"Church tower" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be the sand dunes of Flanders, and the church tower was that of St. Walburga. After a conference with his followers, who also were saved, he founded the solemn annual procession in honor of the True Cross, in which was also introduced the representation of the "Mysteries ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... no reason why churches should not be destroyed if they are serving military purposes," one of them said. "When a church tower shelters a gun, or is used for observations, it is quite legitimate that it be subject to artillery fire. That ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... were, yet so far from it in feeling. There, to the NE. was the little town, sunlit and brilliantly white, with the church tower rising in the middle and the heather-topped cloud-capped hills behind. There around the bay, were the red cliffs, crossed by deep shadows and splotched with dark green bushes. The land was there. We were to sea. The water, which barely gurgled beneath the bows ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... always bad news. The tocsin rings for great fires, for revolution, or, as in this case, for a Declaration of War. Before us lay Normandy, looking inexpressibly peaceful in the evening sunlight, and over that quiet countryside the tocsin was sending its tidings of woe, as it was from every church tower in France. Next morning the only son, the gardener, the coachman, and the man-servant left the old Norman chateau to join their regiments; the son and the gardener never to return to it. To the end of my life I shall remember the weeping women, and the haggard-eyed men in that ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... Bacon's Rebellion (p. 95). In 1679 the Burgesses ordered Jamestown "to be rebuilt and to be the metropolis of Virginia"; but in 1698 the House of Burgesses was again burned and in 1699 Williamsburg became the seat of government. The ruined church tower (p. 40) is the only structure still standing in Jamestown; but remains of the ancient graveyard, of a mansion built on the foundations of the old House of Burgesses, and some foundations of dwellings may also be seen. The site is cared for by the Association for the Preservation ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... late as that!" returned the man, drawing a rude chair before the fire and extending his small, thin hands to the grateful blaze. "The village clock in the old church tower at Wimbledon was on the stroke of ten when I laid my bundle of sticks in their accustomed place, and set my face homewards. I must have travelled at a laggard pace, if it is already midnight. Are you lonesome ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... friend: "If the British march By land or sea from the town tonight, Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch Of the North Church tower, as a signal-light,— One if by land, and two if by sea; And I on the opposite shore will be, Ready to ride and spread the alarm Through every Middlesex village and farm, For the country-folk to be up ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... A church tower loomed up, and then a blaze of light issued from its arched doors. Two by two, in white array, came forth the elves, and from the floating veils Leo saw that it was meant to represent a bridal procession. Garlands ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... The subject was a common enough one in Venice; a tranquil rio between ruinous walls,—here, a bit of quaint mediaeval sculpture,—there, a splash of verdure over the arch of a gateway,—a pointed church tower in remote perspective. The clever craftsman found no difficulty in inventing reasons why a similar combination of advantages was not to be found elsewhere. In his own mind he was perfectly well aware that he chose it because the proper point of view was only to be obtained by disembarking ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... said, desperately, as they passed a lighted church tower. "It is nine o'clock." And she leaned back in her corner again, with her heart beating strongly. Her disappointment was so keen that she could have burst into a passion of tears. Her happy evening was gone, and her dream of simple pleasure had fled with its sacrificed hours. She could ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... silver to gold, from bud to blossom, scattered brightness through the dawn, and the lemon catkins of the hazel, the russet tassels of alders, brought light along the river, warmth into the world. A bell beat five from Chagford Church tower, and the notes came drowsily through morning mists. Then quick steps followed on the last stroke of the hour and Will stood by Billy's side in Monks Barton farmyard. The old man raised his eyes from contemplation of a spade and barrow, bid Blanchard "Good ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... a little while, watching the sweat gather on his brow and the shadow of the church tower fall deeper and darker, like the shadow of doom, on his face. Not out of cruelty—God knows I have never erred in that direction!—but because, for the first time in my life, I felt a strange reluctance ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... from what Ratsey had said, that there was no one with her in the house, and if there was it would be but an old woman, to whom I could pass as a stranger in my disguise, and ask my way to some house in the village. So I lay still and munched a piece of bread, and heard the clock in the church tower strike eight and afterwards nine, but saw no one move in the house. The wood was all alive with singing-birds, and with the calling of cuckoo and wood-pigeon. There were deep patches of green shade and lighter patches ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... and two soldiers were shot by the enemy. They alleged that one of the latter was found on the church tower in the village, from which he would have been able to exchange signals with ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... and went up and up on the ladder-like bean till everything he had left behind him—the cottage, the village, and even the tall church tower—looked quite little, and still he could not see the top of ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... down the room, until the creaking of one of the boards reminded her that she must make no noise. She went and curled herself up on the window-seat in the small, deeply-recessed window. That morning when she had looked out, her heart had danced at seeing the bright clear lights on the church tower, which foretold a fine and sunny day. This evening—sixteen hours at most had past by—she sat down, too full of sorrow to cry, but with a dull cold pain, which seemed to have pressed the youth and buoyancy out of her heart, never to return. Mr. Henry Lennox's visit—his ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... that sleep was out of the question. I said to myself: 'I will read till twelve and then I will stop.' My watch was on a chair by my bedside, and when the clock struck eleven I noticed that it was five minutes slow, and set it right. I could see the church tower from my window, and every time the clock struck—and it struck the quarters—the ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... item of authentic intelligence has been thoroughly assimilated. 'He' is the resident within those vast and endless walls, with the metal gates and the gilded coronet above—the prince of this kingdom and its capital city. To rightly see the subjects loyally hastening hither, let any one ascend the church tower on market day. ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... witnesses of the most brilliant play of his genius. He had a most observant and seeing eye. A walk in the street was fraught with surprise, and he would come back delighted with his adventures. Every little common incident—three little boys with their backs to a wall looking up at a church tower: he would catch snatches of their talk, speculations about deep things and strange; he would note that an old Irish apple-woman in a grimy English town left her basket, with all her stock-in-trade, outside in the street while she went into a church to commune with her heavenly friends; the conversation ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... said to his friend, "If the British march By land or sea from the town to-night, Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch Of the North Church tower as a signal light,— One, if by land, and two, if by sea; And I on the opposite shore will be, Ready to ride and spread the alarm Through every Middlesex village and farm, For the country-folk to be up and ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... and Stockholm in June, and were much delighted with the new land they visited. To read in the public square at midnight; to pass through groves of pine and fir with rose-colored cones; to hear the watchman call from the church tower four times toward the four quarters of the heaven, "Ho, watchmen, ho! Twelve the clock hath stricken. God keep our town from fire and brand, and enemy's hand;" to have boys and girls run before to open the gates; to hear the peasants cry, "God bless you," when you sneezed,—all these ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... into a church tower one night to steal the bell-ropes. The two ropes passed through holes in the wooden ceiling high above them, and they lost no time in climbing to the top. Then one man drew his knife and cut the rope above his head, in consequence of which he fell to the floor and ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... a bower Of shrubs, unknown to LINDLEY, she reposes, See her own ALFRED to the old church tower Led on by CUPID, in a chain of roses; Or let the wreath, when raised, a cage reveal, Wherein two doves their little bills entwine; (A vile device, which always makes me feel Marriage would only add your bills ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... lurched into the gutter, and this time they both got out and mounted the high steps. Lane knocked. They waited what appeared a long time before they heard some one fumbling with the lock. Just then the bell in the church tower nearby began chiming the midnight hour. The door opened, and Doctor ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... gently through the darkness, seized with a strange joy, awakened one could not tell why. All the peasants in the neighborhood declared that it was bewitched, and nobody except the priest and the sacristan would now go near the church tower. And they went because a poor girl was living there in grief and solitude and provided for ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... moon; the night was pitch dark. They threaded their way through the graves, stumbling over them here and there. An owl was toowhooing from the church tower, a dog was howling somewhere, a cock began to crow, as they will sometimes at twelve o'clock ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... wandered out of the light we know into some dim Hades such as the old Greek fancy painted, where strengthless ghosts flit aimlessly, mourning the lost light. Everywhere the giant boles of trees shooting the height of a church tower into the air without a branch; great rib-rooted trees, and beneath them a fierce and hungry growth of creepers. Where a tree had fallen within the last century or so, these creepers ramped upwards in luxuriance, their stems thick as the body of a man, drinking the shaft of light that ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... vengeance to the full. Let the rest pass in silence. The most reliable authorities tell us that the Anabaptists remained calm and firm to the last. 'Art thou a king?' 'Art thou a bishop?' The iron cages still hang on the church tower at Muenster; placed as a warning, they have become a show; perhaps some day they will be treasured as weird mentors of the truth which the world has yet to learn from the story of the ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... As we reached the road leading to Barcy, there was a rift in the clouds, and a long golden ray shot through an enormous breach in the church tower, flickered a moment upon a group of roofless houses, and was gone. Night ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... Solomon, and of more time to make him hear when he is found, and of most time for him to find the key when he hears. But time is not money to the merchant just now, and he watches the western sky patiently, and is made sleepy by the breeze. When at last they saunter under the shadow of the gray church tower, his eye is caught by the mass of color, out of which springs a high cross of white marble, whose top is just flushed by the setting sun. It is of fine design and workmanship, and marks the grave where the great man's ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... I listened, and heard nothing but the voice of the wind in the trees. Not a vehicle was to be seen on the road. The half hour sounded sadly from the church tower. ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... their home for the night. But though Richard's eye dwelt upon the fair garden beneath him, embracing all its terraces, green slopes, and trim pastures; though it fell upon the moat belting the hall like a glittering zone; though it rested upon the church tower; and, roaming over the park beyond it, finally settled upon the range of hills bounding the horizon, which have not inaptly been termed the English Apennines; though he saw all these things, he thought not of them, neither was he conscious of the sounds that met his ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... grafted fruit trees; farther on a group of substantial farm buildings. On the opposite side of the road stretches a long, flat meadow, or "polder," up to the little village which nestles so snugly around its tall church tower; the latter fulfilling also the purpose of a beacon, lit by night, to guide the wayfarer on sea and land; scene of tireless industry, comfortable prosperity, and smiling peace. ... Pride and love of ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... I went down through the oak woods, over Boldre Bridge, to find the high road, which presently brought me past St Austin's once belonging to the Priory of Christchurch, under Buckland Rings to the very ancient borough of Lymington, with its charming old ivy-clad church tower at the end of the High Street. The church, in so far as it is old of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, has little to boast of, for it has been quite horribly restored. In the long street of Lymington ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... the church tower chimed the first quarter past one. She was able to count the strokes and was glad to find that she had lost no time. As soon as the long, singing echo of the bells had died away, she spoke, not loudly, but ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... the eavesdropper, or to startle them by shutting the window, Captain Cai very delicately withdrew, climbed back into bed, and drew the edge of the bedclothes over his ear. Soon he was asleep; but, even as he dropped off, the absurd phrase wove itself into the midnight chime from the church tower and passed on to weave itself into his dreams and vex them. "If I should survive my wife—" In his dreams he was back in Troy, indeed, and yet among foreigners. They spoke in English, too; but they conversed with one another, not with him, as though he might overhear but could ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... were proud—until, ah me! until that desolate day when a merrily, merrily flying squad swooped down upon us and declared they had 'cycled every inch of the twenty-mile periphery of which Ethel's neighboring church tower was the centre! ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... himself. He is very old. Grandmother says that she has heard her own grandmother tell of him; he is said to lead a solitary life, and to have nobody with whom he can converse save the great old church Bell. Once the Bell hung in the church tower; but now there is no trace left of the tower or of the church, which was called ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... the church tower rang! Grazian sprang out of his arm-chair—seized his cane—steadying himself against the wall, he made his way out to the north tower, from which he could get a clear view of the church. The moon, just ready to set, ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... found in a torpid state during the winter in the Isle of Wight, or any part of this country, I never heard any such account worth attending to. But a clergyman, of an inquisitive turn, assures me that, when he was a great boy, some workmen, in pulling down the battlements of a church tower early in the spring, found two or three swifts (hirundines apodes) among the rubbish, which were, at first appearance, dead, but, on being carried toward the fire, revived. He told me that, out of his great care to preserve them, he put them in a paper ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... a pretty drive, through rich meadows, shut in by the sloping wooded hills which gradually closed nearer; and by and by over the shoulder of one looked a very tall church tower, whereat Felix started with a thrill of responsive recognition, and suddenly faltered in the political discussion Mr. Staples had started, but dropped at once, looking at the young man's face ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the last stroke of midnight from the old church tower, May had waked April; and April had run off into the mountains with the dawn. Her final shower of tears still shone upon the ground. Already May was ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... "If the British march By land or sea from the town to-night, Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch Of the North Church tower as a signal light,— One, if by land, and two, if by sea; And I on the opposite shore will be, Ready to ride and spread the alarm Through every Middlesex village and farm, For the country folk to be up and ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow
... view of mountain and bay and inlet, but never a house, never a church, and the farthest point is beyond Calvi, thirty miles away. There is but one spur—a vast buttress of fertile land thrown against the mountain, as a buttress may be thrown against a church tower. ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... six hair-seated mahogany chairs. The other will be a small bed-room. We shall not worship in a chapel, but in a large hall, which will be formed like a gallery. There will be a pulpit in it, and a large circular table before it. The entrance to it will be by a flight of stairs, like those in a church tower. After we have ascended so far, the stairs will divide—one way leading up to the left, to the top of the place. This will be the principal entrance, and it leads to the top of the gallery, which is entered by a door covered with green baize fastened with brass nails. The other stairs lead to ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... ghost. Armed and provided with some strengthening liquor, they repaired to a room down-stairs. First they talked, but soon, getting sleepy, they leaned silently back in their chairs. When the clock from the old church tower struck one, Sebastian awoke and roused his comrade, which was no easy matter. At last, however, John was wide awake, and together they went out into the hall. The same moment a strong wind put out the light that John ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... be a series of giant cascades, ten or twelve in number, in the words of Raleigh, "every one as high above the other as a church tower, which fell with that fury that the rebound of waters made it seem as if it had been all covered over with a great shower of rain. And in some places we took it at first for a smoke that had risen over ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... grown on the upland side of the borough was garnered by farmers who lived in an eastern purlieu called Durnover. Here wheat-ricks overhung the old Roman street, and thrust their eaves against the church tower; green-thatched barns, with doorways as high as the gates of Solomon's temple, opened directly upon the main thoroughfare. Barns indeed were so numerous as to alternate with every half-dozen houses along the way. Here lived burgesses who daily walked the fallow; shepherds in an intra-mural squeeze. ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... the joy-bells rang out from the neighbouring church tower, the summer sun shone into the windows, the bees hummed among the flowers on the lawn. Sir Peter roused himself and looked forth, "After all," said he, cheerily, "the vale of tears is not ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... pressed his fingers against the edge of the table, leaned forward, and looked keenly at Ormiston. He was extremely ugly just then, ugly as the weather-worn gargoyle on some mediaeval church tower; but his ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... this quiet enough," said General D'Hubert, looking round at the vine-fields, framed in purple lines, and dominated by the nest of grey and drab walls of a village clustering around the top of a conical hill, so that the blunt church tower seemed but the shape of a crowning rock—"if you think this spot quiet enough, you can speak to him at once. And I beg you, comrades, to speak openly, ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... little chateau belonging to an elderly lady who was most civil and told us stories of what the Germans had done when they passed through a week or two ago on their retreat eastwards. Amongst other abominations, they had, on arrival, demanded of the old cure the key of the church tower, on which they wished to put a Maxim. The old man, not having the key, had hobbled off to get it from the garde champetre, who happened to be in possession of it for the time being. He could not, however, find him, and the officer in command, being ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... small fields, enclosed by high thick hedgerows; so that when viewed from the top of one of the hills, the whole country appears perfectly green, excepting near harvest-time, when small patches of golden corn catch the eye, or where here and there a church tower peeps above the trees, in the midst of the flat red-tiled roofs of the surrounding village. The roads are deep lanes, often in the winter beds of streams, and in the summer completely roofed by the thick foliage of the ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... silent little square or court-yard that had a great church tower rising above it, and a packer's warehouse, and a bottle-maker's warehouse, for its places of business, Rob the Grinder delivered the white-legged horse to the hostler of a quaint stable at the corner; and inviting Mrs ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... troopship's anchor was weighed on the Tuesday evening at 5 p.m., and we proceeded to sea. It was the month of October, and ere the evening shadows had stretched upon land and sea, I had gazed upon Maker church tower, at whose base my dear sister lay interred, until my eyes were strained. At last it disappeared from view, and the 'Himalaya' was ...
— From Lower Deck to Pulpit • Henry Cowling
... had so long been gathering, and a breathless pause ensued. Every window was now choked up with heads; the house-tops teemed with people—clinging to chimneys, peering over gable-ends, and holding on where the sudden loosening of any brick or stone would dash them down into the street. The church tower, the church roof, the church yard, the prison leads, the very water-spouts and lampposts—every inch of ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... Jimmy. We'll sail out tomorrow, or take the motor boat, according to the wind. We'll enter Langley Shallows there and pass Dead Man's Rock on the left side of the waterway, and keep straight on until we get Budden Wood on the church tower. You follow me?" ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... reluctance that my eyes had been deceived; there was no sensational forest fire at all! What I had seen was but the sunshine on an expanse of yellow bloom on some rising ground beyond the belt of woodland, and on the old church tower, while a rare ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... deep. There was no beast, there was no hound; They all were carried to the ground. And all that lived and laughed around The sea now holds in gloom profound. At times, when low the water falls, The sailor sees the broken walls; The church tower peeps from out the sand, Like to the finger of a hand. Then hears one low the church bells ringing Then hears one low the sexton singing; A chant is carried by the gust: "Give earth to earth, and dust ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... Dissent, with children by the hundred. Some even proposed to ring the church bells and fire the cannon at the harbour's mouth; but the ringers and artillerymen preferred to come and see the sight. As it was, the "George" floated proudly from the church tower, and the Fife and Drum Temperance Band stood ready at the corner of East Street. All Troy, ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... long-superannuated Rotary tandem tricycle riding along winding roads and lanes, between the hedgerows and under the elms English prose and verse had long since made familiar, in and out of little grey or red villages clustered round the old church tower, passing through great towns of many factories and high smoke-belching chimneys, halting for months under the shadow of some old castle or cathedral that had been appointed one of our stations by the way. Or I see us both trudging on foot, knapsacks on our backs, climbing up and down ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... ash-trees, an old woman was sitting. She was called "Old Mary Ann" throughout the whole neighborhood. Her big basket, the weight of which had become a little heavy, she had put down beside her. She was on her way back from La Tour, the little old town, with the vine-covered church tower and the ruined castle, the high turrets of which rose far across the blue lake. Old Mary Ann had taken her work there. This consisted in all kinds of mending which did not need to be done particularly well, ...
— What Sami Sings with the Birds • Johanna Spyri
... The roaring and crackling of the flames was prodigious. Here and there the glare was diversified by columns of a deeper red glow, showing where warehouses, filled with pitch, tar, and oil, were in flames. The heavy crashes of falling buildings were almost incessant. Occasionally they saw a church tower or steeple, that had stood for a time black against the glowing sky, become suddenly wreathed in flames, and, after burning for a time, fall with a crash that could be plainly heard ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... waste, and even the road was marked on each side by high poles, to direct the traveller in winter. We were glad when at length the green fields came again in sight, and the little village of Whelpington Knowes, with its old ivy-grown church tower, welcomed us after ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... lay the moorland, growing mistier and a little unreal in the failing light. To his left, clustering roofs round a church tower, was a village, so silent that none but the dead might have been its inhabitants. Not a labourer plodded homewards from his toil in the fields; not a horse, freed from its harness, grazed in the fields. To his right, sharply cutting the distant sky-line, ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... thought was only dirty, is for the moment all bejewelled. Then the light passes and the colours die. Though even then, if there be room enough for me to fall back so far as that I can gaze up to the top of the Church Tower, I see the rusty vane new burnished, and seeming to look out with a joyful flash over the sea of smoke at the distant ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... said to have been founded by two maiden ladies. The bequest was in the form of land, though the name of the donors and the date of the gift are unknown. With the rents of the land bread and cheese were purchased, and thrown from the church tower to poor people on the Sunday before Christmas. The annual income arising from this source is now divided, being expended partly upon education, partly upon apprenticeship, and a certain amount upon coals ...
— Mayfair, Belgravia, and Bayswater - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... to appeal to him with some especial claim. For ten years he had had the same bedroom, an old low-ceilinged room with queer bulges in the wall, a crooked fireplace and a slanting floor. For years now he had had a wall-paper with an ever-recurrent scene of a church tower, a snowy hill, and a large crimson robin. The robins were faded, and the snowy hill a dingy yellow. There were School groups and Oxford groups on the walls, and the book-case near the door had his old school prizes and Henty and a set of the Waverley Novels with ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... sound gently through the darkness, seized by strange joy, awakened, one could not tell why. All the peasants in the neighborhood declared that it was bewitched, and nobody, except the priest and the sacristan would now go near the church tower, and they went because a poor girl was living there in grief and solitude, and secretly nourished by ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... went off to see. Excitement rose as we neared the saddle; so much depended on finding a reasonable way. One more pull and we were up; it was worth the trouble. The first glance showed us that this was the way we had to go. The mountain-side ran smooth and even under the lofty summit-like a gabled church tower — of Mount Don Pedro Christophersen, and followed the direction of the glacier. We could see the place where this long, even surface united with the glacier; to all appearance it was free from disturbance. We saw some crevasses, of course, but they were far apart, ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... temples; Revenge and Terror, at their dark schemes and counter-schemes; to and fro, upon the tide of the shifting passions, reeled the destinies of men and nations; and hard at hand that day-star, waning into space, looked with impartial eye on the church tower and the guillotine. Up springs the blithesome morn. In yon gardens the birds renew their familiar song. The fishes are sporting through the freshening waters of the Seine. The gladness of divine nature, the roar and dissonance ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... once occur on the longer Italian journey. This was when I accompanied him into the Isle of Man. We had been drinking tea with Mr. and Mrs. Cookson, and left them when the weather was dull. Very soon after leaving them we passed the church tower of Bala Sala. The upper part of the tower had a sort of frieze of yellow lichens. Mr. W. pointed it out to me, and said, 'It's a perpetual sunshine.' I thought no more of it, till I ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... may lie at their moorings, swinging wide on the unforgetting tide, lanterns may hang high in the belfry of the Old North Church tower, hurried knocks and calls of defiance and hoof-beats of fast-galloping steed may echo and echo again, borne on the night-wind of the dim Past, but you ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... the history of parochial finance. In some wardens' accounts the proceeds of these ales form a yearly recurring and an ordinary receipt item; in others ales were resorted to when some unusually large sum had to be raised, or some heavy expense was to be met, such as the rebuilding of the church tower, the recasting of the bells, the raising of a stock to set the poor to work, or the buying of a silver communion cup.[247] Frequently, also, funds were raised by means of ales called clerk-ales, sexton-ales, ...
— The Elizabethan Parish in its Ecclesiastical and Financial Aspects • Sedley Lynch Ware
... the British cruiser Powerful, then lying in Manila Bay, exacted a promise from me that I would tell him if I found out when the advance was to begin, so that we might go to Caloocan together and watch the fighting from the church tower, which commanded a magnificent view ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... gargoyle on the church tower,' said Ethel, gaping into as complete a model of that worthy as flesh and blood ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... came in sight of Valenciennes, from whose church tower eight o'clock was sounding, he perceived that they were about to close the gates. He pushed on, and nearly overturned, on the drawbridge, a man who was fastening the girths of his horse. Henri stopped to make excuses to the man, who turned at the sound ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... solitary trees; to his left, between grassy flood-banks, ran the straight reedy river, full to-day of the little yellow water-lily, golden stars rising from the cool floating leaves; far ahead ran a low wooded ridge, with house-roofs clustering round a fantastic church tower, with a crown of pinnacles. Cattle grazed peacefully, and the whole scene was brimful of sweet passionless life, ineffable content. If he could only have shared it! Yet the sight of it all filled him with a sweet hopefulness; ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... church tower had tolled one, the lights were extinguished, and of the priestly train who had recently thronged the fane, all were gone, like a troop of ghosts evoked at midnight by necromantic skill, and then suddenly ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... hours of your lives were on the afternoon of July 1. Formed in battle array, you advanced to the stone fort against volleys therefrom, and rifle-pits in front, and against a galling fire from blockhouses, the church tower and the village on your left. You continued to advance, skilfully and bravely directed by the officers in immediate command, halting and delivering such a cool and well-directed fire that the enemy was compelled to wave the white ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... with Jack-in-the-basket at its mouth; on the Isle of Wight shore the village of Newton, peeping out amongst the thick foliage, with a line of downs rising far beyond it, extending to the extreme west of the island; and Yarmouth, with its long street and sturdy little castle at one end, a church tower rising in its midst; and Freshwater, with its attractive-looking residences, perched on the hillside; and to the west of it, its formidable but unpicturesque-looking forts, scientifically placed on heights commanding the entrance ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... decayed thing to stand here as a spectacle in the street? And then the projecting windows stand so far out, that no one can see from our windows what happens in that direction! The steps are as broad as those of a palace, and as high as to a church tower. The iron railings look just like the door to an old family vault, and then they have brass tops—that's ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... of the sun roughly gave those who were familiar with astronomy the lay of the land and the time, approximately. When the dial and the gnomon were understood, dialling became a popular science, and ere long the sundial on the church tower, in a public place, or in a private garden, told the time. Then came the marking of time by pocket dials—an advance which foreshadowed the watch which was ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... I would rather incur the responsibility of being Godfather to a Bell than a Boy), and had had their silver mugs, no doubt, besides. But Time had mowed down their sponsors, and Henry the Eighth had melted down their mugs; and they now hung, nameless and mugless, in the church tower. ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... He said to his friend, "If the British march By land or sea from the town to-night, Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch In the North Church tower as a signal light— One if by land, and two if by sea; And I on the opposite shore will be, Ready to ride and spread the alarm Through every Middlesex village and farm, For the country folk to be up ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... On their right front, and at the distance of a mile, lay a town, composed of dark buildings of quaint and ancient architecture, surrounded by walls and a moat, and on the battlements of which sentries were stationed; whilst from the church tower the Spanish colours, the gaudy red and gold, flaunted their folds in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... the church tower, the largest of which was, of course, the tenor bell, weighing thirty-three hundredweight, and the words that had been cast on it ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... to the top of a high tower, a church tower, like that one over there with the gold ball above it. From there you can see ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... salubrious abode. On the return of the sisterhood from Port Royal de Paris in 1648, the nuns found the place improved beyond their expectations. The conventual buildings had been repaired, and the church kept in good preservation. The bells of the church tower pealed a welcome; a large concourse of the neighbouring poor assembled in the courtyard to greet them; while the Solitaries—one of their number, a priest, bearing a cross—waited at the church door to enter ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... Born with my fifty men seized and occupied a village at the foot of the scarp one night. In the morning there were his defences thrown up man-high, and my standard on the church tower. Renny was furious, and despatched a stronger force than he could afford to re-take the village. Salomon, counting upon this, had left two men in it to be killed; with the rest he scaled the scaur and ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... to put forth its might, majesty and strength, in Trade, Commerce, and Enterprise. The man of 1801 can scarcely believe his eyes in 1862. The distant view is still there, from the top of Everton church tower, but how wonderfully is all the ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... always love the country, Ralph," was her reply in English, and as she sat composedly in her chair, after walking from Overstrand, where they had been to see that lonely, crumbling old church tower which the late Clement Scott has called "the Garden of Sleep," she gave him a look which was unmistakable—a look of ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... her, Caldas da Rainha, or Queen's hot baths. Beside the hospital was built a small church, now a good deal altered, with simple round-headed windows, and a curious cresting. Attached to it is a tower, interesting as being the only Manoelino church tower now existing. The lower part is square and plain, but the upper is very curious. On one side are two belfry windows, with depressed trefoil heads—that is the top of the trefoil has a double curve, exactly like the end of a clover leaf. On the outer side of each ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... who is not keeping a sharp look-out would ever notice the village, for the eye is drawn to admire the bluff of Deane Hill, the highest point of the Hampdens, which lowers over the little hamlet of Stoke and gives it a second name; and to the church tower of Chilborough Beacon, away to the ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... its subsidiary entrances a woman in black, heavily veiled, who took a seat in an inconspicuous corner. She was a little nervous at first, for, seeing that the church was dark and empty, she feared lest she had mistaken the time and place; but after ten minutes of painful suspense a bell in the church tower began to toll solemnly. Shortly thereafter an acolyte in black gown and white surplice appeared and lighted groups of candles on either side of the altar. A hushed stirring of feet in the choir-loft indicated that the service was to be ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... enormous. Yet, even when the country was groaning under horrible anarchy, and grinding taxation, and war and poverty, the building went on as if men lived only to glorify the great house, and to raise its church tower, or beautify the west front, or fill the windows with stained glass, or erect the splendid pulpit in the nave—a miracle ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... hill known as Grobler's Kloof, on the summit of which a line of heavy guns could be seen. There were other batteries on slopes at its foot commanding the bridge, to the right of which on another hill was Fort Wylie, and in a bend of the river by the railway could be seen the white roof of the church tower of Colenso. There was another battery behind this, and others still farther to the right on Mount Hlangwane. Heavy guns could be seen on other hills to the left of Grobler's Kloof; while far away behind Colenso was the crest of Mount Bulwana, from which a cannonade was being ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... of things has moved heavier bodies." Quitting England was by no means easy, but "the weather was fine and the North Sea smooth as a dish." They paddled the whole night long in their "solid good vessel, but slow of foot." With morning "a low spit of land hove in sight, and a tree or a church tower" rose out of the water,—this was Holland. At Rotterdam "the boat was soon alongside the Boom Key." With some fluttering about the dykes and windmills of Dutchland, a flight through Belgium soon brought them once more ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... guise, or disguise, I left him, the austere priest with nothing to suggest the whimsical or grotesque in his cold ascetic face. Recrossing the bridge I stood a little time and looked once more at the noble church tower standing dark against the clear amber-coloured sky, and said to myself: "Why, this is one of the oddest incidents of my life! Not that I have seen or heard anything very wonderful—just a small rustic village, one of a thousand ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... were only pages of those books whose leaves he seemed to be turning over. Two hours of this fancy, and then the train stopped at a station within a mile or two of a bleak headland, a beacon, and the gray wash of a pewter-colored sea, where a hilly village street climbed to a Norman church tower and the ivied ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... westward, toward Broadway; but at the corner she paused and looked back down the familiar length of the street. Her eyes rested a moment on the blotched "Bunner Sisters" above the empty window of the shop; then they travelled on to the overflowing foliage of the Square, above which was the church tower with the dial that had marked the hours for the sisters before Ann Eliza had bought the nickel clock. She looked at it all as though it had been the scene of some unknown life, of which the vague report had reached her: she ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... road enlarging itself to a dusty bay in front of the Roebuck Inn, turning by the churchyard wall, forking between two gardened houses of gentlefolk, and losing itself suddenly in the same white mist that closed the other vista. Over the veiling whiteness, over the red roofs, and high above the church tower, the sky of a glorious July morning rose unstained to ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... villagers of Lavardin concealed their goods. The noble ruin of the castle shows that it was once of great majesty. It was battered down by the Huguenots, who for the purpose dragged a cannon to the top of the church tower. ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... though it has a notable church tower in which there are traces of some Byzantine imagination brought hither, perhaps, by a Spanish Army of occupation. Also it has a tea-room which is the trysting-place of all the officers in billets, and the chatelaine of which answers your lame and halting ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... rose and walked away together; he keeping close to the box of puppets in which he was quite absorbed, the merry little man carrying it slung over his arm by a strap attached to it for the purpose, Nelly having hold of her grandfather's hand, and Mr Codlin sauntering slowly behind, casting up at the church tower and neighbouring trees such looks as he was accustomed in town-practice to direct to drawing-room and nursery windows, when seeking for a profitable spot on ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... hour had come, and the hour had passed, leaving behind nothing but a memory and a regret. Why should she herself be more blessed than others? She looked forward and saw a vision of herself ten years hence still hurrying along the well-known street looking up at the clock in the church tower to assure herself that she was in time, still mounting the same bare staircase, still hanging up her hat on the same peg. The prose of it in contradistinction with the poetry of the present was terrifying to Claire's youthful mind, and her look was so white, ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... torchlight procession of pilgrims round the church at Lourdes, with the one black nun praying by herself in a shadowy corner; the lovely valley of the Tauba, where the tinkle of the sheep-bells mingles with the Lutheran hymn blown to the four winds from the old church tower; wines that were red—sunshine that was warm—mandolines—!" His voice died away as ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... weddings and funerals may enter. It is open once a year for service, and when the tourist will, or can, for the sight of the time-mellowed, beautiful stained glass of its eastward window. The oaken pews are square and high- shouldered, like the low church tower; and, without, the soft yellow sandstone is crumbling away from the window traceries. The church did not look as if it felt itself a thousand years old, and perhaps it is not; but I never was in a place where I seemed so like a ghost ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... asleep, and I can sit at my open window and think, think, think as much as I like. What a lovely night it is! The mist has cleared off, and the moat is glistening in the moonlight, and the old trees are silvered over and blackened alternately by its beams; the church tower stands out massively against the sky. How dark the old belfry looks on such a night as this, contrasting with the white tombstones in the churchyard, and the slated roof shimmering above the aisle! There is a faint breeze ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... came into view—the pierced remains of its church tower over the brow of a rise in the plain. Barcy is our driver's show- place. Barcy was in the middle of things. The fighting round Barcy lasted a night and a day, and Barcy was taken and ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... to the open country, lay a wide plain, and behind it, closing it in, a long, low wall of steep hills. On the left, a mile and a half away, Father Francois showed me the church tower of Venette, where the English camped; to the right, a league off, was the tower of Clairoix; and at the end of a long raised causeway that ran from the bridge across the plain, because of the winter floods, I saw the tower and ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... of acoustic focus to which all the noises of the valley incessantly ascend. This afternoon, the dull murmuring of the river, the panting respiration of the tug-boat, the vibration of a bell in a distant church tower, the song of a peasant girl washing her linen in a spring, the bleating of sheep, the tic tac of the mills, the tinkling bells of a long train of mules drawing a barge by a rope, the reverberating clamors of boatmen stowing casks in their boats—all these various sounds came to my ear in ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... end of the long sandy streets. Inward stretches, sloping gently up to the mountains, the beautiful plain of Liguanea, about eight miles in breadth, scattered over with fine villas, and here and there a sugar estate. I remember with delight a view I once enjoyed just after sunset from St. Michael's church tower, toward the eastern end of the city. From that height the numerous trees planted in the yards, and which are not conspicuous from the streets, appeared in full view, and every mean and repulsive feature ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... propounded the usual question with added force. There were reasons. It was a beautiful morning. It was early spring. There was a blue sky, and the rooks and jackdaws were circling in a clear air about the church tower and over the old Market-Cross. He could hear thrushes singing in the trees in the Vicarage garden, close by. Everything was young. And he was young. It would have been affectation on his part to deny either his youth or his good looks. He glanced at his mirrored self without pride, but with ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... past them. When the priest and the lad reached the calvary they turned towards it, bowed, crossed themselves, and the lad rang a little silver bell. Then the two passed on, the lad still ringing. When they were out of sight the sound of the bell came softly, softly up the road, while the bell in the church tower still called to prayer. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to be our destruction has proved our salvation.—Keep yonder hill crowned with wood one point open from the church tower at its base, and steer east and by north; you will run through these shoals on that course in an hour, and by so doing you will gain five leagues of your enemy, who will have to ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... head, and there lacked not other signs to indicate the depth of emotion he concealed. Then the bluejackets who had drawn the gun-carriage fired a volley, and the rattle of their musketry echoed sharply from the church tower. ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... midnight when he saw the square church tower standing blackly out against the dark sky; and when he began to descend the valley, on the other side of which the town stood, a thrill of fear came over him, as he remembered what he had so long forgotten—that the valley was haunted, and was a particularly ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... the boys ascend to the upper part of the church tower, which is beautified by moss and creeping plants, they break out into joyful exclamations at the beauty of the scene spread out before them. In the midst of the clustering roofs of nipa, tiles, corrugated iron, ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... the Hawk's Lynch," he said, as they walked on through the twilight. "Blessed five minutes! Whatever else they may take with them, they will carry my thanks for ever. Look how clear and steady the light of that star is, just over the church tower. I wonder whether Mary is at a great hot dinner. Shall you write ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... one feels as if on the very verge of society; for there, even by day, reigns a monastic gloom, a desertion, a melancholy, a uniform and voiceless silence, broken only by the croak of the gleds and the cawing of the clamorous gulls nestling on the old church tower, while the sea booms incessantly as it rolls ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... and by its light he could see the dim form of the church tower, far away. He heard the clock strike ten. He ...
— Fifty Famous People • James Baldwin
... times; and, from the Archbishop's registry at York, it is ascertained that there was a chapel at Haworth in 1317. The inhabitants refer inquirers concerning the date to the following inscription on a stone in the church tower:— ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... home to lunch I glanced at the clock in the church tower and saw that it was an hour ahead of time, having been made to coincide with Teuton pendulums. This is the second time that it has happened, for the villagers dared to climb up the long stairs and put it back, once, but the soldiers were so ferocious in their ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... the boy never learned what he had intended to do for now the sun ran up, and, at the same time, both the bronze man and the wooden man vanished—as if they had been made of mists. While he still stood and stared after them, the wild geese flew up from the church tower, and swayed back and forth over the city. Instantly they caught sight of Nils Holgersson; and then the big white one darted down from the sky ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... clear and still. A clock struck eleven in some church tower near by. The Van Kirk mansion rose tall and stately in the moonlight, flinging a dense mass of shadow across the street. Up in the third story he saw two windows lighted; the curtains were drawn, ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... in that emporium, its brighter side of cricket goods, of pads and balls and stumps. Out of the window one peeped at the more exterior world, the High Street in front, the tailor's garden, the butcher's yard, the churchyard and Bromley church tower behind; and one was taken upon expeditions to fields and open places. This limited world was peopled with certain familiar presences, mother and father, two brothers, the evasive but interesting cat, and by intermittent people ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells |
