what minute they would open up again, so we hurried over every crossroad. Fritzie had a mania for shelling crossing roads, and those in the Ypres salient are all named appropriately. Here are a few: "Shrapnel Corner," "Hellfire Corner," "Hell Blast Corner." We were marching in single file by this time, and every man carried a sandbag, bomb, rifle and bayonet, rations and a bottle of water. Some load, eh? Judging from the flares going up all around us, we seemed to be going into a pocket. ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... house at three minutes to three, carrying his cloak over his arm. It was a hot day at the beginning of June, and when he stepped out at the door the air of the street smote his face like a blast from an open furnace. He reeled and almost fell. The sun's heat was like a load on his head, its dazzling rays made his sight dim, and he had a sound in his ears like running water. As he walked down ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... I've got a hole in my shoulder that feels as big and hot as a blast furnace. But we've got them nailed, and it's all right, ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... his feet, and began to apologize. The other said nothing, but stooped and waked Moneta. And at that moment I heard the shrill blast of a whistle outside on the street! "There's the Brigade!" ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... that one of the oldest of these acquaintances was present at blast-off time. He happened to be the grandfather of a certain competent young crewman. The old man was a proud figure during the brief ceremonies and his eyes filled with tears as the mighty rocket climbed straight up on ...
— It's a Small Solar System • Allan Howard
... turned to a white hell of wintry fury; where the grim, forbidding mountains were now the abiding place of the snow-ledge and the avalanche; where even steel and the highest product of invention counted for nothing against the blast of the wind and the swirl of the tempest. Then finally, as from far away, a strained ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... who was far your inferior, did you? How did you do it? Where did you go to find a woman who could be your inferior and still keep out of the menagerie? Adelbert, I fear you do your wife a great injustice. With just barely enough vitality to hand your name down to posterity and blast the fair future of Dakota by leaving your trade-mark on future generations, you snivel and whine over your blasted life! If your life had been blasted a little harder twenty years ago, the life of your miserable little wife would have ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... devoted ranks. Have ye not seen, from lonesome waste, The smoke-tower rising tall and slow, O'erlooking, like a stately tree, The russet plain below? And have ye mark'd that pillar'd wreath, When sudden struck by northern blast, Amid the low and stunted heath, In broken volumes cast? At sunrise, as by northern blast The pillar'd smoke is roll'd away. Fled all that cloud of Saxon war. In headlong disarray." ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... true, his task would be child's play. A woman charged with jealousy becomes like a weapon primed and cocked. If Ito could succeed in making Asako jealous, then he knew that any stray spark of misunderstanding would blast a black gulf between husband and wife, and might even blow the importunate Englishman back to his ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... produce. Yet he merits just such successes as the one you describe—triumphs public, brief, and noisy. Notoriety suits Lewes. Fame—were it possible that he could achieve her—would be a thing uncongenial to him: he could not wait for the solemn blast of her trumpet, sounding ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... is not so acute as in England. In France as soon as the war started we began turning out the shells as fast as our factories could work. So, in a short time, they were going full blast. We have been able to supply our army with ample ammunition and to have shells enough to shake up the enemy whenever we put ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... hevedes thorough kervyng; Swerdes draweyng, lymes lesyng Hard assaylyng, strong defendyng, Stiff withstondyng and wighth fleigheyng. Sharp of takyng armes spoylyng; So gret bray, so gret crieyng, Ifor the folk there was dyeyng; So muche dent, noise of sweord, The thondur blast no myghte beo hirde, No the sunne hadde beo seye, For the dust of the poudre! No the weolkyn seon be myght, So was arewes and quarels flyght." —King ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... the instinct of the animals had in some way taken them into rough, broken country, where they would find some shelter from the bitter level blast. They were soon at the bottom of a flat and narrow valley, and above them the wind roared and drove ever on a white blanket that sought to cover ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... ear, And find a cordial in my brethren here. Peers who their conscience to no market bring; Respect themselves, their country, and their king: Nor would round England's smiling hearths diffuse The breath—the very atmosphere of stews. O horrid! yes, I feel the blast impure, Air no blessed spirit may unpained endure: Yet leave I not without a warning voice: Hear, and obey, and Britons ...
— The Ghost of Chatham; A Vision - Dedicated to the House of Peers • Anonymous
... we, we are risen and stand upright." Then one earnest cry to God, one more thought of the true monarch of Israel, whom David would teach them to feel he only shadowed; and with the prayer, "Jehovah! save! Let the King hear us in the day when we cry," ringing like the long trumpet blast that sounds for the charge, they dash ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... would suffer for my loss, the displeasure of the queen, and the ruin of her fortune. Perhaps many travellers have not been under greater difficulties and distress than I was at juncture, expecting every moment to see my box dashed to pieces, or at least overset by the first violent blast or rising wave. A breach in one single pane of glass would have been immediate death; nor could anything have preserved the windows but the strong lattice-wires placed on the outside against accidents in travelling. ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... from all the world without, We sat the clean-winged hearth about, Content to let the north wind roar In baffled rage at pane and door, While the red logs before us beat The frost line back with tropic heat; And ever, when a louder blast Shook beam and rafter as it passed, The merrier up its roaring draft The great throat ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... Already a blast of heat was rising over the land and the rasping cries of the cicala fretted their talk; and Caterina bade him follow her down into the voto—the vast, cool, underground chambers which, for the patricians of Cyprus, made life possible during this heated term, ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... Atlantic, not untry'd before: Thy life impair'd commands thee to arise, Leave these bleak regions and inclement skies, Where chilling winds return the winter past, And nature shudders at the furious blast. O thou stupendous, earth-enclosing main Exert thy wonders to the world again! If ere thy pow'r prolong'd the fleeting breath, Turn'd back the shafts, and mock'd the gates of death, If ere thine ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley
... good. But if not, I will bring dishonor upon Arthur and shame upon thee. Here, on the spot where I stand, I will shout thrice and make the welkin ring. Sounds more deadly than 5 those three shouts have never been heard in this land. They shall resound from Land's End to Cold Blast Ridge in Ireland, and turn the hearts of youths and maidens cold as stone. Matrons shall grow wan and weakly and many a mother's child shall die of fright—so dreadful 10 will ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... behind her. As it approached she turned and faced Ferdy Wickersham. She seemed to be almost in a dream. He had aged somewhat, and his dark face had hardened. Otherwise he had not changed. He was still very handsome. She felt as if a chill blast had struck her. She caught his eye on her, and knew that he had recognized her. As he came up the path toward her, she rose and moved away; but he cut across to intercept her, and she heard ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... plans, and when presently the space between the two craft had narrowed until only a few fathoms separated them, and still there was no sign of the Spanish ship giving way, the young man put a whistle to his lips and blew a shrill blast, whereupon the helm of the Nonsuch was put hard up, and as she bore broad away the whole of her starboard broadside was poured into the approaching ship, within biscuit-toss, and the discharge was instantly followed by a dreadful outcry aboard her, mingled with the sound of rending ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... flags displayed, The bugle's thrilling blast, The charge, the thund'rous cannonade, The din and ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... "Don't shout, blast yer!" whispered the other vehemently. "We saw yer go up 'ere together, Jack, and nobody ain't gone away since. There's five of us, Jack, and we want that swine—we ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... aeroplane are inseparably connected; one is as necessary to the other as clay is to the potter's wheel, or coal to the blast-furnace. This being the case, it is well that we trace briefly the development of the engine during the ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... case—draw on the other side of the house. There's plenty there," he answered shortly, re-lighting his pipe, which had gone out in mid-blast. ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... function of words is to excite? Why, a red rag will do that, or a blast through a brass pipe. But to give calm and gentle heat; to be as the south wind, and the iridescent rain, to all bitterness of frost; and bring at once strength, and healing. This is the work of human lips, ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... And overspread with phantom light (With swimming phantom light o'erspread, But rimmed and circled with a silver thread) I see the old moon in her lap, foretelling The coming on of rain and squally blast. ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... to his iron will, Drains the foul marsh, and rends in twain the hill— A hanging bridge across the torrent flings, And gives the car of fire resistless wings. Light kindles up the forest to its heart, And happy thousands throng the new-born mart; Fleet ships of steam, deriding tide and blast, On the blue bounding waters hurry past; Adventure, eager for the task, explores Primeval wilds, and lone, sequestered shores— Braves every peril, and a beacon lights To guide the nations ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... so calm out yonder, Wherever we turned our eyes, Like the blast of an angel's trumpet Rang out to the earth and skies, Till the reefs and the rocky ramparts Throbbed to the giant fray, And the gullies and jutting headlands Were ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... the country is extremely pretty, being a corn and not a maguey district. Instead of the monotonous and stiff maguey, whose head never bends to the blast, we are surrounded by fields of waving corn. There are also plenty of trees; poplar, ash, and elm; and one flourishing specimen of the latter species, which we see from the windows in front of the house, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... good spot, Manning. I hope I get a chance to lay out the road down here. They will have to blast it out of the solid granite. It will eat money up ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... have entered into an eternal agreement, pledged their faith one to another, and have been calling upon Heaven for help; therefore they declare that no flag will be lowered, and no gun will be silent until the great wall around the city of their foes shall fall, either at a long blast of the horn or a ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... the whole might give way and precipitate me into some gouffre. On arrival at the summit of the cone we had just time to look down and perceive that there was a hole or gouffre, but whether it were very deep or not we could not ascertain, for a blast of fire and smoke issuing from it at this moment nearly suffocated us; we immediately lost no time in gliding down the ashes on the side of the cone on our breech, and reached its base in a few seconds, where we waited till ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... what should have been the shelter of the woods, the gale had increased so that they gave less than the road had given. The trees rocked above him; leaves and dead twigs beat on his face, and at length the blast forced him almost to creep on all fours. It was dark, too, beneath the swaying boughs. But uppermost in his mind was fear for his love, lest the hut should have given way before the tempest, and she be lying ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... is highly carbonized iron from the blast furnace, was laboriously converted into malleable iron by the old process of the puddling furnace. Bessemer conceived the process of forcing air among the particles of molten iron, and by a single ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... glancing now and then down the narrow old-fashioned streets, which run at right angles with the quays—with the innumerable small tile-fashioned pieces of wood, like scales, upon the roofs—which seem as if they would be demolished by every blast. The narrowness and gloom of these streets, together with the bold and overwhelming projections of the upper stories and roofs, afford a striking contrast to the animated scene upon the quays:—where the sun shines with full freedom, as it were; and where the glittering streamers, at innumerable ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... not (if the Lord himself may be believed) to give us an emblem of a person void of good works; but to shew his disciples the power of faith, and what a wonder-working thing that blessed grace is. Wherefore, when the disciples wondered at that sudden blast that was upon the tree, Jesus answered not, behold an emblem of one void of moral virtues; but 'Verily, I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig-tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... planets, and the voluntary operations of the human mind. They dreaded the mysterious power of spells and incantations, of potent herbs and execrable rites, which could extinguish or recall life, influence the passions of the soul, blast the works of creation, and extort from the reluctant demons the secrets of Futurity. They believed with the wildest inconsistency that the preternatural dominion of the air, of earth, and of hell, was exercised from the vilest ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... and beetle wing about The garden ways of other days; Above the hills, a fiery shout Of gold, the day dies slowly out, Like some wild blast a huntsman blows: And o'er the hills my Fancy goes, Following the sunset's golden call Unto a vine-hung garden wall, Where she awaits me in the gloom, Between the lily and the rose, With arms and lips of warm perfume, The dream ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... Yew-tree, which stands near the lake of Esthwaite, on a desolate part of the shore, commanding a beautiful prospect The Borderers The Reverie of Poor Susan 1798 A Night Piece We are Seven Anecdote for Fathers "A whirl-blast from behind the hill" The Thorn Goody Blake and Harry Gill Her Eyes are Wild Simon Lee, the Old Huntsman Lines written in Early Spring To my Sister Expostulation and Reply The Tables Turned The Complaint of a Forsaken Indian Woman The Last of the Flock The Idiot Boy The Old Cumberland Beggar ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... might be too late now. The storm would soon come riding along with a rush and a roar. Sorry, indeed, the frail aeroplane caught in its merciless grip. A handful of straw would not be scattered more quickly by the onrushing blast than the pitiful frame that went to make up ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... stood, all fierce and grim, A stern, heroic form: What was the winter blast to him, And what the driving storm?— What wonder that the children pressed Their faces at the pane And scratched away the frost, in pride To look on him again?— What wonder that, with yearning bold, Their all of love and care Went warmest through the keenest cold To that Snow-Man ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley
... balustrade of the verandah, standing with her arm round the wooden support and looking eagerly towards the Pantai reach. And motionless there in the oppressive calm of the tropical night she could see at each flash of lightning the forest lining both banks up the river, bending before the furious blast of the coming tempest, the upper reach of the river whipped into white foam by the wind, and the black clouds torn into fantastic shapes trailing low over the swaying trees. Round her all was as yet stillness and ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad |
