"Vantage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... boat. If one motors today in the Juniata Valley in Pennsylvania, he can survey near Newport a scene full of meaning to one who has a taste for history. Traveling along the heights on the highway that was once the red man's trail, he can enjoy a wide prospect from this vantage point. Deep in the valley glitters the little Juniata, route of the ancient canoe and the blundering barge. Beside it lies a long lagoon, an abandoned portion of the Pennsylvania Canal. Beside this again, as though some monster had passed leaving a track clear of trees, ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... season. Suratha, the king of Trigartas, well-versed in elephant-charges, approaching the front of Nakula's chariot, caused it to be dragged by the elephant he rode. But Nakula, little daunted at this, leaped out of his chariot, and securing a point of vantage, stood shield and sword in hand, immovable as a hill. Thereupon Suratha, wishing to slay Nakula at once, urged towards him his huge and infuriate elephant with trunk upraised. But when the beast came near, Nakula with his sword severed from his ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... is under obligation to employ it for the general good just as strictly as if it were another's. A man's rights are not merely decorations or ends in themselves. They are opportunities, instruments, trusts. And when any man has them, it means that he is placed on a vantage-ground from which, secure of oppression or interference, he may begin to do his duty.[6] But this moral aspect of right is often lost sight of. People are so enamoured of what they call their rights that they forget ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... cried Roberts, as their own turn came, and after a long and careful search backward from a point of vantage with his glass, he gave the word, and his rested lads began to mount eagerly, but with every one keeping an eye aloft for the blocks of stone they expected to come crashing down, but which never came any more than did the sharp echoing rifle-fire announcing ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... this preliminary excursion into the wilderness of Hawaiian literature we have covered but a small part of the field; we have reached no definite boundaries; followed no stream to its fountain head; gained no high point of vantage, from which to survey the whole. It was indeed outside the purpose of this book to make a delimitation of the whole field of Hawaiian literature and to mark out its relations to the formulated thoughts ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... of vantage and rushed to the rescue. She found him emitting frenzied yells, while a tiny stream of blood trickled ...
— Lovey Mary • Alice Hegan Rice
... was not in a mood to be observant, or to wonder how long the other had waited for her arrival. Nor did Isabella Vernon say a word to betray the fact that she had spent the whole of the previous day in precisely her present position, having carefully chosen a point of vantage from which any one coming along the road from Bessacre could not by any means fail to ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... shortly after. This must have been in the year when Tennyson published 'Maud,' for I remember Tennyson reading the poem one evening while Rossetti made a rapid pen-and-ink sketch of him, very good, from one obscure corner of vantage, which I still possess, and duly value. ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... timbers, which formed his supports. A moment to take breath, and press his torn and bleeding fingers to his lips; then, reaching down, he gave a hand to his companion and dragged him to the same place of vantage. ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... English commander executed in the most brilliant manner: the first brigade of his own division, under Brigadier Hicks, immediately supported by Brigadier Godby's brigade, which had constituted the garrison of Loodiana, gallantly stormed the village of Aliwal, and from this new vantage-ground opened a deadly fire upon the right of the enemy's left, and his left centre. Sir Harry then ordered his whole line to advance, which was gallantly achieved, the 31st (or Young Buffs) European regiment distinguishing itself, although the native regiments ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... up the gravelled driveway to Judge Moran's door, but to my vigorous knocking there was no response. The shades were drawn at the windows, the house silent, and yet I felt convinced the old partisan was within, watching from some point of vantage. Yet if I believed this, the same silence and refusal to respond also served to convince me that Miss Hardy was no longer there. She was a vastly different type, and would exhibit interest even in the coming of the ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... with me; before you left, I said That correspondence was my rock ahead, Lest, when you found that ne'er an answer came To all your letters, you should call it shame. But where's my vantage if you won't agree To go by law, because the law's with me? Nay more, you say I'm faithless to my vow In sending you no verses. ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... he reached a point of vantage, partly hidden by a cleft rock, from which he could look fully into the interior of the shack. It was obviously not a habitation, although a fire was burning briskly within it. Near by stood a small keg or two, what appeared to be a large tub ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... other people was always at his command, and his clients were rich men who did not mind paying for an opinion. To have an opinion from Mr. Dove, or some other learned gentleman, was the every-day practice of his life; and when he obtained, as he often did, little coigns of legal vantage and subtle definitions as to property which were comfortable to him, he would rejoice to think that he could always have a Dove at his hand to tell him exactly how far he was justified in going in defence of his clients' interests. ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... and Twenty-eighth Illinois, under Colonel Pugh, made a desperate effort to maintain their position, but were ordered by General Hurlbut to fall back when Lauman retired. These two regiments fell back fighting, forming wherever the ground gave vantage, and turning upon their pursuers. In the little field they halted and replenished their cartridge-boxes. Here the Twenty-second Alabama attacked them, but was so roughly handled that it took no further part in the ...
— From Fort Henry to Corinth • Manning Ferguson Force
... ready, others who were putting on their gloves, and still others with their guests even making ready to go down to the ball-room, which was the transformed tea-room not to be seen from Patricia's point of vantage. ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... influences from Autun, the Saone between Chalon and Lyons, speeded by '330 square feet of canvas,' my little word of thanks in reply would never get well under weigh from the banks of our sluggish canal; so reserved launching it till I should reach this point of vantage: and now, forth with it, that, wherever it may find you, I may assure your kindness that it would indeed have gratified me to see you, had circumstances enabled you to come my way; and that the amends you promise for failing to do ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... rifle, and, from a convenient nook, he watched for the intruder. The tamaracks crooned in the wind, the Yuba mumbled in the canon, the Sierras lay in a line of white against the stars. As he crept along to a point of better vantage he came to a tree with something tacked on it—something that shone in the dark like a match. In its own light he read, "Notice! I, Thomas Bowers, claim this ground for placer mining." Raising his hand ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... this room Shabby-genteel, that's parlor to the inn Perched on a view-commanding eminence; —Inn which may be a veritable house Where somebody once lived and pleased good taste Till tourists found his coign of vantage out, And fingered blunt the individual mark And vulgarized things comfortably smooth. On a sprig-pattern-papered wall there brays Complaint to sky Sir Edwin's dripping stag; His couchant coast-guard creature corresponds; ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... with false pride, and narrow jealousy, Numbers reject each new expression, won, Perchance, from language richer than our own, O! with glad welcome may the POET see Extension's golden vantage! the decree Each way exclusive, scorn, and re-enthrone The obsolete, if strength, or grace of tone Or imagery await it, with a free, And liberal daring!—For the Critic Train, Whose eyes severe our ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... They cursed me. I cursed them back and shook my naked sword: 'Come down the road I came,' I cried. 'But ye must come one by one, and as ye come, ye die upon this steel.' Some cursed at that, but others wailed. For I had them all at deadly vantage. And doubtless, with my smoke-grimed face and fiendish rage, I looked a demon. And now there was a steady roar inside the mill. The flame was going up it as furnace up its chimney. The mill caught fire. Fire glimmered through it. Tongues of flame darted ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... the world of affairs, he wondered where were these choked avenues, these struggling masses, these competitors for every inch of vantage. Then he gradually discovered that they did ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... that the value of neutral participation will come in. Whatever ambitions the neutral powers may have of their own, it may be said generally that they are keenly interested in preventing the settlement from degenerating into a deal in points of vantage for any further aggressions in any direction. Both the United States of America and China are traditionally and incurably pacific powers, professing and practicing an unaggressive policy, and the chief outstanding minor States ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... not have the church compromise one hair's-breadth with sin. Better that she should err in excessive stringency. But I would have her gain a new vantage ground by being simply true, and not proclaiming unmixed evil, where evil and good are blended in liberal proportions. By not undertaking the task of extermination, where her duty is that of discrimination. The ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.
... in the open is a flying in the face of natural laws. The patriots are wedded to the walls, or, as they call them in Ireland, ditches. The "back iv a ditch" is a proverbial expression for the coign of vantage assumed for the slaying of your enemy. Like General Jackson, the Irish are Stone-wallers, but in another sense. They have brought the Art of Murder with Safety to its highest pitch of perfection. They are the ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... emerged from copse and cleft in that mountainous and entangled neighbourhood—were not unprepared for a fresh foe. At the command of the vigilant Muza, they drew off, fell into order, and, seizing, while yet there was time, the vantage-ground which inequalities of the soil and the shelter of the trees gave to their darts and agile horse, they presented an array which Ponce de Leon himself, who now arrived, deemed it more prudent not to assault. While Villena, in accents almost inarticulate with rage, was urging the Marquess of ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... transactions, he would be fully entitled to do so. What is actually submitted is supposed to be the most fruitful and important part, the cream of affairs. In the discussion of them, the Monarch has more than one advantage over his advisers. He is permanent, they are fugitive; he speaks from the vantage-ground of a station unapproachably higher; he takes a calm and leisurely survey, while they are worried with the preparatory stages, and their force is often impaired by the pressure of countless detail. He may be, therefore, a weighty factor in all deliberations of State. ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... now surveyed the butchers' and the bakers' (and yes, the servants') entrance with casual or philosophic interest from the vantage point of the other side of the street. It wasn't different from any other of the entrances of the kind but it held his gaze. Then he walked across the street again and went in—or down. It didn't really seem now such a bad kind of ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... exclaimed Mr. Rufus Bennett, gazing on the scene from this point of vantage and mopping with a large handkerchief a scarlet face, which, as the result of climbing three flights of stairs, had become slightly soluble. "Great ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... their picnic basket, and, climbing a short way up the steps, settled themselves upon a grassy platform which afforded a good view of the cove below. They liked this vantage-ground better than the sands, and began to spread out the cups and saucers and parcels of cakes which Jessop had packed for them, congratulating themselves upon having a spot at least fairly apart. But they were not ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... glancing at their columns. He estopped a proposed visit from one of his influential countrymen; in the absence of his fair entertainers at their domestic duties, he extracted infinite satisfaction from Foo-Yup, the Chinese servant, who was particularly detached for his service. From his invalid coign of vantage at the window he was observant of all that passed upon the veranda, that al-fresco audience-room of The Lookout, and he was good-humoredly conscious that a great many eccentric and peculiar visitors were invariably dragged thither ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... valor are of no avail here. Vollied musketry has little chance against backwoods sharpshooters occupying every vantage ground that their knowledge of the country enabled them to do. The day was wearing on. Noon found them a disorganized mass, flying through Lexington streets, the scene of their ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... common sense demands. He proposes, when the fire is quite extinguished, to throw overboard the whole, or the greater portion of the cargo, including, of course, the picrate; he will next plug up the leak, and then, with a lightened ship, he will take ad- vantage of the first high tide to quit the ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... broad shoulders, and his dark face with the steady gray eyes looked across at her with grave sweetness. She would have been glad enough to be able to turn from the short range of vision between them; but the stars and river afforded her good vantage-ground, and on them she fixed ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... only shake his head, and answer that he would never cease to love Dorothy and search for her while life lasted. But troubles never seem to come singly. One day, as Jack was pacing restlessly up and down Broadway—the vantage-ground which he always sought at six o'clock each evening, to scan the faces of the working-girls as they passed, with the lingering hope in his heart that some day, sooner or later, his vigilance would ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... opportunity offered, Madero escaped to the United States, and from that vantage-ground kept up a correspondence with his friends and partizans. Though the election had been held in July, the inauguration of the President did not take place until December, 1910. A fortnight before that date, a conspiracy, at which Madero probably connived, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... which he himself had mined deep in the mountain's heart, was on the way to her —that his own hands had helped to fashion the rude circlet-and that it was significant of the truth that he sought her not from the vantage ground of wealth, but because of a manly devotion that would lead him to delve in a mine or work in a shop for her, rather than live a life of luxury with any one else ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... people have a relief against the sky, as they pass over it; artists look patiently thither; lovers, the sad, the humorous, and the meditative, stop there to observe and to muse; they lean over the parapet and watch the flowing tide; they look thence around as from a pleasant vantage-ground. The bridge, in populous old towns, is the rendezvous, the familiar landmark, the traditional nucleus of the place, and perhaps the only picturesque framework in all those marts and homes, more free, open, and suggestive of a common lot than temple, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... Nor are all men alike in their impulses or in the degree of their intelligence. Within limits the individual may exercise choice, reacting upon and modifying his environment and himself. But a moment's reflection reveals to us that the new departure is but a step taken from a vantage-ground which has not been won by independent effort. The information in the light of which he chooses, the situation in the face of which he acts, the emotional nature which impels him to effort, the habits of thought and ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... it is the common phrase of our upstart race of people, who have suddenly sprang up like the dragon's teeth among us, That Ireland was never known to be so rich as it is now; by which, as I apprehend, they can only mean themselves, for they have skipped over the channel from the vantage ground of a dunghill upon no other merit, either visible or divineable, than that of not having been born ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... clasped him round the neck, And he the vantage seized of time and place, And when the ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... Evelyn reached her coign of vantage, the cavalcade was already nearing the prescribed mile where the final parting would take place, to the strains of "Auld Lang Syne"; a piece of gratuitous torment, honoured by custom, which many would ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... afterwards learned that it was a poor specimen, and that there were much finer ones in existence, while the Parson's Pulpit was described as "a place for the gods, where a man, with a knowledge of nature and a lover of the same, might find it vantage ground to speak or lecture on the ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... armed with spears, he would encounter the terrific spring of the bolder beasts, who rushed frantically at the royal marksman and endeavored to tear him from the chariot-board. Sometimes he would even voluntarily quit this vantage-ground, and, engaging with the brutes on the same level, without the protection of armor, in his everyday dress, with a mere fillet upon his head, he would dare a close combat, and smite them with sword or spear through ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... After the great event, rills begin to flow from the pincushion towards the railroad; the rills swell into rivers; the rivers soon unite into a lake. The lake floats Mr. Goodchild into Doncaster, past the Itinerant personage in black, by the way-side telling him from the vantage ground of a legibly printed placard on a pole that for all these things the Lord will bring him to judgment. No turtle and venison ordinary this evening; that is all over. No Betting at the rooms; nothing there but ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... the writer's vantage points of observation was a balcony of the central window of the Hall of Ambassadors, from which he had a magnificent prospect of mountain, valley, and vega, and could look down upon a busy scene ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... our camp on the porch of the temple at Li-chiang and from its vantage point could watch the festivities going on about us. The feasting continued until after dark and at daylight the kettles were again steaming to prepare for the second ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... with gold, and decked with jewels, and sweet with perfume from a hairdresser's. The poet must have been wrong there. If love be anything but a dream, surely it must adhere to the person, and not be liable to change at every offered vantage of name or ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... Jerry saw, from his coign of vantage, the white figure of the miller coming quickly down the road, waving his arms as if he had once owned a wind-mill instead of a water-mill, and was imitating the action ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... afternoon drives might have been marred by unpleasant thoughts as one's sleep is sometimes disturbed by bad dreams. You have no idea what a delight it is to the average New England mind, Mr. Stanton, to secure the vantage ground in a bargain. In view of your own voluntary admissions, you can scarcely do otherwise than let ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... incomes. It is therefore particularly cruel that Natal should be gibbeted as the abode of scoundrels of the worst sort, men prepared to bring about bloodshed in order to profit by it. Sir Garnet Wolseley, however, found in this report of colonial dishonesty a convenient point of vantage from which to attack the colonists generally, and in his despatch about responsible government we may be sure he did not spare them. The Legislative Council thus comments on his remarks: "To colonists a war means the spreading among them of distress, alarm, and confusion, ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... the brown hills in the distance covered with brown horses, the curling smoke from hundreds of wigwams. Word was sent back to Custer. In excited tones, he asked: "Have you seen the cut-throat Sioux?" From the vantage point of the hills where they had seen the camp Hairy Moccasin was sent still farther in advance to reconnoitre. He climbed a pine-clad hill, found the Sioux everywhere, and then he rode back and reported to General Custer the size and position ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... the energy and activity of its employees. Superintendent Leach reached it shortly after the shock and found a number of men already there, whom he stationed at points of vantage from roof to basement. The fire apparatus of the Mint was brought into service and help given by the fire department, and after a period of strenuous labor the flames were driven back. The peril for a time was ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... reiterated fretfully. He was unmasking to no purpose, and felt himself as on a slope, having given his adversary vantage. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... look back on those emotional and violent years from my present vantage point of declining existence in an age of peace and good will toward all mankind, they ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... doubt he thought so. Generals, when they have fine positions and big guns and prostrate people lying under their thumbs, are inclined to think that God's providence has specially ordained them and their points of vantage. It is a good thing in the mind of a general so circumstanced that 200,000 men should be made subject to a dozen big guns. I confess that to me, having had no military education, the matter appeared in a different light, and I could not work up my enthusiasm ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... is always ready with an intelligent reason for whatever, from the vantage-ground of experience, he takes upon him to recommend. Indeed there is not a chapter from which any reader may not gain something.... It is impossible even to glance at a tithe of the useful information and advice contained in this volume, which will be certain ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie
... And without asking leave of priest or statesman, of the North or the South, may we not make the most of the freedom which we enjoy under the guaranty of the ordinances of Heaven and the Constitution of our country? Can we expect to see Christianity on higher vantage-ground than in this country she stands upon? In the midst of a republic based on the principle of the equality of mankind, where every Christian, as vitally connected with the state, freely wields the highest political ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... each herd. He himself is not watchful, but his does are, and the herd gallops off with great leaps at the first scent of danger, the does leading and their lord and master bringing up the rear. If by dint of careful and patient stalking you get to some point of vantage, say 100 yards from the big buck, it is worth while to shoot. Even if the bullet finds its mark the quarry may gallop 50 yards before it drops. Good heads vary from 20" ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... work, man's achievement, that gives us the little desire that we have to live. How often do we prefer death to living life in our former condition, after our efforts have brought us to a point of vantage and comfort! ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis
... the heights where King stood, it would be an hour and longer before the sun got down into the canons and meadows. He saw the flare of a camp-fire shining bright through the dark of a low-lying flat two miles or more from his vantage-point. Brodie would be ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... and then the clustering villas of the outer suburbs. The art of bill-sticking had lost nothing in the interval, and from countless tall hoardings, from house ends, from palings, and a hundred such points of vantage came the polychromatic appeals of the great Boomfood election. "Caterham," "Boomfood," and "Jack the Giant-killer" again and again and again, and monstrous caricatures and distortions—a hundred varieties of misrepresentations of those great and shining figures they had passed so nearly ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... there is no aspect of nature so enchanting or romantic as that which is presented, on a fine summer day from the vantage ground of a ridge or shoulder high up on the mountains of one of ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... fubbed off upon the public as often as Defoe's earlier volume, and neither writer could claim any advantage over the other from his second and slighter contribution. Each held successfully his own coign of vantage. Eliza Haywood, in contemporary opinion, outranked Defoe almost as far as an interpreter of the heart as he surpassed her in concocting an account of a new marvel or a tale of strange adventure. The arbitress of the passions indeed wrote nothing ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... but—a woman comes! Ah!" The shoulders gave nine 'rahs and a tiger. "What a difference! All is light and gay; ever'ting smile w'en you smile. You have 'eart, beauty, grace. My 'eart comes back to me w'en I feel your 'eart. So!" He laid his hand upon his vest pocket. From this vantage point he suddenly snatched at the school-teacher's own hand, "Ah! Mees Adams, if I could only tell you how ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... is the tramp?" Who is the walking person seen from the vantage ground of these pages? He is necessarily a masked figure; he wears the disguise of one who has escaped, and also of one who is a conspirator. He is not the dilettante literary person gone tramping, nor the pauper vagabond who writes sonnets, though either of these roles may be part ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... Bittridge's eye as he drawled, in lazy scorn, "Oh, I don't know." Then his truculence broke in a malicious amusement. "Why, judge, what's the matter?" He put on a face of mock gravity, and Kenton knew with helpless fury that he was enjoying his vantage. He could fall upon him and beat him with his stick, leaving the situation otherwise undefined, but a moment's reflection convinced Kenton that this would not do. It made him sick to think of striking ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... a marvellous uncertainty hangs and broods over the beginnings of life, as over the infant rivulet yet dandled and tended by its mountain-nurses. For, although there are certain elements which rigidly and by a foreseen certainty determine its course, as, for instance, an extraordinary vantage-height of source, securing for it the force and swiftness of a torrent,—yet how shifting are the mountain-winds, chilling into frosty silence or quickening with Favonian warmth, and how shifting the flying clouds, which, whether marshalled in mimic tournament above it, or in the shock of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... arching roots, the better to reconnoitre your movements and to outwit attempts at capture. Their eyes—in life, reflecting gems—are so placed that they command a complete radius, and if you think to sneak upon them they dive from their vantage points and skip with hasty flips and flops to another arching root, which they ascend, and resume their observation. It must not be assumed that the climbing fish—which seems to be more at home on the surface of the water than below—climbs up among the branches. A foot or so is about the limit ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... Sainte-Anne stood at the junction of a dozen roads where all day long troops passed to and from the lines. From such a vantage ground an enemy could wreck the health of an ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... the great white hollows were first scooped out of the chalk, or the dewponds made on the heights. Ever since there were people in Sussex—whether it is five thousand years ago or fifteen thousand—the short wind-swept turf has been grazed by woolly flocks. Before ever a Norman castle held a vantage- height the tansy grew dark and rank in cottage gardens and the children went gathering woodruff and speedwell and the elfin gold of "little socks and shoes." Any change, good or bad, is a loss to some one—the land is so full of ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... A. Picton, in his Memorials of Liverpool, relates an amusing incident connected with the opening of the railway at that town. "On the opening of the railway," he remarks, "of course, every point and 'coin of vantage' from whence the procession could be best seen was eagerly availed of. A tolerably high chimney had recently been built upon the railway ground, affording a sufficient platform on the scaffolding at the top for the accommodation of two or ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... fighting man by trade. Nevertheless, there was a kind of instinct which told me to get the gun set up at any point of vantage along the ...
— The Winged Men of Orcon - A Complete Novelette • David R. Sparks
... touch the muskets of our men and to try to take the same off their shoulders, while they wanted to have whatever they could make use of; our men accordingly diverted their attention by showing them iron and beads, and espying vantage, seized one of the blacks by a string which he wore round his neck, and carried him off to the pinnace; the blacks who remained on the beach, set up dreadful howls and made violent gestures, but the others who ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... There is then a stretch of sea, which is perhaps eight feet deep at the deepest, for about twenty yards, and then a sandy shoal arises where the depth is not more than three to four feet. Since only the swimmers can reach this vantage ground, one soon learns which they are. But, as I say, the sea takes a secondary place and is used chiefly as a corrective to the sun's rays when they have become too hot. "Come unto those yellow sands!" is the real cry of the ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... freely and forcibly in his letters to his parents. His father was a strong Federalist and bitterly deprecated the declaration of war by the United States. The son, on the contrary, from his point of vantage in the enemy's country saw things from a different point of view and stoutly upheld the wisdom, nay, the necessity, of the war. His parents and friends urged him to keep out of politics and to be discreet, and he seems, at any rate, to have ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... degree by this, the hangman took his eyes for an instant from the slumbering figure, and glanced round the cell in search of some 'vantage-ground or weapon of defence. There was nothing moveable within it, but a clumsy table which could not be displaced without noise, and a heavy chair. Stealing on tiptoe towards this latter piece of furniture, he retired with it into the remotest corner, and intrenching himself behind it, ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... themselves to blame; and that knowledge is pleasure as well as power. It will lead us all to try with Milton "to behold the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of study," and to feel with Bacon that "no pleasure is comparable is the standing upon the vantage ground of truth." ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... hand. Two or three rivermen appeared at the edge of the chute. A moment later old man Reed ran up, carrying a rope. This, after some difficulty, was made fast to the bow of the wanigan. A dozen men ran with the end of it to a position of vantage from which they might be able to pull the bow away from the sunken obstruction, but Orde, appearing above, called a halt. After consultation with Reed, another rope was brought and the end of it tossed down to the shipwrecked crew. Orde pointed to the stern of the boat, revolving his hands in pantomime ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... and he would be in a little by-street which would take him out of the uproar. The thought of his little protege crossed his mind. He turned to look for him. He saw him at the very moment when Emmanuel had slipped down from his coign of vantage and was rolling on the ground being trampled underfoot by the rabble: the fugitives were running over his body: the police were just reaching the spot. Olivier did not stop to think: he rushed down the steps and ran to his aid. A navvy saw the danger, the soldiers with drawn sabers. Olivier holding ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... overlooking the court, George Rawson, the Assistant Scout Master, was scoring; while several other scouts had various points of vantage and were watching the ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler
... vantage would be temporary; the Wastrel had been knocked down, not out. Still, the respite was sufficient for Spurlock to look about for some weapon. Hanging on the wall was a temple censer, bronze, moulded in the shape of a lotus blossom with stem and leaves—deadly as a club. He tore it ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... had arrested into the means of victory. Broken as the stockade was by his desperate onset, the shield-wall of the warriors behind it still held the Normans at bay till William by a feint of flight drew a part of the English force from their post of vantage. Turning on his disorderly pursuers, the Duke cut them to pieces, broke through the abandoned line, and made himself master of the central ground. Meanwhile the French and Bretons made good their ascent on either flank. At three the hill seemed won, at six the ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... don't know nuffin, an' you knows, yo' own sef, dat dey ain't 'sponsible. An' deah Lord, good Lord, it ain't like yo' mercy, it ain't like yo' pity, it ain't like yo' long-sufferin' lovin'-kindness for to take dis kind o' 'vantage o' sich little chil'en as dese is when dey's so many ornery grown folks chuck full o' cussedness dat wants roastin' down dah. O Lord, spah de little chil'en, don't tar de little chil'en away f'm dey frens, jes' let 'em off jes' dis once, and take it out'n de ole niggah. ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... it all from his post of vantage near the big viol, but he was not interested in the visitors, he knew what they could do. He was waiting to see his master "lay 'em all in the shade bimeby." Of course he would open the ball. He wasn't fond of dancing but it was the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... highly approved of these arrangements, and we were much admired as we went through the village; the more youthful and vigorous part of the community making dashes now and then to cut us off, and lying in wait to intercept us at points of vantage. At such times the more exuberant among them called out in an excited manner on our emergence round some corner of expectancy, "Here they come!" "Here they are!" and we were all but cheered. In this progress I was much annoyed by the abject Pumblechook, ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... lackey, from the rise to set, Sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and all night Sleeps in Elysium.... And, but for ceremony, such a wretch, Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep, Hath the forehand and vantage ...
— Shakespeare's Insomnia, And the Causes Thereof • Franklin H. Head
... Years must have passed since anything edible could have been found on board the Livorno. Yet I hardly think I should exaggerate if I said that two thousand birds rose circling from various points of vantage about the derelict as we approached her sides. That this winged and highly vocal congregation resented our intrusion was not to be doubted for a moment. Short of actually attacking us with beak and claw, the creatures could hardly have given ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... closely guarded from below that from our secret coign of vantage we seemed to be looking down into the heart of forbidden things. Spacious and serene the great tiled cloister lay beneath us, water spilling over from a central basin of marble with a cool sound to which lesser ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... it was Pedro Mexia. From Nevil and Arden and several of Sir John's old officers of the Mere Honour burst more or less suppressed exclamations. Nevil, from his vantage-point, sent a lightning glance far down the table, where were gathered those whose rank or station barely brought them within this hall, but what with the massed fruit, the candles, this or that outstretched hand and shoulder, ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... their final good-byes, and from where Nina and her friends stood by the deck rail, there was a clear view of the gang plank and the ship's departing visitors. It was from this vantage that several pairs of envious young masculine eyes, looking downward, saw the right hand of the great and only James B. Randolph affectionately laid on the broad shoulder of an ex-oarsman and football player. And for as long as the two were in sight it was the ex-oarsman who talked, ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... the deposition of Charles the Fat was necessarily carried on mainly, not by the king and his officers, but by the great landholders. The grim fortresses of the medival lords, which appeared upon almost every point of vantage throughout western Europe during the Middle Ages, would not have been tolerated by the king, had he been powerful enough to destroy them. They plainly indicate that their owners ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... instead of his head. Had he been content merely to retain his present advantage, unconsciousness would soon have overcome his victim, but he tried to improve his grip, and the attempt proved disastrous. His thumb, seeking better vantage, fell into Harris's gasping mouth. Harris was no more depraved than most of mankind, but when fighting for life, and choking to death in the hands of an unknown enemy, he was ready to seize any advantage, and with a great effort he brought ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... all from his point of vantage. Old memories of battle rose to his mind; his blood grew warm, and he caught himself, up in the drawing-office, making plans of campaign for this trade or that. His was the quick-fighting blood that assumes the offensive, and he noted their blunders; they ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... The purpose of this peculiar arrangement seems to be for defense, for no one can approach the house from any side without being seen, and, in time of attack, it affords the inmates of the house an admirable vantage ground from ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... first spring foliage resembled a limitless peach-orchard sown by some careless and unbelievably prodigal hand. Out of these false acres occasional knolls and low stony hills lifted themselves so that one came, now and then, to vantage-points where the eye leaped for great distances across imperceptible valleys to horizons so far away that the scattered tree-clumps were blended into an unbroken carpet of green. To the woman these outlooks were unutterably depressing, merely serving ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... be seen himself, the boy sprang up a neighbouring tree as lightly as a squirrel, and from that vantage ground he saw that his brother Julian was approaching, and that the monk had stepped out to greet the lad. He heard the sound of the nasal tones, so different from the refined ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... rampart is won, and the spoil begun, And all but the after carnage done, Shriller shrieks now mingling come From within the plundered dome: Hark to the haste of flying feet That splash in the blood of the slippery street; But here and there, where 'vantage ground Against the foe may still be found, Desperate groups, of twelve or ten, Make a pause, and turn again— With banded backs against the wall, Fiercely stand, or ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... the secretary. He had shown the good taste to retire from the library as soon as the conversation became personal. From the vantage point of a room across the hall he had been quietly listening, and decided it a rather unfruitful piece of eavesdropping. He appeared the faithful, deferent employee in every line ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... no such thing. In the first place, I did not tell you that I was going to offer young Latimer an equal division of the profits of my practice; and for what I may offer him I have already taken care to ascertain that he can return a full equivalent. His talents need only a vantage-ground on which to act, and I rejoice to be able to give him that which my own early experience taught me ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... afternoon found the crowd choosing places of vantage for the Snake Dance, which would begin just before sundown and last perhaps half an hour. Owners of houses were charging a dollar a seat on their roofs, and they could have sold many more seats had ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... attention an ant which was making a laborious spiral ascent of his cane. Not until it had gained a vantage point on the bone handle did he ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... own age to discern its true glory, which shall best appear from the vantage-ground of another century; but surely we can feel that it throbs with life, with immortal yearnings, with ever-growing desire to give to all men higher thoughts and purer loves. Society, the State, the Church, ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... expecting to hear a deafening sound from the shell, and to see the earth thrown up in showers about them. From a safe place of vantage they felt it was a sight worth seeing and felt personally aggrieved when, after waiting an unconscionable time, all was quiet on the other side of the ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... thou yield to Fate, Minion of Fortune, now miscalled in vain! Can vantage-ground no confidence create, Marcella's pass, nor Guarda's mountain-chain? Vainglorious fugitive! yet turn again! Behold, where, named by some prophetic Seer, Flows Honour's Fountain, {2} as foredoomed the stain From thy dishonoured name and arms to clear ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... which Manning was careful to pour into the receptive car of Monsignor Talbot. That useful priest, at his post of vantage in the Vatican, was more than ever the devoted servant of the new Archbishop. A league, offensive and defensive, had been established between the two friends. 'I daresay I shall have many opportunities to serve you in Rome,' wrote Monsignor Talbot modestly, 'and ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... the shore they paddled softly against the current, or drifted silently down, searching the bushes with their keen flat eyes for the least stir. Since everything had to come down to the river sooner or later to drink, they could have had no better point of vantage. Every man had a gun in his canoe, but ammunition is expensive on the Swan River, and for small fry, musk-rat, duck, fool-hen, or rabbit, they still used the prehistoric bow ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... his own box alone. Occasionally it happens that the gentlemen in Mrs. Gilding's box, for instance, have all relinquished their places to visitors and have themselves gone to Mrs. Worldly's or Mrs. Jones' or Mrs. Town's boxes. Mrs. Gilding's guests must, from the vantage point of the Worldly, Jones or Town boxes, keep a watchful eye on their hostess and instantly return to her support when they see her visitors about to leave, even though the ladies whom they are momentarily visiting be left to themselves. It is of course the duty of the other gentlemen who ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... lacked instinct, and whose separation from party politics by conditions of service gave him a vantage-ground of detachment, reached a shrewd view of the position before the Longford vacancy occurred. He pressed upon his brother that we should all retire, saying plainly that we had been too long in possession, and should hand over the task of representing Ireland at Westminster to younger ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... He left his vantage point and went quietly back to the kitchen, donning his infra-scope once more. In some of these old houses there was a back steps, leading to ...
— The Mighty Dead • William Campbell Gault
... crushing of the people. But alas, what could be said for the sanctity of the graves when throngs trampled down the well-kept grass, and groups of men and women fought for the possession of the most recent mounds as highest points of vantage? Those whose dead lay buried there raised effectual outcries against this desecration. To go back into the church seemed impossible. The next move had to be into the street. It was at this point that there set in that alienation of the ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... to see. When they reached the strawberry bed Mickey knelt and with her own fingers Peaches pulled a berry and ate it, then laughed, exclaimed, and cried in delight. She picked a flower, and from the safe vantage of the garden viewed the cows and horses afar; and the fields and sheep were explained to her. Mickey carried her across the road, Mary brought a comfort, and for a whole hour the child lay under a big tree with pink and white clover in a foot-deep border around her. When they lifted her she said: ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... bulk blocked the window opening on to the veranda. It was his favorite vantage point in leisure. The after breakfast pipe usually found him there. His evening pipe, when the sun was dipping toward the glistening, fretted peaks of the hills, rarely found him elsewhere. It was the point from ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... From many vantage points along the Blue Ridge may be obtained magnificent views of both the Loudoun and Shenandoah valleys. The eye travels entirely across the fertile expanse of the latter to where, in the far distance, the Alleghany and North Mountains ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... sort of bus, having with difficulty persuaded the professor to leave off specimen hunting for a while, the boys did not notice that from the opposite side of the train three young men had alighted who, from a point of vantage behind a ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... beautiful one, through rocks and brushwood, mountain ash bushes showing their coral berries amid their feathery leaves, golden and white stars of stonecrop studding every coign of vantage, and in more level spots the waxy bell-heather beginning to come into blossom. Still it was rather over praise to call it as smooth as the carefully-levelled and much-trodden Queen's path at Buxton, considering that it ascended steeply ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of nocturnal adventure known by the unsympathetic name of burglary. Among the exponents of the art Peace was at this time known as a "portico-thief," that is to say one who contrived to get himself on to the portico of a house and from that point of vantage make his entrance into the premises. During the year 1854 the houses of a number of well-to-do residents in and about Sheffield were entered after this fashion, and much valuable property stolen. Peace was arrested, and with him a girl with whom he was keeping company, and his ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... from side to side of the building, uttering exciting exclamations, and making vain passes at the little creature, which flew round high above her head, now and then settling in some secure "coigne of vantage." In these intervals we endeavored to catch the attention of the mischievous fowler, but her task had ended with this tower-room, she had done with us, she had found an unexpected source of sport, and was not to be deterred from an enjoyment which she probably thought well-earned. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... She tried to remember, at his urgence, something about her childhood in California; and she told him a great deal more about South Bradfield. She described its characters and customs, and, from no vantage-ground or stand-point but her native feeling of their oddity, and what seemed her sympathy with him, made him see them as one might whose life had not been passed among them. Then they began to compare their own traits, and amused themselves to find how many they had ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... Blue Grotto, and we descended to take one of them. The fixed rate is a franc for each person. The boatmen wanted five francs for each of us. We explained that although not indigenous to Capri, or even Italy, we were not of the succulent growth of travellers, and would not be eaten. We retired to our vantage ground on the heights. The guides called us to the beach again. They would take us for three francs apiece, or say six francs for both of us. We withdrew furious to the heights again, where we found honest Antonino, who did us the pleasure to ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... many of us are apt to boast. Still more absurd would it be to expect readers to know what Hardy is thinking about, when they have never had the advantage of seeing his face even in a photograph. Wherefore, it would seem that the author is bound on such occasions to put his readers on equal vantage ground with himself, and not only tell what a man does, but, so far as may be, what he ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... in her path, no doubt—but she had her vantage-ground, and would use it for her own profit and that of others. She had no cause for shame; and in these days of the developed individual the old solidarity of the family has become injustice and wrong. Her mind filled ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... equipment. Tommy hates this, because it is hard work. Sometimes he fills his pack with straw to lighten it, and sometimes he gets caught. If he gets caught, he grouses at everything in general for twenty-one days, from the vantage point ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... know itself as such. When one compares Rome with Paris or Berlin or London or New York, the newer capitals suffer. The mighty ruins have such authority over all that is new. It is one of the greatest standing-grounds and points of vantage in the world. It has been interpreted as the mountain of temptation from which Satan showed the kingdom of this world. It is the birthplace of Caesardom and the modern idea of world-imperialism. It was ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... country lay through narrow winding streets, and there was great need of care to avoid an ambuscade. Slipping from door to door, from one point of vantage to the next, the boys made the whole distance of the enemy's land without sight of an enemy. They came to the further boundary and raised a cheer of defiance, when suddenly a hail-storm of snowballs struck them, and ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... has won liberty and made it a birthright lets it slip away through hands of weakness or deeds of folly, and if the self-made man of to-day loses the vantage ground of his life work with his fleeting breath, the careers of nations would be brief, the story of liberty would be a nurse's tale, and the careers of individuals would be vanity of vanities. The prepotent blood that made an empire of an insignificant ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various
... weight of the first shock, which, breaking their ranks, densely as they were arranged, carried the barbed horses into the very centre of their host, and well-nigh up to the fatal standard, to which Raymond Berenger, bound by his fatal vow, had that day conceded so much vantage-ground. But they yielded like the billows, which give way, indeed, to the gallant ship, but only to assail her sides, and to unite in her wake. With wild and horrible clamours, they closed their tumultuous ranks around Berenger and his devoted followers, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... vantage!—alligators on the land make none afraid; And the lion's but a jackal that ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... the attitude of the pack, drew himself painfully to a sitting posture on a large flat rock and from this vantage point glared at his followers who had hitherto been obedient to his will. And though he was old and wounded, the pack quailed for a time before his glance. His advantage could not last, however. The others soon grew restless, the circle of dark forms tightening ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... suppressed that impulse. She loved Betty, but she was afraid of her. Betty was the last sort of girl to put up with what she considered liberties; Sibyl was a person to whom she was utterly indifferent, and she would by no means have liked Sibyl to kiss her. From Sibyl's vantage-ground, therefore, she watched Betty, herself unseen. Then it suddenly occurred to her that she might continue to watch her, but from a more ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... have been able to place Lockhart on the right footing in the right quarter, leaving the improvement of his place of vantage to himself as ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... forward five paces and waited, but Rorik edged round me, trying to gain some vantage of light, and ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... seriously. No estimate has ever been satisfactorily obtained of the loss of the enemy. The most reliable account of the number of his forces engaged is from nineteen to thirty, and if I should venture an estimate of his losses, based upon my experience of his ability to select a vantage ground, and take care of himself, I would put it ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... on the right combination?" asked the young inventor, whose latest idea, the plan of fighting fires in skyscrapers from an airship as a vantage point, was taking up ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... delight. Viewed from the vantage ground of a bath-chair, a Treasure Hunt was delirious excitement, but he was heavy! I remembered a sharp upward curve some way further on, and had a vision of myself pushing, with arms extended to full length, and feet at a considerable distance between the arms, ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... commonly called the border town between England and Scotland; at any rate it was a vantage-ground in days gone by that was of a great value to one faction and a thorn in the side to the other. The conquering and unconquered Scots are the back-bone of Britain, there's no denying that; and Carlisle is ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... speculation regard its sun-flecked windows, tightly shut doors, and smoking chimneys, in the hope that she might step forth. Then came more mild weather when he would spend long hours outside the stable, in his corner in the corral, there to renew his silent vigil over nature and the house from this vantage. Thus he filled his days, and found them not so long as formerly in his babyhood, when each hour was fraught with so many little things that demanded his ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... the roaring crowd, with a fantastic dream-sense of a night-sky and a great stone building, dark with age and solemnity, and unreal figures perched on railings and points of vantage, and hurrahing hordes that fused themselves with the procession and became part of its marching. She yearned forwards to vague glories, aware of a poor past. She ran with the crowd. How they cheered her boy! Her boy! She saw him carried off on the shoulders of Christian citizens. Yes; ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... there could be for them but one end to the melee; for though they held the vantage post yet it counted little against those who were arrayed below them, eager to begin. Nevertheless, they stood calm and ready, leaning on their weapons, and showed no glint of fear. And De Lacy, in admiration and loath to put them to the sword, ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... points as these, and would have people believe, what doubtless he believes himself, that he already knows the answer to a number of questions in the realms of physical nature and of philosophy. He writes in so forcible and positive and determined a fashion, from the vantage ground of scientific knowledge, that he exerts an undue influence on the uncultured among his readers, and causes them to fancy that only benighted fools or credulous dupes can really disagree with the historical criticisms, ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... the side of a hill, faced toward the south, and commanded a view which had been the pride of its former owners, before Richard Morton bought up all the rangeland in that locality and converted it into one huge estate of his own. A broad veranda extended from end to end, at the front, and from that vantage point miles upon miles of rich pasture could be seen, dotted with grazing thousands of cattle. Trees, set out with a view to the future, by the creators of the ranch, imparted an aspect of homely comfort, of seclusion, peace and contentment ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... yet unborn, and very progress of the human race, than are the swine who wallow in their streets. Who think that crying out to other nations, old in their iniquity, 'We are no worse than you!' (No worse!) is high defence and 'vantage-ground enough for that Republic, but yesterday let loose upon her noble course, and but to-day so maimed and lame, so full of sores and ulcers, foul to the eye and almost hopeless to the sense, that her best friends turn from the loathsome creature with disgust. Who, having by their ancestors ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... now stand on the high vantage ground of truth and justice, and that it can not be that any nation professing to act on the principles of right and equity can stand up before the civilized world and contest with unyielding pertinacity our claim. We have too much respect for the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... Burgoyne, Clinton, and Howe, to do nothing in their turn. But the peasants they despised were not idle and would not allow them to be idle. The English general woke up one morning to find that under cover of night an important point of vantage overlooking the town of Boston had been occupied and roughly fortified by the rebels. The citizen soldiers who had gathered together to defend their liberties had stolen a march upon the English general. They had occupied the rising ground of Breed Hill, below Bunker's Hill, on the Charlestown side ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... mirth-provoking was Santa Claus. When was John Trimble ever known to unbend sufficiently to romp up the side aisle jingling his sleigh bells, and leap over a front pew stuffed with presents, to gain the vantage-ground he needed for the distribution of his pack? The wing pews on one side of the pulpit had been floored over and the Christmas Tree stood there, triumphant in beauty, while the gifts strewed the green-covered platform ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Guise I feare me much will be, The wine of that famous Realme of France: For his aspiring thoughts aime at the crowne, He takes his vantage on Religion, To plant the Pope and popelings in the Realme, And binde it wholy to the Sea of Rome: But if that God doe prosper mine attempts, And send us safely to arrive in France: Wee'l beat him back, and drive him to his death, That basely seekes ...
— Massacre at Paris • Christopher Marlowe
... a jest than a moral, Molyneux," said the other and graver personage; "thou canst not even let the elements escape thy gibes. I marvel how far we are from our cousin Ireland's at Lydiate. My fears mislead me, or we have missed our way. This flat bosom of desolation hath no vantage-ground whence we may discern our path; and we have been winding about this interminable ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... upon himself and his achievements, religious, social, financial, and political, with no interruption save frequent fits of choking on the part of poor Henrietta, whom even the clouds of rank smoke could not drive from her position of vantage. ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... his vantage ground, so still and high, He watched the storm clouds when they rolled below, And felt the wind mount up to where he ...
— The Miracle and Other Poems • Virna Sheard
... Regretful forebodings aroused energetic efforts to check rival interests. The prize was too valuable, and increasing each year in importance. A dyke needed to be erected to stem the English encroachments and to preserve and consolidate the Hollander position of vantage. The ablest men in Holland and South Africa exercised themselves with that task with an ardour impelled by jealous hatred against the English and intensified by successive revelations of more startling discoveries of gold and other ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... in front of the inn, from the centre of which there rose up a lofty flag-pole. It had been erected by some former proprietor, for the patriotic purpose of flying the American flag; but, to Colonel Witham's thrifty mind, it had offered an excellent vantage for displaying a dingy banner, with the advertisement of the Half Way House lettered thereon. This fluttered now in a mournful way, half way up the mast, as though it were a sign of mourning for ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... and "armed very indifferently with common rifles and ordinary shot-guns."[60] The ponies, in the end, proved fleet of foot, as was to have been expected, and, at one stage of the game, had to be tethered in the rear while their masters fought from the vantage-ground of trees.[61] The Indian's most effective work was done, throughout, under cover of the woods. Indians, as Pike well knew, could never be induced to face shells in the open. It was he who advised their climbing the trees and he ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... in a snowstorm or under a drift of summer daisies. At the turn of the ravine's last winding above the bridge, it plucked away as it passed a small company of fir-trees, that long had dropped their cones and needles into the river from a coign of vantage on a jutting crag, and a minute after, anybody who had looked up from beneath the arch would have seen the glimmering points of foam extinguished like lights, further and nearer, lost amid the shadowy onsweeping of something that set all the darkness ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... upon the shore and see the ships tossed upon the sea; a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle and to see a battle and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth (a hill not to be commanded and where the air is always clear and serene) and to see the errors and wanderings and mists and tempests in the vale below, so always that this prospect be with pity and not with swelling or pride. Certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man's ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... away from crowded pavements, towards the Man Sagar Lake, where ruined temples and palaces dreamed and gleamed, knee deep in the darkling water; where jackals prowled and cranes nested and muggers dozed unheeding. At a point of vantage above the Lake, they halted and sat there awhile in darkness—a group of silent shadows. Words did not meet the case. Even Vernon ceased his jigging and baby Phyllis uttered no sound: for she ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... for the fifth time. The crowd—knotty Spartans, keen Athenians, perfumed Sicilians—pressed his pulpit closer, elbowing for the place of vantage. Amid a lull in their clamour ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... we stopp'd, resum'd their ancient wail, And soon as they had reach'd us, all the three Whirl'd round together in one restless wheel. As naked champions, smear'd with slippery oil, Are wont intent to watch their place of hold And vantage, ere in closer strife they meet; Thus each one, as he wheel'd, his countenance At me directed, so that opposite The neck mov'd ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... avoid fighting and hostile patrols, endeavoring to get in touch with the enemy's main force. Other patrols are sometimes sent out to prevent hostile detachments from approaching the outposts; they endeavor to locate the hostile patrols, drive them back, preventing them from gaining any vantage point from which they can observe the outpost line. These are called combat patrols and have an entirely ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... murder, when the victorious nation was ready to apply, and the conquered faction would have submitted without a murmur to that bold and comprehensive policy which is the only wise as it is the only safe one for great occasions. To let that moment slip was to descend irrecoverably from the vantage ground where statesmanship is an exact science to the experimental level of tentative politics. We cannot often venture to set our own house on fire with civil war, in order to heat our iron up ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... Only in these green hills, aslant to the sea, no change! Here where the road that has climbed from the inland valleys and woodlands, Dips from the hill-tops down, straight to the base of the hills,— Here, from my vantage-ground, I can see the scattering houses, Stained with time, set warm in orchards, and meadows, and wheat, Dotting the broad bright slopes outspread to southward and eastward, Wind-swept all day long, blown by the south-east wind. Skirting the ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... taken aback, stared uncertainly. He had been lured from his vantage ground of force to that of argument; how he scarcely knew. It had certainly been without ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... furrows made smooth, true, and uniform, self-adjusting drivers introduced, and the driving gear better fitted. Spring wheat patents rapidly rose to the first place in the market, and winter wheat millers waked up to find their vantage ground occupied by their hitherto contemned rivals. To their credit it may be said that they have not been slow in taking up the gauntlet, and through the competition of the millers of the two climatically divided sections of this country with each other and among themselves the onward ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... told me that from fear they had always complied with the manners of the court. I felt that if I did not stand up for my social position at once, I should be treated with contempt during the remainder of my visit, and thus lose the vantage-ground I had assumed of appearing rather as a prince than a trader, for the purpose of better gaining the confidence of the king. To avert over-hastiness, however—for my servants began to be alarmed ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke |
