"Catastrophe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as an orphan, he had set foot in Tijuco. There his zeal had raised him high in the offices of the governor-general, into which he had been admitted when still very young. The future smiled on him; he would have filled some important position. Then this sudden catastrophe; the robbery of the diamond convoy, the massacre of the escort, the suspicion directed against him as the only official who could have divulged the secret of the expedition, his arrest, his appearance ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... stared at one another in consternation. Here was a catastrophe to happen just at the last moment, when everyone was so happy and well satisfied! The dismay on the chubby face was so pitiful that neither of Mellicent's companions could find it in her heart to speak a word of reproof. They rather set ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... alike its comfort, power, and speed. Before every engine, as it were, trots the ghost of a superseded horse, refuses most resolutely to trot faster than fifty miles an hour, and shies and threatens catastrophe at every point and curve. That fifty miles an hour, most authorities are agreed, is the limit of our speed for land travel, so far as existing conditions go.[5] Only a revolutionary reconstruction of the railways or the development of ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... it will revive. It would not be the first time that such a result of a great catastrophe was found to be only temporary. I remember that Pepys records in his Diary that one result of the Great Plague was that the wig went out of fashion. People were afraid to wear wigs that might be made ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... the horses, which showed an increasing uneasiness. Her own mare now shared the restlessness of the tall bay, and the two were footing it nervously here and there, tugging at the tethers, and tossing up their heads, with many a start, as if they feared and sought to flee from some approaching catastrophe—some vast and preternatural change—some forest fire which came galloping faster than even their fleet limbs could ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... could explain how the catastrophe occurred, further than that Mr O'Gallagher had collected all the squibs and crackers from the boys, and that they had exploded somehow or another—most people said that it served him right. My grandmother shook her head and said, ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... deserted so long ago. He had been quite content to live without regret or affection, forgetting and forgotten, but in his present prosperity he felt there was some need of putting his domestic affairs into a more secure and legitimate shape, to avert any catastrophe like the last. HERE at least would be no difficulty; husbands had deserted their wives before this in Californian emigration, and had been heard of only after they had made their fortune. Any plausible story would be accepted by HER in the joy ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... Volksrust, Vryheid and Standerton. Persons who are believed to be spies have been seen examining the bridges on the Natal Railway, and it is known that there are spies in all the principal centres of the colony. In the opinion of Ministers, such a catastrophe as the seizure of Laing's Nek and the destruction of the northern portion of the railway, or a successful raid or invasion such as they have reason to believe is contemplated, would produce a most demoralising effect on the natives and on the loyal ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of the existing sea-shells. Since they lived, no very great change in the form of the land can have taken place. What, then, has exterminated so many species and whole genera? The mind at first is irresistibly hurried into the belief of some great catastrophe; but thus to destroy animals, both large and small, in Southern Patagonia, in Brazil, on the Cordillera of Peru, in North America up to Behring's Straits, we must shake the entire framework of the globe. An examination, ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... we do not soon acquire new territory, a frightful catastrophe is inevitable. It signifies little whether it be in Brazil, in Siberia, in Anatolia or in South Africa.... To-day, as 2,000 years ago, when the Cimbri and the Teutons beat at the gates of Rome, a cry arises ... ever louder ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... principle that a "point" of several men is always sent in advance of the larger body when moving supposedly in the face of the enemy. The "point" often draws disastrous fire upon itself, but the larger body of troops is saved from catastrophe. ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... war. The war is obviously one of the great crises of our civilization. It is like a conflagration lighting up the dim past and throwing it into perspective. The war makes it impossible for us to take our own history for granted. We are bound to inquire into the causes of such an astonishing catastrophe, and as soon as we do that we find ourselves inquiring into the evolution of Western Civilization since it emerged from the Dark Age. The shock of the Peloponnesian War gave just the same intellectual stimulus to Thucydides, and made him preface his history ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... servant came and asked if she should open the house, and he nodded. The man-servant—the woman's husband—came also, and to him Bradish nodded; and at noon he had luncheon alone in the fine new house that had just been completed a year before the catastrophe. ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... back to camp, a good deal awed; but they found there was still something to be thankful for, because the great sycamore, the shelter of their beds, was a ruin, now, blasted by the lightnings, and they were not under it when the catastrophe happened. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... since, it was my fortune to face the enemies of my king in a few small affairs, Captain Borroughcliffe; such as the siege of Quebec, and the battle before its gates, a trifling occasion at Ticonderoga, and that unfortunate catastrophe of General Braddock—with a few others. I must say, sir, in favor of the colonists that they played a manful game on the latter day; and this gentleman who now heads the rebels sustained a gallant name among us for ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... is not a vexing toss of the sea, not a cloud in the sky. Is not catastrophe dead, and the arrows of tragedy spilled? Peace broadens into deep, perfumed dusk towards Arabia; languor spreads towards the unknown lands of the farthest south. No anxious soul leans out from the casement of life; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... lost drama of Aeschylus; an ambition which, if my preference to this mode of treating the subject had incited me to cherish, the recollection of the high comparison such an attempt would challenge might well abate. But, in truth, I was averse from a catastrophe so feeble as that of reconciling the Champion with the Oppressor of mankind. The moral interest of the fable, which is so powerfully sustained by the sufferings and endurance of Prometheus, would be annihilated if we could conceive of him as unsaying his high language ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... to wonder how his awkwardness would be received, Sietske was talking along smoothly about something else—just as if this little "catastrophe" ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... not digress here upon the invasion of Italy by Charles VIII., which caused the expulsion of the Medici from Florence, and the establishment of a liberal government under the leadership of Savonarola. Michelangelo appears to have anticipated the catastrophe which was about to overwhelm his patron. He was by nature timid, suspicious, and apt to foresee disaster. Possibly he may have judged that the haughty citizens of Florence would not long put up with Piero's aristocratical ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... reason for my suspicions, it is evident that he transferred his affections to you. It is a terrible thing to say, but—but I feel as if—as if—your presence here had averted a dreadful catastrophe from us. Yes; that letter might have been meant for my wife, and I might have found her here instead of you. Do not think it heartless of me if I say that, deeply as I sympathize with you and grieve for your—your trouble, I am relieved—relieved of an awful apprehension ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... own ship did not reach her port for many weeks. He was a mere boy, his face was drawn with continued pain, but, with the strong repression of emotion characteristic of the sailor, he uttered no sound. The passengers, relieved from silent fears of any catastrophe aboard the sailing ship, and perhaps salving their souls for fancied failure toward the drowned Leung Kai Chu, crowded to fill the boat with books, fruit, and candy, and to help the unfortunate boy. When he ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... learn from the authorities, that, when fairy stories, or balls, or rolls of thread, stopped of their own accord—as I do not—it presaged some great catastrophe near at hand. The precedent holds good in this case. When I have remembered the short time I have before me to spend in this land of mighty interests, and the poor opportunity I can at best have of acquiring a knowledge of, and forming an acquaintance with it, I have felt it almost a duty ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... twisted condition. Not until some weeks of American diet had revolutionized my exterior did my interior completely resume the contours of normality. I am particularly neither ashamed nor proud of this (one might nearly say) mental catastrophe. No more ashamed or proud, in fact, than of the infection of three fingers which I carried to America as a little token of La Ferte's good-will. In the latter case I certainly have no right to boast, even should I find myself so inclined; for B. took with him to Precigne a case of what his father, ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... and darted into the hotel. His business was to speed up the clearing party, and Herr Kronig himself accompanied him to the scene of the catastrophe. Mary sat still, for she had suddenly become possessed of an idea. She drove it from her as foolishness, but it kept returning. Why had those tree-trunks been spilt on the road? Why had an easy pass after a ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... the apparent gap between my arrival and the perturbing catastrophe referred to, it is only necessary to add that if you enter from the main route from Hazebrouck you will find just off the road a convoy of some sixty dear things seeing as much life as can be beheld while groping into the insides of the Red Cross motor ambulance which it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 15, 1919 • Various
... the higher region of the camp or court that has not some indirect influence upon the intrigues of Lorenzo and Elvira; and the part which the gallant is called upon to act in the revolution that winds up the tragic interest, while it is highly in character, serves to bring the catastrophe of both parts of the play under the eye of the spectator, at one ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... Fauntleroy, and the suggestion of its great feasibility first made by him)—these enormities, followed too often, and countersigned for their final result to the future happiness of families, by the appalling catastrophe of suicide, must naturally, in every wealthy nation, or wherever property and the modes of property are much developed, constitute the vast majority of all that come under the review of public justice. Any ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... the slightest accident having signalized the voyage. Fouquet hoped to be the first to arrive at Nantes; there he would see the notables and gain support among the principal members of the States; he would make himself a necessity, a thing very easy for a man of his merit, and would delay the catastrophe, if he did not succeed in avoiding it entirely. "Besides," said Gourville to him, "at Nantes, you will make out, or we will make out, the intentions of your enemies; we will have horses always ready to convey you to Poitou, a bark in which to gain the sea, ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... The century following this catastrophe was marked by violence and bloodshed. In all the setting up and pulling down of kings which ended in the Kalmar Union, the Swedish peasantry, now the body of the nation, had had no part. They had long watched in silence the overpowering growth of the magnates and of the Church; they had ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... the Pope, winds up his celebrated Note by a desponding conclusion. According to him, the Roman Question is one which cannot possibly be definitively solved; and the utmost that can be effected by diplomacy is the postponement of a catastrophe. ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... This second catastrophe broke up our ranks, some of the chaps—only a few, though, I am proud to say—bolting into the bush; but Mr Chisholm, who was leading the rear division, waved his sword in the air, and cried out for volunteers to rescue ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... the World.—Early in the history of the operations of this law the possibilities of an adverse decision by the Supreme Court were considered by those interested in the measure, and a plan was found whereby all might not be lost if such a catastrophe should occur. The first movement in this new direction was made by Elihu Root on January 14, 1913, when he introduced in the Senate a resolution requesting the President to propose to the other governments the negotiation of a convention for the protection of birds. A proposed ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... the Treaty of Utrecht—At the culminating point of her greatness, a humiliating catastrophe is impending—Philip negotiates for the erection of a territory into a sovereignty for Madame des Ursins—The sudden death of Queen Marie Louise causes a serious conjunction for the Princess—Her power begins ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... conscience is oppressed and miserable because you feel as if you were the author of the catastrophe," he replied. "What have you made up your mind to do?" It was evident that her attitude alone interested him, but he understood her mood perfectly. His voice was friendly and matter-of-fact; there was not a hint of the sympathizing lover ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... Juan Bernardo de Fuentiduenas, who was sick with the fever. He went on the voyage, and before dawn of Thursday, January 28, ran foul of a reef, where no land could be seen in any direction, except a few rocky points at low tide. The fever left the pilot at this sudden catastrophe, and at dawn the Spaniards saw on the reefs a large ship, that looked like a Chinese vessel, which had been wrecked. They went to this vessel to get its small boats. Entering it, they found not a soul, living or dead. But they found considerable ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... Ursula's husband and they would to-day have been opulent instead of being, as they now were, in the depths of poverty. Though said without reproach, this argument annihilated the poor woman even more than the thought of her coming ejectment. When Ursula heard of this catastrophe she was stupefied with grief, having scarcely recovered from her fever, and the blow which the heirs had already dealt her. To love and be unable to succor the man she loves,—that is one of the most dreadful of all sufferings to the soul of a noble ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... into utter insignificance. Whatever endangers the perpetuity of this Union, demands the attention of every friend of his country; every man who is worthy the name of an American citizen. It calls loudly for prompt and effectual action, to avert the calamitous catastrophe. God save the Union, should be the prayer of every Christian. This petition, should begin and end their devotional exercises. God save the Union, should be the first lesson taught to the child in the cradle; and from infancy to old age, ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... surprise and shame surged over her. She heard nothing, saw nothing, save the fact that something she thought was dead had come to life. She was wakening from a long numb sleep, and the wakening was terrifying. What irremediable catastrophe had happened between now and that supreme moment when she had stood under the lilacs in the twilight with Donald Morley's arms about her, his breath on her cheek, and his passionate plea: "Oh, if you only knew ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... and I faced each other from the sides. The lamp was brightly trimmed; the wine was good; the viands, although mostly cold, excellent of their sort. We seemed to have agreed tacitly; all reference to the impending catastrophe was carefully avoided; and, considering our tragic circumstances, we made a merrier party than could have been expected. From time to time, it is true, Northmour or I would rise from table and make ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... the distractions of town would send him back a new man. Mr. Stapleton, a mutual friend who was much concerned at his state of health, was of the same opinion. At the last instant came this terrible catastrophe. ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... the country which completely alters the situation, and must necessarily leave things very different from what it found them. Readers of this new edition may reasonably expect to find in it some account of the events which have within the last two years led up to this catastrophe, or at any rate some estimate of that conduct of affairs by the three governments concerned which has brought about a result all three ought to have sought ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... fire or at the sword's point, in 'Clyde Water' or in 'the dowie den in the Lawlands o' Balleichan.' In Gil Morice, that ballad which Gray thought 'divine,' it is 'Willie, the bonnie boy,' whom the hero trusted with his message, that in malice and wilfulness brings about the tremendous catastrophe of the tale. He calls aloud in hall the words he was bid whisper in the ear of Lord Barnard's lady—to meet Gil Morice in the forest, and 'speir ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... faithless Johann, as I gathered, who was responsible for this catastrophe. His heart, it appeared, had failed him when he had discovered that nothing less than a bona-fide marriage was to be the outcome of the meetings he had shown so much skill in contriving, and, full of penitence and alarm, he had written to ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... had broken the friendship between Fanny and her worthless brother. I feared a catastrophe when Mr. Faringfield should learn of the occurrence at the tavern. But, thanks to the silence of us who were concerned, and to the character of the few gentlemen with whom he deigned to converse, it never came to his ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... catastrophe, Alonzo Cuyapit, a rich Indian of Dilao, a suburb of the city, and his friend, the chaplain of the San Francisco Convent, were at prayers together before a statue of St. Francis, that was the Indian's dearest pride. He had shrined it fittingly in his home, with flowers and candles about it, ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... Cuningham's information, it was now three years since a separation had been arranged between Madame de Pastourelles and her husband, Comte Albert de Pastourelles, owing to the Comte's outrageous misconduct. Lord Findon had no doubt taken her abroad after the catastrophe. And, besides her father, Welby had also been ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... throw refinement to the winds. And there was something in her, an unexpurgated vestige of vulgarity, that made a strenuous attempt at proving that Snooks was not so very bad a name after all. Any hovering hesitation flew before Fanny's manner, when Fanny came with an air of catastrophe to tell that she also knew the horror. Fanny's voice fell to a whisper when she said SNOOKS. Miss Winchelsea would not give him any answer when at last, in the Borghese, she could have a minute with him; but she promised ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... completely answers to the European definition. The unity of action is complete, and the unities of time and place much less violated than they frequently are on our own stage. The grandeur and gravity of the subject, the rank and dignity of the personages, the tragical catastrophe, and the strict award of poetical justice, might satisfy the most rigid admirer of Grecian rules. The translator has thought it necessary to adhere to the original by distinguishing the first act ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... a catastrophe come about? That is what we must inquire into before going further to examine its operation and the ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... rollicking song, asking Sir Temple if he remembered it. To him this effect that he had produced meant that the first stroke of the hour, his hour, had sounded; to Archdale it meant that some mystery was here, some catastrophe impending. He could readily ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... own interests, and to formulate their indictment against the bourgeoisie in the interest of the exploited working class alone. Thus the aristocracy took their revenge by singing lampoons on their new master, and whispering in his ears sinister prophecies of coming catastrophe. ...
— The Communist Manifesto • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
... pack of cards into a solid heap, burying everything, as may be supposed, below it. There were many persons in the churchyard, waiting to enter the sacred edifice, and, like ourselves, were struck dumb with horror and dismay at the frightful catastrophe. We were soon aroused to a state of consciousness, and inaction gave way to exertion. In a very short time, the noise of the crash had brought hundreds of persons into the churchyard to ascertain the cause. ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... were, at first, only allowed during Carnival, and on particular occasions called Charivaris, and they were usually made the pretext for the practice of the most licentious follies. These masquerades had a most unfortunate inauguration by the catastrophe which rendered the madness of Charles VI. incurable, and which is described in history under the name of the Burning Ballet. It was on the 29th of January, 1393, that this ballet made famous the festival held in the Royal Palace of St. Paul ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... Trollope. Born in London on April 24, 1815, his home was made sordid by his father's misfortunes, and at Harrow and Winchester, where he was for nearly eleven years, his mean appearance subjected him to many dire humiliations. A final catastrophe in the fortunes of the elder Trollope drove the family to Belgium, where Anthony for a time acted as usher in a school at Brussels. But at the age of nineteen a Post-office appointment brought him back to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... having been reinstated in the British army. I knew but little of him until this catastrophe occurred; but the manliness of his defence showed him to be naturally a man of honour, who, having been guilty of serious misconduct, did all he could to amend the wrong he had done; and so he won my sympathy in ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... through her husband. He once more felt, although he felt it vaguely, the note of impending tragedy which she was so premonitarily sounding. It brought to him a dim and hurried vision of that far-off but inevitable catastrophe which lay, somewhere, at the end of the road they were traveling. Their only hope and solace, it seemed to him, must thereafter lie in feverish and sustained activity. They must lose themselves in the dash and whirl of daring moments. And it was not from pleasure ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... had reported to him the failure of his efforts, for it was this minister who had in the first place come to him. The steeplejack had fallen, so to speak, right into the middle of his department; and with the King's donation coming on the top the catastrophe bulked large. For, be it known, on the order of the day for the morrow's sitting of Parliament was a motion of the Labor Party, directing censure on the Government for having brought pressure to bear on contractors and caused work to be continued upon Government buildings when Labor and Capital ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... vain for the victim; the inexorable duenna had already seized a fourth glass, and the final catastrophe would have been infallibly brought about, had not providence intervened in the person of the call-boy, who, thrusting his head through the half-open doorway, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... had a general vogue. Their conjectures as to the cause of the disappearance were no nearer to the truth. For there were only two who knew, and those two went steadily about the business of living as though no catastrophe had befallen them. They held their heads a trifle more proudly perhaps. Ethne might have become a little more gentle, Dermod a little more irascible, but these were the only changes. So gossip had the field ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... life, the climate, the inconveniences, the absence of what she was accustomed to. She was dead tired of it all. I can understand that. And I—I didn't know what to do about it. . . . So we drifted; and the catastrophe came very quickly. Let me tell you something; a West Pointer, an Annapolis man, knows what sort of life he's going into and what he is to expect when he marries. Usually, too, he marries into the Army or Navy set; and the girl ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... book, the inescapable duty of returning it was too painful to be faced, and if he didn't like it, there was no reason for borrowing it. Books became sacred things to him, to be cherished and protected as nothing else. The loss of one was a catastrophe. ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... were brought her by a joyful bearer, open-mouthed, its effect was such that she fell like one who had been shot. She and Sir William had literally been made ill by their hopes and fears, and joy at a catastrophe so far exceeding all that they had dared to hope for. Their admiration for the hero necessarily produced a degree of proportionate gratitude and affection; and when their barge came alongside the VANGUARD, at the sight of Nelson, Lady Hamilton sprang up the ship's side, and exclaiming, ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... petulant sallies of Dorine, who ridicules the family she serves with affection; are all faithfully drawn, and contribute their own share on the effect of the piece, while they assist in bringing on the catastrophe. In this catastrophe, however, there is something rather inartificial. It is brought about too much by a tour de force, too entirely by the de par le roi, to deserve the praise bestowed on the rest of the piece. It resembles, in short, too nearly the receipt for making the "Beggars' Opera" ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... Rasputin still hung over every head. The first sense of liberty had passed, and now his dirty malicious soul seemed to be watching us all, reminding us that he had not left us, but was waiting for the striking of some vast catastrophe that the friends whom he had left behind him to carry on his work were preparing. It was this sense of moving so desperately and so hopelessly in the dark that was with me. Any chance that there had seemed to ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... him, commiserated discreetly her ladyship, and in short gave my young man no chance whatever. He knew that I had guessed his arriere-pensee, but he let me off for the moment, for which I was thankful; either because he was still ashamed of it, or because he supposed I was reserving myself for the catastrophe,—should it occur. Well, my dear, it did occur, at the end of ten days. Mr. Tester came to see me twice in that interval, each time to tell me that poor Vandeleur was worse; he had some internal inflammation which, in nine cases out of ...
— The Path Of Duty • Henry James
... Malinovka assumed its wonted calm. The quiet life which had been brought to a pause by the catastrophe, flowed evenly on. The peaceful atmosphere was not undisturbed by anxiety. Autumn had laid her hand on men as well as on nature. The household was thoughtful, silent, and cold; smiles, laughter, and joy had vanished like the falling leaves, and even though the worst ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... Mustansir (vol. i. 318); SO that the Hunchback's adventure can hardly be placed earlier than A.D. 1265 or seven years after the storming of Baghdad by Hulaku Khan, successor of Janghiz Khan, a terrible catastrophe which resounded throughout the civilised world. Yet there is no allusion to this crucial epoch and the total silence suffices to invalidate the date.[FN178] Could we assume it as true, by adding to A.D. 1265 half a century for the composition of the Hunchback's story and its incidentals, we ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... prevailed in that part of Italy. They are perhaps exaggerated; therefore I shall only rate them at one million. Let us hasten to open that great scene which establishes the Roman empire, and forms the grand catastrophe of the ancient drama. This empire, whilst in its infancy, began by an effusion of human blood scarcely credible. The neighboring little states teemed for new destruction: the Sabines, the Samnites, the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... told you, sir, my husband was suffocated, and I was left a widow with one little child, a daughter. I will not dwell upon my sorrow, but kindly permit me to say that the horror of that catastrophe has never passed from my mind, and I have been a sad woman; and now, alas! it appears as though a greater sorrow were ...
— A Successful Shadow - A Detective's Successful Quest • Harlan Page Halsey
... if nothing could be done within the next two minutes there would be an awful catastrophe; but he was helpless. No doubt the electricians were at work; in ten minutes the damage would be repaired and the lights would be up again; but the house would be empty then, except for the ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... question it who may see him quitting my house at such unseasonable hours; but what distresses me is that I cannot punish or chide her, for her privity to our intrigue bridles my mouth and keeps me silent about hers, while I am dreading that some catastrophe will ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... The catastrophe of having the mug drained dry at one pull by the stranger in cinder-gray was effectually guarded against this time by Mrs. Fennel. She poured out his allowance in a small cup, keeping the large one at ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... Muscovites, aware of our rash and thoughtless negligence, have conceived the hope of burning with Moscow our soldiers, heavy with wine, fatigue and sleep; or rather, have they dared to imagine that they should involve Napoleon in this catastrophe; that the loss of such a man would be fully equivalent to that of their capital; that it was a result sufficiently important to justify the sacrifice of all Moscow to obtain it; that perhaps Heaven, in order to grant them so signal a victory, had decreed so great a sacrifice; ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... their praises, however, fell finally a victim to his propensities, having been stabbed to the heart in one of those scenes of confusion and drunkenness which were frequently the conclusion of his renowned banquets. Shocked at this catastrophe, the assembled Britons interred the relics of the Prince on the place where he had died, within the narrow vault where Eveline had been confined, and having barricaded the entrance of the sepulchre with fragments ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... on 'Change when he first caught the rumor of the catastrophe. His position with regard to the family (for his relations with it were now well understood) made it difficult for him to make many inquiries, but he hastened to his counting room and despatched a messenger to Hill to come to him forthwith. Hill was prompt, and having ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... references to real places in the vicinity. At the point where Hawthorne locates his story there actually was a mountain tavern called the Willey House, and a modern inn stands on the spot to-day. Concerning the catastrophe which he describes I found the ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... and Blucher went over his head. And, to speak truly, every mule stumbled over the two, and the whole cavalcade was piled up in a heap. No harm done. A fall from one of those donkeys is of little more consequence than rolling off a sofa. The donkeys all stood still after the catastrophe and waited for their dismembered saddles to be patched up and put on by the noisy muleteers. Blucher was pretty angry and wanted to swear, but every time he opened his mouth his animal did so also and let off a series of brays that drowned ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... That catastrophe occurred a few years after his appointment. The fire continued to rage for nearly four days, during which it destroyed eighty-nine churches including St. Paul's, thirteen thousand two hundred houses, and ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... name from failure of male-issue; and although there is, perhaps, no more romantic chapter in the vicissitudes of many a great house than its final extinction from lack of an heir, such a disaster is all the more to be lamented when resulting from a curse. A catastrophe of this kind was that connected with the M'Alister family of Scotch notoriety. The story goes that many generations back, one of their chiefs, M'Alister Indre—an intrepid warrior who feared neither God nor man—in ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... and at that time the general topic of conversation at Paris.]—and what do you think of it? Let me know, for I am determined to form my taste upon yours. I hear that the situations and incidents are well brought on, and the catastrophe unexpected and surprising, but the verses bad. I suppose it is the subject of all conversations at Paris, where both women and men are judges and critics of all such performances; such conversations, that both form and improve the taste, and whet the judgment; ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... in one's coffin! Oh, it was an indignity too terrible for contemplation; and every time they were away from Jerrem she would beset Reuben with entreaties and questions as to what could be done to avoid the catastrophe. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... Johnny Jewel, had presumed to prate of it that day, with half the horses stolen from Sinkhole. For so did conscience magnify the catastrophe. He had dared to assume that his presence there at Sinkhole was necessary to the welfare of the Rolling R! Johnny laughed, but tears would have been ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... velocity,—they fly like three sea-birds driven landward by the tempestuous breeze. The ladies would not thus rival Atalanta if they but knew that any one were at leisure to observe them. Ah! as they hasten onward, laughing in the angry face of nature, a sudden catastrophe has chanced. At the corner where the narrow lane enters into the street, they come plump against the old merchant, whose tortoise motion has just brought him to that point. He likes not the sweet encounter; the darkness of the whole air gathers speedily ...
— Sights From A Steeple (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... well. She had done her part for Claude. But if all her work had been useless? If all the ingenuity of herself and Alston should be of no avail? If the opera should never be produced, or should be produced and fail? Perhaps for the first time she strongly and deliberately imagined that catastrophe. For so long now had the opera been the thing that ruled in her life with Claude, for so long had everything centered round it, been subservient to it, that Charmian could scarcely conceive of life without it. She would be quite alone with Claude. Now they were a menage ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... passed with the Public for contriver of the Catastrophe of Poland,—"felonious mortal," "monster of maleficence," and what not, in consequence. Rulhiere, whose notion of him is none of the friendliest nor correctest, acquits him of this atrocity; declares him, till ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... and comfort him. And the outcome of all these interviews and conversations Madame had to bear. Her son, in his great sorrow, threw off entirely the yoke of her control. He found his own authority and rather abused it. She had hoped the final catastrophe would draw him closer to her; hoped the coolness of friends and acquaintances would make him more dependent on her love and sympathy. It acted in the opposite direction. The public seldom wants two scapegoats. Madame's ostracism ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... sweep our Pacific coast states, killing unprotected settlers, plundering banks and treasuries of $40,000,000 of the people's savings and business capital, and by destroying the producing power of commercial enterprise reduce the community's income by twenty-eight millions more, the catastrophe would ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen
... at home and abroad the worship of Geist and Kultur? Are they fit to instruct us about politics, public law, and international relations, when they were so egregiously mistaken, so blind, so befooled, with regard to the most portentous catastrophe in the memory of living men? I am glad that they see their blindness now—but why this sentimental friendliness ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... With great diffidence we reply to the query of our learned friend. The force of tragedy consists in its depicting evil so ruinous as to involve even the innocent in the catastrophe; the pleasure is derived, we think, from the failure of the mischievous design, and the merited retribution which falls upon the head of the plotters. In Romeo, "a scourge is laid upon the hate of the Montagues and Capulets, by which all ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... catastrophe stood for a minute inert and speechless,—stupefied by its suddenness and awful rapidity. Then with one accord they hurried down to the level shore of the torrent, moved by the unanimous idea that they might possibly succeed in rescuing ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... made the clearer to her all the new, vague pain in regard to Imogen. Imogen, to Mary's delicate perception of moral atmosphere, was different; she had felt it from the moment of her arrival. No one had as yet enlightened her as to the Potts's catastrophe, but even by its interpretation she would have found the change hard to understand. Perhaps it was merely that she, Mary, was selfish and felt herself to be of less importance to Imogen. Mary was always conscious of relief when she could fix responsibility upon herself, and she was adjusting ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... journey. A farmer's cow had momentarily trespassed on another man's land, one of a hostile faction. The farmer offered to pay for the damage, but the reply he received was a shot which killed him on the spot. His brother, who saw the catastrophe, ran to raise the victim; but the man had already reloaded his gun, and shot the brother dead. A third brother, having seen the two fall, ran to the succour so quickly, that the murderer had not time to complete the reloading of his gun; and as a crowd was collecting, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... out by Wire Chief Green, of the Bell Telephone Company, who said the fire was then within a block of the telephone exchange in which was located John A. Bell, who for more than twenty-four hours had kept the outside world informed as best he could of the catastrophe in Dayton. ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... She had not succeeded even in communicating with Alroy. But after the unsuccessful mission of Honain to the dungeon, the late Vizier visited the sister of the captive, and, breaking to her with delicate skill the intelligence of the impending catastrophe, he announced that he had at length succeeded in obtaining for her the desired permission to visit her brother; and, while she shuddered at the proximity of an event for which she had long attempted to prepare herself, Honain, with ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... Tryon! He blamed himself bitterly for the whole catastrophe on the grounds that, if he had only looked into the petrol-tank instead of taking a Kafir's word, the car would never have been held up or the encounter with the leopard occurred. It was no use Lundi Druro's telling ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... roar of the cataract deafened us, the awfulness of the catastrophe made us dumb. We were as if stunned, and I was conscious of nothing save a sickening sense of ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... did not wish to say anything about Mr. Slope just at present, nor did he wish to make known his sad surmises; but the idea that his enemy might possibly become Dean of Barchester made him very gloomy. Should such an event take place, such a dire catastrophe come about, there would be an end to his life as far as his life was connected with the city of Barchester. He must give up all his old haunts, all his old habits, and live quietly as a retired rector at Plumstead. It had been a severe trial for him to have ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... newspaper advertisements. Many women, just for fun, have answered such advertisements, and have been led on from step to step to catastrophe infinite. All the men who write such advertisements are villains and lepers—all, without a single exception. All! All! Do you answer them just for fun? I will tell you a safer and healthier fun. Thrust your hand through the cage at a menagerie, and stroke the back of a cobra from the East ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... message brought Mrs. Harold and Mrs. Howland upon the scene before many hours, as well as a good many other interested parents. True, a large insurance covered most of the valuables and the building also, but a house after such a catastrophe is hardly prepared to hold a function, so it was unanimously agreed that the girls should all go quietly away as quickly as those whose belongings had been ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... the catastrophe caused by my poor boy's heedlessness may prove to be the cause of your making a brilliant fortune; for, really and truly, you were burying your energy and your ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... whilst the Arabian Prince of Muscat was taking possession of the coast of the Persian Gulf, Mahmoud, who had succeeded his father, Mir Vais, in the government of Khandahar, made an irruption into Persia. This invasion of the Ghilzi-Afghans was the greatest catastrophe to the Zoroastrian community, Mahmood having preferred to pass through Kirman rather than risk the deserts of Seistan. Massacres and forced conversions drove the faithful band ...
— Les Parsis • D. Menant
... utter disgust at this protracted play of negotiation between Parliament and the King in the Isle of Wight, there had been forming itself that other agency which was to interpose irresistibly, and hurry all to a real catastrophe. ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... victim of a catastrophe of nature, an earthquake, a conflagration, or a flood, the country would be crushed; but, no, the contrary is now true, for the present catastrophe has been brought about by an evil will and each one comprehends that this will, if left free to act, will continue ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... the office in the shire of—at the time of this catastrophe, was well born and well educated; and, though somewhat pedantic and professional in his habits, he enjoyed general respect as an active and intelligent magistrate. His first employment was to examine all witnesses whose evidence could throw light upon this mysterious event, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... the wall as I write and bears out the truth of the story. Often and often when we children were playing in the park did we wander about, trying to settle from which tree the arrow glanced, conjuring up before our eyes the whole scene—the king's anger and the archbishop's despair at the catastrophe—and feeling the while a proud personal interest in it all. Ah, what good days those were, roaming about knee-deep in heather, catching the rare moths, chasing the squirrels that whisked up the fir stems and mocked us from their high perch, searching the hollow trees ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... a moment later, reached the mission, and with the rocking of the earth and the rending of walls, the tower of the new church fell on the people below, shrieking as they fled. Forty were killed on the spot, as well as many wounded. This catastrophe was by far the worst ever visited on the missions, and it was long before San Juan Capistrano recovered from the blow—never, in fact, so far as the church was concerned, for it was too badly injured to be repaired, and the fathers could not summon up energy enough to build another. ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... with remarkable and characteristic promptitude. He only heard of the catastrophe to San Tajin on 27th April; on 29th April, after two forced marches across country, he appeared before Taitsan, and captured a stockade in front of one of its gates. Bad weather prevented operations the next day, but ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... events related quite ground enough for concluding that the danger I dread is great and imminent, and that, if ill luck is to have its will, no human power can prevent an explosion for a day, or even for an hour. The second is the contemplation—what state will the Queen be placed in by such a catastrophe? That in my position, portraying to myself all the consequences of such a possibility, I look chiefly to the Queen, needs hardly, I trust, an excuse.... Can you hope that the Queen's character will ever recover from a shock received by a collision ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... semblance of truth to this he would that day consult distinguished oculists and, in spite of their assurances, would tell them that slowly and surely his eyesight was failing him. He would declare to them, in the dread of such a catastrophe, he was of a mind to seek self-destruction. To others he would confide the secret of his blindness and his resolution not to survive it. And, later, all of these ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... these questions, and specially, I suspect, that last one, ought to lead the young student up to the great and complex question—How were these islands re-peopled with plants and animals, after the long and wholesale catastrophe of the ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... recollection, was howled down by the orthodox as mere "infidelity." All that, in his sore straits, Dr. Zockler is able to do, is to pronounce a faint commendation upon a particularly absurd attempt at reconciliation, which would make out the Noachian Deluge to be a catastrophe which occurred at the end of the Glacial Epoch. This hypothesis involves only the trifle of a physical revolution of which geology knows nothing; and which, if it secured the accuracy of the Pentateuchal ...
— The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science - Essay #6 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... my mind's eye, that Past of which they are the shrunken remnant, and the unfinished romance of rosy cheeks and bright eyes seems sometimes of feeble interest and significance, compared with that drama of hope and love which has long ago reached its catastrophe, and left the poor soul, like a dim and dusty stage, with all its sweet garden-scenes and fair perspectives overturned and ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... smothered intensely private things, and I knew of but one other person in the secret; yet that person and I found it exquisitely susceptible of notation, followed it with an interest the mutual communication of which did much for our enjoyment, and were present with emotion at its touching catastrophe. The small case—for so small a case—had made a great stride even before my little party separated, and in fact within ...
— The Beldonald Holbein • Henry James
... neither time nor distance have had the least effect on my (in general) changeable disposition. In short, we shall put Lady E. Butler and Miss Ponsonby to the blush, Pylades and Orestes out of countenance, and want nothing but a catastrophe like Nisus and Euryalus, to give Jonathan and David the 'go by.' He certainly is perhaps more attached to me than even I am in return. During the whole of my residence at Cambridge we met every ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... thought, and with full sympathy for his injured friend. He saw also that Dacres could not be trusted by himself. Some catastrophe would be sure to occur. He determined, therefore, to accompany his friend, so as to do what he could to avert the ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... preserve it, in consequence of its remarkable similarity to this, which belonged to a courtly poet, who having grown grey in flattering the great, was cast off in the same manner to perish by the same catastrophe." ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... the celebrities of the Opera. Even that intrigue was of brief duration. Sarrasine was decidedly ugly, always badly dressed, and naturally so independent, so irregular in his private life, that the illustrious nymph, dreading some catastrophe, soon remitted the sculptor to love of the arts. Sophie Arnould made some witty remark on the subject. She was surprised, I think, that her colleague was ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... their northeasterly course than Bob sat down to his instruments and called up the Panama wireless station. In about ten minutes he got it, and told of their position and the accident to the Clarion. They all knew that when the news of this catastrophe reached the American newspapers there would be the greatest excitement, and that Mr. Wrenn would not only be grievously disappointed but horrified at the fate of the three ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... Burnham how Mr. Haswell was induced by his desire for gain to visit you and how you had most mysteriously predicted his blindness. Now, there is no such thing as telepathy, at least in this case. How then was I to explain it? What could cause such a catastrophe naturally? Why, only those rays invisible to the human eye, but which make this piece of willemite ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... and urging his political friends to stand firm and not be coaxed or driven away from the performance of their political duty. By this means he became very "obnoxious" to the "best people" of Horsford, and precipitated a catastrophe that might easily have been avoided had he been willing to enjoy his own good fortune, instead of clamoring about the collective ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... teacher now begged to be sent back to Singapore, and I thought that Beebe could not be persuaded to let him go alone, though my heart had been set on keeping them with me as long as I remained in Siam. It was in vain that I tried to convince the terrified old man that such a catastrophe could hardly happen again; he would not be beguiled, but, shedding faithful tears at the sight of my bandaged head, declared we should all be murdered if we tarried another day in a land of such barbarous Kafirs. I assured him that my ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... Auchincloss's ranch-house seemed endless to Dale. Natives came out in the road to watch after he had passed. Stern as Dale was in dominating his feelings, he could not wholly subordinate his mounting joy to a waiting terrible anticipation of catastrophe. But no matter what awaited—nor what fateful events might hinge upon this nameless circumstance about to be disclosed, the wonderful and glorious fact of the present was that in a moment he would see ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... timbers in the soil. To get them afloat again is a great labour. Sometimes they run upon a "snag," and are instantly swallowed up with all their crew and all their cargo. Sometimes a steamer runs into one of them, and produces a catastrophe equally fatal to both. But all the toils, and dangers, and exposures connected with the long and perilous voyage of a flat boat, do not appear to the passer-by. As you cut along by the power of steam, the flat boat seems anything but a place of toil or care. One of ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... foremast, hitherto standing, tottered and fell. Stout as were her timbers, unable to resist such fierce assaults, they were in a brief space burst asunder, and scattered around in the troubled sea. A cry of horror escaped the young ladies as they witnessed the fearful catastrophe. ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... marble of Greece and Asia Minor, all met with purchasers in the mighty metropolis. [146:2] As John surveyed in vision the fall of Rome, and as he thought of the almost countless commodities which ministered to her insatiable luxury, well might he represent the world's traffic as destroyed by the catastrophe; and well might he speak of the merchants of the earth as weeping and mourning over her, because "no man buyeth their ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... "I suppose the catastrophe will arrive, sooner or later, and it is more likely to occur to a girl of twenty than ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... which is due to Olbers, begins with the startling assumption that a planet, perhaps as large as Mars, formerly revolving in an orbit situated between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, was destroyed by an explosion! Although, at first glance, such a catastrophe may appear too wildly improbable for belief, yet it was not the improbability of a world's blowing up that led to a temporary abandonment of Olbers's bold theory. The great French mathematician Lagrange investigated the explosive force "which would be necessary ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... the catastrophe the mistress of the house rushed up. Luckily, she is as short-sighted as the Wallachian prince, and he is able to escape from the buffet without being recognized. All the same, my evening is spoiled. The massacre ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... trifling apart, the gloomy catastrophe of yesterday morning prompts a sadder vein. The fate of the unfortunate Fauntleroy makes me, whether I will or no, to cast reflecting eyes around on such of my friends as, by a parity of situation, are exposed to a similarity ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... Sir R. K. Porter accompanied Sir John Moore's expedition to the Peninsula, and attended the campaign throughout, up to the closing catastrophe of the battle of Corunna. On his return to England, he published anonymously, Letters from Portugal and Spain, written during the March of the Troops under Sir John ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various
... privileged to indulge, is the marvellous of performance, and not of accident. One extraordinary rencontre or opportune coincidence may be permitted, perhaps, to bring the parties together, and wind up matters for the catastrophe; but a writer who gets through the whole business of his poem, by a series of lucky hits and incalculable chances, certainly manages matters in a very economical way for his judgment and invention, and will probably be found ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... thou canst weep vpon thy Balthazar, Tis like I wailde for my Horatio. And you, my l[ord], whose reconciled sonne Marcht in a net and thought himself vnseene, And rated me for a brainsicke lunacie, With "God amend that mad Hieronimo!"— How can you brook our plaies catastrophe? And heere beholde this bloudie hand-kercher, Which at Horatios death weeping dipt Within the riuer of his bleeding wounds! It as propitious, see, I haue reserued, And neuer hath it left my bloody hart, Soliciting remembrance of my vow With these, O these accursed murderers! ...
— The Spanish Tragedie • Thomas Kyd
... land in great numbers and practically swept the Burgundian people from the face of the earth. According to the Roman historians, twenty thousand Burgundians were slain in this great battle of the Catalaunian Fields. Naturally this catastrophe, in which a whole German nation fell before the hordes of invading barbarians, produced a profound impression upon the Teutonic world. The King Gundahar, the Gunther of the "Nibelungenlied", who also fell in the battle, became the central figure of a new ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... roused his companions, and all was prepared for a heavy rain, when, instead, to their great consternation, the camp was inundated by "a high ridge of water over which came the sea current combing down like water over a mill-dam." The canoes were almost capsized, but this catastrophe was averted by rapid and good management. Even in the darkness, in the face of a danger unexpected and unknown, the trappers never for an instant lost their coolness and quick judgment, which was so often ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... him; which he had felt even when steeled against her, and asked himself again what chance Bruce could have with her in the hour of her boldest triumph? The very fact of her having come immediately on the heels of the catastrophe gave her a look of innocence. . . . Had Zoraida the trick of hypnosis over men? It began ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... friend, but it was impossible. What better thing could I do with the poor little book than bury it in the garden in the shadow of Larmone? The story of a silent fault, hidden in silence. How many of life's deepest tragedies are only that: no great transgression, no shock of conflict, no sudden catastrophe with its answering thrill of courage and resistance: only a mistake made in the darkness, and under the guidance of what seemed a true and noble motive; a failure to see the right path at the right moment, and a long wandering beyond it; a word left unspoken until ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... learned man was a paralyzed invalid, owing to an accident in the prime of life. He had lost the use of his lower limbs—"dead from the waist down." Yet such was the strength of his moral and intellectual life that he had become, since the catastrophe, one of the chief forces of his college. The invalid-chair on which he wheeled himself, recumbent, from room to room, and from which he gave his lectures, was, in the eyes of Oxford, a symbol not of weakness, but of touching and triumphant victory. He gave himself no airs of resignation ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... pulling a stroke for you. Now listen and don't be offended. I know what's put you off your feed, because I was the same way when Milly had me guessing. You've lost your head over Nan Brown. That's not so terrible, though I daresay you think it's a catastrophe. Because you've quit. You've shown a yellow streak. You've ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... mental attitude, and his special method. But he has also a special instrument, the monologue. The drama of action demands a concurrence of several distinct personalities, influencing one another rapidly by word or deed, so as to bring about the catastrophe; hence the propriety of the dialogue. But the introspective drama, in which the design is to represent and reveal the individual, requires a concentration of interest, a focussing of light on one point, to the exclusion or subordination of surroundings; hence the propriety ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... poor creature who, like his father the Pope, sought power only for the lowest purpose of all—the acquisition and accumulation of money. The manner, however, in which father and son practiced this occupation must have led sooner or later to a final catastrophe—the dissolution of the State. If Sixtus had filled his treasury by the sale of spiritual dignities and favours, Innocent and his son, for their part, established an office for the sale of secular favours, in which pardons ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... despite Mr. Churchill, is whether we shall allow a like passion and a like prejudice again to blind us; whether we shall again back the wrong horse in the name of the same hollow theories drifting to a similar but greater futility and catastrophe, or whether we shall profit by our past to ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... campaign, not so much a battle as a catastrophe, delayed Harrison's operations. His failures had shaken popular confidence, and at the end of this dismal winter, after six months of disappointments in which ten thousand men had accomplished nothing, he was compelled to report ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... by foreign barbarians; so an inundation of the barbarians of the world is pouring in on us, and threatens to swallow us up; it is like the flood the dragon poured out of his mouth. Of our duties growing out of this catastrophe we ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... devastated the towns on the Thracian coasts. The inhabitants who did not find death in the destruction of their dwellings went with the garrisons to seek refuge against the destroying scourge and the barbarity of the Turks in the towns and the castles which the catastrophe had spared. But torrents of rain, snow, and a glacial temperature killed the women and the children on the road. As to the men, they fell into the power of Orkhan's soldiers, who were awaiting their passage. Thus the Ottomans found a powerful auxiliary in the warring ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... made a desperate leap from the car. This was followed by another, now equally excited. Those in the front cars, clutching to the sides of the doors, craned their necks as far as possible outward, but could see nothing but leaping men. They fearing a catastrophe of some kind, leaped also, while those in the rear cars, as they saw along the sides of the railroad track men leaping, rolling, and tumbling on the ground, took it for granted that a desperate calamity had happened to a forward car. No time for questions, no time for meditation. The soldier's ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... Thus and thus only is the trustful man protected and shielded from harm. And I for one—by no means a thick-skinned or hard-nerved man-am absolutely satisfied with this arrangement, and do not wish for any other kind of immunity from danger and catastrophe. Quite as sensitive to pain as the most highly strung organism, I yet feel that the worst of it is conquered, and the sting taken out of it altogether, by the thought that God is our loving and sleepless keeper, and that nothing can hurt us without ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... the corner of the street, when, looking anxiously in the direction of his homestead, he saw a column of smoke. It was directly over the spot where he knew his house to be situated. He guessed at a glance what had happened. The frightful catastrophe he foreboded had befallen. Taddy had set ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... suffices to say that forgetfulness, and despondency, and moroseness, and madness take occasion often of ill-health to visit the intellectual faculties so severely as to expel all knowledge (8) from the brain. But he who is in good bodily plight has large security. He runs no risk of incurring any such catastrophe through ill-health at any rate; he has the expectation rather that a good habit must procure consequences the opposite to those of an evil habit; (9) and surely to this end there is nothing a man ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... it can not remove by more merciful agencies, so would it seem that in France the demoralization which necessitated a revolution, concentrating itself in one family, produced the man who was to begin the catastrophe. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... will!" said Geoffrey, still awaiting the catastrophe. It was a great bore, of course, in fact a nuisance, but it couldn't ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... the Sound for several days without landing or reporting herself, though boats were seen going to and from her at night; and that she was seen standing out of the mouth of the harbor, in the gray of the dawn, after the catastrophe ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... needs buttressing, just stop for a moment and consider that this old world in which we have found such happiness has throughout the past ages been visited by every catastrophe of which the human mind can conceive, and from each of these dark periods it has emerged always ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... with one of these works, we were conscious that we never knew how to leave off. The Porteous mob is rather heavily described, and the whole part of George Robertson, or Staunton, is extravagant and displeasing. The final catastrophe is needlessly improbable and startling." The critic felt that he must be critical, but his praise of Effie and Jeanie Deans obviously comes from his heart. Jeanie's character "is superior to anything we can recollect in the ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the advance of democracy, a curb upon colonial insolence. The need of cultivating the new subjects was the greater, Carleton contended, because the plan of settlement by Englishmen gave no sign of succeeding: "barring a Catastrophe shocking to think of, this Country must, to the end of Time, be peopled by ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... dwell upon the minute circumstances of the catastrophe of this bloody tragedy: Suffice it to say, that ten Englishmen, one Portuguese, and eleven Japanese, were publicly executed; of whom ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... "Many thanks for the prompt advice of the affair so glorious for our friends. Letters from England received here this morning confirm it entirely. All was in motion today in our cafes and on the exchange. The royalists here are entirely depressed, and even fear the like catastrophe for General Howe, if he hazard himself further into the country." This news has made an astonishing impression everywhere; all is ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... am sure, averted a worse catastrophe. He met the fate of a hero, and it was always a mystery to me the company never ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... fine, and the whole, joined with the greatest tenderness, has the greatest simplicity; yet, though this ballad was so recently published in the Ancient Reliques, Dr. Goldsmith has been hardy enough to publish a poem called The Hermit, where the circumstances and catastrophe are exactly the same, only with this difference, that the natural simplicity and tenderness of the original are almost entirely lost in the languid smoothness and tedious paraphrase of the copy, which is as short ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... walked hither and thither about the apartment, stamping with his feet, in search of his hat and walking-stick; and, as he bustled from corner to corner, he made Laurent repeat the details of the catastrophe, giving utterance to fresh exclamations at the end of ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... the fury which they had created. Danton had died like a man, Robespierre like a cur; and then the end—cannon clearing the mob from the streets of Paris. A new era had dawned for France, but the future was yet on the knees of the gods. Had Raymond Latour escaped the final catastrophe? Were Sabatier, and Mercier, and Dubois still in Paris, more honestly employed than formerly perchance? Or had they all sunk in the final storm, gone down into night with their sins red upon them? No news of them reached Broadmead, only a rumor that ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... the inevitable catastrophe, or you realized, in time, that nuclear armament and nationalism cannot exist together on the same planet, and it is easier to banish a habit of thought than a piece of knowledge. Ullr was not ready for membership in the Terran ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... sent from Shanghai to form a junction with Ward at Sunkiang, and to effect the safe retreat of the Tsingpu garrison. The earlier proceedings were satisfactorily arranged, but the last act of all was grossly mismanaged and resulted in a catastrophe. Ward caused the place to be set on fire, when the Taepings, realizing what was being done, hastened into the town, and assailed the retiring garrison. A scene of great confusion followed; many lives were lost, and the commandant who had held it so courageously was taken prisoner. ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... forgiveness breathed, and then he plunged a knife into his breast; the blade broke; he shattered the bottle at his side and swallowed the fragments, and then fell bleeding and exhausted on the straw. If left long alone, life would have ebbed away; but, probably in anticipation of such a catastrophe, the officer ere many hours revisited the cell to put chains upon the prisoner. Discovering his condition, a surgeon was called, remedies were applied, and two Austrian sentinels carried Foresti into the presence of the judge. It was scarcely ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... resolved to make me repent of my indifference. The first stroke of their revenge consisted in their hiring a poor collegian to write verses against me, the subject of which was my own poverty, and the catastrophe of my unhappy parents; but, besides the badness of the composition (of which they themselves were ashamed), they did not find their account in endeavouring to reproach me with those misfortunes which they and their relations had brought upon me; and ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... made away with himself. But that catastrophe was the result of a totally different malady, which, as it were, projected itself upon the disease which was established. His case was in the distinctive manner a complication, and the complaint under which ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... activity that our grave postwar problems may be neglected. We need to act now with full regard for pitfalls; we need to act with foresight and balance. We should not be lulled by the immediate alluring prospects into forgetting the fundamental complexity of modern affairs, the catastrophe that can come in this complexity, or the values that can ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... readily made the catastrophe of Sir Condy's history more dramatic and more pathetic, if he thought it allowable to varnish the plain round tale of faithful Thady. He lays it before the English reader as a specimen of manners and characters which are perhaps ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... advised him to depart, and be upon his Guard. But, being pursued by others, he lost his Life. His Fate has been lamented by every Body, especially by those who knew his Merit, and none have thought him deserving so sad a Catastrophe. ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... return to the catastrophe of the Socratics: "By the time that the philosophical experiments in 'diving without hydraulics' had cleaned me entirely out, it was suggested that any thing in the shape of a loan would be desirable; they were not nice—not they; a pair of globes; a set of catoptric instruments; an electrical ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan |
