"Solid ground" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... infinitesimal scraps of knowledge he had about this section of the world. It was pitifully scanty. Punta Arenas was the southernmost point of the continental mass. All about it was an archipelago and a maze of waterways, thinly inhabited everywhere and largely without any inhabitants at all. The only solid ground between Cape Horn and the Antarctic ice pack was Diego Ramirez ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... was cut; but we set this down as light work compared to what the old Black Joke had seen that day month. There was a little sharp fighting ashore, but our men were too strong for the enemy, when they could fairly get their feet on solid ground. ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... have disclosed any outward movement, but the movement was inward, and their handsome fires availed them nothing. This experiment, however, was followed by another, more successful. By placing a drum on the solid ground and a marble on the head of it, they discovered a jar in the earth. This was sufficient, and gathering up their traps they evacuated early in the evening of the 2nd of July, our forces following on ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear
... solid ground for man; the deductions he draws from them are a very different matter. Outside the facts of nature all is a question of probabilities, and the most that can be said is that some conclusions ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... clearer to his mind than the conclusion itself—that his meeting, with the priest and the doctor was the turning-point in his career. They had lifted him bodily out of the slough of ignorance, of contact with low minds and sordid, narrow things, and put him on solid ground. This book he had been reading—this gentle, tender, lovable book, which had as much true piety in it as any devotional book he had ever read, and yet, unlike all devotional books, put its foot firmly upon everything which could not be proved in human reason to ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... place in the traditional texts and ritual have little solid ground for the popular devotion entertained for them. The liturgy was corrupted by the superstitious veneration paid it by the ignorant. False readings had crept into the books which contained the various local "uses," to borrow a term from the Anglican terminology. Liturgical unity ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... the solid ground of the courtyard under his feet, Willems pulled himself up in his headlong rush and moved forward with a moderate gait. He paced stiffly, looking with extreme exactitude at Lingard's face; looking neither to the right nor to the left but at the face only, as if there was nothing in the world ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... involve a lonely cabin in a far-off valley, on the contrary I wanted roads and bridges and neighbors. My hope now was to possess a minute isle of safety in the midst of the streaming currents of western life—a little solid ground in my native valley on which the surviving members of my family ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... side, while sub-assistant Halter observed angles from permanent stations. The angular measurements were made with all kinds of instruments found suitable to the locality. Only a few of the stations were on solid ground, nearly all the shore being overflowed. Frequently the members of the party were compelled to mount their instruments on the chimney tops of dilapidated houses. In other places boats were run under overhanging trees on the shore, in which signal ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... to believe that in a few instances, chiefly in the earlier portion of the correspondence, the critical acuteness of the editor was imposed upon, and that some of the letters inserted were not written by the persons alleged to be the authors. But of the majority of the letters there seems no solid ground for questioning the authenticity. Indeed, in the later and more important portion of the correspondence, that which belongs to the period after the death of the Empress-queen, the genuineness of the Queen's letters is continually supported by the collection of M. Arneth, who has himself ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... floundering in the stream. Now Warburton used his heels savagely. He shortened the reins and whacked Mr. Pirate soundly across the ears. Pirate plunged and reared and, after devious evolutions, reached solid ground. This time his head was high in the air, and, try as he would, he could not lower his ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... formed the deeps unknown; He gave the seas their bound; The watery worlds are all his own, And all the solid ground. ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz
... prevailing bigotry and fanaticism of an established religion. There is in the poet's mind the lofty indignation of one who sees, in its true light, the narrowness of an ignorant and hypocritical clergy, yet can find no solid ground on which to build up for himself a theory of supernaturalism, illumined by hope. Yet there are traces of Mysticism in his writings, which only serve to emphasize his profound longing for some knowledge of the invisible, and his foreboding that the grave is the "be-all" and "end-all" of life. ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... the first line of precipices. Still mounting, but this time with a forward motion, as could be seen by the vapours illuminated by the male stones through which they passed, they were soon altogether out of sight of solid ground. Suddenly and quite unexpectedly the moon broke through. In the upper atmosphere thick masses of fog were seen crawling hither and thither, broken in many places by thin rifts of sky, through one of which Teargeld ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... of Winchester under the Plantagenets (Vol. I. p. 301), denies that there is solid ground in history for representing Beaufort as depraved, and condemns Shakespeare for having endowed Humphry, Duke of Gloucester, with merit of which he deprived the memory of Cardinal Beaufort. The late Dean Hook, too, in his elegantly written life ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... here, holding on to some rushes," the voice said, and Katherine fairly gasped with amazement to find the submerged one so close at hand; for the patch of rushes to which she was holding the boat was the only one anywhere near, and a little ridge of solid ground connected it with the river bank, which was ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... this time coming back from the horses. In his fear of being seen the boy rendered detection certain by nervous motion. The heather and peat stratum overhung the brow of the pit in mats, hiding the actual verge. The boy had stepped beyond the solid ground; the heather now gave way, and down he rolled over the scarp of grey sand to the very foot of ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... lonely situation on the face of the deep, and the great probability even yet, although we had succeeded in removing to a greater distance from the vessel, that we ourselves should never again see the light of day, or set foot on solid ground, absorbed every feeling. For some time the silence was scarcely broken, and the thoughts of many, I doubt not, were engaged on subjects most suitable to immortal beings on the brink of eternity. The number ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... the Gouverneurs, on the north side of the Square. I like Washington Square very much," said Millard, getting on solid ground again. ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... point of confiding to him the intimate affairs of her life and those of her family which she did not have the slightest intention of recounting. She heard herself speak with astonishment; but there was no way of returning to solid ground; the very silence of Pierre was like a declivity down which ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... positive human knowledge of the territory that bears the name of King Edward VII.; and with the geological specimens that we had collected, we were in possession of a tangible proof of the actual existence of solid ground in a region which otherwise bore the greatest resemblance to what we called "Barrier" elsewhere, or in any case to the Barrier as it appears in the neighbourhood of ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... Jack," said Lucy Marsh, bravely enough. "It's a case of the biters bitten, evidently. We came to spy, and we've been spied on in turn. Well, since you've discovered us in a tree, perhaps you'd better climb up and help a pack of foolish girls back to the solid ground again. I seem to lose my head once I ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... occur in the United States; but I have no difficulty in accounting for this circumstance. A lawsuit, of whatever nature it may be, is always a difficult and expensive undertaking. It is easy to attack a public man in a journal, but the motives which can warrant an action at law must be serious. A solid ground of complaint must therefore exist, to induce an individual to prosecute a public officer, and public officers careful not to furnish these grounds of complaint, when they are afraid ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... began to probe with the end of a staff among the ivy. For some time he was met by the solid ground, but presently the butt of the staff went through suddenly, pitching him on his head, amidst a suppressed laugh from ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... tribunal. Of course no certain laws, establishing invariable grounds of hope and fear, would keep the actions of men in a certain course, or direct them to a certain end. Nothing stable in the modes of holding property or exercising function could form a solid ground on which any parent could speculate in the education of his offspring, or in a choice for their future establishment in the world. No principles would be early worked into the habits. As soon as the most able instructor had completed his laborious course of institution, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... time to be spent in Liverpool. Indeed, they had scarcely become accustomed to feeling their feet on solid ground again before the order to march was given, and they left the river front to go ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... noble features. Notwithstanding his prejudices, his simplicity, and his occasional absurdities, he was in his own way an able man, and an excellent judge of human nature. Even his prejudices were as a rule founded upon some solid ground, only it was as a general rule impossible to get at it. Also he had a share of that marvellous instinct which, when it exists, registers the mental altitude of the minds of others with the accuracy of an aneroid. He could tell when a man's words rang true and when they rang false, ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... neat and trim in white uniforms that contrasted beautifully with their dark skins, ran to man the graceful white cutter. Pascherette sat in the stern-sheets, cuddled up like a pretty kitten on a crimson silk cushion, and Milo stood erect, as firm as if on solid ground, between passengers and rowers as the boat sped shoreward. As the two craft separated the schooner stood out in veritable beauty, an exquisite thing of gold and ivory, pearl and rose. Venner's eyes ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... done, than the faithful old black hurried down to his mistress, to communicate the intelligence that the party was safely in the forest; while the adventurers turned, ascended the bank of the stream, and pursued their way on more solid ground. ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... minutes, the four castaways were suddenly brought to a standstill by the sight of foaming billows close to their feet. The solid ground ended here. They found themselves at the extremity of a sharp point on ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... to bear the weight of her body. On she went, with Phyllis close behind her. In spite of the difficulty the girls were plainly making headway. "Hurrah!" called Madge, "we are almost out of this quagmire. There is dry land ahead!" With one long leap she made the solid ground which stretched just ahead of her. Phyllis was not so fortunate. She lunged blindly after Madge, struck an unusually bad part of the marsh and sank knee deep in the soft mud. With a terrified cry she began struggling to free herself, but the harder ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... a shovel, a pickaxe, his armor, and a dark lantern, and one winter's evening he went to the mount. There he dug a pit twenty-two feet deep and twenty broad. He covered the top over so as to make it look like solid ground. He then blew such a blast on his horn that the Giant awoke and came out of his den, crying out: "You saucy villain, you shall pay for this! I'll broil you ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... 1860. Their little talk about debts, and slavery, and sich, is the earth they're droppin onto us for fun; but shel we, like ijeots, cut the rope? Nary! Let em hist; and when we're safe out, and on solid ground, we kin, ef we desire, turn and chuck ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... bank-officers with whom Burnett & Co. did business knew about it, and if it had not been for their lenience and aid the firm would have failed. As it was, it required a struggle of months to regain the solid ground of safety. ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... Reaching solid ground again, there was another easier spell of bush tramping. Then the trail began the ascent of a hill—a rocky, loose-bouldered slope that could only be traversed by a narrow path that somewhat resembled a strip of ribbon on the ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... moment. "What say, men? Let's be Yankee sailors from this time on! We'll be the right sort, eh? We'll put this brave little girl where she belongs—on God's solid ground!" ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... recalling my own. I say there has been but one event in my life; it was that which left me an orphan. O girls, we speak of Clara's coming down to the ground; we speak of seeing our way clear, and treading on solid ground; these are expressions of those whose feet only would walk upon the ground, while their hearts and eyes are on a level with those about them, who have never known how hard to the forehead is the ground, when all we love lie beneath it; how one hides ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... Polly, rooted to the spot. "Well, I never!" In the ten years she had lived with Gabriella she had never seen her cry—not even after George's flight—and she felt as if the solid ground on which she stood had crumbled without warning, and left her insecurely balanced in space. "Something certainly must be wrong, for it ain't like you to give way. Are you real sure you ain't ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... pleasing people in the matter of reputation in this department: every insult is a flattery; every testimonial is a disparagement: Joseph is despised and promoted, Potiphar's wife admired and condemned: in short, you are never on solid ground until you get away from the subject altogether. There is a continual and irreconcilable conflict between the natural and conventional sides of the case, between spontaneous human relations between independent men and women on the one hand and the property ...
— Overruled • George Bernard Shaw
... and inscriptions have all long since passed away, even the very spot itself has changed; new soil has been formed, and there are miles of solid ground between Mount ta and the gulf, so that the Hot Gates no longer exist. But more enduring than stone or brass—nay, than the very battle-field itself—has been the name of Leonidas. Two thousand three hundred years have sped since he braced ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... true laws of planetary motion. But after all these centuries the sidereal world embraced no objects, barring an occasional comet or temporary star, that lay beyond the vision of the earliest astronomers. The conceptions of the stellar universe, except those that ignored the solid ground of observation, were limited by the small aperture of the human eye. But the dawn of another ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale
... an absurdity of the almanac, it is a daily pretext that men have invented in order to put off their business today. Tomorrow may be an earthquake. Today, at any rate, we are on solid ground." ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... well at first. The nimble steed His partners roused,—like lightning was their speed. What happened next? Toward heaven was turned his eye,— Unused across the solid ground to fly, He quitted soon the safe and beaten course, And true to nature's strong resistless force, Ran over bog and moor, o'er hedge and pasture tilled; An equal madness soon the other horses filled— No reins could hold them in, no help was near, Till,—only ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... keep her very long in suspense. She too had put aside every consideration but the one—what was her duty to the Harper family?—and she had found solid ground. ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... by turning aside; for the grappling-irons and other instruments, which, before the engagement, had been greatly derided by the enemy, were fastened upon their ships, and they were compelled to fight as on solid ground. Being victorious, therefore, at Liparae, by sinking and scattering the enemy's fleet, they celebrated their first naval triumph. And how great was the exultation at it! Duilius, the commander, not content with one day's triumph, ordered, during all the rest of his life, when he returned ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... thus trace a continuity of interest in the deepest problems, lasting throughout his life, and, by the sacrifice of one side of his affections, tinging his mind with that subtle melancholy so difficult to analyse, but so irresistible in its charm. The craving to rest the mind upon a solid ground of truth, which was kept in abeyance under the Republic by the incessant calls of active life, now asserted itself in all earnest characters, and would not be content without satisfaction. Virgil was cut off before his philosophical development was completed, and therefore ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... the sand hills back of the town furnished material for filling up the bay under the houses and streets, and still further out. The temporary houses, first built over the water in the harbor, soon gave way to more solid structures. The main business part of the city now is on solid ground, made where vessels of the largest class lay at anchor in the early days. I was in San Francisco again in 1854. Gambling houses had disappeared from public view. The city had ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... of warfare in Nature and the effect of war on the human race. These have long been debated problems concerning which there is no complete agreement. But until we make up our minds on these fundamental questions we can gain no solid ground from which to face serenely, or at all events firmly, the crisis through which mankind is ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... Mr. Burns? Lite and I offered to take you out on solid ground, but your man seemed to think ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... She was conscious more than anything else of the vast spaces about her in every direction, of the loneliness of the spot, and her own desolate condition. She had wanted the horse to stop and let her get down to solid ground, and now that he had done so and she might dismount a great horror filled her and she dared not. But with the lessening of the need for keeping up the tense strain of nerve and muscle, she suddenly began to feel that she ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... He felt solid ground under his feet, and his eyes, snapping open, saw an alien land. It was a land of somber color, with great gray moors, and beetling black cliffs. There was something queer about it, an ...
— Hellhounds of the Cosmos • Clifford Donald Simak
... may have gathered, was that she built too much upon the material side of things. What she saw, what she knew, what her body told her, what the recorded experience of the world taught—these were real; all the rest, to her, was phantasy or imagination. She kept her feet upon the solid ground of fact, and left all else to dreamers; or, as she would have expressed it, to the victims ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... mercy is justice; and declares with what measure we mete to others, it shall be surely measured to us again. If therefore my words shall seem to some here, to be not so much a humble request as a peremptory demand, I cannot help it. I have pleaded the cause of this hospital on the only solid ground of which I am aware, for doing anything but evil to everyone around us who is not a private friend, or a member of one's own family. I ask you to help the poor to their share in the gifts which Christ received for men, because they are His gifts, and neither ours nor any man's. Among these ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... Where the solid ground ran up to the tracks Sam sat down under a tree. Peace came over him. "This is the end of things," he thought, and was like a tired child comforted by its mother. He thought of the sweet-faced nurse who had ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... should have come to so untimely an end in so good a collegiate world as Yale. He stood well in his class, he had played right tackle for two seasons and was heir apparent to the captaincy; he was well beloved and would have received an election to a senior society in the spring. But the solid ground being withdrawn from under his feet—in other words, his allowance from his father—he left amid universal regret, and found himself a very small person in a very great city; worse, a youth who had always had everything, loved pleasure, lights, games, ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... it would fertilize a land of freedom or of bondage!—how shall I struggle with the emotions that stifle the utterance of thy name![7] Our poor work may perish; but thine shall endure! This monument may moulder away; the solid ground it rests upon may sink down to a level with the sea; but thy memory shall not fail! Wheresoever among men a heart shall be found that beats to the transports of patriotism and liberty, its aspirations shall be to claim kindred ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... stop till he's ready.) Space bows before such a man, and shrivels itself up into a mere nothing. Land and water are alike to such a one. It matters not to him whether the waves roll beneath his possessions, or the solid ground upholds them. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... it and around it, extending as far beneath it as it extended in every other direction, shone the light from his own lamp. Nevertheless, that great shell, weighing many tons, lay as if it rested upon the solid ground! ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... solid ground not far from the creek's edge and walked along briskly, following the course of the stream back toward its source. The soil was black and deep and the forest magnificent. Great beeches and hickories were mingled with the willows and live oaks and cypresses, and the foliage was thick, green, and ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... is true; but only the tip of it. Active children will meet with accidents. She was a regular little fly-away, and would sooner climb a tree or a ladder any time, than walk on solid ground. Now ...
— Little Prudy's Sister Susy • Sophie May
... afraid of saying anything, lest the passion of anger, dislike, indignation—whatever it was that was boiling up in her breast—should find vent in cries and screams, or worse, in raging words that could never be forgotten. It was as if the piece of solid ground on which she stood had broken from the shore, and she was drifting out to the infinite ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... so fragmentary, so embarrassed by dogmatic hypotheses and assertions, and deterring complications, that one must give oneself wholly to it for any chance of getting to its foundations. But I feel on perfectly solid ground in Medo- Persian or Scythian. Difficulties in them are like difficulties in Greek or Sanscrit: that is all. In the Assyrian, I do not yet know whether to believe at least half of the characters, and many ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... had been badly shaken for just a few minutes, what with his own nerves and Ocky's confounded chattering! A man without a face! A "familiar" from the Spanish Inquisition! What rot a man's imagination can trick him into crediting. But that was over and done with now; he was back on solid ground, ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... little lower level than where I stood in the sand what appeared a plot of vivid green grass, and without any precaution stupidly stepped with my full weight upon it, and instantly found myself floundering in four feet of mud and water. I had fallen, and getting back on the solid ground I found myself wet to the shoulders, my legs covered with mud and my pistols, bread, etc., soaking with salt water. At once I ran across the beach and sat down in the warm water of the sea, washing off the mud ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... damaging to my desire to convince, if I should seem to deny that the mistaken practice of these hymn-book compilers was based on the solid ground of secular common-sense. If anything is true of rhythm it is this, that the common mind likes common rhythms, such as the march or waltz, whereas elaboration of rhythm appeals to a trained mind or artistic faculty. I should say ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... to find it. If a man put up for the club who had an open mind on the subject of property in umbrellas, I should blackball him. An open mind is all very well in clever talky-talky; but in conduct and in business give me solid ground. ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... She had a dizzy sensation of falling off the earth when she made the jump from the hillside, which was a greater distance than she had ever dropped before, but it was over so quickly that she had no time to lose her breath before she was on solid ground again and taking the long slide over the lake. In a short time they reached the ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... dropping in every now and then. But although their intentions were kindly enough, Ethel felt repelled by them. She resented their having been Amy's friends. For swiftly and quite unconsciously, in her resolute groping in the dark for solid ground on which to stand, she was building up an ideal of her sister—and these women jarred on that. They came to her direct from a world, her sister's world, which she now vaguely felt to be cheap, shallow, disillusioning. And she needed her illusions. By nature frank to bluntness, ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... a hill and entered a level region where we found plenty of mud. About midnight the yemshick exhibited his skill by driving into a mudhole where there was solid ground on both sides. We were hopelessly stuck, and all our cries and utterances were of no avail. The Cossack and the driver could accomplish nothing, and we were obliged to descend from the carriage. We required our subordinates to put their shoulders to the ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... the cure of inebriety through scientific means, I felt that the morning star had risen in the east—I felt that at last we were finding solid ground. I did not accept—being of a skeptical turn of mind—all that I heard as true. I preferred to hope, and wait. I have waited, until I have seen men, the victims of alcohol, in the very gutter of disgrace and despair, lifted from ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... There printed, mournfully rent: Her ebbing adieu, her adieu, And the stride of the Shadow athwart. For one of our Autumns there! . . . Straight as the flight of a dove We went, swift winging we went. We trod solid ground, we breathed air, The heavens were unbroken. Break they, The word of the world is adieu: Her word: and the torrents are round, The jawed wolf-waters of prey. We stand upon isles, who stand: A Shadow before us, and back, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... fear, only an overwhelming contempt. "I mean," she said, "that to save you—to leave you a chance of getting back to solid ground—Donovan and I deceived Burke. He supplied the money, and I put ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... rose to the fascinating bait. She considered it enchanting to live in a house where she could be acquainted with the cook stove; and Miss Martha felt that she had sheered off the thin ice upon solid ground at last. ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... such as they had not before witnessed there. His eye shot out prophetic meanings. At the close, he said, in a low tone, like the murmur of distant thunder, "what I have told you, is true,—true, as that we stand on this solid ground,—true, as that sky that bends above us. This book says it. It is, therefore, eternal truth. I have it impressed upon my mind, that a judgment, a swift, tremendous judgment, is about to descend upon this people on account of their sins. I cannot ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... snow; it seemed to consist of schist and quartz, with some appearance of calcareous rock. At last the travellers had reached terra firma, and, according to their estimation, the continent must be New Cornwall. The doctor was delighted to tread on solid ground once more; the travellers had only a hundred more miles to go before reaching Belcher Cape; but the trouble of walking increased on this rocky soil, full of inequalities, crevices, and precipices; they were obliged to plunge into the interior of the land and climb the high ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... rose up, and hot stones fell like hail on every side, setting fire to the dead wood which, after so long a rest, had completely grown over the ground, and causing it at night to assume the appearance of one vast mountain of flame. For fifteen hours the solid ground rolled like a wave of the sea. Fort Orange, which had withstood numberless earthquakes for two centuries and a quarter, was almost overwhelmed. The people betook themselves to their boats, for the ocean and land seemed to have exchanged natures; the water being calm, ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... end proposed. If, therefore, any society shall deem the common good and interests of the whole society best promoted under the particular circumstances in which it is placed by a restriction of the right of suffrage, it is not easy to state any solid ground of objection to its exercise of such an authority. At least, if any society has a clear right to deprive females, constituting one-half of the whole population, of the right of suffrage (which, with scarcely an exception, has been uniformly maintained), it will require some astuteness to ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... expression of the belief; hence whatever the subjective mind creates is the reproduction externally of our beliefs. Accordingly our whole object is to change our beliefs, and we cannot do this without some solid ground of conviction of the falsity of our old beliefs and of the truth of our new ones, and this ground we find in that law of causation which I have endeavoured to explain. The wrong belief which externalizes as sickness is the belief that some ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... of its real history." He stood up suddenly and held out his hand. "Good-bye, sir," he said. "We may or may not meet again before you too are forced to abandon your work. But I often shall be close to you, and I believe, I firmly believe, that you will do exactly as I should do if I stood on solid ground to-day." ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... happiness, but we can brace up and call our reserve will power, reason, and self-confidence to bear when we come to the marshy places along the road. We can pick our steps and get through the mire and sooner than we believe it possible we can get on the good solid ground; and as we travel, happiness will often come as a reward for our ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... his released the neck yoke from the pole. The next moment both horses were on their feet, head by head now, but facing each other, apparently trying to pull apart; but the martingales held. Then both jumped clear of the cutter and the pole; and they plunged out, to the rear, past the cutter, to solid ground. ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... once more on solid ground, Todd, still iterating his forgiveness of past injuries, picked up a tin pie-plate that had been jarred out of the van among other litter, and began to scrape the black mud off the foreman of the Ancients in as matter-of-fact a way as though he were ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... pilot-house, and the other by way of a trap-door in the bottom of the ship, behind the starboard bilge-keel. This latter was used when it was desired to enter or leave the ship when she was resting upon the solid ground, either above or under water, and it was the means of entrance which the party used upon the present occasion. The professor, to whose genius was due the entire design of the wonderful ship, undertook, at Sir Reginald's request, to point out to Lady Elphinstone ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Therefore she had set herself gladly to learn German; it was a definite task to which such and such hours could be devoted, and the labour would strengthen her mini Her ignorance she represented as a great marsh which by toil had to be filled up and converted into solid ground. She had gone through the library catalogue and made a list of books which seemed needful to be read; and Mr. Wyvern had been of service in guiding her, as well as in lending volumes from his own shelves. The vicar, indeed, had ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... in the past, and now that we are repentant, we want to get everything right before we go ahead with our full native energy. We have suffered from the distrust of the world, and then from our own distrust. In retracing our steps let us be sure that we are on solid ground, and make our "wampum" as good as the best there is ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... presence of the patriotic member of the opposition who formed the regulator and balance-wheel of the Commission. When Senator Gray objected, we all reexamined the processes of our reasoning. When he assented, we knew at once we must be on solid ground and went ahead. It was an expected gratification to have with you also the accomplished secretary and counsel to the Commission, a man as modest and unobtrusive as its president, and, like him, equal to any summons. In ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... that, when for any reason a shade of doubt comes over men's minds that the combination is not working, that the machine is at some point going to give way, that somebody is not playing his part fairly, the solid ground seems to shake under their feet, and we have some of the phenomena resulting from an earthquake, and among others blind terror. But to anyone who understands what this new social force, Credit, is, and the part it plays in human affairs, the wonder is, not that it gives way so seldom, ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... and shoes, as much as all the woods in Maryland together. The road runs from here east-northeast. When we came upon the land above, we found an extraordinary quantity of water, not only upon the flats and in the valleys, brooks, and morasses, but also upon the high, solid ground. We supposed this was caused by shutting up the creek by the mill dam, whereby the water did not have shoot sufficient to run down, but it was not that alone. We pursued our way, however, courageously, but discovered no Indians up to evening. We called aloud to ascertain whether they were about ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... however, it must be acknowledged, though they may be somewhat augmented, cannot be altogether so secure, when they are thus, as it were, suspended upon the Daedalian wings of paper money, as when they travel about upon the solid ground of gold and silver. Over and above the accidents to which they are exposed from the unskilfulness of the conductors of this paper money, they are liable to several others, from which no prudence or skill of ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... do her honor. The common travelers will land this morning, glad to set foot on solid ground again. Mrs. Montgomery Dillon and her party are the only personages that will arrive from Europe. The crowd gathers to meet, not the passengers who merely land, but the personages who ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... glass beads. Perhaps his suspicions were not on any too solid ground. Yet a string of jade beads like that in exchange! ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... you, Miss," he said, removing his plaid travelling cap as he dropped on solid ground. "That was really quite ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... directed the outriders to cease their clamour at the horses and to exercise their strength upon the wheels. The driver alone urged the animals with his familiar voice; David himself heaved a powerful shoulder at the rear of the carriage, and with one harmonious tug the great vehicle rolled up on solid ground. The outriders climbed ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... smother and drown under the hideous pall. With his heart in his throat Eric turned sharply to the right, trusting only to a vague sense of direction. A score of steps brought him to a slight billowing of the ash, and with a sigh of relief he knew he was on solid ground again. ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... of Parma at the commencement of the siege. Sluys was built upon the only piece of solid ground in the district, and it was surrounded by such a labyrinth of canals, ditches, and swamps, that it was said that it was almost as difficult to find Sluys as it was to capture it. Consequently, it was impossible to find ground solid enough for a camp to be pitched upon, ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... not to go on the bridge at times when a train might be expected to cross it, for when the cars passed us, we had much rather be on solid ground. But one day, when we had forgotten the hour; or a train was behind, or ahead of time; or an extra train was on the road—we were crossing this railroad bridge, and had just about reached the middle of it, when we heard the whistle of a locomotive! Looking up quickly, ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... in which it had been foiled, resolved to take precautionary measures against the repetition of any similar attempt. Without loss of time he departed with Bienville, on January 16, 1700, and running up the river, he constructed a small fort, on the first solid ground which he met, and which is said to have been at a distance of fifty-four miles from ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... so much as grounded in the knowledge of the truth, nor having counted their cost, and solidly resolved for suffering; thereupon it comes to pass, when suffering times come, these wither away, and come to nothing. There is a third sort, who go a step farther; they have some root, and some more solid ground than the former, so that they can suffer many things, and not fall away because of persecution, yet they perish through want of mortification. One may suffer persecution for Christ, not being sore tried in that ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... appear and disappear, and the eternal soughings of their wings was silent. He pointed to the water at his feet and I saw, not a picture, but a scene so real that I could have sworn it was alive about me. Yes, those who took part in it stood in front of me as though the pool were solid ground that their feet pressed. You were one of them, son, you were one of them," and the old knight paused, supporting himself against the mantel-shelf as though that ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... England has never been attempted by any one at all duly qualified for dealing with so complex and difficult a subject, and the crudest theories have been substituted for sound conclusions, then only to be accepted when based upon the solid ground of ascertained fact. In the childhood of every science dogmatism precedes induction, and in the absence of clear knowledge, foolish and wild-eyed visionaries have posed as discoverers again and again. Yet bluster and audacity have their use, if only to stimulate ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... otherwise—more contented with the world, more optimistic, happier, than he had been for months, it seemed to him for years. Even while he was speaking to her of his uneasiness and dissatisfaction he was dimly conscious that at that moment he was less uneasy and less dissatisfied, conscious that the solid ground was beneath his feet at last, that here was the haven after ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... to swim for the shore with all possible speed. Fortunately he came in where there was a sandbar, so that he could wade to solid ground. When Shep reached him ...
— Young Hunters of the Lake • Ralph Bonehill
... entire province is covered with almost impenetrable forests of pine and evergreen of different varieties. The tundras or marshes are very treacherous, for the traveler marching along on what appears to be a rough strip of solid ground, suddenly may feel the same give way and he is precipitated into a bath of ice cold muddy water. Great areas of these tundras are nothing more than a thickly woven matting of grasses and weeds overgrowing creeks or ponds and many a lonely traveler has been known to disappear in one of these ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... forth many legends. It is, indeed, a remarkable territory. In summer it seems a vast moor carpeted by glowing purple heather, which one can traverse up to a certain point, but woe betide him who would advance farther, for, surrounded by what seems solid ground, lies a treacherous quagmire declared by the people of the neighbourhood to be unfathomable. This part of the bog, whose victims have been many, is known as the Youdic. As one leans over it its waters may sometimes be seen ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... to stay in the bog to be shot down. With their cutlasses they hewed off branches of trees and threw these down in the bog, making a sort of rude roadway by means of which they were able to get out on solid ground. But here they found themselves confronted by a large body of Spaniards, entrenched behind earthworks. Cannon and musket were opened upon the buccaneers, and the noise and smoke were so terrible they could scarcely hear the ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... we were rising slowly but hardly realizing it, being filled with that peculiar sensation, incident to balloon journeys, by which we could almost believe we were remaining about in the same place and the solid ground was ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... about time it lost that reputation. It's all very well to hang on to your dignity when you're on solid ground, but when you feel things slipping from under you the thing to do is to grab on to anything that'll keep you on your feet for a while at least. I tell you the women will go wild over this knickerbocker idea. They've been ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... and that "His justice would not sleep forever." Patrick Henry said "that a serious view of this subject gives a gloomy prospect to future times." So Mason and other patriots wrote and felt, fully impressed that the high, solid ground of right and justice had been left for the bogs and ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... smaller crevasses, but they could make their way around the ends of these, and it was not long before they had scrambled over the rocks at the glacier's edge and once more stood on solid ground. Even Bello seemed to realize that their troubles were now nearly over, for he barked and ran round them in circles and leaped up with his paws on their shoulders to give them dog kisses, and, as for his tail—he nearly ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... it's safe, Nat," were Uncle Dick's last words. "It's nicer to have the solid ground under you. This is a treat; the sand's like a feather bed; but we shan't often have such a luxurious ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... a little more than a hundred years ago. That earthquake of 1811 surely altered the face of the earth on the then far frontier of this country. It changed the course of rivers, it converted hills into what are now the sunk lands of three states, and it turned the solid ground to jelly and made it roll in waves like the sea. And in the midst of the retching of the land and the vomiting of the waters it depressed to varying depths a section of the earth crust sixty miles long, taking it down—trees, hills, ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... "He's usin' the solid ground this time, anyway," said Sergeant Daniel Whitley. "I've been eight miles farther south, an' if I didn't see cavalry comin' along the skirt of a ridge, then my eyes ain't any friends of mine. Then I came through a little place of not more'n five houses. ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... over the Hudson Bay territory that day, and despite the efforts of the voyagers they could not rise in the Snowbird above the tempest. Had there been solid ground beneath them they could easily have descended and remained upon terra firma until the ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... had better see his family faint from hunger for weeks together, should such an ordeal be an essential part of his struggle for freedom, for only by such an unfaltering effort could he regain the solid ground on which enduring happiness and prosperity could be built. As it was, he was rapidly approaching a point where his habit would become a terrible and uncontrollable disease, for which he would still be morally responsible—a ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... advantage to the Government to close the inlet, as the heavy guns can then be transferred to the proving-grounds on the Hook by a railroad built on solid ground, and not liable to give way ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 38, July 29, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... the creature from the air, but we had decided to assail him on the solid ground, because we should thus be able to scatter and take him in the flank, ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... set out to apply its methods to literary production. His position was that the novelist is, like the scientist, an observer and an experimentalist combined. The observer, he says, gives the facts as he has observed them, fixes the starting-point, lays the solid ground on which his characters are to walk and his phenomena to develop. Then the experimentalist appears and starts the experiment, that is to say, he makes the personages in a particular story move, in order to show that the succession of events will be just what the determinism ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... his head against the solid ground checked his words, and left for ever uncertain what the chieftain meant to say. He quickly recovered from the shock, for possibly, it may be said, he was becoming accustomed to such rough treatment and could stand ...
— The Story of Red Feather - A Tale of the American Frontier • Edward S. (Edward Sylvester) Ellis
... reach surer conclusions than regarding direct psychical effects, because it can trace their mode of operation as well as define the result. Direct psychical effects are more matters of conjecture, whose causation is asserted rather than proved. They seem to float in the air, detached from the solid ground under foot, and are therefore subject matter for the ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... watch- dogs being depended upon to keep watch and ward over everything. The hovels are more underground than above the surface, and often, when the village occupies sloping ground, the upper edge of the roof is practically but a continuation of the solid ground, or at the most there is but a single step-up between them. The goats are of course permitted to wander whithersoever they will, and equally, of course, they abuse their privileges by preferring the roofs to the ground and wandering incessantly about among the sleepers. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... ships—as fast as we can. We're steadying the ground first, sinking concrete piles in steel casing—if you put 'em end to end, they'd reach twenty-five miles. They're just to hold the ground together. That's what the whole country has got to do before it can really begin to begin—put some solid ground under its feet. When the ship is launched she mustn't stick on the ways or ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... altitude. It was clear that its pilot fought to make solid ground before it crashed. Twice it seemed definitely lost. But each time, at the last instant, the motor purred—and popped—and the plane ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... flatteries—My hand is not my own! You shall see all that it writes. I will seem to you no better than I am. I do not tell you to be a Republican, but an Italian. If I had room for myself in my prayers—oh! one half-instant to look on you, though with chains on my limbs. The sky and the solid ground break up when I think of you. I fancy I am still in prison. Angelo was music to me for two whole days (without a morning to the first and a night to the second). He will be here to-morrow and talk of you again. I long for him more than ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... give you. Thus we could feel every small variation in surface, every crust through which our feet broke, every hardened patch below the soft snow. And soon we began to rely more and more upon the sound of our footsteps to tell us whether we were on crevasses or solid ground. From now onwards we were working among crevasses fairly constantly. I loathe them in full daylight when much can be done to avoid them, and when if you fall into them you can at any rate see where the sides are, which way they run and how best to scramble out; when your companions ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... most westerly point marked by the Herculaneum gate leading to the Street of Tombs. Southward, we must imagine the sea much closer to its walls than at the present day, for the alluvial deposits have in the course of nearly two thousand years added many acres of solid ground to the shores of the Bay. Behind the city to the north rose the mountain side, not seared with the traces of lava as in these days, nor surmounted by a smoking cone, but radiant with vineyards and gardens which extended unbroken up to the very rim ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... foot patrols were sent out to scour the adjacent country. The Yankees kept in the swamps and creeks, and no trace of them was found that afternoon or evening. By this time they were ten or fifteen miles away, and thought that they could safely leave the creeks for better walking on the solid ground. They had gone but a few miles, when the pack of hounds Captain Wirz was with took their trail, and came after them in full cry. The boys tried to ran, but, exhausted as they were, they could make no headway. Two of them were soon caught, but Tom Williams, who was so desperate that ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... square for water, but having no soles. The bricks had not sunk in the least through the sandy clay bottom upon which they rested, as they were three inches broad. The other form was of two bricks laid side by side, as a sole, with two others built or laid on each other, at both sides, upon the solid ground, and covered with flat stones, the building being packed on each side of ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... Pierre l'Echelle, where they were furnished with woollen leggings to protect their legs from the snow. Here also they procured a ladder and began the tedious work of traversing the glaciers. Hitherto their route had lain chiefly on solid ground—over grassy slopes and along rocky paths. It was now to be confined almost entirely to the ice, which they found to be cut up in all directions with fissures, so that great caution was needed in crossing crevasses and creeping round slippery ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... memory and his ears, but who had sufficient faculty left to hate the English, to oppress the people, to be corrupt and venal beyond all conception, and to appoint subordinates as flagitious as himself. 'Bad ministers,' wrote Burnes, 'are in every government solid ground for unpopularity; and I doubt if ever a king had a worse set than has Shah Soojah.' The oppressed people appealed to the British functionaries, who remonstrated with the minister, and the minister punished the people for appealing to the British functionaries. The Shah was free to confer ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... (as well the King as my lord the Prince) laboured in divers parts." When Owyn is represented by Shakspeare as recounting the various successful struggles in which he had tried his strength with Bolinbroke, the poet had solid ground on which to build the ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... say that the romances of to-day are not told; that a man and woman of to-day keep the romance apart of their life from the world—of all things most sacred. You may discuss this point with eloquence and at length, but you are not on solid ground. A great romance cannot be veiled from the world, because of all properties that the world waits for, this is the most crying need. Great lovers must be first of all great men and women; and lofty love invariably finds expression, ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... told Mr. Batholommey or me," went on Mrs. Batholommey, climbing still higher on to solid ground, "who the ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... hands and swinging his weight back and forth like a pendulum. At the up-swing of his body to the right, he let go and plunged out, landing half across one of the reed islets. The Khatkan clawed his way to his knees, gained his feet, and leaped for the next bit of solid ground. ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... the possibility of sending American troops to France. Hugh wanted to go into the aviation corps when he was old enough but Bob thought the infantry and solid ground under his feet would be good ...
— Bob Cook and the German Spy • Tomlinson, Paul Greene
... Frank and Lona to fall into the stream. They struck where the water was quite deep, and they were unharmed, although the girl was unconscious when our hero bore her to solid ground. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish |
