"Fathom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have trouble with the little 'un," said Master Polwhele to his captain. "She don't draw half a fathom more than we do. No good running inside the shoals. And with this wind, she has the ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... insects; and this is especially true in the tropics. Fortunately, exactly as certain differences too minute for us as yet to explain render some insects deadly to man or domestic animals, while closely allied forms are harmless, so, for other reasons, which also we are not as yet able to fathom, these insects are for the most part strictly limited by geographical and other considerations. The war against what Sir Harry Johnston calls the really material devil, the devil of evil wild nature in the tropics, has been waged with marked success only during the last two ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... while in his mouth he held a jewel as large as a goose's egg, which shone like fire, and which, in the opinion of Sagean, was a carbuncle. Another of these images was that of a woman mounted on a golden unicorn, with a horn more than a fathom long. After passing, pursues the story, between these idols, which stand on platforms of gold, each thirty feet square, one enters a magnificent vestibule, conducting to the apartment of the king. At the four corners of this vestibule are stationed ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... spoke thus of Alessandro, Felipe marvelled in silence. He himself had been afraid to mention Alessandro's name; but Ramona spoke it as if he were yet by her side. Felipe could not fathom this. There were to be many things yet which Felipe could not fathom in this lovely, sorrowing, sunny ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... the past, if only now he would return to his allegiance to the Covenant, and accept the Lieutenant-generalship of their projected army under the Earl of Leven? If he had seemed to dally with this temptation, it had only been that he might the better fathom the purposes of the Argyle government, and report all to their Majesties! No service, however eminent, under Argyle, or with any of the crafty crew of the Covenant, was that on which his soul was bent, but a quite contrary enterprise, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... odd voice, and did not look at Rachel. He seemed to be making concessions to somebody, and to be ashamed of doing it. After a look into his upraised eyes, which were full of a trouble she could not quite fathom, she dropped into the sheltering chair, and ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... are never weary of singing and writing them? and that the world will never be weary of hearing and reading them? How much hangs upon the three little words! Love: it is the magic word which transforms a life. It means a heaven too great for mortals to imagine, or a hell too deep to fathom. To Nell the words spoke of a mystery which she could not penetrate, but which filled her heart with a joy so great as almost to still ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... highest places in the State. They were the controlling party at the imperial court and had usurped the place of the old society, refined, subtle and perhaps too studied, which formed the environment of the last Sung emperors. Despite their naive efforts and good will, these barbarians could not fathom an art so austere, enlightened and balanced. They were utterly ignorant of such a masterly conception of nature as was evoked in Chinese painting. Monochrome to them was dull. They could admire on trust, ...
— Chinese Painters - A Critical Study • Raphael Petrucci
... indignation, and to be amiable and condescending toward the home-coming Electoral Prince; for it is sometimes very necessary to wear a mask and assume an appearance of harmlessness and unconcern in order the better to fathom the designs of one's enemies, and to make them feel secure, that they may the more ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... were kept in a state of expectancy, awaiting a possible opportunity; but, when the return of spring found the hope unfulfilled, it was plainly idle to look to the summer to afford what winter had denied. The frigates were lightened over a three-fathom bar, and thence, in April, 1814, removed up the Thames fourteen miles, as far as the depth of water would permit. Being there wholly out of reach of the enemy's heavy vessels, they were dismantled, and left to the protection of the shore batteries and the ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... many-toned, circling peals of laughter came from my room. My father went in. I went past the place that mortal eyes were not permitted to fathom, and, for the first time in my life, was curious to know its contents, and why I had never seen the interior thereof, I had grown up with the mystery, until I had accepted it, unquestioning, as a thing not for my view, and therefore out of recognition. It was as far away from me as the open ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... a cab, and had himself driven to his house. He had sent a telegram the day before; and his servant was waiting for him. In less than no time he had changed his clothes. Immediately he went back to his carriage, and went in search of the man, who, he thought, was most likely to be able to fathom this mystery. ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... compass towards the land as might be sufficient for a haven, wherein the great ships might lie in safety; and this he effected by letting down vast stones of above fifty feet in length, not less than eighteen in breadth, and nine in depth, into twenty fathom deep; and as some were lesser, so were others bigger than those dimensions. This mole which he built by the sea-side was two hundred feet wide, the half of which was opposed to the current of the waves, so as to keep off those waves which were ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... retorted, "for you never fail to ask for it. This cousin of mine, Miss Allandale, is always hungry when he comes to see me, and is never satisfied to go away without his slice of gingerbread. Perhaps," she added, shooting a roguish glance from one face to the other, for she had been quick to fathom their relations, "you will some time like to ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... as delicate as the leaves burgeoning beneath it, and Loveday drew herself up in a bunch, knees to chin, her brown strong hands clasped and her slim feet curved over the slope of the smooth granite. The wood below was wrapping itself in mystery, and her eyes attempted to fathom its fastnesses. Ordinarily, she was fearful of venturing into the darkness under the trees when once the evening had fallen, and it was then she was accustomed to come out up to her boulder, but this evening she was strung to any courage, for she walked in that certainty which ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... back into the water, while the son of Alev, who was a cousin of the Kalevide, got a friend to help him to dig a hole in the ground during the night, a fathom in depth and broad at the bottom, but with an opening at the top just wide enough for the top of the hat to fit into; but the hat was cut at the sides, so that the heavy money should fall ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... ourselves off the straits, we stood off and on under easy sail all night, constantly heaving the lead, being eight or nine leagues off the Arabian coast. About noon of the 15th we opened the straits, and at night anchored in fifteen and a half fathom, on black oose, three leagues from the Arabian, and ten from the Abyssinian shore, the weather being so clear that we could ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... pass men through the isles of Colcos and of Lango, of the which isles Ypocras was lord of. And some men say, that in the isle of Lango is yet the daughter of Ypocras, in form and likeness of a great dragon, that is a hundred fathom of length, as men say, for I have not seen her. And they of the isles call her Lady of the Land. And she lieth in an old castle, in a cave, and sheweth twice or thrice in the year, and she doth no harm to no man, but if men do her harm. And ...
— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown
... and it was he who completed it. This resolution, like every thing great and entire, was admirable; the motive sufficient and justified by success; the devotedness unparalleled, and so extraordinary, that the historian is obliged to pause in order to fathom, to comprehend, ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... cruel beast, with a great and thick body after the fashion of a horse; it hath for a weapon a great horn, half a fathom in length, so sharp and so hard that there is nothing it cannot pierce.... When men need to take it they bring a virgin maid to the place where they know that it has its abode. When the unicorn sees her and knows that she is a virgin, it lieth down to sleep in her lap, doing her no harm; ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... wonders many, Which we cannot fathom, Placed within thy form! When the heart is sinking, Thou alone canst raise ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... reply to this argument: he therefore changed the subject by saying, "I wish I could fathom this last business. 'Tis a good deal out o' the course o' plain sailing. So far as I know by, there wasn't a living soul but Jonathan who could have said ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... oddest and abruptest stratum lines, suggestive of sudden and eccentric old upheavals, and garnished with here and there a clinging adventurous flower, and here and there a dangling vine; and by and by your way is along the sea edge, and you may look down a fathom or two through the transparent water and watch the diamond-like flash and play of the light upon the rocks and sands on the bottom until you are tired of it—if you are so constituted as to be able to get ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... fathom the mystery—? Lift up the lashes weighed down by her tears And wash with their dews one white face from her history, Set like a gem in the red rust of years? Nothing will rest her— unless he who died of her Strayed from his grave, and in place of the groom, Tipping her ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... he cried after each splash and pause, gathering the line busily for another cast. "Tiga stengah," which means three fathom and a half. For a mile or so from seaward there was a uniform depth of water right up to the bar. "Half-three. Half-three. Half-three,"—and his modulated cry, returned leisurely and monotonous, like the repeated call of a bird, seemed to float ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... Creator made man to leave him in an endless struggle with the intellectual miseries which surround us: God destines a calmer and a more certain future to the communities of Europe; I am unacquainted with his designs, but I shall not cease to believe in them because I cannot fathom them, and I had rather mistrust my own capacity ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... place to which every race on earth sends a representative, the pulse of the whole world is throbbing. There, whoever does not run with the rest is run over; there, but one thing is important—actual life. Science has undertaken to fathom it, and the results which it gains with measures and numbers is of a different value and more lasting than that which the idle sport of the intellects of the older philosophers obtained. But art, her nobler ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... dresser at the window: what had become of the salt-bucket, the meal-tub, the hams that should be hanging from the rafters? There were no rafters; it was a papered ceiling. She had often heard of open beds, but how came she to be lying in one? To fathom these things she would try to spring out of bed and be startled to find it a labour, as if she had been taken ill in the night. Hearing her move I might knock on the wall that separated us, this being a sign, prearranged between us, that I was near ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... at him with that aggravating, meaning smile; that smile which he could by no means fathom and of which she scarcely knew the meaning. "No," she said, "I don't want your money. You couldn't hire me to leave the bluegrass ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... principal arm, up which the boats went some 30 miles, or about 10 beyond the barracoon. Fresh water can be obtained almost immediately inside the entrance, as the stream runs down very rapidly with the ebb tide. The least water crossing the bar (low-water— springs) was 1-1/2 fathom, one cast only therefrom from 2 to 5 fathoms, another 7 fathoms nearly ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... frank friendliness of the most popular girl in school had much to do with the way the others regarded him; though they were at a loss, sometimes, to account for a certain quality in that friendship, which they could not fathom. ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... got a decent sister to take about, anyway," he replied enigmatically, a remark over which Ingred pondered, but could not fathom. ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... finer and more subtle qualities, to harmonise its more untuned and jarring discords; giving here and thus the first proof of a power never shared in like measure by the mightiest among the sons of men, a sovereign and serene capacity to fathom the else unfathomable depths of spiritual nature, to solve its else insoluble riddles, to reconcile its else irreconcilable discrepancies. In his first stage Shakespeare had dropped his plummet no deeper into the sea of the spirit of man than Marlowe had sounded before him; and in the channel ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... His purposes are inscrutable. We dare not say He should not do this or that, or try to fathom to what ends He ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... "They cannot fathom me," exclaimed a strikingly handsome young man, with pale lofty brow, and dark clustering locks, who was leaning with proud grace against the mantel-piece. "They may take my life, but they cannot read my soul." And he laughed, scornfully, as ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... ministers, We receive you with free sense at last, and are insatiate henceforward, Not you any more shall be able to foil us, or withhold yourselves from us, We use you, and do not cast you aside—we plant you permanently within us, We fathom you not—we love you—there is perfection in you also, You furnish your parts toward eternity, Great or small, you furnish ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... that mystery of the Invisible is! We cannot fathom it with our miserable senses, with our eyes which are unable to perceive what is either too small or too great, too near to, or too far from us; neither the inhabitants of a star nor of a drop of water ... with our ears that deceive us, for they transmit to us the vibrations ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... river, having kept a small boat since she was strong enough to lift an oar, so she took the steering oar, and with four sweeps out we sped along at a fine rate. I shall never forget that water ride. We seemed to be pulling uphill every fathom of the way. The black, oily waves, with their teethlike crests of white, rose above our bow at every stroke of the sweeps, and when I looked behind me it seemed that we must surely ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... to forgive, dear," was my reply, as, placing my arm tenderly about her slim waist, I looked into the depths of those wonderful dark eyes of hers, trying to fathom ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... such clue supplied by the scenes in which he is presently received by the messengers of Duncan, and afterwards received and lauded by Duncan himself. Macbeth's moral character, up to the development of his criminal hopes, remains strictly negative. Hence it is difficult to fathom the meaning of those critics, (A. Schlegel at their head), who have over and over again made the ruin of Macbeth's "so many noble qualities"{10} the ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... fundamental hypothesis, and it is far-reaching. "Many metaphysical difficulties probably arise from our habit of confounding speculation and practice; or of pushing an idea in the direction of utility, when we think we fathom it in theory; or, lastly, of employing in thought the forms of action." (Preface to "Matter and ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... now stay, Lumley Ferrers, and hear me. I neither accuse nor suspect you, I desire not to pierce your heart, and in this case I cannot fathom your motives; but if it should so have happened that you have, in any way, ministered to Lady Florence Lascelles' injurious opinions of my faith and honour, you will have much to answer for, and sooner or later there will come a day of ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... standing on a little ledge of cliff, some six or seven feet above the sea. It was high tide, and the water at my feet was about a fathom deep. 'I shall have a delightful swim,' thought to myself, as I threw off my coat; and as just at that moment Rolf in a very excited way flung himself upon me, evidently understanding the meaning of the proceeding, and, as I thought, anxious to show his sympathy ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... yesterday, an' this afternoon fire started in the hold. It's makin' headway fast now, an'll reach the dynamite most any time. You'd better take us aboard, an' get away from here as quick as you can. 'Tain't safe nowhere within five hun'erd fathom ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... followed the ken of his eagle eye. He had struck more dead bodies, he had stolen more horses, he had taken more scalps, than any man of his nation. He could follow the trail of a glass snake from sun to sun, he could see the wake of a fish a fathom below the surface of the water. When he cast his eye upon a young maiden, she became his without a wrestle(1); when he told the revelations of the spirit of sleep, the aged men and wise councillors never called ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... they drifted to the south shore, where both ships had nearly been wrecked. The Unity lay with her side to the cliffs, yet still kept afloat, and gradually slid down towards the deep water as the tide fell. But the Horn stuck fast aground, so that at last her keel was above a fathom out of the water, and a man might have walked under it at low water. For some time, the N.W. wind blowing hard on one side, kept her from falling over; but, that dying away, she at length fell over on her bends, when she was given over for lost; but next flood, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... be thought to be precluded by the savage character of the region, broken up by precipices, furious torrents, and impassable quebradas,—those hideous rents in the mountain chain, whose depths the eye of the terrified traveller, as he winds along his aerial pathway, vainly endeavors to fathom.5 Yet the industry, we might almost say, the genius, of the Indian was sufficient to overcome all these impediments ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... another; his bodyguard consisted of mutually hostile mercenaries; his captains in the field were watched and thwarted by commissioners appointed to check them at the point of successful ambition or magnificent victory. The historian has a hard task when he tries to fathom the Visconti's schemes, or to understand his motives. Half the Duke's time seems to have been spent in unravelling the webs that he had woven, in undoing his own work, and weakening the hands of his chosen ministers. Conscious that his power was ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... drunk. Now, Neal, there's lots to eat and drink. Sit down and make the best of your time. You'll want a square meal. I'll just take a light and go down to that fellow in the passage. I've got a few fathom of good, stout rope—I'm not sure that it isn't the bit that they meant to hang you with in the morning—and I'll fix him up so that he'll neither stir nor speak till some ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... shall melt away And dew the woods with glittering spray. Then in broad lustre shall be shown That mighty trench of living stone. And each huge trunk that from the side, Reclines him o'er the darksome tide, Where Tees, full many a fathom low, Wears with his rage no common foe; Nor pebbly bank, nor sand-bed here, Nor clay-mound checks his fierce career, Condemned to mine a channelled way O'er solid sheets of ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... a great kettledrum, formed like a brazen caldron, tapering to the bottom and covered with buffalo-hide—at least 3-1/2 or 4 feet in diameter. Bernier, indeed, tells of Nakkaras in use at the Court of Delhi that were not less than a fathom across; and Tod speaks of them in Rajputana as "about 8 or 10 feet in diameter." The Tartar Nakkarahs were usually, I presume, carried on a camel; but as Kublai had begun to use elephants, his may have been carried on an elephant, as is ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... she wasted no time, throwing off her jacket with a quick twist of her wrist. Later she might fathom the tortuosities of her tyrant's mind. All she knew now was that she might dance. With whom was a small matter ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... at their side, I might have comprehended the modest proposal; but coming from those whose energy for business is proverbial, and whose acuteness in all matters of dollars and cents is unsurpassed, if equalled, by the shrewdest Hebrew of the Hebrews, I confess it is beyond my puny imagination to fathom. Were it accompanied with any pecuniary offer adequate to the sacrifice proposed, I might be able to comprehend it: but for those, or the descendants of those, who, as they found white labour more profitable, sold their sable brethren to their southern ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... wonder where the supply for this came from, since the whole island had its foundation in salt water—but there are many strange distillations going on at all times in nature's laboratory beyond the power of man to fathom. ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... hands, two feet, two eyes, and other the like members, which are double in our body, and which Nature has designed as brothers. For the hands cannot at the same time reach two things several fathoms distant from one another; the feet cannot stretch themselves from the end of one fathom to another; the eyes, which seem to discover from so far, cannot, at the same time, see the fore and hind-part of one and the same object; but when two brothers are good friends, no distance of place can hinder them from serving ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... days we have been beating against an easterly wind, a few leagues to the westward of the chops of the channel, subject to continual alarms from french cruisers, of all situations the most disagreeable. This evening we had soundings at 80 fathom, and a favourable change of the wind to ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... study,—as all D. D.'s are supposed to be, or they would not have been honored with that distinguished title. But Mr. Byles Gridley not only had more learning than the deep-sea line of the bucolic intelligence could fathom; he had more wisdom also than they gave him credit for, even those among them who thought most ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... head and shrank away from him. He put out his hand and turned her face to him, gazing into her eyes, as if for the first time he saw and could fathom the sorrow and ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... fathom certain faces that show up in provocative relief among this menagerie of shadows, this aviary of reflections. But one cannot. They are visible, but you can see nothing in the depth ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... stricken look upon her face, and saw her turn slowly back to the house with eyes down—troubled. The mother moved away. The father bent his head upon his hand with closed eyes. The girl came back to her work, but the song on her lips had died. She worked silently with a far look in her eyes, trying to fathom it. ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... the water was deep—deeper than Donald could fathom at low tide—and it was cold, and covered a rocky bottom, upon which a multitude of starfish and prickly sea-eggs lay in clusters. It was green, smooth and clear, too; sight carried straight down to where the ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... of personality—how shall one fathom it? I asked myself this one rainy afternoon, as I sat in the Burroughs homestead and looked from one brother to another, the two so alike and yet so unlike. The one a simple farmer whose interests are circumscribed by the hills which surround the farm on which as children they were reared; ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... shippes, and there to refresh our selues for a while. (M383) Thus making thitherward wee arriued athwart the sayde Riuer, (which because of the fairenesse and largenesse thereof wee named Port Royall) wee strooke our sailes and cast anker at ten fathom of water: for the depth is such, namely when the Sea beginneth to flowe, that the greatest shippes of France, yea, the Arguzes of Venice may enter in there. Hauing cast anker, the Captaine with his Souldiers went on shoare, and hee himself went first on land: where we found the place as pleasaunt ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... Melanesian civilization. On the Solomon Islands there are some petty reef communities which occupy themselves solely with fishing and making shell-bead money.[319] On New Britain divarra is made by boring and stringing fathoms of shell money. A fathom is worth two shillings sterling, and two hundred and fifty fathoms coiled up together looks like a life buoy.[320] In the northwestern Solomon Islands the currency consists of beasts' teeth of two kinds,—those of a kind of flying dog and of a kind of dolphin. Each tooth ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... wind, or a strong tide current, as in the southern anchorage, we should never have found her more, or found her stranded beyond help. As it was, there was little amiss, beyond the wreck of the mainsail. Another anchor was got ready, and dropped in a fathom and a half of water. We all pulled round again to Rum Cove, the nearest point for Ben Gunn's treasure-house; and then Gray, single-handed, returned with the gig to the Hispaniola, where he was to pass the ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... reasons as deeply now as I hope to a little later," he had said, his secretive habit holding good to the final fathom of the slipping hawser of events. "But you must bear with me once more, and whatever you hear between now and the time you go to press, don't comment on it. I have one more chance to win out, and it hangs in a balance that a feather's weight might tip the wrong way. I'll ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... regularly for years in cleansing his hands. Since it answered the first purpose so well, what possible harm could there be in slicking the noose of the rope with it when he was called upon to conduct one of his jobs over up at the prison? Apparently he was at a loss to fathom the looks they cast at him when he had finished with this statement and had asked this question. He began a protest, but broke off quickly and went away shaking his head as though puzzled that ordinarily sane folks should be so squeamish and so ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... his chair and listened, his face a study of perplexity and interest. Now and then he lifted his drooping lids and shot a quick, searching glance at the witness, as if seeking to fathom the thing that he had covered—the motive for Isom Chase's act. It was such an inadequate story, yet what there was of ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... with whom he had come into such close contact, M. Dantes, the Deputy from Marseilles, remained as much of a mystery as ever. Marrast, though now devotedly attached to him, admitted that he was totally unable to fathom either his designs, or his methods of accomplishing them, while Lamartine, who was in his company a large portion of the time, when questioned concerning him, replied that all he knew of M. Dantes was that he was a firm friend of the cause and an untiring worker ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... more gracious in her own house. I have her formal word that I am to come. Soon, not too soon, I will come over; and you shall meet me and take me to see her. There is something in her opposition that I can't fathom: I wondered twice was lunacy her notion: she looked at me ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... million men killed means an economic loss to the countries concerned of $15,000,000,000. But the economic value of the lives destroyed represents only a small fraction of their potentiality—socially, morally, and spiritually. No human brain can calculate, no heart can fathom the cost or loss of this ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... adamantine key's enormous size Through Destiny's inextricable wards, Deep driving every bolt on both their fates. Then, from the crystal battlements of heaven, Down, down she hurls it through the dark profound, Ten thousand, thousand fathom; there to rust And ne'er unlock her resolution more. The deep resounds; and Hell, through all her glooms, Returns, ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... closer to me with an air of briskness which had been foreign to him before. For some reason, which I was unable to fathom, the introduction of Atherton's name seemed to have enlivened him. However, I was not long to remain in darkness. In half a dozen sentences he threw more light on the real cause of his visit to me than he had done in all that had gone before. His bearing, too, was more businesslike and to the point. ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... result from the interview? This may appear to you to be no unusual combination of circumstances; nevertheless, I perceive some hidden plot in the arrangement—something, in fact, more than is apparent on a casual view of the subject. I believe that this singular man, who appears to fathom the motives of every one, has purposely arranged for me to meet M. and Madame de Villefort, and sometimes, I confess, I have gone so far as to try to read in his eyes whether he was in possession of the secret ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the wife of a drunken man I do not think there is any depth of degradation that I would not fathom with my love and pity in trying to save him. I believe I would cling to him, if even his own mother shrank from him. But I never would consent to [marry any man?], whom I knew to be un[?]steady in his principles and a moderate drinker. If his love for me and ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... I never could fathom, John Silence always contrived to keep the compartment to himself, and as the train had a clear run of two hours before the first stop, there was ample time to go over the preliminary facts of the case. He had telephoned to me that very morning, and even through ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... degrading influences of Jones Minor and the First Book of Euclid. Some men find the modern English boy stimulating, and the old Egyptian humorous. Such are the born schoolmasters, and schoolmasters, like poets, nascuntur non fiunt. What I was born passes my ingenuity to fathom. Certainly not a schoolmaster—and my many years of apprenticeship did not make me one. They only turned me into an automaton, feared by myself, bantered by my colleagues, and sometimes good-humouredly tolerated by ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... blindly groped they for a future state, As rashly judged of providence and fate. In this wild maze their vain endeavors end: How can the less the greater comprehend? Or finite Reason reach Infinity? For what could fathom God were more ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... he quoted lightly. But beneath the lightness she divined a pain that she could not wholly fathom. Quite aware of her power, Miss Polly Brewster was now, for one of the few times in her life, stricken with contrition for ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... so; I should not be what I am, Still less what I will be, if hate did not Pursue me as my shadow. Ah! fair wife, Thou knowest not Burgos. Thou hast yet to fathom The depths ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... some he imagined as flinging their voices abroad amid the burning plains of the arid border-lands. But he could not picture to himself the invisible messenger that took the word across the boundary. He could not fathom the mystery, he could not picture to himself the missing link in the chain. As was always the case with him, his mind began at once to grapple with its problem—in this instance the riddle of the missing link. He actually forgot where ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... opposed. She belonged to the class of persons who seem to be capable, and who really are, except where their own personal safety or comfort is concerned. They always have a reason and an answer, simply because others do not take the trouble to fathom the motive for this sacrifice. Dorothy had determined to find Tavia, and whatever her excuses, they were all subservient ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... duration. We have no way of properly placing the maintenance of Icelandic and Chinese as they have been other than by simply laying down the existence of what we may call a Law of Retardation, whose ultimate causes we cannot fathom or classify, but which will stand as an opposite phase of the Law of Stimulation, which is more frequent in operation, ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates
... feet, by her counsel, and holdeth his spear in his fist, and the lion rampeth toward him all in a fury. Clamados receiveth him on the point of his spear, and smiteth him therewith so stoutly that it passeth a fathom beyond his neck. He draweth back his spear without breaking it, and thinketh to smite him again. But the lion cheateth him, and arising himself on his two hinder feet, setteth his fore feet on his shoulders, then huggeth him toward him like as one man doth another. But the grip ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... case could only be explained by the theory of hereditary ideas. Nevertheless, she had become French enough to look at me with a dubious, albeit a good-natured eye. My motive in coming there and going farther without having any commercial object in view was more than she could fathom. After my visit to the dairy I fancy her private notion was that I was commissioned by the English Government to find out how Roquefort cheese was made, with a view to competition. At length, as we talked freely, she let the state ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... the waves break furiously. They are the Piedras de Diego Perez (latitude 21 degrees 58 minutes 10 seconds.) The temperature of the sea at its surface lowers at this point to 22.6 degrees centigrade, the depth of the water being only about one fathom. In the evening we went on shore at Cayo de Piedras; two rocks connected together by breakers and lying in the direction of north-north-west to south-south-east. On these rocks which form the eastern extremity of ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... a mystery, and one that he could not fathom. He could only feel thankful that no compulsion lay upon him to make known what he had seen and heard. His word had been pledged to Catesby and Father Urban, and how to have broken it he knew not. But there was no call ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... looking around at him with eyes widely opened, yet with an expression in them I could not fathom; it was neither hatred nor love, though it might ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... He was also considered eminent as a philologist and philosopher. Physiology, however, with its various branches and degenerate offshoots, was the idol of the scholars of that age, and of Faustus among the rest. A passionate desire to fathom the mysteries of Nature, to dive into the most hidden recesses of moral and physical creation, had seized men of real learning, and seduced them into mingling absurd astrological and magical fancies with profound and scholarlike ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... apparently unexceptional proceeding was looked on by many with grave offence. The Afghan officers muttered that this was mere braggadocio on the part of the sahibs; that the sport was only to show how they would spit and cut down the sons of the Prophet, if they had the chance! To fathom such depths of bigotry as this incident reveals is one of the many difficulties ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... particular manner of her thinking, but according as her action does or does not appear to be of the same character as other action that we commonly call thoughtful. To say that the cat is not intelligent, merely on the ground that we cannot ourselves fathom her intelligence—this, as I have elsewhere said, is to make intelligence mean the power of being understood, rather than the power of understanding. This nevertheless is what, for all our boasted ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... no mortal can fathom, To rejoice in the smile of God! To be first in the light Of His Holy sight, And freed from His chastening rod. Faithful, indeed, that soul, to ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... net; the ship's altitude 5' being deducted, left 53 deg. 55', which agreed very well with our chart, with the depth, and our reckoning. The distance was put at 40 miles. We saw many ships around us, but could speak none. It continued calm until evening, when we found 20 and afterwards 17 fathom water, over a coarse red and white sandy bottom, mixed with small stones. ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... in dreams assurd were Of the Spirit that plagued us so; Nine fathom deep he had followed us From the land of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... so, but I hate him. The hatred is peculiar, though I believe not incurable, but at present it is powerful. That preposterous giant, that fathom and four inches of conceit, that insufferable disgrace to his cloth, that huge mass of human bones ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... departure of the Guarda Costa without firing a shot, and the exultation of the officers who boarded us, and which they tried in vain to conceal, all convinced me there was some mystery which it was not in my power to fathom. ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... mighty river is not more unlike the torrent which swells with the rain, and ebbs the next day, than your nature is to mine. Do not try to understand me, Edward: I say it in the deepest humility, you cannot fathom the folly and the weakness of my soul; but thus much you may believe, that as the mountain stream, chafe and foam as it may, has but one object and one end, so, the varied impulses and the restless fluctuations of my uneasy spirit tend but to one ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... of their acquaintance—the more she marvelled that he had ever chosen Sara Derwent for his wife. Their union must have been like that of night and day, fierce fire and unstable water. Olive longed to fathom the mystery, and could not ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... England were cold. She, Hollyhock, could not understand them, could not attempt to fathom them. She crept softly downstairs, gathering ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... TOBY," said HANBURY, beating his chest in default of getting at the Treasury's; "but there's a dark mystery under this business which I mean to fathom. You remember the case of another chest ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
... wheels. Then from the heaving wreckage a thin tongue of white fire licked up towards the zenith. He was aware of a huge mass flying through the air towards him, and turned upwards just in time to escape the charge—if it was a charge—of a second aeroplane. It whirled by below, sucked him down a fathom, and nearly turned him over in the gust of its ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... change was not easy to fathom, but everybody seized the opportunity to talk at once—all the newspapers and the correspondents and the political experts; to criticize, to prophesy, to predict, to shake their heads—all but one man, the man most concerned. And he said nothing; he listened while ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... looked like a smudge of ink on a background a shade less deep. The south wind was blindly roaming about in the darkness like a sleep-walker. The stars in the sky with vigilant unblinking eyes were trying to penetrate the darkness, in their effort to fathom some profound mystery. ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... and had always shared each other's confidences, but this matter of Annabel Summerhayes was one which her father had forbidden Rose to mention; and around the memory of her mother there had grown a mystery which the girl was unable to fathom. ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... further to fathom the mystery attending this birth of the artist. He went off carrying his astonishment along with him. But before he left, he again gazed at the canvases and said ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... appareling* *preparation Was at the service, and the pyre-making, That with its greene top the heaven raught*, *reached And twenty fathom broad its armes straught*: *stretched This is to say, the boughes were so broad. Of straw first there was laid many a load. But how the pyre was maked up on height, And eke the names how the trees hight*, *were called As oak, fir, birch, asp*, alder, holm, poplere, *aspen Willow, elm, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... ladyship fathom even this?" P'ing Erh answered with a sardonic smile. "Why, their daughters must, I fancy, be servant-girls in Madame Wang's apartments! For her ladyship's rooms four elderly girls are at present allotted with a monthly allowance of one tael; the rest simply receiving several ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Sir George, dejectedly, "Heaven knows you are in no condition to fathom a mystery that hath puzzled wiser heads than yours or mine; and I am little able to lay the tale before you fairly; for your grief, it moves me deeply, and I could curse myself for putting the matter to you so bluntly and so uncouthly. Permit me to retire a while ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... thinking of the calamity which had fallen upon him. So he remained with his mother, sitting near the window which looked out upon the railroad track over which Ethie had gone. What his thoughts were none could fathom, save as they were expressed by the dark, troubled expression of his face, which showed how much he suffered. Perhaps he blamed himself as he went over again the incidents of that fatal night when he kept Ethelyn from the masquerade; but if he did, no one ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... that Mr. Fenelby could not fathom Kitty laughed merrily at this, and then they all went in to dinner. It was a very good dinner, of the kind that Bridget could prepare when she was in the humor, and they sat rather longer over it than usual, and then Mr. Fenelby proposed that he should step over to the Rankins' and ...
— The Cheerful Smugglers • Ellis Parker Butler
... heaps of broken crockery-ware, mixed with the humble repast that hungry men had been looking forward to. Jimmy, in an ordinary way, was really a devotee of religion, who adhered to all its forms most rigidly so long as drink was kept out of his way. He could quote Scripture by the fathom, and when in his cups used to do so copiously. The captain ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman |
