"Ripple" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... public, however, and in the Patterson home it being supposed that you could never tell about motion-picture actors, his disappearance for the night caused absolutely no slightest ripple. Public attention as regarded the young man remained at a mirror-like calm, unflawed by even the mildest curiosity. He had been seen, perhaps, though certainly not noted with any interest, to be one of ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... was allowed to handle Dea's hair. It was her shrivelled fingers that plaited every night the living stream of gold into innumerable little plaits, so that the ripple in it might continue to live again on the morrow. It was Licinia who rubbed Dea's exquisite limbs with unguents after the bath, and she who trimmed the rose-tinted nails into their ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... ruins, the river flowed between walls not over four hundred and fifty feet apart at the top. The current was about three miles an hour, with scarcely a ripple, though it appeared much swifter because of the nearness of the cliffs. At the end of seven miles of winding canyon, there came a sharp turn to the east, which brought into view, at the other end, another canyon of nearly equal proportions ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... not like the voice of Sanda, which Max had once compared in his mind to the ripple of a brook steeped in sunshine. It was thin and weak, almost like the voice of a little, broken old woman. But, praise heaven, she was young, so very young that she would live this down, and, some day, almost ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... woman like a dew-drop, she's so purer than the purest," is, in the circumstances, nearly over the verge which divides the sublime from the ridiculous. No wonder that, on the night the play was first acted, Mertoun's song, as he clambered to his mistress's window, caused a sceptical laugh to ripple lightly among the tolerant auditory. It is with diffidence I take so radically distinct a standpoint from that of Dickens, who declared he knew no love like that of Mildred and Mertoun, no passion like it, no moulding of a splendid thing after ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... like flax-flowers in a south-wind, her tiny, round chin, and low, white forehead, were all adorned by profuse rings and coils and curls of true gold-yellow, that never would grow long, or be braided, or stay smooth, or do anything but ripple and twine and push their shining tendrils out of every bonnet or hat or hood the little creature wore, like a stray parcel of sunbeams that would shine. Her delicate, tiny figure was as round as a child's,—her funny hands as quaint as some fat baby's, with short fingers ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... us. If we throw a pebble into a quiet pool (Fig. 90), waves or ripples form and spread out in all directions, gradually dying out as they become more and more distant from the pebble. It is a strange fact that while we see the ripple moving farther and farther away, the particles of water are themselves not moving outward and away, but are merely bobbing up and down, or are vibrating. If you wish to be sure of this, throw the pebble near a spot where a chip lies quiet on the smooth pond. After the waves form, ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... said!" retorted she, with a ripple of dangerous laughter. "I will carry the comparison no farther. Still, I wager, Chevalier, that the game is not worth ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Honorable Percival concerned himself little with these petty details. To him China was only a pleasing background for Miss Roberta Boynton; he saw no further than her eager, smiling eyes, and heard nothing more distant than the ripple of ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... looks a little like a catalogue of disasters (except the building of the new capitol and the visits of Presidents Hayes and Cleveland), but it must be remembered that Minnesota is such an empire in itself, that such happenings scarcely produce a ripple on the surface of its steady and continuous progress. It is because these events can be particularized and described that they assume proportions beyond their real importance, but when compared with the colossal advances made by the state during the period ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... harmless occupations—if occupations they might be called—the breathless foliage rich in the depth of summer; behind, the old-fashioned house, unpretending, not mean, its open doors and windows giving glimpses of the comfortable repose within; before, the lake, without a ripple and catching the gleam of the sunset clouds,—all made a picture of that complete tranquillity and stillness, which sometimes soothes and sometimes saddens us, according as we are in the temper ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... when they climbed the alleys of the hanging park, resting in one of the little ruined temples, or watching, through a ripple of foliage, the remote blue flash of the lake, they did not always talk of Rendle or of literature. She encouraged Danyers to speak of himself; to confide his ambitions to her; she asked him the questions which are the wise woman's ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... Suddenly a little ripple of excited interest touched the groups in the street. The two soldiers rose and stared hard to their left; M. Perret of the Pharmacie Normale came out at a quick call from his wife, and stood, pestle in hand, as she struggled with a maddening ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... was not fulfilled. There was a little ripple on the water for a few minutes after sundown, but not enough breeze to fill out a sail, and the darkness came on with the brig swinging easily by the creaking cable, which ground ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... A ripple of laughter ran around the room that was now hot and stuffy from the glare and smell of the great oil-lamps. Code heard the laugh, and his brows drew ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... And a ripple of laughter passed round some gigantic whispering gallery in the sky. It set the trellis-work of golden threads all trembling. He felt himself perched dizzily in this shaking web that swung through space. And ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... curl like smoke among the dripping boughs, leaving a diamond on each sprouting bud where next year's leaf is hid; by the moorland river, on bright December mornings, when the grayling are lying on the shallows below the ripple where the rock breaks the surface; by the frozen shore where the land-springs lie fast, drawn into icicles or smeared in slippery slabs on the cliff faces, and hoar frost powders the black sea-wrack; on the lawns of gardens, ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... pool, ten or fifteen feet deep, with a smooth, circular wall of rock on one side worn by the water through long ages; or else into a deep, oblong pocket, into which and out of which the water glides without a ripple. ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... forth from the boat and went toward the strand with him; and the landsfolk met them where the water was shallower, and took him from their hands and bore him forth on to the yellow sand, and laid him down out of reach of the creeping ripple of the tide. Hallblithe withal slipped lightly out of the boat and waded the water after them. But the shipmen rowed back again to their ship, and presently Hallblithe heard the hale and how, as they got up ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... a situation favoring the bloody purposes of their hearts, than they fired upon them. Neal and Triplett were killed, and fell into the river.—Rowell was missed and escaped by swimming the Kenhawa, the Indians shooting at him as he swam. In a few days after the dead were found in a ripple and buried. The Indians had not been able to draw them from their watery grave, and obtain ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... stern of the craft, her fingers strained about the fatal packet. The slow glide of the boat, as almost imperceptibly it approached the low bank; the stillness of the mirror- like surface on which it moved, leaving only the faintest ripple behind it; the silence—for under the influence of emotion Count Hannibal too was mute—all were in tremendous contrast with the storm ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... the woak do overspread, The grass begloom'd below his head, An' water, under bowen zedge, A-springen vrom the river's edge, Do ripple, as the win' do blow, An' sparkle, as the sky do glow; An' grey-leav'd withy-boughs do cool, Wi' darksome sheaedes, the clear-feaeced pool, My chimny smoke, 'ithin the lew O' trees is there arisen blue; Avore the night do dim our zight, Or candle-light, a-sheenen ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... all turtles within hearing—whether terrapin or "snapper"—will put their heads above water. Both are welcome and are quickly sold to the market-men. The snapper slowly appears and disappears, leaving scarcely a ripple; and the hunter cautiously approaching usually takes him by the tail. The terrapin, on the contrary, is quick, and will descend in an oblique direction, so that a hand-net is needed unless he happens ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... repeated Betty. "One of the men at the dock warned me about them, and even told me how to locate them, by the peculiar ripple of the shallow water over them. But I forgot ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Florida - Or, Wintering in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... rudely-built bloto, merely the hollowed trunk of a tree, crosses the water, with a torch flickering at the prow, for the sun has set, and the crimson afterglow begins to fade from the serrated crests of the opposite heights. The ripple of the water in the reeds at the edge of the road, and the sigh of the evening breeze, fluttering the leaves and creaking the yellow canes of the great bamboos, alone stir the silence, which comes as a welcome relief after the toil and excitement of the day; but alas! ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... the middle of the night. The stars shone brightly, and there was but a slight ripple on ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... had been a clear, shining brown, with the pebbles showing white and yellow through it; but out here in the middle of the river it was all a blaze and ripple and sparkle of blue and gold. Hildegarde rested on her oars, and sat still for a few minutes, basking in the light and warmth; but soon she found the glory too strong, and pulled over to the other side, where high steep banks threw a shadow on the water. Here the water was very deep, and the rocks ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... sea-weed of pink, yellow or purple hue, and gem-like shells resting on a bottom of clearest sand; and while the waves are roaring on every side, and flinging their dampness into your very face, these fairy pools will lie at your feet without a breath or ripple on their surface. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... everywhere on every side she shines with colour, this wonderful sea-girt city. Her white marble palaces glow with a soft amber light, the cool green water that reflects her beauty glitters in rings of gold and blue, changing from colour to colour as each ripple changes its form. At sunset, when the sun disappears over the edge of the lagoon and leaves behind its trail of shining clouds, she is like a dream-city rising from a sea of molten gold—a double city, for in the pure gold is reflected each tower and spire, ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... the rosy torso of a woman which comes out living from the shadowy obscurity. Beyond, as far as the eye can see, marble gods and emperors extend away in files up to the windows through which flickers the light ripple of the Arno with the silvery swell ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... to himself, however, by a sudden little ripple of quick feminine laughter. Aghast, he dropped the manuscript among the chessmen and stared in bewilderment round the room. It was as empty and as still as ever. Again he stretched his hand out to the romance, and again came that roguish burst of merriment. He looked up at the ceiling, back at ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... him. Had Etty been on the spot he would have got a hint for one of his finest pictures; though I can give but little idea of it in writing, however, let me try. Before us was a long reach of deep, still water, unbroken by a ripple, so hemmed in on all sides by walls of deep green black wattle, tea-tree, and delicate silver acacia, that the water seemed to flow in a deep shoreless rift of the forest, above which the taller forest trees towered up two hundred feet, hiding the lofty ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... were playing orchestra to a banquet, while he watched the dart and splash of a fish from time to time about the surface, and the shadowy shapes of others deep down below the schooner's stern-post, clearly enough seen in the crystal sunlit water set a-ripple by the gentle gliding through it ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... the household, that when a long lost son appeared on the surface, during Ruth's absence at Chautauqua, proving, sturdy old Californian as he was, to have a home and place for his mother, and a heart to take her with him, her departure caused scarcely a ripple in the well-ordered household of ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... assured me, what everything conspired to assure me, that I was certainly in fairyland, not on the common earth. But I could not get on with my Bible at all. Again and again I began to read; then a bird or a bough or a ripple would catch my attention, and straightway I was off on a flight of fancy or memory, dancing over again my dances with Mr. Thorold, dwelling upon the impression of his figure and dress, and the fascination of his brilliant, changing ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... loveliness remains. All the surrounding country shimmers under the mysterious bloom of these heights, so vast that everything else is dwarfed beside them, and yet so curiously airy that they seem to perpetually ripple against the sky. The Great Blue Hill, especially—the one which bears an observatory on its summit—swims above one's head. It seems to have a singular way of moving from point to point as one motors, and although one may be forced to admit ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... one ripple on the boundless deep Feels that the deep is boundless, and itself For ever changing form, but evermore One with the ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... roaming, where the crested waves are foaming, And the shy mermaidens combing locks that ripple to their feet; When the Gloaming is, I never made the ghost of an endeavour To discover—but whatever were the hour, ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... attracted David's attention, and he soon found he could play upon Pepper as well as the fiddle, raising him and subduing him by turns; only, like the ocean, Pepper was not to be lulled back to his musical ripple quite so quickly as he could ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... Jacob Canfield. He left the shore one morning when it was as mild and fair as the brightest June day that ever dawned, and it was pleasant and calm all day. The sun went down as serenely as it rose, and not a ripple was on the sea—yes, it was a mild, lovely October day, from sunrise to sunset. Jake was seen to go out in his boat, but neither Jake nor the boat was ever seen afterward. I tell you I've never made up my mind ...
— Two Wonderful Detectives - Jack and Gil's Marvelous Skill • Harlan Page Halsey
... him; so he prayed that the silence and the holding of his hand might last a long while—for he might think of naught save her—and long it lasted forsooth, and still she spake no word, though whiles a little sweet chuckle, as of the garden warbler at his softest, came from her lips, and the ripple of her raiment as her swift feet drave it, sounded loud to his eager ears ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... as plainly as at noonday, until it disappeared from sight in a sweeping bend. From their stand-point it resembled a lake more than a river, the woods, apparently, shutting down in such a manner as to hide it entirely. Not a ripple was heard along the shore, and only once a zephyr hurried over its bosom, crinkling the surface as it passed, and rustling the tops of a few trees along the bank as it went on and was lost in the wood beyond. The great wilderness, ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... great glory. The cliffs rise there, tall, dark, majestic-grave, too, especially grave. When the sky is grey, they frown always, and even the warm rays of the setting sun but serve to light their grand solemnity. Very different is the changing sea at their foot. At times it will ripple all day, agog with smiling; anon, provoked by an idle breeze's banter, you shall see it black with rage. In the morning, maybe, it will sleep placidly enough in the sunshine, but at eventide the wind has ruffled its temper, so that it mutters and heaves with anger, breathing ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... part of the story, his mother would go off into a fit of uncontrollable laughter which left her helpless and crumpled up in a heap upon the nearest chair. Her laugh was very infectious; it began with a low, mirthful ripple, well down in the throat, and rose in rapid leaps of musical joy till it had traveled a whole octave of bubbling happy sounds, when it culminated in a peal of double forte shakes and trills, that made it ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... ripple of excited laughter; a bag was thrust into his hand, and like a bird escaped from a cage, Joan darted ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... her jewelled right hand she performed the ceremony of introduction between the three callers and Mrs. Frump—the fat young lady—who also carefully raised herself about two inches from her chair, and lowered herself again, without disarranging a ripple. ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... along without care or uneasiness; she was not afraid of losing it; each morning it shone upon her, with the same blue sky, the same smile, the same sweet words. That clear, still lake was unruffled by any breeze, even a zephyr; she would fain have seen a ripple on its glassy surface. Her desire had something so infantine about it that it ought to be excused; but society is not more indulgent than the God of Genesis. Madame de Vandenesse, having now become intelligently clever, was aware that such sentiments were not permissible, ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... of Paradise were weeping now by the fountain; the men gathered near, and their slow, hushed voices scarcely rose above the ripple of the stream where Robert the Lizard ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... was flung out by Aunt Hortense like a challenge, and the very set of her nostrils gave Marcia warning. But it was in a relieved voice that ended almost in a ripple of laugh that she answered quite assuredly: "Oh, yes, indeed. I can make beautiful bread. I just love ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... gully in front of you is brown and bare, but in the bottom, and clinging to the other side, are patches of moist and half-melted snow, and on all sides you hear the drip of falling moisture and the ripple of little streams of water which are running away to swell the creeks and rivers ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... you live to-day because you lived yesterday, and you do not forecast to-morrow. Perhaps you learn to assuage and deceive the hunger of your immortal soul by forcing your attention upon the petty ripple of daily events and duties, until you present, to the outsider, the appearance of a commonplace, non-tragic person, bearing no noticeable scars of the crime which society perpetrated on you. You perhaps lose, at last, the realization of your own inhuman plight, and ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... singular scene. Here a bird was observed swimming along, with its keen eye scanning the crystal below—there the broad tail of another stood vertically upwards, the rest of its body hidden below the surface—yonder, a third was altogether submerged, the ripple alone showing where it had gone down—a fourth was seen struggling with a large fish that glittered in its pincer-like beak—a fifth had already risen with its scaly prey, and was bearing it to the boat; and thus the twelve birds were all actively engaged in the singular occupation to which they ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... was the ripple and gurgle of some sleepy fountain. From far off, so faint and far that only a keen ear could catch, he heard a sound that made him smile with pleasure. He knew it for the distant, throaty bawl of King Polo—King ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... especially when the river is falling, for each year it alters its course and new sand-banks are formed, and it is not always easy to decide which is the right channel to steer for. The watermen, however, are very expert, and can usually determine their course by the nature of the ripple on the water, which varies according to its depth. Frequently, however, from accidents of light or other causes, it is not possible to gauge the river in this way, so every boat is provided with long sounding-poles called "midra," by means of ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... dimmer. So when a sly trout snatched off my bait I was in no mood to cover my hook again, but set the rod on the rocks and let the bright current waft my line as it would, harmless now as the dusty alder leaves dimpling yonder ripple. So I opened my book, idly attentive, reading The Poems of Pansard, while dappled shadows of clustered maple leaves moved on the page, and droning bees set ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... happiness is no higher than their's in their several occupations and delights. Sight and sense are fully as powerful for happiness as thought and ratiocination. Nature grows flowers wherever she can; she causes sweet waters to ripple over stony beds, and living wells to spring up in deserts, so that grass and herbs may grow and afford nourishment to some of God's creatures. Even the granite and the lava ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... early that year, and although it was not yet May, the green tassels were on the maples and the wild flowers made the ground gay in places. All around the clearing ran a ripple of bird song. The sunshine was 15 dreamy, ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... it seemed to me, something slightly uncanny about this lake, even in repose. The water seemed as translucent as a dark crystal, and as motionless as the surface of a mirror. Nothing stirred its placid surface, not a ripple, not an insect, not ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... in dealing with the small volume of 116 pages called Ionica, long ago ushered into the world so silently that its publication did not cause a single ripple on the sea of literature. Gradually this book has become first a rarity and then a famous possession, so that at the present moment there is perhaps no volume of recent English verse so diminutive which commands so high a price among collectors. When the ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... girl, who has the hill to climb," replied her brother, smoothing her hair with his hand. Her hair was long and smooth and glossy, with a wave like the ripple of a summer breeze upon the surface of still water. It was the girl's great pride, and had been sedulously cared for. "What lovely hair! It has just the ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... of steel, Under heaven's triumphant arch, The long lines break and wheel, And the order is "Forward, March!" The colors ripple o'erhead, The drums roll up to the sky, And with martial time and tread The regiments all pass by— The ranks of the faithful dead Meeting their president's eye. March on, your last brave mile! Salute him, star ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... striding away in the direction of a thicket of cottonwood where he heard the ripple of women's and children's voices. When he had penetrated it, he found his sister sitting on a stump, surrounded by a laughing, gesticulating crowd of young girls and old women, with a tightly swaddled papoose in her lap. Some of them had already half ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... temple; or perchance standing with Gertrude on the deck of the yacht watching the stars growing dim in the east; the sailors would be singing at the time, and out of the ashen stillness a wind would come, and again we would hear the ripple of the water parting as the jib filled and drew the schooner eastward. I imagined how half an hour later an island would appear against the golden sky, a lofty island lined with white buildings, perchance ancient fanes. 'What a delicious ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... father's death there was not a ripple in our affairs and none of the stocks known as "The Randolph's" fluttered a point because of that, to the financial world, momentous event. I inherited all of father's fortune other than four millions, which he divided up among relatives ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... acting for a long while in a painful dream. Her usually clear and tranquil soul was troubled and bewildered as she sat in the boat at the head of Felicita's coffin, with her dear face so near to her, yet hidden from her eyes. All around her lay the Lake, with a fine rapid ripple on the silvery blue of its waters, as the rowers, with measured and rhythmical strokes of their oars, carried the boat's sad freight on towards Lucerne. The evening sun was shining aslant down the wooded slopes ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... ripple on the wall came back again, and nothing else stirred in the room. The old, old fashion! The fashion that came in with our first garments, and will last unchanged until our race has run its course, and the wide firmament is rolled up like a scroll. ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... rounded the point to the left, passing just over the spot where, beneath the waves, lie the guns, cannon balls, ironwork, and all that was indestructible about our good old wreck. And would you believe it? Through the glassy clear water, undisturbed by a ripple, I actually saw many such things strewn ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... A ripple from the surging wave of culture which, for some years, had been sweeping over the women's clubs of the Middle West, began to agitate the extremely stationary waters of Endbury social life. The Women's Literary Club felt that, as the long-established ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... when it became known among the bankers and foreign agencies that a letter of credit for ten thousand pounds had been lost or stolen, there was more than a ripple of excitement. They searched records, but no loss as heavy as this came to light. Add to the flutter a reward of two hundred pounds for the recovery of the letter, and one may readily imagine the scrutinizing alertness ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... B.C.—Return to use of light ground. Brown lustrous paint, fine surface to clay. Decoration naturalistic, flowers, cuttle-fish, shells, spirals, ripple patterns, white and orange dots and bands occasionally super-imposed on dark glaze (Figs. 7, ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various
... circuit, and led Tetricus and Zenobia in triumph through its streets, and distributed elephants among the senators, and laid Etruria out in vineyards, and contemplated in leisure moments the suppression of Christianity as a subordinate detail of administration, a mere ripple on the broad ocean of his policy—at this period Bahram the First, King of Persia, naturally became disquieted in ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... of a rugged mountain, which dropped precipitately down just beyond the sleeping boy, to ripple off again in lesser lofty heights, with beautiful fertile valleys and tossing streams between. A little, lonely, helpless human soul he lay upon Nature's majestic bosom, with the Infinite hand ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... breakfast, the two vessels lay side by side, in complete readiness for sea, our ensigns hanging from the peaks, and our tall spars reflected from the glassy surface of the river, which, since sunrise, had been unbroken by a ripple. At length a few whiffs came across the water, and, by eleven o'clock the regular northwest wind set steadily in. There was no need of calling all hands, for we had all been hanging about the forecastle the whole forenoon, and were ready for a start ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... looking him through, with the same dark shade upon her face, in the same attitude even to the holding of the screen, with her lips a little apart, her brow a little contracted, but for the moment dead. He sees her consciousness return, sees a tremor pass across her frame like a ripple over water, sees her lips shake, sees her compose them by a great effort, sees her force herself back to the knowledge of his presence and of what he has said. All this, so quickly, that her exclamation and her dead condition seem to have passed ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... pond. Many reasons might be assigned for this. There is a wearisome monotony in the scenery along this plain. There are no hills, and but few trees to diversify the almost interminable prospect, stretching east, west, north, and south, like a broad ocean, without wave or ripple. The few trees scattered here and there stand alone, casting long shadows over the plain at nightfall, and adding solemnity to the mysterious stillness of that isolated place. It is not a place for human habitation, for the soil is sandy and sterile; neither is it a place for human hearts, so ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... was going on about him to the contemplation of the sea and the distant shores which he was approaching. The day, for a winter's day, was bright and sunny: the sky without a cloud; the atmosphere of a frosty clearness; and the sea so calm, that it appeared scarcely to swell into a ripple, except immediately in the ship's wake. The distant promontory, which he suspected to be the point whither he had been washed by the waves, after the explosion of the Halcyon, and which seemed the extremity of a small island, had now receded into an azure speck: the ship's course ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... Pericles requested him to go no further. The restraint of his presence prevented any parting less formal than that of friendship. But he stood watching the boat that conveyed them over the waters; and when the last ripple left in its wake had disappeared, he ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... The ripple of events which we have recorded may seem too insignificant; of still less import is the story of the efforts of Clairborne, from 1634: to 1647, to gain, or retain possession of Kent Island, in the Chesapeake, on which he had "squatted" before Baltimore got ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... this sophism for home consumption among his distant constituents on the 12th of June (a few days before the Lecompton delegates were elected), and in so unobtrusive a manner as scarcely to attract a ripple of public notice, was a light task compared with that which confronted him as Senator, at the meeting of Congress in December, in the light of John Calhoun's doings and powers, of the scandal of the Oxford fraud, and ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... roar Its waves dashed wildly on the rocky shore; While on its broad, expansive bosom lay The twinkling orbs in beautiful array; And every pearly drop shone clear and bright, Bathed in a flood of soft and silvery light. Scarcely a ripple stirred its quiet breast; For every sighing breeze was lulled to rest, And every sound was hushed on earth, in air, And silence ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... the periscope (for we had dived) that a lightship was within a few hundred yards of us upon the port bow. Two men were sitting on her bulwarks, but neither of them cast an eye upon the little rod that clove the water so close to them. It was an ideal day for submarine action, with enough ripple upon the surface to make us difficult to detect, and yet smooth enough to give me a clear view. Each of my three periscopes had an angle of sixty degrees so that between them I commanded a complete semi-circle of the horizon. Two British cruisers were steaming north from ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... cracked, fell in a heap of pulverized plaster. The car bucked as a blast sent a ripple down the street. A manhole cover popped up, clattered a few feet, dropped from sight. Brett swerved, gunned the car. It leaped over rubble, roared along the littered pavement. Brett looked in the rear-view mirror. A block behind them ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... on arrival. The night was beautiful and starlight, and, our repast over, the awning was removed, and we sat out enjoying our cigars in the cool night breeze blowing in fresh and strong from the sea. The quiet ripple of the waves as they broke on the sandy beach had a soothing effect very favourable to reflection (and baccy), and the lights of the little fishing village twinkling at the foot of the black and rugged peak of Santubong—which rose to a height of 1,500 feet above our heads, and behind ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... lay by the bank, tied to long stakes which the boys had driven in. The big Nubian sat at one end, cross-legged, a rifle on his knees. At the stern sat a brown boy. And so Arlee sank into the tired sleep that claimed her, and did not wake until the warm sunshine in her tiny window and the ripple of water against the sides told her that another morning was at hand and that they were on the ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... Perhaps the following incident will cause a smile to ripple the good-natured features of some of your readers:—In the county of M——, the Draft Commissioner held an extra appeal for the 'conscientious men.' Now, in said county, there dwelt one Barney Mullen, who, not ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... that apprehension, I said: "The business men are all debtors as well as creditors, and they cannot engage in a struggle over gold payments, and the small class of creditors who are not also debtors will not venture upon a policy in which they must suffer ultimately." The decision did not cause a ripple in ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... it out and held it hanging with such a careful carelessness that the lamplight, picking out each separate link, fired its length and breadth into a dazzling glimmer of living silver flame shot through by the colder blue of hammered steel. With every cunning, unseen movement of the fingers a ripple from the throat rolled downward and out at the edges in a white fire of fairy jewel-work. Then with a jerk he caught it in his open hands, shaking them till it settled so compactly down that it lay ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... Lake Erie. In this dilemma, his only resource was to paddle with his hands, and attempt by this tedious method to force his craft to the nearest shore. While he was thus awkwardly engaged, there came it ripple of laughter from close beside him, and he started up just in time to gaze squarely into the laughing face of an Indian girl, who instantly impressed him as the most graceful creature he had ever seen. She occupied, with a girl companion, a beautifully painted and ornamented canoe, which had ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... shining down on the red parasols, the light dresses, the joyous faces and on the ocean, barely stirred by a ripple. When we were out of the harbor, the little vessel swung round the big curve and pointed her nose toward the distant shore which was barely visible through the early morning mist. On our left was the broad estuary of the Seine, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... the range, before which winds the valley of the Black with miles of placid stream in view. Quite different is this from White river, which is ever hurrying, rushing along. The Black flows within its grassy banks for long distances with scarcely a ripple; then a whirling rapid is passed, beyond which glides another long stretch ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... logs on end, it was called Standing Fort, and in later years the town was called Stanford. In the Logan party was a priest who was a musician of rare ability. In his daily walks, he was accustomed to sit, meditating, at the mouth of the cave from which ran the water of this great spring. The ripple of the stream flowing from the cavern, over the rocks and through the spearmint, was music to the Father's ear, and to him it seemed the spirit of St. Asaph, the director of King David's choir. ...
— The story of Kentucky • Rice S. Eubank
... will pass to a certain night, the moon flooding her radiance all about me and the world very hushed and still with nought to hear save the murmurous ripple and soft lapping of the incoming tide, and I upon my bed (very wakeful) and full of speculation and the problem I pondered this: Adam (and he so precise and exact in all things) had named to my lady ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... muffler pinned close so that his evening dress escaped notice, he found his way down to the railing quite secure from recognition by any one at the peep-hole of the curtain or in the boxes, and there took his seat to watch the late-comers ripple down the aisles. He was experienced enough to know that "first-nighters" do not always count and that they are sometimes false prophets, and yet he could not suppress a growing exaltation as the beautiful auditorium filled with men and women such as he had himself ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... pleasant enough. Lionel Beauchamp and his confreres determined to fall into no such mistake. No sooner are their friends on board and the steamer cast off from her moorings than the signal is given for lunch. The day is so fine that it has been decided to go down nearly to the Nore. With scarce a ripple on the water, even those who have no confidence whatever in their sea-going capabilities can feel no terror of mal de mer. The whole affair is an undoubted success. Mr. Cottrell himself pronounces the luncheon ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... with black and yellow stripes. Patches of clear white sand were seen here and there for the floor, with dark hollows and recesses, beneath overhanging masses and ledges. All those, seen through the clear crystal water, the ripple of which gave motion and quick play of light and shadow to the whole, formed a scene of the rarest beauty, and left nothing to be desired by the eye, either in elegance of form or ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... the light fell upon a deer. He raised his head and gazed upon the light. Burr moved with the boat without making a ripple and finally he held the boat with his oar and ordered me to fire. This I did, and the deer ran for the shore, Burr pushed his boat to the quag, took the jack, and followed the track. At the distance of about fifteen rods ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... fellows, the pickerel. One might, if he were a lucky and persevering fisherman, take a trout in the swift waters of the brook; but for the pickerel, theirs was not the joy of such exertion. In the dark, silent places along Mill stream, where never a ripple disturbed their seclusion, you might see one, now and then, lying motionless in the shadow of an overhanging branch, at the surface of ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... that hung over the surface of the deep appeared to increase in intensity, and they could not see even the faint glimmer of a star to cheer them; while all they could hear was the lapping of the waves as they washed by them, and the ripple and swish of some billow as it overtopped its crest, and spent its strength in eddies of circling foam, as David could imagine—for the darkness rendered everything invisible now, even the platform ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... seemed to emanate from her. Her face expressed no emotion, either good or bad, beyond a voluptuousness at once sensual and divine. She doubtless noticed my suffering, for she asked with a voice as clear as the ripple ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... glided over each ripple, and reed, and closing water-lily; over her face, where the hood had fallen back from her loosened hair; over one hand trailing the water, and the other touching the flower at her breast; and, just above her ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... gone before Stanley had finished. "Pass, friend!" said the bass voice gently, and he slid away through the water with scarcely a ripple... But curse the fellow! He'd ruined Stanley's bathe. What an unpractical idiot the man was! Stanley struck out to sea again, and then as quickly swam in again, and away he rushed up ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... and so high that it is a hill, even among the hills that Nature planted around it. The very river, as though it shared one's feelings of compassion for the extinct tribes who lived so pleasantly here in their blessed ignorance of white existence hundreds of years ago, steals out of its way to ripple near this mound, and there are few places where the Ohio sparkles more brightly than in the Big ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... strange was the sight, so dire the fears it wakened. I looked right and left; the ground was so hard, it told no story. I stood and listened till my ears ached, but the night was hollow about me like an empty church; not even a ripple stirred upon the shore; it seemed you might have heard a pin drop in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... requires many pages to describe the fury of the storm, which Mr. Cruikshank has represented in one. First, he has to prepare you with the something inexpressibly melancholy in sailing on a dark night upon the Thames: "the ripple of the water," "the darkling current," "the indistinctively seen craft," "the solemn shadows" and other phenomena visible on rivers at night are detailed (with not unskilful rhetoric) in order to bring the reader into a proper frame of mind ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... returning: No second crossing that ripple's flow: "Come to me now, for the west is burning: Come ere ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... of the rose-like perfume that fills your hair, Of times when my lips were free of your soft closed eyes, While down in the tank the waters ripple and rise And the flying foxes silently cleave ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... husband entered she looked up, and her lips curved and parted; her eyelids fluttered twice or thrice—a movement remindful (Poesy forgive us!) of the tail-wagging of a faithful dog—and a little ripple went through her like the commotion set up in a weeping willow by a puff of wind. Thus she ever acknowledged his coming, were it twenty times a day. If they who sometimes sat over their wine in Coralio, reshaping old, diverting stories of the madcap career of Isabel Guilbert, could have seen the ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... in the Region of Mines, young and strong and ambitious. Rynason caught and held those impressions; he felt the muscles ripple strangely through his body as Tebron stretched, felt the cold wind of the flat cut through his loose garment. It was night, and he stood on the parapet of a heavy stone structure looking down across the immense stretch of the Flat, spotted here and there ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... the dry torrent-bed. The rocks were a perfectly flat red sandstone, which in many places resembled artificial pavement; this was throughout the district a peculiar geological feature, the surface of the stone being covered with ripple-marks, and upon this easy path Bisgaum now approached the body of the tiger, which lay apparently dead exactly ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... an army marching along the roads from the foothills to the mountains leading through mysterious, shadowy spruce forests, where the soil is covered with rich carpets of moss. Foaming streams ripple in among the moss-covered bowlders. Then the paths emerge on the cheerful, emerald-green pastures of the slopes, alive with the flocks of goats, sheep and cattle, attended by their shepherds. A little farther and ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... in expectation of a signal for the onset. The position of Willis could be ascertained now and then by an eye of fire, which opened and shut as he inhaled or exhaled the fumes of his Maryland. The ripple beat gently on the sea-line of the boat, which oscillated with the regularity and softness of ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... Mr. Stanton, "we reached the spot where President Brown lost his life. What a change in the waters! What was then a roaring torrent, now, with the water some nine feet lower, seemed from the shore like the gentle ripple upon the quiet lake. We found, however, in going through it with our boats, there was the same swift current, the same huge eddy, and between them the same whirlpool, with its ever-changing circles. Marble Canon seemed destined ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... excited jerk. The next instant I perceived the game, and did not need the unfeigned "dam" of Luke to convince me that I had snatched his felt hat from his head and deposited it among the lilies. Discouraged by this, we whirled about, and paddled over to the inlet, where a little ripple was visible in the tinted light. At the very first cast I saw that the hour had come. Three trout leaped into the air. The danger of this manoeuvre all fishermen understand. It is one of the commonest in the woods: three heavy trout ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... moody-looking bee-hunter exclaimed; "it is very well to talk of the other side of this ripple of a river, or brook, or whatever you may call it, but in my judgment it would be a smart rifle that would throw its lead across it—that is, to any ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... on slowly, the little laughing brook beside them seeming to rise like a thunder-voice upon the dead silence. Olive listened to every ripple, that fell as it were like the boom of an engulphing wave. Nothing else she heard, or felt, or ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... risen with a jingle of steel scabbard and a ripple of glitter on his gold-embroidered breast; a heavy sword-hilt appeared at his side above the edge of the table. In this gorgeous uniform, with his bull neck, his hooked nose flattened on the tip upon a blue-black, dyed moustache, he looked like a disguised and sinister ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... but something passes on and migrates to another equally transitory tenement. Neither Brahmans nor Buddhists seem to contemplate the possibility that the human soul may be a temporary manifestation of the Eternal Spirit which comes to an end at death—a leaf on a tree or a momentary ripple on the water. It is always regarded as passing through many births, a wave ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... his lips. "Ah, how angry I was then—but why be angry now? It all happened so long ago; and if it had not happened—who knows?—perhaps you would never have pitied me enough to love me as you did." She laughed softly, reminiscently, leaning back as if to let the tide of memories ripple over her. Then she raised her head suddenly, and said in a changed voice: "Are your plans ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... she swam on: and now a light wind had been drawn up from the west, and was driving a little ripple athwart the lake, and she swam the swiftlier for it awhile, but then turned over on her back and floated southward still. Till on a sudden, as she lay looking up toward the far-away blue sky, and she so little and low ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... Elinor laughed her low ripple. "We didn't find Francis Edward David till the middle of December, and it's now the third week in January. I don't think we've let much grass ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... except an occasional blow-up, their river steamers were really models of enterprise and skill; but it was gravely added, the Mississippi is not the Atlantic; icebergs are not snags; and an Atlantic wave is somewhat different from an Ohio ripple. These truisms were of course undeniable; but to them was quickly added another fact, about which there could be as little mistake—namely, the arrival at Southampton, after a voyage which, considering it ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... did not move from its orbit, but a light ripple of surprise appeared to cross its luminous convexity. ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... gave what in ordinary women would have been a shrug: with her it was a slow ripple. I vow if her neck had been bare one could have seen it ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... blue sea. In a field nearer they could barely make out two brown specks moving slowly back and forth. They were oxen, and Dromas was ploughing with them. It was so still that the children could plainly hear the breathing of the sheep as they cropped the grass, and the ripple of the little stream which spread out into a shallow river and ...
— The Spartan Twins • Lucy (Fitch) Perkins
... enough to heel her some six inches under every stitch of plain sail they could set upon her, was slipping along through the water at the rate of fully five knots, and that, too, so cleanly that the ripple under the bows was inaudible to the men on the forecastle unless they put their heads over the side and listened for it, whilst scarcely a whirl or a bubble was to be seen in the long smooth wake which she left ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... The slightest extra ripple of the waters at New Orleans brings them over the banks and floods the streets, but the ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, April 22, 1897, Vol. 1, No. 24 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various |
