"Thunderstorm" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... enough about it. The subtle way had failed. Now he was going all out. And he was really quite safe. With the broken cables to act as conductors, the first thunderstorm would obliterate all proof of his activities in this valley. Mercury, because of its high electrical potential, was cut off from communication with other worlds. Moulton, even if he had knowledge of what went on, could not send ...
— A World is Born • Leigh Douglass Brackett
... the action of the Leyden phial or jar. Suggests lightning-rods. Sends a kite into the clouds during a thunderstorm; through the kite-string obtains a spark of lightning which throws into divergence the loose fibres of the string, just as an ordinary ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... imprest me, and a portrait of Szopen (Chopin) in fine profile when laid out dead. For amusement, there was a Paul Potter bull beside a Paul Potter willow, delightfully unconscious of a coming Paul Potter thunderstorm, and a miniature of Shakespeare which did not resemble any of the portraits of him that I am familiar with. Any amount of Turkish trappings and reminiscences of Potocki and Kosciuszko, of course. As I had no guide-book, I am quite prepared to learn that I ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... morning of August 4 and 5, in 1689, a terrific thunderstorm had broken over Montreal. Amidst the crack of hail and crash of falling trees, with the thunder reverberating from the mountain like cannonading, whilst the frightened people stood gazing at the play of lightning across their windows, fourteen hundred ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... formulas which I always observe, be the fun fast or slow. I can best explain this by recalling one particular evening on the Mandal river. It was the one occasion when I deemed it necessary to take out a mackintosh. With the exception of a thunderstorm in the early part of July, the downpour as to which was during the night, the days had been of strong and unbroken sunshine; but in the middle of the month there came a close, cloudy day when the flies were exceedingly troublesome, and the only mosquitoes ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... I have said, had played havoc with the parapet. In the next spell of darkness Peter crawled through the gap and twisted among some snowy hillocks. He was no longer afraid of shells, any more than he was afraid of a veld thunderstorm. But he was wondering very hard how he should ever get to the Russians. The Turks were behind him now, but there was the biggest danger ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... do, except bury 'em. There'd been a bit of a thunderstorm in the teak, you see, and they were both stone dead and as black as charcoal. That's what they really were, you see—charcoal. They fell to bits when we tried to shift 'em. The man who was standin' up had the false ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... by a thunderstorm, and he sought shelter in a little house just outside of a town. It was a working-man's home, and the owner was a Slav like himself, a new emigrant from White Russia; he bade Jurgis welcome in his home language, and told him to come to the kitchen-fire and ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... ago it was very hot. Afterwards we had a thunderstorm, followed by rain from the south-west. The wind has veered a point northerly, and the barometer is rising. This morning at half-past five the valley below was filled with white mist. Above it the tops of the trees on the highest points ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... of Jordantown from one end to the other was charged with thunderstorm possibilities. The wives of all the citizens were attending hurriedly to their household affairs, and then attending to other affairs which were not household. Every day some council or committee met in the Woman's Building. ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... to him. "No, dear heart," he said. "I am not sick. For a moment fear outwitted me, a Fabian. You must promise me not to be afraid, whatever happens. Is it cruel to warn you of what may never come to you? But our days are troubled. Jove's thunderstorm has broken upon us. Your husband is among the lofty. It is only the obscure who are sure of escaping the lightning. Send for me, if you need me. Remember whose blood is in you. I must go—there may yet be time." He kissed her ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... little water. And so they had pushed on, eagerly, hopefully, till the terrible truth began to dawn on the older and more experienced bushman. The weather for the last two days had been dull and cloudy, they had not caught a glimpse of the sun, and hourly they had expected a thunderstorm, which would not only clear the air, but would supply them with the water they needed; but to-day the clouds had all cleared away, and the only effect of their presence had been that they had lost their bearings completely. Where and when they ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... in due course; we had a big thunderstorm, but in no other respect was Monday large. The Boers signalised the occasion by the inauguration of a new plan of campaign, which, if the gods were kind, would soon compel the surrender of the Diamond City. The plan—like all great plans—was simple; a dozen guns were trained ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... third time marched upon Rome. Slaves within the city opened the Salarian gate to their countrymen, and on the 24th of August, 410, the sack of the city began. To add to the horrors of the scene, a terrific thunderstorm was raging. For three days Rome was given up to pillage. Only the Christian temples were respected, which were crowded by those who sought within them an asylum. Rome had been the center of Paganism. The scattering and destruction of its patrician ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... in mosaic, except one, and they are at work on one which is to replace this single oil-piece. The studio appeared in good order, but there were only two men at work, as the Government spends very little money upon it at present. From one of the open galleries we (Morier and I) saw a thunderstorm, with gusts of wind, flashes of lightning, and rain. It was amazingly grand from that place as it swept over the city and made us 'sharers in its fierce delight.' Then to the Borghese Gardens, and back to one of those sunsets ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... Noachian Deluge, and he wept bitterly. Meyer thought this rather too much, the Deluge being so remote an event, and, after that, though Meyer read pathetic things in his best manner, Kaspar remained unmoved. He wrote a long account of his remarkable magnetic sensations during and before the first thunderstorm after his arrival at Nuremberg. Yet, before his appearance there, he must have heard plenty of thunderstorms, though he pretended that this was his first. The sight of the moon produced in him 'emotions of horror.' He had ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... little child, so young I can remember nothing earlier, a severe thunderstorm passed over our home. Terrified, I ran to my mother, who placed my hands together, and pointing upward repeated over and over again ...
— How I Know God Answers Prayer - The Personal Testimony of One Life-Time • Rosalind Goforth
... normal and abnormal, which exists.'—It appears that the galvanic communications, external to the Observatory, had been in a bad state, the four wires to London Bridge having probably been injured by a thunderstorm in the last autumn, and the Report states that 'The state of the wires has not enabled us to drop the Ball at Deal. The feeble current which arrives there has been used for some months merely as giving a signal, by which an attendant is guided in dropping the Ball by ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... intelligent social student is not whether the acts of Czolgosz or Averbuch were practical, any more than whether the thunderstorm is practical. The thing that will inevitably impress itself on the thinking and feeling man and woman is that the sight of brutal clubbing of innocent victims in a so-called free Republic, and the degrading, soul-destroying economic struggle, furnish the spark that ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... whose good offices in the first instance he probably owed his English preferment. He had not yet become the most powerful man in the kingdom, the darling of the English people, the husband of the King's sister, the man whom, on his own testimony,—much as he feared a thunderstorm,—Henry feared "more than all the thunder and lightning in the world!" The Earl of Arundel should have been the cup-bearer; but being too young to discharge the office, his kinsman the Earl of Surrey officiated for him. The citizens of Winchester were privileged to cook the banquet; and the ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... Bourassa, and Finden stood in the little waiting-room of the hospital at Jansen, one at each window, and watched the wild thunderstorm which had broken over the prairie. The white heliographs of the elements flashed their warnings across the black sky, and the roaring artillery of the thunder came after, making the circle of prairie and tree and stream a theatre of anger and conflict. The streets of Jansen were ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... sermons. I went round finding eatable things and generally thinking; but I tell you I was bored to death before the first day was out. It shows my luck—the very day I landed the weather changed. A thunderstorm went by to the north and flicked its wing over the island, and in the night there came a drencher and a howling wind slap over us. It wouldn't have taken much, you know, to upset ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... about that kind of talk which is merely luminous and restful, a higher power of silence, the quiet of the evening shared by ruminating friends. There is something, aside from personal preference, to be alleged in support of this omission. Those who are no chimney-cornerers, who rejoice in the social thunderstorm, have a ground in reason for their choice. They get little rest indeed; but restfulness is a quality for cattle; the virtues are all active, life is alert, and it is in repose that men prepare themselves for evil. On the other hand, they are bruised into a knowledge ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a thunderstorm to-day. The weather is quite spring-like, the days are warm but the ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... larger force, but Edward the better position. Philip's army included a number of hired Genoese crossbowmen, on whom he placed great dependence; but a thunderstorm had wet their bowstrings, which rendered them nearly useless, and, as they advanced toward the English, the afternoon sun shone so brightly in their eyes that they could not take accurate aim. The English archers, on the other hand, had kept their long bows in their cases, so that the strings were ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... this moment it seems a pity," she murmured softly. "You will not feel so happy when you know, and it's all over and past and forgotten. It's a thunderstorm that has rolled by and left us again in the sunlight. We are in Paradise now, are ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... however, having noticed the fall in the mercury that had given us our first warning of the coming blow. On the top of this oversight, the officer of the watch had made the fatal mistake of supposing that the change, when it made itself apparent, meant nothing more serious than the working up of a thunderstorm. He had therefore contented himself with clewing up the royals and hauling down the flying-jib, after which he had awaited the outburst with equanimity. When, therefore, it came, they were utterly unprepared, and the ship was caught ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... answered, with a light laugh. "If he objects to letting me in, I shall take great pleasure in making short work of him. I am rather sorry you have put on that uniform. Your appearance will probably inspire so much respect that they will all act like sheep in a thunderstorm,—huddle together, and bleat or squeal. It is some consolation to think that unless I appeared with an adjutant they would not believe that I ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... past weeks was broken just after sunset by a terrific thunderstorm, and the fury of the elemental outburst covered all noises and allowed the toilers to work without any precaution. But, alas! their very haste was their undoing. The head, blunted and worn, broke off short in the depth of the wall. Attempts ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... way he had the experience of a tropical thunderstorm, after having been well warned by the sinking of the barometer through the whole of the day, the 27th of April. 'At 7.30 the breeze came up, and the big drops began, when suddenly a bright forked flash ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and get her blanket, and together they would flee to his country. But unfortunately for the lovers the girl's two brothers had seen the meeting, and after procuring their guns started in pursuit of them. A heavy thunderstorm was coming on at the time. The lovers hastened to, and took shelter under a cliff of rocks, at Black Hawk's watchtower. Soon after a loud peal of thunder was heard, the cliff of rocks was shattered in a thousand pieces, and the lovers buried beneath, while in full view ...
— Autobiography of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, or Black Hawk • Black Hawk
... save a large quantity of the wine by drinking it, and what was left, together with the dinner on the table, was consumed by Admiral Cockburn and his staff. By nightfall the White House, the Treasury, and the War Office were in flames, and only a severe thunderstorm checked the conflagration.* ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... The thunderstorm increases till it drowns the noise of the ford and of the descending battalions, making them seem further off than before. The sentinel is about to retreat to the shed when he discerns two female figures in the gloom. Enter MRS. DALBIAC and MRS. ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... Thaddeus, upon whom this thunderstorm had unexpectedly descended, arose in confusion, and for some moments said nothing, but looked upon his rival more and more terribly and sternly; at that moment by great good luck the Chamberlain sneezed twice. "Vivat!" cried everybody; he bowed to the company, and slowly tapped ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... to you for ever. But my father is quite different. I believe he hears half a note higher with one ear than with the other. At all events the effect of music on him is dreadful. He behaves like a cat in a thunderstorm. If you want to please him, talk to him about old bindings. Next to shooting he likes bindings better than anything in the world—in fact he's a capital ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... Pollux were the special guardians of sailors at sea. When, during a thunderstorm, a light played around the masts and sails of the ship, Castor and Pollux were supposed to be present, watching over the ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... day, St. Peter's, when the pope happened to be in one of the rooms of his ordinary dwelling with Cardinal Capuano and Monsignare Poto, his private chamberlain, he saw through the open windows that a very black cloud was coming up. Foreseeing a thunderstorm, he ordered the cardinal and the chamberlain to shut the windows. He had not been mistaken; for even as they were obeying his command, there came up such a furious gust of wind that the highest chimney of the Vatican ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and, stranger still, he looks happy, even through all his sufferings in this horrible prison. His face has a sort of brightness in it, like the mysterious light there is sometimes to be seen in a dark sky, behind a thunderstorm. A radiance is about him too as if, in spite of all he is enduring, he has some big joy that shines through everything and makes ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... and indeed, as no fire in stove or fireplace was ever allowed within, it was a safe enough place for the explosive material. In Hanover, the powder room was in the steeple, while in Quincy the "powder-closite" was in the beams of the roof. Whenever there chanced to be a thunderstorm during the time of public worship, the people of Beverly ran out under the trees, and in other towns they left the meeting-house if the storm seemed severe or near; still they built no powder houses. Grain, too, was stored in the loft ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... along a path through fairly thick scrub as high as a man's waist. We were moving parallel to, and about 300 yards below, the crestline of the ridge. When we had gone another mile a spattering of "overs" began to fall around like the first heavy drops of a thunderstorm. So wrapped in cotton wool is a now-a-days Commander-in-Chief that this was the first musketry fire I could claim to have come under since the beginning of the war. To sit in a trench and hear flights of bullets flop into the sandbag parapet, or pass harmlessly overhead, is ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... may produce structural changes in insects, so as to change the character of their 'songs' as I prefer to call their sounds. This can best be studied on the battlefields of France, though I suppose I could get the same effect here, if there was a continuous thunderstorm with ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... thunderstorm every day—at least not at home," corrected Zaidie, "but on Jupiter they must have two or three eclipses every day. Meanwhile, there goes Jupiter himself. What a difference distance makes! This little thing is only a trifle larger than ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... setting in I came to the top of a hill, and from it I could see a few straggling houses at a short distance. I had with me two or three men, who proposed to put up a booth for the night. Unhappily for my comfort, a thunderstorm came on with heavy rain, and the booth was no protection. I was taken to a house a short way off, but on entering it the smell from the animals occupying it with their owners was so strong that it drove me out. I preferred to face the storm to bearing the effluvia of that ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... communicates to each of us, if we will trust our poor sinful souls to Him, a new power of living which is triumphant over temptation, and gives the victory over sin if we will be true to Him. And so the last shreds of the veil, like the torn clouds of a spent thunderstorm, are parted into filmy rags and float away below the horizon, leaving the untarnished heavens and the flaming sunshine; and 'we with unveiled faces' can lift them up to be irradiated by the light. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... northern cities with troops: soldiers were lurking in every old courtyard, up all the narrow alleys, waiting for some hardy Socialist to "demonstrate." But it was not the plentiful troops, not even a lively thunderstorm that swept Rome all the afternoon, which discouraged the Socialists: they too were in doubt and apathy. They were hesitating, passing resolutions, defining themselves into fine segments of political opinion—and waiting for ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... thunderstorm of the most violent kind occurred yesterday, when I was quite alone in the Stadthaus. The rain fell in sheets, deluges, streams, and the lightning flashed perfectly blue through a "darkness which could be felt." There is a sort of ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... a man about whom conversation always burst like a thunderstorm the moment he left the room. This arose from many separate touches about him. He was a light, loose person, who wore light, loose clothes, generally white, as if he were in the tropics; he was lean and graceful, like a panther, and ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... along the coast to Adramytium (Adramyti) and Antandros, whence it again struck inland, and, crossing the ridge of Ida, descended into the valley of the Scamander. Some losses were incurred from the effects of a violent thunderstorm amid the mountains; but they cannot have been of a any great consequence. On reaching the Scamander the army found its first difficulty with respect to water. That stream was probably low, and the vast host of men and animals were unable to obtain from it a supply ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... of smoke, which spread itself in the air like a huge duster made from turkey feathers. There came another shriek, a little nearer, and the ground rose in a huge black mushroom, which boiled and writhed like the clouds of an advancing thunderstorm. Boom! Boom! Two vast, all-pervading roars came to Jimmie's ears; and his knees began to quake. By heck! He was under fire! He looked ahead; there must be Germans just up there! Was a fellow supposed to ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... she said. "Just look at the gray clouds above the mountain! I am afraid we shall have a thunderstorm." ...
— Cornelli • Johanna Spyri
... shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue; Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm, With the standards of the peoples plunging through the thunderstorm; Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battleflags were furl'd In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world. There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... sent down to Keighley by an opportune cart; and after early tea they set off to walk thither—no doubt in some excitement; for, independently of the cause of their going to London, it was Anne's first visit there. A great thunderstorm overtook them on their way that summer evening to the station; but they had no time to seek shelter. They only just caught the train at Keighley, arrived at Leeds, and were whirled up by the night train ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... command of this force and directed to seize Brynbella by a night attack. Beacon Hill was occupied without opposition, and the Naval gun, Field battery, and 2nd Queen's were detailed to hold it as a support to the attack; to these was subsequently added the 1st Border. A thunderstorm of great severity now delayed the advance upon Brynbella; the night was intensely dark; the rocky nature of the ground and the absence of beaten tracks made the task of assembling the troops and directing their movements extremely difficult. It was not, therefore, until after midnight ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... of September 30, there was the most awful thunderstorm I ever witnessed,—flash after flash of the most blinding lightning, followed by deafening peals of thunder; and as it echoed from mountain to mountain the uproar was terrifying. I have always loved a storm; the beat of hail and rain, and the roar ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... a little cathedral town, very like the narrow and tumble-down parts of Florence, only more so. The streets were a seething caldron of cattle-market when we entered, which made us feel like a tea-cup in a bull-ring (or is it thunderstorm?) as we drove through needle's-eye ways bristling ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... to them. The small Colony houses which they were to occupy would be uncomfortable. The very sun in the sky seemed alien to them, for the Highland drizzle was seen no more. The days were bright, the weather warm, the nights cool, and there was an occasional August thunderstorm, or hailstorm which alarmed them. The traders, the Indians, the half-breed trappers, and runners were all new to them. Their Gaelic language, which they claimed as that of Eden, was of little value to them except where an occasional company-servant chanced to be a countryman of ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... fact which, driven home by the funeral scene this morning, the rustling crowd come to see the young Squire, the elm box, the heap of flowers—had now flung him down on this couch, crushed, broken, and hopeless, like young ivy after a thunderstorm. ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... air was filled with wild yells and still wilder curses as the two foes grappled. It was war in all its savagery. Tomahawks and knives were used as freely as rifles. Stabbing, shooting, wrestling, the men fought each other more like wildcats than human beings. A fearful thunderstorm burst forth, too. Rain fell in torrents, a raging wind tore through the tree tops, thunder and lightning added ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... the thunderstorm, blew leaves and straws in through the open window she started violently, imagining that Herr Ortlieb had come to call her to account and her trial was to begin. The barber's widow, whom she had seen a few days before ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... hospital accommodation. The noise of mallet and hammer echoed in the soldiers' berth ominously; the workmen might have been making coffins. The prison was strangely silent, with the lowering silence which precedes a thunderstorm; and the convicts on deck no longer told stories, nor laughed at obscene jests, but sat together, moodily patient, as if waiting for something. Three men—two prisoners and a soldier—had succumbed since Rufus Dawes had been removed to the hospital; and though ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... you want to, but I'm going in. I never did think it was right to tempt Providence, and if there was a feather bed in the house I'd get on it. Can't the windows be lowered, Beth, and somebody start the pianola and turn on the lights? A thunderstorm like this gives me such a sinking feeling in my stomach I feel like I'm sitting on a trap-door with a broken catch. My ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... Uayeyab demon, is set up during the xma kaba kin (Cod. Dres. 25c). Now, it is true that a connection of ideas can be established with considerable certainty between clouds, rain, and stone, for in that region every rain was a thunderstorm. But at the same time it will be found comprehensible that a barrier of doubt was removed when I discovered in the course of my Zapotec studies that in Zapotec the same word was used for "rain" and ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas
... Lascars, to catch any breeze that the pace of the ship might give us. The sea was like smoky oil, except where it turned to fire under our forefoot and whirled back into the dark in smears of dull flame. There was a thunderstorm some miles away: we could see the glimmer of the lightning. The ship's cow, distressed by the heat and the smell of the ape-beast in the cage, lowed unhappily from time to time in exactly the same key as the lookout man at the bows answered the hourly call from the bridge. The trampling tune of ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... Children do pick up fears in this way; for example, children who are {144} naturally not the least bit afraid of thunder and lightning may acquire a fear of them from adults who show fear during a thunderstorm. ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... of the Gulf of Lions, during the reign of Louis XIV. On one of his marauding expeditions Bonivon sailed up an estuary of the Rhone rather further than he had intended, and having no pilot on board, ran ashore in the darkness. A thunderstorm came on; a general panic ensued; and Bonivon soon found himself struggling in a whirlpool. Powerful swimmer though he was, he would most certainly have been drowned had not some one come to his assistance, and, freeing him from the heavy clothes which weighed him down, dragged him on dry land. The ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... even acknowledge that we are not exempted; and yet, when actually visited by personal or relative troubles, we seem like a traveller suddenly overtaken by a thunderstorm; all is confusion and alarm: our faith, and hope, and joy, take wing, and leave us solitary and sad. In our alarm we forget God, think it "strange," brood with a melancholy, but guilty pleasure, over our sufferings, and act as if we thought that "God had ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... Nelly strained her bonds, how she gecked and flouted and looked above him, and curtsied past him, and dropped his hand as if it were live coals, while the heavy brow grew darker, until it showed like a thunderstorm over the burning ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... room. But before she had time to recover her breath from her explanation with Panshin and her mother, another thunderstorm broke over her, and this time from a quarter whence she had least expected it. Marfa Timofeevna entered her room, and immediately slammed the door behind her. The old woman's face was pale, her cap was awry, her eyes were flashing, her hands and lips were trembling. Liza was amazed: never before ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... simplified life a lot. And as long as it did not hurt anybody else—what was really the difference? A goody-goody Sunday-school teacher had told him, when he was five, that the lightning would smite him if he told a lie. Whereupon he had told a lie deliberately during the course of the next thunderstorm to test Mr. Goody-Goody's veracity, and proved him a liar, ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... metropolis of machinery itself, sitting down in a solitary coffee-room glaring with gas, with no appetite, a whirling head, and not a plan or purpose for the morrow, why was he there? Because a being, whose name even was unknown to him, had met him in a hedge alehouse during a thunderstorm, and told him that the Age ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... as a general rule, that anything written 'on the spot' is worthless. A certain young poet, who could when he liked do good things, printed some verses, which he declared in a sub-title were 'Written on the top of Snowdon in a thunderstorm.' He asked an opinion, and one replied: 'Written on the top of Snowdon in a thunderstorm.' The poet was naturally angry—and yet, ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... that had precipitated the conflict. As I came through Ockham (for that was the way I returned, and not through Send and Old Woking) I saw along the western horizon a blood-red glow, which as I drew nearer, crept slowly up the sky. The driving clouds of the gathering thunderstorm mingled there with masses of ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... only a year and eight months. He had no time to do anything of permanent value, and was hardly powerful enough to do it, even if time and opportunity had been afforded. In the thunderstorm gathering over Rome and the Papacy, he represents that momentary lull during which men hold their breath and murmur. All the place-seekers, parasites, flatterers, second-rate artificers, folk of facile talents, whom Leo gathered round ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... that we have all had, times without number. I looked that up the other day for Roads, so I know the reference; but you will find it a garden of flowers from beginning to end. All through the passion keeps steadily rising, from the thunderstorm at the country-house—there was thunder in that story too—up to the last wild delirious interview; either Lotte was no good at all, or else Werther should have remained alive after that; either he knew his woman too well, or else ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... history of France during that period should be looked for in those groups which as 'Centre' or 'Marais' seemed for a long time but a drove of supernumeraries, and understands that it should occasionally protect its eyes a little from the lightning flashes of the Gironde and Mountain thunderstorm; so the history of the Reformation period should pay attention—and it has done so for a long time—to the broad central sphere permeated by the Erasmian spirit. One of his opponents said: 'Luther has drawn a large part of the Church to himself, Zwingli and Oecolampadius also some part, but Erasmus ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... managed to edge the words into the blinks until they came to "Zwaartzkopjesfontein." The sun always gave out in the middle of it; the regulations demanded that the word should be begun afresh every time, and finally the sun sank victoriously on the fell word. Darkness set in, and a blinding thunderstorm with deluges of rain, but the signallers ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... nature; but it was somewhat grudgingly admitted that music might express the emotions caused by them. In the face of this, to quote a well-known instance, we have the "Pastoral" symphony of Beethoven, with the thrush, cuckoo, and thunderstorm. The birds and the storm are very plainly indicated; but it is not possible for the music to be an expression of the emotions caused by them, for the very simple reason that no emotions are caused by the cuckoo and thrush, and those caused by thunderstorms ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... very far over the tall hills, which Indians call the Backbone of the Great Spirit, the people saw two great lights, brighter and larger than stars, moving very fast towards the lands of the Shawanos. One was just as high as the other, and they were both as high as the goat-sucker flies before a thunderstorm. At first they were close together, but as they came nearer they grew wider apart. Soon our people saw, by their twinkling, that they were two eyes, and in a little while the body of a great man, whose head nearly reached the sky(9), came after them. Brothers, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... the full fury of one of these awful visitations. We suffered considerable terror during this storm, but when we were all again safe, and comfortably sheltered, we rejoiced that the accident had occurred, as it gave us the best possible opportunity of witnessing, in all its glory, a transatlantic thunderstorm. It was, however, great imprudence that exposed us to it, for we quitted the house, and mounted a hill at a considerable distance from it, for the express purpose of watching to advantage the extraordinary aspect of the clouds. When we ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... a daily paper a severe thunderstorm which recently visited Luton was not heard by the audience in a local concert hall. It is rumoured that a performer was at the time reciting a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, June 2, 1920 • Various
... the intention of devoting more time to the eastern end of the island. It was well we did so, for, shortly after leaving Padalarang, rain began to fall in torrents, and the afternoon and night were passed in a severe thunderstorm which was to cause us delay. Part of the line was washed away near Moentilan, and our train was over three hours late in reaching Djocjakarta on ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... could be seen dragging the dead away, and carrying the wounded over the hills to their villages. Reinforcements, however, joined them, and they renewed their attack, but without much spirit, at 9.30 P.M. They were again repulsed with loss. Once, during a thunderstorm that broke over the camp, they charged the 45th Sikhs' position, and were driven off with the bayonet. Only two men were wounded during ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... Castle must have been a sad exchange from her green valleys—and the more, that they say she was soon to have wedded the Lord of Montagudo, the victor of that tourney. The Montagudos had us in bitter feud ever after, and my father always looked like a thunderstorm if their name was spoken. They say she used to wander on the old battlements like a ghost, ever growing thinner and whiter, and scarce seemed to joy even in her babes, but would only weep over them. That angered the Black Wolf, and there were chidings which made matters little better, ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 'is feet in the fender, and old Burge, as soon as he 'ad got 'is senses back, went into the bar and complained to 'is niece, and she came into the parlour like a thunderstorm. ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... quite certain that the energy of an impression fades from the memory, and becomes more and more indistinct every day; and thus we compare a faded and indistinct image with the decision and certainty of one present to the senses. How constantly do we affirm that the thunderstorm of last week was the most terrible one we ever saw in our lives, because we compare it, not with the thunderstorm of last year, but with the faded ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... really explain it,' he said, 'but that's no wonder. One cannot explain a thunderstorm, but ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... defensive force, destroyed the town, and leaving half his fighting regiment to hold the conquered city he moved through the forest toward the Akasava city proper. He camped in the forest, and his men spent an uncomfortable night, for a thunderstorm broke over the river, and the dark was filled with quick flashes and the heavens crashed noisily. There was still a rumbling and a growling above his head when he assembled his forces in the grey ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... himself was killed, and his body barbarously mutilated.(257) The king, who was in the earl's camp, only saved himself by crying out in time "I am Henry of Winchester, your king." Whilst the battle was raging the city was visited with a terrible thunderstorm—an evil omen of ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... operation of personal beings as responsible for all that occurs. This is not so much the product of careful and elaborate philosophising, it is closer akin to the naive thinking of a child concerning a thunderstorm. Primitive thought accepts the universal operation of living and intelligent forces as an unquestionable fact. Modern thought tends more and more surely in the direction of regarding the universe as a complex of self-adjusting, non-conscious forces. Primitive thought assumes a supernatural ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... was either those immovable rocks, which threw him back in foam, whirling wildly, or it was that fringe of gaunt skeleton trees hanging from the bank playing a "pull devil, pull baker" contest that made him hiss with vexation. But this was an elemental roar. I said to M'bo: "That's a thunderstorm away among the mountains." "No, sir," says he, ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... is perhaps a little spoilt by the affectation of infallibility, qualified it is true by an aside or two, which so often mars the Christopherian utterances. But Wilson's description has never been bettered. The thunderstorm on the hill, the rough conviviality at the illicit distillery, the evening voyage on the loch, match, if they do not beat, anything of the kind in much more recent books far better known to the present generation. ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... and began the journey through the woods on the southern shore. But they had not gone far when they were overtaken by a thunderstorm, which drove them to the shelter of a cave at the base of a cliff forming one side of a broad ravine. The rain fell in torrents, mingled with hail, the thunder rolled and reverberated among the hills, and the skies were riven by vivid ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler
... the swaying Jacob's ladder, and the boat's painter was cast off; and under three oars she moved slowly off over the hot sun-kissed swells. Advice and farewells boomed like a thunderstorm from the steamer, and an animated frieze of faces and figures and ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... either all day or every day; but sometimes for weeks together Simla is smothered in a blanket of grey mist. Normally the rain comes in bursts with longer or shorter breaks between. About the third week of September the rains often cease quite suddenly, the end being usually proclaimed by a thunderstorm. Next morning one wakes to a new heaven and a new earth, a perfectly cloudless sky, and clean, crisp, cool air. This ideal weather lasts for the next three months. Even in December the days are made pleasant by bright sunshine, and the range of temperature is much less than ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... in the seamstress with a whirlwind of denial, and the altercation wages fast and furious, and poor, little, delicate Mrs. Simmons stands like a kitten in a thunderstorm in the midst of a regular ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... sense of awe is tempered by the feeling that in spite of their size the trees have a beauty all their own. Lifted to such heights, the branches appear to be covered with masses of peculiarly soft and rounded foliage like the piled-up banks of a white cumulus cloud before a thunderstorm. At the base of such a tree the eye is caught by the sharp, triangular outline of one of its young progeny. The lower branches sweep the ground. The foliage is harsh and rough. In almost no other species of trees is there such a change from comparatively ungraceful youth ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... filled his whole soul that moment without thought for the future, without analysis, without suppositions or surmises, without doubts and without questioning. It was an instant of full, direct, purely instinctive joy. But at that very moment something like a thunderstorm took place in the office. The assistant superintendent, still shaken by Raskolnikov's disrespect, still fuming and obviously anxious to keep up his wounded dignity, pounced on the unfortunate smart lady, who had been gazing at ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... hospitable quarters at the Bishop's palace, and after a brief stay crossed in an open boat to Port Mahon in Minorca—a rather risky trip, as the youths, with their love of adventure, made it by night, and were overtaken on the way by an alarming thunderstorm. Whilst in Minorca Lord John received a letter from his father, informing him of the death of his old friend General Fitzpatrick, and also stating that the Duke meant to use his influence at Tavistock to obtain for his son a seat in ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... be cooler soon," said Paul. "There's a big thunderstorm coming up. See, around the corner of the mountain. See how black it is now, over the Eagle Rocks" He took her hand in his bramble-scarred little fingers, and led her along, talking proudly of his own virtue. "I've moved Henry's ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... as to her future conduct, no qualms of conscience as to the destiny of France now ruffled Napoleon's mind. Like a sky cleared by a thunderstorm, once more it shone forth with clear radiance. Those who saw him now were astonished at his calmness, except in some moments when he declaimed at his wife and child being kept from him by Austrian schemes. Then he stormed and wept and declared that he would ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... Dr Porhoet, she determined to make one more attempt. It was late at night, and they sat with open windows in the sitting-room of the inn. There was a singular oppressiveness in the air which suggested that a thunderstorm was at hand. Susie prayed for it; for she ascribed to the peculiar heat of the last few days much of Arthur's ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... were passing in the St. Nicholas Hotel, the streets were comparatively quiet. It had been a hard day for the rioters, as well as for the police, and they were glad of a little rest. Besides, they had become more or less scattered by a terrific thunderstorm that broke over the city, deluging the streets with water. In the midst of it, there came a telegraphic dispatch to the commissioners, calling for assistance. The tired police were stretched around on the floor or ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... she kicked him—and after that she was forgotten, for the grown people began to talk, and say it had been a hot day, and that the strawberries needed rain—but Eleanor hoped there wouldn't be a thunderstorm. ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... on in a low voice, "the climax came. The Prince had been to dinner. He had to go, because George was so violent. Denham had got my husband to drink, and his paroxysms of anger became terrible. The Prince wanted to stop to protect me, but I asked him to go. It was a rainy night, a violent thunderstorm was going on. I locked myself in the nursery, to protect myself from the fury of George. He came to the door and broke it down." She paused, and her voice leaped an octave. "George turned me ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm, With the standards of the peoples plunging thro' the thunderstorm; [10] ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... this place, the spectator sees in Tannhauser an inconceivable, arbitrary, wavering, miserable creature. (The commencement of his tale in the last act comes too late to make up for that which here must penetrate our mind like a thunderstorm.) Not only the close of the second act, but the entire third act, and in a sense the whole drama, receive their true significance only when the centre of the whole drama, round which it develops itself, as round its kernel, becomes perfectly clear and lucid in that particular passage. ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... thunderstorm that decided me. When I saw it coming up, black and quick, from the northwest, I gave in at once. I had endured a good deal and was prepared to endure more; but I had paid ten dollars for my hat and I was not going ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Russian progress. He talked of them with emotion and reverence, though sometimes with envy. If we were very much bored, the Jew, Lyamshin (a little post-office clerk), a wonderful performer on the piano, sat down to play, and in the intervals would imitate a pig, a thunderstorm, a confinement with the first cry of the baby, and so on, and so on; it was only for this that he was invited, indeed. If we had drunk a great deal—and that did happen sometimes, though not often—we flew into raptures, and even on one ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... neither is there any single passage of such incomparable quality as the thunderstorm in the first scene, a storm not to ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... lord? (He withdraws without a tremor, TWEENY accompanying him. They can all breathe again; the thunderstorm ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... said, "till we get a good thunderstorm You'll see how long the strike'll last, and what Sir Edward Carson has to ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... avail in denying it. But Signor Guido fought my battle, what with reason and what with ranting, what with entreaties and what with threats: so they merely banisht me out of the dear land. And now this thunderstorm brings me the son of my benefactor into my poor little cottage. Come, give me your hand on the strength of ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... Garibaldi's headquarters, fell into the hands of the enemy, and, on the night of the 29th, the French were within the city walls. St Peter's day is the great feast of Rome, and this time, as usual, the cupola of St Peter's was illuminated, the Italian flag flying from the highest point. The thunderstorm, which proverbially accompanies the feast, raged during the night; the French shells flew in all directions; the fight raged fiercer than the storm; Medici held out among the crumbling walls of the Vascello, which had been bombarded ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... "Only a bad thunderstorm," cried the mate. "There, let's go and get some food, gentlemen, and see how our friends are. I daresay we shall be having a deluge of rain before long, and then the sun will come out and I can take ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... Lee called out to Dora Parse. No one ever called her by her full name of Marda Lee, because she was a Lee only by courtesy, having been adopted from a distant wagon when both her parents were killed in a thunderstorm. Marda, wearing the trim tailored skirt and waist that were her usual costume, was putting the big red tablecloth of the "big meals" on the boards. Dora went quickly toward the young girl and ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... produced a scene no one could have imagined. Neither plant nor bird, excepting a few condors wheeling around the higher pinnacles, distracted my attention from the inanimate mass. I felt glad that I was alone: it was like watching a thunderstorm, or hearing in full orchestra a ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... In the city of Cinalua his royal city in the temple of his gods I set it up. In 157 my 29th year (my) army (and) camp I urged, I sent. To the country of Cirkhi[1] I ascended. Their cities I threw down, 158 dug up, (and) burned with fire. Their country like a thunderstorm I swept. Exceeding 159 fear over them I cast. In my 30th year when in the city of Calah I was stopping, Dayan-Assur 160 the Tartan, the Commander of the wide-spreading army at the head of my army I urged, I sent. The river Zab 161 he crossed. To the midst of the cities ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... agent? It may be so, but how is the assertion, that it is so, to be tested? If it be said that the event exceeds the power of natural causes, what can justify such a saying? The day-fly has better grounds for calling a thunderstorm supernatural, than has man, with his experience of an infinitesimal fraction of duration, to say that the most astonishing event that can be imagined is beyond the scope ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... fatigue which had come in between his passionate dreams and this reminder of the sordid realities of his lot went for nothing. The dream and the truth flashed together like the electric opposites in clouds and awoke a rare thunderstorm within doors. But by the time he had got to his hotel this was over, and he crawled wearily upstairs to a fireless room, the air of which struck chill and lonely. The apartment in itself was well ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... loosely under my chin, to make myself watertight during heavy rain. In that bag I passed many nights of very trying weather. On one instance, I selected a hilltop in Switzerland, on the way from Chambery to the Dent du Midi, during a violent and long-continued thunderstorm. The storm began above my head, then slowly sank to my level, and finally subsided below me. Many Alpine travellers, notably Mr. Packe and Mr. Tuckett, have adopted these bags, and used them continually. Macintosh is ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... men experienced such an awe of the unknown. For all they could tell, this small ball in the white man's hand might contain a medicine more deadly than that of his pistol. They stood like children in a thunderstorm, not knowing when or where the ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... I've noticed it," answered the skipper good-humouredly, but slightly derisive at what he considered the presumption of a landsman in thinking it necessary to caution him about the weather. "Another thunderstorm, I take it—they always work up against the wind; but I shall be back again and safe in my ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... only valuable for the moisture which they supply, but for what they bring to us from the atmosphere. During a thunderstorm nitric acid is produced in considerable quantities; and dissolved in the rain drops to a high degree of attenuation, its effects upon soils are highly salutary, as the nitrogen ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... without notice, or rather the indications are often so similar to those of an ordinary thunderstorm that only a skilled and careful ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... rivers and ocean, the air, the sky, the stars, and the sun and moon. The spirits controlled Nature: they brought light and darkness, sunshine and storm, summer and winter; they were manifested in the thunderstorm, the sandstorm, the glare of sunset, and the wraiths of mist rising from the steaming marshes. They controlled also the lives of men and women. The good spirits were the source of luck. The bad spirits caused misfortunes, ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... supported by field-artillery, Imperial Light Horse, and Natal Mounted Volunteers, and the Republicans. Many shells were pitched into the town, and an artillery duel rampaged with such relentless vigour that the general sensation to those who remained enclosed in the town was as though a thunderstorm with earthquake was passing over the place. Nothing worse happened, and the enemy for a while were driven back to their camp and some thirty or more prisoners were taken. Major Charles Kincaid, 1st Royal Irish Fusiliers, with nine wounded prisoners, ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... ripple on the water, except those which the oars made, and the long widening mark of disturbance the little boat left behind it. Still — still, — surely it was Summer's siesta; the very birds were still; but it was not the oppressive rest before a thunderstorm, only the pleasant hush of a summer's day. The very air seemed blue — blue against the mountains, and kept back the sun's fierceness with its light shield; and even the eye was bid to rest, the distant landscape was so hidden under ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... language, he is able to produce in poetry those vast and vague effects of gloom, of foreboding, and of terror, which seem to be proper to music alone. Sometimes his words are heavy with the doubtful horror of an approaching thunderstorm: ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... watched the twilight darken into a deeper shadow—that of a gathering thunderstorm. The trees beyond the garden began to sway restlessly about, and then, with a sudden flash, and distant thunder growl, down came the rain in torrents. Mrs. Rothesay started and woke; like most timid women, she had a great dread ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... within her mother's womb, and it was able to warn her that her unborn baby was seriously thinking of revising its decision to live. While she had staggered under the stones, the child had quailed in the midst of her terror like a naked man above whom breaks a thunderstorm; her nerves had played round him like a shaft of lightning, her loud heart-beat had been the thunder. Now her fear-poisoned blood gave it sickly nourishment, at which the foetal heart beat weakly, so that the embryo knew what ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... and empire, flashing with Siegfried's sword, commanding the planet with Wotan's spear, upbuilding above the heads of men the castle of the gods. It dares measure itself with the terrestrial forces, exults in the fire, soughs through the forest with the thunderstorm, glitters and surges with the river, spans mountains with the rainbow bridge. It is full of the gestures of giants and heroes and gods, of the large proud movements of which men have ever dreamed in days of affluent ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... at this time that Dam's heart went wholly and finally out to Ormonde Delorme who roundly stated that his father, a bemedalled heroic Colonel of Gurkhas, was "in a blind perishing funk" during a thunderstorm and always sought shelter in the wine cellar when one was in progress ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... thunderstorm, the first of the season, had come up, and Constans recognized, to his vexation, that he would have no decent excuse for turning the peddler out-of-doors. So he kept his seat at the table in sulky silence, watching the man closely, ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... was caused by a severe thunderstorm which literally broke right over the camp. I heard the order ring out "To the horse-lines!" and watched (through a convenient hole in the canvas) several "troopers" flying ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... town. The theaters languished, for their happiest scenic inventions were tame and commonplace compared with my lightning-rods. Our street was blocked night and day with spectators, and among them were many who came from the country to see. It was a blessed relief on the second day when a thunderstorm came up and the lightning began to "go for" my house, as the historian Josephus quaintly phrases it. It cleared the galleries, so to speak. In five minutes there was not a spectator within half a mile of my place; but ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... example, where M. Palacios observed it during two years? The distance, greater than 40 leagues, at which the light is observed, has led to the supposition that it might be owing to the effects of a thunderstorm, or of electrical explosions which might daily take place in a pass in the mountains. It is asserted that, on approaching the farol, the rolling of thunder is heard. Others vaguely allege that it is an air-volcano, and that asphaltic soils, like ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... act of sexual intercourse demands the excitement of brain, spinal cord, and every nerve in the body simultaneously, and resembles the lightning flash which restores the equilibrium of electric force disturbed during a thunderstorm. ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... had what so few American speakers have, a voice that sounded the gamut. I heard him once in Exeter Hall say, "Americans, I send my voice careering across the Atlantic like a thunderstorm, to tell the slave-holders of the Carolinas that God's thunderbolts are hot, and to remind the negro that the dawn of his redemption is drawing near," and I seemed to hear his voice reverberating and reechoing back to ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... curiously left by the picture that whether it was a group of girls, or a clump of hollyhocks, they were not in very good humor. The moment chosen, if one might judge from some suggestions of light, was that just before the breaking of a thunderstorm; the girl, if it was a girl, had flashed into sight round the corner of the house where the hollyhocks, if they were hollyhocks, were blowing outward in the first gust of the storm. It could not be denied that there was something fine in the wild toss and pull of ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... interposed Aunt Jane tremulously. "In the sand—why, I am sure that is such a helpful thought! It shows quite plainly that the chest is not buried in—in a rock, you know." She gave the effect of a person trying to deflect a thunderstorm with ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... he said to Saurin, who was taking his first lesson in an unfurnished room of Slam's house, the fine weather having terminated in a thunderstorm, and a wet week to follow. "Don't plant your feet as if you meant to grow to the floor, and keep your knees straight—no, not stiff like that, I mean don't bend them. You wants to step forwards or to step backwards, quick as a wink, always moving the rear foot first, or else ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... the small and scattered British garrisons in San Domingo. But, when further reinforcements from England reached Mole St. Nicholas, a force detached thence under Major-General Whyte made a dash upon Port-au-Prince. Vigorously handled, and under cover of a violent thunderstorm, the landing parties carried an important outwork in handsome style, and thus assured the surrender of the whole place. The spoils were 101 cannon and 32 ships, with cargoes worth about half a million sterling (4th June 1794). This brilliant success cost the assailants ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... been accurately predicted did we but thoroughly understand the forces themselves. So, too, it is with great political upheavals. The revolution which drenched the whole of France with blood in 1789 is no more difficult to explain than the thunderstorm which drenches the parched earth with rain on a hot midsummer night. It was simply the reaction after a century of oppression, extravagance and vice. In like manner the great revolution whose development we are about to trace was merely the natural result of long years ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... hardly felt it. My head throbbed hotly—and yet I was not sensible of any pain. It seemed as if I were surrounded and enwrapped in some electric atmosphere which altered all the ordinary conditions of sensation. I looked up at the clear, calm sky, and wondered if a thunderstorm was coming. I stopped, and buttoned my coat round me, and questioned myself if I had caught a cold, or if I was going to have a fever. The sun sank below the moorland horizon; the gray twilight trembled over the dark waters of the lake. I went ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... parted with him with regret when he left us at Funchal, where we put in to land him and correct an error in our chronometers, which had gone wrong from an accident resulting from a violent thunderstorm we fell in with when crossing the Equator for the last time, in which the ship got struck by the lightning, when the captain's cabin, where the chronometers were kept, was seriously damaged by the ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... it, and insisted that Rip had been out of his head and that this was one point on which he always remained flighty. The old Dutch inhabitants, however, almost universally gave it full credit. Even to this day they never hear a thunderstorm of a summer afternoon about the Kaatskill, but they say Hendrick Hudson and his crew are at their game of nine-pins; and it is a common wish of all hen-pecked husbands in the neighborhood, when life hangs heavy on their hands, that they might have a quieting draught out of ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... overcast with dense, murky vapours, which totally hid the sun, and the air was excessively hot, moist, and sultry as before a thunderstorm—an unusual phenomenon in Womla. Black boulders and crags, speckled with lichens, and carpeted with coarse herbage, shut out the prospect on every side but one, where the edge of the platform on which the car was resting ran along the sky. ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... has given his field for produce to a cultivator, and has received the produce of his field, and afterwards a thunderstorm has ravaged the field or carried away the produce, the loss is ...
— The Oldest Code of Laws in the World - The code of laws promulgated by Hammurabi, King of Babylon - B.C. 2285-2242 • Hammurabi, King of Babylon
... 11, 1809, during the night in a thunderstorm, when the guides had lost the road to Zitza, near the range of mountains formerly called ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... water holes. Our bivouac was an ill-omened beginning to the route march of the column under Colonel Martin. One of the periodical summer gales came on, raising whirlwinds of dust and sand. To complete our discomfiture a thunderstorm followed, and there was a heavy sprinkling of rain for herbage, but too much for men. Truly, misfortunes rarely befall singly. It was a big Nile year, not a flood, but enough and to spare. A blessing, ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... enjoy the mosquitoes, but about midnight we went on again, taking advantage of the comparative cool of the night. At dawn we rested for three hours, and then started once more, and laboured on till about ten o'clock, when a thunderstorm, accompanied by a deluge of rain, overtook us, and we spent the next six ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... not last long—a thunderstorm comes up. The wind mutters overhead, the rain patters on the leaves, the coast opposite seems to shrink into itself, as if it would fly from the storm. The sea grows dark and rough, and white ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... detachments which scoured the plain on the convoy's flanks, now to the south, now to the north, it was evident that before he could have gone two versts he must have been recaptured. The Tartar horsemen swarmed—it actually appeared as if they sprang from the earth—like insects which a thunderstorm brings to the surface of the ground. Flight under these conditions would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible. The soldiers of the escort displayed excessive vigilance, for they would have paid for the ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... in the nerve to sleep under this roof, when it would be so handy, in a thunderstorm like we had the other day, for instance, that looks as if they believed some in the ghost story, ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... handled it like an artist. Of the three books into which this biography of Nicholas Barton is divided, the first is so much the best that the second seems a little tame. This was, of course, inevitable, for the first book is the thunderstorm, the second the gentle rain which follows it. I have another reason for deriving particular pleasure from the opening book, and that is that the scene is laid in a Battersea Park flat. I have long since ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 25, 1914 • Various
... in the open, their bed-tarps folded to shed as much moisture as possible. The soggy patter of the rain on her teepee lulled the girl to sleep but she was frequently roused. A dull muttering materialized suddenly into a sharp thunderstorm and the canvas walls of her teepee were almost continuously illuminated by successive flashes. The picketed horses fretted and stamped. Between peals she heard the voices of the night guards singing ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... us. Something had happened at the school where they were that they could not stay any longer. I can remember distinctly the first night they ate dinner with us. It seemed to me that it was like a terrific thunderstorm that never quite broke. Everybody was trying to be nice and polite, but underneath it all there was a kind of lightning of all kinds of feelings, hurt feelings and wrong ones and right ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill |
